Sideways on a Scooter (33 page)

“My God, I can’t believe I’ve been chatting to a South Indian all this time!”

She made it sound as though she’d been talking to an alien. Although there are major cultural differences between South and North India, it didn’t follow that she’d be more worried about the guy’s home state than about the fact that he currently lived in a different country.

“He may be an NRI,” Geeta tried to explain, “but these boys move back home when they get married. And his home place is Bangalore, where everything is different—food, culture, language, even the women’s saris. I probably have more in common with a Muslim from the North than I do with a Hindu Brahmin from Bangalore.”

This was quite a statement for someone who had grown up fearing Muslims. Geeta hadn’t been taught to be afraid of South Indians, though—just to consider them strange and humorous. She said she’d known only two South Indian kids in Patiala, and they’d been mocked for their long names and funny-sounding mother tongue. It was hard
for Geeta to get past the stereotyped image she held of South Indians as dark-skinned, mustachioed weirdos with heavy looping accents.

I gently suggested that she might not want to give up on Ramesh Murthy quite yet, though, since he fulfilled every one of her other prerequisites. And over the next few weeks, Geeta showed an impressive capacity for open-mindedness toward the South Indian. Usually, when I stopped by Nanima’s in the evenings, I’d find her on the sofa watching TV with the old woman, each of them sipping a mug of hot
haldi
milk, tinted orange with tumeric powder, which Geeta said helped digestion. Now, though, Geeta’s evenings of what she called “time pass” were over. Instead, she’d be hunched in front of her old desktop PC, poking out messages to potential husbands one finger at a time.

After a few weeks, she told me that they had moved from instant messages to phone calls—a sure sign that things were getting serious, according to Shaadi’s rules of courtship. Geeta said they would sometimes talk past midnight, and joked that she was losing sleep willingly for the first time in her life. She seemed disarmed by it all.

“It’s crazy that I have so much in common with a South Indian boy, Miranda. He wants to know everything about my life. You know what he told me tonight? He said I should always be treated like a princess.”

I should have been happy for her, but I felt protective. There were too many similarities to Ashok, who’d gamely agreed that an arranged marriage was a good idea, even while he had an American girlfriend back home. Geeta hadn’t told her father about Ramesh yet, and I couldn’t help but think about the questions he might have asked: What do we know about this boy? Who is his family? How can we trust him?

I was also a little peeved that my friend was disappearing into this virtual relationship. Geeta didn’t have as much time to hang out as she used to. I was ashamed of my ungenerous feelings. Geeta had been looking for a husband for almost a decade. Was I so selfish that I begrudged her the first guy in ages who seemed to have potential? Perhaps I was afraid she’d leave me floundering in Nizamuddin, without her troubles to distract me from my own loneliness.

I guess she could tell that I was lukewarm about these new developments,
because she sounded sheepish when she told me that she had an appointment at Madame X in the morning.

“Ramesh is coming to visit—but he’s not on a marriage pilgrimage. First he’ll visit his grandfather in Bangalore, and then he’ll be coming up to Delhi to meet me—only me.”

Geeta had consented to meet Ramesh alone for lunch, rather than an evening activity, when he came to town. She felt okay about going unescorted, she said, because she’d already given him her antidating speech.

“I told him firmly, just one date. We’ve already done the chatting. So the only reason to meet is to decide whether a marriage will happen.”

Geeta’s voice sounded exultant on the intercom. I heard her newly bought heels clip perkily on the stairs as she made her way up. Inside the apartment, she plunked a wooden mask down on the living room table. Her face shone.

“See this? Ramesh brought it all the way from Sri Lanka. He loves to travel. You won’t believe it: At the end of lunch he said he wants to bring me to Sri Lanka. He said he has feelings for me!”

Her words were flowing out in a stream of non sequiturs. As grizzled and cynical as I was feeling, I couldn’t help but grin at her. They’d talked for two hours, she said. She’d been relieved that he didn’t have a heavy South Indian accent and was at pains to reassure me that he did not “look all South Indian,” as though I’d been as concerned about this as she had.

“He’s not all dark and scrawny with that horrible curly hair. In fact, he’s quite fair. Maybe it’s because his mother’s family comes from the North of India.”

