It was a gut-dropping moment.
Jay was immature and needy—and attached to me.
“Sorry,” I wrote back to him. “Work has been very hectic, hence haven’t been able to write back. I am in Sydney waiting to board my flight back to New Delhi.”
He wrote back inside of thirty seconds. “Still? I envy your lifestyle. Man, I wish I could travel. It’s so maddening to be stuck at home all the time.”
“But you live in the greatest city on the planet: NYC. I wish I could live in that city.”
“Cool. Let’s trade lives because I hate that it’s April and it’s still snowing. The cold is so deep that I can’t get warm.”
I didn’t know what to say. I was also partially distracted by the announcements being made at the airport at the same time as the server in the lounge showed up to take my order.
“You doing OK today? Are you angry with me? Something I did?” Jay sent me a note.
I took a sip of my wine and looked over the paperwork. “I have to finish a lot of work, so sorting out everything.”
“You seem very not Ahana-like at all.”
“Aww, I am sorry if I haven’t been able to help you this past week.”
“Just missing my regular chitchat with you. :) When do you get back home?”
“Give or take thirty hours.”
“Let’s chat over the weekend at length. I will be watching the Jets kick some Patriot ass! But will be around if you are bored.”
I pressed my palms together and let out a sigh. “I am working this Saturday. My boss wants an update on this trip before Monday. And my friend has thrown a brunch at a club on Sunday. How about Monday evening? I’ll be back home from work and yoga on time. I would absolutely love to hear what you have been up to.”
Jay didn’t write back.
* * *
Once I landed in Delhi, I called Dad. “I am on my way home. Yes. Yes. Don’t worry. I understand. You probably got busy. Yeah, Baburao showed up to the airport on time to pick me up. I’ll see you soon.” I was too tired to react to Dad’s forgetfulness.
As I settled in the car and drank some water, I decided to message Jay and make sure he was doing OK. I understood very well what loneliness could turn us into. Jay had mentioned several times that he had nobody else.
“Had an exciting time?” he promptly wrote back.
I rolled my eyes. And it would seem Jay, magically, despite being thousands of miles away, saw it.
“You really don’t get it, do you? You went to Australia! You forgot me amid all of your new friends, Ahana!”
I really didn’t have the patience for whining right now. “The first thing I do after getting out of the airport is message you, and you still want assurance from me?”
“Wow. Someone tells you they are depressed and that they miss you and you lecture them on how they should not need reassurance about friendship? That’s just disappointing.”
I lost it. “WE AREN’T DATING! We are friends dealing with losing our mothers and getting to know each other. Frankly, there is only so much you can know of a person you meet online. Calm down. I have work to do.” I logged out.
I arrived home, took a shower, changed into my comfy pajamas, which the washer man had cleaned and ironed, updated my family on my trip, ate a simple Indian meal, and got back up to my room. The jetlag had messed up my sleep cycle, but I felt that the MF Husain original paintings on the walls leading up the staircase—ones Mumma had bought at an auction—nudged me to stay strong. I played jazz and sat down to read Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead on my fire-colored couch, nestled among its familiar hand-embroidered cushions.
When we were married, I had told Dev, “I am looking forward to reading Lean In. Apparently, she offers practical advice to help women achieve their goals.”
“Your goal should be to keep your husband happy.”
At first, as I sometimes did, I thought he was teasing, so I continued reading my book. He didn’t have a sense of humor with me, but sometimes I took whatever I could get—usually sexist jokes that his male friends probably thought were genuinely hilarious. But an hour later, he was climbing on top of me with more ferocity than usual, and that night, he tied my hands with wire. I never volunteered to be tied down or spanked but Dev never asked what I wanted.
