Bridegrooms and Boyfriends

I woke up to the sound of metal crashing against cement. I sat up, zombielike, when there was another sharp crash. I looked around with blind, sleep-ridden eyes.

Who the f——?

Sowmya was still sleeping and from what I could make out from my wristwatch, which wasn’t much, considering I was still half-asleep, it was almost six in the morning.

I rose unsteadily and walked to the edge of the terrace and leaned over to investigate the noise and see if I could yell some sense into the noise-maker.

I smiled sleepily. How could I have forgotten?

Thatha was standing by the tulasi plant in his white panchi and looking like he belonged in the fifteenth century or some old-fashioned Telugu movie. His fingers were strumming the white thread that crossed his chest and hung loosely on his body, as if it were a guitar. Like every devout Brahmin, Thatha invoked the Gayatri mantram every morning to welcome the day. I watched him circle the holy tulasi plant and pour water into the cement pot with the offensive brass mug that had fallen on the cement floor and woken me up.

His deep voice boomed to me and even though I couldn’t hear the words, I could feel them, words that were forbidden to women. Sanskrit, sacred words from the Vedas, passed from generation to generation, secretly, to men, by men.

Om
Bhur bhuva swah
Tat savitur varnyam
Bhargo devasya dhimahi
Dhiyo yo nah prachodayat
Om

The words were Sanskrit, unadulterated by bad pronunciation or lack of knowledge. He knew what he was talking about, but I don’t think he really understood what the mantram stood for.

I knew; I had asked Nanna and he had explained to both Nate and me. The mantram stood for enlightenment. It was the way a Brahmin man could become a better person. It was to invoke the sun god and ask the light of the generous sun to enlighten the reader of the mantram, so that he could love all, wipe away hate, and start taking the journey that would bring him closer to the supreme god.

“Why can’t girls say it? Why only boys?” I’d asked Nanna.

“I don’t care if you want to say it,” he said. “Do you want to wake up at six in the morning every day and say the mantram?”

Considering that waking up at seven-thirty in the morning to catch the school bus at eight-thirty was a trial, I shook my head and decided that maybe it was okay that Nate would have to be the one to wake up early, not me. As things turned out, Nate refused to have his thread ceremony done and was planning to never have it done.

“If I don’t feel like a Brahmin, then why should I follow this farce?” he asked my mother, who had then blistered his ear about tradition and culture. He responded to that by saying that just yesterday he’d had beef biriyani at an Irani Café in Mehndipatnam and didn’t care all that much about tradition and culture. Ma was so shocked she never brought the topic up again, mostly, we believed, out of fear that Nate would disclose the meat . . . no, no, that could even be overlooked, but the beef-eating incident to Thatha and the others. That couldn’t and wouldn’t be overlooked.

“Didn’t the boy know that the cow was sacred?” Ma had demanded of Nanna, whose job it had suddenly become to instruct Nate on how to be a good Brahmin.

“Maybe if you read the Gayatri mantram like my father does, your son will learn something,” Ma had told Nanna, who had turned a deaf ear to her demands and pleas in that regard.

But reading the mantram was just a formality. Thatha didn’t really believe in what it was telling him, to hate none and love all. He did what he did because it was expected of him, because his father before him had said the same mantram in the same way with the same passion and lack of understanding. If Thatha understood and abided by the mantram he would not have a problem accepting Nick or anyone else that I might want to marry.

This was a man whose life was steeped in ritual. Life and tradition lay alongside each other and bled into each other. Thatha didn’t question tradition but accepted it just the way he accepted waking up every morning at six to perform the Gayatri mantram.

He would never come around, I realized sadly. I would have to sacrifice the granddaughter to keep the lover.

Needless to say, Vinay was shocked when I called him. It was just not done, but to his credit he stammered only a few times before saying, yes, he would be at Minerva at 11 A.M. sharp.

“He said okay? Really?” Sowmya asked, her fingers trembling on the piece of ginger she was holding.

“Yes, he did,” I said, and stripped some curry leaves from their stem. “What will you say to him?”

Sowmya resumed grating the ginger. “I don’t know, but I am sure I will be inspired once I sit in front of him. You will be there, won’t you? All the time?”

