"Tu hi toh jannat mera
Tu hi mera junoon
Tu hi toh mann hai mera
Tu hi toh armaan mera"
~ Tum Hi Ho – Arijit Singh

I decided to design the outfit myself on a Wednesday morning in April, sitting on the studio floor surrounded by every fabric sample from Jodhpur.

It wasn't a dramatic decision. No single moment of inspiration. More like the quiet arrival of something I had always known and simply hadn't said aloud yet. I was a fashion designer. The most important outfit of my life was not going to be bought.

I called Ziva.

She picked up before the second ring and said: "Is this about the wedding outfit? Because I have been WAITING for this call—"

"It's about the wedding outfit."

The sound she made defied transcription.

~

The design process took three weeks.

Ziva was on video call for most of it, positioned at the corner of her screen so I could see her sketchbook beside my own. She had opinions. Strong ones, delivered with the absolute conviction of a sixteen-year-old who had been thinking about this since the Jodhpur textile market.

"Lehenga," she said firmly on the first call. "Specifically, a Patiala-influenced silhouette. Volume from the waist, not from cartridges—I know you, you hate cartridge pleating."

"I do hate cartridge pleating."

"Rajasthani embroidery on the border. The bandhani technique. And the colour—" She paused dramatically. "Not red. Everyone does red."

"I know."

"What were you thinking?"

I held up the swatch I'd been holding for a week.

Deep, dusty rose. Somewhere between mauve and blush, with gold undertones that shifted in different lights. The colour of Jodhpur sandstone at sunset.

Ziva went very quiet.

"That," she said. "That is exactly that."

~

The embroidery took the longest to work out.

I wanted it to mean something. Not decoratively—conceptually. I'd been thinking about my last collection, about reconstruction, about the idea of carrying your history in the fabric. And I wanted the outfit to hold both of us.

Punjabi phulkari on the dupatta. My roots, my grandmother's hands.

Rajasthani gota patti on the lehenga border. His city, his six hundred years of stone.

And somewhere, hidden where only I would know, the smallest detail: a tiny pair of interlinked motifs in the embroidery over the heart—not traditional, not expected, entirely mine.

Ziva saw it on the final sketch and said nothing for a long moment.

"Does Aadyant Bhaiya know about the hidden detail?"

"No."

"Good," she said. "Let him find it."

~

I came to sit with Kashvi on a Thursday afternoon.

Not because she asked. Just because I needed to be in the same room as her, and I thought maybe she needed the same.

She was draping a dupatta over a dress form when I arrived, pinning and adjusting with the focused silence she got when she was deep in the work. I sat on the studio couch and watched for a while without interrupting.

Eventually she said, without turning: "You have something to say."

"I always have something to say."

"Something specific. I can tell."

I looked at my hands. "I've been trying to figure out how to say it without it sounding wrong."

"Just say it."

She turned and sat cross-legged on the floor facing me.

"He's my twin," I said. "We came into the world ten seconds apart. I've never known a version of my life that didn't have him in the room next to mine."

"I know."

"And I'm gaining a sister. I want that. I have wanted you specifically in this family since approximately the third week of college." I paused. "But there is a version of him that is changing. That has already changed. The version who, when something hard happened, came to my room first—now comes to you first. And I'm not hurt by that. I'm genuinely not. But I didn't know I would need a moment to—grieve isn't the right word—"

"Adjust," Kashvi offered.

"Yes." I exhaled. "Adjust. To the new shape of things."

Kashvi was quiet for a moment.

"Can I tell you what I see when I watch the two of you?" she said.

"Okay."

"I see two people who have never once in their entire lives had to explain themselves to each other. Who communicate in half-sentences and shared references and silences that mean things. Who have a language between them that no one else speaks fluently." She looked at me steadily. "I am not fluent in that language, Aadya. I never will be. And I would never want to be, because it's yours. The room next to his—that's still yours. I'm just—a different room."

I stared at her.

"You're not going to be displaced," she said. "You're just going to have company."

I didn't say anything for a long moment.

"I love you very much. You know that, right?"

"I know."

"I just needed to hear myself say it to you. Properly. Without Aadyant in the room."

"Then say it again."

"I love you. You're my sister. And I'm going to be extremely annoying about this for the rest of our lives."

Kashvi laughed.

She stood and picked up the dupatta from the floor and handed it to me.

"Tell me what you think of this drape," she said.

I held it. The fabric was extraordinary—Jodhpur indigo at the border, phulkari embroidery at the edge, the gold catching the studio light.

"It's perfect," I said honestly.

"It's almost perfect," she said. She took the pin from her collar and adjusted the fall of the fabric by exactly two centimeters.

Then she smiled.

"Now it's perfect."

~

LIKE & COMMENT...