Shivi

SHIV. EIGHTEEN. i am, as you know, in san francisco being a barista and slightly losing my mind in the best possible way. the manager here is named bryce. he is twenty-four. he says "no worries" forty times a day. i think about you constantly. i thought about you yesterday when a girl came in and ordered an oat milk latte with three pumps of vanilla and i was like, that is, exactly, a shivi order. i am sending you a polaroid in the mail and also a SF state hoodie because i know you said you didn't want one but i love you and i don't care. happy birthday. please don't peak in college. love you the most. — TAN xx

shivi. eighteen. i am writing this in the pg in bangalore on a wednesday at almost midnight and my roommate has finally gone to sleep. we met in mrs. rao's class in the first standard and you let me borrow your eraser and i told my mum that night, very seriously, that i had a best friend now. that was twelve years ago. we have, in those twelve years, been in the same group chat (the iyengar girls 4ever, since 2019), the same dance class, the same bunked maths tuition, and the same three rounds of crying about boys who did not deserve the tears. you start college next week. i have been crying off and on for an hour. it is fine. it is good. i love you so much, shiv. happy eighteenth.

Shivi — I am writing this in the LSE library at half past nine on a Tuesday night, which is, frankly, where I have been for most of the last six weeks. The library is enormous and slightly intimidating and full of slightly intimidating people but I have, every evening, taken out the small photograph of all four of us from the farewell party at school and put it on the desk next to my laptop. You are turning eighteen on a Saturday and I am, for the first time since I was four, not going to be there for it. The Bangalore plan didn't come together. I am sorry. I have, however, written you something — a slightly long letter, because that is what I do — and posted it through Anaya so it should reach you on the day. Read it slowly. I love you a great deal.

shiv!!! it's maya!!! from toronto!!! i KNOW it has been forever but anaya found me on instagram last month and added me back to the group chat and i screamed in my dorm room and my roommate thought something terrible had happened. i have read the entire group chat back from 2019 and i think i have caught up on everything. you are EIGHTEEN. you are going to LSR. i used to think about you all every single thursday when we used to have dance class together. i still do, actually. i miss the four of us in the back row of mrs. das's class drawing on each other's hands with biros. happy birthday shiv. don't forget me. love, may xx

Shiv — Bhaiya here, from the desk in Mumbai at, looking at the clock, twenty-two minutes past midnight on a Thursday. I have been at work since seven on Wednesday morning and I should, by every reasonable measure, be asleep by now. I am not. I am writing this because Ma asked me to and because, in the eighteen years that you have been my sister, I have not, I think, ever told you in writing that I am proud of you. I am. You are, by some distance, the funnier and the more interesting of the two of us, and you are going to do, at LSR and after it, things that will quietly amaze the rest of us. I will be at the dinner on Saturday. I have organised the flights. Don't tell Ma. Happy birthday, choti.

Shivi beta — Papa here. I am, as you know, not very good at this. Your mother told me, last week, that I had to write you something for this wall and so here I am, at the dining table on a Saturday morning, writing it out by hand first because I do not trust the typing on the phone. Eighteen years. I remember when you were two and a half and you were sitting on my shoulders at the Mylapore temple and you said, very loudly, in the middle of the puja, "Papa, the man is singing too long." Everyone laughed. Your grandmother was, slightly, mortified. I have, since that day, told that story at approximately every single one of your birthdays. I will tell it again on Saturday. I love you very much, my child. Be safe in Delhi. Ring on Sundays. — Papa.

Shivi kanna — Patti ezhuduren Maduraiku kitta-ren idle table-la, paathukara sappadu mudichu, twelve o'clock-ku munnadi. You are eighteen. Pathinettu vayasu, kanna. Ennoda thaayar — my own mother — pathinettu vayasula kalyanam pannaa, athunaala namma kudumbathula pathinettu vayasu enbathu, romba periya thing. You are not getting married, of course, you are going to Delhi to study, and that is, in itself, the bigger thing. I am sending you, with your mother, the small gold bangle that my mother gave me on my own eighteenth. Wear it. It will keep you safe. I love you the most. Phone pannu, ma, atleast once a week. — Patti.

My darling Shivi — I cannot, in honesty, believe that you are eighteen. I had you on a Wednesday afternoon in September in 2008 and the doctor handed you to me and you were, even then, very alert, looking around the delivery room as if you were taking notes. You have, in eighteen years, never stopped taking notes. You start college on Monday. I have, as you know, packed your trunk twice already, and I will, knowing me, pack it once more before you leave. I have put in the small brass diya from my mother's house in Madurai. Light it on the windowsill of your room on the first night. That is all I am asking. I love you more than I have ever, in my life, loved anything. — Ma.