Sideways on a Scooter (26 page)

“I don’t even have any clothes to match this girlie nail color, Geeta. Anyway, I need you to help me choose the appropriate thing to wear.”

We had been talking about Geeta’s outfit for weeks. Should she “go Western,” as she put it, and don a skirt and blouse for the NRI? Or should she “do Indian” since it was a formal marriage meeting? If she went with the latter, should she don a contemporary tunic or go for a more conservative style of
salwar kameez
? There is a traditional point of reference for such questions, though unlike Emily Post’s
Etiquette
, the classic guide to socially acceptable behavior in the United States since 1922, the manual for the marriage-age Indian girl has never been put to paper. The rules have simply been passed down through generations of Indian women, altered slightly for regional and religious differences: the appropriate attire for a girl’s first meeting with a boy, what
mithai
she should serve, and which songs she should sing.

According to Geeta, the manual hasn’t kept current the way the Emily Post franchise has tried to, with seventeen updated versions of the guide. The guidelines Geeta learned from her mother were almost defunct in
today’s changed cultural circumstances. At tonight’s meeting, there would be no recital or homemade sweets—just cappuccinos in a hotel coffee shop. There was no absolute approved source to which to turn for advice on how a girl should dress for that. Instead, Geeta asked every girl her age she could think of, and they all concurred with her mother that she should “do Indian.” Because the boy was bringing a family member along, they argued, she needed to counteract her unconventional escort with a traditional wardrobe—both for herself and for me.

When we got back to Nanima’s apartment from Madame X, Geeta pulled open her closet and rifled around until she found what she was looking for, a
salwar kameez
suit with a high neck and a low hemline. It was more conservative than the Indian outfits I usually wore, and since I am more than a head taller than Geeta, it looked as though it would fit me badly. For herself, she chose a more fashionable outfit in orange and yellow. The tunic was fitted, with a shorter hem, and it was worn with tight
churidar
leggings rather than loose
salwar
pants—all important details that would signal she was a cosmopolitan girl. Geeta applied a narrow line of kohl under her eyes and just enough glossy lipstick to make her look pretty and not at all sexy.

“You don’t think it’s too tight, do you?” she asked, for the third time in ten minutes.

I reminded myself to be patient. At the meeting, her every aspect would be under the microscope. Ashok’s sister would be making sure she’d described her skin tone correctly in her profile when she’d called it “wheatish to fair.” She’d be noting how well Geeta spoke English and whether her purse matched her outfit.

Geeta seemed to have achieved the look she was going for: innocent Punjabi girl in the big city. As I took stock of my own image in the mirror, though, I felt a wave of exasperation. I looked like an awkward
gora
tourist dressed for a costume party.

“The guy lives in California, Geeta. Would it really matter if I wore jeans?”

Geeta looked at me as if I were missing a marble.

“We’re not dressing for him, Miranda. This is about impressing his family.”

•   •   •

When the heat of the day begins to drain off in the wooded areas of Lodhi Garden, the evening chorus of parakeets and swallows swells quickly to an almost deafening clamor. The park is one of the greenest parts of Delhi, but it is anything but peaceful. During walking prime time, the garden is a place for the city’s elite to see and be seen. With middle-aged couples speed walking in matching sweat suits and lanky teenagers jogging with their iPods tucked into their waistbands, it could be a park in any affluent American neighborhood—if it wasn’t for the grand marble sixteenth-century monuments, the women wearing brightly colored
salwar kameez
, and the kurta-clad politicians.

Parvati and I were usually too distracted by the activity around us to have heart-to-hearts on our evening walks. As a rotund man in flowing white garb strode past, a dozen aides and hangers-on in tow, she’d remark drily: “Member of parliament. You can tell the importance of a man by the size of his entourage.” A few feet later, we’d be startled by a moaning couple behind a sari-draped bush or a knot of trees. Perhaps because she and Vijay were scrupulous about avoiding displays of affection, Parvati found these spectacles particularly offensive. She’d call out for the couple’s ears: “
Hoo hoo
, another one? Do they really have nowhere better to go?”

