#okjaanu

you ask. 'main tumhari jaanu hu?', i reply. thats how it starts off, always. casual, cute, flirty. we joke about it, it sticks; and so does my heart in your ribcage. i file the endearment under 'playing house', because god-forbid i tell you i find myself in your eyes. i act like my heart doesnt skip a beat with you, but im so invested, it's actually pathetic. casual, i remind myself; but your lips on my cheek isnt casual. knowing you dont like coffee - or tea - isnt casual. getting a 97% on our spotify blend isnt casual. my best friend saying youre good for me, will never be casual.

love,

There is a version of Tara Agnihotri that is very easy to admire. She has a career she loves, an apartment of her own, a clear sense of what she wants. She does not wait for people. She does not need to. She is, by every visible measure, someone who has figured it out.

But watching her closely, something else becomes clear. Tara is not free. She is just very good at making sure she leaves before anyone else can.

What a Child Understands Without Words

Tara's parents' marriage did not end cleanly. It fell apart slowly, in the way these things do. Fights, silences, instability, a father who eventually left. She grew up inside all of that.

Children don't need things explained to them. They just absorb. They inherit fears before they have words for them. And what Tara absorbed, without anyone sitting her down and telling her, was that marriage was not warmth or safety. It was a setup for disappointment. A thing that begins with closeness and ends with someone gone.

She didn't decide to be afraid of commitment. She just grew up, and the fear came with her.

The Comfort of Keeping the Door Open

So as an adult, Tara keeps exits available. She holds things lightly. She is drawn to Adi partly because he also resists the idea of permanence. Together they build something that works precisely because it demands nothing from either of them. No future, no pressure, just a present kept deliberately small.

From the outside, this looks like confidence. It always does. Emotionally guarded people get called independent, sorted, unbothered. But Tara is not unbothered. She is careful. There is a real difference.

She stays one step removed because attachment, in her experience, turns into abandonment eventually. And the only way to protect yourself from being left is to already be halfway out the door. What she fears is not marriage itself, not the ceremony or the label. It is the specific, quiet horror of a marriage that continues existing on paper long after the care has gone. She has seen that. She knows exactly what it looks like.

What Changed?

It is not Adi who shifts something in Tara. It is Gopi uncle.

Watching him care for his wife, who has Alzheimer's, who is slowly becoming someone he cannot fully reach anymore, Tara sees something she has genuinely never seen before. She sees someone stay. Not because it is easy or returned or convenient. Just because he does. Because that is what care and love looks like when it is real.

Tara grew up watching love run out. Here, for the first time, she sees it hold.

And then comes the moment that says everything. She asks Adi, almost quietly, "If I get lost, will you come find me?"

It sounds small. It is not. Underneath that question is everything she has been carrying since childhood.

The fear that love is temporary. That people leave. That she will one day be standing in a room that used to be full and is now just hers.

She is not asking about getting lost. She is asking whether someone would stay for her when things got hard. Whether she is worth staying for.