by Nisha Sharma
She sighed as she exited stage left and met Bridget in the aisle.
“That wasn’t so bad,” Bridget whispered. “You had such an awesome vibe going on, like you totally didn’t care that he broke your heart on every social media site that ever existed.”
“Bridget, what the hell was that? Raj looked so sad, and then he let me take over. And what’s this whole thing with our new faculty advisor? Mr. Reece has barely tolerated me since I had him for homeroom teacher freshman year. He better not split up the festival and the film-club roles, because both have to be on my college application if I’m getting into NYU.”
“Yeah, that’s a game changer, isn’t it?” Bridget said.
Dev Khanna stepped into Winnie’s line of sight. He topped six feet, and he had beautiful dark skin and a lean frame. Something inside Winnie’s stomach fluttered.
“What’s the deal with Raj, the film-club traitor?” he asked, running a hand through his wavy hair. He locked eyes with Winnie. There was that strange click again. Some things from freshman year hadn’t changed after all.
“Wow, right to the chase,” Bridget said. “Isn’t this the first time you’ve spoken directly to us in, like, ever? What gives, Tarantino?”
Dev shrugged. “It’s the first time you guys aren’t attached at the hip to Raj. He’s been a tool since high school started. Now you know that, too.”
Winnie’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She’d felt it go off during the meeting but hadn’t had a moment to check. When she saw the slew of twenty-one text messages from her mother, she knew that facing the film club was just the beginning of her nightmare.
Dev peeked over her shoulder. “Looks like your mom’s caps lock is stuck.”
“Oh crap,” Bridget said. “Your mom’s texting you in caps? Do you think she found out? I told you it would backfire, Winnie.”
For once, Winnie was speechless.
WINNIE COME HOME RIGHT NOW
YOU ARE NEVER ALLOWED TO LEAVE THE HOUSE AGAIN
WE ARE GOING TO SEND YOU TO BOARDING SCHOOL IN INDIA
THE NUNS IN INDIA WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU
HOW DARE YOU TRY TO RUIN THE FAMILY NAME????????????
IF YOU ARENT HOME IN TEN MINUTES IM CALLING THE POLICE TO GET YOU AND THEN WE WONT BAIL YOU OUT OF JAIL!!!!!!!!!!!
“I feel like I’m missing something,” Dev said.
“You are,” Bridget said. “Winnie’s mom is like a champion texter. She texts her friends all day and her family overseas. She knows very well how to use emojis, stickers, filters, GIFs, and especially caps lock. If she’s texting Winnie in all caps, it means Winnie is dead meat.”
“I gotta go,” Winnie said. She had five minutes to get home, when it usually took fifteen. She was hoping that the threat of calling the police was subject to Indian Standard Time, which gave her an extra two hours.
She took her backpack from Bridget and slung it over one shoulder. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, and brushed past Dev. Thinking about him had to wait, getting in touch with Raj had to wait, and, most importantly, film club had to wait. Right now, Winnie Mehta had to face the grand high executioner.
4
HUMPTY SHARMA KI DULHANIA / HUMPTY SHARMA’S BRIDE
★★★★★
Parents in Bollywood movies. Scary. Super scary, and sometimes super accurate. Other times…well, not so much.
After shifting her car into park in the middle of her driveway, Winnie ran to the front door and kicked off her shoes in the foyer. She heard her mother’s voice from the kitchen.
“Vaneeta Mehta,” she said in a clipped accent. Uh-oh. If Winnie’s name sounded like a question, her mother wanted to know if she was hungry. If her name sounded like a command, then the gods were about to duck for cover.
“Just get it over with,” she whispered to herself. “Like ripping off a Band-Aid.”
Sita Mehta stood at the kitchen island, flipping rotis in a shallow pan. Her bangles jingled as her fingers moved deftly from raw dough to flour to rolling pin to stove.
