Neeraj tried to find a middle ground between his wife and son. “Omkar, I know you believe you love this girl, but your mother is right. You are too young to know what love is. The game of love is slippery. And by lying to us, you have proven that you are too immature.
“This has got to end now, Omkar. The kind of love that lasts is the kind that is slow to bloom. If love comes fast, it will disappear just as fast. Is that what you want? Do you want to throw your life away for something that will end soon anyway?”
Omkar fumed at his parents’ blatant refusal to consider the reality of his love for Aria. As usual, the control they confused for love gave him no room to breathe.
Aria was petrified. She was not the sort of person to stay where she wasn’t wanted, and being so obviously unwanted made her want to run as fast and far as she could. But Omkar held her tight and she let him hold her there, out of some dim hope that his parents’ sound rejection would wither. Aria had imagined that the only reason Omkar had made her sleep in the storeroom was because of his parents’ strict stance on sex; the reality now revealed made everything depressingly more clear. She said nothing, but continued to listen to them talk about her as if she weren’t there.
“I can do nothing about it if you refuse to accept that I love this girl,” Omkar said. “But I’m disappointed in you. You have raised me to have an open mind, but now, when I ask you to have an open mind, you keep yours closed.”
Omkar’s confidence was quickly countered by his father. “Don’t disrespect us. Don’t talk to us that way,” Neeraj yelled, puffing up his chest and turning a shoulder to Omkar as a warning. “Whose son is this? We have not raised a son to act like this and to think this way and to talk this way. We have not worked so hard to give you this life so you could wreck it. We forbid this match, Omkar. I am your father and because I am your father, I can tell you that this girl is not right for you. And I expect you to respect that. Now come inside.”
Neeraj motioned to Jarminder, who began to follow him back inside. Omkar hesitated a second before the futility of convincing them strengthened instead of weakened his resolve. Taking a final stand, he yelled, “Alright, I can see that you don’t respect what I have said. I can see that you do not respect that I love this girl. I can see that you do not believe you have raised a son who can love this girl. So maybe I’m not your son. Maybe you will disown me. I don’t care because I do love this girl, Papa, I love her whether you accept it or not.”
When the pause led to no compromise on either side, Omkar told Aria to wait outside. He walked past his parents and back into the store. Neeraj and Jarminder followed him, relieved. Despite his last words, they were convinced that he was going back into the store because he had given in to their reasoning. However, in the time it took them to walk back up the stairs to put the conflict entirely to rest, Omkar had dressed in the first outfit he could find. He had grabbed all the things he needed for class; he had collected his wallet and was now looking for the car keys.
“Omkar, Mama needs you to drive her to gurdwara this morning on your way to school,” Neeraj said, walking toward his room.
Omkar was further enraged by the way the obvious conflict was swept under the carpet of their plans for the day. He lacked the tolerance to stay there a moment longer. Keys in hand, he walked back out of his room and straight past his parents, ignoring his father’s comment. It was a disrespect that he had never shown them before. It felt both liberating and catastrophic.
Neeraj and Jarminder were so taken aback that by the time they yelled out after him, he had already reached the bottom of the stairs. They followed him, but by the time they got outside, Omkar had already ushered Aria into the passenger seat of his car. They watched him turn on the engine and drive away.
The pair took to arguing when Omkar’s absence left them nothing but each other to fight against. They were angry but Jarminder quickly collapsed into tears. Her anger at Omkar’s insolence could not compare to her fear of losing the only child she had left. She felt guilty. Maybe she even doubted herself for the things she had said. The fear that Neeraj felt could not be seen, though it was there inside him too. He held himself together like he had been trained to do. He looked at the empty road where his son had been and held his wife like a stem supporting a petal that was wilting.
The guilt that had taken over his parents affected Omkar too. After apologizing to Aria multiple times, his voice had been stripped away by it. It blew through him like white smoke, snuffing out the air in his lungs. He could feel the numbness it carried in his left hand, which gripped the steering wheel, and in his right hand, which held Aria’s. He knew that the love he felt for Aria, and his choice to be honest about it with his parents, was right. He never doubted that for a second, which was why it was so confusing to feel so wrong about doing something that felt so right. The wrongness of displeasing his parents
