by Sonya Lalli
Jayesh was an open book, liked to laugh, and as I sipped on the dregs of my pint, I realized I might actually like him. I felt my stomach growl, and I set down my empty glass.
“Are you hungry?”
We’d only committed to a quick drink, and he smiled at me, as if he was surprised I was making an effort.
“After all this time,” I said, “I can at least buy you dinner.”
“I suppose you can . . .”
“Do you like tacos?”
“Do you know anyone who doesn’t like tacos?”
I grinned. “Great. I know this place off King West.”
We took the streetcar, and Jayesh told me about the PhD he’d recently defended on energetics—which he explained was the study of energy as it transformed between forms.
“Energy can be stored, which is potential energy. Or it can be kinetic, thermal, elastic, nuclear—but it’s always there. It cannot be destroyed or created. It always balances out—kind of like the Force.”
I stared at him curiously, before breaking out into a grin.
“Sorry, that was a dumb joke. I meant—”
“Star Wars.” My hand bumped against his on the handrail, and I let it stay there. “I get it. I love Star Wars.”
It was warm enough to sit on the restaurant’s patio, and we shared a pitcher of margaritas, a big bowl of guac and chips, and then ordered a sharing plate of baja fish and buttermilk chicken tacos.
“You know,” Jayesh said, pouring hot sauce onto his plate. “Come to think of it, I’ve been here before.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” He set the bottle down. “My ex-wife works just around the corner.”
I nodded slowly, trying to figure out what to say.
“Too early to bring up the ex?”
“After what I unloaded on you earlier, not at all.” I paused. “How long has it been?”
“We’ve been divorced three years now. In retrospect, we married way too young. Turns out, she cared more about the wedding than me.”
“I’m sorry.” I wiped my hands on a napkin. “The same thing happened to my uncle Kris, too. But you seem to be handling it a lot better than he is.”
“I have good days and bad days still.” He smiled. “On the bad days I dwell on the fact that a lot of people in the community have drawn a black mark over me. Labeled me as damaged, somehow.”
“And the good days?”
“The good days, I think about the future.” He shrugged. “I eat tacos with cute girls . . .”
He was smiling at me now, and I couldn’t help but return one.
“And on your good days,” I said, reaching for the dessert menu. “Do you eat ice cream?”
“Lots.”
“Chocolate?”
“Duh.”
Jayesh—Sharon’s cousin, science professor at university . . .
divorced!!!
Intriguing . . . taco tour round
#2 TBD after Shay’s wedding!
THIRTY
Shay’s wedding week arrived in a flurry. Serena, the twins, and I were recruited for countless errands: picking up and dropping off relatives, lugging decorations and marigold garlands to and from the venues, helping Shay manage Auntie Sarla’s demands. There were dinner parties with relatives, with family friends who had traveled to Toronto, and then the Ganesh puja: a religious ceremony performed to remove obstacles and ensure the successful completion of the wedding.
I sat down near the back of the temple with Serena, and looked around the room. Up at the front, Nani and Auntie Sarla were assisting the priest as he carried out the ceremony. Shay and Julien were seated cross-legged with their eyes closed, and as the priest resumed chanting, I closed mine, too.
I’d never really tried to understand Hinduism. For most, it conjured the image of Ganesh’s trunk and bright colors, bronze statues and bathing in the Ganges, and my knowledge—my understanding of it—only went a tad further.
Its belief system was supple. Its rituals and traditions were blended and nuanced over thousands of years, from one region to another. But surely, at its core, there was nothing about it that decreed its believers to be intolerant. The Kama Sutra encouraged homosexual relations, and so did the holy book the Rigveda. Shay had mentioned that there were even transgender characters in the Mahabharata.
But then why did so many traditional Hindus, like Depesh’s parents, like Auntie Sarla, vehemently disapprove? When had it all started; why had we been taught to fear, taught to discredit everything but our own perspective?
Whatever the belief system, we were all in charge of our own values. Depesh had been brave to challenge them, to stand up to his own family and community. And now—for a while, at least—he was gone. As much as it hurt, as much as I didn’t want to let him go, I knew that he would be all right.
When the puja was over, I went into the dining hall and found that Nani had slipped out ahead of me, and was now bustling around in the kitchen with a dozen other women.
“What can I do?” I asked, tying an apron around my sari.
“Your Auntie Sarla has rented extra plates, but I cannot find!”
“Where should I look?”
She fished out a ring of keys from her bra and pressed it into my hand. “I think her car.”
“Do you need a hand?”
The voice startled me, and it took me a while to realize it belonged to Asher.
“Hah, she will,” I heard Nani say to him. “It is very heavy.”
“No problem,” he said. “I’m Asher, by the way. You must be Auntie Suvali?”
“So you are Asher . . .” Nani beamed at him. “Yes, I am Auntie Suvali—but you can call me Nani.”
“Oh, uh—”
“She says that to everybody.” I shook my head, and Asher grinned. “She wasn’t implying—”
“Nice to meet you, Nani,” he said, ignoring me completely.
“Nice to meet you.”
