When Hari Met His Saali

by Harsh Warrdhan

  Nagpur

  As Simi was riding her Kinetic Honda back from the airport, she felt there was something new in the smog-filled Nagpur air. She felt like opening her arms and inhaling the air. Thankfully she kept her hands on the bike but she did inhale sharply. It only made her sneeze. She was passing all the street food vendors cooking away gloriously and frying delicious things. The wafts of masala flavors of pav bhaji, bhel puri, dabeli, Indian Chinese filled her nostrils. She stopped her bike at the side of the road, took off her helmet, closed her eyes and inhaled blissfully as if she was at some exotic valley of flowers.

  Simi had been passing the vendors on this street since she was a child, but she had never felt like she was feeling today. All her senses, all the pores in her body, felt rejuvenated. She had no clue why. She probably could have guessed — and she would have been right — but the thought was too far removed from her mind for now.

  Just then the honk from a car startled her from her blissful state.It was her neighbor, Deshpande Uncle, in his Hyundai Wagon R, along with his wife, sister-in-law, and three children.

  Deshpande Uncle leaned from his window asking, ‘Arrey, Simi beta, is your bike broken down?’

  Simi realized what she must have looked like standing with the support of her two legs on her bike in the middle of the road with her eyes closed as if she was praying.

  ‘No, no, Uncle, everything is fine.’

  Deshpande Aunty shifted her three-year-old onto the other side of her lap and leaned over her husband to speak to Simi through the window on the driver’s side.

  ‘If you want us to take you home, there’s space in our Wagon R, huh!’ Of course she was overselling the space part. The car was crammed to the extent of illegality.

  Simi quickly started her bike and waved to them.

  ‘No, no. Just reaching home …’ but as her bike started moving, she heard Deshpande Aunty instruct Deshpande Uncle to follow her, still under the impression that something was wrong with her bike.

  It was an awkward thing to be followed by an entire family. Simi straitened her kameez from the back to make sure it was not flying in the wind. At the signal, she could feel multiple eyes watching her from behind. She casually turned around and, sure enough, everyone in the car was watching her like a hawk. She smiled at them and they waved back, with Uncle signaling her and telling her, ‘Don’t worry, we are right behind you. Go, go, we follow you.’ He looked like a bandar mouthing the word and using hand gestures.

  As soon as the signal turned green Simi speeded away, lost the car at the next turn, got home, parked her bike in a hurry, entered the house and quickly switched off all the lights. In her household, the Deshpandes were known as badbadas, meaning the entire family was talkative and wouldn’t get the hint to shut up. She didn’t want them to start at this hour.

  Her mother was sitting in bed waiting for her. When Simi handed her the invitation, her mother started to cry. Silently she grabbed Simi’s hand and took her to the kitchen. She quietly laid the card in front of Simi’s father’s photograph and hugged her daughter. Simi could feel her mother’s heart pounding. She couldn’t help but start sniffling herself. It seemed like an eternity before her mother spoke.

  ‘How I wish your father was here to guide me.’

  Simi sat her mother down and took her hands in hers.

  ‘Mom, wherever Papa is I am sure he is happy for Tia, for us!’

  ‘Oh, I am happy for Tia. After all, our happiness is in whatever ways she is happy, na? Do we ever have a say in how she should live her life? Tia always does what she wants and we have to accept it and be happy about it.’ Her mother’s anger surged as she wiped away her tears.

  ‘Do you not like Hariprasad, Mom?’ Simi asked, because she didn’t know what else to say.

  ‘No, no. Such a fine boy he is, that Hariprasad. But will she keep him happy?’ Her mother had her argument prepared. Simi decided not to engage her as she knew that by the morning her mother’s tune may have changed. It had happened before.

  ‘Mom, she has invited us both to the engagement ceremony and the wedding. We should go to both,’ Simi said, excitedly taking the card out of the envelope and showing it to her mother. She knew that her mother had not even read the invitation card.

  ‘What? Go to America?’ she responded as if it was an absurd idea.

  Simi had anticipated that response.

  ‘Mom, if she didn’t invite us you would be sad, and now that she has you don’t want to go. I am telling you, she is even sending us a letter for our visas.’

