by Zara Raheem
Dedication
Dedicated to every woman who’s ever been told she wasn’t enough.
Epigraph
She hasn’t a single moon
to worship her
or to cloud her judgment.
She is alone.
And oh
how brilliantly she shines.
—FROM “VENUS” BY NIKITA GILL
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
A Bollywood State of Mind
Arrange This
Never Say Never
The Marriage Clock
Set in Motion
Mr. Bollywood
Matchmaker, Matchmaker
Cyber Suitor
Mr. Catfish
Mr. Smoky
Mr. Busybody
Ambushed
Speed Dating
Summer Lovin’
Take Two
Ghosted
Family Dinner
Departure
Motherland
Family Reunion
Meena
Seeing Double
Mehendi Nights
An Unexpected Hero
Guilt Trip
Sari Not Sorry
Bombshell
Revelations
Deadline
Prayers Answered
Final Toast
Acknowledgments
P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
About the Author
About the Book
Copyright
About the Publisher
A Bollywood State of Mind
As a young girl, when I thought about life in my mid-twenties, I envisioned a glamorous profession like being a principal dancer for a prestigious New York ballet company, living in a fabulous penthouse apartment overlooking a city skyline, and being married to a tall, dark, and mysterious musician whose beautifully written love songs were the inner soundtrack to my beating heart. If I had known that my mid-twenties would actually consist of a less-than-desirable career working as an underpaid English teacher, a modest-sized room in my parents’ suburban home, and a total sense of ambivalence regarding the notion of love, I probably would have signed up for someone else’s life.
Growing up in a semitraditional Muslim household, I believed in love wholeheartedly. Love, after all, was Shah Jahan’s inspiration for the Taj Mahal. Love was the underlying theme in every Urdu ghazal or shayari ever written. Love was the reason my mother left behind her entire life in India to start afresh with my father—a man she barely knew—in America. Love was the sole reason the world turned; why bluebirds sang and fireworks shot into the warm summer sky. It was not just an idea; it was something tangible—felt within my grasp. A whimsical notion looming in the distant future, anxiously waiting to be discovered, like a present still wrapped.
My years of dissecting on-screen Bollywood romances provided me with enough insight to know exactly what to look for when it would finally happen. I was desperately waiting for that random run-in with a total stranger with unbelievably good hair with whom I could slow-motion run through a meadow as we dramatically proclaimed our love for each other through nonsensical lyrical metaphors and perfectly synchronized dance routines—with multiple colorful outfit changes. In my mind, that was what was supposed to happen. You meet someone, fall in love (in the aforementioned fashion), get married, and live happily ever after. Unfortunately, the screenplay written for my life was not quite as predictable as I had hoped. There were no meadows in close proximity to Los Angeles, and my lack of coordination limited my dance moves to the Robot and the Inebriated Baby. The only random run-ins I had were with nosy South Asian aunties inquiring about my marital status. Finally, after twenty-two delusional years and a brief yet eye-opening conversation with my college roommate, I was temporarily plucked out of my Bollywood fantasy and brought back to harsh reality.
“What if you turn out to be one of those people who are incapable of falling in love?” Annie said as she leaned back in her chair and took a sip of her coffee.
“Of course I’m not going to be one of those people.” I scoffed, appalled by this idea. “Why would you possibly think I could be one of those people, Annie?”
“Because you push away every nice guy you’ve ever met and refuse to date anyone longer than two weeks. I mean seriously, Leila, we have produce in our refrigerator with longer life spans than most of your relationships.”
“That . . . is not true.” I was completely taken aback by the blatant verity behind her words; a realization that I was not quite ready to acknowledge in that particular moment. So what if I was a “serial” dater and not a “long-term” dater? Before I went away for college, I was a “never allowed to” dater. I grew up Muslim. My conservative parents made sure all my free time was occupied with homework from AP classes, community activities, and tennis. Annie was being slightly unfair given that the whole concept of dating was still fairly new to me in comparison to my non-Muslim peers.
“Fine.” Annie lifted one of her eyebrows accusingly. “Then remind me of the last time you were in a long-term relationship.”
I hesitated as I thought for a moment. “That’s beside the point,” I said dismissively when nothing immediately jumped to mind. “Besides, I’m not just looking for a nice guy,” I stated firmly. “I’m looking for the right guy.”
“The right guy?”
“Yes, the right guy. And I don’t need to waste my time on a long-term relationship when it’s pretty obvious I haven’t found what I’m looking for yet.”
“Okay, Leila,” Annie said, shrugging. “Then tell me, what makes someone the right guy? Let’s make a list.”
“A list?” I half laughed. “I’m not shopping for groceries, Annie,” I said, leaning back with my arms crossed. I couldn’t help but feel irritated by her interrogation of my love life.