* * *
My laptop was on charge on my desk. I heard a ping. I closed the book and walked over to see who was messaging me at this late hour. Jay wrote. “I get that we aren’t dating. It’s tough to explain so I generally don’t bother trying anymore. I just feel like most of my friendships are conditional and even after so many years of life, I don’t really know who I can count on as a true friend anymore. I try to do kind things for people because it’s my nature, but I just get abused and eventually dropped when I am no longer of use. I have no doubt it’s my fault for courting such people into my circle, but I don’t do it on purpose, nor do I know how to undo it so I do feel a bit stuck. My mother understood my battles, but with her gone, I feel lonely. I have no one to talk to without the fear of being judged. You are the one friend who understands me, Ahana. I guess sometimes I get too used to chatting with you and miss it when we can’t for a while. That’s about it. I fear losing you…my friend, that is.”
I felt bad for my meltdown with Jay as I had done with Rohan. Was Jay hurtful because he was hurting? I sat at my desk and typed, “What happened, Jay?”
He disappeared again.
I ended the chat with J. D. Salinger’s words, “That’s the whole trouble. When you’re feeling very depressed, you can’t even think.”
He replied, “I see you’re stewing on something I can’t grasp. You are making assumptions that I am depressed. You are searching for reasons to be disappointed.”
I was stunned by Jay’s tone. Dev used to take that tone with me. It made my head spin. “Why the hell are you screaming at me?” I wrote back.
“Screaming? Fuck, what is wrong with you?” He sent me another message right away. “Problem is you can’t accept that you’re ever wrong. It’s all feelings for you—you felt I was depressed. Fuck, you could feel I was a seventy-five-year-old transvestite and never be convinced otherwise. OK, fine. But I will never just accept such feelings, so if I’m not allowed to question your feelings that are simply at odds with my reality, then we really need to stop this and just put the friendship to rest.”
“Are you on something?” I could feel my fingers burn. Jay kept bringing up images of my dark past with Dev; it irked me. He was disruptive like my ex-husband.
“I will never understand the depth of your disappointment in nearly every action I take, Ahana. I won’t be by email for a while. I have some knitting to do.”
I sat perplexed. Even though Jay was condescending, I could deeply identify with him lashing out, and saw similarities to myself. He sent a one-line email the following morning. “I miss the hell out of being your friend. I am afraid you are going to terminate our friendship.”
- 9 -
Mumma would say, “You cannot always control what goes on outside. But you can always control what goes on inside.” The realization that I was pathologically dependent on my mother started to hit me with each passing day. I was lucky to have Mumma as a strong role model in my life, but her strength also made me weak because I never learned to wean off and make my own decisions. My marriage, my divorce, my career…Mumma remained a strong influence.
I focused on my work all day Saturday. On Sunday morning, I went for a yoga class to de-stress. After getting dressed, I headed to the brunch organized by my friend Maya at the club in South Delhi, to blend in with New Delhi’s socialites.
Across the street from the club, there were families sleeping on the pavement in the seething heat. There was a little girl baking rotis on the side of the street, feeding her toddler brothers, and shooing away street dogs. The contrasts in New Delhi! In the cloistered, privileged world that I grew up in—where your value was determined by
your wealth, foreign vacations, education abroad, and how well you spoke English—no one wanted to discuss the economic disparities. “Don’t ruin the party and people’s mood, Ahana,” Dev would warn me if I tried to bring up social issues.
I gave the little girl a hundred rupees and entered the club. Maya had warned me about the crowd she was expecting—her colleagues from both the advertising agency and law school days. The women pouted their lips and took a lot of selfies. They posted our pictures on social media. How did I know this? They asked for my social media handle and said, “We have tagged you in the photos. You have such pretty hair, Ahana. And such big boobs!” I wondered whether they, too, thought I looked like a matron. I had had difficulty implementing Rohan’s advice about social media posts. None of the pics I’d shared from the Sydney trip had anything to do with the conference. In my efforts to sign up with big-name organizations and the special work moments of forging partnerships, I’d forgotten to capture them.
