"Ki tujhse hi jaadui, jaadui
Jaadui, jaadui, jaadui lage ye zindagi
Ki tujhse hi jaadui, jaadui
Jaadui, jaadui, jaadui lage ye zindagi"
~Jaadui: - Jubin Nautiyal

~ The Next Morning ~

I woke up before Kashvi.

This was not unusual. What was unusual was that I lay there for twenty minutes in the dark, staring at the ceiling, completely unable to sleep.

We were having a baby.

The thought arrived the same way it had on the balcony—warm and enormous and slightly destabilizing, like standing on ground that had just shifted a centimeter and realizing the whole landscape was different now.

I looked at Kashvi asleep beside me.

She was on her side, one hand tucked under her cheek, completely out. The morning light was starting at the edges of the curtains.

Nineteen years old. Married five months. About to call our families.

From the other side of the wall, I heard Aadya's alarm go off, and then the sound of her immediately silencing it, which meant she was already awake. Which meant she had probably slept approximately as much as I had.

I got up quietly, made coffee, and knocked on Aadya's door.

She opened it in approximately two seconds, already dressed, holding her own phone.

We looked at each other.

"Maa and Baba first," she said.

"Maa and Baba first," I agreed.

"Video call. Not a text."

"Obviously not a text."

She nodded. Took the coffee I held out. We stood in the corridor like two people coordinating a military operation, which, given that our mother was involved, was not entirely inaccurate.

~

I woke up to Aadyant sitting on the edge of the bed with his phone, and the specific expression of someone who has been rehearsing something in their head and is not yet sure they're ready.

"We're calling Maa and Baba," he said.

I sat up.

"Now?"

"Aadya has already made coffee. She's been awake since five apparently."

I looked at the time. Seven-fifteen.

"She knows this means your mother is about to cry," I said.

"My mother is absolutely going to cry." He held out his hand. "Come on."

Aadya was at the kitchen island with two mugs and the expression of someone in the front row of a theatre production she had been waiting for.

"Are we ready?" she said.

"No," Aadyant and I said, simultaneously.

"Perfect. That means we're ready." She pushed her mug toward the center of the island. "Do it."

~

Maa picked up on the second ring.

She was in the palace kitchen, which I could tell from the background, and she was clearly mid-something because there was a bowl in her hand when the video connected. She looked at my face and immediately set the bowl down.

"Beta," she said. "What's happened?"

"Nothing bad," I said quickly. "Nothing is wrong. Is Baba nearby?"

"He's in the study. AADHIR—"

"Maa, you don't have to—"

"AADHIR, COME TO THE KITCHEN—"

From somewhere off-screen, my father's voice, "What's happened—"

"Come and see—"

He appeared behind her, still holding his newspaper, reading glasses pushed up on his forehead. They both looked at the screen.

"Is everyone all right?" Baba said.

"Everyone is very all right," I said. I looked at Kashvi beside me.

She took a breath.

"We wanted to tell you something," she said. "Together."

Maa looked between us. Something was moving across her face—hope, maybe, or the particular maternal instinct that arrives before the words do.

"We're pregnant," I said.

Silence.

One second.

Two.

And then Maa put her hand over her mouth.

And burst into tears.

Not gently. Properly. Full, complete, covering-her-face tears.

Baba, behind her, went very still in the way he did when something had moved him that he had not prepared for. He removed his reading glasses from his forehead. Folded them. Set them on the counter.

"Aadyant," he said.

"Baba."

His jaw worked for a moment.

"That's—" He stopped. "That's wonderful news."

From beside the phone, Aadya made a sound and buried her face in her hands.

Kashvi was laughing—the real one, surprised out of her by Maa's reaction. "Maa—please, we're all going to—"

"I'm fine," Maa said, into her hands, clearly not fine. "I'm completely fine, I'm just—you're going to make me a grandmother—"

"Maa—"

"I'm going to be a grandmother—"

"Devika," Baba said, with the patient tone of a man who had managed his wife's emotions for over twenty years and had made peace with the process. "Breathe."

"I'm breathing—"

"You are not."

"I'm emotionally breathing—"

"That's not a real—"

"Baba," I said, "is she going to be okay?"

He looked at Maa, who was now clutching the kitchen counter and doing the thing where she tried to compose herself and kept almost getting there and then not. He looked back at the screen.

"She is going to be extraordinary," he said simply. "And so are you both."

