A Match Made in Mehendi

by Nandini Bajpai

  “Simi, go get ready,” Masi says. “Take a shower, put on something nice. I want to show off my niece today.”

  “Okay.” I finish stacking the napkins and silverware I’ve been arranging on the table and walk home.

  Next door at our house, things are not so tidy. Our kitchen has been the back end for all the food preparation for the party. The counters are covered in platters and dishes, ready to be warmed up and carried next door at the right time.

  It smells heavenly. I grab a samosa off the counter and head upstairs. Sweetie’s sitting on my bed, next to the clothes Mom laid out for me—a purple embroidered kameez with a full dhoti salwar and a tasseled dupatta. I get ready in a hurry, listening to bursts of party noise pop up from next door and downstairs—laughter, chatter, kitchen clatter, cars pulling into the cul-de-sac, my dad greeting guests.

  “Stop pacing, Simi,” Navdeep yells from his room. “Go walk Sweetie or something.”

  Not a bad idea. I bound down the stairs with Sweetie following me. I pass Mom and Nanima, who are dressed and surrounded by guests.

  “Wait for me, beta. I’ll walk with you,” Nanima says.

  I wait for her to lace up her sturdy Bata shoes—she never walks without them—and then we head out into the sunshine with Sweetie. Nanima takes my arm and leans in as she talks so I can hear her.

  “Everything has been so busy, but I’m so happy today. My oldest granddaughter getting engaged to a wonderful boy. And my youngest granddaughter is starting to learn the family business. So much to be thankful for.”

  “About that, Nanima… I’m still not sure that I’ll ever be a matchmaker the way you all are. I love art. I’m pretty sure I want it to be my future.”

  “Then you should not give it up.” Nanima thumps her walking stick for emphasis. “No reason why it has to be a choice. Learn all you can about art. Learn all you can from your mother and masi. Do both. And who knows, maybe something else will come along that will make you forget both these things. Be open to possibilities.”

  “I’ve never thought of it that way.” I’m not sure when matching and art became such an either/or situation in my head, but talking with Nanima has lifted a weight from my shoulders.

  “I know your mother and masi have decided to start using the quiz software for the business,” Nanima says. “Growth is important. But I wonder, do you think there is a place for what we do in America?”

  “Yes,” I say. This is something I’m sure about now. “The quiz is a tool. One of many we can use to help us match people. It will let us expand the number of people we can help, because the more people we have in our database, the better matches we’ll be able to find. We can get so many more people to share their information if they can sign up online instead of coming in for a face-to-face interview. People from all over the country! In fact…”

  “What, Simi?”

  “I don’t think we should limit our clients to Desis. People are people.”

  “And love is love.” Nanima runs a hand gently over my head and smiles. “I’m tired now, Simi, and I want to save some energy for our party. Let’s go home.”

  The party’s just getting into gear as I finally make my way down, two hours after the actual start time. The yard is strung with glittering lights against a sunset-streaked sky, there’s a wooden dance floor laid out, and a bunch of settees—little couches brought in by the party planner—for people to perch on scattered throughout the fenced-in space. The November chill hasn’t quite settled in yet, so people aren’t even bothering with coats over their Desi finery. The DJ is blasting “Sadi Gali,” a Punjabi song from the movie Tanu Weds Manu. It’s one of my favorites.

  I spy Noah in the crowd, wearing one of Navdeep’s glitzy old sherwanis. He looks way more comfortable in it than Navdeep ever has. He did my makeup earlier, then helped me practice for the bridesmaids-versus-groomsmen dance-off and came up with random dance moves for the spontaneous boliyan that will likely happen today. Noah loves a good party. He does a little spin and hop—his version of bhangra—and then I realize he’s actually teaching the moves to Connor. They lift their arms like they’re screwing in light bulbs, then Connor grabs him and spins him and I can almost hear them laughing over the thump of the bhangra music. I knew tonight would be the start of something beautiful—but I thought it was Preet and Jolly.

  “Simi, there you are! Can you start doing some mehendi?” Masi asks. She points to a bunch of cones and some patterns for people to pick from. “We have one mehendi artist working on Preet and another to work on guests, but she’s swamped. Go help her, puttar.”

