But then again, her father could not have foreseen, nor would he be able to compute, the extent of his recent miscalculations. Only Lata could project future contractual demise without the cushion of enough hurricane bonds to ride her through this emotional tempest. Only Lata could see bullion and bangles resold (though admittedly the gold market had never been hotter), and dreams of prime real estate holdings in Credit Mills forfeited, in the dissolution of a marriage that would bear little yield in terms of present family interests or future family gain.
For once she had seen the value in home-grown and home-spun and this is what she had to show for it! He played a good game but Made in India he certainly was not! He had said the requisite amount of pleases, thank yous, and namastes to her parents. He had appeared adequately enthusiastic without being inappropriately desperate at the prospect of his Canadian bride-to-be. And his web-profile photos, which Lata had found particularly appealing, weren’t airbrushed or doctored in any way (she knew this because she hired a fashion photographer to scrutinize them). And for all that, something had gone terribly wrong in the voyage across. Arjun was like one of those disappointing shipments of grown-for-export mangoes: touted as nothing less than the Alfonso, the king of the mango, when in reality he was as green and sour as the inferior kind used for pickles and chutneys.
Giving up on the unrelenting gear shift, Lata sat in her car and replayed their “talk” over and over in her throbbing but perfectly butterscotch-highlighted head of hair. And to think that all she’d said was that it was time to start a family.
“An heir! You want an heir! You can’t have an heir without an inheritance!” he jeered, and stormed out of the house to catch the eight a.m. bus, which he insisted on taking because it allowed him to connect with the people. Lata may not have understood her husband’s desire to connect with the people, or who exactly “these people” were, but it didn’t take an expert to figure out that she had been struck out by a curve ball aimed and fired, with barbaric accuracy, at her total net worth.
Lata’s first instinct was to scold her parents for not having done a thorough background check on the Malhotra family. Weren’t they supposed to come from a long line of well-placed Delhi stock? Wasn’t Arjun’s great-grandfather supposed to be related to that Nehru guy? Or one of those people her abbu-ji droned on about, lapsing into languorous bouts of nostalgia for what he called the “days of york” or “yoda” … or whatever the hell those days were. At any rate, those kinds of connections didn’t interest her. In her fragmented and scant conception of Indian history, Mohandas K. Gandhi and Indira Gandhi were some famously unfashionable married couple, and “Partition” was a bad word whose mere mention launched her parents into frenzied exchanges of Hindi or a complicit silence that only a long distance call or news of relatives could break.
At any rate, the real injustice was not the suspect nature of Arjun’s lineage. She had wanted to say as much when she called her parents earlier that day. Not in the mood to endure a lecture, Lata only managed to mumble something about their needing to be prepared to take some responsibility for this hungama before she, herself, hung up. Apparently her mother didn’t dwell on the cryptic or frantic nature of the call, otherwise Lata would have been bombarded by ariatic voice messages all day long: “What is all this nonsense, beti?” or “How dare you hang up on your mother!” or the classic, “What will your father say?”
In retrospect, even her mother’s tirades would be a welcome intrusion if it meant being able to confide in someone. She wasn’t able to concentrate on much else anyway. She was desperate to confide in one of her co-workers but Lata had vowed, from what seemed to be her kindergarten days, to keep her Indianness, and everything that was remotely connected to it, where it belonged: in the haldi-infused walls of her mother’s kitchen. In this she was sorely out of step with the times because, in fact, there was nothing hotter or cooler than being Indian, at least when it came to food and fashion. If she were a silk scarf, a beaded “tunic” or a foodies’ secret ingredient in one of those Top Chef cook-offs, being Indian wouldn’t feel so lame. But even in the category of consumable India, she felt like an outmoded spice-mix packet for some generic dish (Vindaloo or Chana Masala) upstaged by the fusion-inspired Naan pizzas or just-add-water exotic Tamil soups.
