Her mind was wandering. This is what happened when she came to temple. Most of the time, she would conjure up characters and scenes; if she could have gotten away with it, she would have kept a small notebook with her and jotted down these ideas. Ranjana had not brought a dupatta but had a maroon wool scarf that she wore over her head. She wondered if describing blood as a maroon scarf might work. No—a maroon dupatta. That was culturally appropriate for the story.
She was so lost in her thoughts that she didn’t notice at first that Harit was glancing her way. She had thought herself out of his line of sight, but he had shifted his legs so that he was tilted in her direction. He nodded his head slightly, in a way that indicated it was the last in a series of nods that he had tried to direct toward her. She nodded her head back in turn, felt the nervousness rise in her again. She looked at Mohan. Harit saw her look and then looked at Mohan, too. He faced forward for the rest of the puja.
Harit had probably gotten to know Preeti at the temple. Now that Ranjana saw him here, even though he was merely sitting and watching a puja, she realized that he seemed almost as out of place here as he had at the restaurant. She would have thought a place like temple would be a natural fit for him, but the unease of his posture made his reticence more evident than ever. She was overcome with sympathy for Harit. She had made her way through this country with the help of various Indians around her, and she wondered to what extent Harit had that kind of support system. Maybe Preeti had extended some kindness to him, and here he was, supporting her, his tenuous acquaintance, doing the only thing he knew how to do—to pray among others.
What if she had come to the States by herself, with no one to guide her? True, Harit had come with his mother, but Ranjana was thinking of people her own age, people who could share her experience. If you didn’t have a family member to steer you through this mess of a country—and it was a mess—then what would happen to you? You would become the quiet, confused dining companion that Harit had been.
She had mistaken her budding friendship with Achyut as the logical replacement for Prashant’s absence. But she saw now that maybe she could contribute to the greater good of her little world if she directed her kindness at Harit, a fellow lost soul.
* * *
The puja ended, and Harit was not quite sure how best to proceed. He had come here with hopes of seeing Ranjana, and upon seeing her, he felt an instant sense of communion. Nothing like this had happened since Swati’s passing. Despite his interactions with Teddy, he didn’t feel himself understood by anyone, but his dinner with Ranjana had assured him that he was a viable person. That was the word that kept coming back to him—viable. He was living as if incidental to the world around him instead of having an active part in it. Ranjana could help him change that.
He was overthinking this evening. Yes, he needed to figure out whether or not Ranjana’s husband knew about their dinner, but it was no big deal. Indians met other Indians all the time. Meeting other people was not something that he did with any great frequency, but he could interact with Ranjana and her husband if he simply pretended that he was like everyone else.
The few moments after a puja ended were always fleeting, and he did not want to end up in some situation where all they did was say hello. He approached her, and her greeting betrayed no trace of deeper understanding. Her husband was in conversation with another man, a heart surgeon whose name Harit had forgotten, so he and Ranjana had a moment to themselves.
“How are you, ji?” he asked.
“Very well,” she said. “I apologize for disappearing. It has been rather hectic at home.”
This was a compassionate response because it directed blame at her instead of allowing any to come his way.
“How have you been?” she asked. It was a question he always found comical. As if there were any particularly intriguing answer anyone could give.
“Busy at the store,” he said. “And you?”
“A doctor’s office is always busy,” she said. “People always getting sick.”
“Cold season?” he said, proud to have used this phrase.
“Yes,” she said.
“Is this your husband?” he asked, sensing that the conversation between her husband and his companion was making terminal overtures.
“Yes, it is. He comes home so late from tennis that I’m not sure I told him about our dinner!”
Perfect. She had helped him.
Her husband approached. He seemed gruff. Perhaps Harit was projecting a common stereotype onto Ranjana’s husband—that Indian professors, more than any other type, had a haughty manner. The broad-chested stance that her husband took, even though he was very slight, even though he was clearly trying to emphasize his defiance, reinforced this idea.
