Chapter 1: The Question That Changed Everything

My girlfriend used a fake account to post a question on a Q&A site.

“Has a little angel ever come to my belly? Can a premarital checkup find out?”

Mere toh hosh udd gaye.

We had always used protection—never once had any slip-ups.

For a moment, it felt like someone dumped a whole bucket of ice water on my head, spine to toes. I just sat there, dumbstruck, staring at the screen. I read and re-read those words, trying to make sense of them. Why would she ask something like this? I could hear the distant clang of the temple bell mixing with the constant blare of auto-rickshaws from the road below. My heart thudded in my chest, so loud it echoed in my fingertips. That nickname—‘little angel’—only she called herself that. No doubt, it was her.

1

The question had been posted a few days ago.

“Took the morning-after pill, but still got pregnant. I had a medical abortion a little over a month later, and it’s been almost half a year since then. In this case, will a premarital checkup reveal anything?”

There were already over a hundred replies.

Some people were joking, some were being sarcastic, and a few were just plain mean…

But some answered seriously: “A premarital checkup is just to see if your health is normal and if you have any hereditary diseases. What you’re talking about usually isn’t checked.”

My girlfriend replied only to that one: “Then I’m relieved.”

It was like a lightning bolt straight to my chest.

My fingers shook. Relief? She was relieved, but my head was spinning. My throat felt parched, as if I’d swallowed sand. I wanted to call her up and shout, demand an explanation right now. But all I could hear was the lazy whir of the ceiling fan and the sudden cawing of a crow outside the window. That question just echoed in my mind, blending with the Mumbai traffic below—how could she hide something this big from me? Who was this person I’d loved all these years?