We took the back stairs up to the main level and found Auntie Sarla’s flashy red car in the parking lot. I was at a loss for words, and I could tell Asher felt awkward around me, too. Was Rebekah lurking somewhere?
“I didn’t see you upstairs,” I ventured, as we unloaded boxes from the trunk.
“I was sitting behind you a bit—on the men’s side.” He paused, shutting the trunk. “Why is there a men’s side and women’s side at the temple, by the way?”
“It beats me.”
“Tradition?”
“I guess.”
“Traditions change. It takes a while, but they do . . . Or, they can.”
I stared hard at the concrete beneath my feet, focusing on a crack jutting out from my left big toe. “How long are we expected to wait, Asher?”
He was breathing heavily, and I felt his hand brush against my forearm. “There are a few girls from South Asian families in my class this year,” I heard him say. “In some ways, they’re teaching me more than I’m teaching them.”
I followed the crack with my eyes farther and farther, until it disappeared into the bushes.
“I’ve come to realize that as much as I’d like to, there are some things I’ll just never be able to understand.”
Did Asher realize that, by just saying those words, he did understand? That even though our backgrounds were worlds apart, his empathy, his outlook on life, brought him closer to my heart than any man had been before?
“It was a beautiful ceremony today. Wasn’t it, Raina?”
But what right did I have to ask him anything? What right did I have to say all those words on the tip of my tongue, weighing down my chest?
To interfere in a life he had with another woman.
“Where’s Rebekah?”
My eyes still on the ground, I saw his hands shift from his side to his poc
kets.
Was that a sigh?
“She’s at school.”
* * *
By the time we got the last of the dishes into the kitchen, everyone had started to leave the main hall and was queuing up for lunch. I figured Asher would run off to find Julien’s other friends, but he didn’t. He found another apron beneath the sink, and after rolling up the sleeves of his white collared shirt, he took up the post next to me. It was an assembly line. I put one naan on everybody’s plate, Asher spooned the rice, and a battalion of aunties next to him dished out the subjiis, dal, chutney, sweets. When Asher started chatting to the aunties next to him, I tried not to eavesdrop. But I couldn’t help but notice their laughter, how smitten they all seemed to be by him. I was relieved when Nani tapped him on the shoulder and asked him to fetch her a heavy Crock-Pot from a high shelf, and someone else took over serving the rice.
I could hear Asher and Nani behind me as they worked away on something. I didn’t dare look. I kept my eyes on the naan, on the hungry people in front of me. My stomach hurt, but I knew it wasn’t from hunger.
“Asher is very tall,” I heard Nani say to me.
I tried not to smile. Nani, who was probably too short to go on the adult rides at amusement parks, tended to use the word “tall” when she meant handsome.
“And very sweet.” She sidled in closer to me, and I could just make out her profile with my peripheral vision. “So heavy those dishes, and helping us while everyone else is eating . . .” As she trailed off, I knew exactly what she was thinking: how out of the dozens of people helping serve and prepare lunch, Asher was one of the few men. How Nana, no matter how much he had loved her, had not once helped her in the kitchen.
“Is Asher . . .” Nani shook her head. “Hah. Never mind. I will not again be interference.” She mimed zipping her lips shut, and a beat later, I mimed reopening them.
“He has a girlfriend, Nani, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“So Asher is just friend?”
I nodded, leaning in close to whisper, “He also thinks I’m gay.”
Nani laughed. “A man cannot be in love with supposedly gay woman?”
“Nani, shhhh!”
“His girlfriend cannot be so pretty the way he is looking at you—”
“Nani!”
“Kya? It is merely observation—”
“Can we go back to you not interfering in my life?”
“No,” she said, grinning. “Now I am stuck. I am in the mix!”
I stepped aside from my post, and took Nani off to the side of the kitchen. She was smiling so much I had to fight the urge to wipe it right off.
“Please don’t go getting your hopes up, okay?”
“But why? Is it not obvious—”
“Nani, I’ve messed up a lot this year. You know that.” After she didn’t disagree, I continued. “Asher’s dating someone. It might even be serious, and I’m not going to insert myself in that. I’m not going to . . . mess that up, too.”
She crossed her arms, and I couldn’t quite tell if she was yawning or sighing.
“And besides. I’m seeing Jayesh again.”
“Really?”
“Yep.” I smiled. “We had a nice time. He’s very sweet. He knows Shay’s wedding is this week, and so he told me to call him after, when I’m free.”
“And you plan to?”
I nodded. “We’re going to have tacos.”
“Taco?”
“You’ve had tacos, Nani.” I rolled my eyes. “It’s like a roti, and inside there’s meat and salsa and—”
“Hah, hah. I like taco.” She pursed her lips together. “They are very messy, nah?”
I laughed. “I suppose so.”
“You know,” she said, resting her palm on my cheek. Her eyes beamed. “Life can be messy, too.”
