Day 103 of Covid-19 lockdown restrictions. The sun gleams on my glassy back, the small dark garnet of my eye in its silver socket twitches as I flit from house to house. Slowly swinging myself on a whisker, I balance my little body on the ledge of a window as I peer inside.

* * * * *

It is a beautiful ceremony. The sacred fire is huge under the wedding mandap, a pergola, and Pinky feels the heat from about halfway back in the rows of seats placed six feet apart from each of the guests in the Iyengar’s backyard. She worries a little for Bhumi swath in glittering diamonds and an elaborate peach and silver brocade lehenga, which splays out in multiple folds and drapes around her feet.

It does, however, seem to bring greater resonance to each of the seven steps.

Pinky stares unseeingly at the grand columns where sprays of hibiscus, marigolds, and fragrant jasmines wilt in the heat and fire smoke. Her brother’s phone call had left her feeling so miserable, so powerless. Suraj had been in the waiting room of the psych ward of the hospital where his daughter Jasmine was being kept for observation. Pinky had the telephone pressed tightly to her ear, and she could hear his shallow breathing through the mask that likely covered his face. Pinky could picture Suraj pacing up and down the linoleum floor of the hallway, his palms sweaty as they gripped the phone with nerveless fingers.

“What news of Jasmine?” she asked him tremulously.

“She’s stable, but resting, Didi.” He insisted on calling her Didi, older sister, even though she was only a year senior to him. It was a running joke between them. “They’ve pumped her stomach. They say she must have swallowed twenty pills.” His voice breaks and Pinky feels her younger brother’s pain as acutely as if it were her own.

With the smoke rising from the fire, the crimson mask feels suffocating. She’d bought it, especially for Bhumi’s wedding to match with the red border of her gold kanjeeveram sari. As only one of thirty guests in attendance, she’d taken extra care over her appearance. Pinky and her husband are invited because she’s Bhumi’s oldest friend from Hindu College in New Delhi—the other 200 or so invitees are watching the Pandit officiate the ceremony via a Zoom live stream.

Pinky peeks at the silver Rolex wristwatch strapped on her left arm. It’s 4 p.m. Six hours since her brother and his wife found their daughter, Jasmine unconscious in her room. There was no bedside note, but the reasons are known too well to both their families.

Jasmine and Justin had had their wedding in Maui planned for over a year. Jasmine made two trips to India with her mom to buy outfits for the five functions of their lavish Big Indian Wedding venued at Justin’s parents’ beach house. Jasmine had spent hours agonizing over every detail starting with the trimming on her dupatta to the exact shade of gold on Justin’s sherwani.

Pinky knew from talking to Suraj (in her twice-weekly phone calls to her brother) that Jasmine was in constant touch with the designers, the florists, and the wedding coordinator. Every exacting detail of their wedding was mapped out. Nothing less was expected of these two Stanford graduates—Jasmine, an interior decorator, who’d become a hot commodity, and Justin, who was on the partnership track at his law firm in Silicon Valley. They relished their image as an emerging power couple, generous in their time and attention to the charities they’d nurtured since high school, with hopes of the perfect kids they’d bear and rear.

It was going to cost her brother a whopping million dollars. Pinky could hear the frustration in Suraj’s voice when he complained about the bills Jasmine was racking up, and how helpless he was against her pleas. “But Papa, I need to have the orchids flown in from Thailand, please Papa,” Jasmine would say from under fluttering eyelashes, her brown eyes big and limpid, and he would give in.

“It’s okay, Didi,” he would reason with himself in a phone call to Pinky. “She’s my only child.”

And, then the pandemic struck. Jasmine’s dreams of her extravagant wedding destroyed. That’s when the depression set in, and the tantrums, as the shelter-in-place order required that no more than a social bubble of twenty was acceptable. Finally, the flaming row with Justin that exposed all the flaws in their relationship. “You’re too high maintenance,” was his last parting thrust.

“You don’t understand me,” Jasmine responded, throwing the engagement ring in his face.

And, now this.

Somewhere in front of her, a woman curses the heat. A baby coos. Pinky looks at the fuchsia and orange swaths of organza fabric cascading to the mandap floor in pools all around Bhumi and the colors start to smear together as she gazes, eyes blurring. She remembers how distraught her brother was when he called to tell her about Jasmine’s fight with Justin and how she clenched her fists into tight balls so that she wouldn’t blurt out the words she was thinking. It’s your fault, Suraj. You pampered her too much. When she demanded she change her middle school because she fell out with her best friend, you let her do that. When she asked for a pony, you bought it for her. You gave her no tools to deal with a corona crisis. Pinky does not say the words aloud because she knows from their shared history that words have actual mass, and can drive a wedge between her and her brother.

The sound of hands clapping punctures Pinky’s reverie dragging her back to the present. The seven pheras around the fire are done. Pinky mops her brow with the edge of her sari as Bhumi and her new husband make their way down the aisle to personally greet their guests.

“Hello Aunty, it’s so good to see you, “ Bhumi’s eyes over her handcrafted peach and silver silk mask are brimming with joy.

“Congratulations, Bhumi dear. How wise of you to get married now instead of waiting for when the pandemic is over.” Pinky grabs hand sanitizer from a passing waiter and squirts it on her hands.

“Yes, Aunty,” Bhumi says gaily as she adjusts the gold bangles that cover her arms from wrist to elbow. “We were disappointed, of course, that we couldn’t have the grand wedding we’d planned at Wente vineyards.” She shrugs languidly, “To Marie Kondo the original wedding party of 250 to just thirty guests was not easy. But, ultimately we decided to get married now because we want to start our lives together. We didn’t want coronavirus to take that from us. It can take a party. It can take a trip, but we were still able to get married. That’s what I hope a lot of engaged couples are learning. it’s not about what your linens look like or your flowers.”

Bhumi clasps her red henna hands together. “That’s what the Vedas teach you as well,” Pinky recalls that Bhumi spent the final year of her doctoral studies while at college translating ancient texts.

“Your struggles are sublime. Your mind is infinite. Your life is holy. You are God’s purpose. You can only control your actions. Your karma is your glory,” Bhumi finishes in a rush of words. Her husband wraps his arm around her waist to lead her away.

Pinky nods and wipes away an invisible tear that has gathered at the end of her eyes. This is what she will tell Suraj, instead of assigning blame.