by Sonali Dev
Mili sank into the seat, her tiny body gathered into itself. As the priest started chanting, her sparkling eyes went somber, her fingers twisted together in her lap. Samir reached out and placed a tentative hand on her back. She sniffed and squeezed her reddening nose with the end of her sari and her jaw worked to prevent the tears from forming. His heart twisted. What must it be like for her to watch someone get married?
“Amazingly, I remember it,” she whispered, as if he had spoken his thoughts out loud. “Not a stark clear memory, but I do remember how that day felt.” She turned to him and searched his face, making sure he didn’t mind her bringing up that conversation. “Maybe I remember it only because my naani talked about it so much. Apparently, I cried a lot. Screamed and screamed until my mother-in-law asked the priest to rush through the ceremony so my naani could take me home.”
A startling vivid memory of a screaming girl with huge cheeks and huge eyes flashed in Samir’s mind. Along with the intense restlessness that her crying had set off in his chest. The memory was so out of the blue and so stark he felt as though someone had pulled the chair from under him. The memory that followed was starker still. The slash of the belt slicing his back, pain upon pain, going on without end. The taste of his own tears, the heavy shame of his screams. The relief of Virat throwing himself on top of him to stop the belt.
Mili’s brow crinkled. Sweat trickled down his spine and moistened his scalp. He wiped his hand over his forehead. His fingers were ice.
“Samir, are you all right?” She took his hand. “Are you sick?”
This was bullshit. Fucking ancient history. “I’m fine.” He downed the rest of his drink, his entire buzz gone. “You were saying?”
“Nothing. Just that I don’t remember anything else from when I was that young. But I actually remember my wedding.”
“And your groom. Do you remember him?” Even to his own ears he sounded harsh.
She swallowed and of course she colored, but she didn’t answer.
“Do you even know what he looks like now?”
Pain flashed in her eyes. He felt it all the way in his gut. But he couldn’t stop. “You have the right to file for an annulment, you know.”
She looked startled. “Annulment? You mean like a divorce?”
“Well, technically it’s not a marriage, so, it’s not a divorce.”
She slid her hand out from under his, but he refused to remove his hand from her lap. “My naani will kill herself. If she doesn’t have a heart attack first.” Her eyes shot angry sparks at him. “And stop saying it’s not a marriage. It is. I believe with all my heart that we will be together, that he will come for me one day.”
“What if you find yourself in a situation where you don’t want him to?”
Sickening sympathy diffused the anger in her eyes. “I’ll just have to stay away from such a situation then, won’t I?” She put his hand back on his lap.
He gripped her fingers and held them in place. “What if you can’t? What if it just happens? Would you give it a chance?”
She met his eyes, unflinching. “No. The truth is I can’t imagine being married to anyone else. I know you don’t understand it. But my marriage is very real to me.”
“What if something else becomes even more real?”
She pulled her hand away. “Samir, please, can we not do this? Can we just be friends, at least for today, for just one day more, please?” She looked so tired, so beseeching, so certain he would do as she wished.
He grabbed her hand again and dropped a kiss on her fingertips. “Mili, we will always be friends. Whatever else we become we will always be friends. Will you remember that? If you ever forget, will you promise to remember that this”—he traced an arc between them with his finger—“this is real. Okay?”
Her brows drew together again. “Of course.”
He was blathering like an idiot, but he never wanted her to doubt what her friendship meant to him. Even though she would never know what she had come to mean to him. Because suddenly he could see clearly where they were headed and how violently the shit was going to hit the fan.
She leaned her head into the back of the chair. “This updo is really heavy,” she said as they watched Ridhi and Ravi take their last and final walk around the sacred fire, the last vow after which there would be no going back. Unless of course they decided to go back.
“I can help you get out of it, you know, if you wanted out.”
She straightened up and glared at him.
“Relax, I was talking about the updo.” He gave her his best bad-boy smolder. “What did you think I was talking about?”
