The Heart Is a Shifting Sea: Love and Marriage in Mumbai

by Elizabeth Flock

  The following night, she and Ashok went bowling at the mall, passing a romantic fountain with colored lights at the entrance and a lingerie store promising “lace all over . . . so, so sensual.” The city’s malls were so different from the street bazaars of old—far more sterile and orderly. They passed a kids’ arcade filled with well-dressed children and a giant Hamleys toy shop from London. As they walked, Eric Clapton’s “Have You Ever Loved a Woman” played from the loudspeakers.

  “I don’t know if I have ever loved,” Ashok said to Parvati in a put-on, dreamy voice.

  Parvati laughed at this. Just that week, Ashok had told her that he loved her. He said he loved her the most in the mornings, when she smelled just like a baby.

  They went bowling and then played a game of pool—Ashok guiding her hands on the cue stick to show her how to strike the ball. Afterward, they walked back to the car with their arms around each other’s shoulders. Parvati kept wondering if she might be pregnant. They stopped to take a selfie by the fountain, the colors changing from purple to blue behind them.

  That week, they tried sex with Parvati on top, and both thought it felt good. It felt so good that they made love for a long time.

  And then it was their second wedding anniversary, and Parvati woke up feeling hopeful. In the morning, Ashok’s parents had called to wish them a happy day, and she’d talked to them for a long time—even laughed at Ashok’s father’s jokes. While she talked, Ashok sat beside her and gently massaged her legs. Afterward, he offered to make them lunch. “Today is a special day, so I’ll rustle up something, boo boo.” He’d started calling her “boo boo” when she was crying all the time, and now he used the nickname with confidence.

  “No, no,” she said, laughing, “I’ll help.”

  Together they made a giant spread of potato, okra, broccoli, and coconut curd, using fresh, hand-ground coconut. On their first anniversary, they had gone out to a nice restaurant and the mall and taken a picture to preserve the memory. But this year it was enough just to be together. As background music, Ashok put on a Carnatic song, an ode to Parjanya, the South Indian god of rain and the life-giver. After eating, they went into the bedroom to talk and agreed to try to watch porn again soon. The government, facing the outrage of the country, had lifted the ban.

  That night, Parvati got her period. After she saw the blood, she sank into the couch and put on The Holiday, a bad American movie, and ate an entire dark chocolate bar. She called Ashok, who told her, quietly, “It’s okay, Chiboo. It’ll be okay.” She nodded but thought bitterly: I am supposed to love today, but I hated it.

  When she got her period, Parvati often used a hot water bag to ease the cramps. This time, Ashok came into their bedroom every half hour to reheat it. Parvati was surprised to find his efforts romantic.

  And this time, a memory came back to her from Trivandrum. Once, many years ago, she had been on her period, and the cramps had been almost unbearable. That day, for once, though her father was supposed to consider her untouchable, he had come into her bedroom and held her hand. Parvati had forgotten this until now.

  * * *

  The following month, Parvati’s father came to Mumbai for a visit. As always, he was pleasant but proper with his daughter and son-in-law. Over lunch, he brought up Kathakali, the expressive style of dance from Kerala, and told Parvati he was glad it was becoming obsolete. He told her it was “boring” and “had no use” because the performers didn’t speak. “Then what would be the use of any music or dance?” Parvati asked, incredulous. “Exactly,” he said.

  But after he left to go back to Trivandrum, Parvati was surprised to find she missed him. She even cried a little when he was gone. Her father was something known, and solid, after a year filled with uncertainty. She could have guessed what his opinion would be on Kathakali. She almost always knew what he’d say. And she thought that even if he was wrong about art, perhaps he had been right about other things—like marrying Ashok instead of Joseph. She fought with Ashok about little things, but they did not argue over gods or family or tradition. And when they had a baby, they would not fight over what beliefs to pass on.