Winnie’s father, Deepak Mehta, sat at a bar stool across from her. His glasses were perched low on his nose as he read a finance magazine. He tapped his toe to the old Indian music coming through the speakers in the walls and ceilings. A slim remote sat at his elbow next to a cup of chai.
The kitchen was filled with the scent of fresh Indian bread and curried vegetables.
“Dinner already?” Winnie asked, putting on her best cutesy voice. Like that would help, she thought. She could tell by her mother’s body language that she was in deep cow dung.
“Come here.”
Winnie’s father shot her a warning glance over the edge of his magazine but quickly looked down again.
Oh yeah. Deep, deep, deep cow dung. Her palms started sweating as she inched forward.
“What’s…what’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” her mother replied sweetly. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong.” She pinched dough from the mixing bowl and rolled it into a tiny ball in her hand. Then she slammed the ball down onto the counter in front of her.
“I got a call from Binnie Auntie, who got a call from Minnie Auntie, who got a text from Raj’s mother, who was upset that someone took Raj’s movies from his room while he wasn’t home. That woman actually had the nerve to tell Minnie, who told Binnie, who said to me that they thought my daughter was the one who stole something!”
Winnie flinched as the rolling pin made a loud cracking sound when her mother dropped it onto the dough ball. She began pushing the ball into a thin, flat circle. Her father brushed some of the flying flour off the edge of his magazine page and kept reading.
“I told Binnie,” her mother continued, “my daughter would never steal from someone. And besides, Raj may not be her boyfriend right now, but they’ve been destined to be together since they were children. They played with colored powder at our Indian Society Holi festival. They lit firecrackers on Diwali. I did the carpool with Chaya for years so they could ride to school together. There must be some misunderstanding, and that bowlegged, hook-nose, bad-hair-dye woman who buys her clothes from a secondhand trash store doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
Winnie prayed that her fear wasn’t obvious. “Uh, thanks, Mom.”
The rolling pin made another whacking sound against the counter, and her father’s teacup rattled this time. She watched in admiration as he calmly lifted the cup and took a sip.
“Well, I thought that was the end of that conversation with Minnie—”
“Binnie.”
“Whatever. But do you know what she told me?”
“Uh, no…”
“She said that Minnie told her that the Shahs’ neighbor watched you, criminal-in-the-making, taking things out of Raj Shah’s house. What do you have to say to that?”
“It could have been one of Raj’s other girlfriends,” Winnie said with a shrug. “According to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and Snapchat, we aren’t together anymore.”
“Vaneeta Mehta, do not lie to me! Did you steal from Raj Shah?”
Now that it had been a few days since she’d broken into Raj’s house, she felt guilty for breaking and entering, but she couldn’t do anything about it.
“Okay,” she said, raising her hands, palms up. “Maybe I used the garage code I had and went to Raj’s room to take some DVDs, but everything I took was stuff I bought for him. None of it was actually his in the first place. If you want me to apologize to Raj, fine. I’ll do it, but I won’t mean it.”
Her dad snorted, and when her mother shot him a death stare—all big, wild eyes with thin lips—he buried his face in his reading material.
“Winnie, you’ve embarrassed me and your father in front of the whole Indian community. You know what respect is called in Hindi? Izzat. We lost the respect of our friends because of your behavior. Because you didn’t think of anyone but yourself. How are we supposed to face Raj’s parents in public now? You know we belong to the same Indian assoc
iation. If it wasn’t for this man, I’d send you to boarding school!” She pointed at Winnie’s father with the rolling pin.
“Mom, the Indian community in Princeton, New Jersey, is like fifty thousand people who just happen to all be in your ‘association.’ I doubt everyone knows that I took my revenge. And besides, I have bigger problems to think about right now.”
“What’s bigger than stealing? You broke into their house, Winnie. You’re lucky that Raj’s parents haven’t called the police. I can’t even say my daughter was innocent because someone saw you. Do you know what they’ll say to me now? That we are bad parents. At any party we go to from now on, they’ll worry that I’ll be sliding their Lenox flatware into my purse when the host isn’t looking.”