The crowd burst into applause and everyone stood. Ridhi and Ravi exchanged garlands, then Ridhi threw her arms around Ravi and kissed him—on the lips. There were many gasps, but amazingly enough, no one fainted.
In perfectly sane families the time after the bride and groom exchanged garlands was chaotic. What with everyone descending on the couple to bless them, congratulate them, and generally hug and kiss the hell out of them. So Samir wasn’t in the least bit surprised at the insanity that ensued with the Kapoor clan. Everyone sobbed. Mrs. Kapoor wrapped her arms around her daughter and refused to let her go. Mother and daughter remained stuck together until the bride’s father pried them apart. “Come on, Lovely, come now. She’s not going far.”
“My baby, my baby, my baby,” Mrs. Lovely Kapoor repeated, giving each rendition a different nuance, much like they did in acting class.
“Don’t say one word,” Mili warned when she saw his expression. Tears streamed down her face. Unlike the Kapoor women her eyeliner was not run-proof. She took a deep wet sniff and smiled through her tears in Ridhi’s direction.
Samir put his napkin back under his drink. Let her enjoy her moment. There would be plenty of women jumping on her when they saw the streaks running down her face. As far as he was concerned that wet streaky face flushed with emotion and bare of even a hint of vanity was the most utterly beautiful face he had ever seen.
He had to tell her the truth.
The realization came to him in a flash. Bhai was everything to him. But his brother and he had completely misjudged Mili. There had to be more to the legal shit than met the eye and he was going to find out what it was. And he was going to tell her everything and let her decide what she wanted to do. As soon as the damn script was done, he was going to tell her everything. No matter what the consequences.
She smiled as Ridhi jangled her bangles over the heads of a bunch of girls who bowed in front of her.
“What are they doing?” Samir asked.
Mili pointed to the golden tassels with golden foil flowers that hung from Ridhi’s bangles. “The elders tied those on Ridhi’s bangles for good luck earlier. Now Ridhi is trying to shake them off over the unmarried girls’ heads. If a flower falls on an unmarried girl’s head, it means she’ll be next in line to get married.”
“Ah, that explains it. I think your witch has been under Ridhi’s arms for a full five minutes,” he said, making her smile.
“OMG, look at your face!” It was the first thing Ridhi said to Mili when they finally made their way to the newlyweds. She swiped Mili’s face with a wet tissue and set her to rights. Then she squeezed Mili into a hug so tight Samir feared for her life.
Samir congratulated Ravi and bit back the ball-and-chain jokes. He was actually feeling a little envious of the bastard, which should’ve scared him shitless but didn’t. Which in turn did scare him shitless. “You look great, Ridhi. Congratulations.”
Mili, Ravi, and Ridhi all gawked at him and waited for him to say something to ruin it, but he didn’t.
“Oh. My. God. That is just. So. Sweet.” Ridhi threw her arms around him, kissing him squarely on one cheek, then twisting his face around with both hands and kissing him on the other cheek.
He squeezed his eyes shut and patted Ridhi’s shoulder awkwardly. Mili beamed at him like a proud mother hen and the torture seemed almost worth it.
“Why didn’t you tell me about the smudged eyeliner?” she asked as they walked away.
“What smudged eyeliner?” Shit, now he was making puppy-dog eyes at her.
She rolled her eyes, but she glowed and panic squeezed in his chest.
“You should’ve told me. I’m sure I looked like a panda bear,” she said.
He pinched his finger and thumb together to indicate that maybe she had looked just a little bit like a panda. She smacked his arm.
What he really wanted to tell her was how very beautiful she looked, how being touched by her felt. “Sorry I didn’t say anything,” he said instead. “But there is something I want to tell you now.”
She raised terrified eyes at him. “Samir, please.”
“Hear me out, because later you’ll ask why I didn’t say anything.”
“Samir, no. Don’t say anything. Please.” Her voice was a breathless whisper.
