Chapter 2: In the Cyber Café’s Blue Glow

When I found Ananya, she was chatting and laughing with a boy.

The cyber café was dimly lit, the whir of ceiling fans barely stirring the heat. The sticky counter still bore the marks of long-forgotten Thums Up bottles. I stood behind a rack of dusty gaming posters, watching her animated face—so different from the sullen mask I saw at home. My throat was parched from the long search, but I waited, not wanting to barge in and create a tamasha.

Usually cold as ice to everyone, my daughter was now giggling, twirling a pen in her fingers, swaying in front of some unknown boy.

“Really? This is the first time someone’s told me I’m pretty. My dad always says I’m still a student, shouldn’t wear skirts, shouldn’t go out and have fun, shouldn’t do anything. In that house, I just feel suffocated.”

I felt my breath catch. In that moment, a flash of our last argument about her skirt seared through me—a pang of regret and a memory of my own schooldays: Amma scolding me for torn Bata shoes, how rules always felt like love twisted into knots.

When the teacher called to say Ananya had skipped class, I didn’t even care about the most important international conference—I risked a major project falling through and rushed out to find her.

The memory replayed in my mind: my mobile vibrating furiously during the meeting, my boss’s sharp glare, the city’s traffic jams as I sped on my Activa, reckless and desperate. I hadn’t even stopped for chai. But for her, none of it seemed to matter.

But to my daughter, I’m actually this kind of person?

A slow burn of anger crept into my chest. Just as I was about to step forward and scold her, another barrage appeared:

[Arre, let the heroine meet her hero! This villain papa, always coming in between—uff, kitna toxic!]

[Mere daddy issues are on fire! When will this villain dad finally get out of the way? Big heroine mom ki entry kab hogi, re?]

[Exactly! How is this man even worthy of our big heroine mom? Good he’ll drop dead from overwork—then big heroine mom can run back to her college wala pehla pyaar!]

My hand froze midair.

Villain dad? Big heroine and heroine mom?

From these scattered comments, I could already piece together the whole plot.

This world is a group-pampering serial, and Ananya is the big heroine who will eventually get together with the boy in front of her and become everyone’s darling.

And me? I’ll die of overwork.

These so-called viewers never see how hard I work to keep this family afloat. They’ll never understand my efforts.

Ananya is still a student, immature. My wife, Meera, never cared about her daughter’s education—completely indifferent. If it weren’t for me, Ananya would have become a delinquent ages ago.

But no one ever tries to understand me.

“You have no idea. With a dad like that, I’d rather never have been born.”

Those words stabbed into my heart like needles, leaving me sweating from the pain. I wiped the sweat from my brow with my gamcha, wishing Appa was still alive to tell me what to do.

A lump rose in my throat. In our house, words are rarely soft—they hang heavy, like the monsoon clouds that threaten but never rain. Yet, nothing she’d ever said before had cut this deep. For a moment, my knees felt weak, and I had to grip the frame of the cyber café’s grimy door just to steady myself.

The comments exploded again:

[As expected of our big heroine! So cool! With a villain dad like that, just because he’s her father, he thinks he owns her. How selfish.]

[Exactly. What was the scriptwriter thinking, giving our heroine such a twisted dad? So pitiful.]

[It’s not just the heroine—even her mom always hated the villain dad. A man like that, might as well just drop dead.]

That last line made my head buzz. I wondered, not for the first time, what Amma or Appa would have thought of all this—how their rules now seemed so distant, yet so familiar.

So Meera has always hated me too.

I hid my disappointment.

If my efforts are worthless to them, and I’m just an obstacle, then fine—I won’t care anymore.