Well-Behaved Indian Women

by Saumya Dave

  “Seriously? SERIOUSLY?!” She hears herself crossing into dangerous territory but keeps treading.

  She wonders what it would feel like to beat her fists against his shoulder. Her voice breaks, but she keeps rambling. “Did I ever think about that? What do you think I’ve been doing?! I drop everything when you’re free. For God’s sake, I live out of a fucking drawer in your tiny room where I’m not even comfortable half the time because I don’t have most of my stuff. I call your mom routinely because I want her to know she doesn’t have to worry about losing you when we’re married. And you? You usually can’t even send me a text during the day! And now, I tell you I see myself traveling and actually doing something with my life, and you can’t even promise me you’ll be supportive!”

  Both of them stay quiet but keep eye contact.

  “You know what, Simran?” he asks. The anger from before is clearly there in his eyes, but it’s distilled with a layer of sadness, which is even more heartbreaking. “I looked through all of your Facebook pictures the other day, and I realized that you smile differently with me than you do with other people.”

  “What do you mean?” Simran asks, surprised that he even took the time to do this. Kunal rarely goes on Facebook.

  “You just look forced with me, but in other pictures, you tilt your head, laugh. . . .”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t want it to be that way. But what if we’re just not right for each other?”

  “Ugh,” he grumbles, as if to say, Not this melodramatic crap again.

  “No, I’m being serious. Don’t you ever wonder that?”

  Kunal lowers his eyebrows. “No, I don’t. You know why? Because I love you. I know I want to be with you. I always have.”

  “I love you, too,” Simran whispers.

  He lowers his shoulders and exhales.

  Suddenly, he seems to morph into his younger self. He’s the boy waving at her before scoring the winning lacrosse goal, the boy who snuck into his basement to call her late at night, the boy who kissed her in the back seat of his beat-up Honda Accord. And that’s when it occurs to her: a relationship can be at its most beautiful and raw at its most desperate point.

  Simran can tell by his soft expression that he isn’t taking her seriously, so she takes a deep, nervous breath. “We should break up.”

  “Just stop,” he urges. “Okay? You can’t pull these threats whenever we hit a rough patch. Sweetie, you’re emotional, and you’re just jumping to an extreme that we both know you aren’t going to follow through with. I mean, look at your whole situation with school and how you quit. Damn it, you can’t just quit—or say you’ll quit—on things when they get difficult.”

  She runs her hands through her overly dry-shampooed hair. Sure, they will both make more of an effort . . . at first. But with enough time, their usual equilibrium will ensue: Kunal will slowly inch back into complacency, and she’ll keep picking fights to try to kick him out of it. Despite this, they’ll still find a way to remain pathologically committed, more out of a fear of failure than anything else.

  Simran says some of this to Kunal, and he shakes his head while squeezing her hand. “That’s not going to happen. I promise you it won’t be that way. You’re my future wife. God, I need you.”

  Within minutes, their emotions translate into something physical. He runs his hands down her waist, lingers on her neck. She doesn’t want to fight. She doesn’t want to say these things. She loves this boy. This man. Her man.

  Their kisses are ravenous and desperate, in vivid contrast to their shy first one. Kunal tastes like green tea and cherry ChapStick. She digs her nails through his hair and feels his large hands cup her butt and pick her up off the ground. He wraps her legs around his hips.

  Simran gets off him. She squeezes her eyes shut and opens them. Kunal’s still standing there. His shoulders are lower now, and she draws an imaginary line down them with her eyes. Seven years of her life stuffed into this guy’s shoulders.

  “I have to go.” Simran slips the ring off and places it on his desk. The tears start to come when she sees it against the dull wood. She never thought they’d get to this place, but who ever really does?

  “Simran,” he says, finally registering her gesture. “Don’t do this.”

  He digs his fingers into her arm as a mechanical plea. They pull her toward one direction while something inside her points toward another.

  “I’m going,” Simran says.

