The Bollywood Bride

by Sonali Dev

  All anyone cared about was the insanity—an almost poetic tribute to the rest of her life. No one cared about her father’s murder. All of this digging and no one asked how he had died. Nobody cared that the poor nurse who had taken care of her mother for seventeen years had also died. All these healthy, vital lives lost and all they cared about was the darkness that had destroyed it all.

  But the media was indolent as a satiated beast, drunk on the drama. The public had a new cause. Every mental health organization in the country squeezed as much mileage from the story as they could. Every obscure psychiatrist had an opinion. Why the UK? Are our own mental health facilities not good enough? Isn’t mental health as important as physical health? Shouldn’t the government be doing more to raise awareness? Isn’t it time to erase the stigma? How shameful is shame for a sick relative? There were bleeding hearts everywhere.

  One TV psychiatrist even issued a grandstanding public challenge to Ria over the airwaves, urging her to come to him and accept the help she so badly needed.

  “The first step is acceptance,” he goaded from the TV studio dressed in his best three-piece suit with his rimless glasses. “Get past the denial phase. Seeking help is the only path to recovery. You are a role model, take action, show the public how it’s done. I can help you.”

  Like hell you can, Viky would have said.

  But the opportunistic bastard was right about one thing. She did need to take action. A horrible weight had sat on her shoulders for ten years and she wanted it off. She had lost control over everything in her life, but there was one thing she did have the ability to do, and now she was finally free to do it.

  The woman sitting across from Ria in her living room had exceptionally large eyes that made her look perpetually surprised. It was the one thing Ria remembered about the nurse who had cared for her mother. Her daughter had the exact same eyes and an alacrity that spoke of someone entirely at home in her own skin. The last time she had seen the nurse Ria was seven years old. At least that was the last time she’d seen her alive. Dead, there had been nothing left except a charred, swollen mess.

  “I’m sorry.” Ria had carried those words for so long, saying them was almost like giving away a piece of herself. But she had been sick with guilt for ten years and saying the words was like taking a step out of thick, heavy sludge.

  Tears pooled in the woman’s huge eyes. “Ms. Parkar, please. Please don’t say that. Don’t humiliate me like that. By saying sorry.” She got off the chair she was sitting on and sat down next to Ria on the sofa. “You have nothing to worry about. I will never talk to the media about anything. I swear.”

  Shame sliced through Ria. “No. That’s not why I’m saying sorry. Whatever you want to tell the media, it’s your prerogative. If you want people to know what happened to your mother, I completely understand. I . . . I just wanted you to know how sorry I am for what happened.” It had taken her ten years to say it, but she had been sorry every single day.

  She stared at her hands clasped together in her lap. Suddenly, reaching out to the woman seemed like a horrible idea. What did her apology even mean? It’s not like she was offering justice. She’d had the chance to tell the police what had happened, and she had lied. Or at least she had supported Baba’s lie and told them the fire had been an accident.

  “Ms. Parkar, did you know that my mother was illiterate? She used to clean your parents’ house before your father hired her to care for your mother. I grew up in a slum. My mother’s only dream was that I learn to read and write, that I don’t spend my life washing other people’s toilets. And ten years ago, just before she died, she had to pull me out of school, because she could no longer afford to pay the slumlord to keep a roof over our heads and send me to school instead of have me work.”

  She reached out and took Ria’s hands. Her hands were soft, not labor-worn. “Last year I made tenure as Assistant Lecturer in the Chemistry department at Mithibai College.” Her hands shook in Ria’s and without meaning to, Ria squeezed them. “For ten years I have waited to meet you and thank you. For ten years my every prayer has been for your well-being. If you hadn’t paid for my education, for everything, after my mother died, I can’t even imagine where a homeless orphan like me would have ended up.”

  Ria pulled her hands away. “I didn’t—”

  “Of course I knew it was you. I had seen you at the cremation. When Mr. Veluri came to me, took care of admissions, and sent me checks every month, I knew it wasn’t him. I knew the charity story wasn’t true.” She smiled. “Stupid people don’t become Assistant Lecturer, you know.”

  Despite herself, Ria smiled back.

  “I recognized you when your first movie poster came out, and I’ve followed your career ever since. You’re only two years older than me, you know. You worked and I went to college.”

  Ria’s first paycheck, all the money from selling the land, had been just enough to cover the asylum and the nurse’s daughter’s boarding school fees.

  “But you lost your mother.”

  “And you lost your father. Life and death aren’t in our hands, are they?”

  Ria swallowed. Her throat burned, but she could no longer cry.

  “But what you did for me. That was in your hands. You saved my life. All these things people are saying about you. They don’t know anything. They don’t know how much you took on at such a young age. How is putting your mother in the best care facility in the world a bad thing? And the only sick person in all this is the man who took those pictures of you in your home.” She wiped her eyes with her dupatta and smiled through her tears, a pure luminous smile so peaceful it didn’t belong to a motherless child yearning for justice.

