Well-Behaved Indian Women

by Saumya Dave

Simran shows her pictures from the engagement party, including family portraits where, at a quick glance, they look content.

  Nani’s servant, Kavita, a fifty-year-old woman who has been coming to her house for three decades, takes their plates and refills the chai cups. It doesn’t matter how many times Ronak and Simran visit India; they’ve never gotten used to the idea of servants. Even their parents have trouble adjusting to that now.

  “It’s so different being here alone,” Simran says. “Quiet.”

  “Of course,” Nani says. “Are you talking to your family yet?”

  “You know what happened?”

  “I think everyone in India and America knows. You made quite the show,” she says. “Your mom called.”

  Simran rolls her eyes. “I don’t even want to know what she said.”

  Nani smiles. “She’s just worried about you.”

  “No, she isn’t. None of them are. They just want me to live like them, instead of doing what I want.”

  “And what is that?”

  Simran wraps her fingers around her teacup and absorbs its warmth. “To do something that’s authentic to me. Have a sense of purpose.”

  “How do you plan to do that?”

  “I have no idea. All I know is that I need to read and learn more right now. See where I can contribute to something. Twenty-six was supposed to be the year I had everything figured out. Instead, I just feel like I’m wearing some strange version of myself.”

  Before Simran met Neil, Nani was the only person she could tell that to without being judged.

  “Oh, Simi,” Nani says, shaking her head in the same way she did when Simran was in third grade and cried to her after Matt Fowler yelled about her “stinky Indian food” to the entire cafeteria.

  “I know. I know,” Simran says. “It’s just that for my entire life, I thought I did everything I was supposed to do. But maybe I was some insufficient combination of rebellious and risk-averse, and now it’s all catching up to me.”

  Unlike Neil, Simran was never strong enough to accept anyone’s disapproval or any job without guaranteed health insurance.

  “I was bored with school for a long time, so I wasn’t giving it my all,” she tells Nani. “I saw it as this thing I was told—pushed—to do. And I thought it would work because it was about knowing people. But it wasn’t enough. I didn’t like collecting data and making experiments out of human nature. I only liked that people approved of it. Understood what I was doing.”

  “So do something else,” Nani says.

  “That’s what I tried to explain to everyone at home. I told them that I could maybe give journalism a thought. Research some topics for articles. They didn’t get it. Mom was the worst out of everyone. I can’t do anything properly in her mind.”

  “That’s not true. She just doesn’t want you to make things harder than they need to be, the way she did.”

  “The way she did? She’s always done what she’s supposed to. At least, until now. Did she tell you about how she’s thinking of leaving Dad? Moving away?”

  Nani looks out the window, toward the potted basil plants in her garden. “You should let her explain that to you, when the time is right.”

  Before they can continue on the subject, Nani asks, “How is Kunal?”

  “I don’t know,” Simran says. “He’s leaving for Costa Rica in a few days. He told me he doesn’t know who I am anymore or how to be around me. He’s never said anything like that before. He’s always said that we balance each other out. He’s practical, I’m emotional. He’s a straight shooter, I meander around everything. But I’ve never heard him question anything between us, about us, like that. Not that I blame him. But . . . our relationship has been through so much, and I don’t know if this entire mess is because we’re supposed to be tested on whether we can make it through.”

  “So that was the last contact you had with him?”

  Simran nods. “We agreed to take a little time to think, get some space, since we’ll both be out of the country. We set a date to talk about everything after he’s back from Costa Rica. August 20. Exactly ten months before our wedding date.”

  “I see.” Nani nudges another plate of chakri toward Simran. “Am I allowed to ask if you are still in touch with Neil?”

  Simran pictures Neil’s head shot alongside his latest column, which she might have read a dozen times on the flight. “I thought all of this would make it easier to stop thinking about him, but it hasn’t. In a way, I think he’s the only person who would understand why I had to do what I did. But right now, it’s better for me to have some space from everyone.”

