My parents still laugh about their first encounter. My dad and twelve of his closest relatives came from my dad’s city of Hyderabad to my mom’s birthplace in Vijayawada. They all crowded into her living room and interrogated her about her interests and how well she could cook.
“Amma!” I had exclaimed when she first told me the story. “That is the most unromantic thing ever. How could you have said yes to a match like that?”
“Oh, it was typical back then! I impressed them enough, and they all approved unanimously. I knew what I was doing!” she replied with a wave of her hand and a confident jut of her chin.
My dad tells another story. After the Guantanamo Bay interrogation Amma endured, Nanna asked her to go on a walk, thinking they could take the pressure off and talk on their own. My mom had shyly acquiesced. Halfway through their walk, just as they were beginning to break the ice, my dad happened to glance behind him. About fifty feet away, skulking behind them, was Amma’s younger brother.
“That’s terrible!” I had cried.
“It was the way things were,” Nanna had shrugged. “A woman’s virtue was paramount, and they needed to be sure I wasn’t taking advantage of her… though I did think I was a nice boy, and they overreacted.” He had been amused by my outraged expression.
Years have passed, but some things don’t change. My family and I haven’t had many conversations about marriage because I’m only twenty-one. We don’t need to. My parents had a semi-arranged marriage and so did all the other married people in their generation. My grandparents imply it when they discuss the search for marriage matches. The message is clear when my mom complains that I need to learn how to cook Indian meals so I can blend in with my husband’s family. As my cousins start to marry, the tradition continues. The conversations will inevitably start once I graduate. I don’t look forward to it. Perhaps it is because I have been raised in the United States. I still tear up when I watch western couples reciting their vows, or when I hear about a friend whose significant other has gone down on one knee. Love marriages are beautiful in their own way. Regardless of how I want to find a husband, however, I do know my family will always come first. I guess my future is sealed.
The DJ announces that we’re ready to begin and introduces the parents and finally the happy couple themselves. The crowd is raucous. Mohini and Nakul sway to their first dance, a slow Indian love song I’ve never heard before, likely from my mother’s age. Indian weddings tend to be productions–carefully choreographed events where the hosts put on a show and the guests serve as a willing audience. Mohini’s and Nakul’s gazes haven’t shifted from each other’s faces since they started dancing. Perhaps the idea of falling in love, dating, and making your own decisions is overplayed. Maybe love grows. Maybe it isn’t something that exists from first look or first kiss. Maybe, just maybe, the end justifies the means.
Dance performances follow the couple’s first dance: siblings, cousins, and friends have choreographed performances to entertain the crowd. When the music takes up again after dinner, Indrani, Anisha, Sophia, Nishanth, and I are the first on the floor. We all dance, scream the lyrics in each other’s faces, and cheer on the dancers around us. We laugh as drunken guests slip on the wooden floor and act gangster when the rap songs come on, as if we have any idea what it’s like to grow up in the ghetto. Our bodies pour sweat, but we don’t stop. We take shameless selfies of ourselves with my camera. Under the lights, our skin is dewy, our smiles are brilliant, and our photos look full of fun and hope.
My parents, at a nearby table, surround themselves with family members and Nishanth’s parents. They are the center of attention, completely comfortable. My dad cracks a joke, and everyone around him bursts out in loud hysterics. Tears stream down my mother’s cheeks from her belly-busting giggles. We’ll pull out these pictures a month from now, and us five kids will look like we’ve known each other our entire lives, and our parents, who have, will look complete. James, school, and all the miles of detours my mind has taken lately have vanished.
In this moment, I don’t care how any of this plays out in my future. I just want this. A big Indian wedding with colors, people I love, and tradition. It’s all I need.
he return to school is like night and day. After the weekend of festivities, loud music, and dancing until the wee hours on Saturday, the Indian girl in me is not ready for the party to end. I listen to Indian music through my headphones on the way to class, and Sophia walks in on me watching a Bollywood movie while I do my traditional Monday night bedroom cleanup. Being around Indians reinvigorates me, and suddenly, I bleed orange, white, and green. The sudden transformation from Indian reception partier to minority student is a reminder of the dichotomous life I live.