  There are at least ten women and girls waiting for mehendi. “I’ll take someone,” I say, sitting down next to the artists Masi hired. Kiran plonks herself down in front of me.

  “How’s it going with Marcus?” I ask as I get to work.

  “Fine.” She smiles. “Better than fine, actually. Did you know my dad coaches the Mayfield Mathletes?”

  “No!” I know her dad only as the granthi of our gurdwara.

  “Yeah, so he already knows Marcus, and I think he loves him more than anyone.” She grins, doing her best impression of her father. “‘Bloody math genius, that boy, I tell you.’”

  “That’s great,” I say.

  “All thanks to you, matchmaker. Oh, hey, Jassi!”

  I put the finishing touches on Kiran’s tattoo, then glance up to see Jassi in line, waiting for her turn. “It looks nice,” she says, studying Kiran’s mehendi.

  “Thanks! You’re up.” I offer her my design book. “What do you want? Flowers? Paisleys?”

  “Robots?” Navdeep says, leaning over my shoulder.

  “As if!” I elbow him, and he skips away, laughing.

  “Okay, yeah,” Jassi says, shrugging. “I’ll try something robotic.”

  “Um, are you sure?” I ask, cone poised over her palm. She nods.

  I make a quick sketch of Navdeep’s current robot, and she giggles. I add a few dots and zigzags around him. “Cute, huh?”

  “Yeah,” she says.

  Nanima peers over my shoulder. “Beautiful,” she says.

  “Jassi, have you met my nani?”

  “No.” She smiles at Nanima. “Namaste.”

  “Jeete raho, jeete raho,” Nanima says, her eyes twinkling. “Simi, add some hearts to that robot, no? It will suit!”

  “Okay. Jassi, you want?”

  “Sure,” she says.

  I squiggle a few on. Then: “Done!”

  A smile lights up her face as she examines her hands. “I can’t wait to show it to Navdeep!”

  That was random. I frown at her back as she hurries off.

  Or… was it? I turn to look at Nanima, my jaw dropping at the thought that…

  “These eyes may be old,” Nanima tells me, “but there are some things I can still see clearly.”

  “Oof—Navdeep and Jassi?! Some matchmaker I am! I missed a possible pair that was right under my nose.”

  “Sometimes you have to step away from things you’re very close to, or it’s hard to see them clearly,” Nanima says.

  “It’s just so hard to believe that someone might like my rude, annoying, obnoxious, scruffy big brother.…”

  “He’s not so bad!”

  “No, he isn’t,” I say. I’m going to have to do something about Navdeep and Jassi. Now that I’m thinking about it, they’d be great together.

  I busy myself finishing mehendi designs for as many people as I can. Mango-shaped paisleys, peacocks, lotuses, suns. There’re a bunch of women around me with mehendi-ed hands, asking for drinks since they can’t pick up anything until the designs dry.

  When I’ve gotten through the line at my table, I sit down next to Preet. Since she’s the guest of honor, mehendi designs swirl over her hands, arms, and feet.

  “Simi, you should get mehendi done, too,” Preet says.

  The mehendi artist I was helping earlier has a lull in people waiting for her. She holds a cone over my hand and looks a
t me inquiringly as I pick a pattern—sunflowers. The DJ chooses that moment to blast “Mehndi Laga Ke Rakhna,” from Dilwale Dulhunia Le Jayenge.

  There’s a commotion at the door, and a deep dhol drumbeat interrupts the song. Everyone jumps up and rushes to a window. The groom’s party has arrived. And in style!

  Jolly and his family have a couple of professional dholwale—traditional drummers—with them, and they’re singing boliyan, old Punjabi folk songs. The dholis’ colorful fanned turbans add four inches to their height. Everyone is up on their feet.

  “Baari barsi khatan geya see…”

  They start the call-and-response wedding song. Except, being Punjabi, you have to respond by dancing, not singing. Each verse calls on specific members of the bride’s or groom’s family, and if you’re called on, you have to dance—no wallflowers allowed!

  “Khat key liandhi GAA…”

  “Get my mom, quick.” Preet nudges me, because Gaa can only rhyme with Maa.

  I run off to grab Meera Masi and get back just as they’re finishing the boli.

