He is dead set against any man without a profession, your father. You trust that he and stepmother have made a good choice - and yet your stomach is churning, the smell of fresh kesari twisting it into knots.
It's a girl who sits next to you in the cinema, and you beat down the flutter of disappointment. You're here for your nephew, to play the doting aunt. A dress rehearsal for a play that might never open.
They tell you that he is a doctor in public health, with the right family from the right caste. He is older than you, of course, but at eighteen, most people are. You hope only that he is kind.
Your nephew is chattering about school and Norwich City, but your mood has soured. You are thinking about it again - how all your friends are married and you are not. How thirty is on the near horizon and your prospects are fading with every summer.
You hear the car pull up outside and you smooth down your sari one last time. Fiddling with the borrowed bangles on your slender wrists, the gold contrasting with the deep brown beneath. The glitter overlying the ordinary. This is the moment where you meet your future and you are not ready.
The attendant comes round with the ice creams and you root through your purse, even though you know exactly how many pennies are left after your mother has taken her share. But then an ice cream is in your hand and you look up to see who bought it.
He comes in with his parents and you take him in before lowering your eyes. He looks confident where you are nervous, bright where you are dull. Your heart beats faster as you wonder when he will whisper to his mother that he wants someone else.
You stare along the row to the young man with the farmer's tan, grinning at you and waving awkwardly. No one has ever looked at you with that kind of enthusiasm, at you alone. You feel wanted for the very first time.
When you dare to look up, he is smiling at you, admiring you. In the dark pools of his eyes, you think you see someone you could admire too.
You dare to look away, to watch the film instead of the man. You have to trust that he will still be there after.
He takes a bite of the kesari you made, a tentative one - waiting for the overwhelming richness, the bitterness beneath.
You almost forget to pass the ice cream to the eager child at your side, a curl of cream circling your pale wrist. Holding your hand to your mouth, you suck in the sweetness over the tang of salt.
He talks about the house you will live in with his family, about his work, and you want to love the future he is offering you - but the cardamom catches in your throat. Bringing tears to your eyes.
After the reel has run out, the man is waiting for you. You notice at once that he is a little slow, slower than you, and a small selfish part of you doesn't want to give up the shop to be a farmer's wife. But there's the warmth of vanilla on your tongue and the light in a young boy's eyes.
Do you taste the ash of the funeral pyre on the horizon, the legacy of an accident that never should have been? That deprived your children of a father and you of every speck of value? What care has the world for a widow in white?
Do you feel the sweat and the blood flowing inexorably over your skin, hearing the midwife say it's a girl before you slip into unconsciousness - as all your dreams are dying with you? What use has a farmer got for a girl?
But you will live, alone among others, as your children leave one by one for a brighter land that will never see past their darkness.
And you will live, a life marked by that one day, that one disappointment from which you will never fully recover.
He is dead.
It's a girl.