  “My mother never stopped talking about what a kind and generous person your mother was before she got sick. What a wonderful couple your parents were. She talked so much about them, in fact, that I’ve idolized their marriage all my life. I won’t marry until I have a love like that.” She smiled another luminous smile and touched Ria’s hand again. “Someday when I can afford it, I want to go to Bristol and see your mother.”

  Ria stood, jerking her hand away, her relief turning suddenly cold in her gut. She backed away, putting as much distance as she could between them. Ria was glad she had met her and had a chance to apologize, but the woman didn’t know what she was talking about, didn’t know what her mother’s murderer was capable of. “I’m sorry, I have another appointment. It was nice meeting you.”

  “Of course.” The woman looked a little baffled at the sudden change in Ria, but her only reaction was to reach into her purse and pull out a thick envelope. “I don’t need you to send me money anymore. These are all the checks you sent me after I got a job. I wanted to give them back to you in person.” She put the envelope down on the polished slab of marble that served as a coffee table and joined her palms in a namaste. “You are my guardian angel, Ms. Parkar. I fast every Tuesday so Lord Ganesha will fulfill your every desire. And he has never disappointed me.”

  With that she was gone, easing guilt off Ria’s shoulders even as she shoved unwanted thoughts into Ria’s mind. My mother never stopped talking about what a kind and generous person your mother was before she got sick.

  Ria slid the French doors open and let herself onto the balcony for the first time since that disastrous night on the ledge. Had it really been just a month? It didn’t even seem like this lifetime. She leaned over the sandstone railing. Press vans and reporters clogged the street outside the building gates. How long were they going to lay siege? What more did they hope to find out? Everything she had ever hidden was out in the open.

  Everything except what she had done with Ved. But it was just a matter of time. The pride in Uma’s voice, even now when failure and shame were all Ria had left, felt like just another thing waiting to slip away. Over the past few days Ved had tried several times to call her. She hadn’t spoken to him in years. That first film was all she’d ever done with him and after that he had moved on to newer girls
and left her alone. The e-mail he had sent her yesterday still sat unopened in her mailbox. She had almost deleted it a few times. But it was time to stop running. She tapped her phone and his e-mail popped open.

  Dear Ria,

  I understand you not wanting to talk to me. But I can only hope that you will read this and absolve me of some of my guilt. Believe me when I say that I have not been able to sleep since I found out about your mother.

  I wish you had told me about her when we first met. I know I did nothing to support my claim, but I would have helped you had I known. My own mother suffered from schizophrenia for twenty years before she died, and my brothers and me barely knew her. Last year my youngest daughter was diagnosed with the disease. She is twenty years old. Obviously, no one outside of my family knows any of this, but I wanted to share it with you. If for no other reason at least to assure you that I will never speak to the media about us.

  The secrets destiny has burdened us with are cruel and inescapable. We can hide them, but never hide from them. The shame our society thrusts upon us for crimes that are not ours is too heavy, but such is the world we live in. I wanted you to know that I understand and that I’m here in case you need anything.

  May the Mother Goddess give you strength. Jai Mata Di.

  Ved Kapoor

  Ria blinked and had the strangest urge to burst out laughing. But if she laughed now, she wouldn’t be able to stop until her laughter turned to tears. Maybe Ved meant it, maybe he would never tell, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. Maybe she’d tell Uma herself and then it wouldn’t matter.

  She sucked in a long breath. Who could have imagined that Ved would get anything so right? But he had hit at the heart of it all. Her secret was inescapable. She could hide it, but never hide from it.

  The secret was out and she no longer had to worry about anyone finding out. But that meant nothing. Hiding her mother had just distracted from what she really wanted to hide from. It was just concealer on her scars. The concealer had been scraped off and the scars were still there. They would always be there. She could hide from the woman in the asylum thousands of miles away, but the woman couldn’t hurt her anymore. What could hurt her, destroy her, what she was really hiding from, was what she carried inside her, where it ripened day after day waiting to emerge full-blown.

  It’s the child’s destiny.... You should have made her spill the child before she was born.

  The insanity in her genes was her destiny. That was what was inescapable. The only comfort was that the one person whom she needed to protect from it was out of her life.

  And that helped her make up her mind.

  Ria watched the drama of her own life unfold like someone sitting in an audience. She finally told the producers that she couldn’t do the film. She could’ve sworn they were relieved. They issued a statement saying they were dropping her because they were committed to wholesome Indian family values and a star who could so coldly forsake her own mother clearly did not share the vision of the production house.

  The publicity was fantastic. PKGJ was assured a great opening even before it released. The film she had been dumped from was also assured a great opening even before they had started shooting. All the producers had to do was bring up the story in the media every now and again until release and keep it fresh in the public’s mind. The new girl they signed to replace Ria was DJ’s newest client, so it wasn’t a total loss.

  DJ stood by Ria like a rock. He didn’t ask a single question and guarded her privacy like a pit bull. Even after she found her words again, there were no words to fit her gratitude.

  When he told her about the new girl, Ria asked him to make sure there were no crazy mothers buried in her closet. DJ assured Ria that she was one of a kind and that scripts like hers weren’t written every day. Ria smiled to herself. He didn’t know the half of it.