  Yup, Preet was right. And Meera Masi has some moves! She spins and sways, hands up, shoulders skipping to the beat as a circle forms around her with everyone clapping along. Dad sticks his fingers in his mouth and whistles as people wah-wah the performance.

  “Simi, look at you, so grown-up!” An auntie pinches my cheeks between her fingers. I’m holding a drink in my free hand, so I can’t do anything to defend myself.

  Help me, Wahe Guru!

  “Sat Sri Akal,” says a boy’s voice coming from right next to me.

  “Suraj!”

  He’s dressed in crisp chinos and a blue button-down shirt. His hair is a little bit overgrown and curls over his collar adorably. I wonder how he would look if he grew out his hair long like a keshdhari Sikh. I think it would look really beautiful on him.

  The auntie lets go and pinches his cheeks instead.

  “Suraj, you’re so cute!”

  Thank you, I mouth at him. I think he just rescued me.

  “Suraj,” someone yells, “they’re calling you to dance! Go!”

  He doesn’t hesitate to step into the circle to dance. Jolly doesn’t have a brother, so that makes Suraj, his cousin, the default brother—“cousin brother,” as my mom would say. Also, this brah can really bhangra, because he’s killing it on the floor. Go, Suraj!

  When it’s over, he returns to me. “That was embarrassing.” My heart does a loop de loop as he grins sheepishly. “I’m not usually a dancer.”

  “You were great.” I offer him the unopened Limca bottle in my hand. “Drink?”

  “Thanks.” He takes it and opens it with a quick twist.

  “Simran, there you are!” Mom says. “They’re calling you out to dance!”

  I peer at the dance floor, and there’s Geet, dancing alone and awkwardly, looking desperately for me.

  Oh, right; I count as a sister, too!

  “See you in a bit!” I throw my arms up into bhangra hands and twirl onto the dance floor with Geet. Not to brag or anything, but I rock this. I jump and shimmy to the dhol’s beat, and I can’t wipe the grin off my face.

  After Preet and Jolly have exchanged their rings—they’re now officially engaged!—everyone helps themselves to the buffet dinner, squishing in wherever there’s a spare seat. But for some reason there’s no one at the little table Suraj and I find in a quiet corner of the garden.

  “It’s a nice night,” he says, leaning toward me and smiling. “No flurries recently, huh?”

  My cheeks warm and I smile back. “Not a single flake,” I say.

  “You know, we haven’t gone out yet. I asked, you said yes, but we never got around to going anywhere.”

  “There’s plenty of time,” I say.

  “Right. Sooo, next weekend?”

  “I have to work on Saturday, and my grandparents are leaving on Sunday. Saturday’s going to be huge. We’re rolling out the Matched! quiz to Shagun clients.”

  “No way.”

  “Way,” I say. “But maybe I could meet you for dinner. There’s the café in the new bookstore that just opened up. I love it there.”

  “Perfect. I’ll pick you up around six thirty?”

  “Just let me ask my mom first.”

  “Ask your mom what?” Mom says—I didn’t hear her coming up behind me.

  “Um… can Suraj and I go out for dinner on Saturday?”

  “Is anyone else going? Or is this a date?” Mom doesn’t even try to beat around the bush. She is so, so cringey! This is payback for me not telling her about Aiden, I think.

  “It’ll just be us,” Suraj says. “If that’s okay with you, Auntie.”

  “It’s fine, beta,” Mom says. “But Simi has a curfew.”

  “I do?” I ask. That’s news to me.

  Mom smiles. “It’s nine.”

  “Can we make it ten?” I pout. “I’ll still be home in time to hang with Nani and Nanoo before they head to the airport, promise.”

  Mom nods. She’s happy—I can tell. She wanders off toward my dad, leaving Suraj and me at our little table.

  “Let’s see your mehendi,” he says, turning my palm up. My hand is warm in both of his. I wonder what he’ll think of the design I chose. He glances up at me, a sudden surprised smile on his face. “A sunflower?”

  I nod.

  “I love it,” he says softly. Gently, he pulls me in toward him for a kiss. Except I’m so surprised, I knock over my cup of ginger ale before our lips can connect.