  After he left Mumbai, Ashok’s mother also came for a visit. She did a last-ditch baby pooja for them, buying salt and sesame seeds and waving them over their faces. She brought the spices back home to Trivandrum and did another pooja at home. She put ghee in a bowl of fire while a priest chanted a mantra, and sent the ghee to them in Mumbai, telling them to use it to cook with for three or four days. After that, she said, Parvati would definitely become pregnant. Parvati almost believed her. Believing can’t hurt, she thought. In hindsight, even removing the bird’s nest had seemed like bad luck.

  * * *

  Just before Parvati took another pregnancy test, certain this time it’d be positive, they made plans to have over her Malayali friends from school. Parvati cleaned the house and bought fresh vegetables, and they made a big lunch of rice and sambar together, which filled the house with the smells of coriander and cinnamon. Parvati dressed in a pressed white and black patterned kurta and tied her thick hair back.

  Over lunch, the conversation with the Malayali boys turned to marriage, and Ashok asked if any of them were married yet. One said he was having trouble getting married off because the “sin” factor in his astrology chart was low. “It’s bad if the guy is low and the girl is high,” he said, and another boy joked, “Should not be a good guy with a bad girl.” Everybody laughed at this, and then one of them brought up intermarriage, which was becoming more common in the city.

  “Well, if my child wants to marry a Muslim, I’d accept it,” Ashok said.

  “I would too,” one of the Malayali boys agreed.

  “I—I don’t think I would,” Parvati said softly, stirring the remaining vegetables on her plate.

  Ashok, startled, turned to look at her. “Really, Chiboo? Why not?”

  “My thinking has grown more conservative over time,” she said. “I’ve grown more like my father.”

  Parvati got up from the table and began clearing the dishes. There was a silence as she disappeared into the kitchen, gliding past the lunch table and the bookshelves, which contained all her old Malayali books. It had been years since she’d read The God of Small Things, which warned of the love laws that kept people apart. It had been years since she read Kamala Das and wanted to live as fearlessly as she had, thinking: You don’t have to just live the way your parents have told you.

  It turned out she had lived according to those laws and to her parents’ wishes. She had married Ashok, another Hindu and a Tam Brahm, and it had worked out well enough. Now Parvati thought that she should push her son or daughter to do the same. He or she should marry someone who shared the same background; it was easier that way. That is, if she ever got pregnant. Pushing her thoughts aside, Parvati picked up a cake thick with icing from the kitchen counter and carried it into the living room. “Dessert,” she told the Malayali boys brightly, holding the cake aloft. Ashok got up to help her cut it.

  After cake, the Malayali boys asked for a concert. Parvati did not want to sing, but they pestered her, and eventually she gave in. She turned on her electric tanpura, which gave out a continuous drone to keep the time, so she and Ashok could play together.

  “No, you sing,” Ashok said, and she nodded at him.

  Parvati chose a song from an old Malayalam movie called The Colors of Love, which she had watched as a little girl. As she began, her alto voice was certain, supple, yet also melancholy and filled with emotion. “The heart of early morning is filled with turmeric color,” she sang. It was a haunting song, or hopeful, depending on how it was heard. In the song, the girl sang of her future lover without knowing all that lay ahead. As Parvati sang, she kept her eyes closed and held her hand to her ear.

  When she was young, she had sung this song at parties her father held, and all the guests told her how beautiful her singing was.

  Now as Parvati finished the song, everybody clapped, Ashok
loudest of all.

  Epilogue: Mumbai, 2015

  pune: The monsoon season ended on Wednesday . . . The weakest monsoon [in years] . . . The country has seen two back-to-back droughts . . . The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has, however, discontinued using the term “drought” because it believes an entire country never faces a drought.

  The Times of India, October 1, 2015

  Maya and Veer

  The season after the monsoon ends in Mumbai—a monsoon that floods the city and leaves it bone dry at the end, so dry there is a water crisis and farmer suicides in the state—Maya and Veer and Janu move into their new apartment. It is in a concrete apartment building in a suburb far north of the city. It is hot, but they do not fight.

  But first, they host a gruhpravesh, or traditional Hindu housewarming ceremony, and the invitations are sent out in Veer’s father’s name. On the invite Maya sends out herself, she writes: “Bless us as we enter our new home ‘Sukhtara.’”

