by Sonali Dev
“Mummy, have you gone completely mad? What are you freaking out about now?”
“Freaking out? You’re wearing that? On your wedding day? Oh Lord, take me now.”
“What’s wrong with this? You told me to wear something casual for the henna ceremony. So, I wore casual.”
“I said casual, not Chandni-Chowk-whore slutty! Brainless daughter of an oaf.”
Mili smiled, but quickly covered her mouth when Ridhi glared at her.
Ridhi yanked her ankle-length skirt all the way up to her thighs and looked down at it. “How is this slutty? It touches the floor. You can’t even see my toes.”
Her mother pinched the half of her breast that pushed up from her tube top. “What about these? You want your in-laws to see your mangoes? Save those for the man who’s going to eat them,” she hissed.
“Mummy!” Ridhi screamed. “You’re disgusting. Yuck.”
“Disgusting nothing. Go up right now and change before they see you.” She threw quick darting glances over her shoulder. “Go, you stupid cow. Go!”
Ridhi ran up the stairs mumbling words Mili had never heard before. Ridhi’s mother slapped her forehead and turned to Mili. “Her in-laws are South Indian,” she said as if being South Indian was akin to being an alien species. “Doesn’t she know how old-fashioned those people are? Does she have any sense at all?”
Mili patted Ridhi’s mother’s shoulder. “It’s okay, Auntie, she’s changing.”
It wasn’t easy but she didn’t laugh until Mrs. Kapoor walked away.
“What’s so funny?” Samir asked as she entered the kitchen and walked up to the island. It was covered from end to end with food. Fluffy white idli rice cakes, rolled-up crepe dosas, round donut-shaped, deep-fried vadas, huge tureens filled with steaming sambar lentils, red, white, and green chutneys of coconut and mint and cilantro. Stuffed naans and parathas, freshly churned butter, yogurt, cut fruit, and all sorts of cakes and donuts and cheeses.
She had to be dead, or dying or something, because really, this had to be heaven.
He laughed next to her ear and she turned around.
“You didn’t even hear the question, did you?” He smiled as if she had done something truly amusing.
“Shush, don’t disturb me. I’m in heaven right now.” She looked back at the food, closed her eyes and inhaled. Her mouth watered. The aromas danced in her head, danced in her soul.
When she opened her eyes he was holding out a plate and watching her. But with all these aromas strumming her senses, she couldn’t analyze his expression. She reached over and picked up one hot, perfectly crisp stuffed paratha.
She brought it to her nose and took a deep sniff before putting it on her plate. Then she added some seasoned yogurt, green chutney, and a shamelessly large serving of mango pickle. She broke off a piece of the paratha with her fingers, used it to scoop up some yogurt, dipped it in chutney, and then popped it in her mouth. The purest pleasure exploded in her mouth. She moaned and her eyes fluttered shut. She chewed, and chewed, and wanted to go on chewing for as long as she lived.
Just as the paratha melted on her tongue she picked up a piece of mango pickle and sucked on it.
Oh dear God.
Samir grabbed her elbow and led her away from the island, where for some reason a crowd was starting to gather.
“God, Samir, have you tried these paneer parathas?” She broke off a piece, dunked it in some yogurt and chutney, and brought it to his lips. He swallowed before he opened his mouth and took the food from her fingers.
His lips grazed her fingertips and the sensation stunned her so much she forgot to remove her hand fast enough.
But the smell of the food on her plate brought her back. “Incredible, isn’t it?” she asked, and took another bite.
He nodded and chewed and watched her wordlessly with suddenly shuttered eyes.
“Did you know we have ten thousand taste buds in our mouth?” she said, trying to hold the flavors on her tongue as she chewed.
He smiled. “Of course you would know that.”
She put another piece in her mouth. Then another piece in his mouth. “Wait, wait,” she said as he started to chew. His wide, lush mouth froze mid-chew. She picked up a piece of pickle and pushed it between his lips. His honey-brown eyes melted to that smoky amber.
