Saree

by Su Dharmapala

  To the people at Beautiful Silks, I thank you for your invaluable advice on the silk making process. And likewise to the Handweavers and Spinners Guild of Victoria for letting me lurk about like some kind of maladroit stalker.

  Last but not least, I need to acknowledge the support I received from my beautiful mother, Lalitha Dharmapala, who carried my world on her shoulders like Atlas as I wrote this book.

  If you loved Saree You’ll adore The Wedding Season. Read on to enjoy the first chapter …

  Meet Shani – she’s 32, single and has a job to die for and is very happy with her life. So why does everyone insist on trying to convince her that the only way to true happiness is meeting the perfect man?

  When Shani’s horoscope miraculously reveals that now is the best time of her life for marriage, her mother decides to take control. As the Sri Lankan wedding season opens she arranges a parade of suitors, in the hope that her unmarried daughter will salvage the family honour by finally finding Mr Right. But true life, like true love, can get very complicated.

  Amidst a riot of hilarious dates with would-be husbands, a stressful job and a neurotic mother with serious cultural baggage, her best friend is sliding into depression and Shani seems powerless to help.

  Through a flurry of curry, cricket, sarees, and weddings, Shani comes to learn that love comes in many guises – and that life is a one-shot game, even if you do believe in reincarnation.

  Praise for The Wedding Season

  ‘Lots of fun – A Suitable Boy meets Bridget Jones’s Diary with a bittersweet twist’

  – Kylie Ladd, author of Into My Arms, Last Summer, After the Fall and Naked

  ‘A fabulous debut: heart warming, with emotional depth’

  – Lisa Heidke, author of Lucy Springer Gets Even, What Kate Did Next, Claudia’s Big Break and Stella Makes Good

  The Wedding Season

  CHAPTER 1

  An Email

  Imagine this if you can: a single woman in her thirties who is happy. Nope, I didn’t think so. I didn’t think you’d be able to do it. But here I am, in my thirties, single and I am totally happy. I may be the only woman in the Western world in her thirties, single and happy; but I am honestly happy and unafraid to say it.

  My mind was buzzing with these mutinous thoughts when the lights changed and I gunned my BMW past the tram in a flawless execution of the Melbourne Tango, swerving hard to avoid the parked cars along Albert Park Road and somehow dodging an exquisitely coiffed office worker in stilettos trying to get across with her life intact.

  I glanced back guiltily; I hated giving tram drivers cardiac arrests on the job. Especially when I was on my way to work myself!

  A few hundred metres later, I turned down the narrow laneway that led to the cavernous carpark under my office in South Melbourne. I slowed down as I reached the guardhouse, reducing the volume of the Bollywood Beat track blaring through the surround sound system, and pressed the button to lower my window.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Shani,’ Abdul, the ancient car park attendant, said with an elegant little bow. I never bothered to hide my predilection for Bollywood music from Abdul; he knew all about my favourite vice.

  ‘Just call me Shani,’ I protested. ‘You know we don’t do any of this “Miss” stuff in Australia.’

  ‘That is fine, Miss Shani,’ he replied, wiggling his head. Abdul was of the old school and I doubted he’d ever call me by my first name no matter where we lived. I tossed my hands up in frustration. This suddenly reminded me of something.

  I reached to the passenger side floor, gingerly picked up a Harrods carry bag and carefully presented it to Abdul as if it were a nuclear bomb.

  ‘For you Abdul – chicken buriyani from my mum.’ Okay, so it was a tiny white lie. My mum had packed the fridge at my unit in Blackburn with rice and curry over the weekend, and I’d be completely curried out if it weren’t for the fact that I could flog my lunch each day to Abdul.

  ‘Thank you, Miss Shani,’ he said, bowing rapidly over and over again like a dashboard dog.

  My iPhone beeped at me as I entered the lift, telling me that I had somehow missed a call while I had been parking my car. I looked at my phone. Yup, it was Mum. I saw Max Ferguson, the other senior group accountant, do a quick jog to catch the lift, so I held the doors open for a moment.

