A Good Indian Wife: A Novel (7 page)

Now Mr. Honeymoon was building another obstacle in the race Aunty Vimla had signed him up for. Everybody, he was assured, would consider him an out-of-date miser if he didn’t take Leila somewhere. He was America-returned. People expected him to want a honeymoon.

Aunty Vimla, Mummy, Ashok, Smita—he didn’t need to hear their voices to know what they were saying. His pulse beat in time to their rapid, go, go, go words. Nags, the lot of them.

“Suneel,” Aunty Vimla kept up the pestering, “I simply cannot understand why you are refusing to make a nice honeymoon.”

It was the thought of getting away from her, from the hopelessness and anger, from the manic preparations and winking eyes, that decided Neel. He gave the locale as much deliberation as he had given his decision to see Leila. He wasn’t about to ratify the bogus marriage by going to an Indian equivalent of Hawaii. When his friends in the United States began getting married and sailing away to Maui, Mexico, the Bahamas, they had openly envied Neel’s easy access to India, for them an exotic honeymoon spot. But he thought it boring and backward, and never imagined that one day he would pick an Indian town for his honeymoon. If a fortuneteller had predicted the events of the past week, he would have laughed and demanded his money back.

When he finally settled on a place, Ashok immediately found fault.

“Ooty? Ooty?” Ashok repeated, voice high with astonishment. “It’s for school kids, yaar. When I went there, it still only had one cheapo Chinese restaurant. If you want to stay in India, why not at least go to the Lake Palace in Udaipur? Now that is a very fine, very first-class hotel.”

Neel had never been to Ooty, and as a young boy had yearned to study in any one of its prestigious boarding schools. But though he had begged and pleaded, Tattappa told him they simply could not afford the tuition. It was for rich people and diplomats who wanted to send their children to Indian schools that weren’t too “Indian.” Now he was a rich man who could easily afford this onetime summer haven of Indian kings.

Ooty had been home to the Todas long before the British carved it into a resort. They dotted the hills with tea estates where Englishwomen, the so-called grass widows, gratefully spent the summers while their husbands remained on active duty in the hot plains below. Until the 1970s it was still possible to see old Britishers, ghostly remnants of the Raj, tapping their canes along the streets. Like so many cities, Ooty had reclaimed its old name: Udhagamandalam. The king was long gone, but his palace was open to the public, and boating on the large lake was still the main activity.

He did not discuss the honeymoon with Leila. He did not discuss anything with her. There was no time for the two of them to meet, what with the wedding taking place two weeks after their only meeting. He was relieved not to see her. The closest he came to her were Aunty Vimla’s reports of activities in the Krishnan household. He had no interest in those, either. What did he care that the family had decided to hold the wedding and reception in their garden? He had not lived in America so long that he could not decipher the underlying meaning: the Krishnans did not have the money for a hotel. He retained a vague recollection of the house and garden and hoped there would be no cow dung patties on the wall. He barely remembered Leila.

Knowing he could not put it off any longer, he cabled the hospital to inform them he was extending his trip. Sanjay would know what that meant. Would Caroline, too, guess that he was returning a married man? Would she realize, though, that that would be the only change?

Relatives began descending a week before the wedding and he had to give up his bedroom. He suggested putting them up in a hotel, but no one would hear of that. It was Indian hospitality over American common sense. It gave his mother more work, but she did not mind. She was anyway collapsing from the sheer happiness of preparing for his wedding.

She had become an unexpected ally since Tattappa’s fall, the only one in the family who didn’t blame him. Even Father had told Neel that if he’d behaved in a proper way it wouldn’t have happened. That fateful day had become a tragedy of interlocking mishaps, with Neel at the center of every episode, but the final act belonged to Tattappa.

He remembered being riveted by Aunty Vimla’s close-faced anger even as he tried to distance himself from her spouting, shouting mouth. Anxious to get away from her, he strode toward the verandah. His back was to the living room and he couldn’t see Tattappa hurrying to come between his daughter and his grandson. Aunty Vimla, eyes like Cerberus, turned and tried to catch her father, but was too late. Tattappa hit his knee against an end table and fell to the floor.

The room went from screaming anger to deafening silence. Aunty Vimla was the first to move. “Appa, Appa!” Her screams were heard by the neighbors as she extended her arms in front of her father, guarding him against Neel.

“You,” she accused Neel, “you are the cause of this! Go, go away now before you make more damage.”