  She loves Kunal. He knows her in ways nobody else ever will. But if she doesn’t go, they’ll both hold each other back. She takes a deep breath and stabilizes her legs as every part of her seems to lunge into a free fall. And for the first time since they’ve met, she walks out on them without looking back.

  Nandini

  “How exactly does this all work?” Charu asks Nandini.

  “It just does.” Nandini shrugs her shoulders as if Charu asked her about an appliance and not her life.

  “So, you’re still going back and forth between New Jersey and Baltimore while Ranjit stays here?” Charu asks the question with disbelief, as if she wasn’t already aware of this, as if asking again and again would make Nandini change her answer.

  Nandini empties a bag of Indian snacks into tiny, hand-painted bowls. “Correct.”

  She hates to admit that it still stings when people judge her. But over the past several months, it has affected her less.

  Nandini invited Charu, Payal, Sonali, and Preeti over for dance practice. They’re supposed to find two Bollywood songs to perform at Simran and Kunal’s reception. So far, Payal has insisted on “anything Priyanka Chopra starred in,” and the others seem fine taking her lead.

  “I think that’s so nice!” Payal exclaims. “Can you imagine? A new life once the kids leave the house? We all dream of it”—she gives Charu a look as if to say, You do it, too, don’t lie—“but you’re the only one who has done it! I mean, I always said I’d move back to India or get back into my singing, but here I am, still in the same place. Tell me, are you enjoying this?”

  “I am.” Nandini feels the weight of her words. I am enjoying my life. “I’m learning a lot. And I actually just found out that I’ll be speaking at the national American Medical Association conference.”

  “Wow!” Sonali says. “Congratulations! I wish I could do something like that.”

  Nandini had a panic attack when she first heard she had been picked to speak. Luckily, she was alone, so nobody saw her as she became dizzy and disoriented. Her breathing quickened as she thought of how Greg would never know, that her own mother wouldn’t be able to hear her. Then she pictured herself at a podium, stumbling over her words and not knowing how to answer any questions from the audience.

  “I think it’s possible for all of us to do the things we wished to do. It won’t look the way we thought it would, but it can happen,” Nandini says now.

  “But some of us consider our children and families,” Charu chimes in. “I think it’s important that we’re there for them and making sure we’re not being selfish.”

  The word “selfish” hangs in the air. Sonali’s eyes dart toward Preeti.

  Ignore her, a voice in her head says. She’s trying to get to you. Mami and Nandini’s therapist used to tell her that she had to choose what to give her energy to. And in this moment, she could choose not to give anything to Charu.

  But then she remembers when Charu gave Simran a bottle of Fair and Lovely and warned her to “not become too dark” and how she told her to hold on to Kunal because he was “out of her league.” For years, Charu has been trying to scare Nandini and her daughter. Enough is enough.

  “Just bitch her out already,” Simran told Nandini on the phone the other day. “She needs to be put in her place.”

  At the time, Nandini told Simran to remember to be respectful. But now, she thinks her daughter had a point.
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br />   “Oh! Another dig at me. That is what you do best, Charu, isn’t it? Good for you.” Nandini hears the words come out of her mouth like a verbal avalanche.

  Mami and Simran would have said, Good, shut her up for once. Yuwa would have been proud of her and given her a high five.

  But Sonali and Preeti have their mouths open in disbelief. Payal has a gleam in her eyes. Is she giving Nandini a nod of approval? Was it possible she wanted this to happen?

  Nandini hears the creak of the basement steps. Two seconds later, Ranjit approaches them, holding a tray of mango lassi. “Why is it so quiet in here? Where’s the music? Aren’t you supposed to be practicing a dance?”

  The women’s eyes dart between Nandini and Charu. Just as Charu is about to say something, Payal interjects. “We were just talking about how wonderful it is that Nandini was chosen to speak at a conference. And that she’s doing what she’s always wanted to do.”

  “She is,” Ranjit says. “It’s been a fun change for us. What do the kids who date call it? A long-distance relationship! We’re in a long-distance relationship.”