“Yes,” I said, and popped a peanut into my mouth.

“I can’t believe it is going to happen. Marriage!” Sowmya sounded excited. “But I want to talk to him before I say anything to Nanna. Otherwise . . . life will be a waste, you know.”

“You’ll leave this house, your parents. Do you think you’ll miss it?”

“I think so,” Sowmya said, looking around the kitchen. “I like this house. It is nice and cozy. The tenants upstairs don’t make too much noise; Parvati comes regularly, more or less, and yes, I am very comfortable here.

“But I am ready for the change,” she said, and paused. She looked around to make sure no one was listening and then whispered, “You have had sex, right?” just as I put another peanut into my mouth. I all but choked on the nut.

“What?”

Sowmya gave me a look laden with curiosity. “You have, right? You live with this American and . . . you have, right?”

“I . . .” This was an intensely personal question, but she seemed so eager to know that I nodded.

“How was it the first time?” she asked.

I shrugged. I was mortified.

“Tell me,” she demanded.

I watched her put a wok on the gas stove and fire it up. She poured oil into the wok and looked at me expectantly.

“I don’t remember,” was the best I could do on short notice. Sowmya gave me a “sell me another bridge” look and I grinned, embarrassed. “I . . . it was fine.”

“Was it with this American?” she asked.

“Yes.” Good Lord, this was not a conversation I was prepared to have.

Sowmya threw some mustard seeds in the wok, and they spluttered in the oil. Some sprang out and landed on the stove and counter. She stirred the mustard seeds for a few moments and then dropped some curry leaves with black and yellow gram dal into the wok and let them sizzle for a while. Then she broke two dry red peppers and plopped them into the oil with crackling fanfare.

“Oh, give me those pachi marapakayalu.” She pointed to the green chilies by the sink, which I was leaning against.

She put green chilies inside the wok as well and sighed, spatula in hand. “I always wondered about it. And now it will actually happen. I am scared and excited.”

I had never seen this side of Sowmya before. This was a dreamy Sowmya, not the practical mouse I had grown up with.

She piled a deep-bowled steel ladle with yogurt and thumped the handle of the ladle on the side of the wok to drop a dollop of yogurt in it. She dropped another dollop of yogurt alongside the first and stirred hard, forcing the thick yogurt to liquefy and mix with the spices already sizzling in the oil.

“I always liked curd rice,” I said, as the familiar smell of burning yogurt filled the kitchen.

“This is the best thing to cook for breakfast,” Sowmya responded. “Fast and easy and I can use all leftovers. Pass me that rice, will you?” She added the rice left over from dinner the previous night to the wok and started to stir hard again, mixing everything into a Telugu breakfast staple.

“Do you think he will say no because I am being so bold?” Sowmya asked, almost as if she were wondering aloud.

“If he does, to hell with him,” I said.

She nodded, smiled, and turned the gas off.

Breakfast was ready.

Everyone in Ma’s family drank filter coffee in the morning. Instant coffee was okay for any other time of day but for mornings it had to be filter coffee. The coffee was made in a steel filter where hot water was poured onto rich ground coffee and filtered to make a thick decoction. The decoction was then mixed with frothy, bubbling hot milk and sugar. I remembered waking up every morning to the smell of decoction. I never got hooked on coffee but I always drank it when I was at Thatha’s house. No matter what Ma said about all filter coffee being the same—“You mix coffee decoction with milk, what skill do you need for that?”—Sowmya’s coffee was way better and she didn’t complain when I added five spoons of sugar to my coffee tumbler either.

Sowmya poured coffee in steel tumblers and put the tumblers in small steel bowls.

“Priya, I have a personal question,” Sowmya asked. She topped the glasses off with the coffee left in the steel utensil after she had filled up all the glasses.

Asking me if I’d had sex was not personal enough anymore? “Sure,” I said.

“Does it hurt a lot the first time?”

I shrugged. “Depends upon the . . . Sowmya, I can’t talk to you about this.”

“Then who should I talk to about all this?” she demanded. “Maybe your Ammamma would like to fill me in regarding the ins and outs of marital life. What do you think?”

