“You’re going to break Nanna’s heart,” Nate said. “That’s going to be hard.”
“Yes, and Thatha’s,” I said. “But what has to be done-”
“Priya?” Lata came out and I bit my lip. How much had she heard? Did we say anything incriminating?
“They’re leaving and your mother wants you there,” she said, and then smiled at Nate. “Going, Nate?”
“Yes,” Nate said casually. He winked at me before leaving.
“He is so aloof,” Lata complained. “As if we are not good enough.”
“He just likes his own company,” I defended Nate immediately. “And he is not aloof.”
“Oh, come on, he has always been in his own world, not interested in the family or anything,” Lata said, and then sighed. “Of course, you don’t see anything wrong because you are his doting sister.”
“There is nothing wrong with him,” I said annoyed.
The family was not fond of Nate. It was as if he was more Nanna’s son than Ma’s. Even Thatha was more close to me than to Nate. It probably was because Nate spent more time with his friends and on his own than with the family. Nanna always said that he didn’t blame Nate. “He isn’t married to your mother, he doesn’t have to be in her parents’ house all the time,” he would say.
And to be honest, Nate didn’t even try to get along with Thatha or Ammamma or anyone else. He spoke to Anand once in a while and got along reasonably well with him, but the rest of the family could go hang itself and Nate wouldn’t give a damn, as he always said.
After the guests left, everyone congregated in the living room. Thatha opened his pouch of tobacco and started rubbing some in the palm of his hand. “Nice family… enh, Sowmya?”
Sowmya nodded.
Ammamma banged her hand against the arm of the sofa she was sitting on. “Very nice. If this works out… a big burden will be off our heads. I can’t wait for this marriage to take place. Ten years… ten long years… Now I want to see my Sowmya married.”
“They will definitely ask for dowry,” Jayant said. “Do you know what they want?”
Thatha put the tobacco inside his lower lip and sucked the tobacco into his mouth. “From what I hear they are not greedy people. And whatever they want, we will give… within reason, of course.”
Sowmya fidgeted with the gold bangle she was wearing. “He lives with his parents,” she said quietly.
“And…?” Thatha demanded immediately.
Sowmya just shrugged.
“Why? You don’t want to take care of his parents?” Thatha asked, chewing the tobacco noisily. “Sowmya?” he asked again when she didn’t respond.
“No, nothing like that,” she all but whimpered.
“So, do we have a problem, Sowmya?” Thatha asked.
“No,” she said after a minute’s hesitation.
We all knew she was lying.
“Grooms are not lining up outside the gate, you know,” Lata said as nicely as she could to Sowmya when the three of us were in the kitchen. “And his parents seem like nice people.”
Sowmya shrugged as she squeezed the pulp out of the tamarind, which was soaking in water. “Priya, large pieces, Ma. We need large pieces of tomato for the sambhar,” she told me, and threw the pieces of tomato I had diced into the sink. “You don’t even know the basics, Priya,” she complained. “You have to learn to cook… And if you don’t… just leave my kitchen.”
I wanted to leave her kitchen as she suggested. It was there just for an instant, the prick of pride, piercing and slamming against ego. I let it pass.
“I’ll do it properly,” I said, and showed her as I cut the tomatoes into large pieces. “This will do?”
Sowmya nodded without looking at me.
“He is a nice boy,” Lata said, looking up from the pearl onions she was peeling.
“He is thirty-five, dark, balding, and he wants dowry,” Sowmya said, tears glistening at the edge of her eyes, threatening to fall. “And he wants his wife to take care of his old parents. Haven’t I done enough? How many people do I need to take care of? What about me? Who will take care of me?” The tears fell.
I wanted to console her, but I didn’t have the words. What would I say to her? Wait for number sixty-six; maybe that will bring better luck?
Sowmya sat down on the floor and buried her face in her hands. “He asks if there is problem.” she sobbed, “There is always a problem… I am the problem. Can’t wait to get rid of me, she keeps saying.”
“They don’t mean it that way,” I said lamely.
“What would you know?” Sowmya flashed at me. “You have Mr. Mercedes wanting to marry you and you have an American boyfriend who wants to marry you. You have all the choices and…” She stopped speaking as she saw the shock on my face and then on Lata’s.
“American boyfriend?” Lata said, catching the most important part.
“I was just making a point,” Sowmya tried to backtrack but it was already too late.
“Yes,” I said boldly. No point in lying anymore, I realized. It was time. I should have done this as soon as I got to India. I shouldn’t have waited. “But please don’t tell anyone anything,” I pleaded. “I want to be the one to tell them.”
Lata nodded and then threw her hands up in the air. “You girls complicate your lives,” she said in exasperation. “When I was getting married it was simple. The first groom who said yes, it was yes. With you-”
“It is not like I have been saying no, Lata,” Sowmya pointed out.
“I know,” Lata said, and sighed. “Our choices are so pathetic. Look at me, pregnant for the third time so that your father can have a grandson, so that Jayant can feel that he is for once closer to his father than Anand, so that when the old man dies he will leave something more to us than he plans to. Disgusting lives we women have to live.”
“We make our own choices,” I said.
“No,” Sowmya said as she stood up. “No, we don’t. If I had a choice, I would have gotten a job, gotten outside the house. Who knows, met someone. But Nanna wouldn’t have it.”
“You have choices,” Lata said, looking at me. “And you are going to blow it. An American boyfriend?”
“I didn’t plan it,” I told her what I had told Sowmya. “It just happened.”
“Have you slept with him?” Lata asked.
“None of your business,” I said without thinking. “That’s very personal.”
“There is no personal for women,” Sowmya piped in. “My father knows when I menstruate because I have to sit out, they know who talks to me and who doesn’t, they know what movie I see and with whom, they know exactly, down to the paisa what I spend on anything. Personal! My foot!”
I had never seen Sowmya so riled up, but then I had never seen her as a real woman with feelings and emotions, always as Sowmya, everyone’s punching bag. The one you could dump on, the one who put up with everything. I think all of us had forgotten that beneath the thick glasses lay the perceptive eyes of a woman. Not some bride-to-be but a grown woman who was as angry at the world as I was but had more of a right to be so.
I found Indian rituals appalling but I didn’t have to live them; Sowmya and Lata did. My life was better and my choices infinitely more appealing than theirs. My parents had given me this and I owed them the truth about my personal life. They needed to know and soon that Nick existed and because he did exist, I could not marry Adarsh or any other good-looking Indian “boy.”
“Where did Natarajan go?” Ammamma asked. Both Thatha and Ammamma refused to call Nate anything but Natarajan. Nate they said was too anglicized and in any case why would you shorten a nice God’s name like Natarajan?
“He had some studying to do, so he went home,” Nanna made the excuse. “He wants to catch up with next semester’s syllabus.”