  “Yes, we are,” Nandini says. She refuses to look at Charu. Let her scowl. Let her give her brother heat for supporting his wife.

  To her surprise, Charu clears her throat and says, “I’ve got to get home.”

  Nobody protests, and Ranjit doesn’t even seem to notice any tension. Nandini breathes a sigh of relief as she hears Charu’s quick footsteps going up the stairs and then out the front door.

  Later, Nandini will go through what happened with Simran, Mami, and Yuwa. All of them will find their own ways to encourage and congratulate her. Over the past months, she’s realized that she doesn’t have to go through everything alone. It’s okay to have a tribe.

  “Everything okay?” Ranjit asks.

  Sonali, Preeti, and Payal nod.

  “It’s more than fine,” Nandini says, and for the first time in a long time, she means it.

  Nineteen

  Simran

  Once Simran is outside Kunal’s apartment, she strides from street to sidewalk, feeling unrecognizable, like a stranger to everyone, even to her own self. She clutches the side of a brick building and grabs her stomach. Don’t throw up. She sits on the sidewalk and tucks her head into her hands. It suddenly seems too warm for December in New York. She unzips her coat, airs out her sweater dress.

  Manhattan swirls around her. A middle-aged Hispanic man arranges vegetables in their brown boxes as if they’re gems on display. Children are bundled in winter jackets and drinking hot chocolate. A young, brunette couple sits on a bench, their gloved hands intertwined. They’ve definitely had sex.

  Yes, go be happy. At least someone should.

  Simran’s not sure what she’s thinking as she pulls out her phone and dials her parents’ number.

  Dad picks up on the first ring. “What’s going on, beta?”

  Time to rip off the Band-Aid. “Kunal and I are over. For good.”

  “What?” Simran hears a click that indicates their conversation is now on speakerphone.

  “Hi, Mom. Dad, I was saying that I broke up with Kunal. We’re not engaged anymore.” Simran hears the words come out of her mouth and hang in the air. Everything’s slower, as if she’s drunk. She even throws in a “cancel your India tickets” statement, in case anything is unclear.

  “Why is this happening?” Dad asks. Simran knows she won’t hear her mom’s voice.

  “It just is. There were things we’d been ignoring for a really long time. Things that would have been difficult for both of us to live with.”

  “So then Kunal also wanted this?”

  Simran sighs. She must be sick. Yes, that’s it. That’s the only reason she can say this so quickly. “Not exactly. I made the decision. But it’s right for both of us.”

  “Why don’t we all talk? You, Kunal, us? We ca—”

  “No,” Simran says, cutting her dad off. “There’s nothing left to talk about. I’ll call his parents myself and talk to them.”

  “Is there . . . someone else?” he asks.

  “No, this has nothing to do with anyone else,” Simran says.

  “What will we tell everyone?” Dad whispers to Mom.

  Maybe Mom will get it. After everything they’ve been through this year, everything she’s been through in her life, this can’t possibly rattle her.

  Mom clears her throat. “Oh, just forget it, Ranjit. We don’t need to worry about everyone. Obviously Simran isn’t worrying, so why should we? Simran, I don’t understand. You picked the person you wanted to marry, all on your own. You went behind our backs, for years, to date him, and then we accepted that, because you were so determined. We never pushed an arranged marriage on you because we thought we taught you the value of commitment. And now you just decide to walk away? Because things are difficult?”

  “Mom, we literally had a discussion when we were at that diner months ago, you know, about how you didn’t want me to struggle with anything the way you did.”

  She scoffs. “And you haven’t! You think you’ve had to deal with anything close to what I’ve been through?”

  There are so many times when Simran thinks her mom understands her, they understand each other, and then, poof! They’re back to square one. She doesn’t see the contradictions in her own words, the impossibility of pleasing her.

  “Do you think the chance to marry someone comes every day?” Mom asks. “Do you realize what this means for any future potential man who may come into your life? What you’ll have to explain?”