I felt amused listening to these women’s stories of sex, cigarettes, men, cheating, and one-night stands. Every now and then, Maya and I exchanged a look—a sly smile lingering at the corner of our lips. One of them found her brother-in-law attractive when, ironically, she found the same qualities attractive in her husband. One of the women asserted after a big gulp of her single malt, “I am so good at what I do. I am the best fucking lawyer in my entire law firm. But I don’t have a dick and that’s why I can’t get to the next level.” Another woman in the group didn’t eat or drink; her brunch was a pack of cigarettes. It felt as if her bones were pressed against her flesh and they would all crumble. Maya’s boss swallowed her gin and tonic. “My mother still doesn’t get it. She keeps getting priests over to pray for me. Men and their private parts, they make me want to vomit.” She threw the olive pit in the ashtray.
I was silent for most of the brunch. Maya mouthed to ask whether I was OK with the crowd. I texted her, “Sweetie, never been better.” I sipped some prosecco.
One of the ladies elbowed me. “Hope you got bumped by one of the hot Aussie hunks.”
“Those Aussie men know how to fuck hard and good.” Another woman winked, holding a knife seductively in her mouth. When Dev wanted me to go down on him, he would put the butt of the knife inside his mouth with the tip pointing toward me and pull it out and push it back in continuous motion. That was it: my tipping point.
“I am so stuffed; I need to move things around my stomach.” I wiped my glasses and went for a walk in the heat.
After a thirty-minute stroll, I checked my phone. There was a message from Rohan.
“Yo, Matron. You added new life to the crisp Connecticut housewife look. Nice work!” There was a wink at the end of the sentence.
“Oh gosh, those pictures are all over social media, aren’t they?”
“Hell, yeah! Haha. You couldn’t look unhappier in your pictures of pouts and pastels,” he replied.
In my inebriated state, I wrote, “These women are strange.”
“How so?”
“All of them want to talk about the intimate details of their lives.”
“The balls on them.” Rohan ended his message with a smile.
“Fine, I get it. I am not like the harem women you are used to.”
“Geez, I am kidding. Walk away, Matron. Tell them you want to go for a stroll.”
“That’s exactly what I’m doing, genius.” I rolled my eyes at the phone as I wrote back. “Why are you still awake, Brady?” I perched my sunglasses on my head.
“I got invited to a fashion show—”
I interrupted Rohan and typed fast. “Lucky guy! Christmas came early for you, right?”
“You choose to be cruel to me, Matron.” After a few seconds, Rohan wrote again, “I know you are at brunch. But can we, sorry may we, speak for just a few minutes? It’s important.”
I sat down on a bench and extended my legs, “Yes, you may speak,” not knowing what I would hear.
Rohan called. “I heard about Anna Smith changing her mind while you guys were in Sydney. Dracula messaged me today.”
I stared at the sky so no tears would fall. “I wanted to tell you, but Michael is your boss. I didn’t want it to be awkward.” A tear fell on my dress.
“Hedick might pay my salary, but you are my friend. I know it seems like it’s above our paygrade, but we’ll figure something out. I am sure Anna Smith changed her mind because Hedick did something about it.”
“I am really disappointed, Rohan. I worked so hard for it.”
Rohan heard me patiently. “I am sorry you have to put up with Hedick’s bad behavior. You totally deserve the lead on the partnership with Safe Voice. This conference is your brainchild and nobody can change that.”
“That means a lot. Thank you, Brady.”
Rohan hung up, and I took a nap with the desert cooler blowing in my face. Soft jazz played in the background and the leaves on the tree shook with ecstasy.
* * *
When I woke up, it was 3:30 p.m. There was a message from Maya to check on me and to let me know that the party was still going on. I stretched my arms over my head. I wrote back, “See you in a few.”
There was a ping: It was Jay.
“Hey, just sending mid-day hugs.”
What’s with the greeting? I thought to myself. After I connected with Rohan and Jay, I checked with Naina whether it was part of American culture to address all women as “babe” and “hon” and send out “virtual hugs.” She’d said, “Fuck, no!”
