Deranged Marriage
Page 24
Within weeks Tom and I were sitting with an excited little girl at the departure gates in terminal two at Melbourne Airport waiting for Qantas flight 93 to Los Angeles. It was nearly lunchtime and my daughter would be hungry soon. Tom had her peanut butter sandwiches in the Hello Kitty backpack on his back. In about twenty-four hours we would be at JFK Airport in New York. A night and day to fly to the other side of the world; half a lifetime to acclimatise.
‘I can’t believe Vin’s managed to coordinate this reunion,’ I said. ‘I feel a bit nervous actually. It’s been twenty-four years since we all lived under the same roof.’
‘Why? What’s there to be nervous about?’
‘Don’t know. What if it’s awkward? What if we start arguing with each other? I don’t think I could bear that.’
‘What if you all just carry on from where you left off?’
It was late in the evening and frosty when we arrived in New York. The airport was warm and Christmas baubles dangled in the duty-free shop. Dinesh, who came to pick us up, looked almost no different to the way he had when I’d first set eyes on him in my parent’s garden. Unlike Vin, who was a fast driver, he drove slowly and cautiously all the way to New Jersey, where Vin was waiting in her extraordinarily large house with her three kids.
Within days everyone had arrived. Mum and Dad, both wearing sneakers, looked like a pair of American tourists. A floppy map and self-darkening sunglasses would have completed the picture. Raja and his wife had with them their seven-month-old baby girl – a little half-Indian half-Chinese honeyball. It was the first time I’d met her. Vin’s father-in-law was also there, a quiet old man who mostly kept to himself.
All the kids, once they’d finished staring at each other, became instant friends, rummaging through toys in the rumpus room and watching TV together. It was the grown-ups who needed a little help relaxing. We spent our first few days together being terribly polite, passing the salt, helping to put the dishes away, all smiling tentatively. That came to an abrupt end one evening when Vin pulled out a bottle of Grey Goose Vodka, placed it on the island kitchen bench with a loud bang and said, ‘Right, who wants a cocktail?’
Within a couple of hours our shyness had evaporated and everyone was laughing and chatting loudly. It was like being at a house party where most of the partygoers bore a physical resemblance to each other.
Most evenings Vin and Mum prepared the evening meal. One night Vin asked me, ‘Can you put some of this bayzel on the salad?’
‘Bayzel?’ I mocked. ‘Bayzel? You’re really American now, eh?’
‘Well, you change, don’t you?’ she replied.
‘I haven’t.’
‘That just shows there’s something wrong with you. There’s always been something wrong with your head.’
‘She’s changed, all right,’ said Raja. Then he said to me, ‘You sound like an Australian.’
‘I most certainly do not,’ I said, exaggerating my English accent to push back against a comment that perturbed me.
‘You most certainly do. You go up at the end of all your sentences? Like this? Like you’re asking a question?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Yes, you do.’
‘Don’t.’
‘Do.’
I looked at Vin for support. ‘G’day, Sheila,’ she said, raising her glass to me and grinning.
That evening after Mum and Dad had gone to bed, and the kids were sound asleep, Vin and I found ourselves sitting on the couch watching the TV on mute.
‘Do you think you’ll ever go back to England to live?’ I asked without looking at her.
‘Nah,’ she said without hesitation. ‘I’ve made my home here; the kids are settled at school. America’s good, it gives people a chance. The country code for America is number one, you know. I’ll always miss England though. What about you? You ever gonna go back?’
‘I hope so. I don’t want Australia to be the country I die in. It would be like dying miles away from home – where you should be when you die. But I have to consider Tom and a child now, so it’s not straightforward. I might go back for a quick visit next year though. I have some business to attend to. I’ve got to give Mum and Dad something. Well, return something actually.’
‘What?’
‘Just some old black and white photos.’
Vin turned to look at me. ‘I nicked them when I was a kid,’ I said.
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. Probably because there’s something wrong with my head.’
‘I could have told you that.’
We sat in silence for a while, staring at the TV.
‘Do you think you’ll give your kids an arranged marriage?’ I asked.
‘No,’ she said flatly.