Nishanth and I have kept up a steady stream of texts following the wedding. On Sunday of the wedding weekend, after our families said goodbye in the early morning hours, the messages started flowing back and forth almost immediately. It’s been five days now, and they haven’t stopped. I don’t feel the spark of a relationship… yet. My mom, I suspect, is planning our wedding. I would bet my tuition money that she spent the Friday morning pooja at the temple thanking the gods for granting her a happenstance meeting with old friends who have an eligible son.
“You text so often!” she said on the phone this morning after she returned from the temple.
“We’re friends, Amma.”
“You seem interested… you always tell me you are texting him,” she pressed further. It’s her specialty. She should have been an investigative journalist.
“Because you always ask, Amma.” I humor her.
She seems to conveniently put her own spin on things. Whether or not I answer her question doesn’t seem to matter because her wishful thinking is clear.
The casual remarks began in the car on the way home to Philly Sunday morning after the wedding. It started with, “Madhu and I spoke about…” By dinner on Sunday, before Sophia and I were to catch our bus, she initiated a trip down memory lane when Nanna was around.
“Do you remember when Madhu, Aditya, and the two of us took Nishanth to Catalina when you were in graduate school?”
“Of course. Your belly was the size of a beach ball at the time. He was a cute little boy, wanting to ride golf carts around the island all day,” Nanna remarked, passing me some rice.
“Nishanth used to be fascinated by Nithya when she was born,” Amma told Anisha and Sophia.
“I don’t know why. She’s kind of a goober now,” Anisha ribbed on me.
“I didn’t realize we knew each other when we were little.”
“How did you not know? You were born in L.A., weren’t you?” Amma spoke like it was obvious I would remember Nishanth and I as diaper buddies.
“Obviously, Amma.” I had rolled my eyes. “I just didn’t realize we played together.”
“Well, you did. You were very close.”
“You looked close at the reception,” Sophia pointed out, and my mom’s eyes lit up, happy Sophia had caught onto something that I clearly should have acknowledged.
“As close as you can be when you can’t talk and one of you is too little to crawl.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. You had a connection,” Amma insisted.
Nanna looked at me and gave me a wink when she wasn’t looking, his silent form of solidarity.
“You guys go way back,” Anisha acknowledged. “That’s kind of cool.”
“We have a lot of history. A lot in common. It’s great to have family friends who you understand, isn’t it?” Amma asked pointedly.
I simply nodded.
The conversations like that on Sunday nights aren’t coincidental. She’s gauging my progress and doesn’t expect me to hide anything. After all, I’ve never lied to her before. The truth is, when Nishanth and I text and there is an undercurrent of flirtatiousness, I wonder what it would be like if we started dating–like when he messaged while I was on the bus back to Penn State.
-So my mom won’t
stop going on about you.
Yours too?! I thought it was just on my end, I replied.
-Nope. She hasn’t stopped mentioning our family history for the last six hours.
Apparently, we were best buddies when we were babies.
-No one says we still can’t be. We can make up for lost time, he replied almost instantly.
You ARE from Michigan… I don’t know if I want to give in to this rivalry.
-I like my chances.
His answer prompted some heart fluttering. Maybe love could grow. Except deep down, I want to fall in love after a serendipitous meeting with a soulmate, unbound by history between our families… something new, uncharted, and ours to guide in the direction we want it to go.
That brings me to James. Nothing can happen. I’m Indian, I have other people to consider in making my decisions, and I’ve never stepped a toe out of line. I also can’t explain why monarch butterflies take flight in my belly when I see him. It hasn’t escaped my attention that I’ve worn my favorite dresses all week, or that I’ve been putting on an extra coat of my favorite MAC lip gloss before I walk through the doors. It also hasn’t passed my notice that James arrives earlier and earlier each day. He walks in at 8:55 on Monday. 8:50 on Wednesday. This morning, we meet in the hallway. James slides onto the bench next to me before the previous class even leaves the classroom.
