Daya stared at the television and felt tears stab her eyes. The collective sigh of disappointment in the room revealed how much everybody was affected by the space mission's failure. She could hear her mother-in-law chanting, no doubt, hoping for some miracle to save it. Her husband Nitin loudly slapped the sofa as the headlines repeated the disappointing end - or hopefully, interlude - to this much awaited event. Her father-in-law shook his head and got up, clearly having expected some such fate.
But Daya herself felt as if it were a personal loss, a loss that had its roots fifteen years ago, when she gave up her pursuit of education to pursue Nitin and eloped to get married to him. Shalini, a friend she had reconnected with recently, told her, "I had expected you would be somewhere in NASA, working on some space mission! Never expected you to give it all up for marriage!"