In spite of this, or maybe because of this, everything about Lata’s life, except her arranged marriage, was a testament to her judicious adherence to North Ameri-khana (a bilingual pun that Arjun had invented in his mimicry of her decidedly un-ethnic eating habits, which generally consisted of boxed greens accompanied by broiled chicken breast or baked salmon). All her daily lifestyle choices were motivated by her desire to emulate the signs and symbols of a thoroughly Canadian existence that did not require the numerous accommodations of multiculturalism or political correctness. For this reason, the only person outside community circles who was privy to what Lata cryptically referred to as “the details” was her best friend Vanessa. And Vanessa had only found out because her mother once saw fit to entertain her with stories of the various “duds” they had rejected from the matrimonial websites. “I’m sorry?” Vanessa had interjected, always a little discomfited by Lakshmi Menon’s accent. “Duds, beti, duds!” her mother persisted.
“You mean dudes, Mrs. Menon?” Vanessa looked perplexed.
“No, duds, Vanessa dear! It’s an Eng-u-lish word for … loos-ah.” her mother drawled, pleased with her efforts at crossing this idiomatic and generational hurdle.
Vanessa took a few minutes to decipher her mother’s explanation: “Ooooh, you mean a loserrr?” Lata almost died having to sit through those excruciating eleven minutes till her mother shuffled off to tend to some household chore.
For everyone else, Lata had spun, with minimal gesticulatory verve (she was very conscious of the fact that Desis spoke with their hands), a mundanely credible fairy tale about meeting Arjun at a trendy nightclub in Delhi during a summer vacation. “First it was a summer fling. Nothing more,” she’d breathlessly explained to Jennifer and Becky, the bank tellers she usually had lunch with. “But even with an ocean between us, we couldn’t stop thinking about each other.… ” Everything but the wedding details was sheer fabrication, of course, details which, in this case, Lata described with gusto, throwing in, for added visual effect, a few gratuitous comparisons to her ever-growing list of wedding-themed chick flicks: My Best Friend’s Wedding, Wedding Planner, 27 Dresses, Something Borrowed. Not that Jennifer or Becky needed any cinematic assistance in imagining the scope, scale, and expenditure of a respectable wedding. Working at the bank was exposure enough. So many young couples were in debt because of their “big fat weddings” that one of the rotating managers had designated it a new type of “unsecured loan.”
As for the divorce Lata was now bracing herself for: well, now there was a fine North American tradition she could participate in without any need for creative dishonesty. Maybe it would even help her bond with Jennifer, who was a twenty-something divorcée and single mother of two. Maybe divorce would give her the kind of edginess that twenty-somethings were supposed to emulate. She didn’t know what classified as edgy, but she was convinced that making a mess of one’s life was a sure step to gaining “street cred,” a term she had picked up watching some reality cop show with her younger brother Sanjay.
Still hesitant to confide in Jennifer or Becky because of the million and one questions it might generate, Lata thought of Priya, the bank receptionist. In normal circumstances, Lata avoided Priya like the plague, but desperate times called for desperate measures. For one, Priya was the only one of her co-workers to have met Arjun. Lata recoiled from the memory. She had almost dropped the iPhone she was browsing with one hand, her custom-monogrammed water thermos in the other, when she saw Arjun and Priya chatting up a storm in the parking lot. To make matters worse, the two of them were speaking in Punjabi. Lata had no idea Arjun spoke Punjabi! She remembered being impressed by the fact that he
had checked off the “fluent in multiple languages” category on his marital profile, which she assumed meant French and German, or French and Spanish, but as it turned out merely consisted of Hindi, Punjabi, and English. Another act of false advertising, Lata thought resentfully.
Lata seethed with jealousy at the sight of Arjun and Priya getting up close and personal. She was not only envious of Priya’s universal claim to beauty, but also of the fact that the sum total of her parts magically transformed what was usually the vulgar language of race into the lyrical cadences of poetry: “Paki” metamorphosed into princess, “ethnic” into exotic, and so on. On most people that dreadful pierced nose would look so “yesterday,” but on Priya it looked so “today” that Stella McCartney could have designed it! The colour-blinding effect of Priya’s beauty on man, woman, and child—and even the occasional pooch—was nothing short of genetic larceny to Lata, who had never been the recipient of such flattering linguistic and cultural transmutations.