I sighed. “It hurts, but it gets better.”

“Really?” she brightened. “How much better?”

“A lot better,” I said unable to keep a straight face any longer.

“But it depends upon the husband, right?”

“Yes.”

Sowmya nodded. “But I can’t test that.”

“Not in India, you can’t.”

Sowmya sipped some coffee from a glass and nodded again. “That is okay. It is going to be okay. Right, Priya?”

“Right,” I said, though I wasn’t sure what she was talking about being okay.

Minerva hadn’t changed, even a bit. It even smelled the same way it had seven years ago. My mouth watered at the sight of long crisp dosas and sizzling vadas. It was hard to get good south Indian food in America. The chicken curries and tandoori places were in abundance but the all-out vegetarian, south Indian food was almost impossible to find.

“I’m going to get a masala dosa,” I told the terribly nervous Sowmya.

“I am going to throw up,” she said, as soon as her eyes fell on her husband-maybe-to-be. “I have never been this scared before, Priya. This is a really bad idea,” she clutched my wrist. “Let us go back and we will pretend you never called him.”

I unclasped the death grip she had on me and patted the offending hand. “You don’t have to do this. But I think you need to, to be sure. It’s okay. I’ll be there.”

“You are more interested in that masala dosa,” she quipped nervously.

“Well . . . it is hard to get good dosa back home,” I said with a smile. “Come on. You know you won’t rest until you do this. And we have to get back by noon. Thatha wants me to let him know what my decision is.”

“And what is your decision?” Sowmya asked, still rooted at a safe distance from Vinay.

“We’re not here to discuss that,” I reminded her. I raised my hand and waved to Vinay. “Hi,” I cried out, and Sowmya closed her eyes.

She looked strange without her glasses. Vanity had taken over and she had abandoned the thick glasses for her seldom-used contact lenses.

“Namaskaram.” Vinay folded his hands and then gestured for us to sit down.

“Namaskaram,” Sowmya said. “Ah . . . chala, thanks, for coming here.”

“No problem,” Vinay said, and then smiled uneasily at me. “Would you like to eat something?”

“No,” Sowmya said, but I nodded and said, “ Masala dosa.”

Sowmya pinched my thigh and I stifled a yelp. “No, nothing, thanks.”

“Coffee?” Vinay asked, sounding as nervous as Sowmya.

“No,” Sowmya said, her head still bent. “I . . . wanted to talk to you,” she raised her head and he nodded. Speaking of uncomfortable places to be, this one took the cake and the baker.

“So . . . is there a problem?” Vinay asked. “You don’t approve of the match?”

“I . . . I want to marry you,” Sowmya reassured him a little too curtly. “But I wanted to clarify a few things.”

“Sure, sure. I am very happy that you want to marry me,” Vinay said with a small smile.

Sowmya held my hand and almost broke my pinkie finger. “I want to work,” she revealed sincerely. “My father didn’t let me and they said that your family doesn’t approve. But I want to work.”

Vinay nodded. “No problem. I can handle my parents. I will explain to them. If you want to work, I fully support that and they will, too.”

Sowmya smiled and I felt and heard her sigh of relief. “And . . . I want to have my own house. I know you care for your parents, but . . .”

Vinay smiled then. “The house is big. There are two kitchens and two everything. Old house, though. My grandfather, he built it. We will live separate, but they are still my parents.”

Sowmya smiled back and nodded.

“Anything else?” Vinay asked.

“And that is all,” she said.

“Now will you have coffee?” Vinay looked at me. “ Masala dosa?” he asked.

Sowmya nodded shyly and Vinay signaled for a waiter to come to our table.

During the auto rickshaw ride back home, Sowmya was flushed with happiness. “He is nice, isn’t he?” she said.

“Very nice,” I agreed with her.

“I can work,” Sowmya said almost giddily. “A job, Priya. A place I can go to every day, out of the house. I am so glad I did this. I feel so relieved. And”—she laughed softly—“I am getting married!”

“Congratulations,” I said, and kissed her on her cheek.

“What will you tell them?” she asked me when we got off the auto rickshaw.