She resumed ranting, this time in Hindi and then in Punjabi, each word punctuated by wild hand gestures. Winnie linked her fingers together and waited from her spot in the middle of the kitchen. After a few more minutes, Sita Mehta quieted and slipped the last roti onto a plate before running a thin slab of ghee over it.
“I’m sorry I embarrassed you,” Winnie said.
Her mother shut the stove off with a quick jerk of her wrist. “Tell me, what started all this? You two were destined to be together. Everyone saw it, even Pandit Ohmi.”
“I may have asked for a break at the beginning of summer, but technically he broke up with me when I came back and found out he cheated. He’s with someone else, and I don’t want him anymore.”
“But your future happiness relies on him, Winnie. We’ve been over your prophecy already. Don’t ruin your chances.”
“Nice, Ma,” Winnie said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “I should sacrifice happiness to be with someone who isn’t right for me because you think he’s my only hope. It’s not as if I’m enjoying all of this. Remember, Raj was one of my best friends next to Bridget.”
“He wants something different from his life, too,” her father said. His soft voice ricocheted through the kitchen with more presence than her mother’s tirade. “He wants money like his father now. Different path than film. You don’t have much in common anymore.”
“See? Even Dad knows that Raj went all Shashi Kapoor like in that Wall movie.”
“Deewaar,” her father said. “But it was Amitabh Bachchan who was focused on money. Shashi Kapoor was happy he had his family. His life was content and—”
“No!” Winnie’s mother shouted. “You two don’t even think about going off on one of your movie conversations right now. Winnie, you should’ve talked to Raj instead of stealing—”
“He wouldn’t speak to me, Mom. Not even at film club. He isn’t Pandit Ohmi’s answer to my destiny. Not anymore. I know you really wanted that—I sort of wanted that, too—but we’re not meant to be.”
“Well, not if you don’t try. Destiny needs to be believed in for it to come true.”
The problem was that Winnie didn’t want to believe in her destiny anymore. She knew arguing with her mother was useless. They were never going to see eye to eye on this issue. She dropped into one of the chairs at the kitchen table set with three place settings and a covered dish. Winnie grabbed the water jug and poured herself a glass.
Her mother put one roti and a serving of vegetables on her plate before pressing a kiss on the top of Winnie’s head and settling down across from her. A moment later her father joined the table as well.
They ate for almost five full minutes before her father spoke. His tone was calmer than her mother’s.
“Winnie, beta,” he said. “You know this could have hurt your chances of getting into NYU.”
“I know.”
“And?”
“And my dream school is so much more important to me than revenge, but I needed to do this. To take back something of mine. Like every Ranbir Kapoor movie that ever existed.”
Her father rolled his eyes. “I seem to recall that every Ranbir Kapoor movie was more about running away from problems instead of starting over.”
“What? So not true!”
Winnie was about to launch into her list of examples when her mother brought her hand down like an ax.
“Fine,” Winnie said. “But Dad’s wrong.”
“I’m never wrong. And if you don’t think about getting into NYU first, you’re going to lose what you’ve worked so hard for, before you even have a chance at it.”
“Focusing on your future means focusing on your match, too,” her mother added. “It was practically handed to you on a silver thaali.” She gestured like she was holding a platter up for Winnie. “Not all of us have the luxury of pursuing career and marriage equally.”
Talk about added pressure. Her dad had given up film school to marry her mom because of the prophecy. A part of her wanted to get into film school for him as well. He never said anything about it, but if she could show him that she’d succeeded for both of them, maybe he’d feel as if he was getting his dream, too. Winnie remembered Pandit Ohmi’s words and his assurance that her father would be proud of her regardless, but she still wasn’t sure that was enough.
“This is the year we work on your college application,” her father said.
“Yeah, early decision is coming up for NYU. If I get in, I can apply for the Yash Chopra Fellowship, the only one that deals with South Asian film theory. The first step is getting into college, though. I talked to Pandit Ohmi and—”
“You talked to Pandit Ohmi? When did this happen?” her mother said, her voice rising.