  “Simi, what happened to you?”

  Simran props her hands under her chin. “What do you mean?”

  “You used to be so much more—what’s the word?—brave. Regardless, now you’re just so ‘Oh, my life is hard’ and ‘I’m just going to sit here and feel sorry for myself.’”

  “No, I’m not!”

  “Sure you are,” Nani says, giving the table a light slap. “Of course, I guess I should be glad that you aren’t handling your problems by drinking scotch or dating too many people at once or sleeping at work and not caring about family.”

  “Are you referring to me or the characters in Mad Men?”

  “Ah, right,” Nani says, as if it’s perfectly reasonable to confuse her granddaughter with Don Draper.

  Nani reaches across the table and puts her cool palm over Simran’s. “Now buck up. Stop being such a weakling. You have some difficult things you need to figure out, choices you need to make. And the way to do that isn’t to cower. You’re better than that.

  “You stood up to your entire family. That’s not easy. Your mother and I couldn’t do it. And even now, do you know how many people just take the life that’s handed to them, and then regret it when it’s too late?”

  Simran shakes her head.

  “Nobody can do the work you’ll have to do in order to grow and accept yourself. Only you can take that journey. But you’re not going to get anywhere by moping and feeling sorry for yourself.” Nani lowers her voice. “Now, come, let’s get ready to go to the school. I have your clothes in the bedroom.”

  They stop at the garden, which is now occupied with its standard afternoon members: black sparrows that flock from one clothesline to the next, gray monkeys with tails that curl like question marks, and Kavita squatting to wash the dishes and arrange them in the sun to dry. Many people around Baroda will stretch out for their afternoon naps.

  Nani guides Simran into her drafty bedroom. It’s dark and warm, with low ceilings.

  Specks of dust float in the sunlight. There are two short beds with stiff mattresses and folded cotton and polyester blankets. The floor is cluttered with cardboard boxes.

  “What’s going on here?” Simran asks.

  “I’m finally trying to organize everything. You accumulate so much junk over the years. Those”—Nani points to boxes labeled Simi—“have some things you can take back home.”

  Simran nods, and Nani says, “And I have your salwar kameezes in the bottom drawer of the kabaat.”

  Simran wears cotton salwar kameezes whenever she comes to India, partially because they’re comfortable and partially because they decrease the number of stares she receives for being an obvious foreigner.

  On their walk to the school, Nani waves at her neighbors and stops to talk to everyone. She introduces Simran to the tailor at the end of her street. They say hi to the owner of the local DVD store. (Nani knows about his three scandalous affairs, his mother’s irritable bowel syndrome, and where he gets his pirated DVDs, but she forgot his name.) She yells at the corner paan dealer for overcharging her yesterday. Mom told Simran that despite the expectations of widows in India, Nani only became more social after Nana passed away.

  Simran’s grandmother: charismatic, cultured, and ca
pable of beating the shit out of you if you offend her.

  There’s more sweat trickling down Simran’s stomach by the time they reach the school’s playground, which is a sea of dirt patches and rusty swing sets. The girls are dressed in navy blue and white uniforms, their hair slicked back with coconut oil and tied into pigtails.

  “Mimi Masi!” One of the girls runs toward Nani and gives her a hug.

  “Hi, Pallavi,” Nani says. “This is my granddaughter, Simran.”

  Pallavi waves and offers a shy smile.

  “Pallavi is the top student in her class.”

  “That’s great,” Simran says. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

  “A doctor,” she says, pointing her nose in the air, reminding Simran of what Mom may have been like at that age. Self-assured. Unaware of limits.

  “She’s learning how to read the story of Sita,” Nani tells Simran as Pallavi nods. “The right version, of course, not the one where Rama is esteemed for being perfect.”

  Out of all the Hindu stories Nani’s shared with Ronak and Simran, the Ramayana is her favorite, because of how it showed a man’s devotion to his duties and a woman’s ability to sacrifice.