  ‘Very nice,’ Max complimented me, a little breathlessly, on my wine-coloured, ruched Burberry knit dress.

  ‘Thank you,’ I smiled serenely – and coolly – back. Max was a bit of a flirt, and I wasn’t into office romances.

  ‘Good weekend?’ he wheezed, wiping his pudgy sweaty brow with an oversized handkerchief.

  Oh, how could I explain my weekend to Max?

  I was supposed to have met my older brother for a quick coffee at TGI Friday’s yesterday, during the tiny window of time he had spare during a trip down to Melbourne from Sydney. Except I was ambushed by a blind date my mum had sicced on me! I should have known that my yuppie brother would never be caught dead at TGI Friday’s.

  But I went anyway, and was sitting there, waiting for my dear elder sibling, when a complete stranger accosted me. ‘Are you Shani Devapura?’ the man wearing cream pants belted up to his chest and a stripy pink polo t-shirt had asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied warily. ‘Oh good. Your ammi said you’d meet me here,’ he replied with a gap-toothed grin. The evening went downhill from there.

  I couldn’t dump this debacle on poor Max, so I took refuge in a solid social lie and replied, ‘Fine!’ brightly and turned the tables on him. ‘So how was your weekend?’

  For my sins, I was treated to a ball-by-ball account of a cricket game Max had gone to at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

  The lift stopped with a soft ping at the fourteenth floor and I made a hasty escape into the luxurious confines of my wood-panelled office. Max had wanted my opinion on whether a certain player was a ‘chucker’. Sorry, but as far as I’m concerned, chucking is something that happens in a toilet bowl after a big night out.

  I fired up my computer, enjoying the plush neutral decor of my office overlooking Port Phillip Bay and deliberately ignoring a further three missed calls from my mum. I knew what she’d be up to, and I didn’t want to play.

  How could I make my mother understand that it was possible for a woman in her thirties to be single and happy? I had tried. Many times. But my mother seemed to think my unmarried status at the ripe old age of thirty-two was a cause for serious alarm – a code red alarm, complete with sirens, bells, whistles and defibrillator machine. I know it’s difficult for many people to imagine. But here I am, in my thirties, single and happy.

  For the record, I am not a lesbian either. Not that I haven’t seriously considered it in the past, attempted it once or twice – you can never know unless you try more than once – but alas, no. I just do not feel that way about women.

  It’s not as if I’m an unemployed burden on my parents either. I am the Senior Group Accountant at George Elliot & Co, a chain of upmarket department stores based in South Melbourne (trust me when I say I enjoy my staff discount card that I truly do enjoy it). I report directly to their Chief Financial Operations Manager. I own my own home and I have no credit card debt (no mean feat considering the above mentioned staff discount card).

  Unlike most other women who also seem to have it all, I am not a bitch either. I volunteer at a homeless shelter once every couple of weeks, I go to temple, and I donate blood regularly. What’s not to love about me? Just ask my mother!

  So why, if I am a totally happy, independent, heterosexual female of thirty-two years, do I still listen to my mum, and go out on the disastrous blind dates she sets up? Three words for you (four if you are being pedantic): I am Sri Lankan.

  Okay, okay, okay … I am an Australian citizen, with the certificate to prove it, but I am of Sri Lankan descent. Which means that we listen to our mothers. Not just because we love them, and certainly not because they cook and clean for us until they die – as t
hey constantly remind us. No, it’s the guilt factor. Sri Lankan mothers are guilt mongers to rival the very best in the field, including Jewish mothers and the entire Roman Catholic establishment.

  Happy to be at work, far from Mother’s interfering ways, I fired up my email and what was left of my post-weekend euphoria vanished like a packet of Tim Tams on a girls’ night out.

  An email from Mrs.Peiris@srilankans.com. Who the bloody hell uses their title in their email address?

  On cue, my phone rang. ‘Have you got the email?’ Tehara demanded without preamble.

