on being asked for the third time this year

Masi asked at the January wedding. She is seventy-two and deployed the question with surgical precision between the baraat arriving and the pheras beginning, in a tone that suggested she was noting a minor problem she expected someone else to solve. My mother's colleague asked at the office party my mother dragged me to in March, prefacing it with "you must be so busy with work," which I recognized as kindness. She was trying to give me an exit ramp. I used it. My best friend's new boyfriend asked, which was — I don't know what that was. Enthusiasm, maybe. He's from Chandigarh and hasn't learned yet which questions are on the list. The thing I want to say, and don't, is that I am thirty-one and living in a city I chose, doing work I find interesting, with people I like. I am not waiting for anything. I am not in a holding pattern until marriage arrives and my life begins. This is my life. It is happening now. I am in it. What I actually say is some version of "haan, dekhenge," delivered with a smile that I've been perfecting since 2019. It communicates nothing and everything. It satisfies nobody and bothers nobody. It ends the conversation. My masi hugged me at the end of the wedding and said I looked beautiful. She probably meant it as consolation. I took it as a compliment. She's not wrong. I did look beautiful.