Two letters tonight

The pen is the same one. I sat at the dining table and signed my name to the letter to the postal inspector general, and the ink had the same little drag at the end of the 'a' that it had the night I signed the roka. Heena did not notice. My hand knew before I did — the muscle memory of a promise I broke off and a complaint I am just beginning.

I mailed it at the Andheri West counter under fluorescent light. The clerk did not care what was inside. The tracking form asked for sender name and I wrote mine the way I write it on a fee quotation. My name on a registered receipt. My name in a builder's file. My name on a planner's client list. Three places I did not ask to be, all in the same week.

Then I called Veer and told him the Teej card goes out tomorrow. The peach and marigold one I have been carrying across two monsoons. He went quiet on the line. I think he wanted to say more about the forwarded message from Jaipur, the cousin who wrote that I only keep rokas and never weddings. He did not say it. I said Didi will send it tomorrow in the tone our mother uses, and he let me go.

The Bandra sangeet is confirmed. September 29. Full fee plus the repeat-client bump, contingent on the same NDA the Shah family signed. Ritu called it routine. I sat on the bed and laughed once, alone, because I am taking work from a Shah planner and evidence against the property cell in the same evening, and the bridal selfie is still up, and the roka ended, and the Teej card is going out, and I have not cried twice yet.