Geeta had joined us in the park, determined to stay fit now that she was back on the hunt for a husband. We were certainly helping her in this effort—her legs were shorter than ours, so she had to scamper to keep up with us, which meant she was getting twice the workout that we were. Parvati refused to slow her pace; her policy was to endure but never accommodate Geeta, whom she considered a conservative elitist. The good-natured Geeta appeared not to notice Parvati’s disdain: She was puffing along behind us, straining to hear my longer-legged friend’s story about Promila, her Dalit maid who denied that she was a Dalit. The latest turn of events was that Promila had taken to refusing to do untouchable tasks. She and Parvati were at a standoff about her job description, which meant Parvati’s bathroom hadn’t been cleaned for weeks.

“Who does she think she is?” Geeta piped up behind us. “Tell her to do the work you pay her for, or get rid of her! There are millions of people in Delhi who would be happy to clean your toilets.”

I shrank into my skin. Parvati cycled through her own bouts of frustration at her misbehaving servant, but she also admired Promila for trying to buck the caste system. Parvati also hated hearing sweeping generalizations about caste, such as Geeta was prone to make—she refused to tolerate them from anyone aside from her mother.

She wheeled around to face Geeta.

“See, this is why India is stuck in the dark ages. Even educated people are stuck with medieval ideas!”

Geeta looked startled by the ferocity in Parvati’s voice. She was a punchy Punjabi, though, and she braced herself against the assault.

“Parvati, what I am saying is quite simple. You pay her to do certain tasks, and she thinks she’s too good for such work. If she is so much better than other Dalits, then she should prove it. She’s had plenty of opportunities. Already there are quotas in government jobs for the lower castes.”

Parvati’s eyes narrowed, and I wished intensely I hadn’t suggested we all go for a walk together.

“How many Dalits do you work with at your company? Just name them. How many.”

Geeta faltered: “I’m not sure. But … that’s not the point. Chances are there for them. If they want to apply for the job, they can.”

“Then why don’t they?” We were attracting glances from the speed-walking couples. “Do you think they’d still want to pick up garbage if they had the opportunity to work in an office? You think they prefer that, just because it is their traditional work?”

Like the battle over affirmative action in the United States, the debate in India about job quotas is a hairy one. Geeta was making the mainstream argument: that the quota system had created a “creamy top layer” of low-caste beneficiaries who now had an unfair edge over the higher castes. Parvati’s position was less popular: that affirmative action hadn’t yet helped the worst off, and wouldn’t unless the government
extended the quota system to include elementary school education.

Digging deep into their argument, the two of them ignored my attempts to make peace; in fact, they ignored everything I said, until I gave up on the walk and led us out to Parvati’s car. Geeta’s face was still twisted with anger when Parvati dropped her at Nanima’s. She slammed out of the car. Parvati and I had planned to go out together after the walk, but I felt awkward about it now, because it looked as though I was choosing sides.

I could tell that Parvati was trying to pull herself together as she drove us out of Nizamuddin.

“Sorry about that. Even though she has bloody backwards ideas, she’s your friend.”

I mustered the nicest smile I could. I’d given up trying to influence how Parvati behaved—if that’s a bad idea in any friendship, it was utterly counterproductive with her. In any case, I had a feeling something was going on with her these days. The last couple of times we’d met, she’d come alone.

“Are you and Vijay fighting?”

This had become a fairly standard question in the years since we’d become friends. Parvati’s confrontational personality and Vijay’s propensity for whiskey-sodden gloom made for an explosive combination. I’d become somewhat inured to their hollering matches outside the Press Club or in Vijay’s apartment after dinner, and the occasional climax of Vijay storming off. After one of these fights, Parvati sometimes went weeks without speaking to him. It was probably for the best that they couldn’t share an apartment.