And to think that Arjun had made a point of saying that even though he liked all the pictures on her web profile, they didn’t do her justice! That double-crossing, no good, haramzada! Lata fumed, as she feverishly scanned the bank’s main floor for Priya while trying to erase the image of Arjun chatting her up in the parking lot like a love-sick puppy. Her only consolation was that Priya was newly affianced to that Dollar Store franchisee. Much to Lata’s delight, Priya’s engagement had set the rumour mill on overdrive because no one could believe someone as gorgeous as Priya would “choose” to sink so low. Even Lata did a double take: Dilip Singh? Of Dilip’s Buck or Two? Dilip, the son of a Punjabi electrician and one of those weird Indian women from Trinidad? He was hardly a catch by anyone’s standards! Lata clearly recalled the day she had become the unfortunate recipient of the wholly unspectacular account of the Dilip-Priya romance. “I was down to my last few pennies. And you know I have no experience outside retail. Then I applied for the position here and a cashier position at Dilip’s store. Well, as it turned out I got this job too, but Dilip and I started seeing each other since my interview and the rest,” Priya said with a twinkle in her eyes that made Lata want to stick her finger down her throat, “is history.” No doubt Dilip’s a sleaze-bag and probably deserves to be slapped with a sexual harassment suit, but whatever, Lata had thought at the time, bit her tongue, and smiled.
***
“Poor Priya,” Becky had muttered over her bagel and cream cheese during their lunch break earlier that afternoon. “I mean, having to spend the rest of your life with someone you, like, hardly know. That’s too sad.”
At that moment, Jeff, the office flirt who was, himself, usually two steps shy of a sexual harassment suit, sauntered into the lunch room. Giving the vending machine a gratuitous kick to release his preferred Mr. Big bar, he piped up, “Oh, yeah! What a waste. I give her two months before she needs a real man’s touch, if ya’ know what I mean.”
“You pig!” Becky yelled after Jeff, though her smile betrayed her amusement.
“Grrrrr!” Jeff feigned a lion’s roar coming in for the kill as he theatrically ripped open his Mr. Big.
“Cut it out, Jeff.” Steve admonished Jeff mildly, as he waited for a frozen mac-and-cheese to heat up in the microwave. Lata sighed, transfixed by the bulging veins that contracted and pulsed in Steve’s perfectly contoured forearms. It was no wonder she still found herself scheduling her lunch-break to coincide with Steve’s, a habit she half-heartedly tried to break after marrying Arjun.
“Priya’s only been here for a few years. She wasn’t born here,” Steve explained, bringing Lata back to the lunchroom chatter.
Priya was ten when her family got here! She’s as much a second-genner as I am, Lata thought, piercing the slippery kidney beans in her salad bowl with added ferocity.
“You can’t expect people to change overnight,” Steve added. “We’re talking about traditions that have been practiced for hundreds of years—for millennia, even.”
Lata blushed upon hearing Steve defend her culture. Though she also smarted at his insinuation that arranged marriages were an antiquated tradition. Now she was more convinced than ever that she had made the right decision not to invite her co-workers to her wedding, even though she had desperately wanted them to see her all dolled up on the mandap.
“Speak for yourself, Steve!” Jennifer interjected while flipping over the glossy pages of an old copy of Hello magazine featuring the “Royals’ Wedding of the Century.”
“Or maybe Priya’s the one who’s got it right. I mean, the divorce rate is far lower in India than it is here. Being hopeless romantics isn’t exactly a freedom we’ve put to any practical use, is it?” Steve persisted, directing his last comment to Jennifer, which Lata thought was a little below the belt.
“Hey, millions of people around the world celebrated the royal wedding! And now they’ve got two royal babies!” Becky jumped in, though Lata wasn’t sure if she was coming to Jennifer’s or the royal family’s defence. “Can you imagine, like, falling for some guy in your art history class and he turns out to be frickin’ Prince William?”
