Dr. Nandini Yadav is a geochemist in Tokyo, a world away from her turbulent youth in India. She has built a stable, loving life for her sharp-witted seventeen-year-old daughter, Aani, with the support of her kind ex-husband, Karan, and his wife, Yuki. But Nandini is haunted by two things: a violent, unresolved trauma from her past and the memory of Anoop Krishnamurthy, her brilliant, reckless first love who vanished from her life twenty-two years ago
The story shifts between timelines and cities where a young, struggling Nandini battles postpartum psychosis and later, where she is a respected scientist.
The plot kicks into gear when Nandini is convinced by Aani to attend her 25th college reunion in Goa. There, she confronts Anoop. The chemistry between them is as electric as ever, but their reunion is fraught with anger, longing, and the unspoken question of Aaniâs paternity. Then there is are converging threats from their past that force Nandini and Anoop to rely on each other. And they end up creating a makeshift family with Karan, Yuki and Aani in Tokyo. However, their fragile new beginning is shattered when Aani overhears a private conversation and realizes Anoop is her father.
Dr. Nandini Yadav is a geochemist in Tokyo, a world away from her turbulent youth in India. She has built a stable, loving life for her sharp-witted seventeen-year-old daughter, Aani, with the support of her kind ex-husband, Karan, and his wife, Yuki. But Nandini is haunted by two things: a violent, unresolved trauma from her past and the memory of Anoop Krishnamurthy, her brilliant, reckless first love who vanished from her life twenty-two years ago
The story shifts between timelines and cities where a young, struggling Nandini battles postpartum psychosis and later, where she is a respected scientist.
The plot kicks into gear when Nandini is convinced by Aani to attend her 25th college reunion in Goa. There, she confronts Anoop. The chemistry between them is as electric as ever, but their reunion is fraught with anger, longing, and the unspoken question of Aaniâs paternity. Then there is are converging threats from their past that force Nandini and Anoop to rely on each other. And they end up creating a makeshift family with Karan, Yuki and Aani in Tokyo. However, their fragile new beginning is shattered when Aani overhears a private conversation and realizes Anoop is her father.
The Maps We Carry
New Delhi, India | 2008
The walls were breathing.
Nandini sat rigid on the edge of the floor bed, her fingers digging into the cheap cotton sheets, her gaze locked on the shifting patterns of damp spreading across the ceiling.
Not real. Not real. Not real.
The mantra did nothing to stop the whispers slithering from the cracks in the plasterâhissing, laughing, calling her name in voices that werenât there.
The voices were always dark. She could feel the quiver, her eyes wild and wide. Her bones were hollow with fear and fatigueâthe horror within, shaking to get loose and get out. A part of her brain knew she was on the cusp of full-blown psychotic mania, and she was tempted. Oh, ever so tempted to let go. It started right after she came to, in the hospital.
On the thin mattress beside her, two-week-old Aani let out a thin, reedy cry.
"Sheâs hungry," murmured the woman in the corner.
Nandiniâs head snapped up. The shadowy figureâher grandmother, dead twelve yearsâsmiled sadly, her sari dissolving into the wallpaper.
"Youâre not here," Nandini whispered.
"Neither are you, darling," the ghost sighed. "Not really."
Aaniâs wail sharpened. Nandini forced herself to stand, her legs trembling beneath her. The postpartum haemorrhage had left her weak; the hallucinations left her terrified. But the baby was real. The baby needed her.
You donât have the luxury to lose it. Get a grip!
She lifted her daughter, her tiny body radiating a heat so fierce it burned through the fog.
"Shh, my dragonfly," Nandini murmured, pressing her lips to the downy crown of Aaniâs head. Her scent of milk and new skin anchored her.
Real. This is real. My baby is real.
The ghost dissolved. The walls stilled. For the momentâŚ
A year later, summer of 2009. Rain lashed the single-pane window of the cramped third-floor flat, distorting the flickering neon sign of Sharmaâs Electricals across the street into bleeding streaks of green and red.
