happily (n)ever after

Viyaan counts everything. The kilometres he runs before sunrise. The minutes Goldie waits at the door. Every dare he has ever chosen over the truth.

Meera is quiet until it matters. Soft-spoken, steady, forever answering his dares with the same three words: maybe next time. She is also, it turns out, the one who moves first. Every time.

Viyaan, a Gujju banker from Bilimora, and Meera, a Kannadiga corporate trainer from Dharwad: two people nobody would have put together, but Goldie already had.

An adventure group brings them together in Rishikesh. Goldie recognises her before Viyaan knows who she is. At the bungee platform, Meera volunteers to jump with him. Her hand finds his before they fall.

Across trips, teasing and conversations between working days, their acquaintance grows into friendship, then love. Goldie is there through it all, part of the everyday life they begin to build together.

Then life changes everything, and the future they had planned so carefully begins, quietly, to rewrite itself. What they build in its place is a love measured in the smallest, surest units there are: one more morning, one more chai, one more day.

Goldie, the novel’s rescued Indie, is the third protagonist, not a plot device. Readers who love dog-centred fiction will understand why he matters.

Tender, funny, and deeply human.