Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Alisha Kay
Read between
November 28 - November 30, 2023
An astrologer once told my grandmother that a girl would be my downfall.
We are a clan of hot-headed adrenaline junkies. And there’s no greater rush than carrying a bride off from her wedding mandap - with her permission, of course, because consent is king. I sighed in dismay. I was so going to hell.
“You can’t call off the wedding at such short notice. And you can’t stop me from doing what I want. So here’s what you’re going to do, sweetheart. You’re going to get over yourself, and you’re going to mind your own fucking business,”
ASSHOLE🤬
“What I did when Bhaiyya passed away, and I heard Papa telling Ma that he wished God had taken one of us instead of Bhaiyya.”
I knew exactly what I was going to do. In this house, I was the invisible girl. The wall flower. A wraith. No one ever noticed me. For all matters and purposes, I didn’t exist. And I didn’t think a bright-coloured outfit was going to change that.
Yashvardhan Rathore of Bannor.
“How can I resist when you put it that way? Come on down, then,” he said, with a grin.
The man must have been blind, I thought as I stared at that classic profile. Ananya wasn’t simply beautiful. Her face had character. When she turned around to meet my eyes, her own blazing with a mix of anger and humiliation, my heart slammed against my ribcage. As if it had just received a hard jolt. Indigestion, I told myself firmly.
For some reason, that made me feel so protective of her. Like I wanted to cocoon her from the world.
“Oh, you’re not getting rid of me so easily, you brat,”
“Since you seem to have all the answers, tell me how not to be scared, Yash. Tell me how to produce a life from nowhere. A life where I don’t take a penny from my parents, where I’m in control of my own life. Tell me how to do that overnight,”
“You can’t do it overnight, Ananya,” I said gently. “But you can do it. We’ll find a way.”
“We?”
“We. You, me, Aisha. We will find a way around this. Right now, all you need to do is to take one step at a time. And the first step is to find you some clothes. I’ll have some sent to your room. Freshen up a bit and meet me in the coffee shop for a quick bite. I ...
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Why did everyone who loved me have to die?
“Maybe I could go to a women’s shelter?”
“Over my dead body,” snapped Yash. “You’re not in such dire straits, yet.”
“I’m taking you to Bannor,” he announced. “You can stay at the palace.”
“I have to say I’m surprised at your reaction, Ananya. The last time I told a woman that I owned a plane, she threw her panties at me.”
😭🤣🤣🤣🤣
“Ugh! You daft cow! You sound like someone out of a TV serial. I’ll be fine, I promise. I’m going to come back from Bannor heart-whole,”
“Just don’t come back with a giant Yash-shaped hole in it,”
Damon-bloody-Salvatore from The Vampire Diaries.
Cranky as hell. But adorable.
It was surprising how the man could glare at me with the heat of a thousand suns, and yet be so gentle as he set me on my feet.
And as I looked around me, I realised that he was right. This was probably how Jasmine felt when Aladdin took her riding on a magic carpet. My fingers released their death grip on the console and I leaned forward to see if I could identify any of the structures below us.
“Think of this as your Cinderella moment,”
And that’s when I learnt an important life lesson. No matter how bad things seem, don’t ever make the mistake of assuming that nothing worse can happen to you. That is an open invitation for fate to bitch-slap you in the face.
Jessie or Nivy.
“Yes, yes. I know she ran away again,”
Wait. What?
again?
“If you’re an established flight risk, why on earth did your parents not guard you better on your wedding day?”
“Here’s the thing. My parents never realised I ran away from home,”
“How the fuck is that possible, Ananya?”
“I don’t know. But they never realised that I wasn’t home until Aisha went and yelled at them.”
“Where did you go?”
“To Aisha’s house. Always to Aisha’s. Because where else could I go? Every time my heart felt like it was about to burst with pain, I’d run off to her house, determined to finally grow some balls and claim my life back. And then, my mother would come and guilt me into going back h...
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“Because I feel helpless, okay? Because there’s nothing I can do to make things better. To make myself feel better. I can’t bring my brother back to life. Not even if I offer my own life in exchange. I can’t be the daughter that my parents want, because my parents don’t want any daughters. They want a son. They want Aseem back. And Aisha and I will never be enough for them,”
“Why is this time any different, Ananya? Are you sure you won’t go back?”
“It’s different because I’ve burnt my bridges on such a spectacular scale this time, that there’s no going back from this. I can only seek a way forward.”
Everyone I had ever loved, had left me.
“To the best teacher in the world. May your students never pelt you with paper balls.”
I felt a curious warmth in the region of my heart.
“I haven’t been living it up anywhere, Papa. I did what I did to escape an unhappy marriage because you and Ma wouldn’t listen to me. You wanted me to marry a man who was cheating on me,”
“So it’s our fault, is it?”
“Yes,”
“It is your fault.”
There was something about her that made me want to wrap her in cotton wool and shield her from the evil world. I was protective of her. Which was a huge red flag.
“That girl can change your life if you give her a chance. She’s perfect for you, unlike that painted clothes hanger you used to date.”
She brings out that
