by Tara Pammi
When Tara Met Farah
The Bollywood Dance & Drama Society # 1
Tara Pammi
Copyright © 2021 Tara Pammi
Illustration & Cover Design: ZenTee/Roshni Narasimhan
Copy Editing: Romy Sommer
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or within the public domain. Any resemblance to actual events or actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
No portion of this book may be reprinted, including by any electronic or mechanical means, or in information storage and retrieval systems, without express written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a review.
Created with Vellum
For all the beautiful, brave brown girls everywhere.
Contents
Content Warnings
1. Tara
2. Farah
3. Tara
4. Farah
5. Tara
6. Farah
7. Tara
8. Farah
9. Tara
10. Farah
11. Farah
12. Tara
13. Tara
14. Farah
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Content Warnings
Continuing grief over sudden parental death; Off-page depiction of homophobia; On-page sex.
One
Tara
I was horny. Again.
I could’ve said it was a reaction to the stress of waiting on my grade for my algebra class. Or that it was brought on by the lingering sadness after saying goodbye to my BFF Zen and returning to my lonely life and the need to self soothe. But I’d just be lying to myself.
The fact of the matter was that I was just…horny all the time.
Like now…while I was sitting in the backseat of a shuttle ferrying me from SeaTac airport to my street at six thirty on a drizzly November morning. The interior of the shuttle was shabby at best and a dried, cream-ish glob of some gloriously dirty substance winked at me from the next seat. Two homeless guys were hugging their life’s belongings to their chest, filling the air with unwashed smell and yet: I was horny.
Unzipping my backpack, I dug out the three cookies I’d stashed in there and handed them over. The sound of crinkling plastic filled the bus. Then I pulled out my notepad and made a note about researching libido in teen girls. Just to make sure I didn’t have Abnormal Horny Syndrome.
Had anyone done this research at all? Why was horniness always a boys’ domain in pop culture? Could I get a grant for independent research and study sexual habits of adolescent girls? Could this be the valid career path I was looking for, after all?
I quickly scribbled the tag line – Work with your left hand and earn with the right! Or even better: Jill off and Get rich! The glittery unicorn at the top corner of the page looked a little affronted by the raunchy tag line.
I closed my journal, leaned my head back against the seat and sighed. Rubbing one out – as good as I was getting at that, would only be a temporary distraction from the actual condition. Like taking Tylenol for a fever.
A glimpse of Zen’s college life, and his cute new girlfriend, had only made the inertia of my own life glaringly obvious. All my friends and cousins were moving on in life. They were out in the world, meeting people, having experiences, living life to the fullest. While I…I was stuck with no plans on the horizon for either a bright future or a girlfriend.
The odds of my meeting someone – as a high school failed lesbian living in her parents’ basement at the age of nineteen – were pretty slim. Hanging out with Zen and his Uni friends this past week showed me I could land a hook up – if I put myself out there. But that wasn’t what I wanted.
I wanted someone who appreciated my very own brand of weird, someone I could share my life with, someone who didn’t think I was an utter failure, like even most of my well-meaning friends and cousins did.
Apparently, the doom of one’s future and love life was the kryptonite for horniness. I snort-laughed at this and the homeless guys gave me the ‘weird teenager is weird’ look. I murmured sorry and looked away.
I had to pass the damn algebra course this time. No matter what. Even a B in the last test would help me get over the finish line. Assuming I aced the final.
You can do this, I chanted as I waved the guys goodbye, got off the shuttle, and walked towards our corner house. The drizzle felt good on my face. I blew a kiss at the three evergreens that bracketed our house. The only friends I had that hadn’t moved on.
I unlocked the front door, chucked my shoes off and snuck down to the basement. I didn't want Amma to see me like this, feeling all weird and wired. I’d already texted in our group chat the flight had landed and I was in the shuttle.
Amma had a very strict AM routine. She woke up at the Godforsaken hour of four – before the Sun God himself had finished his round to reach this part of the world – walked for forty-five minutes, come rain or shine, and made watery chai for herself and lumpy oatmeal for us, and then sat down to work promptly at five am.
The thought of the hot lumpy oatmeal intensified the queasiness in my stomach. Or was it the egg salad I’d chowed down at the greasy airport place at five thirty in the morning? I had a habit of eating my anxieties, as evidenced by the nice paunch I had.
Dad would be at Kohl’s or JC Penney with a thermos of ginger chai and a sheaf of coupons. He loved Black Friday shopping. For years, we’d both wake up at dawn, eat steaming hot idlis with ghee liberally splashed all over, pack cheese toast and colorful bell pepper slices in my Hello Kitty lunch box and begin our annual pilgrimage of six stores. We’d spend Thursday optimizing our approach for maximum sales and least amount of standing in line. He’d build spreadsheets and I’d plug in all my 13 cousins’ favorites. I carefully collected and curated the things they wanted most, based on months of casual spying. Then when we visited India like we did every summer, Dad got to pretend he was summer Santa.
