Four cousins. One old dharamsala. A wedding that was supposed to last four days.

Nikita notices it first in a bathroom mirror — a reflection that moves just a half-beat too late, wearing a face that isn't quite right. She tells herself it's nothing. The light, the glass, her own tired eyes.

A stranger outside the gate disagrees. He tells her to stay away from someone she's known her whole life — someone who is, he insists, not who she seems to be anymore.

By the second night, Nikita understands he wasn't exaggerating.

Something in that building has been waiting a very long time for exactly this family, in exactly this place — patient, old, and far too good at wearing the people you love.

Based on true events, The Other Shalini is a slow-burn horror novel that asks how well you really know the people closest to you — and what's left of them once something else moves in.