“Ji, this is Harit Sinha,” she said. “He is a friend of Preeti’s.”
Harit did not exactly love the fact that this was the introduction she gave him, but he understood why she phrased it this way.
Her husband inclined his head and pulled his pants up, his thumbs and forefingers pinching at the back of his waistband, which meant Let’s hit the road.
“Namaste,” Mohan said. “Are you new to the area?” He clearly felt obligated to ask this, given the flat tone of his voice.
“No, I have been here for a few years,” Harit said, shrinking the tenure he’d had in the area so as to appear more agreeable. “I work at Harriman’s.” He appended this fact randomly, courtesy of his nerves. Her husband reacted accordingly, his brows raising, his head nodding to indicate that he knew the place but had no cause to value it.
“We would love to have you and your mother over for dinner sometime,” Ranjana interjected.
He knew why Ranjana had said this—compassion, again, as well as an effort to ease the conversation along—but it stopped him cold. It was something he had not even considered as a possibility, the idea of taking his mother somewhere to meet potential friends. Of course, he thought often of his own home and how bizarre it would seem to visitors, which is why he did not bring others into it. But with this offer of dinner, he foresaw the challenge of making a friend of Ranjana: the little string of conversations like this one, the folded paper plates and tousled napkins, the head nods and kowtows, the clink of bangles and the pulling of waistbands, the subtle jokes and confusions, the mystery of his mother and her blankness, the secrets of his rum and Cokes and tangled saris.
He could see that Ranjana understood his discomfort, in the way that she said her good-bye and then bustled away with her husband. It was as careful yet respectful an exit as she could have made.
As they disappeared down the wide temple steps, he realized that he still didn’t know her husband’s name.
STEFANIE HAD WRITTEN A SECTION containing as many adverbs as it did mermaid scales, and Ranjana wanted to scream. Sometimes she wondered why she even came to this writing group, why she endured these strange people week after week. But she knew why: she needed a reliable tether, something to guide her. To lose herself at her computer and not have any outlet other than that was dangerous. She knew that people went to therapy to talk through their struggles, since worry led to off-putting behavior if left unchecked, so it was necessary for her to vent her literary frustrations here. Yet at times like these, when Stefanie was tugging at her daggered necklace, her neck practically painted in hives, her long nails scraping against the paper in her hands—it was times like these when Ranjana thought of turning to crime novels, of writing her own Dexter-like serial killer just so that he could prey on such people.
She wished that she could bring Seema to this workshop. Oh, the laughs they would have. There was practically no intersection between a woman like Seema and Stefanie apart from outspokenness and kohl, but Seema could have seen Stefanie as a scientific study, a fun organism to observe. Instead, Seema constantly chided Ranjana for continuing to go to the class. “If you’re better than the people around you, it’s time to go to a different class,” she would say, and then Ranjana would
call Seema out on her own yoga class, and then they would keen at the cyclical routine of their complaints, the fact that they simply continued to find new ways to malign the same old things.
Meanwhile, here were these classmates, writing about the same old things. How many times had Stefanie written about mermaids? At least a dozen. Cassie, her face especially sallow today, as if the sarcasm had sucked the blood from her cheeks, was massaging her temple with one hand, the other clutching her stomach. Wendy was staring at the ceiling. Colin was cleaning his glasses with the bottom of his Return of the Jedi T-shirt. The crumpled pages in Ranjana’s own hands were an accordion of exasperation.
Then Stefanie stopped. The silence resounded with the sharpness of a halved sentence, and Ranjana had no idea what that sentence had been. Stefanie was staring right at her.
“You got a problem?” Stefanie said. She was still pulling on her necklace.
“Pardon?” was all Ranjana could think to say.
“If you were any less interested in my book, you’d be dead,” Stefanie said.
“Now, now,” Roberta said, her voice scooping with surprise. “Stefanie. Ranjana was paying attention.”
“No, she wasn’t,” Stefanie said. “What just happened? What part did I just read?”