  Sukhtara. Happy star. She cannot help giving the new apartment the same name.

  In the morning, they do a pooja with a priest in the flat, and at night they host a big dinner. Veer’s family invites Maya’s father to the ceremony, as does Maya, but he does not come. Veer invites many of their friends, including Subal, which surprises Maya, but Subal does not come either. Maya has begun going on her own or with Janu to Aksa Beach now. As they play together by the sea, she lets new memories paper over the old.

  Guests at the gruhpravesh tell Maya she should have used Italian marble on the floors. Why spend so much and not show it off? they ask. Instead she has used wood, which feels homey to her. Veer does not care how she decorates the new apartment. But at the tile store, he says he wants to buy tile printed with images of galloping horses for his new study. He announces plans to someday own a fleet of horses, a fleet of airplanes, and a brewery. He makes these plans on a day he is feeling unwell. Maya tells him not to get the tile because it is tacky.

  The first night in their new apartment, Maya cannot sleep. It does not feel like home to her. That week, Janu cycles around the flat on a bicycle because it is so big. He says he is bored, because there are no children in the courtyard to play with.

  Maya throws herself into the work of decorating the apartment. She finds lovely yellow flowered chairs, pale blue couches, and an old antique clock on a trip to Jaipur, the city where she and Veer were wed. For Janu’s room, she buys astronaut sheets and origami wallpaper. To his collection of toys, she adds the pink fluffy teddy bear she bought Veer after their wedding.

  Almost all the furniture is new, but they keep the living and dining room tables from their old apartment. Maya does not try to replace them. “Papa won’t let us give them away,” says Janu, his tone serious, and Maya agrees. The tables are from Veer’s childhood, from time he spent with his mother. Janu has begun eating more meat but knows not to ask for meat in their new home.

  In the guest room, Maya installs bookshelves against the wall, which contain books she has bought, or that were given to her by Subal, or collected from places she doesn’t remember. Among them is Sacred Games, the book she bought with Veer that Sunday he came to Crossword. She also hangs the painting of Radha and Krishna in the guest room and thinks that she might sleep in there sometimes.

  After a few months in the new house, Maya decides to go to a session of past-life regression therapy. She wants an answer to why she moved into the new flat, even though it was an opportunity to leave Veer. Even though he is feeling better from the diabetes. And even though there are other men more suited—men who tell her how much they love her. She feels that her past must contain the answer.

  The session lasts four or five hours, and in this time Maya is taken through her past lives, each of which feels like a dream. In one, she sees that she was a hippie who died in a road accident. In another, she was a Buddhist monk child. Janu also appears in several of her lives—twice or three times as her son and once as her father. The therapist tells Maya, “Janu is the one guiding your soul from birth to birth.” This does not surprise Maya. She does not get an answer about why she cannot leave Veer.

  At home, Veer’s health has improved. He even puts on a little weight, but not too much. His pants fit him just right. He works hard, like he always has, traveling between his factories and family offices and to Africa. He does not repeat his big plans about horses and airplanes. He begins coming home early, in time to help Maya put Janu to bed.

  Veer is doing better in part because their new maid cooks him the mostly vegan diet he needs. They have a new maid despite the fact that Maya tried to convince Pallavi to move homes with them. She even took Pallavi to meet a broker and look at shanties nearby. Pallavi initially told Maya she would move with them, but in the end she said she couldn’t leave her husband. When she said this, Maya thought of Pallavi’s two small sons, who showed up that day looking for her, anxiety on their faces. She also thought of Janu.

  Around this time, Janu tells Maya that in school he has learned about Santa Claus, whom he sees as a kind of miracle. “Santa Claus, you know what he will do?” Janu tells his mother one day in a rickshaw, his voice earnest. He watches her face to make sure she is listening. “He will make one snow globe and inside will be me, and you, and Papa also, and when he shakes it all of Bombay will be covered in snow.”

  “Haan, beta,” Maya says, and ruffles his hair.

  After Janu tells her this, Maya does not push the matter with Pallavi. She understands why she does not leave.