Except I hadn’t gone to India this summer with Amma. I’d chosen to stay back with Dad, even though it meant I wouldn’t be seeing Thaatha for more than a year. He was visiting a gazillion temples in India with family friends. The party we’d thrown for his seventieth birthday, just before he left on the trip, had somehow morphed into a morbid farewell I’d hated. As if everyone was worried that he might not return home.
The thought of not seeing my grandfather again dispersed the last piece of BS I’d been telling myself all night.
Planting my ass on the last step, I pulled my laptop out. My eyes felt gritty from the red eye flight from Houston as I logged on. Digging my toes into the thick carpet, I scrolled down. And there it was.
A big, shining D.
A D in the one subject I desperately wanted to master.
A D in this test meant I’d fail again if I messed up the final.
A D that could stand for a Dumbass or a Donkey or a Dud.
Tears prickled behind my eyelids and I pinched my nose to stop gravity from sending them down. I hated that I couldn’t manage a simple B. I hated this negative talk in my head.
I hated that I…so desperately wanted this.
Amma was a statistics genius, and I had a D to show off for slogging through the course. For the second time.
‘It’s a D’, I texted Zen.
Of course, Zen didn’t text back. Because unlike me, Zen was at university and therefore, in class. My backpack slipped from my lap and fell to the floor. I closed my eyes and leaned back against the wall as misery enveloped me. I was close, so close, to giving up. To accepting that I just couldn’t fix myself in this.
; “Fine! I give up!” I said, hitting the opposite wall with one socked foot. The momentum sent my ass slipping down to the bottom step. I yowled in pain and rubbed my ass. “I give up!” I repeated in a lower voice because I absolutely didn’t want Amma to come down and see me like this.
With a shove, I pushed up onto my feet. “Don’t give me a passing grade in math! Don’t let me move forward in life! Don’t give me a girlfriend. Don’t give me even one damn thing that makes me happy!”
I said it all staring at the beautiful brass statue of Lord Ganesha Ammamma had given me when I’d visited our ancestral village. Ganesha was supposed to help me cross all the obstacles. Except he hadn’t helped with even one.
I stared at his trunk and big ears and said, “Did you ever feel your mother loved you less because you were different?”
The brass shimmered in the thin sliver of sunlight that came in through the windows. Slowly, the anger cycled out of me, leaving me exhausted. I rubbed my hand over the statue and my fingers came away with a layer of dust. I cringed. Pulling out the microfiber cloth I kept in the drawer, I gave him a thorough dusting. I also wiped down Ammamma’s framed picture that I kept next to Ganesha’s statue and threw out the old flowers.
I smiled at her. “I give up, yes. But only for today. Tomorrow’s another day.”
I nodded to myself, satisfied with this resolution. I’d had my tantrum and it was time now to move on.
It was the Friday after Thanksgiving. Amma’s student body would arrive for the annual Professor Usha Rao’s dinner bash at the very early hour of five thirty this evening. Which meant I only had a few hours to confer with Dad over the menu and decide what had been ordered out, what he’d whipped up and what else needed to be cooked. Because Amma wouldn’t have spared a moment’s thought to what she’d feed the horde of hungry grad students who looked at tonight’s dinner as their feast for the holidays.
I lifted my arm and scrunched my nose. First a shower, then some breakfast. Not the lumpy oatmeal but maybe a big, fat, golden omelet and some freshly squeezed orange juice.
My parents had built a self-sufficient unit in the basement with a walk out, to give my grandparents complete freedom. But after Ammamma had passed away, Thaatha had had a heart attack and moved to the main floor. So the basement was now my domain.
Pushing down my sweatpants and shedding my t-shirt on the way, I turned the knob for the bathroom. The door always got stuck at this time of the year. I pushed it with my shoulder and it finally budged.
Steam hit me in the face. Something citrusy tickled my nostrils. I didn’t use anything citrusy. Blinking, I realized someone was in the shower. And that someone had just stepped out of it.
My confused mind registered the most delicious part first, of course. The stranger in my bathroom was a girl. A hot girl, to be precise. I’d have totally squee-d at this meet-cute in a movie.
If not for the fact that I’d just yelled at a hundred-year-old statue like a maniac, I’d have wondered if I’d walked into someone else’s house.
But this was my house, my basement, my bathroom. The one that usually looked like a hurricane had passed through. The marble counter where I usually dumped several bottles in different colors and sizes looked neat and tidy.
A vase full of bright pink mums took pride of place on the floating shelves Zen had put in for me last year. All my various cosmetic bottles and lipsticks had been set up on the small pressed wood shelf I’d bought ages ago but had left on the floor in its packaging. The white tile floor that Thaatha and I’d picked when we’d renovated the basement gleamed now that the tiles were visible again.
Someone had tidied up my bathroom. Tidied, not cleaned. I pointed out the distinction to myself.
I was an untidy person. Not a dirty one.
In a matter of a few seconds, I took all this in. And then my gaze moved towards the someone.
