Lovetorn (2 page)

My father walked to a window, pulled back a blue curtain, and looked outside. It was a perfect morning. The window looked out onto the front yard, a patch of green bordered with multicolored flowers. The street was quiet and empty except for a young mother pushing a baby stroller and talking on her cell phone.

“Come, Shalini, let me show you around,” my father said, holding me by my elbow. Sangita and my mother came down the stairs, my mother’s face still passive and unimpressed, my sister’s exuberant.

“You should come and see our rooms,” Sangita gushed.
“So pretty!”
Five years younger than me, she was still a kid. She seemed the most excited to be here. She had every reason to be: she hadn’t left behind the boy she loved. Thinking of Vikram left a sick feeling in my stomach now. From somewhere deep in my memory, I suddenly got a whiff of his aftershave, remembered the warmth of his eyes when he had kissed me on my forehead at the airport. I couldn’t even fathom how far away he was.

“Let me see the kitchen,” my mother said, her handbag still strung over her shoulder, a black sweater folded over her arms. She looked like she was ready to go somewhere instead of having just arrived.

We followed her inside, and I marveled at the clean efficiency of it all. The refrigerator was built into the wall so it seemed to take up almost no space. The stove had no food-stained gas rings; instead, it was covered with what looked like some high-tech touch pad. My mother opened a dark-wood cabinet and ran her fingers down a stack of glossy black plates, matching bowls nestled next to them. She picked up one of the clear drinking glasses and peered at it. She made her way over to the refrigerator and opened it. It was empty. She turned to my father.

“What will we do for food? There is nothing here!” she said. “Thank the Lord I packed some
dals,
some
masalas.
But still, I need onion, garlic, the basics. How can we walk into an empty house?” She was almost hysterical now, her eyes wide, her voice panic-stricken. I knew how she felt. Even though everything was so nice, so new, there was a coldness here. I missed the background noise I had grown up with, the constant chatter and hum of a house full of aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents.

“Asha, don’t worry,” my father said soothingly. “There is a very big supermarket down the road. I didn’t want to leave perishables to spoil. We will go out soon, get what we need. It is a small thing.”

My mother turned around and marched upstairs, the sweater still covering her forearms, the brown bag swinging from her stiff shoulders.

Chapter Two

WHILE THE REST OF US NAPPED
in the afternoon, my father went out to buy groceries. In the evening, my mother prepared a salad using bagged, prewashed vegetables, followed by canned cream of mushroom soup, buttered toast, and sliced cheese. It wasn’t the most momentous of first meals, but the last thing my father wanted was for my mother to start roasting eggplant and peeling potatoes. He said that when she was less jet-lagged, he would take her to the nearest Indian shop to stock up on cumin seeds, coriander powder, fresh coconuts, and chickpea flour.

We sat around the dining table looking at the alien offerings in front of us, a meal scant and slight compared to what we were used to.

“It’s the first time that it’s just the four of us eating dinner,” said Sangita. Of course it was. In my Bangalore home, there were at least a dozen of us gathered at any time. There were so many of us, we ate in shifts.

“Yes, and later it will be the first time we have had to wash our own dishes,” I said. I forced a smile.

It would be the first time we would have to lock our doors at night, shutting out the strange world that lay beyond those quiet walls. Even though we were talking, the house was eerily still, with none of the babble of aunts in the background, children playing in the hallway, maids scurrying in and out of the kitchen carrying trays of hot food and scolding the kids who got in the way. I couldn’t even imagine how my father had been on his own in this house for two weeks, preparing for our arrival.

“We should call Dada soon,” said my father. “He will just be waking up now.”

I thought of the house I had been born in, the huge rambling structure that was the most imposing bungalow on its quiet side street in Bangalore. My grandparents, Dada and Dadi, would be stirring from sleep in their airy bedroom, my grandmother slowly creaking herself into a sitting position, easing her arthritic feet into her slippers, and hobbling to the bathroom to wash. Their maid, Meena, who had served my grandparents for the better part of forty years, would enter with a tray of steaming
chai
and a small steel bowl of chipped sugar cubes. The morning newspapers would be brought to Dada, who by now would be reclining in a wicker chair by the window, his eyes shut in grateful salutation to another day of life. At seventy-five, he gave thanks for every morning he woke up.