It was 5:00 a.m. in NYC. Jay wasn’t a morning person from what he had told me. I wondered how he could spend so much time online, when he said he was trying to turn things around with his career.
I didn’t respond. But that didn’t stop Jay. “I have gone out of my way for friends, but they use and cast me aside. I have only seen betrayals by those whom I held close to me.”
How often in an argument with Dev I would stay quiet because I found him exhausting; Jay was repeating Dev’s behavioral patterns, not mine, by alternating between abusing and emotionally blackmailing me. I had no desire to communicate with him in that moment.
* * *
Once I got home, Dad and Chutney could tell something was not OK. They asked, but I refused to say anything. I went up to my room and changed into pajamas and a T-shirt, and then joined them in the family room. Dad was watching the news on a loud volume while Chutney was reading a book.
I asked them both about their day and then followed Lakshmi into the kitchen and pointed at her protruding belly. “Lakshmi, did you go for a walk after eating rice and chicken curry?”
Lakshmi covered her face with the corner of her sari and spoke in broken English, “Now what age to becoming thin, didi. You looking beautiful, meeting boy handsome. I no use, so I eating, working, and sleeping.” She smiled and her missing front tooth only made her look adorable. Her sari barely covered her midriff and her breasts reached the middle of her belly. She pointed at them, “All this gone southwards, didi.”
“Silly.” I smiled at Lakshmi and helped her arrange the teacups on the tray.
There was a ping, again, from Jay about him feeling deflated and depressed. I thought my eye-rolling was obvious only to the ceiling fan above my head, but clearly, I was wrong. Chutney asked, again, “Beta, is everything ok?”
“Yup.” I pressed the back of the dining chair and walked toward the patio. I was in denial about Jay’s erratic behavior. I knew Dad and Chutney wouldn’t understand. And that was why I didn’t tell them anything.
An hour later, as I put my phone away, Chutney joined me on the swing on the patio with two mugs of savory lassi, a perfect yoghurt drink for the heat. I was full from brunch and hadn’t eaten anything for dinner; lassi garnished with ginger, cilantro, and cumin was exactly what I needed to calm my stomach and mind. She set down each mug on a coaster, and ran her hands affectionately on my forehead, gently tucking my hair behind my ears.
“Ahana, you are one of the wisest peo
ple I know.”
“Thank you.” I hugged her.
“Not so fast.” She pulled me away and smiled. “You are also one of the most gullible people I know, who believes sob stories and wants to help everyone.”
“Chutney....”
“Ahana, while it’s great that you are doing online therapy, there have to be boundaries.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know this Jay guy, but I do know that you take on too much. Why are your stakes so high in this friendship?”
“Jay is alone in his grieving.”
“You have never met him. You live in different worlds. I am not attacking you, kiddo. But I do notice that you look low after interacting with Jay.”
For the first time, I confessed to Chutney. “Jay is temperamental.”
She interrupted me. “I love you and your sense of loyalty, beta. We Indians are always taught the importance of relationships and to take care of those battling hard times. But you have to take care of yourself, too.”
“I have Dad, you, Naina, and my close friends. I couldn’t have survived a broken marriage and Mumma’s death had it not been for all of you.”
“Do you like Jay?”
I took a sip of the lassi. “I can’t even think of any man, or relationships, in my life.” I thought about how Jay and I created our respective online presences for different reasons.
“Fair enough. Then even more be protective of whom you allow into your life. Dev took away your smile, Ahana. Don’t allow another man to do that.”
I put both the mugs on the coffee table and hugged her tightly. She put my head on her lap. I pointed at the stars. “You think Mumma is among one of these?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What do you mean?” I sat up in surprise.
“Your mumma is probably haunting dirty restaurant kitchens and florists selling poor quality flowers.”
We both laughed loudly.
- 10 -
Naina visited Delhi in the hot month of June to attend Mumma’s first death anniversary, and to shop for her wedding. “I didn’t want my mom or Josh or anyone on this trip. This is my time with you, Ahana.”
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