2 States The Story Of My Marriage (10 page)

You wait and see, they will ask me first.’

‘I am not interested,’ I sat up on my bed.

‘Come for the snacks. They are very rich. Even for ordinary guests they give

dry fruits.’

‘Mom, why should I come, really?’

‘Because it will make me happy. Is that reason enough?’ she said and I noticed

her wrinkled hand with the bandage.

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‘OK,’ I shrugged and slid back into bed. ‘Now let me sleep.’

‘Excellent,’ she said and switched off the lights as she left the room. I allowed
my mind to be trapped again by thoughts of my South Indian girl.

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13

Pammi aunty lived in Pitampura, a hardcore Punjabi neighbourhood. Each lane in

this area has more marble than the Taj Mahal. Every street smells of tomatoes

cooking with paneer. We took an auto as my father never allowed us to take the

car. My mother told the auto driver to stop a few houses away. We couldn’t tell

Pammi aunty we hadn’t come by car.

‘He had a meeting, he dropped us outside and left,’ my mother said as Pammi

aunty came to greet us at the door.

‘He should have come for a cold drink at least,’ Pammi aunty said and

escorted us in. Pammi aunty’s weight roughly matched the decade she lived in,

and that correlation had continued into the current nineties. Pammi aunty had

been Ms Chandigarh thirty-seven years ago. A rich businessman snapped her

soon after the title and gave her a life of extra luxury and extra calories. Now, she
weighed more than the three finalists put together.

We walked to five steps to get to their living room. Pammi aunty had difficulty
climbing them. ‘My knees,’ she mumbled as she took the last step.

‘You are going for morning walk nowadays?’ my mother asked.

‘Where Kavita-ji, it is so hot. Plus, I have satsang in the morning. Sit,’ Pammi
aunty said as she told her maid to get khus sharbat.

We sank into a red velvet sofa with a two-feet deep sponge base.

‘Actually, even if you walk to satsang, it can be good exercise,’ my mother

said.

‘Six cars, Kavita-ji. Drivers sitting useless. How to walk?’ Pammi aunty asked.

She had demonstrated a fine Punjabi skill – of showing off her wealth as part of

an innocent conversation.

My mother turned to me to repeat her comment. ‘Six cars? Krish, you heard,

they have six cars.’

I didn’t know how to respond. Maybe I was supposed to applaud. ‘Which

ones?’ I said, only because they kept staring at me.

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‘I don’t know. My husband knows. Just last week he bought a Honda.’

‘How much for?’ my mother asked. It is almost courteous among Punjabis to

encourage someone who is flaunting his wealth to brag some more.

‘Seven lakh, plus stereo changed for thirty thousand,’ Pammi aunty said.

‘Wow!’ my mother said. ‘He has also got a job with Citibank, four lakh a year.’

To a non-Punjabi, my mother’s comment would be considered a non-sequitur.

To a Punjabi, it is perfect continuation. We are talking about lakh, after all.

‘Good. Your son has turned out bright,’ she said.

I guess to be rich is to be bright, as she didn’t ask for my IQ.

‘Your blessings, Pammi-ji,’ my mother said.

‘No, no,’ Pammi aunty said as she gloated over her possible role in my

bagging the job.

We had smiled at each other for another minute when Pammi aunty spoke

again. ‘Dry fruits?’

‘No, no, Pammi-ji, what formalities you are getting into?’ my mother demurred.

‘Rani, get cashews and those Dubai dates,’ Pammi-ji screamed.

My mother gave a mini nod in appreciation of the international nuts. ‘Where’s

our Dolly?’ my mother inquired, claiming the heiress of three gas stations as hers

without hesitation.

‘Here only, Dolly!’ Pammi aunty screamed hard to reach the upper floors of the

hydrocarbon-funded mansion.

The servants were summoned to call Dolly downstairs.

‘She takes forever to have a bath and get ready,’ Pammi aunty said in mock

anger, as she took a fistful of cashews and forced them in my hands.

‘Don’t stop our daughter from looking beautiful, Pammi-ji,’ my mother said.

Yes, Dolly was already ours.

‘Who knows ji about whose daughter she will become? We only have two girls,

everything is theirs,’ Pammi said and spread her arms to show everything. Yes,

the sofas, hideous marble coffee tables, curios, fans, air conditioners –

everything belonged to the daughters and their future husbands. I have to say, for

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a second the thought of owning half this house made me wonder if my mother

was right. But the next second the thought of losing Ananya came to me. No, I

wouldn’t give up Ananya for all the cashews and cash in the world. If only Pammi

aunty allowed me to live in this house with Ananya.

Dolly came scurrying down the steps with her perfume reaching us three

seconds before her. ‘Hello Aunti-ji,’ Dolly said and went on to give my mother a

tight hug.

‘How beautiful our daughter has become!’ my mother exclaimed.

Dolly and I greeted each other with slight nods. She wore a wine-red slawar

kameez with vertical gold stripes sunning down it. She was abnormally white, and

my mother was right; she did remind me of milk. She sucked in her stomach a

little, though she wasn’t fat. Her ample bosom matched Pammi aunty’s and it

made me wonder how these women would even wean their children off without

suffocating them.

‘What are you doing these days, Dolly?’ my mother asked.

‘BA pass, aunty, correspondence.’

‘You are also doing computer course, tell that,’ Pammi aunty said and turned

to my mother, ‘I’ll get more snacks?’

Dolly tried to say something but was ignored as we had moved on to the

interesting topic of food.

‘No, Pammi-ji. This is enough,’ my mother said, obviously daring her to serve

us more.

‘What are you saying? You haven’t come at meal time, so I just arranged dome

heavy snacks. Raju, get the snacks. And get both the red and green chutneys!’

she shrieked to her servant.

