The Choices We Make
The permission had taken three days.
Not because Ramesh objected loudly — he rarely did anything loudly. He simply made things difficult in the small, procedural way that had become the texture of their marriage. He asked about the timing, then the location, then whether Arjun’s school bag was packed for the week, then who else was going, then whether it was really necessary. Each question delivered not with hostility but with a kind of bureaucratic weight, as if he were reviewing a proposal that needed more documentation.