“See?” she said, popping more food in her own mouth. “I told you. You’re in heaven, aren’t you?”
Before she knew it her plate was empty. “What should we get next?” she asked him.
He grinned, dropping his guard for the first time today, and she felt so light she thought she would float away. She was about to ask him what he was so amused about when his phone rang.
He wiped something off the edge of her lips before he answered.
His fingers stilled on her mouth. “Yes, Baiji. Hold on just a minute. I’m right here. Don’t go away.” His voice turned soft and respectful. Mili had never heard him sound like this. He spoke in the dialect of her village and it made her so light-headed with homesickness she had to focus to hear what he was saying.
He pulled his hand away, raised a finger to indicate he needed a minute, and walked out of the kitchen and into the backyard. The last thing she saw him do was wipe his fingers on his jeans. Her heart twisted painfully in her chest. He was wiping away her touch.
“How are you, beta?” His mother’s voice was exactly what Samir needed to hear after what had just happened. He had been feeling so restless and crazed in there he didn’t know what was wrong with him. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen a woman eat before. It wasn’t like a woman had never slipped food into his mouth. He’d done some pretty creative things involving food and women. But having Mili slip food into his mouth was the most erotic thing he’d ever had happen to him.
He shook his hand out, wiped it on his jeans again, but his fingers still tingled. He switched his phone from hand to hand and dragged his fingers through his hair.
“Beta?”
“Baiji, I’m right here. Sorry. There was too much noise. I needed to get to a quieter spot. Can you hear me?”
“Very clearly, son. I haven’t heard from you in a week. I was starting to worry.”
“I’m sorry. I should have called. Is everything okay? How is Rima? Bhai?”
“Rima’s fine. She’s starting to show more and more every day.” He heard the smile in her voice, then sadness. “She’s still having cramps. I think the shock was too much. But Krishna is watching over us. Everything will be fine.” She went silent for a moment, and he knew she was saying a prayer. “She’s still not eating enough. And she spends all her time in the hospital with Virat.”
The paratha turned over in Samir’s stomach. “Baiji, she needs to be there. Bhai needs her there. Please don’t—” He swallowed the lump in his throat. He should’ve been by Virat’s side right now. “Have they said anything about—” But he couldn’t ask the question.
“Samir-beta, your brother is going to be fine. We are all fine. We all understand that work comes first.”
Samir and Virat had told Rima and their mother that Samir needed to work with some investors in America for his film.
Suddenly Baiji’s voice turned guarded. “Beta, it’s been three weeks. When are you coming home?”
“Soon, Baiji.”
“Okay, but don’t linger. Finish what you have to do and come home soon.” She kept her voice calm but Samir knew exactly what was running through her mind.
He had no business putting her through this. Especially not now with Virat in the hospital.
“Baiji, I can’t wait to come home. There’s nothing for me here—absolutely nothing. If you want I’ll come home today. You just have to say the word.”
His mother was silent for a long moment and he knew she was actually considering it. She had lost her husband to this country. The thought of her being afraid of losing him too made Samir sick.
“Finish what you need to,” she said finally. “But remember you are my
whole life, Samir.”
“I know, Baiji, I love you too.”
“Blessings, beta. Hold on, Virat has some news for you.”
“Oy, Chintu! How are you, little brother?” Virat sounded like his old self and Samir dropped back on the patio wall with relief.
“You sound good, Bhai.”
“Not good, Chintu, I’m bloody fantastic! They’re letting me out of here and . . . are you sitting down because this is huge . . . I’m going to fly again. It’s going to be another six months. But I’m going to fly again! Can you believe that?”
“That’s amazing, Bhai.” Samir’s hands were shaking, all of him was shaking, his relief was so intense. The idea of Virat never being able to fly his beloved fighters again was a thought so preposterous Samir had refused to entertain it. Now he knew Virat had been just as worried.