  But her mother cut her off halfway.

  ‘Everyone speaks American there, I am not good in English you know that, Simi. I am not going, bas.’

  Simi felt pissed. She was hoping her mother would add, ‘Go if you want to, but I am not going,’ to her decision. But she didn’t. Simi took a chance.

  ‘Fine, if you don’t want to go to your daughter’s wedding, that’s OK, but I am going to my sister’s wedding … and to the engagement!’

  Simi took the invitation card, put it back into the envelope and left her mother’s bedroom. A moment later she came back in, switched off the light to say ‘Good night!’ and walked out again.

  Simi cried herself to sleep that night and so did her mother. In fact, both knew that the other would be crying in bed, but it was as if some unseen invisible force restricted them to reach out to each other. Simi knew that her mother would not go to America. She just knew it. She also knew that she wanted to go, but at the same time she felt that to go for a whole month and leave her mother behind was incomprehensible. By the time Simi finally fell asleep she had made a decision that this might be her only opportunity to go to America, and she was going to take it. Lucky for her, but unknown to her, was that her mother had made the same decision. She wanted Simi to go.

  Individually, they were both calculating how the trip would be financed.

  Next Day — The Malhotra house

  Tia was looking at the calendar on her phone. She realized there were only twenty days to go until the engagement ceremony. She was looking into the bathroom mirror at her mother-in-law’s house. Her lips pursed to make a ‘whoo-whoo, whoo-whoo’ sound and she was hyperventilating like a mother delivering a baby. Her breathing could be heard outside.

  ‘Beta Tia, are you OK in there?’ Mary called.

  When Tia joined them back in the living room, Mary, Badi Mama and Nana were staring at her. There was a mysterious silence.

  ‘Er, you’re not pregnant, na, Tia?’ Mary asked bluntly.

  Badi Mama and Nana turned their gaze to Tia, as if they were watching a tennis match, and waited for her response.

  ‘What? Noooo!!!’ Tia protested. ‘I am, just stressed over all the arrangements for the ceremony.’

  But Mary, Badi Mama and Nana just stared at her, making her feel very uncomfortable.

  ‘How, how can I be pregnant?’ Tia blurted out in her defense, realizing that she was avoiding eye contact with them. The three elderly ladies started giggling.

  ‘Beta Tia, you should ask me to help you, na? After all how much work are you going to do alone?’ Mary scolded Tia as she poured her another cup of rich milky coffee.

  Tia had been running around for the last few days trying to finalise arrangements for the ceremony. But, Tia being Tia, she couldn’t trust anyone else to do it the way she wanted.

  ‘Mummy, I have everything under control, don’t you worry,’ Tia replied, sipping on the coffee. It smelled of milk rather than of coffee and that bothered her, but for Mary’s sake she pretended to like it.

  ‘Nice, na? Listen, I didn’t know how to tell you but Hari started drinking tea and coffee only after he was in college. He is used to milk — and I mean milk-milk, not those skimmed, toned, low-fat, artificial milks, but proper buffalo milk. The tea and coffee are just a disguise to get milk into his body.’

  Mary waited for Tia to react.

  Tia nodded her head.

  ‘Does Hari come wi
th a manual, Mary?’ Tia said laughingly.

  None of the three elderly ladies found it amusing or funny. I guess their only son, the heir of their khandaan, was off-limits for jokes. Tia made a mental note never to crack a joke about Hari in front of his mother and his two grandmothers again. To break the awkwardness, she pulled out a file from her bag and showed it to them.

  ‘It’s all in here. The mega bible for the engagement ceremony.’ Tia held the file next to her face as if she was advertising a dishwasher liquid. But the room had gone cold. No one thought it was amusing.

  ‘This tells me everything that’s still to be done for the night of the engagement ceremony. All eighty-four pages of it!’

  Badi Mama looked quizzically at Nana who had a blank expression, and whispered in Punjabi: ‘Is this girl getting married or building a car?’

  But Mary was excited.

  ‘Listen, our people — I mean our guests — will make their own arrangements, OK? You don’t worry. You focus on what you want to do at the ceremony, OK?’