  Rama, the king of Ayodhya, is forced to spend a period of exile in the forest. His wife, Sita, devotedly joins him but is kidnapped by Ravana, the conniving king of Lanka, and Rama’s enemy. Sita is eventually rescued, but she has to perform a series of tests that confirm her purity. She passes the trials, asserting that she didn’t have any inappropriate relations with Ravana, and Rama welcomes her back to the kingdom.

  Unfortunately, the local citizens start to doubt her and, in turn, criticize Rama for keeping a wife who had lived with another man. Despite his own faith in Sita, Rama realizes that he can’t be an effective ruler when his people discredit his choices. His dharma as a king overruled his dharma as a husband, and ultimately, he drives Sita out of the kingdom. She obeys and eventually raises two boys as a single mother. Her resilience and unwavering strength became the virtues that Indian women revered over generations.

  Pallavi finishes summarizing the story for Simran. When she walks away, Simran turns to Nani. “It’s amazing you’ve taught her all of that. She knows every detail.”

  Nani shrugs. “I try. She’s at the top of her class, but her parents can’t pay for her English lessons, so there’s a good chance she won’t get that far in school. She had an older sister here. They took her out of school once she started her period. Now she’s married. They could barely afford her dowry. That’s my main problem with our country. The minute a girl bleeds, she no longer belongs to herself.”

  Nani introduces Simran to some of the other girls. “Simran, do you want to tell them a story?”

  “Sure,” Simran says, moving away from Nani.

  Simran motions for the girls to come closer to her, but only two of them listen. The others rush to play hopscotch or sit on the dirt, their hands in their laps.

  “So, uh, have either of you heard of Goddess Kali?”

  Simran tries to remember the details Nani taught her about Kali years ago. But before she even starts, the two girls run away.

  “Hey!” she yells.

  Neither of them looks back toward her. Pallavi is leading her own discussion at the far end of the playground.

  Nani touches her arm. “You have to get started right away or they lose interest. Sometimes, their teachers don’t show up, so they stay out here for the entire day, waiting for their parents to pick them up. They’re fed up by now. Bored out of their minds.”

  “I don’t know how you do this.” Simran slumps her shoulders.

  Nani throws back her head and laughs. It’s the first time Simran has heard her laugh since she got here. “Come. I’ll show you the rest of this place.”

  They take a tour through the hallways, where a janitor asks Nani if Simran’s the granddaughter she’s been talking about.

  “I used to bring your mom here,” Nani says. “She was the only one of my kids who cared to come with me. The other ones were always bored. But she would walk around with me. When she was eight or nine years old, I told her not to tell my in-laws about these visits. She kept that secret without asking any questions.”

  “You never thought about working here after your in-laws passed away?”

  She looks over the playground, considering this. “By that point, it had been so long that I don’t even think it occurred to me. You see, most people eventually make peace with their lives, but that doesn’t mean that things turned out the way they wanted. And when you’ve been living in a certain way for so many years, you lose that faith you used to have in yourself when you were younger.”

  Just before Simran can tell her that might be one of the most depressing things she’s ever heard, Nani says, “But I’m happy with my life now. I have regrets, yes, but who doesn’t? Don’t trust anyone who tells you they don’t have regrets.”

  “You really are doing so much for these girls. Have you ever thought of doing more?”

  She furrows her thin, gray eyebrows. “Oh, no.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want to get any more involved in the politics of teaching at this school. All that corruption and fighting and getting pushed around. The administration is already watching me.”

  She shades her eyes with her hands and squints at the school’s entrance. “Let’s go before some annoying administrative person shows up to make fake small talk.”

  They say goodbye to the girls and head home. Simran realizes she hasn’t thought of home or Kunal or Neil all afternoon.

  At home, they slip off their chappals. Simran unlocks the wooden doors. She’s always loved the large double doors in old Indian bungalows, with their barrel-bolt locks that are on the top instead of the side, like American doors.