I asked what else they’d talked about, and Geeta said she couldn’t remember, sinking back from her perch on my living room chair. Over the next hour or so, she’d sit suddenly upright, recalling scraps from their conversation: He never watched Hindi films, for instance, and loved Hollywood.

“In fact, he has American taste in most things.” Geeta sounded satisfied
about this. “He will only wear American clothes, like Banana Republic and Tommy Hilfiger, and some other brands that aren’t even
available
in India.”

“He sounds like a modern-minded guy. So … did marriage come up?”

Geeta shifted in her chair. She’d been enjoying the afterglow of her date until I broke in with reality.

“Of course it did. In fact, Ramesh said three times he wanted to marry me. But I stayed quiet. You know … he doesn’t look the way I imagined my husband would. He’s not tall or Punjabi. It just … complicates things that he is from the South, that he is so different. I don’t think I’m ready to make the decision.”

“What about being able to tell that you want to marry someone in thirty minutes?”

I was just ribbing her, but Geeta didn’t see the humor.

“I guess that’s only if I
don’t
like a boy. Deciding to like someone takes longer—the risks are much more. Maybe Ramesh is already liking me too much, but something isn’t right.”

When Geeta and I watched an old movie, we’d chuckle at how the 1950s Bollywood heroine lowers her eyes when the hero proposes marriage. A girl can never say yes the first time: It’s one of the rules of courtship laid out in the unwritten marriage-age girls’ manual. She will raise her eyes ever so slightly to signal that she means “Absolutely yes! Oh my God, yes!” I had to watch a great deal of Bollywood to realize that coyness is the way the pious virgin shows that in fact she wants to embrace the hero in a verdant field of mustard. I couldn’t tell whether Geeta was acting the part of the reluctant bride because she felt she should, or whether she had genuine reservations.

Either way, Ramesh was prepared to wait. He’d told Geeta he’d stay in Delhi for the next week, during which time he dedicated himself to wooing her: He sent her flowers every day and peppered her with compliments and requests to meet him one final time. Even the Punjabi princess seemed a little overwhelmed by Ramesh’s extreme courtship. “What am I supposed to
do
with all these roses?” she said. It might have been frightening for Geeta to be treated as she’d always dreamed,
because it seemed like evidence that she was fated to marry this South Indian boy.

I doubt Geeta slept or worked much that week. She told me she’d been leaving the office early every evening and spending hours on the phone with Ramesh. But although he was staying with relatives just a couple miles from Nizamuddin, she didn’t see him again until the day before he left. She called me before she agreed to meet him, eager to hear that it was the right decision.

“Ramesh has been trying to convince me all week that we should have one final premarriage meeting. What do you think? Once more is okay, right?”

I’m sure she could hear my smile in my voice.

“I don’t know, Geeta … wouldn’t that be a second date?”

She sighed.

“No, Miranda, it’s absolutely not a date, and the first one wasn’t either. You know that! I have a very serious decision to make, and I think I need to talk to him in person once more to decide.”

So I told her what she wanted to hear. She made me promise to come over to Nanima’s the following night, so I could ensure that the old woman didn’t embarrass her when he picked her up.

I was waiting there as arranged when Ramesh rang the doorbell. Geeta was still getting dressed. She’d been having trouble deciding whether to “go Indian” or not for this meeting. Her friends had pointed out that there wasn’t much point in her trying to look traditional on a second, unescorted date, but it still felt wrong to her not to dress like a traditional, modest bride-to-be. Her anxiety was contagious. Nanima, her maid, and I were all hovering outside her room, and we all jumped at the sound of the bell. I sent them back to Nanima’s bedroom and smoothed out my hair in the mirror before pulling open the door to the South Indian.