“A couple of days ago. Nani gave me his number.”
“Winnie!”
“What?” Winnie shrugged. “I had to tell him to stop talking to you about my Bollywood romance janampatri because now that Raj dumped me, it’s not going to happen.”
“Winnie!” her parents said in unison.
“I didn’t say it like that. I get that he’s a pandit and all,” she said, then paused to chew the last piece of roti. “Anyway, he had to know. Instead of agreeing, he told me that I was going to have these pitfalls in the next few months.”
Her parents shared another look.
“She sounds like your mother,” her father said.
“Our daughter is so filmi because you’re the one who made her sit and watch all those old Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan movies every weekend. That’s the only reason she’s a drama queen—total nakhrewali. Speaking of my mother, she’s coming next week to stay for a while.”
“Nani is coming to stay?” Winnie asked with a squeal. Her grandmother was completely squealworthy.
“Hai Ram,” her father said with a groan. “That means not only do I have to restock the Johnnie Walker, but we have to deal with our nakhrewali daughter before your mother decides to defend her.” He spooned more vegetables onto his plate before giving Winnie a knowing look.
“What?”
“Your mother and I understand the significance of Pandit Ohmi’s natal star-chart readings more than anyone. We lived it and had to face hard choices as well. But stealing, Winnie? It doesn’t serve a point you’re trying to make if you end up jeopardizing your future. You’ve never acted like this before, so we’re not going to send you to boarding school like your mother wants. But you will give Raj his movies back.”
“Uh, there may be a problem with that….”
“What kind of a problem?”
“I may have buried them.”
“May have buried them? As in in the ground?”
“Yes. In the ground. I could dig them up, but since it rained last night, I don’t know how good they’d be. I also have to find them because I don’t remember the exact location….Daddy, it was the principle of the matter!”
Her father hung his head and said with a long-suffering sigh, “Then you’ll repay Raj, giving him the money value of the property you took.”
“Dad—”
“You and I both know what our movie collections mean to us. If Raj’s held the same importance to him, and I’m sure it did if you gave it to him, then it’s only righ
t you pay him so he can rebuild his library. Your mother is right. It is about izzat.”
“I used up all my money for film camp,” Winnie said.
Her father grunted in acknowledgment.
“So, what, you want me to get a job even though you know I’m doing AP classes, college applications, the film club, and the film festival?”
“Yes.”
“What about my review blog? That takes a lot of time.”
Her dad looked at her blandly. “Your review site that no one reads?”
“Um, so not true.”
“Your site talks only about the musicals. That’s why no one reads it. You’re not considering the new trends.”
“Hey, just because I don’t like new Bollywood with all its kissing and lack of song-and-dance numbers doesn’t mean my blog is outdated. Song-and-dance numbers are the pillars of the industry.”
“Okay, enough, you two,” her mother said. “Winnie, we can always have a pooja to pray for you to find your destined husband.”
“No!” Winnie shouted. “Please do not invite your friends here to pray for me. That makes me look so pathetic.” The thought of a prayer service with a gaggle of “aunties”—the women who hung out with her mother—all asking the gods to give her what she needed to find a man was nauseating.
“There is nothing wrong with a pooja,” her mother said. She got up from the table, grabbed her dishes, and carried them to the sink. “You should be ashamed for saying that.”
“Hey, praying is totally fine. It’s the whole in-house pooja thing that drives me crazy. Daddy? No pooja. But a job?”
“You’re working.”
With a sigh she pushed her plate forward and dropped her head onto her folded arms. She mumbled into the crease of her elbow, “Where am I supposed to find a job that hires high school students? The summer season is over. Fall is, like, dead.”
“The movie theater.”
She jerked up. “Which movie theater? The one on Route 1? The one on Route 27? The one off 287? Do you mean the dine-in theater? The one in Bridgewater, or the one in Edison?”