“Don’t blame her for the fact that your book is boring,” Cassie said. Ranjana had never loved her more.
“Cassie,” Roberta said, rising in her seat and putting her hands out, as if calming an angry group of animals. “Ladies, please. Where is this coming from?”
Oddly, Stefanie started laughing. “I don’t even know why I bother coming here. I’m clearly the only one who takes this seriously.” Cassie made the beginning of a retort, her mouth popping open, but Stefanie was at the ready. “And don’t even try to pretend like you take this seriously, Cassie. All you do is sit there and act like a sourpuss. I like writing erotic thrillers. It’s what I do. Leave it alone.”
“Stefanie, I really do think that you are mistaken,” said Roberta. “Ranjana, you were paying attention, weren’t you, dear?”
Never had Ranjana wanted to be a bitch more than she did right now, but she shuddered to think how much longer this outburst would last if she engaged with such pettiness. So she said as evenly as she could, “No, I wasn’t paying attention. And I am sorry, Stefanie. It is not you. I have a family member who has been very ill, and it’s put me in a bad mood.”
An easy fib, and it had the desired effect: Stefanie held her tongue, and there were a few seconds of silence as Roberta reemphasized her hands, as if patting the anger to the ground. Stefanie started reading again.
Afterward, Ranjana called Seema from her cell phone and asked to see her right away.
Seema was at her dining room table reorganizing one of her many cosmetics cases. She bought lipstick like it was Chapstick—frequently and almost medically—and the table had become a shiny arsenal of tubes and wayward pink splotches.
“Can you believe this woman?” Ranjana asked, blowing on her tea and remembering her awkward spill from weeks before.
“Yes, I can believe it,” Seema said. “I have finally decided that nothing can surprise me about women in this country. Nothing. Yesterday, I was standing in line behind a girl at the grocery store, and one whole cheek of her bottom was sticking out from her shorts, they were so short.” The way Seema said “cheek of her bottom” in Hindi, while caressing the imaginary protrusion in the air, made Ranjana’s tea squirt back up her throat. “Laugh all you want, ji! It’s not funny! No wonder this country has so few successful women politicians. They’ve gone mad! At least Indiraji kept her saris wrapped tight.”
They’d read Midnight’s Children in a two-person book club a year ago, and as a result, Indira Gandhi had become Seema’s go-to political reference for any manner of occasion, even and especially when the reference didn’t make any sense.
Like in some sitcom, Satish walked into the house just as she said this, shaking his head and sighing. “Always with Indiraji. Let her rest in peace, yaar.”
“But look at Hillary Clinton,” Ranjana said, nodding at Satish, who held a plastic grocery bag in one hand. “She dressed demurely.”
“What a horrible example, Ranjana!” Seema yelled. “I’d rather wear one of Indiraji’s saris from years ago than one of those pantsuits. And don’t compare them to salwars because you know they aren’t the same.”
“Then what about Michelle Obama?” Satish said, turning toward the kitchen. “She’s always been very stylish.”
“Oh, God. Let’s make a deal, ji—I’ll stop mentioning Indiraji if you stop mentioning Michelle Obama.” Seema leaned over to Ranjana, exaggerating a whisper so that Satish could hear. “He loves that Michelle Obama. I think they all do.” Ranjana had not considered this before, but she did know that she found Barack attractive. Perhaps the other women did. She abstained from mentioning this to Seema in the presence of Satish.
“What are you really discussing?” Satish called out as he emptied whatever contents were in the bag into a variety of cabinets and drawers.
“What do you mean?” Seema said. She fixated on a lipstick that she had clearly not seen in ages. An intricate pattern of flowers was carved into its golden surface. She popped the tube open, a touch of dark pink.
“I mean, what are you talking about? American women?”
“We are talking about how American women are crazy.” Seema slid the lipstick around her mouth.
“Not just that.” Ranjana sighed. “They don’t want to expand their minds and learn anything new. Or accept anyone new. Instead of supporting other women—in a world dominated by men—they’re mean. And petty.”