“The truth,” I said easily. If Sowmya could take such a big chance to make a better life, I should be able to do the same. “I love Nick. I’m going to marry him.”

Sowmya laced her fingers with mine after she paid off the auto rickshaw driver and squeezed gently. “I will be with you all the time. All right?”

“All right,” I said. “I . . . am going to go and make a phone call.”

“Isn’t it late there?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Around midnight, but he’s usually awake late.”

“Okay, I will make an excuse for you,” Sowmya said and winked at me.

I couldn’t get ahold of Nick. His cell phone said he was out of range. I got our answering machine the five times I tried our home number and his work number said he was either out of his cubicle or on another line.

Panic set in! Had he received the email about my meeting Adarsh despite the server error and had just gone postal? Or maybe he had moved out of our home, changed his cell phone number and . . . didn’t pick up his work phone either? All sorts of unhealthy scenarios emerged in my head. To quell the feeling of misery that was welling inside me, I dialed Frances’s phone number from memory. I knew it would be really late in Memphis but if Nick had dumped me his mother would definitely know.

She was sleeping, but the minute she heard my voice she sounded wide awake.

“They’re forcing you to marry some Indian man and you want me to say good-bye to Nick for you,” she said as soon as she heard my “Hello, Frances.”

I laughed. “No.”

“Thank god, because my policy is that everyone does their own dirty work,” Frances said and I could hear her smile. “How’s it going, Priya?”

“I can’t find Nick,” I said, now feeling foolish for having woken her up. “I . . . thought he might be angry with me.”

“Angry? No, I don’t think so. I just spoke with him yesterday and he was fine. Was waiting for you to come back and get married to him,” Frances said. “And speaking of marriage, I found the perfect place for you both. It’s in midtown and it’s beautiful. The gardens are lovely. And I was thinking, if we did it in the fall, this fall, we could have great pictures of the foliage and—”

“Frances, I’m worried your son has dumped me. I don’t think I can even think about marriage,” I said, half hysterical.

“What’s one thing got to do with the other?” Frances demanded. “Find the right place to get married and I’ll make sure he shows up. He’s silly in love with you. Don’t you have faith?”

“Plenty,” I said. “Plenty back home. Here everything is murky and they made me go through this bride-seeing ceremony.”

“Like they do in the books? Was he a suitable boy?” Frances asked sounding excited. “Are you sure they made you go through it? Or did you want to?”

“Of course I didn’t want to and he isn’t suitable,” I said.

“Are you saying that a grown woman like you couldn’t stop something as simple as a bride-seeing ceremony?”

“I didn’t have the courage to tell them about Nick. Now I have and they all hate me,” I confessed.

“If this is all it takes to get them to hate you, you’re better off without them,” Frances said. “But they don’t hate you. They’re just mad and once they’re over their mad, they’ll be fine.”

“Really?”

“Well, I would be, if you were my daughter,” Frances said. “So . . . do I book this place for this fall or what? I was thinking early October. Not too hot, not too cold.”

“And then I can be knocked up by December?“ I asked sardonically.

“Would you?” Frances said. “That would be excellent. You could have a baby in September and . . . oh, that would be excellent. A September baby would—”

“Frances!”

“I’ll tell Nick that you wanted to get in touch with him,” Frances said, sounding very satisfied. “But don’t worry about him. He isn’t going anywhere.”

We chatted for a while; Frances wanted to know how everything in Hyderabad was, including the weather. She had this romantic idea about India, the way it was shown in books as an exotic land. When I told her about the slums and the dust that settled on your entire body, even your eyelids as soon as you got here, she thought it was quaint. India was not just a country you visited, it was a country that sank into your blood and stole a part of you.

As an insider all those years ago I couldn’t see it, but now after several years of exile I could feel the texture of India. It was the people, the smell, the taste, the noise, the essence that dragged you in and kept you. I hated this country for a lot of reasons, the narrow-mindedness, the bigotry, the treatment of women, but that was all on a larger scale, on a day-to-day basis. India still was my country.

I felt light-hearted, confident, and on top of the world after speaking with Frances. That changed when I got to Thatha’s house.