  Nani sits on her leather recliner. “Simi, can you get me some water?”

  Simran goes to the kitchen and opens the fridge. The inside door has bottles of boiled water, which Nani always has ready when they visit. During their first trip to India, Ronak drank water at a neighbor’s house straight out of a pot and battled a miserable, endless cycle of diarrhea and vomiting for the rest of the trip. Since then, he and Simran never drank water that wasn’t from Nani’s fridge.

  Simran pours some water into a steel glass. When she comes back in the living room, Nani is horizontal on the recliner.

  “I’m going to take a nap for a little bit. You’ll be fine, right?”

  “Of course,” Simran says. “Are you feeling okay?”

  “Yes, yes,” Nani says. “I didn’t sleep very well last night, so I just need a little rest.”

  “Okay,” Simran says, giving her a quick kiss on her forehead.

  Simran goes into her bedroom, closes the double doors, and unclasps her suitcase. In the inside pocket, she takes out an article she started last month: “Things Nobody Ever Told You About Being an Indian Adolescent Girl” by Simran Mehta.

  She spent three paragraphs talking about how Indian girls have to balance academic success, abide by their parents’ strict rules, and deny any desire to want a relationship. Then, she discussed how those things change when an Indian girl enters her twenties, and all of a sudden, if she isn’t thinking about a relationship, something is wrong with her. She included lines from celebrity media interviews and novels.

  Simran’s not sure if it’s being in India or time or a mixture of both, but she suddenly sees that the piece isn’t working. The message is strong, but the execution is poor. She folds it in thirds and tucks it into the bottom of her suitcase.

  A puff of dust fills the air when she puts her notebook on top of the dresser, next to tubes of Tiger Balm and Pond’s talcum powder. She starts opening the boxes labeled Simi. Two are filled with antique jewelry, Bollywood cassettes, and frayed Enid Blyton books, the ones she used to read on her
family’s trips to India. All of the boxes are stuffed with ghosts, items that have lost their purpose.

  On the other side of the room, there’s a pile of unlabeled boxes. Two of the boxes have faded kurta tops and saris. The box underneath them has black-and-white pictures of Mom and her sisters when they were younger.

  In one of the pictures, Mom is wearing a navy blue cotton frock and doing a curtsey. She’s grinning, and her baby teeth are missing. In another, she’s sticking out her tongue at the camera. Simran doesn’t remember her ever being this carefree.

  She looks at the picture again. There her mother is, playful and confident at once. This little girl had no idea she would move across the world, have an arranged marriage, find herself stressed and overwhelmed as she tried to balance the needs of the world with her own.

  Maybe Simran has seen glimpses of this little girl sometimes. In the car when she lets her hair down and hums to old Hindi songs or when she stretches out on the recliner and pretends not to be watching a marathon of Golden Girls.

  Simran puts the picture back into the box. There are also black-and-white pictures of the extended family, where Nana and Nani sit in the middle and nobody is smiling. Underneath them is a portrait of Mom and her sisters. They’re all wearing school uniforms similar to the ones she saw today.

  A few stray sheets of paper and dried fountain pens are amid the photos. Her mother’s old homework. Simran reads through her mother’s analysis of The Scarlet Letter, with her long, looped handwriting that has since flattened into exhausted doctor script.

  At the bottom of the stack, there’s a photo of Mom in her wedding sari. Simran lifts it up and studies the red dupatta over her head, the gold naath on her nose. Her smile is straighter than in the earlier pictures.

  Below that picture, there’s one of Mom during her wedding ceremony.

  Sitting next to a man who isn’t Dad.

  Simran stares at the picture again. At first, she’s confused. It can’t be real. Her mom, with her hands draped in maroon henna and the man who isn’t her dad, wearing a cream sherwani and bifocals. Bifocals. The fire between them. Nani and Nana on one side. His parents on another.