“I don’t want to hear about all that again, Appa. Anyway, not all Indians care about caste the way you do. And what about subcaste? Why is that important?”
“You see, India is a very diverse country.” Appa slung one knee over the other. Rasika realized she was in for a long lecture. “In America, we are friends with Indians from all over. We are even friends with people from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal. We see them all as part of the same general culture. But you must understand that everyone’s traditions are different. We are Tamilians. We want to hold on to our culture.” Appa held up a hand and folded a finger down with each point. “We speak Tamil at home. Not all Indians insist on their mother tongue as we do. We have not taken up Western habits like drinking and meat eating. We believe in marrying within the subcaste because that is our tradition. It is tradition all over India, but so many people are becoming Westernized these days, dating and having love marriages. That is why there are so many divorces now. You see, even among our own friends, Shanti Auntie and Raghu Uncle have gotten divorced, after forty years of marriage.” He lowered his hands to his lap.
“But they had an arranged marriage,” Rasika said.
“The point is, they have become Westernized. In our family, we believe in holding on to our traditions for the sake of family stability. . . .”
Rasika stopped listening to the lecture. On the hill below them, a young couple in matching lime green jackets stood discussing the course. Leaves rustled in the breeze, and the faint tok of a golf ball being hit sounded from the distance. Rasika didn’t belong to the country club anymore, though she had enjoyed the club thoroughly as a child. She’d loved swimming in the bright turquoise pool, lying on her back with her ears underwater and looking up at the sky; jumping off the diving board again and again; crunching into onion rings and slurping up slushees. As a teenager she had sworn off onion rings and had enjoyed showing off her body in a swimsuit as revealing as her mother would allow her to wear, which wasn’t saying much, since she had not been allowed a bikini.
She could imagine joining a club such as this one after she got married. She and her husband would perhaps play golf together, or tennis. She wasn’t terrible at tennis, plus she liked wearing tennis skirts. They would have friends, other club members, and they’d all eat dinner together sometimes at the club restaurant with their children.
As her father droned on, she realized it was too hard to fight against her parents. She couldn’t let her father think she’d throw herself away on someone like Abhay. Anyway, everyone—her relatives, her parents’ friends—would be very impressed with her if she married a guy from India. It might not be so bad. She had cousins in India who were as sophisticated as she wanted. Maybe this guy would be similar.
Her father put out a trembling hand and rested it on her knee. “You may like Yuvan. You will never know until you try.”
“OK,” she agreed. “Maybe I can call him tonight.”
Appa’s forehead was damp with sweat, maybe from the exertion of trying to convince her. He patted her knee. “Your mother will be very pleased.”
Rasika talked with Yuvan, she e-mailed with him, and when she couldn’t really find anything to object to about him, when things seemed inevitably to point to her marriage with him, she agreed to go to India to meet him. He seemed like a polite, cultured young man. He was soft-spoken yet not shy. It’s true they didn’t speak for long on the phone, but after all it was international long-distance. It’s true they didn’t spend hours chatting on the computer. Still, he seemed everything she had hoped for in a husband.
Her mother, frantic with excitement, insisted that Rasika buy a few silk saris at the Cleveland sari shop, and get some outfits stitched by a local Indian seamstress. Amma suggested that, in addition to salvar kameez outfits, Rasika order a pants set, which was apparently a new fashion: flared pants with a hip-length top and scarf, done up in a dark purple silk with decorative silver borders. “You will be meeting the boy as soon as you arrive,” Amma pointed out. “We won’t have time to shop before you meet.” Rasika went along with everything, even allowing her mother to choose a bright red, heavily embroidered salvar set as one of the outfits.
Amma spent days shopping for gifts for Yuvan and his family, even though the engagement wasn’t final. Rasika helped her pick out some nice knit polo shirts for Yuvan and his younger brothers. Appa consulted with several friends and read innumerable articles before purchasing one of the new iPhones for Yuvan, which allowed the user to connect to the Internet from the phone itself. “Everything is available in India now,” Appa noted. “But we want to bring him something from the U.S.”
Appa had also arranged, just in case, for Rasika to meet a few other eligible bachelors whose horoscopes had been fairly good matches. Her parents were determined to get her married on this trip—to Yuvan or to someone else.
Amma was busy calling all of their relatives in the United States and India, telling them about the planned wedding. She talked to her mother and sister in Bangalore and her sister in Durham, North Carolina; as well as Appa’s mother, brothers, and sister, all in Bangalore. Amma had already found out, from the astrologer, the best dates and times for a wedding between Rasika and Yuvan, and she spent a lot of time on the phone discussing wedding halls and cooks for hire. “It will have to be a small wedding,” Amma apologized. “Just our relatives and friends. Maybe a hundred people. We can’t get a big wedding hall on such short notice. And if by chance you choose another man, we may have to move the date. But don’t worry. We’ll get it done on this trip.” Amma made the whole thing sound like a surgical procedure that had to be done before Rasika’s health failed.