Raju and another servant brought in a gigantic tray with samosas, jalebis,

chole bhature, milk cake, kachoris and, of course, the red and green chutneys.

Twenty thousand calories were plonked on the table.

‘You shouldn’t have!’ my mother said as she signalled the servant to pass the

jalebis.

‘Nothing ji, just for tasting. You should have come for dinner.’

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I felt I would come across as a retard if I didn’t talk to Dolly now. ‘What

computer course are you doing?’

‘Microsoft Word, Power Point, Email, I don’t know, just started. Looks quite hi-fi.’

‘Sure, it does sound like a challenging programme,’ I said, and instantly felt

guilty for my sarcasm.

‘My friends are doing it, so I joined. If it is too difficult, I’ll stop. You know all
these things, no?’

‘Sort of,’ I said.

My mother and Pammi aunty had stopped talking the moment Dolly and I

began a conversation. Dolly and I became quiet as we noticed them staring at us.

‘It’s OK. Keep talking,’ my mother beamed and looked at Pammi-ji. Both of

them gave each other a sly grin. They winked at each other and then folded their

hands and looked up to thank God.

Dolly looked at my mother and smiled. ‘Aunty-ji tea?’ she asked.

‘No ji, we don’t make our daughters work,’ my mother said. The work in this

case being screaming at the servant.

‘Raju, get tea,’ Dolly exerted herself and earned affectionate glances from my

mother. Why couldn’t my mother give Ananya one, just one, glance like that?

‘Son, tea?’ Pammi aunty offered me. I shook my head. ‘You young people have

coffee, I know. Should we get coffee? Or wait, what is that new place at the

District Centre, Dolly? Where they sell that expensive coffee? Barsaat?’

‘Barista, mom.’ Dolly switched to a more anglicized accent when asked to

describe something trendy.

‘Yes, that. Take his there in the Honda. See ji, we are quite modern actually,’

she said to my mother.

‘Modern is good ji. We are also not old-fashioned. Go Krish, enjoy,’ my mother

said. Of course, hating Tamilians is not old-fashioned at all.

I stood up to partly enjoy myself with Dolly, but mainly to get away from here

and ride in the new Honda.

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‘Come here, Dolly,’ Pammi-ji said and did the unthinkable. She slid a hand into
her bosom ATM and pulled out a wad of notes. I wondered if Pammi aunty’s

cleavage also contained credit cards.

Dolly took the wad and put it in her golden handbag without counting it. She

screamed at the servants to scream at the driver to scream at the security guard

to open the gate so the Honda could be taken out.

We reached the District Centre, a ghetto of salwar-kameez shops, beauty parlours

and STD booths. Dolly insisted on going to her favourite clothes boutique. I

watched her choose clothes for half an hour. I wondered if it would be

appropriate to call Ananya form one of the STD booths. I dropped the idea and

hung around the shop, watching Punjabi mothers and daughters buy salwar

kameezes by the dozen. The daughters were all thin and the mothers were all fat.

The boutique specialised in these extreme sizes.

‘Healthy figure range is there,’ one salesman said as he pointed a mother to

the right direction.

Dolly finished her shopping and paid for three new suits with her wad of notes.

‘You like these?’ she asked, opening her bag.

‘Nice,’ I said as we entered Barista. The air-conditioning and soothing music

were a respite from the blazing forty-degree sun outside.

‘One cold coffee with ice-cream,’ Dolly said. ‘What do you want?’

I ordered the same and we sat on the couch, sitting as far apart as possible.

We mutely stared at the music channel on the television in front of us.

‘I’ve never spoken to an IITian before,’ she said after some time.

‘You are not missing much,’ I said.

She shifted in her seat. Her clothes bag fell down. She lifted it back up.

‘Sorry, I get nervous in front of hi-fi people,’ she said.

‘Don’t be,’ I said. ‘Enjoy your coffee.’

‘You have a girlfriend, no? South Indian?’

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‘What?’ I jumped off my seat. ‘Who told you?’

‘Kittu told me,’ she said.

Kittu was my first cousin and Shipra masi’s daughter. Kittu’s father was

Pammi aunty’s cousin. In some sense, Dolly was my third or fourth cousin,

though we weren’t related by blood.

‘Kittu? How did she know?’

‘Shipra masi must have told her. And your mother must have told Shipra masi.’

‘And now the whole clan knows,’ I guessed.

‘Sort of.’

‘What else do you know about her?’

‘Nothing,’ Dolly said as her eyes shifted around.

‘Tell me.’

‘Oh, some stuff. That she is very aggressive and clever and has you totally

under control. But South Indian girls are like that, no?’

‘Do you know any South Indian girls?’

‘No,’ Dolly said as she twirled her straw. ‘Sorry, I didn’t want to tell you. You
guys serious or is it just time-pass?’

I tried to curb my anger. ‘What about you? You have a boyfriend?’

‘No, no. Never,’ she swore.

‘Not even time-pass?’

She looked at me. I smiled to show friendliness.

‘Just one colony guy. Don’t tell my mom, please. Or your mother, or even

Kittu.’

‘I won.’

‘He sent me a teddy bear on Valentine’s day.’

‘Cute,’ I said.

‘Have you kissed anyone?’ she asked. ‘Like this South Indian girl.’

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I thought hard about how I should answer her question without saying the

truth, that I loved with Ananya in one tiny hostel room for two years.

‘No,’ I said.

‘OK, because this guy is insisting I kiss him. But I don’t want to get pregnant.’

‘How did you meet him?’

‘It’s a very sweet story. He called a wrong number at my home one day. And

we started talking. I’ve only met him once.’

‘You are seeing someone who called a wrong number?’

‘He’s not my boyfriend yet. But you know I have a didi in Ludhiana who