  30

  Bristol

  Ria stood outside the imposing iron gates of the historic manor house. A bronze plaque announcing the heritage of the building and a dedication to the family who had donated it for use as a sanitarium was inlaid into one of the two high brick columns housing the gates. It was a shaded residential street, and she could have been standing outside a wealthy friend’s house waiting to be let in for breakfast.

  A short buzzing sound indicated that the gate had been unlocked. Ria made no move to go inside. She had been inside the building only once before, ten years ago, when she had signed the admission papers. Even then, she had only gone as far as the administrator’s office, waiting there while Vijay Kaka and Uma Atya made sure all the arrangements were acceptable.

  Over the years, Vijay and Uma had visited regularly. At first Uma had filled Ria in after each visit, but it had made Ria almost catatonically withdrawn and Uma had stopped telling her about it. They had never asked Ria to join them on their visits and Ria had never considered doing it by herself. Maybe if she’d had the courage to face up to what she was going to become, she might have had the sense to keep away from Vikram.

  She gripped the cold iron gate with one hand and stared at the stone façade. The one lone connection she had with this godforsaken place was the checks she wrote twice a year. It was the one thing she steadfastly took care of herself, refusing to let anyone help in any way.

  I won’t let you leech off my son.

  Who would sign the checks for Ria? Who would make sure the arrangements were suitable? Would the money she had collected be enough? What if she outlived it? The buzzer went off again, breaking through her morbid thoughts. She tried to get herself to push the gate open, but she couldn’t. Withdrawing her hand, she stared at the beautiful building that housed all her grotesquely ugly fears, unable to go in.

  She had done this every morning for the past week. It had taken her a few days before that just to leave the flat she had rented half a mile away and make her way to the sanitarium gates.

  When DJ had asked her what her plans were, Ria had surprised herself by asking him to find her a flat in Bristol. It had just popped out, but she hadn’t taken it back. Like everything else, DJ had taken care of it quickly and efficiently. All Ria had to do after that was pack up all her possessions and leave.

  Her maid had helped her put everything into boxes. Every time Tai liked something they were packing, Ria asked her to take it. She gave her everything in the kitchen, utensils Ria had never used, electronics she had never needed. Tai was the one who had used the stuff anyway; it belonged to her. Finally, the poor thing had stopped exclaiming over things, afraid that Ria would give her more.

  “Babyji, God is there, just keep the faith. He is there,” she kept saying, pointing at the ceiling as if her God sat on the ceiling fan. As she sat there sorting through the mess of Ria’s life in her simple sari, with hair that had turned silver without ever seeing a stylist, and sun-worn skin that had never seen a moisturizer in its long hard life, she was overwhelmed with guilt to be taking things from Ria. Things Ria had no use for.

  By the time they were ready to tackle Ria’s wardrobe with the obscene amount of clothes and shoes and belts and scarves piled in unending stacks, Ria felt buried, tied down, and ashamed. She had worn most of those things only once. But the maid’s eyes lit up. Before Ria could ask her to take it all, she cut Ria off. “Babyji, I just had a fantastic idea! Why don’t you give all these clothes away to those crazy people who are so angry with you?”

  Although the “crazy people” themselves had no use for the clothes, the charities that took care of them could make a lot of money from all this stuff. Most of it had made appearances in Ria’s films and had to be worth something. For the first time since she had left Chicago, Ria had voluntarily touched someone. She had given Tai a quick hug, making her tear up. Then Ria had done exactly as she suggested and given all of it to the mental health charities.

  For the rest of their time together, as they wrapped and packed and taped boxes shut, tears had leaked down Tai’s cheeks. When she left for the last time, all her new posse
ssions crammed into the Tempo van her son had borrowed from his friend, she had sobbed like a baby.

  “Achha, Babyji. I’ll be coming now.” It was what she always said when she left Ria’s house, not wanting to tempt the evil spirits by saying she was going away. “You’ll keep me in your memory, no?”

  As if Ria could ever forget her.

  Ria turned away from the iron gates and started walking away. Going in would have to wait another day. The past week in Bristol had gone by like a slow, suspended dream. Ria took turns hurtling between feeling like a clean slate and a ten-ton truck loaded with baggage, both ancient and newborn, sullied and pure as freshly tilled earth. Through it all, Vikram stayed with her, inside her. She clung to him. To the warm, soothing memories of him. It was all she had, it was all she would ever need. It hurt. Sometimes the pain was slow and aching, sometimes stark and maddening. She savored every bit of it like a gift. She would not give it up for anything. He was finally safe from her. She would never see him again, but she had this.

  “Excuse me, miss,” someone called from behind her.

  She sped up, lengthening her stride across the cobbled sidewalk that edged the high sanitarium wall. The sun was just about making an appearance. Mottled sunrays sifted through the flaming red leaves that clung to branches one last time before they let go. A thick carpet of brown leaves crunched beneath her feet.

  “Miss Parkar!” The voice came closer. Ria had no desire to engage in conversation with anyone. After the first wave of scandal had passed, the reporters had targeted her with renewed fervor. They were everywhere, clamoring for a sound bite. Apparently, now that the furor of all the other voices had died down, it was Ria’s turn to be heard.