Seema snickered, almost smudging herself. “Yaar, what do you think you’re being?”
“Et tu, Brute?” Ranjana said, sighing and picking up her teacup.
“What?” Seema asked.
“I thought you were on my side!” Ranjana clarified as Satish sighed in the kitchen.
“I am on your side, believe me.” Seema turned back toward Satish. “Ji, all I mean is that we Indian women are so much more … civil and … well, smarter than these American women.”
“But you are American women!” he called out.
It was odd that Satish was the one saying this. Mohan would never have called Ranjana American. He forever saw her as a transplant from India. In fact, he took pride in retaining his Indian nationality as much as he could.
“Are you really trying to tell me that there is no difference between us and the other women you see in this country?” Seema asked. “Weren’t you just complaining yesterday about some woman who cut you off on the highway?”
“Well, she couldn’t drive because she was a woman, not because she was an American woman.” Satish cackled while Ranjana and Seema rolled their eyes.
“There is no such thing as an ‘American woman,’” Satish continued, finished with his chore and returning to the doorway. He leaned against its frame with his stomach as a cushion. He had a common Indian male physique: second trimester with a possible sail into the third. Ranjana remembered Dr. Butt telling her that the reason why so many Indian men looked like this was because their ancestors had spent centuries farming in the fields and doing other hard manual labor, whereas now, in this modern world, their heirs were much more stationary and, well, lazy. “So all of the fat gets pushed to the front,” Dr. Butt had said, pushing his hands together in front of his own flat stomach and pantomiming a potbelly.
Satish continued: “America has become full of so many different types of people that we can’t define it anymore. It’s true!” he was saying to Seema’s scoff. “Just look at you, yaar. Look at this mess on the table. You and Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama are all ‘American women,’ but I’ll bet their dining room tables don’t ever look like this.”
“But that isn’t really the point,” Seema said. “Fine, there are different types of American women. But what we are talking about is whether we Indian women in America
are more open to change, more accepting, and I think the answer is a resounding yes.”
Ranjana found herself agreeing with this blunt statement. Not just because of someone like Stefanie or someone like Cheryl. It was because, if she stepped back and considered her life in relation to those of the American women around her, she had a firm sense of having always been criticized, at once exoticized because she was Eastern and resented because she was different. If American women had been more accepting of adaptation, then she and all of the Indian women she knew would have felt validated. But they constantly felt self-conscious—indeed, this entire conversation with Seema was predicated on feeling self-conscious—and so the only possible explanation was that Indian women hadn’t been made to feel comfortable. Wasn’t “diversity” the word that everyone used about creative industries now? So why was her writing group, her creative outlet, not providing a safe space for her? Because she was seen as inferior due to her ethnicity.
She wasn’t a particularly political person. Whenever an argument broke out in their temple about the controversial organization Vishva Hindu Parishad and how its increasingly nationalist followers were forming a small but dedicated group within their community, she shrugged and complimented herself on having a drama-free family in this regard. At the same time, she also couldn’t slough off politics entirely. She had always found inspiration in the ascent of Sonia Gandhi, whose own political career seemed to have embodied the confused nationality of Ranjana and her contemporaries. The Italian woman who had married Indiraji’s son, Rajiv—not just married but fallen in love with him, leaping over the chasm between their two cultures—seemed like a rare branch of India’s political tree, and Ranjana loved this idea of an interloper, an oddball. More than this, though, she loved how Sonia Gandhi had defied the defeatists around her, the people that had predicted that she would die a quick political death after Rajiv’s assassination. Everyone had expected her to bury her Italian face in her Indian shawl, grab her children, and become a shut-in, but she had seen the opportunity to wrest every last bit of power her husband had left her, and soon she had become a nationalist heroine. She argued and debated and showed up to rallies where her face was enlarged on billboards and placards; she had inhaled whatever political fervor had blown into the wind with her husband’s ashes.
No One Can Pronounce My Name Page 16