“Mili, you have a golden flower in your hair. Ridhi must’ve dropped it on your head when she hugged you.”
19
Mili knew they were back in Ypsilanti when she saw the water tower with its unmistakably phallic shape.
Samir lifted his sunglasses onto his forehead and squinted at the obscene structure. “I know I’ve hardly slept all night but you won’t believe what I’m seeing right now.”
She laughed.
“No, seriously, there’s a giant erection in the middle of the road. Tell me I’m hallucinating.”
“You’re not hallucinating.”
“Then what the fu—heck is that?”
“That’s what everyone in college calls the Ypsi-mmm . . . the Ypsi-dick.” She mumbled the last word and pressed her hand to her mouth self-consciously.
He didn’t tease her about it. He just twisted around in his seat and looked at the tower as they passed. She caught his eyes crinkling with laughter before he dropped his sunglasses back in place.
Mili pinched her own arm. Driving in a yellow convertible on this beautiful early-September day with Samir had to be a dream. This entire trip had to be a dream. She had never seen Samir like this. She had asked for his friendship and he had given it to her with nothing held back. He had talked and listened, his curiosity about her endless. She had never felt so safe, so free to share herself. She’d told him about growing up in her grandmother’s house, about being teacher’s pet, about playing cricket with the village boys until she was twelve, after which she wasn’t allowed to anymore.
She told him about winning a regional essay contest in high school and getting on a bus to go to New Delhi. Seeing the parliament houses, seeing Fatehpur Sikri, Emperor Akbar’s red sandstone palace complex. About meeting the president of India, and seeing the Gandhi memorial. About seeing young girls in pants and skirts shopping in the markets of Janpath. Soaking up a whole new world and yearning to come back to it someday. About applying to Jaipur University without letting Naani know and then convincing her to let her go.
“How did you convince her?” he asked.
“I showed her a film in which the hero was an Air Force officer. The women in the movie were stylish and modern and educated. I told her maybe that’s what he wanted. How could he want a village girl when these were the women he was used to?”
“And she listened?” He was incredulous.
“You have to understand how desperate my naani’s situation is. She had four children, but she lost two boys, one girl, and her husband to a cholera epidemic. My mother was the only responsibility she had left. Once she had my mother married off, she thought all her duties were done. She thought my father would take care of everything. But instead, my parents died and she was left with me and she had to start over. The dowry, protecting my honor, raising me to be a good wife. She had to do it all again. Then my husband’s grandfather offered for me. Yet again Naani thought she was done. But then my husband’s mother packed him up and took off for the city. His grandfather squeezed everything out of my grandmother. He took the grain from our fields, demanded clothes and jewels for every festival. Every year he assured Naani this year they would take me home. I loved school so she kept letting me study. She thought it would please my city husband. She would do anything to see me in my own home, settled and off her hands.”
Samir paled, his face strained with sadness. But she didn’t want his sympathy. What she wanted was to keep talking to him in this borrowed time they had left together.
“And how did she let you come to America?” he asked.
“Well, with that I didn’t give her a choice. I had just started working at the National Women’s Center in Jaipur. My boss recommended me for the scholarship program but I still needed money for a ticket. I told Naani I was going to go see my husband so I needed my dowry jewelry. And I sold it. I didn’t tell her I was here until I was already here.”
It had been a terrible, unforgivable thing to do. But instead of being disgusted, Samir looked impressed.
“Why didn’t you ever really go see your husband?”
She shrugged. “I’m not sure. Where I come from it’s just not how we do things. Plus, I . . . I felt like maybe there was a reason he hadn’t come for me. What city boy wants a village girl, right? But then I went to Jaipur, got a job, a scholarship, I made it all the way here by myself. And I’m the best student in my program.” No, she didn’t feel unworthy anymore.
Suddenly she was angry. Truly angry. And terribly sad. She had wasted so much time feeling unworthy. She was smart and accomplished. She had always been. And for the first time in her life she also felt beautiful. And she wished it didn’t have anything to do with the way Samir was looking at her.