  Shahzad and Sabeena

  After the weak monsoon is over and the holidays have passed—the last goat slaughtered and the last stains of blood washed away in the rain—the city is left in limbo. At the downtown mosque, at the southernmost tip of Mumbai, the men who work in corporate offices still show up to prayer on time. But elsewhere men are struggling. The monsoon came and went too quickly and set off droughts across the state. In Dharavi, the slum dwellers have to wait even longer in line at a common tap and do not know if they will get water. Shahzad visits Dharavi and meets with the builder, who promises the final big deposit of money soon.

  At home, with the new fans on high, Farhan helps Taheem and Mahala with their homework and their memorization of the Quran. He teaches them about world religions and how similar they all are. He tells them that Christianity and Islam are almost synonymous in their belief in one God, and that the divisions between Sunni and Shia Muslims do not matter. He tells them that terrorism is wrong. “This is ego, this is power,” Farhan says. “Everyone is searching for some power.” The children nod solemnly.

  Someday, Farhan thinks he will also teach them what he has learned about marriage. He will tell them that it is about small things, that when you marry you are young or unthinking or both and not aware of the many problems you will face together. Money. Time. And that you will always desire more than you have.

  Taheem is not focused on his tuitions today, and Nadine hits him hard on the head. “Oww,” he shouts, and runs out of the apartment, over to his aunt and uncle’s flat. “Kya hua?” Sabeena asks, as Taheem plops down beside her. “I was making too much masti,” he says, wincing as she pats him on the head. Sabeena laughs, eyes twinkling, and tells him it will be okay. She knows that Nadine must have fire in the heart over her marriage again and is grateful she is old enough to be past this.

  That afternoon, Shahzad lays out his prayer mat for namaaz. Recently, he went to see his local imam and asked about the old rules on adoption. The imam told him these guidelines were outdated. He said that Islam had no problem with adoption anymore. “You are doing a good deed by adopting a child,” the imam told him. “You can even give the child your name.”

  Hearing this, Shahzad at first was excited. He told Sabeena he wanted to go visit Ajmer, where it was said that praying to the grave of a saint would magically grant you a son. But Sabeena told him she wasn’t interested. She gently reminded him that it was too late. She told him to focus on helping raise Taheem and M
ahala, who saw him as a kind of father.

  On the prayer mat today, Shahzad does not say his usual prayer for a child. Instead, he says a dua of the Prophet Muhammad, which goes: “Oh turner of the hearts, make my heart firm on your deen.” Deen can be translated many ways, but Shahzad understands it as “a complete way of life,” which is often difficult for a man to attain. Or difficult for a man to recognize even after he has achieved it.

  After Shahzad finishes his prayer, he lies down on his bed for a nap and dreams of his father. This time they are at the cold storage shop together, which always left them stinking of meat and blood. When Shahzad wakes up, he thinks, Arey, Shahzad, your father is not here, and there is no shop. You sold it. It’s finished.

  He is glad this is in the past now, and that his future is with Sabeena, Taheem, and Mahala. He is glad it is only a dream.

  Ashok and Parvati

  They do not know if it is a boy or a girl, because it is illegal to find out, and so they choose names for both. They have moved out of their anonymous-looking cooperative apartment, not into the sky-high towers but into a small flat on the campus of Parvati’s school. The new apartment is cramped and hot after the monsoon that came in fits and bursts and died out too soon. It is hard for Parvati to even steam idlis in the tiny new kitchen. And it is hard for her to go to school with her morning sickness or take road trips with Ashok to beautiful places like Khandala anymore. But they are too excited about the baby to care. If the baby is a boy, they have a long list of names. But if it is a girl, Ashok will name her Kavita, which means “poem” in Sanskrit. It is the name with the closest meaning to “writer” he could find.

  Ashok has stopped writing ever since Parvati got pregnant again. After he sent off his book to agents, he never heard back from any of them. He tells himself he should stop trying. I have to give this up now for the baby, he thinks. The second stage of life: the householder, or family man. The kutumpa peyar should continue. The family line should not end.