I stepped into the hall and the earth shifted. This was classic Ma, classic Indian mother.

Ma and Thatha were sitting across from Adarsh on the sofa Ammamma frequented most.

“Priya,” Ma stood up nervously. “Adarsh is here to see you.”

“I can see that,” I said, my lips pursued. “Hi,” I said to Adarsh, and he nodded with a confused look on his face.

“Can you come with me?” Ma insisted, and then just in case I would say something contrary she grabbed my wrist and took me inside.

“We thought it best,” she said as soon as we were in the kitchen.

“Thought what best?” I was now very confused and very suspicious. It was always a bad thing when Ma started thinking about my best.

Ma took a deep breath, her potbelly jiggled and her hands landed on her waist in an offensive gesture. “We asked Adarsh to come here saying that you wanted to meet him one last time before you made a decision.”

I wanted to say something, anything, but the words were not forming. Each time I thought they couldn’t surpass their previous nonsense, they did.

“We think you should talk to him and see what a good boy he is before you decide anything,” Ma advised.

I shook my head as if to clear the cobwebs that had settled in as soon as I saw Adarsh. “Ma, I’ve already decided. Actually, there is nothing to decide.”

“Just talk to him,” Ma cried out. “What do you lose?”

“Does Nanna know about this?” I asked.

“No. Your Thatha and I thought it was a good idea.”

I sighed. “I’ll talk to him, but not here,” I said even before she could let the triumphant smile form on her face. “We’ll go out and I’ll talk to him. You handle Thatha about that.”

“And you’ll be good to him? Right? Speak properly? No nonsense?”

I grinned; she had to push for that extra mile. “Ma, don’t you think I’m doing enough?”

Ma frowned and muttered something that I thankfully couldn’t catch. Thatha was called into the kitchen by Ma while I asked Adarsh if he wouldn’t mind going out.

“Sure,” Adarsh nodded and then followed me onto the veranda. I slipped my feet into the Kohlapuri slippers that I had just taken off. I had bought them a few days ago when I got home and they were already showing serious signs of wear.

While Adarsh buckled his leather sandals, I asked him if he knew of a place where we could have a cup of coffee and talk.

“Sure, we can drive,” Adarsh said, pointing to a black Tata Sierra parked outside the gate that I hadn’t noticed when I’d come back.

We didn’t speak as Adarsh drove to a chaat place.

“I love chaat,” he told me. “As soon as I got here I ate chaat.”

“I lived on chaat and ganna juice while I was in college,” I said. “When I got to the U.S. I was skinny. I looked like I was a refugee from one of those sad African countries.”

“Can’t bulk up just on chaat and sugarcane juice,” Adarsh concurred. “But if you add beer to the mix . . .” We laughed, almost companionably.

The chaat place was a small restaurant. Not your regular roadside chaat, this one was a step up. There were probably fifteen tables covered with red-and-white checkered vinyl tablecloths. Each table had a small plastic vase where a dusty plastic red rose stood upright proclaiming its artificiality.

Adarsh asked for two bottles of water as soon as we got in. The place was practically empty except for a man sitting at a table in a corner reading a newspaper. We found a table by a window looking out at the busy road where Adarsh had parked the black Tata Sierra. A young boy of maybe ten or eleven years old, wearing a pair of oversized khaki shorts and a dirty white T-shirt, put two bottles of water on our table. A small white-and-red checkered towel rested on his shoulders and he took our order on a small notepad with a ballpoint pen that had been resting against his ear.

“Just chai? No chaat?” Adarsh asked when he heard what I wanted.

“I just had a masala dosa at Minerva. Went there with my aunt,” I said, but my mouth watered when Adarsh ordered pau bhaji.

“The best pau bhaji is still in Bombay,” Adarsh said when the busboy was gone. He then took a swig from the bottled water. “So, why did you want to see me?”

I rested my chin on the palm of my left hand, moving my head slowly as my hand pivoted around my elbow and smiled at Adarsh.

“You didn’t want to see me,” he deduced, and sighed. “Your mother and your grandfather—”

“Plotted behind my back,” I finished. “Yup. I’m horribly sorry and to make up for it, chaat is on me and we can stop by this place I went to the other day and even have ganna juice.”

