Nikita Singh on Love and Loss | What Do You See When You Look in the Mirror? EXCERPT

In this dazzling collection of short fiction, bestselling author Nikita Singh explores the secret inner lives of her characters as they grapple with love, loss, grief and mental health. Read an excerpt!

Together Forever

‘Are you okay?’ Sher’s worried voice calls from behind her. Preeti moves slightly to the side, revealing the reflection of her husband in the mirror in front of her.

‘More than okay. I’m sexy,’ she says. She’s not lying; she feels sexy. She hasn’t felt this way in a long time. She has spent longer than usual in front of the mirror this morning,  surveying herself. Her fifty years of life on this planet show in the crevices around her eyes, the wrinkles on the back of her hand, the softness under her skin. While getting dressed this special morning, Preeti had gravitated towards her laciest, most uncomfortable bra. She hadn’t worn it in several years, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it still fit perfectly, cupping her breasts in a flattering way. She counted that as a perk of having cancer – the shrinking.

She could now fit into many of her clothes from some time ago, and yet, she didn’t have the time, energy or occasion to dress that way. The lehenga choli from Sher’s brother’s wedding, decades ago, was hardly appropriate for her oncologist appointments.

‘Can you be serious for a second?’ Sher is especially irritable today. Preeti doesn’t take it personally. She senses the worry in his tone, understands the reason behind it.

‘You’ve been … looking at them for a long time. Is everything okay?’ he checks.

‘Hey bhagwan! You can say the word “breasts”. You’re fifty-five years old! This is the second time your wife has been struck by breast cancer. How are you still uncomfortable saying breasts?’

‘Not everything has to be mazaak, okay? I’m just asking you to be serious for one minute. Please?’ Sher looks positively pained, and his crumpled face finally wipes the smile off of Preeti’s.

‘Okay, baba, fine! I’m serious now. Tell me.’ She finishes buttoning her silk kurti and turns around to look at him with full attention.

‘Come, sit with me.’

Preeti knows what is coming. She takes calculated steps towards him, revising her strategy in her head. She has been expecting this moment, and has a perfect little speech prepared for the occasion. But she’ll let him start. She sits down next to him on the bed and places her palm gently on his knee.

‘Like Facebook would ask: what’s on your mind?’ she says, in an attempt to be funny. It lands flat, getting no reaction from Sher, as expected.

‘Are you really not scared at all? This is … all very difficult to deal with. I know I’m having a hard time …’

‘Just don’t think about it,’ she suggests gently, when in fact, she feels a tide of anger bubbling inside her. They’ve gone over this already. He needs to stop talking about it, stop letting it occupy his headspace and hers. The rest of her short life cannot be governed by this stupid cancer. It has taken too much from her already. Enough is enough.

‘I can’t just stop thinking about it …’ Sher begins to complain.

Preeti talks over him loudly, ‘We thought about it enough the first time! That’s all we thought about, for two whole years. I’m done. This is it. Game over. I will not let this cancer take one more moment of our time. It’s here, okay? And it’s growing fast. Get that through your thick head.’ She suddenly giggles, poking the side of his head. Lowering her voice, she adapts that silly, sweet tone they reserve for each other when no one is watching. ‘Are you having second

thoughts or what? You made a promise to me, mister. You better not back out now!’

‘I’m not backing out.’ Sher speaks like a petulant child accused of a naughty crime he absolutely did commit.

‘Theek hai fir, good. Because I don’t think you’ll make it without me anyway.’ Preeti holds her chin up high in the air.

‘Jo wada kiya woh nibhana padega,’ she sings poorly under her breath, loud enough for Sher to hear, as she pulls him close to her. He has to keep his promise. He rests his head on her shoulder and chuckles.

‘What a twisted sense of humour you have, no?’

‘Mm-hmm.’

Today is going to be a good day.

***

Later in the day, they make their way to Chelsea, the posh neighbourhood in London where their son Ratan lives with his rapidly growing family. First came Angela, three years ago. They married one year later, had Leo a year after that, and now they’re expecting their second baby.

