Well-Behaved Indian Women

by Saumya Dave

  “Wow,” Simran says, motioning to her sofa. “That’s just . . . wow. I’m so happy for you.”

  “Me too!” Sheila says, in the giddy bride-to-be voice that she swore she’d never have. “I can’t believe it! After all the bullshit, it finally worked out. I guess things have a way of coming together, right?”

  Simran nods.

  “You’re the first person I wanted to tell,” Sheila says as she hugs Simran.

  She gazes at Simran’s floor, and her voice becomes quieter. “I’m so sorry for what happened at the salon. I want to move on.”

  “I want to move on, too,” Simran says.

  Sheila smiles. “And now, we can plan our weddings together, the way we always thought we would when we were younger.”

  “Sure,” Simran mutters. “But more than anything, I’m really proud of you for fighting through this. I know it wasn’t easy for you at all.”

  “No, it was hell. You more than anyone know how distraught I was. I can’t believe that I even thought of breaking things off altogether.”

  “Nobody would have blamed you either way, Sheila. It was an impossible situation.”

  “I know, but I couldn’t have gotten through it without you,” Sheila says.

  As Sheila walks to Simran’s kitchen, Simran mentally replays everything that happened at Kunal’s apartment. The anger builds as she hears him insulting her mother, her future plans. He needs to know that he also contributed to things getting fucked up. He made her feel inadequate. He became the type of person who wanted a traditional, subservient wife.

  But then she takes another peek at Sheila’s left ring finger. Did Simran give up too easily? Did she let the heat of an argument lead her to a decision she’ll always regret?

  “Do you, by any chance, have champagne?” Sheila asks.

  “I do.” Simran straightens her face and takes a deep breath. Gives herself a psychological dose of Xanax. There’s no need to ruin this moment.

  Simran opens her silver refrigerator. She doesn’t tell Sheila that she had picked out the bottle for her and Kunal to share before they left for India, so they could toast to their wedding shopping.

  Simran removes two glasses from the cabinet. She and Kunal were going to put white wineglasses, red wineglasses, and champagne flutes on their registry. She guesses she’s stuck with one type of glass for now.

  After Simran hands Sheila her glass, Sheila says, “There’s so much to celebrate!”

  “Cheers.” Simran raises her glass and feels a surge of relief and excitement. The future materializes in front of her, one that’s new and scary and different than anything she’s ever known.

  Sheila walks toward the sofa. Simran joins her. She yearns for a conversation with her best friend, a chance to be open and understood, and also to feel new.

  Nandini

  “Really? That’s it?” Nandini scoots to the edge of her new sofa in Baltimore.

  Simran nods. “Yes, that’s it.”

  “So you aren’t even going to try to see if things can work?”

  Simran’s head snaps up. “I have tried. A lot. No, more than a lot. More than you realize. And I’m done. Aren’t we supposed to be here to focus on you, anyway? The entire reason Dad and I drove to Baltimore for the day was to be able to see how you’re doing, not me.”

  “I see. So I can’t even ask if you’re sure about breaking off your engagement.”

  “God, Mom, I’m telling you I’ve made a decision that is already hard enough for me, and all you can do is challenge that? Make me feel worse?” Simran stands up and starts folding her chair. Nandini hadn’t found time to pick out anything besides the sofa, so Ranjit and Simran brought the folding chairs usually reserved for parties.

  “Oh, right. I’m supposed to just accept whatever you say.” Nandini’s heart beats quicker. “If I don’t tell you certain things, then who will? Do you think anyone in the world is going to care enough to challenge you?”

  “I don’t need challenging right now! How do you not get that?”

  Ranjit comes back into the tiny living room. Both Simran and Nandini have pursed lips, tightened fists. As if even one more word could lead to an explosion. Two plastic cups of chai are on the coffee table, untouched. Nandini hadn’t found time to buy dishes, either.

  Nandini widens her eyes at him. Say something to her.

  Ranjit sits on the other folding chair. “Simran, are you saying you don’t want to get married at all? Ever?”

  The gentle tone of his voice only angers her more.

  “I have no idea about if or when I’ll get married,” Simran says, throwing her palms in the air. “And I really don’t care. That’s the furthest thing from my mind right now.”

  “And you really told Kunal’s parents this?” Ranjit asks. “Just like that?”

  He asks the question partially because he wants to know and partially because he can’t believe it. His daughter had the courage to have that type of conversation?

  Simran massages her temples. “I did. I told you I would.”

  Silence coats the room. Nandini is now picking at her nails. Ranjit noticed this nervous habit back when Nandini was in residency.

  He leans back on the couch. “So, now what?”

  Simran puts her face in her hands. “Now we move on with life.”

  “Ah, right,” Nandini says. “We just move on.”

  Simran glares at her. She stands up and takes large, quick steps toward her purse. Nandini and Ranjit watch her walk to the bathroom. Within a few seconds, they hear the slam of the door.

  “What are we supposed to do with this mess?” Nandini asks.

