A cool breeze touches her soul as she stands near the window of the house with a cup of milk tea in her hands. She could feel the Christmas month rolling in and getting closer as the frosty smell of winter spread in the air.
No matter how much she loves winter's chill-down-to-the-spine smell, no one can deny the fact, not even her heart, that the monsoon's earthy smell is the best out of all seasons. It's the smell of life emerging after a heaty and sweaty scorching season. Whenever she thinks of the rain, the homesickness knocks on her door. Rainy Season would always be her First Love.
Vancouver, Canada doesn't have that kind of intense monsoon which she loves. The rain here is nothing compared to the rain in the city where she belongs to, Mumbai, India. But then, if Vancouver can't beat Mumbai in terms of the rain, Mumbai can't stand-off to Vancouver when it comes to snowfall. Her home city has never experienced what snowfall is like.
She laughs at her homesick yet not so homesick behavior. Whenever the time for her winter vacation comes near, she always feels the same emotions capturing her body.
She wants to visit her homeland badly as Christmas is the only holiday where she gets more than a week off from her work. But then again, she doesn't want to leave Canada and celebrate Christmas here, as differences can be clearly seen in celebration of the festival in both of the cities. In fact, she wishes that she could get a holiday in August or September so that in Mumbai, she can enjoy the festival of Ganesh Chaturthi. But then again, she is just an assistant, she doesn't have paid holidays.
"Feeling homesick again...?"
She turns around to see her brother, or should she say uncle...? When it comes to giving a name to the relationships of a particular family, the Asian community is very wild.
She has an uncle, with whose family she has been staying for the last 5 years, and he is just 5 years older than her. It didn't surprise her when she was first introduced to him by her father's maternal uncle, that means her grand-uncle, as she already has an aunt who is 9 years younger than her. Yes, an aunt 9 years younger than her and that's why the 'wild' word has been used before.
She just shrugs her shoulders in response while taking out her phone from her jean pocket to read today's headlines. She can't function properly without reading the news in the morning. She needed to know the breaking news of the day before getting out of the house for work.
Anvish, her uncle according to the family tree, but she prefers to call him brother, walks behind her as she walks towards the dining table, scrolling through the news highlights.
"One of the top and very successful K-pop boy group bands which consists of 8 members, Wings, suddenly disbands, leaving behind the mystery of why they are parting ways."
Before she could skip the news to the next one, her phone is taken away from her at the speed of lighting, not at all exaggerating. She almost shouts at that person, but when she realizes that it is her brother, she shuts her mouth. She thought it was some intruder.
"How stupid of me to think like that when I am living in a very protected premises," she thinks.
When she looks at him, she sees how his face carried a look of shock with a tint of worry.
Without saying anything, he gives her phone back to her and walks towards the door. She watches his movement until he gets out of the house and is no longer visible to her eyes.
Confused, she sits down on the chair while interpreting his weird behavior. After a while, her brother's wife, who was sitting quietly at the dining table, stood up suddenly, startling her.
Tarika, who is actually her Aunt, but they both mutually agreed on Vanika calling her sister-in-law or sister instead. She is glad that they were chill because, to be honest, it's quite weird to call them Uncle or Aunt when they are just 5 years older than you. Though she has to call them Uncle and Aunt in front of her parents because, in India, you have to give respect to relationships.
"I will check what happened to him. After having breakfast, can you wake Vaidehi up..?"
Vanika smiles and gives her a thumbs up. In response, Tarika just shakes her head and smiles at her childish behavior.
"Wakey wakey up, My Little Princess!!"
After having breakfast, she goes to Avnish and Tarika's room to wake up her little princess, her niece/cousin.
She starts tickling her with no mercy when she showed no signs of waking up. The whole room soon erupted with laughter as the duo turned their normal wakey wakey program into the Great Tickling War Of 06th December 2025..
Unaware of what was coming for her, she awes at her cute little, soon-to-be 6-year-old niece when she yawns after getting tired from the war earlier. Waking her up is the best routine in her daily schedule.
Vaidehi lays her tiny head on top of her lap. The older one starts playing with her hair while adoringly looking at the little one. Not even a minute passed, when the main door's bell rang and the little girl whined as she felt the older girl moving away.
Her little act makes the older one coo at her once again as her heart tells her to stay in the same position forever, but she can't. She has to go and open the door. Apart from her, who else will do the honors when they are the only two people in the house?
After getting out of bed, she watches how her little one, while making her way towards the bathroom, groans. Finally, when she dramatically closes her bathroom door, Vanika makes her way out the room, towards the door with a happy smile dancing on her face.
Without even looking in the peep-hole carved in the door, in a fraction of a second, she opens the door as she could hear Anvish's voice coming from the other side.
The moment she looks up, she sees an unknown man's back facing her as he is talking to someone. She is shocked. Her instincts acts up. She has a 5-year-old kid in the house and a stranger's back facing her outside the door. She is not even seconds away from slamming the door shut but soon relaxes when she finds out that 'someone' who that unknown man is taking to, is none other than Anvish and Tarika.
Being a curious person she is, she decides to peek to see who that guy facing the door was. But before she could take a peek of his face, Tarika came in between, blocking her view.
"Omg!! Are you still not ready? It's 7:30 am. You have to speed up or else you will be late for work."
Hearing that sentence, her eyes got wider and, without any hesitation, she ran towards her room.
While preparing her clothes, she thinks about who that guy could be.
"A new resident of the building? Or wait, he could be a friend of Anvish?"
She quickly sidelines her thoughts when she sees the time on her phone. For now, getting ready for the work was her top priority, or else she would be very late.
The moment she steps outside her room and picks up her car keys, that unknown person is no longer in their house. So she just shrugs, and makes her way towards her car parked in the basement.
Throughout the day, she forgets about that unknown person as she gets engaged in her work and the sessions with her patients, as she didn't give that much importance to the incident.
What she didn't know was that this incident was going to change her entire life. This unknown man was not only her future, but everything she ever wanted in life —
'To find a partner who would be the lyrics to her feelings and rhythm to her emotions.'