“I think he likes you,” Sophia says seriously when I mention that James suggested Sophia, Luca, and the two of us should hang out soon.
“That’s gleaning a lot from a couple of conversations.”
“He asked you out for coffee, didn’t he?”
“As friends. He could just be checking on me. He seems like the type to do that.”
“Doubtful. Something tells me he likes you.” Sophia is stubborn. “Do you like him?”
“I barely know him.” With equal stubbornness, I ignore the monarchs in my belly.
“What does that have to do with anything?” She gives me a coquettish glance. “Okay, well, then can you do me a favor?”
“Yeah?”
“Just don’t overanalyze this. Go with your gut.” She says this firmly, a command rather than a request.
The thing is, I wasn’t raised to ‘go with my gut,’ or think about myself. I even made the decision to go to college closer to home because I thought being able to go home for Diwali or for family celebrations would be beneficial for everyone. My parents, who always warned me ahead of time what festivals were coming, could still feel like a family.
Whether I want to or not, I always do what is necessary for the greater good. But as James crosses my mind again, I wonder if I should go with what’s good for me for a change.
Luca and Sophia meet up three times this week. They’ve hit the one-month mark, an occasion Sophia insists they commemorate with a dinner out, and Luca indulges her. When she’s with him, another side of her comes out. It’s a reminder she didn’t grow up with a father to indulge her every whim, to sit with her and have a pretend tea party, or to warn her dates to bring her home by nine.
I can still remember six months after Sophia and I had met and become best friends, the way she told me her dad had died in a drunk driving accident… where he was the drunk driver. Her mother, Sarah, had come into preschool, where Sophia was busy coloring butterflies, and broke the bad news. It wasn’t until much, much later that Sophia learned the truth: her father was a secret alcoholic. No one had even had a clue until the day he died.
She hasn’t trusted many people since. Sure, she’s had her share of breakups, but she’s never allowed herself to fall deeply enough for someone to trust them to catch her.
“You make your own luck. There is no fairy tale,” she’d said then, matter-of-factly.
After their celebratory Thai dinner date, she pulls on Luca’s arm and allows herself to be childish, whining about how she wants chocolate cake for dessert, or playfully telling him to skip his review session to spend the night. Now, the cracks burst in the façade of her former self. They’ve progressed from the awkward giddiness to not minding if he catches her flossing her teeth or she sees him wearing the same shirt twice in a row. Normally, I’d imagine that takes months, but they’ve jet-setted from casual dating to bonafide ‘it’ couple before I can blink my eyes, spending every weekend together. This time, it’s different. Sophia isn’t holding back. Whether I can do the same is a whole different story.
“Nithya?” A soft knock on my door Friday night, five days after the wedding, has me looking up from my computer.
“Do you want to go out tonight?” she asks, hopefully.
“Oh… What did you have in mind?”
“Luca and James are having a party at their apartment. They invited us.”
“Us? Or you with me tagging along?” I look at her suspiciously. It wouldn’t be beyond her to orchestrate a setup, but she giggles and raises her hands in surrender. She loves the idea of the two of us, best friends forever, dating a sexy set of roommates.
“I swear, Luca said both of our names and told me to tell you to come!” Her blue eyes look like lightning in a bottle, both daring and pleading with me.
Just to prove I’m not overanalyzing or even thinking of James, I say yes.
The apartment is crammed, and the music thumps against my eardrums. The wall where I collapsed and cried is right in front of me. The counter where James sat when I stumbled into the living room is lined with oblivious strangers. It’s like a secret–it puts me at ease that no one knows any of the history here, and the world can keep turning… but it’s a little isolating, too; a feeling I didn’t expect.
