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CHAPTER 1
ISHA
As I stared at the woman who had just face-planted into a bowl of deconstructed kesar-pista falooda, all I could think of was that I had just killed my grandmother.
Fuck!
To make matters worse, instead of feeling guilty, all I could feel was intense relief that she could no longer bully me into marrying a man of her choice. I was so going to hell.
I bit my lower lip hard enough to draw blood to hold back the nervous giggles that threatened to burst from my lips.
Pull it together, Isha, I told myself sternly. You will not shame your family by getting hysterical in a restaurant with your grandmother lying dead in front of you.
The head waiter hurried to our table when I beckoned him over and his eyes widened in horror at the sight of Dadi Sa’s lifeless form. But he took charge of the situation and within minutes, he had an ornate wooden screen placed around our table for privacy and arranged for a doctor to attend to her. All I had to do was call my brother and tell him what had happened.
But how did one just come out and confess to killing one’s grandmother? That too, in public!
I opened my mouth to tell Bhai Sa exactly how it happened, but at the last second, I chickened out and only gave him the bare bones of the story - that she had collapsed in her chair without warning. I left out the part where I drove her to said collapse.
To be fair, I didn’t set out to kill her. All I wanted to do was enjoy a falooda without being made to feel like a marauding wildebeest. It wasn’t a crime to eat ice cream. After a lifetime of counting calories and thinking of food as my biggest enemy, I had finally made my peace with the fact that my soul needed as much nourishment as my body. Which was why when Dadi Sa slowly pulled my bowl of falooda towards her just as I sank my spoon into it, I snatched it back firmly and shoved a heaping spoonful of kulfi into my mouth.
“This is mine, Dadi Sa. Yours is right in front of you,” I said with my mouth full, ignoring the way her face turned an ugly shade of puce.
She was forced to bottle up her anger because she was playing the genial grandmother today as she tried to fix me up with yet another man she deemed suitable. For our illustrious family, that is. Not for me. Never for me.
“Wow! You really like ice cream,” said Captain Obvious sitting opposite me.
That wasn’t his real name, but I couldn’t remember a thing about him except the fact that he belonged to one of the minor royal families that had made it big in import-export post-independence and that his family used to export ivory and tiger skin. That was all I needed to know because eww! I would never marry a poacher! God only knew where Dadi Sa dug up these creeps and why she inflicted them on me.
I fixed him with a cold glare and enjoyed the way he shrivelled under my gaze.
His mother sniffed disapprovingly.
“Your Highness, in our family, girls would die before they allowed anyone to see them gorge in public,” she drawled. “The Solankis are a very dignified family.”
And what are the Trikheras, I wondered. Chopped liver? My ancestors had built their kingdom the hard way - through years and years of war and sacrifice. And we had held on to it despite nearly two centuries of oppression by the British. As far as I knew, the Solankis got their jagir as a reward from the British for supplying arms and men to quell the 1857 mutiny.
I turned to the older lady with a sweet smile and ignored Dadi Sa’s foot which came down heavily on mine under the table in warning.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, Aunty. But isn’t it true that the girls in your family tend to die young?” I asked gently, referring to the suspected dowry deaths of at least three women in her extended family.
From what I’d heard, the Solankis were a very greedy family, I thought with an eye roll. Dadi Sa dug her heel into my instep and I tried not to wince in pain.
Captain Obvious stammered something about that being an ugly rumour but closed his mouth with a snap when his mother held up a hand.
“I don’t think your uncouth granddaughter is suited to our family, Your Highness, even if she is a princess. Her immense fortune cannot compensate for her lack of beauty or venomous tongue. Good luck with getting her off your hands,” she said sarcastically before she rose and stalked away from the table, her son following at her heels like a trained puppy.
I knew what was coming, so I decided to keep my head down and finish my ice cream as Dadi Sa berated me for the millionth time in my life. Was it the millionth or the zillionth lecture I was about to hear? I had lost count by now. I was slurping up the last bit of seviyan from the bowl when I realised that she hadn’t said anything. And then I heard it - a wheezy gasp.
I looked up in time to see Dadi Sa faceplant in her untouched bowl of melted kulfi and seviyan.
I shook her in panic, but she didn’t stir. I even checked her pulse after a hasty look around the room to make sure no one was looking in our direction. When I couldn’t find one even after minutes of trying, I had to accept that I had done what I had only dreamed of doing for years. I had finally killed the woman who had tortured me since I was a child. A woman who had played tambola with my insecurities and fears and who had lived to shame me for every kilo I gained, for every bite of food I ate. Well, the joke was on her because I had finally shamed her to death.
“I’m a bad, bad person,” I said with a sigh as Dadi Sa’s lifeless body was loaded into the ambulance.
My brother, His Highness Randheer Singh Shekhawat, the Maharaja of Trikhera, begged to differ.
“Dadi Sa died of a heart attack. You had nothing to do with it, so stop feeling guilty.”
