The Bhat household in Kigga smelled of jasmine and filter coffee on the morning the boy's family was to visit. Aparna's mother had been up since four, arranging banana leaves and silver plates, while her elder sister pinned the pleats of Aparna's mysore silk saree and lined her eyes with a careful, unfamiliar hand. "Just smile and speak only when they ask you something," her sister whispered. "Let your eyes do the rest."
The Hegde family arrived in a car too polished for the mud lane outside, dust rising behind it toward the areca groves. Karthik stepped out in a crisp linen shirt, tall, easy in his own skin — the kind of young man who seemed to have practiced being looked at without ever needing to. His grandfather had been born in the very village he now visited as a guest, though Karthik himself knew Bangalore far better than the sound of the Tunga river.
Inside, over coffee and kodubale, the two were sent to the veranda "to get to know each other," as families do. Thirty minutes passed — mostly silence, a few polite questions about work, an awkward laugh about the rain. Aparna, dressed exactly as her sister had shaped her, looked lovely enough that Karthik noticed. He didn't know yet that this careful, borrowed elegance wasn't quite her own.
Fifteen days later, word came from the Hegde house: the boy had agreed. There was a small, joyful engagement in the same courtyard, marigolds strung along the pillars, elders blessing them with rice and turmeric. Both families were already settled enough, both children already working in Bangalore. It felt, to everyone watching, like a match written by fate itself.