Denial, Drama And A Destination Wedding

1. FIRST MEETING

"No, no, no! You're doing it all wrong" her sister screamed.

"Yes, since you clearly are the expert at sweeping the floor why don't you demonstrate exactly how it's done!" Meera responded sarcastically.

"It's not my fault that the maid decided to fall ill today itself" Arya said. They sighed and continued the chores.

Ordinarily the girls would not be concerned with any house chore, but today was a special day. It was the day their family-friends were coming to visit from London. Their mother was busy preparing a grand dinner sans their maid, therefore needless to say, she was frustrated. Their father would be picking them up from the hotel.

Indians never make such a fuss about a clean house unless someone from another country is coming to visit. Meera could remember her mother's words loud and clear, "They need to feel that we too lead very prosperous lives here. So what if our home is only 3 bedrooms! There is no place to stay in Mumbai anyway. Make every corner sparkle!"

How was it going to be possible to make any corner shiny? Even the maid may not have dusted the house in a whole week as much as the sisters had that day. They better be worth this trouble, thought Meera. She was going to meet these people after 7 years.

What was so special about these people now? The couple was with Meera's parents in college. They went way back. So her parents were way too excited to meet their best friends after so long. They would drink wine, retell their college stories, sigh about how times had changed since they were students. The sisters (as usual) were left to entertain absolute strangers with whom they were supposed to become instant best friends. They had a son Arjun, who was a year older than Meera and a daughter, Tara who was Arya's age.

Being socially awkward is not a trait that is helpful in such cases. Meera had sworn to herself that she would pretend to be the overly-dutiful elder sibling and cater to their every need, just so that the children would not be asked to socialize. Their children might have an accent, thought Meera. British accents had always been her weakness. Her only wish was that Arjun had not become incredibly good-looking. That would make the socializing even more difficult. Her mother snapped fingers in front of her face, breaking her train of thought.

"Get the garlic bread from the fridge! You brought some this morning, right?" she said and began rinsing a dish. Holy crap, thought Meera. She had obviously forgotten to do this from the list of Things-to-be-done-before-they-arrive.

She mumbled "I forgot" under her breath and as she soundlessly turned to leave and get it, her mother cried, "I knew it. You always do this. I should never have told you to do anything. Arya would not have forgotten. And you're supposed to be the elder one!"

Meera sighed. She had heard this speech a million times before. She retaliated, "Don't be melodramatic, Mom. I'm going right now. The shop is just 3 buildings away!" Her mother told her to hurry up and continued her preparations.

Meera grabbed her keys and phone and stepped out of the house. As she was getting into the lift, her best friend Tanya called. This happened so frequently that it was not a coincidence. The elevator cut out her phone's range. She waited to reach the ground floor and called her back.

Tanya shrieked, "So, is the mystery guy hot or not?"

Meera had been freaking out about this meeting for days. The presence of a rumoured hot guy was enough to keep Tanya's interest in the matter.

"They haven't arrived yet. I forgot to get garlic bread so I'm going to buy some right now".

Tanya replied, "This is textbook Meera behaviour. Freak out about some random thing and forget everything else!"