Chapter 6: The Costume Fitting
The faint scent of sandalwood incense still clung to the air in Priya’s bedroom, a ghost of her evening prayers. She sat on the edge of her perfectly made bed, the pink curtains diffusing the afternoon sun into a soft, rosy glow. Her fingers traced the raised embroidery on the bedspread, following the same vine pattern over and over.
Her mind replayed the morning. The defeated slope of Dev’s shoulders as he’d described that stupid party. The flat, hollow tone he’d used to recount the cruelty. It had ignited a cold fury in her, one that had now cooled into a hard, stubborn resolve.
He was thirty. A man. And yet, in that moment, he’d been her little boy again, coming home with a scraped knee from the playground. Only this playground was permanent, and the bullies wore lab coats.
“Their loss,” she had said. A pathetic, weak offering.
It wasn’t enough. The fortress of an alternative—takeout and bad movies—felt flimsy now, a cardboard shield against a real wound. She was treating a symptom, not the disease. The disease was that hostel, that environment, that relentless erosion of his spirit. He was withering there. And she was just… watering a plant she kept in a dark room.
Her eyes wandered to the shelves lining the wall. A gallery of their life. Dev as a gap-toothed six-year-old on his father’s shoulders. Her husband’s smile, forever frozen in time. Dev at his medical school white coat ceremony, looking so proud, so hopeful. That photo was only two years old. The light in his eyes seemed to belong to a different person than the one currently slumped at her dining table, pretending to read a pathophysiology textbook.
A deep, aching loneliness, one she usually kept folded and stored away like winter blankets, unfolded within her. It wasn’t just his loneliness. It was hers. For years, her identity had been a binary toggle: Mother and Widow. The world saw the capable, nurturing Priya Sharma and nothing else. No woman. No person with needs that existed outside of her son. Sometimes, in the silent apartment, she felt like a museum exhibit of maternal devotion. Admired, perhaps, but fundamentally alone.
And now her son, her only tether to the world, was drowning in the same isolating sea. The symmetry of it was cruel.
She stood up, a sudden, decisive movement. She walked to the window and pushed the curtain aside. The ordinary sight of the quiet street below did nothing to quiet the storm in her head. She had spent a lifetime making things right for him. Feeding him, tutoring him, nursing him, advocating for him. She had fought teachers, relatives, and his own creeping doubts. This was just another fight. A bigger one.
But the enemy was vague. A feeling. An absence. You couldn’t slap it away or argue with it over the phone.
An idea, tentative and terrifying, began to form. It wasn’t about the Halloween party. That ship had sailed. It was about everything after. She had money saved—the careful nest egg from her husband’s insurance and her own frugal decades. It was for emergencies, for his future, for a dowry she now knew would never be needed.
What bigger emergency was there than this? Than watching her child disappear?
She could bring him home. Properly. Not as a retreat, but as a strategic withdrawal. He could transfer. There were other medical colleges, decent ones, within commuting distance. He could study here, in the quiet of his childhood room, eat proper food, sleep without fear of ridicule. He would have a foundation again. He could heal.
And her? The thought echoed in the silent room. What would she have? Him. Always him. The totality of it should have felt suffocating. Instead, in that moment, it felt like a purpose reinstated. A life re-defined, but defined nonetheless. It was a sacrifice, but one she understood. It was the soil she knew how to till.
She smoothed her kameez, took a steadying breath, and left the sanctuary of her room.
He was at the dining table, a fortress of open textbooks and highlighted notes surrounding him. He looked up as she approached, his eyes momentarily wide, like he’d been caught doing something wrong.
“Making progress?” she asked, her voice deliberately light.
“Some. The Krebs cycle is trying to kill me.” He attempted a smile. It was weak, but it was an attempt. That was something.
She pulled out a chair and sat opposite him, crossing her legs. “Dev. About this party.”
His face closed off immediately, a shutter coming down. “Ma, forget it. It’s not important.”
