“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.