My decision to attend college outside of Los Angeles—away from my parents—had given me four years of unrestricted freedom to date without having to deal directly with the aftereffects of fear, guilt, or the risk of bringing shame upon my family. But my hopes of attaining a bona fide Bollywood romance at school were destroyed freshman year when I realized that aside from myself, not many other Muslim desis—aka, people from the Indian subcontinent—chose to attend my small liberal arts college. Even the Muslim Student Association on campus was more just a club consisting of five overly zealous bearded guys who seemed more interested in planning protests and food drives than talking to the opposite gender. So while I had plenty of opportunities to meet “nice guys” over the next few years, my dating experiences were chiefly restricted to non-desis, which—to my dismay—was much less glamorous than the sizzling on-screen story lines entrenched in my mind.
Even just the memory of my first real date caused me to cringe with embarrassment. It was sophomore year, and I had been asked out by Chad Edelstein from my Literary Theories class. Our first—and only—romantic engagement ended with him leaning in for a kiss outside my dorm room, and me shyly yet teasingly turning my head to gaze into a nonexistent camera, causing him to make out with my right earlobe for a solid ten seconds. I eventually got better at these types of interactions, yet whenever I would be introduced to another blond-haired, blue-eyed guy, a small voice, which sounded eerily similar to my mother’s, would sound off in my head like a broken fire alarm—never ceasing to remind me that I was failing my culture, and essentially myself, somehow.
I tried my best to ignore that voice, but despite my efforts, in the end, I couldn’t imagine running through a meadow with any of the non-desi guys surrounding me—no matter how unbelievably good their hair was. As much as I hated to admit it, I too had subco
nsciously imagined my future to be with someone closer to my counterpart—an American-born South Asian man. Who shared my affinity for Bollywood romances. And who also happened to be Muslim—or was at least willing to convert to Islam to prove his undying love for me. Being with someone who not only understood my culture but also lived it as I had would definitely have its perks. I wouldn’t have to explain things like why my mother called me five times a day just to remind me to eat, or why I couldn’t go out twice a week because my hair was slathered in amla oil. Plus, it wasn’t worth going to war with my parents over.
So I ended relationships before they even started. I pretended that love was merely a social construct that failed to exist outside a silver screen. I convinced myself that my feelings were an inevitable side effect of all the Bollywood movies watched during my impressionable years as a youth, but the truth was, I wanted to experience love. It was just that I had yet to find someone who mirrored the dashing image of the Bollywood hero who had stolen my heart from that very first pelvic thrust.
“Look, Annie.” I sighed. “When I do meet the right guy, I’ll just know. I don’t need some list to tell me what I want.”
“I’m sure you do know what you want, Leila,” Annie replied with a hint of frustration in her voice. “The list is just there to keep you focused on the qualities that are important, and a few of the ones that you may need to . . . compromise on,” she continued with such an intense look that I couldn’t help but smile.
“Fine,” I groaned. “Let’s make a list. But just so you know, all the qualities I’m looking for are important, so there’s no need for any compromising.” I grabbed a napkin off the table.
For the next hour or so, I rattled off every trait embodied by my Bollywood crushes as Annie frantically tried to jot them all down. I wanted someone who had #4: Govinda’s SENSE OF HUMOR, #17: Shah Rukh Khan’s CHARMING demeanor, #23: Salman Khan’s MUSCULAR build, and #38: Akshaye Khanna’s SENSITIVE side. As Annie wrote out the final quality—#46: SEXY—on the seventh napkin, I started to see why she may have thought I needed to scale back on my vision of love . . . just a little. However, the idea of giving up any of the qualities listed made me feel like I would be cheating myself out of finding “the one.” So I quickly pushed the thought out of my mind. Besides, this was the person I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with. So what if I had forty-six items on my list? Why should I settle for anything less than my idea of perfect?
As we walked out of the coffeehouse that afternoon, Annie handed me my Mr. Right on seven napkins and left me with her last piece of advice:
“Leila, it’s good to have expectations. There’s nothing wrong with that. All I’m saying is life is not a movie and not everyone experiences that moment you’re so hopelessly waiting for. The longer you hold on to these notions of perfection, the more disappointed you’re going to feel when you don’t find it.”
While I quickly brushed aside the probability of her prediction at the time, looking back on this moment four years later, I now realized that Annie—my annoyingly wise and astute college roommate—might actually turn out to be right after all.
Arrange This
After graduating college, I moved back in with my parents, found a part-time teaching gig, and resumed my casual dating habits—albeit much more discreetly, since my mother and father were still not keen on the whole noncommittal-outings-for-the-sake-of-getting-to-know-each-other idea. My excuses to “hang out with friends” were always met with their silent disapproval. My parents simply couldn’t understand another purpose for dating aside from marriage. They also couldn’t understand why any decent “friend” would choose to pick their daughter up in anything other than a Toyota Camry.
“They really are the most dependable cars,” my mother would casually remark at the breakfast table the morning after my late-night trysts. “You should let your friend know.”
Despite their failed attempts to feign ignorance, I appreciated my parents’ efforts to stay out of my love life. And as a compromise, I made a greater effort to meet more South Asian men, not only to make up for my past non-desi pursuits, but also because I was still harboring hopes of finding my perfect Bollywood hero. I figured if I couldn’t find him in college, now was my chance. Even if my living situation added another layer of complication to my search.