‘Nor me. I don’t think Raja will either.’
‘Mmm,’ she said rubbing an eye. ‘I’m tired. I’m gonna go to bed now. Got laundry and kids’ stuff to do in the morning. We’ll cut Dad’s birthday cake at lunchtime. Don’t forget to turn the lights out.’
She got up and took some empty glasses into the kitchen. She had Mum’s shoulders from behind: slightly rounded. She had her skinny ankles too. I had my dad’s height and angular features and Raja was somewhere in between.
Vin had an open-plan house so I could see her as she climbed the stairs and walked across the long landing to her bedroom. When we were kids, people used to say they could tell we were sisters. We didn’t look anything like each other now.
After I heard her close her bedroom door, I sat for a while looking around me at the comfortable L-shaped couch, the fireplace without a mantelpiece, the large flatscreen TV, the twelve-foot Christmas tree standing in the hallway.
The era of arranged marriages in the family was dead now, I thought. How quickly it had happened – just one generation to end a centuries-old tradition. ‘Still, the family’s all together,’ I said aloud to myself. ‘The firm’s still going strong.’ Hauling myself off the couch, I made my way to the pink bedroom that Tom and I had been allocated.
The next morning I awoke to find my daughter standing near the bed like a silent child ghost, and weak sunlight passing easily through the fabric blinds. Downstairs I could hear cupboards being closed and plates clanking. I sat up and yawned. ‘Good morning, my lovely little thing. Let’s go downstairs and see what everyone’s up to.’
When I opened the bedroom door I saw Vin on the landing wrestling with laundry.
‘Good morning,’ she said, folding a large white towel that had yet to go grey. ‘I’ve got to go out, I forgot the flipping candles.’
‘It’s Sunday. Where are you going to get seventy candles?’
‘This is America, baby. You can get anything you like, any time of the day or night. I could buy a whole lounge suite at midnight if I wanted.’
‘Yes, very impressive. I’ll come with you.’
I dressed and went downstairs with my daughter one step at a time to avoid rushing her. I found Mum having breakfast with Vin’s kids, Raja and his wife feeding their daughter and Dad sitting on the couch, his head buried in the New York Times, reading all the news that was fit to print.
‘Happy Birthday, Dad.’
‘Thank you,’ he said looking over the top of the paper.
‘Will you give her breakfast, Mum?’ I asked, helping my daughter climb on to a chair. ‘Me and Vin are just popping out to get something.’
Mum gave my little girl a kiss, looked up at my face and then stared down at my knees.
‘Your skirt look too short,’ she said, disapprovingly. ‘Haven’t you got long one? Iss very cold outside. You need long skirt. Why don’t you wear the jean?’
‘Mum, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed but I’m forty-three years old and I’m a mother now. I like this skirt and I’m going to wear it. And I won’t be cold.’ She rolled her eyes. I rolled mine.
‘Where are you going?’ asked Raja.
‘Nowhere, just got to get something,’ said Vin. I blew the air as if blowing
out candles. He looked at me quizzically, raised his eyebrows questioningly and put two straight fingers to his mouth as if he was holding an imaginary cigarette. I shook my head to indicate he had misunderstood.
‘Whatever,’ he said. ‘Just be back before lunchtime for you-know-what.’
Vin and I left through the back door and climbed into her four-wheel drive parked in the garage. The air was bitterly cold.
‘Bloody hell, it’s freezing,’ I said, rubbing my hands together vigorously.
‘You should have worn something warmer.’
‘I know, I know. I should have worn my jeans.’
Vin pulled the driver’s side door and it closed with a soft thud, the way expensive car doors do. She turned the key in the ignition as the garage doors opened magically, and we drove out into the bright wintery sunlight. Once we were on the road she leant forward to turn on the radio, which burst into sound at high volume halfway through Lynyrd Skynyrd’s ‘Free Bird’.
‘Ah, I love this song,’ she said, running her fingers through her hair as if releasing it from a bun, and then put her foot down hard on the accelerator.