Adarsh’s eyes glinted with good humor. “You don’t want to marry me. Is that it?”

“Well . . . ” I started and paused when a big smile broke on his face. “I don’t.”

“Okay,” he said, and took another swig of water.

“You don’t seem too broken up about it,” I said, slightly miffed that he was taking my rejection so well.

“I’ve seen five girls and I liked you the best, but I’m not in love with you,” Adarsh said.

That was the good thing, I thought, about men like Adarsh. They treated arranged marriage exactly the way it should be treated, without too many emotions messing with their decision-making process.

“Any of the other four girls to your liking?” I had to ask.

“Yes,” Adarsh said with a smile. “Her name is Priya, too, but she’s shorter than you are and definitely has less . . . of that spark.”

“Is that a polite way of saying I have a short temper?”

“Well . . . I just saw a spark of it here and there,” Adarsh said with a grin. “So, your family forced you into that pelli-chupulu?”

“Yes and no,” I confessed. “I could’ve—no, should’ve—fought against it but I wanted some peace and I didn’t have the courage to tell them about my boyfriend.”

Adarsh put the bottle down and made an annoyed sound. “You have a boyfriend? And why the hell didn’t you tell me when I told you about my ex-girlfriend?”

He had every right to be mad so I continued humbly. “I was scared,” I admitted the truth. “I was scared of hurting my family and I ended up hurting you.”

“Humiliating me,” Adarsh amended. “Goddamn it, what’s wrong with you women? I mean, I agree that arranged marriage is archaic but, Priya, you work in the United States. You are a grown woman. Why the hell are you playing these stupid games?”

“Not games, Adarsh,” I said, keeping my voice calm even though I wanted to rage at him. How would he understand how much I was afraid of losing my family? How could he understand that?

“Then what?”

“He is American,” I revealed. “And I told them yesterday but they don’t want to come to terms with it. They dragged you here hoping I would give in. Be charmed by your ultra-good looks and the rest of the package.”

We fell silent when the busboy brought Adarsh’s pau bhaji and my chai. He ignored his food while I blew at the hot tea to cool it.

“I’m so sorry,” I apologized.

“I’m so fucking tired of women like you,” Adarsh muttered.

“Women like me? Excuse me, but you don’t even know me,” I said, putting my cup down with force that caused some of the tea spill on the saucer.

“Why are you so scared? My ex-girlfriend wouldn’t tell her parents about me. She was scared because they expected her to marry a Chinese guy. . . . And that’s why we broke up, because I got sick of her not accepting me,” Adarsh said.

“And you told your parents about her?”

“Yes,” Adarsh said. “I told them when things got serious and we moved in together, but Linda just wouldn’t do it.”

“I’m sorry,” I repeated sincerely. “I told my family yesterday night. I’m going to tell them again today. . . . I don’t know what else to do. I’m scared that I’ll lose them if I tell them and I’m scared I’ll lose Nick if I don’t.”

“Oh, you’ll lose him if you don’t,” Adarsh assured me and dug into his bhaji. “Want a bite?”

I shook my head. “So am I forgiven?”

“Hey, who am I to judge. I’m the one finding a wife like I would a job,” Adarsh said, and then chewed on his food with relish.

“You think the other Priya will work out for you?”

Adarsh nodded, his expression amused as well as confident. “She’s twenty years old, lives with her parents. Just finished her degree, so yeah, I think she’ll work out. She likes to run and hike, I kinda like the same things, so . . . we’ll go camping a lot.”

“I’m glad and again, I’m really sorry for having put you through this,” I said.

Adarsh shrugged nonchalantly. “As long as you pay for the chaat and provide me with the promised ganna juice . . . I have no complaints.”

I tried to call Nick once more and still got the answering machine and voice mail. It was hard not to panic. I checked my email in the hope that he had sent something but I couldn’t access the account as the ISP of the Internet café I was going to was down.

Not wanting to go back to Thatha’s where I would have to deal with some unsavory questions, I decided to go to my parents’ house instead. Nate was there and if he wasn’t, I knew the neighbor always had a key to the house. I could sneak in and get some quiet time. And I could check email from Nate’s computer.