While my quests for love were consistent, they unfortunately did not go as smoothly as I had initially anticipated. It seemed the more I chased after love, the more confused I felt about it. So after a couple of years of numerous failed attempts and crumpled-up napkins, I eventually accepted my fate as “one of those people who are incapable of falling in love,” and decided to surrender myself, voluntarily, to a life of singlehood. That plan, however, quickly changed the night of my twenty-sixth birthday, when my parents excitedly informed me of their plans to arrange my marriage during my home-cooked celebratory dinner. This was not exactly what I had wished for when I blew out the candles on my cake.
While the idea of my parents arranging my marriage might seem preposterous, I had listened in on enough conversations at the mosque and community gatherings to know that this was a pretty normal topic of discussion in Muslim American households like mine. In traditional South Asian culture, marriage was considered the climactic point of one’s life. Most Indian parents equated marriage to happiness. Marriage was the ultimate goal. Once you reached this goal, you had not only attained happiness but had also completed the first half of your filial duties as an Indian son or daughter. (The second half completed only after the successful birth of a grandchild.)
I was always subconsciously aware of the importance of marriage in my culture, even though it was never directly stated by either of my parents. Even as a child, I had a slight inkling that all the hours spent in the kitchen with my mother held a far greater purpose than simply practicing the art of cooking. Looking back on it now, it was obvious that my mother was preparing me to become a “good” wife so I could one day honor my family by making impeccably seasoned biryani and rolling perfectly round chapatis for my future husband. The same way if I were a boy, I would’ve been taught early on to get good grades and prepare myself to apply to a respectable (non–liberal arts) college so I could study either medicine or engineering and become a more desirable candidate as a husband.
The signs were all there, so I probably should not have been quite as surprised by my parents’ plans for my future. The only problem was that I had never—at least not until that exact moment—considered my parents to be such staunch traditionalists. They had grown up in India and were both practicing Muslims, but despite being religiously conservative, they had made great efforts to assimilate to American culture when they immigrated almost thirty years ago.
For as long as I could remember, my mother wore high heels, watched Wheel of Fortune, and prided herself on her “international” cuisine. My father was a Dodgers fan. For all I knew, I was American. At least as American as a Starbucks chai tea latte. They had even agreed to let me go away for college and did a commendable job of pretending they didn’t know about all the Chad Edelsteins and the non-Camry-driving dates over the years. I could only assume they were kidding with this proposition . . . at first. But as soon as I saw my mother pull out a carefully organized portfolio of “bio-datas”—a collection of résumés containing the names, birth dates, family histories, and professions of all the South Asian Muslim potential grooms residing in the greater Los Angeles area—during dessert, I suddenly realized that this was no joke.
“How did you get all of these?” I asked incredulously as I watched my mother unclasp a one-inch stack of “applications” from the black portfolio.
“Oh, never mind all that,” she said, shrugging off my question. “Now that you are twenty-six, beti, it is time to think of our future.” She took a seat next to me at the table. “Remember, Leila, marriage is half your deen.”
I cringed. This was not the first time I had heard this saying. All Muslims grew up hea
ring some version of this: “Marriage is half your religion” or “Marriage will complete you” or “Your life doesn’t truly begin until you get married.” With each year that passed, these phrases were tossed around more frequently; often being used as a guilt tactic by Muslim parents to remind their children of their priorities.
“Here are just a few rishtas we thought might be good matches for you.” My mother pointed to a bulleted list with each name highlighted in one of three colors—most likely organized in order of compatibility. The sheer excitement in her voice matched the degree of dread steadily rising inside of me.
“Leila, you remember the Dhakkars, right? Well,” she continued before I even had a chance to respond, “one of their close family friends, the Rehmans, have a son who is around your age. Can you believe that?” she squealed, as if this were the most exciting news since the inception of JadooTV. “He is just finishing his last year of residency at County General, and your father and I were thinking of inviting them for dinner.” I instantly knew where this was headed, and I did not like it one bit. “What do you say, Leila?”
As she eagerly searched my face for a response, I turned to my father in hopes that his innate sensibility would kick in at this precise moment and work to my advantage. “Abba,” I said. “Please tell me you’re not trying to set me up on a blind date?”
“Of course not, beti,” he said calmly. I let out a deep sigh of relief. “We would never force you to do a blind date. Come look, see here is a picture of him.” He removed a page from the stack and pointed to a two-by-three head shot stapled to the bottom.
I knew then it was time to make my exit. I quickly excused myself as my mother continued to pull out other options from the portfolio whom I could choose from “if the Rehmans’ son is not your type.” As I walked to my room—in utter confusion and disbelief at what had just occurred—I could not help but think that my parents had absolutely lost their minds. Yes, I had heard them engage in conversations over the years with other aunties and uncles in the community who had arranged marriages for their children, but never before had they brought up the topic with me. I had just assumed they considered the practice to be outdated.