The details of studies cited in the book are as follows:
‘A passage from Erotic Art of the East, by art expert Philip Rawson’: Erotic Art of the East: The Sexual Theme in Oriental Painting and Sculpture, Philip Rawson, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, p. 59
‘Roger Ballard, a British anthropologist and expert’: ‘Honour Killing? Or just plain homicide?’, Roger Ballard in Cultural Expertise and Litigation: Patterns, Conflicts, Narratives, Livia Holden (ed.), Routledge, 2011, London, pp. 123–148
‘In 2012, a BBC survey about the honour system’: BBC Panorama Honour Crime Survey, conducted by ComRes, March 2012
‘A global study by an American think-tank called the Middle East Forum’: ‘Worldwide Trends in Honour Killings’, Phyllis Chesler, Middle East Quarterly, spring 2010
‘A 2010 American study of child gender’: ‘Child Gender and Parental Investments in India: Are Boys and Girls Treated Differently?’, Silvia Helena Barcellos, Leandro Carvalho and Adriana Lleras-Muney, dissertation, Princeton University, July 2010
‘In Britain the rate of mixed marriages’: ‘Who Intermarries in Britain: Explaining Ethnic Diversity in Intermarriage Pattern’, Raya Muttarak and Anthony Heath, British Journal of Sociology 61(2), 2010
‘In America, mixed marriages’: ‘The Rise of Intermarriage – Rates, Characteristics Vary by Race and Gender’, Wendy Wang, Pew Research Center, February 2012
‘And in Australia, less than’: ‘Intermarriage in Australia: Patterns by Birthplace, Ancestry, Religion and Indigenous Status – a report using data from the 2006 Census’, Genevieve Heard, Siew-Ean Khoo and Bob Birrell, Centre for Population and Urban Research, Monash University for the Australian Bureau of Statistics Australian Census Analytic Program
I would like to thank everyone at Random House, especially Nikki Christer for believing in me and for her enthusiastic support from beginning to end. Thanks also to Catherine Hill, as judicious an editor as any writer could hope for, who rescued me from myself many times.
I am grateful to the following people for helping in so many different ways: Sanjeev Bhaskar, Simon Clews, Clare Forster, John Hobson, Eugene Hyland, Frank Maiorana, Nic ‘the punk’ Moore, Elliot Perlman, Bob Taylor and Tony Wood. I reserve a very special thank you for Chris Feik.
I have spent nearly all my life infuriating everyone in my family, and, inexplicably, they have always put up with me. They once again demonstrated the depth of their patience during the writing of this book. I thank them all, particularly my dad and mum for taking all the blows, for reliving painful memories so I could write this book, and for never abandoning me. And thank you also to Vin and Praveen for providing invaluable feedback.
I am indebted to Tom Hyland, my most brutal and honest editor, who kept me on the straight and narrow with his sharp eye and big heart. Finally, I would like to thank my remarkably patient six-year-old daughter, Lotus, who no longer needs to come home from school and ask, ‘Did you make any progress today, Mum?’
Sushi Das is an award-winning British-Australian journalist of Indian origin who has worked at The Age newspaper for seventeen years. She currently holds the position of opinion editor. Educated and raised in London, she migrated to Australia in 1991 and began her career as a news reporter at Australian Associated Press. Her work has been recognised with two Melbourne Press Club Quill awards, including Best Columnist (2006).
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Version 1.0
Deranged Marriage
9781742751573
Copyright © Sushi Das, 2012
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
A Bantam book
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First published by Bantam in 2012
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: (ebook)
Das, Sushi
Deranged marriage [electronic resource] / Sushi Das
ISBN 9781742751573 (ebook)
Das, Sushi
Women, Anglo-Indian-Biography
Arranged marriage
305.48891411092
Cover art and design © Design by Committee
Text from Erotic Art of the East by Philip Rawson © Piers Rawson/Estate of Philip S. Rawson reproduced with permission of Piers Rawson
Lyrics from ‘Lookin’ After No. 1’ by Bob Geldof reproduced with permission of Mushroom Music on behalf of Mute Song
Lyrics from ‘Free Bird’: words and music by Ronnie Van Zant / Allen Collins © Universal Duchess Music Corp/EMI Longitude Music. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Reprinted with permission.
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