“I am a doctor, Aunty. Let me check him.”

“First you make him fall, then you want to see what you have done. Go and get a taxi,” she ordered her brother. “Appa must go to the hospital.”

Tattappa lay like a question mark on the cold mosaic. His chest rose and fell heavily, as if he had just run a marathon. Neel walked around Aunty Vimla and her protestations and took his grandfather’s pulse, checking the thin body for broken bones.

“He hasn’t broken anything,” he told his mother. “Where’s Father? We should get Tattappa to bed.”

“Your father went to get a taxi.” Amma stood by fearfully, twisting and untwisting an edge of her pallao.

It was obvious they didn’t need him. He was a son of the house and a doctor, but they had managed without him for years. Everyone knew what to do, had done this before. When his father returned, Neel simply followed orders, and sat quietly in the taxi as they drove to the hospital, where Father again took charge. It was an Indian hospital, perplexing Neel with its endless head nods and use of connections to avoid waiting, but Father knew his way around. Neel didn’t even ask to speak to the doctor. He sat in the waiting area, trying to ignore Aunty Vimla’s histrionic sobs.

They kept Tattappa in the hospital overnight. As Neel had said, there were no broken bones or cracked ribs. The doctor wanted him to stay, “Just in case only, only for observation and the family’s peace of mind.”

Neel dropped all talk of going to the Krishnans. The wedding plans went on. Tattappa insisted on that. Aunty Vimla, who visited her father every day, body stuffed into a chair by his side, agreed. It would be bad luck to change the date.

Two days before the wedding, as relatives stowed their suitcases under his bed, Neel moved into Tattappa’s room. He removed Caroline’s letters from the side pocket of the suitcase. They carried her scent—Chanel No. 5—and her words. “Sweetie.” She was the only person who had given him an affectionate nickname. Savannah had only ever called him Neel or, sometimes, Neely. He remembered the exact moment when Caroline began using the endearment, and how he had played the message over and over again, just to hear those two syllables. To his ear they carried the promise of the life he wanted. He wasn’t Father, who didn’t mind that Mummy called him “Suneel’s father,” or Ashok, who enjoyed being called “My hubby.” He hid the packet of condoms—handed to him by a grinning Ashok—among his toiletries. His mother was already talking about coming to the States to assist with the birth of their first child. She acted as if he
wanted
to get married.

Tattappa seemed to think that as well. He had recovered enough to confer with various priests who came to the house carrying big charts. Tattappa wanted to ensure that each aspect of the wedding was conducted at the auspicious time. Everyone agreed that it was a great effort on his part. The fall had tired him, “made his cancer worse,” Aunty Vimla claimed, and he usually slept most of the day. As much as Neel disliked the endless round of lunches and teas, he was relieved that the invitations kept him away from Aunty, who had grown into her role as the allegory of accusation.

The morning before the wedding, Tattappa said, “Suneel, this marriage, I know it is not exactly to your liking. But of one thing I am sure. She is a virry good girl.” Neel could hear his mother in the kitchen, the clink of stainless-steel glasses she was filling with coffee. “I know, I know,” Tattappa continued, “I said many things earlier. And they are all true. So, she is a little old. So? I think that will only make her a better wife for you. Our young girls when they go to Ahmerica can become a little uppity. Tell me, you have nothing to say?”

Neel shook his head. It was too late to say, “I don’t want to marry her.” It had been too late from the beginning. How could he ever explain this to his colleagues? “Get out, man,” he could hear them say. “This is the eighties. It’s not the Middle Ages. It’s total bullshit.” But they hadn’t been raised in this house, with its small altar in the dining room, the curtained, open doors that defied privacy, the windows that let in the rain and kept out Western ideas. They wouldn’t understand that bullshit
was
important in India, that if he said the word, he would be reminded that it was used as fuel to cook food and to fertilize the land.

He wasn’t even sure how he had got himself in this position. His ignorance—and arrogance—perhaps. He had never been to see a prospective bride before. Like Sanjay, he had only heard of men who went home for a vacation and returned with a wife. He had seen them on the plane, the shiny polyester suits their only nod to being in America. They ordered the vegetarian meal and preferred speaking with the male attendants. Neel had always dismissed them as idiots who gave India and Indians a bad name. He wasn’t one of those men straitlaced into following tradition. And yet here he was. When he was young, the boy who pointed a finger in accusation at another was always taunted that three of his own fingers pointed back at him. Now he was the idiot, sitting on a hard mattress, unable to say what was really on his mind.

