“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?”