He said it the way he said everything that mattered—simply, precisely, without decoration.

Kashvi's face did something quiet and completely undone.

"Thank you, Baba," she said.

~

Dadi was next.

Aadyant had insisted.

"She'll know if we wait," he said. "She always knows."

"How does she always know—"

"I stopped questioning it around age twelve. She just knows."

Dadi picked up and looked at the three of us on screen—Aadyant, me, and Aadya squeezing into the frame—and smiled before anyone said a word.

"I wondered when you were going to call," she said pleasantly.

Dead silence.

"Dadi," Aadyant said slowly. "Did Maa tell you?"

"Your mother cannot keep anything from me. She has tried for twenty years."

"She called you in the last ten minutes—"

"She sent a voice note," Dadi said serenely. "Seven minutes ago. She was crying in it. Very happy crying."

Aadya made a strangled sound. "MAA—"

"She couldn't help it," Dadi said, waving a hand. "She was very excited. Now." She looked at me directly. "Kashvi, beta. How are you feeling? The first weeks are the hardest. Are you eating?"

The shift from revelation to practical care was so instantaneous and so Dadi that I laughed.

"I'm eating," I said. "The mornings are difficult."

"Ginger," she said immediately. "Fresh ginger in warm water, first thing. Before you get out of bed. It helps. And crackers beside the bed for the same reason." She paused. "Also, you are not to lift anything heavy. Tell him." She pointed at Aadyant.

"I'm right here, Dadi—"

"Tell her she's not to lift anything heavy."

"Kashvi, you're not to lift—"

"I heard her, she's right there—"

"Good." Dadi folded her hands. "I'm very happy. Your grandfather will be pleased. I haven't told him yet because I wanted you to have the call first, but he's going to be very pleased."

"How do you know?" I asked.

She looked at me with the expression of a woman who had been married to Vikram Rathore for fifty-two years.

"I know," she said simply.

~

Dadu was a different call entirely.

He answered on the fourth ring, which for Dadu meant he had been occupied with something that required full attention. He was in his study—I could see the familiar bookshelf behind him, the lamp on the desk, the particular quality of stillness that that room always had.

"Aadyant," he said.

"Dadu. I have some news."

He waited. No prompting.

"Kashvi is pregnant."

Dadu was quiet for a moment.

Then he looked at Kashvi on the screen.

"How are you?" he said. Not congratulations. Not exclamation. Just: how are you.

Kashvi blinked.

"I'm—" She paused. "Still figuring that out. But okay. Getting more okay."

He nodded.

"That's the correct answer," he said. "There is no script for this. You figure it out as you go." He paused. "Both of you."

He looked at me.

"You'll be adequate," he said.

Aadya, off-screen, made a noise.

I knew, from a lifetime of reading Vikram Rathore, that adequate from him was not an insult. It was his version of:

you're going to be better than you think.

"Thank you, Dadu," I said.

He gave one nod. The real one.

Then: "Tell your grandmother to stop sending voice notes to everyone before you've had the chance to call them yourself."

The call ended.

All three of us stared at the screen.

"He already knew," Aadya said.

"Of course, he already knew," I said.

~

Ivaan was the call I had been looking forward to the most.

He answered with his camera sideways, which suggested he was lying down, and said "Bhai?" and then saw it was me and Aadyant together and immediately sat up.

"Both of you. At the same time. What happened."

"Nothing bad," Aadyant said. "Why does everyone assume something bad has happened—"

"Because you never call together unless it's important—what happened—"

"Ivaan," I said. "We're pregnant."

Ivaan's face went through approximately six expressions in two seconds.

The first was confusion.

The second was the beginning of understanding.

The third was a very wide grin starting.

The fourth was him launching himself off whatever he'd been lying on, because there was a significant movement and the camera went chaotic.

"BHAI—"

"IVAAN—"

"KASHVI BHABHI—"

"Stop yelling—"

"I'M GOING TO BE A CHACHU—"

"I'M GOING TO BE THE COOLEST CHACHU—"

"Ivaan, calm—"

"RISHVIK—" He had clearly turned and was shouting at someone off-screen. "RISHVIK COME HERE RIGHT NOW—"

"WHAT—"

"AADYANT BHAI AND KASHVI BHABHI ARE HAVING A BABY—"

A long pause from off-screen.