Secretly, Preeti used to wish her sons would be just a little bit on the wild side. Break some rules, stir things up. They didn’t move from India to come here, struggle and go on living pretty much the same sheltered, by-the-book lives they would’ve lived back at home, did they?

Much to her dismay, both her sons were straight arrows.

Ratan would have a whole picture-perfect family of four before he turned twenty-eight, later this year. Ronnie, five years younger, was probably on the same beaten path.

Preeti prided herself on being a rule-breaker, a cool mom. She never felt part of the tight-knit, talking-behind-eachother’s-backs community they had belonged to in India.

Being different was important to her. It made her feel special, better than the rest. Just the thought of being one in 7 billion gave her anxiety. She had no other option but to cling to the things about her that were out of the ordinary.

Preeti had lived the first twenty-five years of her life in India and the next twenty-five years in London. During her life in London, she had done everything she wasn’t allowed to do back home, followed every instinct, broken every rule that made her unhappy. Even as a twenty-five-year-old small-town Indian woman, flying abroad for the very first time in her life, clutching her three-year-old son’s hand, she had felt more thrilled than terrified. It really was a shame that her sons, who received every privilege, every liberty to aim as high as they could, to do whatever in the world their hearts desired, had only ever wanted simple, straightforward lives.

Preeti shakes her thoughts aside and pays attention to little Leo. Angela really did give birth to a perfectly angelic boy. Preeti feels a stab in her chest, not from the cancer, but the knowledge that she would never get to meet the angel Angela currently carried in her swollen belly.

‘Gwamma, look!’ Leo cries, spotting a waiter carrying a giant cake on a round tray. Preeti spins around to watch.

The waiter sets the cake in the middle of the table next to theirs, and lights one of those obnoxious firecracker candles.

‘Pwetty,’ Leo coos.

‘Do you want some ice cream, Leo?’ Preeti asks to distract him. The last thing they needed was for the girls on the cake table to offer a toxic residue–covered slice to Leo. ‘Ooh, look, Leo, they have chocolate ice cream on the menu. Your favourite! Would you like a scoop of chocolate ice cream?’

Leo is instantly distracted. Angela gives Preeti a grateful look. They both know that if the girls did offer Leo a slice, Ratan probably wouldn’t even question the toxins on the cake. His parenting philosophy was rooted in one primary rule: no coddling, which tended to become problematic when he pushed it to an unreasonably dangerous extreme.

‘What kind of toppings do you want?’ Angela asks Leo in the sweet voice she always reserves for him. Her tone for adults is crisp, sharp, even rude on occasions. Which is why Preeti loves her hot-shot lawyer daughter-in-law so much. Zero times has she seen Angela fake smile to diffuse a situation. Preeti would never say it out loud to her sensitive  family, but Angela had earned Preeti’s respect in a way her boring sons’ attitudes or actions seldom could. Sher would be horrified to hear this truth. He was too sweet, too devoted to their family to ever think of such a thing. It wasn’t that Preeti’s love for her family wasn’t unconditional. It was. But her respect wasn’t free.

Preeti elbows Sher’s arm for attention. He looks sad. He spins towards her and gives her a wide, fake smile. Was he capable of surviving her death? She wouldn’t bet on it. But she had to take action. Her time was here. She couldn’t delay it any longer.

She hides it well, but she is in constant pain. Every moment she is awake, every moment she is asleep, she is in pain. Nine days ago, she stopped taking the strong drugs her doctor had prescribed her. Those drugs pushed her deep underwater, leaving her to swim through an impossible pressure pulling her down, trying to drown her. She would cling to familiar bits and pieces, moments of clarity, but before she could save herself, another tide would rise up and swallow her. She didn’t want to spend the last days of her life in a state of numbness and disorientation. She wanted to close the book of her life on her own terms.

Everyone chooses how they live. What was so wrong in choosing how they die?

To read more, pre-order your copy of What Do You See When You Look in the Mirror today!