“Oy, drama queen, you’re not crying, are you?” But it was Virat’s voice that cracked. “Baiji, you and Rima need to go get something to eat. I’m fine. My baby brother is sobbing, I need to take care of him.” Samir could imagine Virat hamming it up as he sent Rima and their mother off.
There was a beat of silence.
“What’s wrong, Bhai?”
“Well, did she sign yet?”
Samir rubbed his forehead and forced himself not to turn around and look for her. “I’m working on it. She will.”
“Of course she will. Which woman can say no to Sam Rathod?”
No woman. That was the fucking problem. “I’ve been a little distracted with finishing the script. I’ll get it done and be back home soon. Bhai . . . I’m sorry I’m not there with you.”
“Chintu, you’ll never change. Bastard, you travelled halfway across the earth for me. You’re doing something I should be doing myself and you’re apologizing? You’re everything to me, brother. You know that, right? Without you there’s nothing. Don’t ever apologize to me again. Got that?”
Samir couldn’t respond. No, Bhai, you’re everything.
And he was. All the other shit that had been going on meant nothing.
“By the way, there was another letter. And another legal notice from her lawyer.”
Despair slammed like a fist into Samir’s gut. Another letter?
“Bhai, I don’t want you to worry about it. You focus on getting out of the hospital and getting back in the cockpit. Leave this to me. I’ll take care of it.”
After Virat hung up, Samir swung his legs over the patio wall he was perched on and faced the house. It was a crisp blue-sky day. Not enough sun for sunglasses, but just enough to warm the air. Across the patio, on the other side of the lead-glass French doors, Mili’s petite form was waving at him. Or at least that’s what he thought she was doing. The beaded glass broke her into little pieces and blurred her slender form into disjointed parts. Which one was the real her?
The girl who had gone flying into a tree to protect her friend of four months. The girl who had deviously worked her friend’s family to save her friend’s love. The girl who ate food like she was making love to it. The girl whose body beat out music in the exact rhythm as his. Or the girl who threatened a wounded man for his ancestral estate.
Looking through that crystal window, across that sparkling afternoon sunshine, Samir had to reach deep into his cynicism, into his disillusionment with the world, into his distrust of human nature to find his anger, to find the belief that Mili, like everyone else, was capable of greed and deviousness.
He was sure she had her reasons. He knew without doubt that they would be good reasons. But he couldn’t concern himself with her reasons. He had a debt to pay. A debt to a brother who had jumped into a dark well and let his little brother climb onto his shoulders while he clung to the protruding well stones and waited hours to be rescued. A debt to a mother who had packed up her boys in the middle of the night and fled the safety of her home to protect a little boy from the beatings that had gouged the skin off his back, before the beatings that had killed his spirit took his body too.
17
All day Samir had blown hot and cold. Mili knew he was struggling with something. She also knew with absolute certainty that it had something to do with her. It was just as well. After last night she knew what she had to do. The time had come to tell him that she was married. This warmth, this friendship between them, she had no right to any of it. It was time for it to end.
“A lie has only one face,” her naani always said, “but a liar has several.” She had always had only one face. And now there were too many faces; some she recognized, some were entirely alien. And yet with him she had never been someone she wasn’t. She was just all the things she never thought she could be, no matter how badly she wanted to.
“You’ve been spending an awful lot of time making eyes at Romeo recently.” How Ridhi had the time to make useless observations in the middle of her own wedding Mili would never know.
“I see you changed,” she said, taking in the sleeveless white kurti that fit Ridhi like a glove. “And it covers your mangoes and everything.”
Ridhi grinned. “I can’t believe Mummy said that. But I’m glad she did. Don’t know what I was thinking. Ravi’s parents really are conservative. Did you meet them yet? His mother is actually wearing one of those stereotypical orange-and-green silk saris with that huge gold border. I mean, I thought they only dressed like that in those calendars they hang at South Indian grocery stores.” She lowered her voice and looked around to make sure no one was listening. “I mean, how did someone like that give birth to someone as hot as Ravi? Speaking of hot, I have some dirt on Romeo. Did you know he’s a big hotshot Bollywood director?”
