Chapter 1: The Sherwani Fitting
The air in the boutique was a solid thing, thick with the smell of new silk and jasmine flowers, undercut by the sharp, sweet sweat of too many bodies in a space meant for half as many. Karthik felt it cling to the back of his thin sherwani, a fine sheen of moisture already forming. He was a satellite orbiting the main event, a man adrift in a sea of women’s voices, a riot of Tamil and Hindi and the clatter of bangles.
“Amma, the zardozi work on this one is too heavy,” Priya said, holding up a deep maroon sari. Her voice was a familiar anchor in the chaos.
Her mother, Lakshmi, didn’t even glance at it. Her eyes, dark and assessing, were fixed on Karthik. “He is like a thread,” she said, not to Priya, but to the air between them, her Madurai accent rounding the edges of her words. “A strong wind and he will snap.”
Karthik forced a smile, his cheeks aching with the effort. He wished he’d spent less time debugging code and more time in a gym. Anything to fill out the elegant, but suddenly feeling flimsy, sherwani his own mother had insisted on.
“Come,” Lakshmi commanded, her hand closing around his wrist. Her grip was surprising, a farmer’s grip, all calloused strength and unyielding purpose. Her fingers, rough against his skin, felt like they could sense the delicate structure of his bones beneath.
She pulled him through the labyrinth of fabric, past mannequins draped in rainbows and glass cases glittering with gold jewelry. He followed, a slender reed in her wake, offering a helpless shrug to Priya over his shoulder. Priya’s lips were pressed together, her eyes dancing with a mixture of sympathy and barely-contained laughter.
Lakshmi stopped in a quieter corner, shielded by a tall rack of raw silk saris. The cacophony of the main shop faded to a dull roar. Here, the light was softer, dust motes dancing in a single sunbeam from a high window.
“Stand straight,” she instructed, her voice low.
Karthik straightened his spine, feeling like a specimen under a microscope.
She didn’t look at his face. Her gaze traveled over his shoulders, down his arms. She reached out and pinched the fabric of his sherwani at the shoulder, rubbing the embroidered pattern between her thumb and forefinger. “Good thread,” she murmured, to herself.
Then her hand moved to his collarbone. It was not a caress. It was an inspection. Her rough fingertips pressed down, not hard, but with a firm, probing pressure, as if gauging the sturdiness of the architecture beneath. He could feel the prominent ridge of the bone, and he knew she could feel it too. He held his breath, his heart a frantic bird against his ribs. The intimacy of it was staggering, mortifying. This was his future mother-in-law.
Her eyes met his, and for a second, he saw something unreadable in their depths. Not disapproval, not quite. Calculation, perhaps. A reassessment.
“You don’t eat enough,” she stated, her hand finally falling away. The spot on his collarbone where her fingers had been felt branded.
“I… I do, Aunty. It’s just my metabolism,” he managed, the excuse sounding pathetic even to his own ears.
From behind the silk rack, Priya could no longer stifle a soft giggle. Lakshmi’s head snapped towards the sound, and Priya quickly composed her face into a mask of innocence.
Lakshmi turned back to Karthik. Her gaze was different now. Softer around the edges, but no less intense. She reached out again, but this time her hand rested on his arm, just above the elbow. A simple, steadying gesture.
“Metabolism,” she repeated, the word foreign on her tongue. She gave his arm a slight, almost imperceptible squeeze. There was a new weight in her silence, a shift in the atmosphere of the little corner. The initial inspection was over. Something else had begun.
Something else had begun.
The ride to the next shop was a silent, humid affair in the back of the air-conditioned cab. Lakshmi sat between them, a solid, unreadable presence, her gaze fixed on the chaotic swirl of Chennai traffic outside her window. Karthik stared at his own reflection in the glass, trying to parse the strange, proprietary look in his future mother-in-law’s eyes. It wasn’t hostility. It was more like… appraisal.
The new boutique was smaller, more intimate, and blessedly quieter. A single ceiling fan chopped lazily at the heavy air. This time, the tailor, a wizened man with pins stuck in the corner of his mouth, had Karthik stand on a low wooden platform.
“Right arm up, please,” the tailor mumbled around the pins.
Karthik complied, raising his arm so the man could adjust the sleeve of a sample bandhgala. He held the pose, feeling the strain in his shoulder. As he moved his arm slightly, a ripple passed through the soft flesh of his underarm. A distinct, loose jiggle.
Priya, leaning against a nearby wall and scrolling through her phone, glanced up. Her eyes caught the movement. She watched, fascinated, as the pale skin of his inner arm continued to tremble slightly even after he’d stilled. It was such a small, vulnerable thing. Without thinking, she lifted her own arm, bending it at the elbow. She flexed subtly. Nothing. Just the smooth, firm curve of defined triceps, the unyielding density of muscle built from years of athletics and weight training. Her arm was solid. His… quivered.
A strange, tender feeling bloomed in her chest. It wasn’t mockery. It was a sudden, stark understanding of the physical difference between them. He was made of different stuff. Softer. More delicate.
Lakshmi’s voice cut through the silence, sharp and clear. “See?” she said, pointing a blunt finger at Karthik’s arm. “No strength. Like a baby.” She turned to Priya, her expression utterly serious. “You will have to be careful with him.”
The tailor froze, a pin halfway to the fabric. Karthik’s face flushed a deep, mortified crimson. He slowly lowered his arm, the jiggling ceasing, leaving only a burning self-consciousness.
Priya dropped her own arm, her cheeks growing warm. “Amma, please,” she whispered, a mixture of embarrassment and defiance in her voice.
Lakshmi simply shrugged, a practical, unshakeable mountain of a woman. “It is the truth. He needs ghee. Good food. Strength.” She looked directly at Karthik, her dark eyes holding his. “We will feed you.”