And then Rishvik's face appeared in the corner of the frame. He looked at the screen. Then at Ivaan. Then at the screen again.

"Congratulations," he said, with the measured sincerity that Rishvik brought to everything. Then, a beat, "Ivaan, get off the desk."

"I'M CELEBRATING—"

"You're going to knock the lamp over again—"

"I WON'T—"

A crash.

A pause.

"I told you," Rishvik said.

Aadyant was laughing so hard he had put his face in his hands.

I was laughing too, leaning against him, and it occurred to me, not for the first time, that this was exactly what family was supposed to feel like.

~

Ziva found out last among the siblings.

Not because we called her last—we had—but because Ziva had been in a three-hour design lecture with her phone off and had surfaced to seventeen messages from Ivaan, four from Rishvik, two from Maa, and a voice note from Dadi that was, by all accounts, extremely enthusiastic.

She called back within thirty seconds of reading them.

"KASHVI BHABHI—"

"Hi, Ziva—"

"I WAS IN A LECTURE—"

"I know, we tried—"

"I MISSED THE CALL—"

"We'll tell you now—"

"I ALREADY KNOW, IVAAN TOLD EVERYONE—" A breath. "Okay. Okay. I'm—" Another breath. "Is it real? You're actually—"

"It's real," Kashvi said.

Ziva made a sound.

A very specific, very Ziva sound—the one she produced when something exceeded her capacity for words and she had to make a noise instead.

"The baby," she said. "Is going to have the best dressed childhood of any child in Jodhpur. I am starting a design file tonight."

"Ziva, the baby is seven weeks old—"

"A design file," Ziva repeated, firmly. "Tonight. This is happening."

Kashvi looked at me.

I looked at Kashvi.

"Thank you, Ziva," Kashvi said.

"Also," Ziva added, "Bhabhi—your whole maternity wardrobe. I'm calling you this weekend. This is the greatest design brief I've ever received."

The call ended.

Kashvi sat back on the couch.

"The baby already has a designer," she said.

"The baby already has a designer," I confirmed.

She put her face in her hands.

But she was smiling.

~

By evening, the penthouse had fielded approximately twenty-three calls and voice notes from various members of the Rathore family.

Mihir Chachu had called twice. The first time to congratulate us properly. The second time to ask if we needed financial planning advice, which Aadyant handled with the patience of someone who loved his family unreservedly and also sometimes found them a lot.

Mahika Chachi had sent a voice note that was entirely in exclamations.

Dadi had sent three follow-up voice notes about ginger tea. Specifically about the ratio of ginger to water, which she felt her first message had not addressed with sufficient precision.

Maa called again at eight to check that Kashvi had actually eaten dinner and not just said she had, which was—impressively accurate, because I had only said I had.

"Tell me what you ate," Maa said.

"Rice and dal—"

"And?"

"Vegetables—"

"Kashvi."

"Aadyant made the vegetables, Maa, I can't be held responsible—"

From the kitchen, "THEY WERE FINE—"

"They were a little overcooked," I said, into the phone.

From Maa, faintly, "Aadhir, go and get the cookbook—"

From Baba, further away, "She said the vegetables were fine—"

"The cookbook, Aadhir—"

The call ended twenty minutes later with Maa reading me a recipe for pregnancy-safe vegetable dishes that she was going to courier to us physically as a printed document, apparently having very little faith in our ability to find this information ourselves.

I set the phone down.

Aadyant was in the doorway with an expression caught between offended and amused.

"A little overcooked," he said.

"The broccoli was grey, Aan."

"It was thoroughly cooked—"

"Grey."

Aadya, from the couch, said: "I wasn't going to say anything but yes."

"AADYA—"

"The broccoli was grey," Aadya confirmed. "I love you. The broccoli was grey."

I looked at him.

He looked at the ceiling.

Then he came and sat beside me and put his arm around me and said, "Fine. I'll learn to cook vegetables properly."

"Maa is sending a cookbook."

"I'm aware. I heard."

"It's going to be a physical book, couriered—"

"I know."

"She has very strong feelings about this."

"She has very strong feelings about everything. It's one of her best qualities." He pressed a kiss to my temple. "I'll learn to cook."

I leaned against him.

The penthouse was quiet for the first time all day.

This, I thought.

This is the beginning of something enormous.

And for the first time, I didn't feel the need to brace for it.

~

LIKE AND COMMENT...