I was startled by how good looking Ramesh was, with finely chiseled features and intelligent eyes. He was well dressed, too: His jeans were a baggy American style rather than the slum-cut tighter fit generally favored by Indian men. He stood in the living room, wiping his hands on them, until I gestured awkwardly to the sofa. Geeta was right:
Ramesh spoke English with an American twang, drawing out his vowels the way Indian call center workers do after they’ve been trained to sound un-Indian when they take computer support calls. Ramesh also used obvious Americanisms, such as “you guys” and “dude,” more often than seemed strictly necessary in twenty minutes of casual conversation. After sitting down, he informed me that “the American lifestyle” had made a big impact on him during his college years in Edison, New Jersey. Afterward, he’d found a job as a computer programmer so that he could stay on. He proudly listed the “American food” he’d learned to cook, omelets and pasta, and his favorite restaurants, Pizza Hut and Burger King.

Growing impatient with the fast-food theme, I asked Ramesh what else he liked about American culture. He had something more substantial to say: He’d been impressed by America’s ethnic diversity and civic values, he said, and by community associations, neighborhood cleanups, and crime-watch campaigns. Ramesh went to pains to emphasize that he’d made non-Indian friends in college.

“I didn’t want to live in an Indian ghetto, you know? In college, black guys, white guys—we all hung out like we were the same. I didn’t know their family backgrounds, and they didn’t know mine. In India, people are so concerned about whether they are the same as other people.”

I was impressed by his bluntness. Ramesh was thirty-two, with a younger brother and sister who were both already married, and he said he’d only just started thinking about marriage—which was also unusual. I decided to take advantage of the time before Geeta emerged to do a little reconnaissance about his plans.

“Do you plan to stay in the States?”

Ramesh wiped his hands on his jeans again.

“I don’t know. When I lived there I felt really American. But after some time, I started to think that I am a little different from American guys—at least in the relationship way. Americans come in and out of romantic affairs easily. We aren’t like that in India. Here, nothing is more important than family. And that’s how I feel.”

It didn’t exactly answer my question, but it was the right response for a marriage-age boy, and Ramesh knew it. I felt sure then that Geeta
would marry this guy. As she clip-clopped out of her room wearing “Westerns”—slacks and a blouse—I gave her the escort’s approving nod.

Geeta came over that evening after the date so we could rehash the conversation we’d had hundreds of times.

“Ramesh thinks love and marriage should go together. I wonder whether there’s something wrong with me.”

“Well, you always said that love will come later,” I said, trying to quell my Super Reporter Girl urges, even though I felt as though I’d said this many times before.

“What if it doesn’t, though? What if I never feel it for him? I don’t even know what love
feels
like!”

“I think you need a drink, Geeta.”

When I offered, Geeta usually demurred, saying she was too petite to handle alcohol. She agreed tonight, though, and I poured us each an Old Monk rum and mixed it with seltzer water to cut the sweetness. Geeta accepted the glass without acknowledging that she’d taken it. She was staring out over the balcony. The neighborhood
chowkidars
had begun their nightly racket, blowing their whistles and clanging their clubs against the metal railings of the gates. We were accustomed to the racket of the overenthusiastic Nizamuddin watchmen. It was their habit to make enough noise to ensure that the whole neighborhood knew that they were out on their rounds. The watchmen wanted us to know that they were earning their keep, even at the cost of keeping everyone awake.

“I always thought that if it was the right boy, I would just know … but I don’t feel sure at all. I don’t understand how Ramesh can say he’s already in love with me.”

“Okay, Geeta. If you’re not feeling sure about marrying him, why don’t you try to imagine whether you
could
love him someday?” She shrugged her shoulders. “Well, are you attracted to him?” I continued.

Geeta wrinkled her eyebrows.

“Girls don’t think like that in India, Miranda. Remember, it’s not like
Friends
here.”

I couldn’t help but think that we were in trouble if the definitive word on sexuality, for Geeta, came from
Friends
reruns. Still I pressed on, emboldened by the rum. Geeta hadn’t ever talked about sex, or anything to do with her body, with anyone: not with her mother, her female cousins, or her friends. I struggled to come up with the right vocabulary to use with her.

“Well, what about Amit? You told me you thought he was cute. Did you ever flirt with him?”

“Are you kidding me? He’s my boss, and he’s married, Miranda!”

My pop sex-therapy session wasn’t going as well as I’d hoped.

“All I mean is that even if it doesn’t mean anything, sometimes we flirt with guys just because they’re attractive and it’s fun to. It doesn’t have to mean anything. It’s just a function of male and female energy.”