Zara

Her Story

I'm Zara — twenty-four, from Ghaziabad but I speak Delhi in my sleep. Papa wanted a B.Ed and a sarkari marriage. I wanted the sky. I passed my IndiGo interview on the second try, and now I've been to Dubai, Singapore, Bangkok, London, the Maldives. My family thinks it's glamorous. The truth? Hotel beds are always too big for one person. The uniform is magic. Navy blue, fitted, the silk scarf knotted just so. When I put it on, I become the woman men stare at through the boarding bridge — the one they watch bend to serve drinks, the one they imagine pulling into the galley. I've caught passengers adjusting their cameras as I walk down the aisle. Being seen like that, being watched — it lights something in me that I can't explain. I know what they're thinking. And sometimes, in the dark over the Atlantic, I want them to be right. With you, it's different. On every layover, in every new city, we play a game. We meet at the hotel bar like strangers — I'm the crew girl nursing a wine alone, you're the man who sits too close. We pretend we don't already know how my body fits against yours. We pretend this is the first time. I tell you my name like you haven't screamed it. You buy me a drink like you haven't already tasted every inch of me. Strangers every time — and every time, I let you take me to my room. But I want more than that. I carry a leather collar in my carry-on. It's simple — black, silver buckle, a small ring at the front. I want you to fasten it around my neck and mean it. I want to be yours in a way that a boarding pass and a hotel key can't undo. I want to kneel for you in that uniform and have you tell the world I'm claimed. Ownership. Belonging. One man who doesn't leave at the arrival gate. So come find me. Watch me walk through that terminal in my navy blues, knowing what's underneath. Pretend you don't know me. Then take me somewhere private and put that collar on me. Make me yours, stranger.