  “That’s not fair,” I grumble, dropping a wad of dinner napkins onto the spill. Being a klutz has trained me to always grab extra napkins. “You have to warn a girl first, otherwise she dumps her soda everywhere.”

  He laughs. “Is that the way it’s done?”

  I shrug, taking a deep breath. “Maybe try again, but go very slow?”

  “All right. Incoming, in very slow motion…”

  Slow. Delicious. Sweet like atte-ki-pinni.

  Even in this quiet corner, I think a couple of aunties may have spotted us, but right now, honestly, I don’t care.

  The root of family is love. The root of all love is friendship.

  —THE SHAGUN MATCHMAKING GUIDE

  chapter thirty-two

  Saturday morning, we’re all up early for breakfast. The kitchen is fragrant with the sizzle of aloo parathas and steaming cups of masala chai and buzzing with conversation, mostly about the engagement.

  “Such lovely photos.”

  “So much wedding shopping to do now.”

  “Food was fantastic.”

  “Manju, keep me up to date with your computer quiz, dheek hai?”

  I sit in the middle of the action, soaking up snippets of conversation and basking in the warmth and affection. It’s great to just listen to my crazy family chatting and laughing around me. I have a mehendi cone out, and I’m working on a project that I know Ms. Furst will love. It’s my drawing of Nanima and Nanoo by the angeethi, but I’ve traced the line drawing onto wood and I’m going over it in mehendi. I’ll weave in a border of swirling paisleys and change the smoke rising from the angeethi into paisleys, too. It’s going to be perfect.

  “Stop looking at those corny engagement pictures and check out my scans.” Navdeep is so over the posed glitzy family photos everyone’s gushing over. “I worked hard to get the whole book digitized before you left, Nanima. Here, see?”

  Nanima and Nanoo admire the digital scans of The Shagun Matchmaking Guide that Navdeep completed over the past few days.

  “They’re better than the original,” Nanima says. “You can zoom in and everything.”

  “Nothing is better than the original,” I say. I hold up my mehendi-on-wood masterpiece. It took me months to think this project up, but hardly any time at all to do it. “Ta-da! I’m done.”

  “So beautiful,” Nanima says. “I’ve never seen anything like it!”

  “Navdeep,” Mom says. “I need to talk to you, puttar! Come to the off
ice and explain what you’ve done with the feature I asked you to build.”

  “How come I don’t get paid like Simi was?” Navdeep complains good-naturedly. I laugh and follow them into the Shagun office.

  “We’re going to pay your college fees, no?” Mom says, and then she points to her laptop. “I need to be able to compare just a few selected profiles. I can’t do full batch runs for every new match—it takes far too long.”

  “I know; that’s why I set up the individual-match tab,” Navdeep says. “You can see how any one profile matches up against another you’ve picked out.”

  Mom sighs. “Simi, will you run a test?”

  “Sure,” I say. I grab Mom’s laptop, head upstairs, and plop down on my bed. I stare at the Matched! admin page. Who should I pick to match against each other?

  You are logged in as Simran Sangha. Pick a profile or profiles to match against, the screen prompts. Oh, the program’s set to reveal the data from Mayfield High—not Shagun data. I can still run the test Mom requested; I’ll just use my classmates instead of her clients.

  An idea occurs to me: If I retake the quiz, I can use my own profile to run the individual match Mom asked about.

  But do I really want to be matched again?

  I click on the drop-down menu to show available profiles.

  Four hundred and twenty-five Mayfield students are in the database.

  Why not add one more?

  I do it—I retake the quiz, answering the questions exactly as I did the first time, so the data remains accurate and unbiased.

  When I finish, there are four hundred and twenty-six available profiles. My MI is the same—a silver unicorn.

  I scan the names and icons and giggle as I think of who I could try to match myself against.

  Marcus? I bet we’d have, like, a 6 percent match.

  Ethan? Probably even lower.

  Amanda Taylor? We’d probably break the system and end up with a negative match.

  Then one name leaps out at me.

  Suraj Singh.

  My fingers hover over the keyboard. He’s already asked me out, so there’s really no point. And I’ll be bummed if we’re not a match, or a weak match. There’s a part of me that’s always wanted to know, though.