“So you did not get a dowry like Ashok. No matter. The Gods have given you enough of money. Many people do not know that I, too, did not get a dowry from your grandmother.” Tattappa paused. “Suneel, it is the family and the girl that is important. I have been watching this girl, Leila, for many years now. She is virry much like your grandmother and I think will be a good daughter to our house.”

His mother brought in the coffee. She kept forgetting that he drank his black and sugarless and he was getting used to the tastes of his childhood again.

As soon as she left, Tattappa lowered his voice. “I have spoken to the priest. He has picked July 24 as the ahspicious day. So. Of course you are mahdern and do not have to wait, but I wanted for you to know.”

Tattappa was delicately referring to the traditional night of consummation, “the” night, Neel and his teenage friends had called it. Some boys bragged that they had peeped through keyholes and watched as their newly married cousins, sisters, brothers, “did it.” Ashok had already confided that no one followed the priest’s precept. It wasn’t like the old days when child brides and grooms needed time to mature.

This was something he hadn’t even thought about when he yielded to their joint pressure and said, “Yes, I’ll marry her.” Now Tattappa was informing him of what else was expected of him. Thank God no one could force their way into his bedroom.

“ARE YOU GOING TO THE MOON, AKKA?”
Kila asked Leila, her brown eyes narrowed with worry.

“Don’t be stupid, Kila,” Indy snapped. “Akka is going to Ooty.” They were sitting on the back steps of the kitchen, eating the last of the spinach pakoras Amma had fried for their four o’clock snack.

“Ooty! Can I come, Akka?” Kila asked immediately.

“Amma told you a hundred million times at least that you can’t go. Why must you be so irritating?” Indy struggled to keep from crying. She had prayed all these years for Akka to get a good husband, and now did not know how she would manage life without her. Ooty was the first step in the journey Akka was to make without her.

Kila ignored Indy, and pulled at Leila’s hand.

“Aunty Vimla said the sweet is very expensive. Can you save some for me?”

“What sweet?” Leila was confused.

“The sweet in the hotel.”

“Oh, Kila, you mean suite. It’s a room in a hotel.” Leila and Indy burst out laughing.

Kila, pleased to have caused the merriment, asked, “Will you bring me back something?”

“If Mohammed can’t go to the mountain, then Ooty shall come to Kila. What would you like me to bring?” Leila ruffled Kila’s curls.

“Ice cream!” Kila promptly shouted her favorite food.

“I’ll try,” she promised, “but it may melt.”

Such light moments were rare, for with the wedding taking place so soon, the household was dominated by work. Leila wished there was time to enjoy her engagement, to tell all those pitying friends, “Yes, I’m marrying a doctor.” Pause. “From America.” It was like standing first in class all over again. She would say it modestly, though. She didn’t want to jeopardize her good luck by appearing proud. From the time they were young, Amma had never missed a chance to tell them the warning story of Lord Krishna and the gopis.

“Our own Lord Krishna was playing on the riverbank with the cowherds’ wives one day. But the silly gopis, instead of only being happy, became virry proud. So what did Krishna do? He disappeared in front of their eyes so that in the future they would never be proud in that way again.”

It wasn’t just Amma’s stories; Leila also knew from teaching her students about hubris that good fortune could easily vanish. Faustus, Tamurlaine, Macbeth, they all had risen, only to ride the wheel to the bottom.

Yet in spite of her newfound joy, she often felt uneasy—and afraid. Now that the main event, the marriage, was arranged, she fretted. She worried that Suneel would find her lacking once they reached San Francisco. She didn’t know him and he wasn’t making any effort to see her. She recalled every moment of their meeting, and had imagined him coming to their house, her fiancé now. They would walk down Main Road side by side, in full view of the townspeople. Surely he would take her to the best restaurant, the Chinese one that had opened ten years ago and which she had visited just once. She would see again the deep cleft in his cheek, learn a little about his tastes, ask him about America. He was probably as busy as she was, but most grooms from abroad visited their future spouses at least once before the wedding. It was one of the major distinctions between marrying a man who had remained in India and one who had experienced the West.