But Samir had that gift. No wonder countless women had fallen under his spell. She thought of the Filmfare magazine: Bollywood playboy changes women like he changes clothes. The strange thing was she could imagine him like that, running from involvement. But she could also see him as something more.
“What about you, how did you end up in Mumbai? A hotshot director with a girlfriend angry enough to accuse him of beating her up,” she asked as he turned down their street.
“I have a gift for making women mad.”
She smiled. “No! Really?”
He narrowed his golden eyes at her over his sunglasses, but they were smiling. “I grew up in Nagpur. But I went to Mumbai to go to college and got picked up on campus by a modeling scout my first year. Guess what my first assignment was?” He smiled that thirty-two-teeth smile of his. “A toothpaste commercial.”
“I knew it!”
“Modeling led to a bit part in a movie. But I spent so much time behind the camera with my director, he signed me on as assistant director. And from then on I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life.”
He made a screeching turn and pulled into their pothole-filled parking lot. A thought poked at Mili’s mind. “Samir, why didn’t you tell me that your movies were such big hits?”
He shrugged. “You never asked.”
She noticed the peeling paint on her balcony, the curling, discolored roof tiles, and the thought roared to life. She slapped her hand across her mouth. “My God, you were never going to live in my building, were you? You only moved there after I got hurt. Why did you move into my building, Samir?” But she already knew. It had to do with her being hurt and needing help. Her throat constricted.
Instead of jumping out of the car as soon as it stopped like he usually did, he turned to her and studied her from behind his sunglasses, his face more serious than she’d ever seen it. “You give me too much credit, Mili.” He took a deep breath, his chest swelling under the stretched cotton as he measured his words. “Truth is, I had been struggling with my writing for almost a year. No matter what I tried, I hadn’t been able to write.”
“That’s why you signed up for the workshop,” she said.
He swallowed and removed his sunglasses. And the relief of meeting his eyes again was so intense it was absurd. “The night I met you I was able to write again. It was yo
u, Mili. You gave me back my ability to write. And I was too afraid the words would stop if I wasn’t around you.” The gold in his eyes darkened with emotion, as though a great burden rested on his heart, and her heart sprouted wings and started fluttering about in her chest.
He jumped out of the car, jogged to her side, and held open her door. “Thank you.”
She stood and leaned back to look up at him. “That’s it? That’s all I get, a thank-you?”
A smile crinkled the edges of those too-serious eyes.
“Sounds to me like I was solely responsible for you writing this multimillion-rupee script.”
“Let’s not get carried away.” He tried but he couldn’t suppress that Colgate smile. God, how she loved that smile of his.
“But you couldn’t have done it without me, right? So you owe me.”
He leaned past her and pulled the bags out of the car. “I just drove you to your best friend’s wedding and you want more? A bit greedy, don’t you think?” But he was looking at her like he would give her anything she asked for and the fluttering intensified.
“I want your hero not to lose the love of his life.” She had no idea why it mattered so much that he believe in happy endings, but it did.
“Okay,” he said with a casual shrug, “anything else?”
“Really?” she all but shrieked. And then she looked in his golden eyes and she knew. He had already changed his story because of what she had said. She pressed her hand into her heart. “It doesn’t count if you’ve already done it without me asking. You still owe me.”
He threw his head back and laughed. “What now?”
She smiled at him, a crazy idea popping into her head. “Finish your script first. Then I’ll tell you. But you can’t say no.”
“Of course I can’t.” And he followed her up the stairs.
He helped her put the sacks of food Ridhi’s mom had given them into the fridge. She asked him to stay for dinner and he sank down into the mattress on the living room floor while she went in to change. When she came out she found him fast asleep. She tried to wake him but he was dead to the world. With the amount of sleep he’d been getting between his writing and the wedding, waking him up was a lost cause.