Inside, the air hung thick with damp plaster and the sour tang of desperation. One-year-old Aani lay curled on a thin mattress on the floor, her dark curls plastered to her forehead with sweat, clutching a faded charity shop Gudetama plushie. Her breathing was shallow, uneven.
Nandini sat cross-legged beside her, her back pressed against the wall, vibrating with the bass from the bar downstairs. She wasnât looking at her daughter. Her gaze was locked on the two official-looking papers trembling in her hand.
EVICTION NOTICE. SEVEN DAYS.
Her knuckles were bone-white around her last five-hundred-rupee note. The rejection letter from the National Science Foundation lay crumpled at her feet. Her third geochemistry PhD grant application had been denied.
âLacks sufficient practical application,â the dean had scrawled. His handwriting was smudged. She had poured her heart and soul into these applications. She was sure her passion had translated onto the paper. Obviously not.
A shadow moved beneath the streetlamp outside. Lingering. Rakesh from the lab. Her skin crawled. This would be his third âcasual check-inâ this week, offering âhelpâ with a smile that never reached his eyes. âA pretty thing like you shouldnât struggle alone, Ms Nandini.â
She shot to her feet, the eviction notice fluttering from her grasp. She slammed the rusted bolt across the door, the sound echoing sharply in the small room. Aani whimpered in her sleep. Heart hammering against her ribs, Nandini dragged the rickety wooden chair from the table and wedged it hard under the doorknob. The scrape of wood on concrete was a raw, desperate sound.
She slid down the wall, the rough plaster catching at her thin cotton kurta. The tremors started, deep in her core, radiating outwards until her teeth chattered. Not just fear. It was the crushing, suffocating weight of everything. The terrifying knowledge that the fragile dam holding back chaos was cracking, and only she stood between her child and the flood. She pressed her forehead to her knuckles, the smell of dust and mildew filling her nostrils.
She would just have to try again.
Think. Breathe. Survive.
Delhi University Faculty Lounge | 2011
"Dr. Yadav? Dr. Yadav?â
The voice was calm, measured. Nandini was still getting used to being called âdoctor.â She looked up from her sediment core samples, blinking away the grit of another sleepless night. A man stood before her, holding two steaming paper cups of chai. Tall, but not imposing, the man was in his late thirties with warm brown skin and a close-cropped beard shot through with premature silver. His eyesâdark as monsoon soilâheld none of the predatory interest sheâd come to expect from male colleagues.
"Professor Karan Sharma," he said, offering a slight smile. "Ancient Climate Patterns. Your cross-analysis of zircon decay chains in Himalayan glacial samplesâremarkable work."
Nandini took the chai, her fingers brushing his. No static. No spark. Just warmth.
"I have been here two years, and youâre the first person to cite my research instead of my marital status," she said dryly.
Karan chuckled, the sound rich and unhurried. "A tragedy. Your findings on sediment-borne radionuclides could rewrite our understanding ofâ"
"Mummy!"
Three-year-old Aani barrelled into Nandiniâs legs, her tiny fists clutching a mangled crayon drawing.
"Look! Fishies!"
Karan knelt without hesitation, eye-level with the toddler. "Are these Himalayan fishies?" he asked solemnly. "Because Iâve heard theyâre very clever!â
Aani giggled, delighted. Nandini felt something in her chest loosen.
***
The year 2012. Another year. Another rain. Instead of lashing, it played bass against the window like a thousand whispered secrets, each drop a tiny fracture in time. The room was bathed in the kind of warm, golden light that exists only in memoriesâsoft at the edges, thick with the scent of old books and the faintest trace of vanilla from a long-forgotten candle. In the corner, the stereo hummed a Linkin Park instrumental, the notes bleeding into the sound of the storm, turning the air into something alive, something felt.
Nandini lay still on the couch, Aani curled against her chest like a living ember. The weight of her daughterâfour years old, all wild curls and restless energyâwas both an anchor and an ache. Her arms had long since gone numb, but she couldnât bring herself to move. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
The shadows in the corners of the room pulsed with the rain, restless.
