My Priest Predicted I’d Be a Spy

M
y kundali—my Hindu astrology chart—says I must not keep a weapon at home. That’s not even a thing in kundalis. I googled it, checked my sister’s too.

Strange. He didn’t predict an armed officer or a serial killer. Also, I don’t live in America, or plan to, unless a few crores I don’t have suddenly buy me a visa. No guns here in Bengaluru, only startups.

Unless he meant spy. A real spy wouldn’t keep a weapon at home. Maybe “teacher” or “designer” were just cover jobs. Maybe I’ve been recruited by RAW or a ghost agency using this code. Writing this might be my round-one clearance.

I’m also not supposed to wear black or blue. Pink it is. So I burned my closet, black and blue, hoping for pink glitter ash. Evidence of what I burned to become who I’m supposed to be. Another instruction: eat on the floor. It’s made my psoriasis worse and turned me into a target for ants, but I know I need to toughen up for the job.

I’m not just stubborn; I can out-argue anyone on anything. He predicted that too. Maybe that’s why I keep trying to prove things, like the ants I sometimes see crawling on me or around me, where there aren’t any. They feel real to me, not a metaphor, or some trauma residue, however the therapists label it.

My ex said his first impression of me was a shallow South Delhi chick with all the pink and the accent. The only pink on me that day was my phone cover and nail paint—maybe my lipstick too. But others, especially boys, tend to notice pink more than I ever did. When I got him a pink hoodie, he flung it like it had cockroaches on it. Pink is a man-child repellent; I could carry it instead of pepper spray.

I should’ve seen the red flags sooner, but I was blinded by all that black. Spies can’t have functional relationships anyway.

Selfish. Stubborn. Uses others’ secrets. The priest wrote those words over and over, between unrelated paragraphs of my fate. Maybe so I wouldn’t miss them, or maybe repetition was the point: a mantra of who I’m meant to be. A selfish, stubborn woman who extracts secrets and weaponizes them. That’s a spy. Dress her in pink. Perfect cover.

There’s more, but I’m not at liberty to reveal it—

wouldn’t be a good spy if I did—

because some of it reads like torture: truths you’re not ready to hear, like how your ex’s new girlfriend is pretty without makeup, or how you’re no longer twenty-something and can’t get away with saying I’m figuring it out—

and because even the app that reads doctor’s handwriting couldn’t read his.

I had to test the kundali once. I placed a knife by my bedside before sleeping. I woke with a thin cut as I leapt for a call at seven. No one spoke. Points for guessing who.

I’m fixated on this tiny pink booklet of fate. It feels like a book that won’t stop talking back—insistent, speaking in riddles. I sit with it for hours on the floor, lining its meanings up like clues. My life before this already feels archived; every day I’m catching up to what it decided. It also reads like poetry: staccato lines, broken stanzas, numbers posing as symbols. My only measurable progress is physical—I can hold a deep squat for four minutes now. That should count if I ever make it past round two.

This is what my luck looks like. A pink mist of scribbles that could mean anything, if I read them at all. It turns out that words are weapons too. I keep them close.