She stepped out of the shower, grabbed an unfamiliar looking towel from the bar and covered herself. Not fast enough for my eyes to have missed the glorious sight of her nakedness though.
She was tall with long limbs and lean muscles. Dark jet-black hair plastered to her scalp, highlighting a high forehead and a sharp nose and wide mouth. My gaze collided with hers just as she moved the towel to cover her front. Dark brown eyes with long lashes that had nothing to do with mascara or lash extension treatments stared back.
I let out a soft breath. She was gorgeous. In the way that only got better and better with age and wisdom and all that shit.
Amma had mentioned another one of her old friend’s kid coming to stay with us a while back. Six or seven weeks ago. Grad students from India came and went through our house. Although that was usually during the last week of August when international students flew into the US.
Was this our new houseguest? This smoking hot stranger who was already giving me all the feels?
I rubbed my eyes, feeling warm and damp in places that had nothing to do with the steam. A weird sound escaped my mouth – a cross between a gasp and a cry and a sigh. I cringed at the sound and clamped my mouth so nothing else escaped.
“Are you okay?”
I’d invaded her privacy and she was the one asking if I was okay. She had such expressive eyes that I recognized the kindness before she shut down and her expression became one of blank calm.
“I’m sorry,” I finally mumbled. “I didn't know anyone was in here and the lock–”
“Does not work,” she finished. She shrugged, still clutching the towel to herself in a very casual gesture. “I have finished my bath if you want to use the bathroom. Just give me two minutes and I will dress and leave.”
Something about how strictly her eyes stayed on my face – as if she was determined to not let them stray, made me realize my own undressed state. Made some devil in my head want to tease her, draw out her reaction.
Okay, so I didn’t have the lean, toned look this hot stranger had but I liked my body well enough. Still, I turned a little to the side under the guise of reaching for the counter and presented my best angle. Then I lifted my hands and redid my perfectly messy bun.
There was something in her eyes that told me she was looking. A flash of desire, there but gone in a second, despite the obvious resolve to not look. “No rush,” I said, a slow hum of attraction unspooling in my lower belly. “I’ll use the bathroom upstairs.” I sounded husky, rough and my skin tingled with that awareness that I’d only read about.
One nicely rounded shoulder rose in a shrug. The light from the three bulbs highlighted the line of her shoulder to the graceful arch of her neck. Her skin shimmered with a golden brown glow.
I looked up at the light fixtures and blinked. Three bulbs shone brightly instead of the one I’d had for weeks.
She’d replaced the bulbs that had gone out. Now that I thought about it, even the living room and the kitchen in the basement had looked spotless. Not the mess I’d made before I left to visit Zen.
Who was this girl? Why was she fixing things for me?
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, realizing that I’d been gaping at her for too long.
“It is okay,” she said in a slightly louder voice, as if she meant to jerk my attention back to her.
I nodded. Stared at her one last time. Banged the door shut behind me. Barely remembered to pull on my sweats and the t-shirt before I ran back upstairs. Before I turned the corner on the steps, I looked back at the brass idol of my favorite god.
Was that a weak sliver of light playing tricks on me, or had Ganesha just winked at me?
Two
Farah
Farah Ahmed decided, with an uncharacteristic pettiness, that she was never going to get over the lack of shelves in the closet. Of all the things that she missed about the home she’d shared with her mother in India, she missed this simple, stupid thing.
Wherever she’d stayed in the last two months that she’d been in the US – from her father’s lavish home in New Jersey to her aunt’s modest home in Californi
a to now, Professor Rao’s home in PNW, apparently none of the houses could afford shelves in the closet.
As much as her favorite heroine of all time, Lizzy, had wondered at Lady Catherine De Burgh’s insistence that the Collinses have shelves, Farah would’ve sided with the haughty lady in this.
She hated hanging her things.
In the midst of hating things that didn’t deserve to be hated, she discovered a small almarah with three little drawers sitting on the floor of the closet. Finding it empty and lined with pink contact paper, she put her underwear in there along with a couple of cotton nighties and her neatly ironed kurtas with the newspaper still intact in between the folds.
It was ridiculous how she was hanging onto those pristinely folded cotton kurtas and pajamas, but she didn’t care. All the homemade snacks and pickles her two aunts had packed had been consumed within a month of her arrival. Her other clothes had been washed and dried in high energy tech machines amidst lavender scented sheets.
She raised her arm and sniffed her wrist. Even she was beginning to smell different. The only thing that smelled like home were those kurtas. She couldn’t bring herself to wear them and lose that.
Would she change so much that one day her memories of Mama would also become jumbled, like a creased photograph? And yet how long could she stand still just so she didn’t lose her connection to Mama?
With a sigh, Farah dropped onto the bed she’d already made twice and looked around the not-quite-small room. The mostly bare walls had been painted a soft pink that she’d have usually turned her nose up at. Even the fresh bed sheets she’d found in the closet had been baby pink.