Nikhil
Nikhil was born on 8 May 1998 in Vejalpur, on the western side of Ahmedabad, in the Indian state of Gujarat. The city sat under India’s national government and Gujarat’s state government, with neighborhood politics that turned on municipal services and party networks. His family spoke Gujarati at home, switched to Hindi when needed, and treated English as a school and office language. They were Hindu and kept their religion practical: a small shrine in the flat, a few framed pictures, a brass diya, and festivals when they came.
His father, Suresh, left each morning in a tucked-in shirt with his bag on his shoulder. He worked as a professional—an engineer in a private firm with a steady salary, deadlines, and colleagues who talked in acronyms. His mother, Meena, worked in a clerical job where files moved from desk to desk and pay came on time. They lived as a nuclear family. Nikhil’s older brother Jayesh, born in 1995, was louder and faster, always sure he knew the better way to do something. Both parents worked, so on school afternoons a neighbor named Aarti watched the boys—she fed them snacks, made sure Jayesh did his homework, and kept Nikhil from wandering into the stairwell. She stayed in their lives as an informal aunt figure even after they outgrew supervision.
The home shrine sat in a corner cabinet. On ordinary days Meena lit incense and waved it once or twice, quick and efficient, before leaving for work. On festivals the household changed pace. At Diwali, they cleaned cupboards, put rangoli near the door, and set out sweets from the local shop—soan papdi and kaju katli—alongside a small plate with flowers and kumkum. On Janmashtami, Jayesh pinched pieces of makhan from the kitchen and ran, and Nikhil chased him down the hallway laughing, slipping on the polished floor.
In 2001, when Nikhil was three, the Bhuj earthquake hit far to the west, but its images and talk reached Ahmedabad. The adults watched the news at night, and Meena set aside money for a donation drive at school. A few months later, building safety came up in colony meetings, and Suresh complained about shoddy construction whenever they passed a new site.
The next year brought fear closer. In 2002 Ahmedabad convulsed with communal violence. Nikhil didn’t understand the words adults used, but he understood the rules that appeared overnight: stay inside, don’t wander to the main road, come straight home from tuition, keep your voice down on the stairwell. Jayesh walked him to the corner shop when Meena needed milk, holding his wrist as if he might bolt. Suresh kept the TV low and made phone calls to relatives. By 2004 the family moved through the city more freely again, but the carefulness stayed in small habits—checking where the bus went, asking who lived on which side of a lane, choosing routes that felt predictable.
School suited Nikhil in some ways. He liked neat, bounded tasks: copying from the board, keeping columns straight in a notebook, reading short passages aloud in English class when called on. He didn’t push himself forward. He found a spot in the classroom where he could watch without being watched much. Teachers described him as polite. They also wrote “careless” on report cards. His bag regularly missed something: a signed form, a workbook, a geometry box. Meena kept a plastic folder at home for school papers, but Nikhil still lost slips in the gap between desk and wall.
He spent afternoons with two friends more often than with a crowd. Imran lived a few buildings away and liked cricket in the parking area, using broken bricks as stumps. They argued about whether a ball had hit the edge of a scooter and counted as out, then settled it with a re-bowl. Nikhil preferred batting where he didn’t have to dive on gravel. When the heat grew sharp, they bought ice gola from a cart—lemon and kala khatta, tongues stained, hands sticky.
By the late 2000s, Ahmedabad’s traffic thickened and new corridors and bus routes changed how people moved. Suresh complained about the roads but also enjoyed pointing out flyovers and BRTS lanes like a man taking stock of his city. Dust became part of the background. Nikhil learned to keep a handkerchief in his pocket because his nose ran easily in certain seasons.