  ‘Mary I am glad you asked because I have booked the banquet hall. Once Hari is back we’ll go and meet the event manager to choose the table arrangements, do a cake tasting, select the wines along with the general theme for the night and that would just leave the rehearsals because everything else will be … wait, I have to get an evening gown and Hari has to decide on his tuxedo, and we still haven’t decided if we want to book a limousine for our arrival at the venue …’ Tia would have gone on longer sharing every detail that was on her mind if Mary, thankfully, had not interrupted her.

  ‘Tia, beta, you don’t have to stress so much. Sab guests apne hi log hai.’

  ‘But it has to be perfect not for the guests Mary, but for me!’ Tia said, looking at no one in particular but staring someplace else, with the look of a villain making an ambitious evil plan of his own.

  Mary chose not to point out the narcissism in her statement and instead encouraged Tia.

  ‘I know you will make the ceremony a grand success, Tia. Barry’s most important colleagues, all our relatives, friends, everyone will be there. Since Hari is our only son, this is going to be a much-awaited occasion.’

  Instead of encouraging her, this only freaked Tia out even more. She wanted to do her ‘whoo-whoo’ breathing but decided to split from there.

  ‘Oh, God, I must leave, I have to meet Jenny. Running late. Bye!’

  Once she had driven a little away from Mary’s house, Tia controlled her breathing.

  Oh, God, I feel so lost. How am I going to do all this in addition to my work commitments? She asked herself out loud.

  Forty-five minutes later — Downtown Los Angeles

  When she reached Jenny’s office after driving in woeful traffic, her friend was grinning from ear to ear.

  ‘Whoa, let me guess, you’re pregnant?’ Tia asked confidently.

  Jenny’s smile disappeared.

  ‘No silly, I was just appointed to the panel of immigration reforms by Los Angeles Governor Jerry Brown.’

  ‘Oh!’ Tia slumped down on the chair disappointed.

  ‘Babes, this is like a big deal in my career, OK? Show some enthusiasm. It’s equivalent to you being made a partner in your firm!’ Jenny said, knowing it would get Tia’s attention.

  ‘Wow, really? That’s exciting Jen …” but even Jenny could sense a tinge of jealousy in Tia’s voice. Tia had always competed with Jenny. In fact, Tia would compete with anyone and everyone who came into her life and that competitive spirit was not limited to her work.

  ‘We gotta celebrate then, Jen!’ Tia said, trying to continue her fake enthusiasm.

  But Jenny wasn’t easily offended.

  ‘I know why you are here, bitch. Here’s the sponsor letter you wanted for your sister and mom’s visa. You gotta courier it to them and not fax it, OK?’

  Tia took the letter in her hand and looked at the stamp at the bottom. It was a golden seal.

  ‘You slut, tell me one thing, this … this new appointment of yours, is that going to help my sis get her visa?’ Tia engaged Jenny in the banter.

  ‘You bet your spicy Indian ass it will. That’s the golden seal babes. That’s like the U.S. government telling the visa granting authority that it wants this person to visit America.’

  ‘You are a darling. A slut, but a darling slut!’ Tia was genuinely happy.

  ‘You’re welcome. I’ll bill you, you whore!’ Jenny leaned back in her chair proudly.

  ‘I am not paying you a dime, you leg-spreader white trash …’ Tia tossed the letter back at Jenny. ‘And do me a favor, can you courier it for me please, you vamp, I just don’t want to do it from my office.’

  ‘Only because you’re my only friend from a starving third world country.’ Jenny took the letter and put in an envelope.

  ‘Thanks, floozy!’ Tia got up and opened her arms. ‘Now give me a hug, you slutomania!’

  Jenny hugged her. They squeezed each other’s bodies.

  ‘Congratulations, Jen, you deserve it!’ Tia said, trying to remove herself from the embrace, but Jenny was holding her tight.

  ‘Don’t go, your body feels so nice.’

  Of course Jenny was teasing Tia, and Tia knew it.

  ‘Get off me, you harlot! You can’t afford me!’

  Jenny was still teasing her as Tia started to leave.

  ‘But I always thought the two of us would go lesbo eventually …’

  Tia flipped her middle finger.

