The world snapped into existence with a sickening jolt.
One moment, there was nothing. A void of perfect, unmarred white.
The next, Arjun was standing. His knees were locked, a slight ache in his lower back. A sterile, fluorescent hum filled his ears, underpinned by the distant, rhythmic clatter of keyboards and the murmur of hushed, serious conversations.
He blinked. The light was harsh, institutional. He was in an office—but not his IT office. This one was smaller, beige, impersonal. A potted plastic palm wilted in the corner. A middle-aged man with kind, exhausted eyes and a crisply ironed shirt sat behind a cheap laminate desk. The man was holding out a manila folder.
"Arjun," the man said, his voice a practiced blend of regret and finality. "As discussed in the previous meetings, due to the annual restructuring and your performance not meeting the expected benchmarks, we've decided to let you go. I'm sorry."
Arjun's mind was a screaming blank. This isn't my office. My boss is Mr. Suresh. My code compiled. This isn't my life. Panic, cold and sharp, tried to rise, but a strange, heavy numbness sat on top of it, pressing it down.
His hands moved. They reached out and took the folder. They flipped it open. His eyes scanned words that meant nothing: 'Termination', 'Mutual Consent', 'Notice Period Waiver'. A pen was placed in his hand. His fingers curled around it, familiar and alien. They guided the nib to the dotted lines—one, two, three times. A jagged, unrecognizable signature bloomed on the paper.
"Your final settlement and experience letter are inside," the HR manager said, standing, signaling the end. "Best of luck."
Arjun's body turned. His legs carried him out of the room, down a hallway he'd never seen, past faces he didn't know, who offered him sympathetic half-smiles or avoided his eyes entirely. The folder was a dead weight in his hand.
The heat of Chennai outside hit him like a physical wall after the artificial chill. The noise of the street was a roaring, chaotic symphony. His body, operating on a deep, cellular memory, walked to an auto-rickshaw stand. It raised a hand.
An auto veered over. As Arjun moved to get in, a figure slipped in beside him. A woman. She wore a crisp cotton sari, her hair tied back in a neat, practical bun. She had an air of focused energy, her eyes scanning a document on her phone before she looked up.
"Evening, Arjun," she said. Her voice was clear, direct.
"Hmm," a sound grunted out of his throat. It didn't sound like his voice. It was warmer, looser.
The auto jerked into the traffic. Arjun stared at his own hands in his lap, the manila folder balanced on his knees. Who was this woman? Why did the way she settled into the seat, the faint scent of her sandalwood soap, feel… known? His pulse hammered a frantic, silent question against the cage of his ribs.
The woman—Priya, a name surfaced from the fog—fidgeted beside him. She took a slow, deliberate breath, her fingers twisting the neat pallu of her sari. The focused expression melted into one of acute vulnerability.
"Arjun," she began again, her voice softer now. "I've been meaning to ask you something. For a while now, actually." She hesitated, her courage visibly wavering, then the words rushed out in a single, brave exhale. "Will you marry me?"
The world tilted. The auto' rattle, the blaring horns, the shouts from the street—all of it receded into a distant hum. Arjun's head snapped toward her. His mind was a white, screaming static. What? Who? How?
But his mouth, connected to some other script, some other life, moved.
"Yes."
The syllable was quiet, solid. Unthinking.
Priya's eyes widened, stunned by the lack of hesitation, the absence of drama. She scanned his face, looking for a joke, finding only a profound, bewildered numbness. Her gaze dropped to the folder on his lap, the corporate logo visible. Understanding, and a fierce, protective tenderness, softened her features.
"You got laid off today, didn't you?" she said, her voice gentle. She didn't wait for an answer. "Don't worry about the job. I'll work hard. We'll figure it out together till you get a new one."
Married? To her? A job? What the hell is happening? The internal monologue was a scream trapped behind his teeth. He just stared.
The auto shuddered to a halt in front of a modest, familiar-looking apartment building. His body stood up. He turned to Priya, who was still sitting, looking up at him with a dazed, hopeful wonder.
"Bye, Priya," his voice said, automatically.
"Bye…" she whispered, watching him as if he were a miracle she couldn't quite believe.
His legs carried him. Up the stairs, one flight, two. They stopped at a green door. His hand raised, knocked once, then used a key from his pocket. He let himself in.
The wave of sound and scent that hit him was a physical force. The sizzle of tempering mustard seeds from the kitchen. The low, rhythmic chanting of a news anchor on the television. The safe, lived-in smell of old books, spices, and floor polish.
"Beta, is that you?" a woman's voice called from the kitchen—warm, immediate, his mother's voice.
"Haan, Ma," he heard himself reply, his tone easy, affectionate.
He walked into the living room. A grey-haired man, his father, sat on the sofa, peering over reading glasses at the newspaper. A younger girl, maybe eighteen, was curled in an armchair, scrolling through her phone.
"Hi, Papa," Arjun said.
A grunt of acknowledgment.
"Hey, Ria."
His sister glanced up, rolled her eyes playfully. "You're late. Hungry."
He moved through the space, a ghost piloting a familiar vessel. He went to his room—his room, with a bed, a bookshelf of engineering textbooks and a few stray thrillers, a framed certificate on the wall. He washed his face, the cold water doing nothing to clear the fog. He changed out of the formal trousers and shirt into a worn-out t-shirt and track pants. The clothes felt right.
He sat at the dinner table. The clink of utensils. His mother serving steaming dal, his father tearing a roti. Ria chattering about a college assignment. It was a perfect, terrible diorama of a life he'd never lived.
His mind spun, a gyroscope losing its axis. The numbness was beginning to crack, the reality of it all pressing in, a terrifying, beautiful weight. The words rose in his throat, unbidden, a truth that needed to be aired in this sacred, familial space.
He swallowed a mouthful of food, looked at his mother's smiling face, his father's focused frown, his sister's distracted grin.
"Priya proposed to me today," he said, his voice calm in the warm room. "I said yes."
The diorama shattered.
His father choked, a piece of rice going down the wrong pipe, triggering a violent, gasping cough. His mother gasped, her hand flying to her mouth, before she leapt up to fetch water. Ria's phone clattered onto her plate, her eyes wide as moons.
"Wait—what?" Ria breathed.
In the chaos, in the epicenter of their shock, something clicked. A final, seismic gear engaged. The last of the fog burned away in the heat of their raw, real reactions. The phantom sensation of piloting a body vanished. The ache in his back from standing in the HR office was his ache. The taste of the dal on his tongue was his taste. The overwhelming, terrifying love for these three stunned people was his love.
He was here. He was Arjun. This was his life.
His father finally recovered, wiping tears from his eyes, staring at his son as if seeing him for the first time.
"You—you what?" his father managed, voice hoarse.
Arjun looked at his hands, his own hands, then at his family's incredulous faces. He felt a smile touch his lips—not the rare, fleeting ghost of a smile from his gaming chair, but a small, solid, determined thing.
"I said yes," he repeated, the certainty settling into his bones. "We're getting married."
And just like that, Arjun Mehta's new life began.