Talking to Adarsh had raised some difficult issues; mostly I was feeling the garden variety, old-fashioned guilt. I started to wonder how Nick had felt about me keeping him a secret for the past three years we had been dating. I knew he thought it was silly not to tell my family about him, but now I started to realize that maybe he saw it as an insult as well, just like Adarsh had with his Chinese girlfriend.

But it was still a man’s world and we women had to balance the fine line between familial responsibilities and our own needs.

I waved for an auto rickshaw to take me to my parents’ house from the Internet café. I didn’t barter with the rickshawwallah, just agreed to the forty-five rupees he asked for.

Maybe Nick was busy. My mind made up excuses for his not being available on any data line. What if he had had an accident? No, no, I told myself firmly, Frances would know if that happened and Frances had said everything was fine, that she’d just talked to Nick the night before.

What if he was with another woman? As soon as I thought it, I knew it was preposterous. Nick could never be with another woman. Whenever I joked that he should leave me and go away he would say, “Where would I go? No one will have me but you.”

We both really had nowhere to be but with each other. Relationships bound people together to the point that home was a feeling and not a brick structure. I knew where home was and it definitely was not here in Hyderabad. These people were not family. How easily they had decided to give me up. Anger ripped through me. I don’t conform to their rules, I don’t exist, not important to anyone anymore. My own father walks out and doesn’t bother to tell me whether he is dead or alive as if my marrying Nick is the end of the world.

I paid the auto rickshaw driver and opened the rickety metal gate that led to the grilled veranda of my parents’ house.

“Priya?” Mrs. Murthy who lived across the street called out from her veranda.

I nodded and then waved to her. She stood up from the cane chair she was sitting on, fanning herself rapidly with a coconut straw fan. “Is your mother back, too?”

“No,” I said. “She’s still at Thatha and Ammamma’s house.”

“They took the light off again,” she complained, vigorously fanning herself. “Why don’t you come here and sit with me for a while until the light comes back, hanh? It is cooler here than your place. . . . I always told Radha, west-facing house, big mistake.”

It would be rude to say no. On the other hand I could have a nervous breakdown in front of good old Mallika Murthy, mother of a brilliant son who had gone to the best engineering and business school in India and now worked for a big multinational consultancy. She also had a gorgeous daughter who was married to a handsome doctor in Dubai and made an insane amount of money.

Ma hated Murthy Auntie even as she spent all her afternoons gossiping with her. They both talked about their children and tried to one up each other. Nate was in an IIT and he had gotten a better rank than Ravi Murthy in the IIT entrance exam so Ma showed off about that every time Murthy Auntie brought up the topic of her daughter, Sanjana, and her amazing husband. They were expecting a child in six months and Ma was burning with jealousy. Maybe that was why she had tried to hook me up with Adarsh who had gone the BITS Pilani-Stanford-big-company-manager job route, which made him just as desirable as the doctor in Dubai.

“Come, come, Priya,” Murthy Auntie insisted. “I have some thanda-thanda nimboo pani.”

Well, cold lemon juice did sound good and there was probably just Nate in the house sweating like a pig. So I made the big mistake of going onto Murthy Auntie’s veranda instead of my parents’. I should’ve known that she’d grill me about my personal life as she gave me the nimboo pani. It had never bothered me when I lived in India how everyone nosed around everyone else’s life; now it was inconceivable.

I remember Sowmya asking me, when I first got a job, how much I was getting paid. After two years of graduate school in the United States I flinched at the question and didn’t give her a number. I couldn’t be coy with Ma who would beat the number out of me, but if I had been working in India, I would’ve probably not even thought twice about telling anyone who asked.

The nimboo pani was a little too sweet, but it was cold enough that I didn’t complain. The heat was getting to me in more than one way. My salwar kameez had wet patches at my armpits, my back, and my stomach, and my thighs felt like they were plastered to any chair I sat on. My hair was matted against my skull and my head was starting to slowly ache because it had forgotten the taste and smell of a Hyderabad summer.

