Chapter 2: The Feeding
The air in the bridal suite was cool and smelled of tuberoses and polished wood. It was a world away from the clattering boutiques, all soft carpets and gilded mirrors that reflected the scene back in fractured, golden pieces. Karthik sat stiffly on the edge of a brocade sofa, the cushion swallowing his slight frame. He felt like an exhibit. Priya’s aunts and cousins flowed around him in a river of silk, their voices a melodic hum, their eyes constantly flicking towards him, assessing, measuring.
“He’s very fair, no?” one aunt whispered, not quietly enough.
“Like an Englishman,” another agreed.
Karthik focused on the intricate pattern of the carpet, wishing he could code his way out of this reality.
Lakshmi moved through the room with the quiet authority of a general. She dismissed the hotel staff with a wave of her hand when they tried to serve tea, insisting on overseeing everything herself. She had commandeered a small trolley, now laden not with delicate finger sandwiches, but with a battalion of steel containers from home.
“The hotel food has no strength,” she declared to the room, lifting the lid from one. The rich, ghee-laden scent of mysore pak filled the immediate air, dense and sweet. “It is all for show. No substance.”
She turned her gaze to Karthik. It was the same look she’d given his collarbone in the boutique—practical, appraising, and utterly inescapable. She picked up a piece of the sweet, a perfect, trembling golden cube. It glistened.
“Come,” she said, not asking.
Priya, perched on the arm of a chair nearby, stopped her conversation with a cousin. She watched, a strange knot tightening in her stomach. This was different from the boutique. This was more direct.
Karthik’s mind went blank. Every polite protest, every soft-spoken refusal, evaporated. He saw the determination in Lakshmi’s eyes, the same unyielding will that had pulled him through the crowd and tested the bone beneath his skin. He slowly opened his mouth.
Lakshmi’s fingers, thick and strong from a lifetime of work, pushed the mysore pak past his lips. Her skin brushed against them, dry and rough. The sweetness exploded in his mouth, overwhelming, almost cloying. It was heavy, a solid mass of gram flour and sugar and pure fat.
He chewed mechanically, his throat already constricting.
“Good,” Lakshmi said, her voice a low murmur of satisfaction. She didn’t wait for him to swallow before she was picking up another piece, this time a laddu, round and dense. “For the bones.”
Again, her fingers approached. This time, the tip of her finger, calloused and firm, pressed against his lower lip as she deposited the sweet. A flush of heat spread from his neck to his hairline. He could feel the eyes of the entire room on them now. The gentle chatter had died down to a few uncertain whispers.
He saw Priya from the corner of his eye. She was staring, her amusement completely gone, replaced by a frozen, wide-eyed stillness. Her knuckles were white where she gripped the chair.
He swallowed the first sweet with effort, a thick, sticky lump traveling down his esophagus. The second was already at his lips.
“Amma,” Priya’s voice was thin, a strained thread in the heavy air. “Maybe he’s full.”
Lakshmi didn’t even look at her. “Full? Nonsense. Look at him. He has space.” Her eyes were fixed on Karthik’s mouth, on the process of consumption. It was a ritual, a forced feeding. He was the vessel and she was filling him, pouring her own definition of strength into his fragile container.
The laddu was drier. It coated his tongue and the roof of his mouth. He tried to work up enough saliva to swallow, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously. He felt a panic begin to simmer, low in his gut. This was more than embarrassment. This was a violation, performed with a smile and the unassailable authority of maternal care.
Lakshmi reached for a third sweet, a jalebi, coiled and dripping with syrup.
Karthik’s hand, which had been lying limp on his knee, twitched. He brought it up, a feeble gesture of defense, palm open. “Aunty, please,” he managed, his voice thick with sugar and shame. “I… I really can’t.”
For a second, Lakshmi paused, the jalebi hovering in the air between them. She looked from his pleading eyes to his trembling hand, so slight compared to her own. A complex emotion flickered in her gaze—not anger, but something like impatience, mixed with a stubborn, unwavering certainty. She saw his refusal not as a boundary, but as further proof of his deficiency.
The moment stretched, tight and silent. The gilded mirrors seemed to hold their breath. Then, slowly, she withdrew the sweet, placing it back on the trolley. She wiped her fingers on a napkin, the rough sound loud in the quiet room.
“You need to build your tolerance,” she said, her tone final. The lesson, for now, was over.
Karthik looked down at his lap, his heart hammering. The taste of ghee and sugar was a nauseating film in his mouth. He felt Priya’s gaze on him, but he couldn’t meet it. He just stared at his own hands, at the fine bones of his wrists, and felt the weight of the future settling deep inside him, heavy and indigestible.