And then, slowly, as if silently bidden by the rousing of the heads of the household, the rest of the family would come to life: my five uncles getting up in preparation for work, my aunts helping them with their morning routines, my spinster aunt barking instructions to the cook about what to serve for breakfast. My cousins—or as we had been taught to call one another, my cousin-brothers and cousin-sisters—would be getting dressed for school, kindergarten to college. My oldest cousin-sisters still at home—the twins Geeta and Leela—who were twenty and unmarried, would be checking the homework and packing the schoolbags and lunches for the younger children and would later be attending to the duties of the household. By ten a.m. there would only be women, babies, and household staff around.

At the farewell dinner we’d had at our home the night before we left, I had stood in a corner and counted every single family member I had lived with: thirty-seven relatives and twelve helpers, including nursemaids, cooks, kitchen boys, cleaning ladies, drivers, and Vishal and Chandan, the two old men who took turns staying up at night, sitting on a round stool in front of the gate surrounding our house in a bid to provide the security that was never really needed.

I had realized then that I had never actually thought of that before, that I had simply taken for granted that there were all these people under one roof, all the relatives that I had grown up with who had given birth in the adjacent room or died a floor above or been tearfully sent away in marriage on a marigold-strewn path outside the house. It was a noisy and bustling household. It was not always happy; with thirty-seven people and four generations under one roof, how could it be? But it was a life that was busy and full and mostly loving, and there was great comfort in that. Dada had been adamant that his six sons, their wives, and the rest of the brood would live together. The only way he would agree to one of us leaving was if a) she was a daughter of the house and had been married off to a family of Dada’s choosing, or b) if he or she died.

While Sangita, my mother, and I cleared the table and did the dishes, my father retreated to his downstairs office to call his parents. I heard him talking with Dada, then to a few of my uncles, recounting the details of the flight over, the weather, how my mother and sister and I were doing. It was mundane information; but, in my mind, the conversation proved that things had now finally returned to normal between my father and Dada. Just a few days earlier, when my father had come back to Bangalore to fetch us, there had been another blowup between him and Dada, my grandfather accusing his son of taking us away, my father telling him that it was just for two years, until his contract was up.

I should have been reassured. But instead, there was a fine edge to my father’s voice, and a raw anger in my mother’s eyes, that left me feeling unsettled.

Chapter Three

SANGITA AND I DECIDED TO SHARE A ROOM,
even though there was an extra bedroom next door. We had never slept apart. In a house with thirty-seven people, space was at a premium.

The jet lag was horrible. I fell asleep at nine, woke up at midnight, tossed and turned like a dying fish out of water. Nothing would help me get back to sleep. I went downstairs at two a.m. and found my mother sitting on the couch in the den, the TV on, watching someone trying to sell cooking appliances. I sat down next to her.

“You can’t even call Vikram, can you?” she asked. I shook my head. Right after seeing us off at the airport, my fiancé was going to visit his sick grandfather in a remote part of Jodhpur, staying in a house that had no phone. He said he would try and get to one of the public international calling booths in town; but with the time difference and lack of access, he might not be able to call until Monday. The timing, in my mind, couldn’t have been worse. Right now I would have done anything just to hear his voice.

“We’ve been here less than twenty-four hours and I’m miserable,” my mother said bluntly. Her eyes stared vacantly at the screen. The woman was cheerfully showing how easy it was to make soups and sauces.

“You’re just jet-lagged, Ma,” I said. “We all are.”

“Your father isn’t,” she said bitterly. “He’s upstairs, snoring away.”

“Don’t be mad at him, Ma. He wanted to do the right thing.”

“Well,” my mother said, standing up. “He didn’t.”

I fell asleep on the couch, the TV still on. When I woke up, it was eight thirty. I heard Sangita in the kitchen, my father’s voice in the background. My head felt as if it was stuffed with cotton balls. I dragged myself up and went to join them.

“I didn’t want to wake you,
beti
,” said my father. “The first few days are hard.” He was speaking like an old pro.

“Is Ma still asleep?” I asked. My father nodded, stirring sugar into hot tea.