"You could stay," she whispered, the words barely louder than the drip-drip-drip of the leak in the ceilingâa lullaby for the broken things.
Karan turned his head beside her, his fingers tracing slow, absent patterns along her arm. Moonlight caught the silver threading his beard, turning him into something between dream and man.
"I wasnât planning to leave," he muttered, his voice rough with sleep and something deeperâsomething like devotion.
She smiled, not just at him, but at the world she had builtâthis tiny one-bedroom flat with its fairy lights and thrifted couch, its kitchen just big enough for simple meals, its window framing the park outside where the trees swayed under the weight of the rain. Autumn had stripped them bare, but when the headlights of passing cars cut through the dark, the branches glittered like tinsel as if Christmas had come early.
And him. This man beside her. Calm. Steady. Warm.
"Dr. Yadav!"
His laugh broke through her reverie, sudden and bright. She turned, blinking, and found him watching her with an expression sheâd never seen beforeâcagey, almost nervous.
"Hmm?"
"Marry me?"
The words hung between them, suspended in the amber glow of the room. The rain kept falling. The shadows kept breathing.
Silence.
Karan reached over, his hand, calloused from fieldwork, from digging through layers of earth and timeâand his grip was steady as bedrock.
"Yes."
No grand declarations. No fireworks.
Just a pact between two people who understood survival, who knew the weight of scars and the quiet relief of not having to carry them alone.
Later, in the quiet of the living room sofa-bed, after Aani had been tucked in, Karan traced the old scar on Nandiniâs kneeâthe one from the Honda CBZ bike, though he didnât know its originâand pressed his lips to the raised line.
"Youâre the strongest and most beautiful person I know," he said, the words sinking into her skin like an incantation.
And for the first time in years, Nandini let herself lean into him.
Just for this moment. Just for now.
After the wedding, after handing a sugar-high Aani to her sister Eleni, after the last of the guests had gone home, Nandini stood in the quiet of their hotel room, looking out at the sea view, struck by a storm of contradictionsârelief, wonder, dread.
She was a doctor and loved her work. A mother to a happy, healthy, alive child. A wife to a man who was kind, who was steady, who loved them both without hesitation.
And yet. The ghosts wouldnât leave.
The first was the spectre of postpartum and PTSD (the crushing weight of it, the way it had hollowed her out and left her gasping. She knew, objectively, that she should have named it, should have sought help, but she was not yet ready to put it in words even to herself. After years of trying to repress and run, it felt indulgent to call it anything at all. She had survived, hadnât she? That had to be enough.
And then there was the other ghost. Him. The one whose name she didnât speak, whose memory lived in the curve of Aaniâs smile, in the way her daughterâs eyes caught the light.
She resolved, then, to stop doubting. To stop looking back. She had survived. She had thrived. That had to be enough. She turned around.
The hotel room smelled of sandalwood and hope, fragile and new. Karan stood by the window, his broad shoulders cutting a silhouette against the city lights, the rain still painting the glass behind him in streaks of silver.
"I know youâre tired," he began, his voice low. "You donât have toâ"
"I want to," she said simply.
His hands were careful as they undressed her, reverent as they mapped the stretch marks on her body that had carried Aaniâeach touch a silent thank you, each brush of his fingers a promise.
When he kissed her with quiet certainty and not hunger, the promise of the kiss left her trembling.
"You're beautiful, Nandini," he declared against her throat, the words warm and rough like sunlight through old parchment. His beard scraped deliciously against her skin, a tactile reminder of his presenceâsolid, real. "Every part of you." He paused, then softer, shyly, he said, "Did you know I fell in love the very first time I walked over to you with that chai?"
She stilled.
The wordsâso familiar, yet so differentâsent a ripple through her. A ghost of another voice, another lifetime, whispering something achingly similar. ("You taste like the sea," HE had moaned against her collarbone)
She laughed, bright and sudden, the sound startling even herself. She shrugged the ghost voice away, a deflection from the past to a promise of this present.
In that moment, she walked over from nostalgia of that pulverising passion to this calm steadiness. Intense to constant. Consciously.