  ‘Dream on, dork,’ she said as she walked out.

  That was the relationship between Tia and Jenny. Underneath all that casual banter was a solid friendship and a sense of togetherness. They had always depended on each other and they knew that they had each other’s backs whenever needed. The good thing about the depth of their relationship was that they had never discussed the depth of their relationship, but both knew they felt the relationship. They would have been best of sisters.

  Lunch hour — Tia’s office

  Stephan had just walked into Tia’s office and she immediately covered her mouth with a napkin; she didn’t want him to see her chewing food.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt your lunch,’ he said, sitting down. ‘But we have to go to New York!’

  Tia nodded, using all her concentration to swallow her mouthful.

  ‘Don’t choke on your food. I don’t mean we have to go now, now!’ Stephan said mockingly.

  Aah, he is making a joke about my eating habits. How cute! Go, go, go down you chicken burrito.

  She shifted the food to the left side of her mouth and chewed faster, harder, then shifted it back to her right side and kept chewing. There was no way she could open her mouth without spraying food everywhere. If she was in a slapstick movie, at this point she would have run towards her sixth floor window with her arms flaying up and down and crashed through the glass panel. Tia was that embarrassed. She found herself signaling Stephan to give her a second. He nodded and then leaned back. This made her even more nervous, as if he was expecting her abnormal chewing to go on even longer. In her mind she saw Stephan looking at his wristwatch wondering how long she was gonna take.

  Oh gosh, why? Why? Why do I take such large bites? It must look inhuman to him! Look at his ocean blue eyes, he is just waiting for … gosh, he is so perfectly tanned … Stop, stop thinking about him and focus on chewing. OK, on three, just gulp! One, two … GULP!

  Sure enough, Tia swallowed her food making a very obnoxious sound.

  ‘So, when are we going to New York?’

  ‘As soon as you finish eating that … whatever you were eating. No actually, we’ll have to leave tomorrow. For two days.’

  This made her nervous. Tia was aware that she became jelly-legged in Stephan’s presence. She had concluded that it was just how her body reacted to him and that she couldn’t do much about it, but she knew she could focus on not making it obvious to him — or to anyone else in the office.

  Clara is your good friend; Clara is your good f
riend.

  This loop of affirmations helped Tia resist the urge to rip his clothes off, throw him on the table and … and … just stare into his deep blue eyes. All that talk in her head made her say, ‘OK. Two days in New York. With you.’

  What the fuck, girl? What was that last part about ‘with you’. How stupid!

  Whether Stephan caught the last part or not was unclear.

  ‘Showtime, Tia,’ he said, walking out of her office. ‘Your pitch has gotta be rocking. Sorry couldn’t get you more time to prep …’

  ‘No worries. I am ready, Stephan.’

  Tia was glad that sentence didn’t have any snafu!

  But no sooner had Stephan stepped out her office, Tia was panicking. She had already scheduled so many engagement ‘to-do’ activities for the next two days. She told herself that if she could clinch the New York contract for the firm, she could begin to sow the seed of becoming a partner in the firm. She would at least have a good excuse to bring it up with Stephan.

  Although she knew nothing could happen personally between her and Stephan, the idea of being away from the office with him for two whole days in New York excited her. But more importantly, Hari was landing tonight, and she knew she’d have to postpone her plans to spend the night with him, as she’d have lots to prepare for her pitch.

  That night — Los Angeles

  By the time Hari had landed at Los Angeles airport it was midnight. He had got to know Swati and Abhijat during the flight in spite of his reservations. Swati had eagerly asked for all of his contact information but he decided to only give her his mobile number and email address. He was conflicted about sharing so much information with her because, as he knew, it all starts out innocently like it did years ago when his father asked him to look up a girl at UCLA and now he was marrying her! He shuddered as the thought of it happening again with Swati entered his mind. She was also going to UCLA, but he figured that this brother-sister team was too fresh-off-the-boat to be a risk. He waited for them to come out of the customs and immigration check and then helped them to get them a cab to their destination. Both Swati and Abhijat were overwhelmed by Hari’s thoughtfulness and thanked him so many times that Hari felt like the white man welcoming the pilgrims.