Rasika went through her days in a fog. She removed her summer clothing from her closets and dresser. Yuvan would be staying with her in this room until they found a house. She recoiled at the idea of a strange man invading her beautiful room. As she sat on the carpet in front of her bookshelf, packing away her Beanie Babies in a paper grocery sack, she tried to remind herself that the man would not be strange, he would be her husband. She slid the Bollywood stars collage down the side of the sack, and carried the whole thing down to the basement.
“If all else fails, there is still Subhash,” Amma said one Saturday as they were driving home from the mall. “They will be coming to India for the wedding.”
The trees on either side of the wide roadway had lost most of their leaves by now, and the bare brown branches rose against a dull white sky. Rasika tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “Amma, I can’t marry Subhash. You haven’t had the horoscopes matched.”
“We sent them to the astrologer last week. It’s not a very good match, but it would be a last resort only.”
“I won’t marry him.” She veered into their development, realized she was driving a little too fast, and jammed on the brake.
“Then you had better make up your mind to accept Yuvan,” Amma retorted, bracing herself with a hand on the dashboard.
The next day, Sunday morning, Rasika showed up at Jill’s place unannounced.
“So you’re actually going through with this wedding,” Jill said. She was on the sofa in a white robe and bare feet, toweling dry her wet dark hair. She had always been beautiful—tall, high cheekbones, and effortlessly thin (she never exercised, as far as Rasika could tell)—but she was casual about her beauty, unlike Rasika, who spent hours putting together outfits, tweezing her eyebrows, and applying makeup. If Jill wore so much as lipstick, you knew she was going somewhere special.
Jill’s apartment held a few comfortable pieces of expensive furniture: a tan Italian leather sofa and armchair and two solid maple end tables, set on an expanse of off-white carpet. The other furniture—the bookshelves, the entertainment center, the floor lamps—had been taken by Jared when he moved out.
“Are you happy?” Jill tossed her towel onto the carpet, ran her fingers through her damp hair, stretching her legs over the sofa cushions.
“I think so.” Rasika wa
s in the leather armchair, holding a steaming cup of coffee. She had been feeling so sleepy recently and relied on coffee just to keep herself functioning.
“What’s he like? Was it love at first sight?”
“I haven’t met him yet. I don’t know.”
Jill threw her legs onto the floor and strode to the bedroom, from which she emerged with a wide-toothed comb. She sat down again and began untangling her hair. “I’m never going to get married. I’ll never live with another guy, either. They take you for granted when you’re around all the time. Jared turned into a baby once he moved in. I had to nag him to pay his share of the rent and utilities. And you think he’d ever bother to make a meal for the two of us? I was like the mommy who was supposed to take care of everything for him, clean up after him, pay his bills.”
“You’ll find another guy,” Rasika consoled.
“I’m going to find lots of other guys. I’m never going to limit myself to just one. Guys are for having fun with. They’re not for living with.” Jill tossed her comb onto the side table. “I’ll make my own money, live my own way, do my own thing, and pick up whatever man I want.”
Jill’s robe had become loose, and Rasika could see a bright blue sports bra with red trim. She said, “You look like Wonder Woman in that bra.”
Jill cast off her robe and planted her feet apart on the empty carpet in front of the sofa. Her panties were also bright blue. “I am Wonder Woman!” She flung her arms out.
Rasika tried to laugh and managed a stiff smile. “I wish I could be Wonder Woman,” she said, a bit sadly.
“Well, why can’t you? We’ll be twin Wonder Women. It’ll be great! You can get an apartment just like mine, and we’ll entice men to do our bidding.”
Rasika knew Jill had never really understood family ties. Jill’s father had abandoned the family when she was a small child. Jill had never seen him again. Her mother had remarried, and then divorced, and now lived alone nearby. Jill had no siblings and no cousins, at least none whom she cared to keep in touch with. Jill would never make life decisions based on whether or not her relatives would approve.
Jill picked up her robe, put it on, and sat down. “Rasika, you’re disappearing. You’re wearing a tan shirt and brown pants. It’s like camouflage. You hardly smile. You look like you’re about to go to sleep.”
“I’m OK.” She sat up straighter and made an effort to open her eyes wider.
“How about we run away together? We can quit our jobs, take all our savings, and go somewhere new. Someplace exciting. We’ll get jobs and start over. How about Hawaii? Or Miami? I want to go where I can live in my bathing suit. I only stayed in Ohio because I was in a serious relationship. Now I’m free. So what do you say?”
Rasika smiled. “You know I can’t.”
“What’s stopping you? We’re not kids anymore. You’re not going to get grounded if you do something your parents don’t approve of. You’re not going to have your allowance taken away. Why are you still trying to please them?”
“Because, Jill. They’re my parents. You don’t understand. My dad’s so happy about this marriage. He’s been walking around whistling. He never whistles. He said now he doesn’t have to worry about disappointing his mother.”
“His mother? Your grandmother?”
“Yeah. She never wanted him to live in this country. He’s her youngest child. After medical school in India, he came to the U.S. against her wishes. She kept asking him to come home and get married. She was so afraid he’d marry a foreigner. So finally, after he turned thirty, he did go home and agree to get married.”
“I can’t believe your mother agreed to have an arranged marriage. She’s so modern, so classy.”
“Everyone had arranged marriages back then, Jill. Most people in India still do.”
