Chapter 1- The People We supposed to be
Mumbai had a strange way of making people feel lonely.
There could be thousands of people pressed against one another inside a metro coach, shoulders touching, bags colliding, strangers breathing the same air—and yet everyone seemed to live inside a little invisible room of their own.
Mehak knew that room very well.
So did Vyom.
They were both twenty-somethings with respectable jobs, respectable families, respectable salaries and, most importantly, respectable reputations.
And both of them were exhausted by it.
Mehak was twenty-seven and worked a nine-to-five corporate job she hated. She was the elder daughter in a family of four—her parents and her younger sister. Almost everything she earned went somewhere other than herself.
A bill.
Her sister's needs.
Her parents' medicines.
Something her mother had casually mentioned wanting.
Something her father needed but refused to buy for himself.
Mehak rarely bought things simply because she wanted them.
Wanting something had gradually become a suspicious activity in her mind.
Why do you need it?
Is it necessary?
What will people say?
What if it turns out to be a bad decision?
Those questions had followed her for years.
She had never been in a relationship.
Not because nobody had ever interested her.
There had been people.
A boy in college who smiled at her too often. A colleague who once asked her out for coffee. Someone she met at a friend's wedding who seemed genuinely interested.
But every possibility died somewhere between What if? and What will everyone think?
She had watched other women around her being judged for their choices.
Too modern.
Too independent.
Too loud.
Too romantic.
Too ambitious.
Too free.
Mehak didn't want to become a topic of discussion.
So she had become almost impossible to discuss.
Vyom had perfected the same art.
Thirty years old, a corporate employee, elder brother to a younger brother, financially responsible and painfully careful about everything he did.
He had never had a girlfriend either.
Not once.
People occasionally joked about it.
He laughed along.
He called it a choice.
Sometimes he even convinced himself that it was.
But privately, he was tired.
Tired of always being the good man.
The dependable son.
The responsible brother.
The man who never drank too much, never came home late without explanation, never got involved in unnecessary friendships, never flirted, never created scandals and never gave anyone a reason to talk.
He had spent so many years protecting his image that he had forgotten what it felt like to simply live.
And yet neither Mehak nor Vyom considered themselves victims.
They loved their families.
That was the problem.
They loved them so much that every dream came with a calculation.
Will this hurt them?
Will they approve?
What if something goes wrong?
What will relatives say?
What if I regret it?
So they continued.
Work.
Metro.
Home.
Family.
Sleep.
Repeat.
Every day.
Until one rainy night in Mumbai, something changed.
