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“Not much, I just have to change the colour layers…” She dejectedly popped the remaining bhajia into her mouth, cleaned her hands on a wet wipe he offered, and grabbed her iPad and pencil.

“Ten minutes, huh…” she opened her mouth to inform him when it was stuffed with a bite of poha and seva. More of the sev. She looked up surprised. He was filling another spoon for her.

“You work,” his eyes nudged, while his hand brought her another bite. She hesitated.

“It’s hot, Ava. Eat it while it’s hot.”

“It’ll take ten minutes.”

“I know. Now eat,” he fed the bite into her open mouth and began to add more sev in the pit created in the poha.

“Work,” he commanded, eyes still down on mixing the perfect ratio of sev and poha. How did he know she was looking at him?

“Fine. I appoint you, Prince of Nawanagar, to feed me while I work. I wish you had brought grapes too,” She began to work, opening her mouth when he brought her a bite. “And could perform belly dancing…” she opened her mouth again. This time it was a bhajia.

“You didn’t get chutney, Kunwarji?” She switched the colour layer from lilac to linen.

“Kshama, Kumari.”

————————————————————

“This was such a good dinner,” Avantika moaned, throwing her palms behind her and leaning to look at the sun dipping below the city’s edge. The water had cooled the night down. People around them had thinned too, leaving the surroundings smelling and feeling cooler.

“When you came here to stay, hadn’t you planned on long-term food options?” He asked, mimicking her stance with his legs kicked out.

“No,” she sighed. “If I had stayed back home to plan all this, my mother wouldn’t have let me come at all. I had to show that I was ready to fly without any back-up landing options for her to believe that I really wanted to go.”

“Did you?”

“What?”

“Really want to go?”

Avantika shrugged — “It wasn’t like a dream-dream. I have loved Van Cleef & Arpels, I mean. Their jewellery is incredible. Working for them was… fairytalish. Of course, now I see the reality and it’s way different…”

“What was your dream-dream then?”

She turned her face to eye him. His profile was sharper now.

He had grown up and grown up so well. The flesh had baked into his bones, the faint five ‘o clock shadow had replaced the soft dark fuzz of his youth, the eyes…

they were still as truthful as they used to be.

But they were also deeper, more intense, because life had dug a pit inside them.

“Hmm?” His head turned, and those pits stared deep into hers.

“To make my own life.”

“You are not happy in your palace?”

“I am happy. But I have spent more years away from there than in there. Strangely… I am not as attached to it as I like to think. I love my parents, Kaka Maharaj and Kaki Maharaj… my cousins…”

“Kresha,” he rolled his eyes. She chuckled.

“On leap days, Kresha too, yes. But living there, a set pattern awaited me. I did not want that. Saraswati Crest had straightened the royal keeda out of all of us. So the princess life did not appeal to me… See, I am not a rebel. That’s something I have finalised about myself.”

“Finalised?” His eyebrows shot up.

“Yeah. It took me years to think and figure it out. Was I just a rebel because I wanted to do something so unorthodox? Or was I something else? I have come to the conclusion that I am not a rebel.”

“Then what are you?”

“I am… I don’t know what I am for making this decision of my life.” She smiled. “But I can say this with 100% clarity that I am happy.”

“Content.”

Her smile softened.

“Samarth, are you content?”

He nodded, too quickly for her comfort.

“Happy?”

“You ask me this on every birthday call.”

“So?”

“So? My birthday is over.”

“I am still asking.”

“I am not happy about you doing this because of me. How will I carry this guilt with me all my life? That I spoiled what could have been a happy, fulfilled life for you…”

“Oh, please, don’t overestimate yourself. Your god complex was there in school but now it’s gone to the next level.”

“I am serious, Ava. Rethink. Please. There is no prize for greatness…”

“Excuse me? You think this is me trying to be great?” Her temper flared.

“I didn’t mean it like that…”

“Then what did you mean it like? You have a god complex of meddling in people’s lives and making them as perfect as you can. I don’t. I only meddle with my own life.”

“And look what you are doing.”

“Was this dinner to feed me, then belittle me, then insult me?”

“No, Ava… no! Of course not. I didn’t plan to talk all this.”

“Then what did you plan?”

He went silent.

“You said you did not arrange this for making up to me, you did not come prepared to talk this bullshit to me, then what did you come to do?”

He remained silent.

“Answer me now. Don’t you dare shut up.”

His eyes lowered, taking those deep dark pits away from her. Long moments passed. He did not say anything. And the sun set completely, leaving the sky dark, pierced with tiny, very tiny stars. Far and few, barely visible from this centre of the city.

“I think I should go now,” Avantika said finally and braced her palm on the ground to lift off. His hand fell over hers — “I am sorry.”

His voice sounded hoarse. Like he had just woken up from a deep sleep.

“For what?”

“For knowingly, unknowingly dragging you into this. How was I to know that my decisions at 15 would lead to this? To you… becoming like this. And before you launch into another angry tirade, let me clarify — you are brilliant. So brilliant that I am unable to look at you. I made a decision, I swore an oath. I forsook my father’s throne, my ancestor’s kingdom and a family.

You were a part of me then but I did not imagine you would still be a part of me. In your head at least.”

“Am I a part of you in your head?”

He laughed bitterly, his eyes meeting hers for a second and then again looking away. “Can’t you tell?”

Avantika pulled her hand from below his, set it atop his, and gave it a gentle pat.

Something very agitated inside her had finally laid to rest. She hadn’t realised it all these years, but a part of her had always niggled.

That she was unable to move on from a boy who might be living his life, at least on the surface, with all the joys of the world.

A part of her had wished for that, another hated it.

Now, knowing they had sailed in the same boat for the last decade, put that disturbed, agitated part to rest.

“Then that’s my dream-dream.”

His eyes squeezed shut. His head shook, even as a tired chuckle left his mouth. How did he look so tired at just 26?

Avantika patted the back of his hand again.

“Next time you plan this, remember to get a bunch of grapes and wear a waist chain.”

He laughed. Full-bodied, unable-to-stop, tearing-up-from-the-sides-of-his-eyes laugh. The real Samarth Solanki from Saraswati Crest laugh.