Book Excerpt: The Other Sister by Amrita Tripathi
Read an excerpt from The Other Sister / watch a short video of the excerpt and behind the scenes below
1. IT’S NOT YOU, IT’S ME | [Present day: DECEMBER 2023]
‘Life is short, before you know it, time’s up…’ Maya posts on her page, unable to resist the urge to perform, the way social media loves (and insists on). Twenty-two ‘likes’ and four days later, she disappears, ghosting her friends and a new potential significant other. None of them knew that she was already on a time-out, not till she announced it, but that just goes to show how much attention they were paying in real life.
Maya’s previous cryptic status update, ‘My best friend has left the building,’ by now has at least fifty-five likes (most from people assuming this was some cool reference they weren’t aware of, hence a ‘like’ to keep up, but not enough interest to probe further); she did get some individualised attention, the update having prompted ten inquiries, seven of which were on the site itself.
A couple of people Whatsapp Maya and only one person thinks the post refers to her (and is faintly annoyed at the implication), but Akira is that kind of girl. As people used to say when status updates were the norm, ‘It’s complicated’.
The thing is, Maya is going offline in no small part to avoid her self-professed BFFs and the BS that passes for everyday social life in this great Capital.
None of them get it, she thinks. None of them ever will, she has known, ever since the trauma that hit in high school.
She herself though, lost in a world of her own making, doesn’t even realise that she’s been looking for an exit, an escape… until she suddenly does.
One person does the old-fashioned thing and calls her on the phone, possibly because he is related to her, and probably because he knows that family ties need to be reinforced periodically, away from the virtual world we all prefer. In an unusual, dysfunctional family, there are no winners, but we aren’t all losers either and Maya’s brother knows (has always known?) that showing up is half the battle won.
…
3. THE BIG D, THE LITTLE D AND A TIME-OUT | [Present Day with Flashbacks]
It doesn’t take Maya long to figure out where to go—it’s a flat that she pretty much grew up in, after all. Chini Auntie is the best, she thinks, even though she’d never admit to any of her friends that she still enjoys coming to this pokey neighbourhood every so often and being fussed over. Far from the heart of the city when they used to live here back in the day, it’s come into its own now, especially with the Metro emerging as a game-changer. Maya wonders if her younger self would be surprised to know that flats here are selling for more than a couple of crores.
Do her fancy friends even register money and the need to earn it? She has stopped wondering on that front. Funny, that. She’s never really thought about money since that period when she didn’t have enough, but just leaving the high-rolling life—not to mention some of her Chhatarpur farmhouse-owning, ‘Are you in London this summer, darling?’ friends—a few years ago, has proven to be a very cash-friendly decision. She also knows that none of them will bother to come find her here, trans-Yamuna (or Yamuna Park, as a friend used to routinely mispronounce it years ago), so it’s as good a hideout as any.
Luckily, she’s always had a standing invitation from her aunt.
This place, her refuge, reminds her of the one good thing from a childhood riven by abandonment (which she doesn’t remember too clearly), bullying, trauma and death (which she can’t forget), but more on that later. The One Good Thing was strong and powerful—it was unconditional love. And specifically, it came from one beacon of light, as far as Maya is concerned.
For Maya, Chini Auntie was a harbour and by far the only one who would let her talk endlessly without interrupting, Chini Auntie let Maya hold her hand and not even once attempt to stop her from sitting in her lap (unlike her supposed mother Usha).
Maya may have had an unconventional childhood, shunted between three families all told, but the one constant was Chini Auntie, who would make it a point to visit, even taking her for some holidays, before finally transplanting her to the trans-Yamuna flat for good.
Chini Auntie effortlessly became the favourite, not just for Maya but also her best friend and brother Gautam bhaiyya. He was always welcome at Chini Auntie’s house, even after the Big D that deepened the rift in her family.
That cinched it.
But there was also the fact that till she moved in with Chini Auntie, no one had ever bothered to give Maya the secret codes that other girls in her school seemed to have been born knowing, like how to know who’s actually your friend versus just trying to use you or make you the butt of the joke, or when to speak up and show what you know and when to dumb it down. Like what to do when you’re the first one to get your period, and how to deal with boys and the girls who change around them.
But perhaps none was as important as knowing when to blend in and fade into the background.
Maya treasured this one as the Key. An important tip that would let her crack life, knowing by then as she did that you need to be prepared—life could pull the rug out from under your feet at any given moment. No use pretending otherwise.
Excerpted with permission from Westland Books.