  Ranjit raises his eyebrows. “Is there anything we can do? It seems like everything is already settled.”

  Nandini mutters something Ranjit can’t understand.

  He moves to the sofa and squeezes her hand. “I think what’s done is done.”

  “I think so, too,” she says, slumping into the cushions. “I just . . . I don’t know. . . . I can’t really believe it. This. After everything.”

  “I know. But these things are always unpredictable. Everything is, really. I think we’ve learned at least that much over the past year.” He gives her a knowing look, indicating that he isn’t just referring to their daughter.

  “Yes . . . but why does she have to do this now? She had time to get to know him. Years! And now she does this just a few months before her wedding?”

  He nods. “She did have time, yes.”

  “So then, what was even the point of dating?” she asks. “Do you think something happened? Something she won’t tell us?”

  “I don’t know. One thing is for sure, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “She’s capable of more than we give her credit for. Look at what she did for us.”

  Nandini sighs. “That’s true. . . .”

  She refuses to say what she’s thinking out loud: I left my family, and they fell apart. If I had stayed back, this wouldn’t have happened.

  Ranjit rubs his thumb across her fingers. His hands aren’t as rough as usual. The first time they met, when he came to Papa and Mami’s home for the meeting, she studied his hands while he sipped chai. They were clean and strong, but not abrasive. She wonders if that was the moment she started feeling something for him beyond an arrangement.

  “You should go talk to her,” he says. “Alone.”

  “Not now,” Nandini says. “Trust me.”

  Two minutes later, she sees Simran going into the bedroom. Nandini walks toward her. She opens the door without knocking. Simran is curled in fetal position on her mattress.

  Nandini stands there and soaks in her daughter’s long, thick black hair, the back of her blush pink sweat shirt. She might as well be back in middle school, in her bed at home, against the lavender sheets and stu
ffed animals.

  In a strained voice, without turning to face Nandini, Simran asks, “What is it?”

  Nandini hesitates for a few seconds and then sits on the edge of the mattress.

  She remembers how she felt just before Simran was born, an odd mixture of fear and relief. Ranjit was stuck in a surgical case and had promised her he would be there for the birth. But hours later, it was still only Nandini, the kind but firm Russian nurse, and a young female OB-GYN in the room. She thinks about the never-ending pushing, the forceps that had to be used for Simran’s head to finally emerge, the lacerations she endured as a result of her daughter stretching her too far from the very beginning.

  For several years, she replayed that night in her head and wished her husband had made it. But over time, she realized that that was how it was supposed to be. The two of them. Her mother had said the same thing: You can learn from moments long after they’ve happened.

  Now, Nandini asks, “Are you planning to stay in here until you and Dad go back to New Jersey?”

  Simran grips the edge of a plum pillow. “I don’t know.”

  “Okay . . . you have to leave soon to make it back at a good time . . . but if that’s what you want to do . . .”

  Simran sits up. “If that’s what I want to do? Is any of this really what you think I want?”

  Nandini shakes her head. “How am I supposed to know what you want? It’s not as though you told Dad or me about what you were going to do with Kunal.”

  She thinks Simran is going to yell, but to her surprise, she leans against the back wall and lowers her voice. “I see. You think it’s that easy. I’m supposed to just tell you what’s going on.”

  Nandini nods.

  Simran scoffs. “You really don’t get it.”

  “What don’t I get?”

  “For years and years, I’m not encouraged to talk about dating or anything related to it. So, I have to figure that out on my own in high school and college. And then, once I’m engaged, I’m expected to just deal with everything that comes along, because that’s what you and all the women in your generation had to do. I wasn’t used to talking to you about anything that was confusing or conflicting for me since I never did it before, and now, when all the crap hits the fan, I’m supposed to just talk to you? Just so you could have tried to prevent all of it?

  “Do you realize something, Mom? There’s an entire generation of us, the kids of arranged marriages, who are figuring things out as we go along. I know it isn’t what you had to go through, but it’s still not easy.”

  Nandini considers Simran’s point. Maybe there were things she could never understand about her. There were plenty of things she felt she could never discuss with her own mom. There still are.

  Simran wraps her arms around her knees. “And you want to know the best part? The irony? I realized my relationship wasn’t going to work for a lot of reasons, yes . . . but one of them was that I saw how you and Dad were able to work through everything that’s happened. I knew Kunal and I didn’t have that in us. So, that was great. My parents’ arranged marriage showed me what my own marriage was going to lack.”

  She collapses onto the pillows.

  “I should have done things differently. Then you wouldn’t have been in this position,” Nandini says.

  “No, you couldn’t have done anything about this,” Simran says.

  “I just don’t know . . . what you’re planning to do next.”

  “Mom, seriously? After everything I just said, that’s how you’re going to follow it up?”

  “Is that not a fair concern? To want to know what my daughter is doing with her life? You’re gallivanting off to India with Nani for God-knows-what and th—”

  “You know I’m going there to help her teach.”

  “Really? That’s it?” Nandini asks. “And you really have to be there?”