Leila could not tell Amma her fears. Amma assumed that her daughter was as delighted as she. The smile on her face reminded Leila of the permanent pleated skirt she used to wear when she was ten years old. No matter how she sat or where she laid the skirt, the pleats never got disarranged. Amma was ecstatic because she had performed her duty as a mother beyond even her own expectations. None of her friends had an American doctor for a son-in-law.

Indy, as always, understood Leila’s apprehension. A week after the engagement, they crouched under the pale yellow mosquito net on Leila’s bed, speaking in whispers so as not to waken Kila, who slept just a few breaths away, one foot sticking out from under her counterpane. The sisters didn’t look at each other, but talked as they watched the fireflies pirouette around the dark room. On. Off. On. Off.

“It is the same moon in America,” Indy said, consoling herself as much as her sister. She had spent every night in this room with Leila. Soon they would be parted by waters—and a husband.

“America. I never thought I would actually live there.” That one sentence carried a lifetime of longing. Like so many others Leila, too, had dreamed of a better life in America. America—not Europe or Australia—was the place they aspired to. It wasn’t famine or unemployment that drove their desire. It was the movies, the sheer openness of a country that had also rid itself of the British and seemed friendlier to foreigners. American lore had even trickled down to their servant. When Heera heard that Leila was going to live in America, she assured her that all the roads were paved with gold. There was that much money there.

Indy noticed that Leila had said “live,” not “visit.”

“Now maybe Amma will let you come there to study.” Leila pulled her legs into the Lotus position and turned toward Indy.

It was a comforting thought, but Indy knew that Leila or no Leila, Amma would never let her go to America as a single woman.

“I told you everything would work out okay.” Indy kept rolling a corner of the striped counterpane.

“Oh Indy, you were like me. You just hoped.” Leila thought of the green silk morning Suneel had come to see her and how Mrs. Rajan had walked back up the steps and they had all known his answer.

But Indy wasn’t thinking of Suneel. Her thoughts were in the past. “I meant Janni. No one knew—”

“The doctor knew.” Leila interrupted, her heart jackhammering at the remembered incident. She recalled the surgeon’s face in the hospital, more shocked than concerned.

“He was Appa’s cousin. He would never tell anyone.” Indy’s conviction came from her own integrity.

“Maybe he did tell someone. Maybe that was why all those proposals fell through. They were afraid that I would do it again.”

“What rubbish.” Indy’s voice was shrill. “The other proposals were wrong for you. You were waiting for Suneel.”

“You really think so?”

“Of course.”

“Do you think he will still like me in America?” The illusional safety of the dark allowed Leila to ask this question, the one she worried over every night, as if it were a rosary bead.

“Is it the same moon in America? If he likes you enough to marry you in India, of course he will like you even better in America.”

THE NEXT DAY WAS
another cyclone of activity, Amma yoking everyone in the household to the various wedding preparations. Leila never even got a chance to sit down. “I feel like Mrs. Porter and her daughter,” she sighed, “except that I don’t have time to soak my feet in soda water.”

“You and your poetry,” Indy teased, eyes shiny with unshed tears. “I never thought I would actually miss it.”

Along with Amma and Indy, Leila searched through all the shops, even the ones tucked in narrow alleys, for sarees. Aware that the wedding was expensive, Leila protested she didn’t need too many, but Amma was not about to send her to “Ahmerica, where all the girls show their legs and what-not,” without a proper wardrobe. Leila hoped that she would be one of those what-not girls soon. But she didn’t tell Amma, who years ago had forbidden Leila to wear pants. As a teenager, Leila had borrowed Appa’s shirt and tie to wear with her blue denims, and Amma had scolded her for days. “Shameful girl, going out in men’s clothes. No other girl does this. Why must you be so…so…” The other girls thought it fashionable, but not Amma. A week later, when Leila couldn’t find the denims, Amma claimed the dhobi must have lost them.

Now Amma only reluctantly allowed her to add a few salwar kameezes to the growing saree collection. Even though the kurta covered her midriff, reaching almost to her ankles, and each pant leg was so wide it was difficult to tell they were two, Amma felt the North Indian garment was more risqué than a saree. So Leila dutifully accompanied Amma to the bazaar, hurrying from shop to shop to shop. Saree Niketan, Queen of all Sarees; the shops had different names, but each had the same crisp aroma of new cloth.