“Don’t be so naïve. It’s not as if she didn’t know who he was. Besides, people say her mother groomed her for the part for years,” Jennifer retorted.
“Listen to you two,” Steve interjected. “It’s one thing for Brits to be sucked in by the monarchy, but what’s our excuse? Did you know that the cost of that wedding cake you’re looking at was thousands more than the combined pay increase of their entire cleaning staff at Buckingham Palace—a pay increase the staff never got. They’re a tax burden, pure and simple.”
“Blah, blah, blah,” Jennifer mocked. “Don’t be such a downer. So they had a big cake. What do you expect? A Sunday Special from DQ?”
“Didn’t you guys learn anything from the Charles-Diana debacle?” Steve persisted. “And look how well that ended.”
“Okay, man! We get the picture: you’re hot for Kate!” Jeff cut him off this time.
“All this fairy tale crap has really got you people fooled. If Charles and Diana could have been an arranged marriage, then so could this. They’ve just got a better PR team this time round, so they don’t look completely out of step with the times,” Steve said, ignoring Jeff.
“Steve’s right. It could have been an arranged marriage, like Charles and Di,” Lata chimed in this time, thrilled that she was the one coming to Steve’s defense.
“See, ladies? Kate and William; Priya and Dilip. Same difference.”
Lata almost choked on her low fat pro-biotic blueberry yoghurt. Same difference? That wasn’t her point at all. That was like comparing The Bachelor, the Rolls Royce of reality TV shows which she religiously PVR-ed because it fell on Spin Class night, to Bridezillas!
When Steve and the others dispersed, Lata flipped through a more current version of People magazine featuring the “Royal Baby Diaries” devoted entirely to centerfold pages with Kate and William holding their first-born son. That could be us, Lata sighed enviously. She’d counted on becoming pregnant no later than their first anniversary, preferably around the holidays so she could make a spectacular announcement of their “Christmas miracle” over Turkey dinner.
***
As soon as she unlocked the front door, she was assaulted by the unmistakable stench of hot dogs sizzling in a frying pan. She’d asked him time and time again to barbeque them outside, particularly because she was convinced he was eating the all-beef kind.
“For god’s sake, Arjun!” she shouted from the foyer.
“And hello to you too!” Arjun shouted back.
When she entered the kitchen, he was fishing out the dogs with a set of tongs and setting them on a poppy-seeded bun. “Care for some dinner?”
“Gross!” Lata put her hand up as if to draw an invisible line between herself and the greasy object suspended in the tongs. Grabbing an anti-odour deodorizer, she proce
eded to spray the room with vengeful zeal.
“Opening the window would be just as effective!” Arjun countered, while hunting for condiments in the fridge. He picked out a jar of Patak’s Hot Mango Chutney, a bottle of Jamaican Scotch Bonnet hot sauce, a squeeze bottle of French mustard, and a Costco size tub of onion relish, all of which he placed together on the kitchen table.
“Well, that’s how we do things in the First World,” Lata retorted. “If you don’t like it, why did you come here in the first place?”
“Why indeed? I should have stayed in India where there is no shortage of jobs for someone with a Master’s in Computer Science,” Arjun said, spreading a heaping spoonful of the syrupy chutney on one side of the bun. “This is not exactly the IT mecca, is it? Why would I come to a place that outsources most of its jobs these days! The First World seems pretty close to bankruptcy, if you ask me.”
Lata knew enough about market trends to admit that he wasn’t entirely wrong. But she was more confused than ever about Arjun and his motives.
“So-why-then?” she repeated, slumping herself into one of the chrome and lucite dining chairs she had picked out in her mind well before she and her father had put a down payment on their townhome.
“For you, of course.” He seemed serious enough but Lata wasn’t about to fall for that again.
“You know what I’m asking. Why didn’t you just marry an … Indian?”
Outside People and Other Stories Page 6