  ‘Hot and smokin’ in my inbox.’ ‘I bet you a tub of Nuts About Chocolate that old woman Peiris has finally managed to flog off one of her daughters. And I bet you a second tub that it is Jayani, not Gayani.’

  Who bloody well names their daughters Jayani and Gayani? Oh, yeah, Sri Lankans do. My name is Shamini, the older brother I should have seen last night for coffee is Gamini and my younger brother, Gehani.

  ‘You know what this means though?’ I asked Tehara, thinking of the larger picture.

  ‘Yup, the wedding season is off with a bang this year! We need to catch up and coordinate, machang. When is a good time for you?’

  ‘We’ll see each other tomorrow night, like we always do.’ ‘Look here, I’m not bloody doing wedding season again without preparation. You know the other two won’t get any grief …’

  ‘Well, that’s because Amani is married like a good little girl and Una doesn’t count. Her skin’s so pale Dulux uses her as a standard for their pure white range,’ I replied distractedly, my eyes skimming over the week’s sales figures.

  ‘Well duh …’ Tehara’s beeper cut her off. ‘I’d better get this. I just sedated one of my patients.’

  ‘Oh darling, the only people who like hanging out with you are comatose,’ I teased lightly. Tehara was a psychiatrist who specialised in dealing with people with bipolar disorder, the really extreme cases who liked to swing from chandeliers.

  ‘Yeah, yeah … Come to the hospital around 1 pm and we’ll catch up. We need a good plan this year, machang.’

  ‘Okay, chief,’ I replied, hanging up.

  I clicked the email open and my heart sank.

  As I’d feared, it was a formal marriage announcement prior to the official hand-engraved invitation from the happy couple. Or the happy parents, more to the point. Old woman Peiris had finally managed to ‘flog off’ one of her daughters.

  I kept reading and my heart sank further. It wasn’t the younger, malleable, prettier sister who was about to get married; but rather the bane of my existence, the perfect example of a well-brought up Australian-Sri Lankan woman – Gayani.

  I said I was happy, but I never said my life was perfect. And as I took a deep swig of my morning latte, I realised that the ‘happy’ status of my life was about to get seriously challenged.

  About the author

  Su Dharmapala is a Melbourne based writer.

  She was born in Singapore and grew up between Singapore and Sri Lanka before immigrating to Australia in 1989. She completed her Bachelor of Arts (majoring in French and German) and Bachelor of Science at Monash University in 1997.

  After graduating from university, Su has worked in technology for some of Australia’s Fortune 500 companies.

  Saree is Su’s second novel. The Wedding Season was published by Simon and Schuster Australia in 2012.

  When she is not writing, Su is a political junkie with a passion for social justice and food. She lives in the leafy eastern suburbs of Melbourne with her family.

  Also by Su Dharmapala

  The Wedding Season

  SAREE

  First published in Australia in 2014 by

  Simon & Schuster (Australia) Pty Limited

  Suite 19A, Level 1, 450 Miller Street, Cammeray, NSW 2062

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  A CBS Company

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  Visit our website at www.simonandschuster.com.au

  © Su Dharmapala 2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher.

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

  Author: Dharampala, Su, author.

  Title: Saree/Su Dharampala.

  ISBN: 9781922052933 (paperback)

  Subjects: Saris – Fiction.

  Sri Lankan fiction (English)

  Sinhalese fiction – 20th century.

  Dewey Number: 823.48

  Ebook ISBN: 9781922052957

  Cover design by Christabella Designs

  Peacock cover image © Lynea/Shutterstock; peacock feathers pattern/frame © Fears/Shutterstock

  Internal peacock feather dinkus © Petrovic Igor/Shutterstock

  Internal design and typesetting by Midland Typesetters, Australia

  Map by James Mills-Hicks, Ice Cold Publishing

  The paper used to produce this book is a natural, recyclable product made from wood grown in sustainable plantation forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations in the country of origin.