James leans against the wall, farther down the hallway near his room, and chats up a beautiful brunette. His silver watch gleams in the dim light as he gesticulates, beer in hand. When he laughs, he tilts his head back. He’s playful; he makes faces and animatedly widens his eyes. The girl he’s with crosses and uncrosses her long legs as she stands next to him, touching his arm when she finds his jokes funny. The intimacy hurts my heart… like I’m an outsider to something I so desperately want to be a part of. I can’t even explain why James tugs at my heartstrings–I hardly know him. Being saved by him, sharing a few laughs… that doesn’t a love make. It doesn’t amount to anything. But here I am, captivated. He’s with a girl, probably someone he’s seeing, and I didn’t know. It reminds me of how far out of his circle I am. And how silly it is to wish I wasn’t.
I pour my own drink this time, a Sprite, making sure the two-liter bottle isn’t opened before I tip some into my glass. See, I learn quickly. I give myself a wry grin.
“Nithya, it’s about time you came and hung out with us!” Luca is a welcome distraction from James and his likely girlfriend. Sophia is wrapped in his arms.
“I figured it was time to come out of hibernation!”
He chortles, and I instantly fall for him a little bit–in a strictly platonic, dating-my-best-friend kind of way.
“Oh em gee, I love this song!” Sophia cuts off the pleasantries, and Luca rolls his eyes.
The beat has changed from a popular rock song to a danceable R&B tune. She takes hold of my hand and pulls Luca along. The two of them move smoothly, perfectly in time with the music and with each other. Luca’s a fluid dancer. Sophia spins me around, goofy with energy. It’s us in our own world. The song blends into one screaming about shots, and about twenty people crowd the area throwing their arms and drinks up in the air. Sophia and Luca are separated from me, and the ten feet between us might as well be ten miles. I try to wade through the crowd, but people bump and shove me every which way.
Hands are on my waist. The déjà vu hits me like a brick. I don’t want to be touched by a stranger, and I stop moving, pushing the arms away instinctively.
“Hey, you okay?” A confused looking boy stands behind me, puzzled.
“Uh, yeah, not feeling good.” I spot the door and rush toward it. I need air.
“Nithya?” Sophia asks as I blast by her.
> I throw open the door and jog down the hall, ignoring that I’m in heels and a broken ankle is a real possibility. Snippets of music from different apartments float along, and bursts of chatter sound from the doors as I pass.
The fresh air is like a blanket. I bend down, my hands on my knees, gasping for breath. I manage to walk to the nearest half-wall, where the streetlights glow near the dorms across the street. My hands are clammy, and my heart patters against my chest like someone rapping on a door. You’re okay, I tell myself over and over. Stop freaking out.
“You okay?” It’s James. His voice echoes around the parking deck.
“I’m fine… no. I don’t know. Panic or something.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” He leans near me, elbows propped on the wall.
“What are you even doing here?” The last thing I want is his pity. Again.
“I just saw your escape act. I told Sophia I’d check on you.”
“Are you always watching out for a crisis?” I snap. The unexpected anxiety makes me cranky. I’m equally annoyed James has seen me lose my cool three times now and has shown up each time to save the day. I don’t need that. I can save myself. As soon as I collect my thoughts.
“No, Nithya, of course not. I wanted to come say hi and you looked freaked and left. I just figured I’d make sure you were okay.”
“Won’t your girlfriend be annoyed by that?” I blurt out. My inhibitions have taken a dive off this parking deck along with any sanity I have.
“I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“That girl you were talking to in there.”
“Now who’s watching?” He smirks, his characteristic confidence back in a flash.
“That’s just… well. I just meant… No,” I stumble. “Whatever.”
“Well, if you want to talk, I’m here.” He turns and walks back toward the stairwell.
“Why did you save me that night?”
I need to know. It’s the start of everything. James would have meant nothing. He would be the guy who helped with my homework. I would have thanked him before we both moved on with our lives, unaffected like a beat on a regular sinus rhythm. Then he intervened, and didn’t let something horrible shatter my world, and now I’m bound to him. I have to know why.
The Rearranged Life Page 5