* * *
Another day, another ceremony. Shay and Julien had disappeared immediately after the Ganesh puja was over—to where, I wasn’t sure—and so I didn’t see her until the following evening’s mehndi—a ladies-only ceremony held to decorate the bride with henna. The entire evening, Shay was stuck in the middle of Auntie Sarla’s living room as two artists painted her hands, wrists, and feet with the black ink. She seemed snappy, ill-tempered, and I wanted to ask how she was coping with the wedding stress (clearly not well), but someone always seemed to be within earshot. When I saw her slip into the kitchen, I followed her and found her standing in front of the sink limply scraping off the dried henna into the sink.
“Are you okay?”
She didn’t reply, and in silence, I watched as she rubbed her hands together. Her eyes were fixated on the black paste as it crumbled down the drain, and left a sprawl of bright orange on her palm.
“Here.” I reached for a platter of samosas. “You must be hungry.”
“No, not hungry,” she said quietly. Suddenly, she looked up through the glass in the kitchen door. “Shit.”
A moment later, Auntie Sarla burst in, glaring at Shay. “I told you—you must leave that on all evening.” Auntie Sarla lunged for Shay’s hands. “Aacha? It is all ruined! The color will be gone by ceremony!”
“Ma, it doesn’t matter.”
Auntie Sarla whipped toward me. “And Raina has taken hers off, too. Of course. Follow her example.”
“I needed to call Julien. I can’t dial the phone with this stuff on my hands—”
Auntie Sarla launched into a tirade in Rajasthani. I kept trying to interrupt, but Auntie Sarla ignored me, and after a few moments, even Shay told me I should leave. I wasn’t going to abandon her, but I felt my phone vibrate, and when I pulled it from beneath the strap of my bra, my heart stopped. It was Depesh.
I nearly tripped over my sari as I raced into a quiet room at the back of Shay’s house. Deliberately, I clicked answer, and held the phone up to my ear.
“Depo?”
I heard heavy breathing, faint music thumping in the background. I checked my watch. It was the middle of the night in London.
For almost a minute, he didn’t speak, and I listened to him breathing, and I tried to work up the courage to say something.
“Where are you?” I finally asked.
“I’m in Hack-ney.”
I nodded into the phone. He sounded drunk, his words slurring, and with every ounce of me, I prayed that he was safe.
“Are you okay—”
“So this was all about that fucking British guy.”
I pressed my hand over my face. “You read my e-mail . . .”
“A guy? An ex-boyfriend?”
“It started out that way. I know it doesn’t make any sense. I have no excuse—”
“I came out—I fucking came out to my parents—because, because of you, because I thought you, but—” He cut off, and I could hear a garble through the phone.
“Depesh, I don’t expect forgiveness.”
“Good.”
“But, I’m always going to be here for you,” I said slowly. “You can hate me, but I’m here.”
“God. I’m not—not some baby bird that needs taking care of, okay? I don’t need you.”
“Depo . . .”
“And you don’t need me, either, Raina.” He laughed. “Apparently all you need is a boyfriend.”
My ears burned.
“Sorry,” he said after a minute. “Sorry, I’m drunk.”
“No, it’s okay. I deserved that.”
The music started getting louder through the phone, and I heard shouting behind him.
“I should go.”
“Depo, you’re being safe? Do your parents know—”
“Yeah, okay? They know where I am—” He paused, and I heard a voice beside him. “I have to go.”
“Wait, please. Just one thing.”
“What?”
“I know you don’t need me. I know you’re hurt. But just—just know you can call me anytime. I’m here for you.”
He didn’t respond.
“Tell me you know I’m still here, Depo.” My voice cracked. “Please.”
A moment passed. And right before he clicked off, he said, “I know.”
THIRTY-ONE
Shay had disappeared by the time I went back into Auntie Sarla’s kitchen, so I spent the rest of the mehndi with Serena and the other bridesmaids chatting with the aunties, helping to tidy up. Afterward, I found my way back downtown and lay down fully dressed on the bed—but I didn’t sleep a wink. I didn’t deserve it. I kept my phone plugged in and with the volume turned up next to me the whole night, but it didn’t ring. At 4 A.M. I caved and texted Depesh, but there was no answer.
The following night was Shay’s final pre-wedding celebration and the eve before the big day: the sangeet, or music party, which came well stocked with dinner and dancing, live music and an open bar.
Serena picked me up in her car, and we dropped off our armory of saris, jewelry, and makeup at the hotel. Our room was next door to Nikki and Niti’s, and a few floors below Shay’s suite—where we’d all get ready together the next morning.
We changed quickly and then made our way into the main ballroom downstairs. Dozens of waiters in uniform bustled around the room fussing with chair covers and centerpieces, sprinkling rose petals and pouring wine. In the corner, Auntie Sarla, clipboard in hand, was instructing a group of waiters.
The guests started to arrive, and Serena and I took up posts at the entrance and handed out programs. Afterward, I tried to find Shay—but she kept disappearing, offering vague and unconvincing excuses. In fact, she had acted strange all evening—all week, really. Watching her at the head table wedged between Auntie Sarla and Julien, a fake smile on her face, I could tell something was wrong. It was more than stress; she looked miserable, even though she should have been the happiest woman in the room. The moment dinner was over, she pushed back her chair and raced out of the hall, and I was right on her heels.