At fourteen, in 2012, his sneezing stopped being a small nuisance and became a routine problem. He woke with a blocked nose and a dry throat. In class he coughed until classmates turned around. Some nights he heard his own breathing whistle when he tried to fall asleep. Meena took him to Dr. Shah, who prescribed antihistamines and a nasal spray and later added an inhaler for wheeze. Nikhil used the medicine in bursts, stopping as soon as he felt better, then returning when symptoms forced him. During summer heat and winter smog, his sleep broke into short stretches, and mornings came with a dull head that made schoolwork feel slow.
Stress changed his habits in other ways. In 2014 he began checking the front door lock, once, then again, fingers turning the latch, eyes fixed on the bolt. He washed his hands longer than needed and returned to the sink after touching the doorknob. He stuffed his schoolbag, then reopened it to confirm a notebook was there, then confirmed again. Meena noticed first because he made them late. Suresh reacted with irritation. Jayesh teased him—“Are you locking the whole building?”—until Nikhil snapped once and surprised them both. After that Jayesh stopped mocking and waited while Nikhil did his checks, leaning on the railing and looking down at the street.
In late 2016, demonetization hit. Meena stood in a bank line with other office workers; Suresh asked colleagues for change. At local shops, arguments rose over whether someone could pay by card. Nikhil carried a few small notes, folding them carefully into his wallet and unfolding them again to see what he had left.
He finished school and moved into entry-level work instead of a long, prestigious professional track. In 2017 he joined a small accounts office near a commercial strip. The work was steady and repetitive: matching invoices, entering voucher details, calling vendors about missing GST numbers. His supervisor, Rakeshbhai, taught him how to keep files in order, then scolded him when he didn’t. Nikhil understood the rules once they were laid out. He could sit for hours making sure figures aligned. What tripped him was timing. He promised to finish a set of entries by lunch and then drifted into helping someone else with a phone call, or he lost ten minutes reopening a spreadsheet because he couldn’t remember where he saved it. Rakeshbhai’s voice sharpened: “Nikhil, you are not a child. Put reminders.”
He kept his honesty simple and firm. When a vendor’s bill had an obvious error that could have benefited the firm if ignored, Nikhil flagged it and called. When someone suggested an “adjustment” to make a problem disappear, he refused and did it properly: correction, resubmission, a fresh printout.
In 2020 the pandemic shut the city down. Offices closed, transport stopped, and the streets outside their building went quiet. Nikhil stayed indoors and cleaned his phone and keys again and again. He avoided touching elevator buttons with bare fingers. When he returned to work after restrictions eased, he carried sanitizer and wiped his desk before sitting. The breathing trouble didn’t vanish either; masks and heat made him feel tight-chested on some days, and Dr. Shah renewed his inhaler prescriptions.
In 2022 his family arranged meetings with a woman named Pooja. She spoke Gujarati with the same Ahmedabad lilt, asked direct questions about his job, and laughed when he admitted he forgot things unless he wrote them down. They married that year with a small ceremony and the usual rituals: garlands, aarti, sweets, and relatives filming everything on phones. They set up their own place in Ahmedabad, not far enough to escape family visits but far enough to feel like adults. They had no children by the end of 2025.
Married life gave his days more structure. Pooja kept a list on the refrigerator: electricity bill, rent, his clinic follow-up. Nikhil resented the list for about an hour and then used it, crossing items out with a pen. When his allergies flared, she reminded him to take the spray instead of pretending it would go away. He still checked the door more than once, especially on days when he was rushed, but he learned to do it faster. Jayesh visited on weekends and brought snacks, sometimes a packet of fafda-jalebi in the morning. He still acted like an older brother, but with warmth: advice about saving, a warning about a scam call, an extra helmet when Nikhil’s strap broke.
Now, in early 2026, Nikhil sits at his desk in an accounts role he understands. He speaks softly in the office, gets along with people, and keeps his files neat when he remembers to file them. In the evenings he stops at a tea stall for cutting chai, then heads home through traffic and dust. At the door he checks the lock, once and once more, and steps inside to the sound of Pooja’s voice from the kitchen.