“Hotshot?” No, he wasn’t. He had told her he was a small artsytype director.
“Haven’t you watched Love Lights? It was like the biggest hit last year and like the most romantic film ever!”
“Really? The one with the human bomb? Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. My cousin Nimi is like a Bollywood encyclopedia.” Ridhi waved to her cousin, who was standing with a group of giggling girls. “She’s the one who told me. Nimi, hey, Nimi, over here.”
The entire gaggle of cousins sauntered across the kitchen to the arched entrance of the family room, from where they had a clear view of Samir, Ravi, and a few other cousins drinking beer.
“Nice view, ha?” Nimi whispered, coming to stand next to Ridhi.
“No kidding,” someone else said.
Samir raised a questioning eyebrow at Mili from across the room and she looked away self-consciously.
“Holy shit!” One of the cousins Mili had not yet met gripped her chest as if she were having a heart attack. “Is that who I think it is?”
“That depends on who you think it is,” Ridhi responded.
“That’s that bastard director guy.” She said it so loudly all the guys including Samir looked at them.
“Reena, shut up,” Ridhi said, and Mili wanted to hug her.
“No, seriously, you guys have to see this.” She ran into the kitchen and fished a glossy magazine out of a big leather bag. “That man is wanted by the police for beating Neha Pratap up.”
A collective gasp rose across the room. The guys turned to look at Samir. He took a sip from his beer bottle, his face an unreadable mask.
Reena started to flip furiously through the magazine. “Here, see here!” She held the magazine up.
Splattered across the page were several close-up shots of a woman’s face. She appeared to have been brutally beaten. One side of her face was swollen and purple, one eye was puffed shut. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail and her eyes had a hollow, pained look that made Mili’s stomach cramp with sympathy. Across the middle of the page was a larger picture of a very beautiful girl in a very short, very tight dress hanging on the arm of a heartbreakingly handsome Samir dressed in a dark suit with a crisp white shirt, his hair gelled back, his breathtaking face smiling down at the girl as if she were the only girl in the world.
Scrawled acr
oss the bottom of the picture were the words, “Sam did this!” Neha admits to their love affair going violent.
“See.” Reena smiled like a smug cow.
Anger exploded inside Mili’s head with such force she snatched the magazine out of Reena’s hand and shoved her hard. “Shut up. Just shut the heck up, you stupidhead witch. What is wrong with you? This is a gossip magazine. A stupid, donkey-faced gossip magazine. They write whatever they need to write to sell copies. Shame on you for buying this nonsense. Don’t you have anything better to do with your life?”
Samir leaned forward in his chair, but he didn’t get up. The other girl was at least half a foot taller than Mili and exactly three times as wide. And yet Mili went for her, lunging at her and practically toppling her over. This crazy household was definitely getting to her.
Or maybe it was just who she was.
Ridhi pulled Mili back before she did herself some serious damage against the mountainous woman who looked so shocked Samir had to suppress a smile.
“Mill, calm down. Reena was just showing us what she found.”
“What she found in that . . . in that stupidhead magazine?” Mili stuttered, so angry she was having a hard time speaking.
“What do you mean, ‘stupidhead magazine’? It’s Filmfare. It’s India’s best—” The “stupidhead witch” was stupid enough to argue.
Mili charged at her, knocking the wind out of her. She burst into tears.
“Mili, stop it. What’s wrong with you?” Ridhi held Mili back. “Samir’s not even saying anything. Why are you so angry? Let him defend himself.” Bizarrely enough, Ridhi sounded like the voice of reason.
But Mili hissed and sputtered, turning on Ridhi, incensed beyond reason. “Why? Why should Samir defend himself? Why should he dignify this nonsense with an explanation?”
Samir stood. Time to fight his own battles. Although, he could spend the rest of his life watching Mili go to bat for him like this.
Ridhi and her nasal whine still had some wisdom left to go. “Mill, how do you even know it’s not true? You’ve only just met the man, he doesn’t even know—”