Stepping Together– Waltz Missing.

Dance of Intimacy (Featuring SriJi, Patron Saint of Complications)

The Write-a-Page-a-Day challenge had begun again.

“Ptah,” muttered Akshara, sticking his tongue out at the ceiling, “not today.”

“It is entirely possible to invoke me without oral gymnastics,” came the voice.

SriJi had arrived. Same cosmic smugness. Slightly Punjabi accent this time. He liked cultural layering.

Around them, the world was in full matrimonial meltdown.

Punjabi Aunty had stopped eating samosas because Guddi was not getting married. Or possibly she had doubled her intake. With aunties it was difficult to tell whether grief reduced appetite or deep-fried it.

Tamil Mami, meanwhile, was in a state of ritualized cardiac arrest because Kanda had chosen a North Indian bride. “What next?” she whispered to no one in particular. “Chapati in my kitchen?”

Arul wanted a divorce. Athena wanted her ex-boyfriend, who had married her best friend. The best friend was posting motivational quotes about self-love. The ex-boyfriend had taken up pottery.

Every self-development seminar, Akshara noticed, eventually arrived at the same airport: Man. Woman. Relationship. Even productivity hacks ended there. “Optimize your morning, optimize your marriage.”

Ptah had often said people confuse internal relationships with external ones.

“How poetic,” Akshara muttered.

“How literal,” corrected SriJi.

Marriage, according to his father, became mercenary after a few years. The first child was born in the honeymoon period. The second, Ptah claimed, was the peace treaty with legs.

“Relationship is a dance,” SriJi began, adopting the tone of a TED Talk with divine sponsorship. “Sometimes you come together. Sometimes you move apart.”

“Yes, and sometimes someone steps on your foot and pretends it was choreography,” Akshara replied.

SriJi ignored him.

“A sapling needs attention. A full-grown tree needs space. Budding relationships demand time, energy, adventure. Established ones redirect attention outward—family, work, ego maintenance.”

“Or scrolling,” Akshara added.

“Marriage,” SriJi continued, “requires reinvention and nurturing.”

“Or maybe divorce is simply expensive,” Akshara said. “Romance dies; EMI lives forever.”

SriJi’s eyebrow twitched.

“Conversations,” he declared. “Communication.”

Akshara felt the lecture descending.

“When relationships fray, you infuse bridge-thought.”

“Bridge-thought?”

“Yes. Instead of ‘man-woman-relationship,’ try ‘papa-mama-Akshara.’ You blame everyone. There is no parking space for new connection. Deadlines, parental cold wars, bachelor bashes masquerading as networking.”

Akshara winced.

“How,” SriJi asked mildly, “do you expect a new relationship to enter when the house is already rented to resentment?”

He hated when gods used real estate metaphors.

“Start small. Take your mother for a drive once a week. Speak. Not about utility bills. About her.”

Akshara imagined it. His mother. Silence. Traffic. The radio discussing inflation. It sounded braver than dating.

“And Swapna?” he asked.

“You have a relationship with her,” SriJi said.

“We barely have coffee.”

“Exactly. You are either on a beat or she is. If you manage coffee, the entire team arrives like moral surveillance.”

It was true. Privacy had become a corporate myth.

“You think you’ve lost romance,” SriJi went on. “What you’ve lost is margin. Everything is deadline. Even affection must be calendar-invited.”

Akshara looked at his blinking laptop. Story pending. Mother waiting. Swapna orbiting. Marriage statistics hovering like mosquitoes.

SriJi stretched, satisfied.

“I make relationships,” he said grandly. “I break them. I choreograph the dance.”

“And what do I do?” Akshara asked.

“You,” said Ptah, fading slightly, “show up before the music stops.”

The page remained blank.

The dance, apparently, had already begun.