This man. This man, who stayed. Who built dollhouses from scrap wood and read Mughal history to Aani until his voice went hoarse. Who loved them both without conditions, without ghosts.
And then, because she was tired of haunting herself, she arched into him.
She let the heat of his bodyâthe weight of his devotionâchase away the shadows that had lingered too long.
For the first time in years, she let herself believe it.
For the first time in years, she let herself be believed.
Tokyo, Japan | 2025
The lab smelled of ozone and possibilityâthat crisp, electric scent of high-voltage equipment humming to life, of discoveries waiting to be made. Sunlight poured through the floor-to-ceiling windows, catching the dance of dust motes above the workbench, turning them into tiny constellations. Nandini often thought of them as remnants of stars, these floating particlesâfragments of something greater, now suspended in ordinary air.
Dr. Nandini Yadav stood with her silver-streaked hair pulled into a no-nonsense knot, her fingers tracing the glowing streams of data that hovered before her. Neodymium and strontium isotopes painted rivers of colour across the holographic display, telling stories older than civilisation itself. The sediment cores held secretsâwhispers of ancient currents, of earthquakes that had shuddered through ocean floors centuries ago.
"Fascinating," she said in awe, her fingertip pausing on a jagged spike in the data.
Science was rarely this poetic, this neat. But sometimes, just sometimes, the universe folded itself into patterns so precise they felt like fate.
She continued her voice note. âThis anomaly aligns perfectly with the predicted deep-water current shift post the last major Kuril Trench earthquakeâŚâ
Her intercom buzzed. "Dr. Yadav? Your Two PM sediment analysis is ready in bay three."
"Arigato, Sato-san," she replied, her voice steady, her fingers flicking the projection with practised ease.
She had built herself this sanctuary. A love story of quiet steadiness of numbers, the hum of machines that didnât judge, only measured. Here, she was defined by the astuteness of her mind, not the weight of her past.
Then, her phone buzzed, shattering the quiet of her lab.
"Mum, we are going to be late for Karan Papaâs thing. And do you know where my red Converse are? Bro, I told you not to touch my stuff! Umm, found it! Okay, Iâll meet you at the venue. Be ready. Be on time, please. Love you, bye!"
Seventeen-year-old Aaniâs voice barrelled through the speaker, loud and alive, leaving no room for a breath, let alone a response. Just like always.
Nandini exhaled, a smile she didn't have to force tugging at her lips. It was thisâthis vibrant, demanding life they had built afterâthat always quieted the old, whispering ghost of guilt. She needed to get ready for Karanâs âthingâ as Aani called it. The word was a soft blanket thrown over the sharp edges of his achievement, and she was grateful for it. She was proud of him, truly. Proud of them as coparents, and genuinely, of his wife, Yuki. The three of them were a well-oiled machine, a tripartite council that gave Aani a loving, sprawling family. She would repeat this to herself like a mantra, and most days, like today, she entirely believed it.
Her mind drifted back to the day she had received two letters that altered her life's trajectory, one with a roar, the other with a whisper.
Tokyo, 2018.
That Saturday, the light in Nandiniâs kitchen was too bright. The first envelope was crispâaggressively so. Divorce papers. They had arrived the same week as her tenure letter, a perfect, cosmic sucker-punch. Of course. The distance between her and Karan hadn't been a chasm that opened suddenly, but a glacierâslow, silent, and inexorable. It was in the missed calls that were never returned, the unread texts piling up like unmarked graves for half-finished conversations.
At the bottom of the envelope, a note in Karanâs neat, architectural script. Tried my best, Nandu. But you were always halfway somewhere elseâlike you left your favourite part of yourself back in 2003. She could hear him saying it, not with anger, but with the same gentle finality he used when explaining extinct climate patterns to Aani. He had loved them. Unequivocally. But whilst he loved Aani with the easy, sprawling joy of a father, with Nandini he was careful. Oh, so careful. He loved her like a conservator loves a fragile parchmentâwith awe, with reverence, but never with the messy, forgetful abandon that true daily intimacy requires. He was always afraid she might tear. And she, in turn, was afraid she already had.