Benares silk, shot silk, raw silk, Tanjavoor silk. The bright colors and materials that slipped between her fingers confused Leila. But not Amma, who took off her glasses and peered at the material to check for flaws, carrying home the packets with pride and determination. When the shop owners learned Leila was “States bound,” they insisted she buy the “Sunday-Monday” saree. “It is the best of buys, madam,” the buck-toothed shopkeeper assured them. “All of our ladies living in abroad are liking it. You see, can to wear on both sides. Two sarees for the price of one.” He held up the yellow saree and then quickly turned it around to show the pink on the other side.

The longest search was for the wedding saree. After exhausting the supplies in all the major stores, they went to a tiny shop Mrs. Rajan had told them about. Anticipating a good sale, the shopkeeper gave them complimentary lime juice, and unfurled rows of neatly folded wedding sarees for Leila’s approval. Every possible combination of red and blue, the traditional colors for a wedding saree, were spread out on the counter. The latest fashion was narrow blue borders, but Leila thought it would make her look even taller. She also didn’t like the large gold dots sprinkled all over the red body of the saree.

“I want something simple, not so heavy.”

“Simple simply not good for wedding saree,” the old man shook his balding head. “Better you keep that for home saree. For wedding you must to look like peacock.”

Amma agreed. People judged wealth and status by the bride’s saree and jewels. She couldn’t give Leila as much gold jewelry as she would have liked, but they could afford an obviously ostentatious saree. Amma pointed to a Kanjeepuram saree, purplish-red, interlaced throughout with gold thread.

“Amma, I’ll disappear under all that weight,” Leila protested. “Not to mention a sex change to become a peacock,” she whispered to Indy, who giggled.

“This saree virry fine,” the old man spread it out completely. “Not to worry about weight. You will hundred percent not to feel heaviness on wedding day.”

In the end, Leila got her way. The red saree she chose for the most important event in her life had a wide blue-and-gold border and scattered throughout the red body were thumbsize almond-shaped designs, the thin gold thread ensuring it wasn’t too heavy.

“The almond is good luck, for sure,” Amma said. “But it is so light.” She tested the weight of the material. “Still and all, if this is what you really like, Leila—”

The old man folded the saree disapprovingly and said, “Okay, madam. But tomorrow you come back and buy the other saree. Is much more better.”

Since she had disappointed Amma, Leila allowed her mother to choose the reception saree. Many brides saw the reception as an opportunity to make either a fashion or a wealth statement. Leila didn’t care what she wore. By then she would be Mrs. Suneel Sarath and she didn’t have to impress anyone. But remembering the first and only time she had met her future husband, Leila stipulated that the color be green.

She continued to worry quietly that Suneel wasn’t coming to see her. Everyone knew stories of America returnees who were coerced into marriage, and the fear that he might be one of those heavy-footed ones was never far from her thoughts. She knew his grandfather had been in the hospital, but she also heard from Smita that Neel was going out for lunches and teas almost every day. Couldn’t he find the time to stop by, even for a few minutes?

Smita had become the daily visitor Leila hoped Suneel would be. She never told them when she was coming, just showed up in the mornings, or, if they weren’t home, in the early evenings. After all, she constantly told Leila, they were going to be cousin sisters-in-law and Ashok and Suneel were very close to each other.

Leila and Indy didn’t trust her sudden friendship.

“Did you hear what I heard?” Smita announced one morning.

“What?” Leila was irritated. Smita had just looked over her jewelry and pronounced the bangles “so old-fashioned, I wonder if our Suneel will like them.” It had upset Amma, who decided then and there to have them melted and reworked into the latest style. Amma had begun to treat Suneel like a god who has to be constantly pleased. But Leila liked the leaf design and also thought it was a waste of Appa’s hard-saved money.

“About the fight. My servant girl told me. That same morning Suneel came to see you and his grandfather became so sick. A big fight in their house.”

Leila’s fears felt like a necklace, choking her throat so she could not say any words. She looked at Smita.

“A big, big one,” Smita repeated. “My mother-in-law had to settle it. She is very good at making the peace.”

“So, what was it about?” Indy demanded. Smita was implying that SS was just another foreign returnee who was being forced to marry, and Indy didn’t like it. Leila was worried enough already without this idiot adding her ten-paisa bit.

“Don’t know. It was in English so the servant could not understand.”

“So then why are you telling us this?” Indy was angry.

“Maybe you know?”

“Maybe you should ask your mother-in-law before opening your mouth and telling us these stories.”