“Come,” he said. “Have something. When your mother wakes up, we will go together to the Indian store; and I will take you all around, show you the neighborhood, the mall.” We were lucky enough, he said, to be within walking distance of many basic amenities; even the school Sangita and I had been enrolled in was within fifteen minutes on foot, though we could take the bus if we wanted to. My father had also started driving lessons and would soon get a car and his license. There would be no shortage of ways for us to get to school.

My mother finally came downstairs after eleven, yesterday’s
kohl
streaked down her cheek, her hair a mess, her
mangalsutra—
a necklace made of black beads and gold that is worn by most married Hindu women— tangled in the lace collar of her nightgown. She didn’t say a word and headed straight for the cabinet, retrieved a glass, and filled it with water from a plastic bottle on the counter. She gulped down the water thirstily and turned to go back upstairs. She hesitated for a second as if she had suddenly realized we were there, in her midst, waiting for a word from her. But it was as if the thought then disappeared. She put the glass back on the counter and left the kitchen.

Sangita and I turned to look at our father.

“She’s just tired,” he said.

An hour later my father knocked on their bedroom door to see if she’d like to join us, explore the neighborhood, pick up some groceries. Her initial response was to say no. He tried to open the door. It was locked. I had never known my mother to shut us out like that before. I don’t even think most of the doors back home in India
had
locks.

“Asha, why have you locked yourself in?” he asked. There was silence. “Look, I’ll take you to the Indian store,” he said. “Delhi Delites and Supplies. Nice chap from Ludhiana runs it. I’ve told him all about you and the girls.” Then he pressed himself to the door and lowered his voice. “Please, Asha, just come. We need some provisions for the house. I don’t know what to get. I need you.”

After a brief silence we heard some movement inside, the clicking of the doorknob turning. She stood in the doorway as unkempt as she had been earlier.

“Okay, fine,” she said. “Give me fifteen minutes to get ready.”

We waited outside the house for her, enjoying the cool midmorning breeze. From a few houses down came the sound of a radio turned on high volume, an American pop song playing a peppy, cheerful tune. Across the street a man in green shorts was hosing down his car while his young son rode up and down the sidewalk on a tricycle. This scene, right here, captured everything I knew to be American.

I drew in a deep breath. I calculated the time in India and imagined what Vikram was doing at that moment. He would be lying alone in the room next to his grandfather’s, covered by a woolen blanket, a small lamp by his bed shining onto the pages of the fantasy novel he had started just before I’d left. He had said that reading would help distract him from thoughts of me. I had smiled and rubbed his cheek. Thinking about this, I remembered the scent of his cologne, how his chin felt when he hadn’t shaved for a few days. He would nuzzle my forehead, one arm clasped around my shoulders, a show of affection when nobody was looking. A small sob caught in my throat now as I let those thoughts of him wash over me.

My mother finally appeared, wrapped in an embroidered gray shawl.

“How are we going?” she asked. “Where is the taxi?”

My father smiled broadly.

“No need for Mr. Phil today,” he said. “We will walk, then take a bus. You will enjoy it.”

Sangita linked her arm through my mother’s and carried her bag. Her two slender braids swung behind her as she walked. Usually my mother braided both my hair and my sister’s. Today I had done my own and helped Sangita with hers.

My father led us down the wide, clean street. For us this was like another world. No potholes and
paan
-stained pavements, no mangy dogs blocking our path. No relentless honking of cars and auto-rickshaws, no running the risk of being knocked over by a bicyclist carrying bales of fabric. There were no hawkers selling raw bananas and used books blocking the path. It was seamless, organized.

“This is the local coffee place,” my father said, leading us into a long stretch of stores. There was a Starbucks, a massive grocery store, a mailbox rental place, somewhere to buy
shawarmas
and sandwiches, a drugstore on the far end. Everything was brightly lit and bustling: cars pulling in and out of the parking lot, people clutching the hands of their kids. It felt safe and sanitized. My father took my mother just inside the automatic doors of the big supermarket so she could get a sense of the size of it. She gazed at the high ceilings, the rows and rows of shelves piled with things she had never seen before. By the entrance, she picked up an orange, smelled it, and put it back.