  “I do,” Simran says, and then adds, “And don’t worry. This doesn’t mean you’ve failed as a parent.”

  Simran regrets her words the second they come out. She shouldn’t provoke Mom. She hears Dad sighing as if he’s thinking the exact same thing.

  “Ha, as if you know anything about parenting. What’s the point of even having children, Ranjit? And sacrificing everything to give them a life here? They take all of the wrong values from America. We were better off staying in Baroda. At least then our daughter could have had a sense of right and wrong.”

  Simran’s surprised by her own sudden sense of calm. She doesn’t need to react to anything Mom’s saying. This is a natural, expected consequence of telling her shocking news. And as strange as it seems, it’s reassuring to hear her parents interacting with each other, aligning, being normal for once.

  “Mom, Dad, I know you’re going to be angry—livid—with me for a long time. Maybe even longer than I realize right now. But at some point, I know you’ll understand that I had to do this. Not to hurt or disrespect you but to stand up for myself and have the type of life that’s right for me.”

  There. Simran stuck to the script. She hangs up and stays in her spot, staring at the phone. Nobody tells you that when your identity begins to betray you, every part of you revolts.

  When she and Ronak used to attend Hinduism classes at the mandir, they’d often learn about the theory of reincarnation, the idea that you can come back with an entirely different self. She wonders if people are also capable of being reborn emotionally throughout each lifetime.

  Simran stumbles into her apartment. The first thing she notices is Kunal’s old anatomy textbook. It’s one of his slimmer ones, only a couple hundred pages, none of them highlighted or tabbed (he finds that distracting).

  His go-to pen is inside the book. She thumbs the engraving. NYU School of Medicine. That’s when the pain grows roots. It stretches across her chest and infiltrates her organs. She collapses onto the floor and hears her sobs as if they’re coming from someone else.

  There’s a very good chance that her life will never be okay. She’s read those stories of people who took a turn for the worse with just a few events. There’s a thin line between a life to be proud of and a life that destroys you.

  Then there’s a banging a
t her door. Assertive knuckles against concrete.

  Kunal.

  She takes brisk steps toward her door. Everything can be okay again. Who cares if they have deep-rooted issues? Anything has to feel better than this. There are millions of women in this world, even in just New York, who would die to marry a future doctor who loves his mom.

  Simran opens the door. It takes her a second to register the frizzy hair on the other side.

  Sheila. She’s wearing a light blue sweater and brown dress pants, no jewelry, and some eyeliner that has smeared.

  “I know you’re still mad at me,” she says. “But I need to talk to you.”

  “Did Kunal call you?” Simran asks, standing to the side to let her in.

  Sheila frowns. “Kunal? Why would he call me?”

  “No reason.”

  They stare at each other for a couple of seconds.

  “So, what’s up?”

  “Are you okay?” Sheila’s eyes move from Simran’s hairline to her cheeks, which Simran knows must be some shade of pink.

  “Uh, yeah. Long day.”

  “You sure that’s all?”

  “Uh-huh.” Simran can’t form words without the risk of crying. “Why?”

  “Well . . .”

  Sheila smiles and places her left hand against her cheek, just slowly enough for Simran to catch a wink on her ring finger.

  “OH MY GOD,” Simran says with a gasp, at the same time that Sheila yells, “ALEX PROPOSED!”

  They both shriek, and Simran grabs Sheila’s hand to examine the one-carat emerald-cut diamond set within a halo.

  “When did this happen?”

  “Just this morning. He asked me while we were reading the Times and eating breakfast. It was perfect. No big performance or flashy scene. Just us.”

  “And your parents?”

  “Oh my god, that’s the even crazier part! You know how Alex and I had met up with my parents a few times? Apparently he had been calling them on the phone and even saw them twice without me. Then, my dad’s best friend from med school, whose daughter married a German guy, reasoned with my dad about why this was a good idea and how even an Indian guy can be shit and blah blah blah.”