Travelling to Malaysia with my sisters turned us from strangers into soulmates

Years later, G got married and settled down in Mumbai. In Gurgaon, B kept switching jobs until she found one she loved. Higher studies took me to Pune. The turning point in my relationship with G came when when I found out she was pregnant. I was no longer the baby of the family; I could now be someone’s role model. Work started bringing me to Mumbai and closer to G. Eventually, she became the first person I confided in about my relationship and also the one who held me when it ended. With B, I could never quite establish that kind of bond. Until one day, I found myself added to a WhatsApp group called ‘The Three Musketeers,’ thanks to G’s sudden hankering for a girls’ trip to Baku.

B was flying from Delhi, and G and I from Mumbai. But just as G and I got to the airport, we were told that Iran and Israel had closed their airspace due to bombings. Our flight was cancelled. B, meanwhile, had already landed in Baku, stranded and anxious. What was meant to be an exciting trip turned into a flurry of constant news updates and our parents spiralling into panic.

And then, in a move that only my sisters could pull off, we decided, within hours, to reroute everything. Malaysia had a visa-on-arrival policy and it was a way for us to still be together. B packed her bags in Baku, booked the next available flight, and before I could process any of it, we were on our way to Kuala Lumpur. Through all the chaos, I felt something shifting. We weren’t just travelling together, we were looking out for each other, making sure we all got to the same place. All this, just to see each other.

That first night in Kuala Lumpur, jet-lagged, we found ourselves in our hotel room, sprawled across the beds, scrolling through restaurant options. “What do you want to eat?” G asked me. Usually, they would just decide and I was meant to obey. But now, they were asking me. My opinion finally mattered.

Travelling to Malaysia ended up being wonderful. Every night, B would make us do an elaborate skincare routine. “You’ll thank me when you’re 30,” she’d say, smearing something on my face while I rolled my eyes. But I secretly loved it. We laughed, we argued over whether double cleansing was a scam, and somewhere in between, we started talking. Really talking. About relationships and insecurities that they had shared with each other in the past, but never with me.