She had tried, too. But trying felt like a performance where her heart was a locked room. It felt profoundly selfish to hoard the shadows inside her from a man who offered his whole self, sunlit and unguarded. Letting him go was the last, most painful act of love she could offer him. Atonement, dressed as surrender. It still hurt, a clean, precise hurt, like a surgeon's scalpel.
She grabbed her phone, her thumbs flying over the screen before the ache could root itself.
Nandini: Got the papersâvery corporate of you, Sharma. đ Go live your happy. (But youâre still on the hook for Karan Papa lifelong duties, just FYI.)
Karan: I still love you. You do know that, right? Both of you.
The breath caught in her throat. She did! And that was the very heart of the tragedy. His love had never been the question. It was the answer she had been too fractured to hold.
Ten-year-old Aani sat cross-legged on the tatami floor, her small hands carefully packing her Gudetama plushie into a bright yellow duffel bag. She glanced up, her dark eyesâKaranâs Aani with Anoopâs eyes in Nandini fontâcatching Nandini frozen in the hallway, a woman marooned between the life she had and the life that was beginning.
"Can Karan Papa still video-call on Sundays?" Aani asked, her voice deceptively steady, as if she were renegotiating the rules of a board game, not the architecture of her world. She held up a lone Totoro sock, waving it like a tiny white flag. "And can we finally get that giant sushi plushie from the arcade? You know, the one bigger than me?"
Nandini knelt, the legal papers becoming just paper, forgotten on the kotatsu. She pulled Aani close, breathing her inâstrawberry shampoo and the faint, metallic tang of Tokyo rain. The grief wasn't loud. It was a quiet, deep-breath kind of ache, the closing of a door that had once been her only shelter.
"Every Sunday," Nandini promised, her voice thick with a love that had to be big enough for this new, complicated shape. "And yes. Giant. Sushi. Plushie. But only if you promise not to actually let it eat you."
Aani grinned, all teeth and glorious mischief. "No promises."
And just like that, as Nandini held Aani, this piece of him, his daughter in all but blood, a soul he had claimed as his own, making their bond not a given, but a gift.
And she held herself. Nandini understood. Some loves don't end. They can't. Instead, they fracture and regrow, like a bone that was broken and never set quite right, forever a little different, a little wiser, a permanent, loving ache from which new strength is drawn.
In Vanilla Hour, Neer Ya invites readers into a deeply emotional story about how people live with their pasts and how they slowly learn to move forward. Set across cities like Delhi, Tokyo, New York, and Goa, the novel follows Dr. Nandini Yadav as her life is shaped through trauma, motherhood, work, friendship, and old love.
The story unfolds in stages of Nandiniâs journey. We see her first as a young woman struggling to stay afloat, then as someone who builds stability through work and family, and finally as a person forced to face memories she has long kept buried. These phases are connected through recurring elements like music, science, and memory. The writing often pauses to dwell on small moments, whether it is a shared meal or a quiet conversation, to remind the readers of their importance.
One of the strongest aspects of Vanilla Hour is the healthy and supportive relationships between its characters. The dynamics between Nandini, Karan, Yuki, Anoop, Anurag, and Aani are marked by care and mutual respect. Even when relationships change or end, they do so without cruelty. Karan and Yuki model a steady, generous partnership, while Anoop and Anuragâs friendship is built on loyalty and understanding. Aani, Nandiniâs daughter, is especially memorable as a curious, witty, and emotionally aware teenager. It is rare and refreshing to encounter a story where characters consistently try to show up for one another rather than tear each other down.
That said, some readers may find it slow if they are looking for a fast-moving plot or major dramatic conflict. The novel also deals with heavy themes such as trauma and assault, which may be difficult for some, even though the author handled them with the right amount of sensitivity.
Overall, Vanilla Hour is best suited for readers who enjoy character-driven stories and quiet resilience. It is a thoughtful, compassionate one that suggests love, when shared with the right people, can mature into something steady and sustaining. Like its name, the book carries a comforting scent that lingers long after the final page.