Keep the apology

Three weddings. I vouched for Priya at three weddings in 2025, stood behind her in front of families who trusted my word, and the whole time she was forwarding my BKC referral number to a cousin who needed a hostess contact. I keep saying it flat in my head because if I let it curve I will scream in this flat and the neighbours already think I am dramatic.

Heena told me later that my voice sounded like my mother's when I said keep the apology, give me the SIM card. I did not know I had my mother's voice. I thought it was just the host voice, the one I use when the MC mic cuts out and a baraat needs turning. Apparently there is a different one. Apparently I found it today without rehearsing.

On SV Road this afternoon the shoulder started. I had genuinely filed it. Healed. Archived under do-not-open. And then I see him walk out of a Bank of Baroda four shops down, jaw like the men in Jaipur who never quite look at you, and the purple welt on my left shoulder begins to itch exactly like the morning after. The body is a traitor. It remembers what the mind has graciously buried.

I do not feel guilty about Priya's apology going nowhere. I should. I am not going to perform guilt I do not have on top of everything else.

The selfie I posted when I got in — wet hair, soft home smile — took four tries. The smile cost something but I have gotten good at spending my own face like small change.