“Radha tells me that she has the perfect boy for you.” Murthy Auntie didn’t even bother to mask her curiosity. “So,” she demanded, her eyes wide, “how was this Sarma boy? Did you see him? What did he say?”

I licked my lips and stifled a scream that was lodged in my throat, waiting to get out. “He was okay,” I said, digging my nose into the lemon juice, trying not to look at her when I spoke.

“Really . . . just okay?” Murthy Auntie persisted. “Radha said that he was . . . as good-looking as Venkatesh. Personally, I don’t even think Venkatesh is that good-looking. Aamir Khan any day for me. What do you think, hanh?”

“About Aamir Khan?” I looked up at her with innocent, wide-eyed confusion.

Murthy Auntie sighed. “So, he wasn’t good-looking, hanh ?”

“He was fine looking,” I told her casually.

“So”—she cocked an eyebrow—“did they refuse the match? You can tell me, really. There is no shame. It happens all the time. Of course, with Sanjana, as soon as Mahesh saw her . . . clean bowled, he was. Married her within two weeks, would not let us delay an extra day.”

“I heard Sanjana is pregnant. Congratulations,” I said politely, hoping that this would veer her off my marriage path.

Murthy Auntie glowed. “It is a boy, they found out just two days ago. Mahesh is the only son so his parents are very happy that he is also having a son. Very rich family . . . The boy will be born with a silver spoon in his mouth.”

“That’s nice,” I said, now uncomfortable. Added to the heat was the fact I had nothing in common with this woman and I had, really, nothing to say to her.

“So they refused, hanh? Did they?” she asked, her eyes jumping out of her skull, wanting to peep inside my head to find out the truth.

“No,” I said in irritation.

“They said yes?”

“Yes.”

“And you said no?” Murthy Auntie asked in disbelief. “You can tell me the truth, Priya. If they said no, that is fine, it is okay to tell me. I am not a gossip like all the—”

“I can’t marry him, Auntie,” I interrupted her and gulped down the whole glass of lemon juice. I put the glass on the cool marble floor and stood up.

“Why not? Sit, Priya, what’s the hurry?” she said, tugging at my hand.

Just seven years and all this seemed alien. This browbeating and digging into personal lives seemed alien. But inside me I knew that this was the Indian way. I could turn my nose up at it and think it was uncouth but this was how I was raised, this was how things were. It was bloody high time I accepted it and did what needed to be done.

“No,” I said and smiled at her. I was just about to make her day. “I’m already engaged. My fiancé is an American. We’re getting married this fall, hopefully in October. I will definitely send you an invitation but the wedding will probably be in the U.S.”

Her mouth stayed wide open for almost fifteen seconds. But for the fact that I had just ruined my mother’s reputation and my apparent good name, I would’ve found it comical. It felt good, though, to have told her. I had stepped into the light, the light of truth, and it was a nice place to be.

I knew that even before I got inside my parents’ house, Mallika Murthy would be dialing the phone number of ten of her and Ma’s closest friends to inform them about my fall from grace.

I was smiling when I knocked on my parents’ front door. The power was still off and the doorbell was useless. I was fully expecting Nate to open the door and was surprised to see my father, red-eyed, looking slightly sloshed at his doorstep.

“Nanna?” I asked, and he sighed deeply.

“I was hiding, but everyone seems to find me,” he said, and stepped away from the door.

“Hiding in your own house, Nanna?”

Nanna shrugged. “Best place I could think of.”

“Have you been drinking?” I asked, as I smelled whiskey in the air.

“Not really,” he said, and pointed to Nate who was lying on a sofa sleeping, despite the heat. “We just drank a few pegs of whiskey last night.”

“A few pegs?” I picked up an empty bottle of Johnny Walker lying on the coffee table, surrounded with a few empty soda bottles.

“Well, after the first three pegs we lost count,” Nanna said and sat down by Nate’s feet on the sofa.

Nanna usually didn’t drink like this, maybe a peg socially and never with his own son. Looked like they were connecting on the alcohol level—a whole new kind of closeness?

“How’re you feeling?” I asked lamely.

“Hung over,” Nanna said, leaning against the backrest and closing his eyes.