“Your mom’s really educated, isn’t she? I mean, she used to work at a college, right?”
“She has a master’s degree in biology. There are only girls in her family, and her father wanted all of them to be well educated.”
“So they got married, and they lived in India for a long time, right? Because, you were born there. Did she work in India? I don’t remember if you ever told me that.” Jill was sitting with her elbows on her knees and a puzzled dent on her forehead.
Rasika took a sip of coffee and tried to be as clear as she could. “After my mom got married, she pretty much had me and my brother right away. My dad tried to settle down in India, but he got so upset about the dirty condition of the hospitals in India, the lack of equipment, and the corruption. So he came back to the U.S., and my mother raised us in India for a while, and she didn’t work then. And when we all came here, she worked for a while as a temporary lecturer at Akron U.”
“That’s right! I remember that! Why’d she quit?”
“I think the low status of the job got to her. She didn’t feel like she had to do that kind of work, when she was a mother and a wife of a doctor. So she never really worked after that.”
“It’s hard for me to understand someone like your mother. She’s so educated, but she had an arranged marriage. Do you think your parents were in love when they got married?”
“That’s not the point, Jill. No one expected them to be in love.”
“Do they love each other now?”
“Of course. They’re married. They’re my parents.”
“So you think that’ll happen to you, too? You’ll get married to this person, and then later on, you’ll love him?”
Rasika closed her eyes. She didn’t want to think about her parents’ relationship. That had nothing to do with her own marriage. “I like him already.”
“Well, it’s your tradition.” Jill sat back and waved her hand in the air. “If you understand it, I guess that’s good enough for me.”
“The way we’re doing it is really quite modern, Jill. If you want tradition, my dad’s mother is very traditional. She only went to school through eighth grade, and she got married at fourteen. She wasn’t even allowed to see her husband before they got married.”
“God. I never knew that.”
“I guess I never told you much about my family in India.”
“I remember hearing about your cousins, but you never told me about your grandmother, that’s for sure.”
“All my grandmother’s other children stayed in India; my dad is the only one who left. She doesn’t want her grandchildren marrying foreigners. So now, my dad feels like he’ll be satisfying her, because I won’t be marrying a foreigner.”
“Well, this guy might not be a foreigner to your grandmother, but isn’t he sort of a stranger to you? I remember when you started third grade. You had just come from India. You were Indian then. Now you’re American.”
“To my parents, I’m still one hundred percent Indian.”
“You’ve been so good, Rasika. You’ve always tried so hard to please your parents. You live at home, you don’t stay out late, you help your mother when she has parties.”
“But I have this whole secret life that I feel really awful about.”
“Your parents can’t expect to know about your sex life.”
“I’m not supposed to have a sex life at all, Jill. The life of an unmarried Indian woman should be a completely open book.”
“That’s crazy. Does anyone actually manage to live like that?”
“I’m sure my cousins do.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Girls are a lot more supervised in India.”
“So you’ve had a few flings. That’s nothing.”
“More than a few flings.”
Jill’s eyebrows went up. “What’re you hiding from me?”
Rasika shook her head. Jill knew about almost all of Rasika’s encounters. For Jill, what seemed like “a few” seemed to Rasika a never-ending, revolving list of sins and transgressions. “I’m ashamed of the way I’ve acted, Jill. My parents see things differently. Even if it had been only one man, my parents would think I was a w
hore.”
“Come on, Rasika. You’re twenty-five! What do they expect?”
“They expect me to have an arranged marriage to someone they pick out.”
“Are you agreeing to marry this guy just to please your grandmother?”
“This is the way we do things in our family, and I want to fit in.”
“What about your cousins in North Carolina? Have they gone off to India for arranged marriages?”
“All my cousins on my dad’s side have had arranged marriages. They’re all in India and all older than me. I’m the oldest cousin on my mom’s side. No one else is married yet. I’m supposed to set the good example.”
“So, the pressure’s on.”
Rasika had already received congratulatory phone calls from some of her aunts and uncles, and the praise felt good. “You are doing the right thing,” Ahalya Auntie had told her from North Carolina. “Happiness comes from obeying your parents.”
“What if you left with me?” Jill persisted. “What would happen then?”
“How, Jill? What would I do with my car? What about all my things? I can’t just abandon my clothes, and my bedroom furniture.”
“Why not? They have clothes in Hawaii. They have furniture wherever we’ll go.”
“Are you serious?”
“Absolutely.”
“I can’t, Jill. You don’t know my parents; they’ll track me down. They’ll fly out to see me. My mother will cry. My father—I can’t even imagine what he’d do. He’d be so disappointed in me. Maybe he’d fall ill from the stress of it all. And then all the relatives will find out about it, and they’ll feel sorry for my parents.”
“What about your brother? Doesn’t he have a girlfriend? Aren’t your parents worried about that?”
Pramod had been dating a fellow student, Hannah, for the past several months. Rasika had met them for dinner once. She was a thin, intense white woman who seemed to study a lot. “My parents don’t know about her. Anyway, once Pramod is finished with his education, I guess they’ll work on finding a girl for him, too.”
And Laughter Fell From the Sky Page 16