They both seemed content to accept the turmoil as the way things were. Vijay was pretty hotheaded in general, which was one reason he’d taken up boxing as a hobby. He spent a night or two a week at the extremely low-budget, cramped, and smelly men’s boxing gym in their neighborhood. At first, I thought this hobby seemed incongruous with Vijay’s string bags and Marxist politics, but as I got to know him better, I realized it was all of a piece. Boxing was a great way for him to purge
his angry energy. It didn’t entirely work, though. He was notorious in Delhi journalism circles for walking out during editorial meetings if the management of his newspaper refused to take a stand on an issue he believed in, or if he thought his boss was ordering him around too much. Parvati had more than once talked him down from quitting. After a bad fight, Parvati would remind me—a little defensively—that she’d never met anyone with his passion for music and poetry, or his rigorous commitment to socialist ideals. That stuff made his terrible temper worth bearing, she said.

Luckily, Vijay rarely directed his angry outbursts at me. It only happened once, late at night; the three of us were having a nightcap at a hotel bar after an embassy party, along with a British reporter I’d started an affair with. It was a new and awkward relationship; we both had significant others back home, and no one other than Parvati knew that we were dating. I don’t know whether Vijay had figured it out, but if he had, it probably only worsened his mood, already blackened by the foreigners and elite Indians around us.

“All these privileged
choots
. Screw this bloody globalizing Indian government. Selling us off to any foreign government that’s buying. We’re at the beck and call of the U.S.!”

In his booze-addled blur, Vijay made a fabulous leap of logic: He tried to blame my British friend and me for the Iraq war. At first we laughed, but it was not a joke; Vijay’s yelling soon got us evicted from the bar. It took him more than two weeks to call me and acknowledge that I wasn’t personally responsible for the actions of my government.

Parvati’s fits of pique were not as irrational, though they were more often directed at me. She was the dominant force in our friendship, and I rarely contradicted her: I considered myself the Maneesh to her Radha. When I refused to go along with her plans or do favors for her, it sometimes turned ugly. Once, she called late at night to ask for the cell-phone number of an acquaintance at the U.S. embassy, whom she wanted to talk to for a story. When I told her it was too late to call him, she hung up and refused to speak to me for more than six months.

In the time I had to stew over the incident, I decided that she was right in thinking me ungenerous—I should have just given her the
number; what did I care if she woke up the guy? Still, I was shocked that she could hold a grudge about it for so long. One evening, she showed up unannounced at my apartment with a bottle of Seagram’s Blenders Pride. I was so happy to hear her voice that I swallowed my pride and buzzed her upstairs.

I needed Parvati’s intensity and independence—especially if I’d been spending a lot of time with Geeta. My own inclinations lay somewhere between theirs, and it seemed to me that only with them both in my life could I achieve some kind of equilibrium.

Still fuming about Geeta’s conservative views, Parvati tugged her seat belt across her body as a police car appeared beside us at a red light.

“Bugger off, you bloody cops.” She looked at me a moment later, to acknowledge that she was overreacting, and her tone lightened. “This has been a bad week. I’m feeling really tense.”

I was surprised; this was a vulnerable moment by Parvati’s standards. The light changed, the cop car sped off, and eventually she spoke again, gazing straight ahead at the road.

“You know, I’ve been wanting to talk about something with you. Shall we go somewhere?”

She drove us to Khan Market, an upscale shopping spot that was central to my existence: It contained the ATMs that allowed me to withdraw money from my American bank account, the pet shops that sold cat food, and the well-organized grocery stores that I relied on for expat luxuries like peanut butter and soy sauce. Parvati and I liked to meet at Café Turtle, a bookstore and coffee shop—though never with Vijay, because he’d refuse to order even a cup of tea at such places, on the grounds that the
chai
at outdoor stalls cost a tenth of the price.

Parvati found a table outside so she could smoke. We had the patio to ourselves. She collapsed in a chair, looking worn out, and took a long drag of her cigarette.

“Vijay’s college days were really exciting for him. You know how he was a student leader and all.”

I turned back from the view of the bustling Saturday market and the green of Lodhi Garden beyond. Vijay often boasted about how he’d chaired meetings and led protest marches in his student days. He’d
shown me photos of himself in those days, thinner, longer haired, and fiery. I imagined him surrounded by girlfriends in college, though he’d never directly said anything to give me that impression.