“It is,” she insisted softly. “It’s a symptom. Listen to me.” She leaned forward, her hands clasped on the table. “I’ve been thinking. All day. This situation… it’s not sustainable. You’re miserable there. Really, truly miserable. And I can’t just… send you back into that every week.”
He stared at her, confusion replacing the defensiveness. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying maybe you don’t go back.” The words hung in the air, huge and final. “Not to live. We look into a transfer. You commute. You study here. You get your degree without… all that poison.”
Dev was utterly still. The proposal was a lifeline thrown directly into the heart of his secret fantasy. Home. Permanently. With her. The current plan for Halloween night sparked and crackled, threatening to explode into a permanent, blinding sun. But another part of him, a sliver of the man he was supposed to be, recoiled. It was admission of total defeat. It was letting them win by surrendering the entire battlefield.
“You’d do that?” he asked, his voice hoarse.
“In a heartbeat.”
The unconditional offer lay between them. He saw the love in her eyes, pure and fierce. He also saw, for the first time, the profound loneliness that fueled it. It wasn’t just for him. It was for her, too. The realization was intoxicating. Their isolations were entwined, mutual.
He looked down at his textbook, the diagrams a blur. “Let me… let me think about it. It’s a big decision.”
“Of course,” she said, relief softening her features. She hadn’t expected an immediate answer. The seed was planted. “Just know it’s on the table. No pressure.”
He nodded, unable to speak.
She stood, placing a warm hand on his head for a moment, ruffling his hair like she did when he was small. “We’ll have our nice Halloween, yeah? A proper reset. Then we can talk seriously.”
After she walked away, back towards the kitchen, Dev slowly closed his textbook. His heart was thrumming a frantic, disjointed rhythm. The world had just been reconfigured. Her offer was a moon, pulling the tides of his future.
But his own plan was now a compulsion. Halloween wasn’t a consolation prize anymore. It was an audition. A test run for the life she was proposing. He had to show her—and himself—what it could be. Not just mother and son coexisting in quiet solace. Something more. Something that could fill that loneliness he saw in her eyes with a different kind of light.
He needed to go out. He needed supplies.
He found her at the sink, washing a few dishes. “Ma, I’m going to step out for a bit. Need some air, maybe pick up a few things.”
She turned, her hands wet and soapy. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah. Just… need to move. Think.”
She smiled, that understanding smile that always felt like a blessing. “Okay. Don’t be long. I’m making saag for dinner.”
He grabbed his jacket and left, the door clicking shut behind him. As he walked down the familiar street, the autumn air crisp on his face, his mind was a whirlwind. Flowers. He should get flowers. Not a garish, festive bouquet. Something elegant. White lilies, maybe. She liked those. And wine. A good red. He could say it was for their special dinner. A candle. One candle, not two. Too obvious. Just one, for atmosphere.
He was constructing a set, piece by piece. He was directing a scene. And for the first time in a long time, the creeping dread of social interaction was gone, burned away by a feverish, singular purpose. He wasn’t Dev the anxious student. He was Dev the architect of a new reality.
As he turned the corner towards the market, his phone buzzed in his pocket. A message from a number he didn’t recognize, but the area code was from the hostel. He opened it.
Hey Sharma. Big news. Patel chickened out of being the zombie bride. Costume is free. You in? Would be hilarious. LMK.
He stared at the screen. The words “zombie bride” and “hilarious” seemed to bleed together. An invitation, of a sort. A cruel, joke invitation to wear a dead woman’s costume. The final punchline.
His thumb hovered over the screen. A part of him wanted to type back something vile, to finally unleash the vitriol he kept bottled. Another part just wanted to delete it.
He did neither. He put the phone back in his pocket, the message unanswered. The noise from that world was just static now. He had a mission. He had a lily to find. The quiet of the apartment awaited his transformation, and he would not let something as trivial as a costume party get in his way.