  Simran stares at her lap. “You know how stubborn she is. I feel like I can really be there for her. And I want to be. I need to be. You can say whatever you want. But nothing is going to stop me from going.”

  “So, you’re going to help her teach, and then come back . . .”

  “Yes . . . and I’m working on some things of my own and will see where they le—”

  Nandini cuts her off. “What things? Things that will lead somewhere? Be of help for you?”

  Simran peers at Nandini for a few seconds. “God, Mom, what are you so scared of? Is it about what people are going to think and say? Why does that even matter?”

  Why does that even matter? After all of Nandini’s years of constant fear—what if this isn’t good enough, what if that person gets offended, what if I’m seen as bad—what was the point? Simran makes sense. But maybe the inherent pressure and guilt of the culture had lodged itself deep inside her, to the point where she couldn’t even be rational about her own daughter’s decisions.

  “You’re right,” Nandini says. “It doesn’t matter. You’re the one who taught me that. And if I can’t do the same for you, if I can’t teach you to live for yourself and not for others, then what’s the point?”

  Simran stares at her, and for a second, Nandini thinks she has the perfect words to say. But then Simran burrows under the comforter and turns away.

  Nandini steps out of her bedroom. She takes one last glance at Simran. She isn’t crying. She was able to discuss her plans without hesitation. She’s different from how she was even two months ago.

  Maybe there were things she could never understand about her. But maybe, at the same time, there were plenty of things they understood about each other without even realizing it.

  Nandini closes the bedroom door. When she’s back in the living room, she sees Ranjit picking up the plastic cups of chai.

  “Look at how we’ve come full circle,” he says, glancing around her apartment.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Being in a small apartment. Drinking out of plastic cups. Barely any furniture. It’s like we just moved from India.”

  “You’re right,” she says, unsure of why this hadn’t occurred to her before. “We really have come full circle. Who would have thought that I’d need to be back in a tiny apartment, alone?”

  She pictures herself waking up for work tomorrow morning and feels a vibration of excitement. Everything about her day seems noteworthy: slipping into low black heels and her white coat, seeing patients in Greg’s (now her) clinic, going to the hospital for teaching rounds with the residents, coming home and sipping chai while reading the newest New England Journal of Medicine issue.

  Ranjit laughs. “I don’t think anybody could have predicted any of this.”

  Nandini smiles at him, and then her expression becomes grave. “I think I should come back to New Jersey with you. At least until all of this Simran stuff calms down.”

  He shakes his head. “There’s no need for that. And you have a lot going on here.”

  “I can take a day or two,” she says.

  “Really? How many e-mails have you gotten today?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Check,” he says as he points to her phone.

  Nandini opens her e-mail. There are twelve new ones today and five from yesterday. She’s invited to give a grand rounds presentation and a lecture to the GI fellows. There are a few e-mails from residents about how to interpret lab values, upcoming conferences, and an interesting journal article. She is now someone people turn to. Someone people respect. Someone she respects.

  “Seventeen new e-mails,” she says to Ranjit.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  Twenty minutes later, the three of them are outside, standing against Ranjit’s green BMW.

  Simran hugs her before climbing into the passenger seat. “Mom, don’t worry about anything.”

  Nandini nods. Before she can say anything, Simran hugs her
again. “I love you.”

  “I love you too, beta,” she says, not wanting to let her go.

  Nandini walks over to the other side of the car and exchanges a hug and kiss with Ranjit, something they wouldn’t have done months ago but feels natural now. Ranjit sits in the driver’s seat. An old Dev Anand song plays when he turns on the car.

  “Have a safe drive. Call me when you reach,” she tells them as they wave at her.

  Nandini remembers how she used to cry when she would leave Simran and Ronak to go to the clinic. She was always able to wait until she got into the car, but once the ignition started, the tears followed.

  And now, as she watches her husband and daughter drive away, she finds herself holding back tears again.

  When she’s back in her apartment, she lingers in the living room. The folding chairs are pushed against the wall. The evening sun streams through the blinds. It’s quiet without her family.

  Too quiet.

  She starts tearing up again.

  Stop being so emotional.

  But maybe it’s okay. There is no way to have everything, despite those irritating articles about women “having it all.” There would always be conflicting desires, certain parts of herself that had to be dormant so the others could emerge.

  And somehow, despite the years of feeling inadequate at work and home, her marriage evolved to allow this for her. New opportunities. Purpose. Growth. She and Ranjit have become different people.

  Nandini walks toward her laptop and settles onto the couch.

  She has work to do.

  Twenty

  Simran

  Your cappuccino,” the waiter says as he hands Simran a full mug.

  “Thanks.” Simran rearranges her frothy drink and avocado toast around the free tabloid she picked up on the way to Le Pain Quotidien. She notices that the woman next to her ordered two chocolate chip cookies but isn’t eating them. She’s simply taking a picture of them for Instagram and then pushing the plate away. What a waste of amazing cookies, Simran thinks. She guesses that’s why Manhattan thin can be just as extreme as Los Angeles thin.