And with passion.
If they really went on an Indian tour together, outside the confines of Bangalore’s best eateries, what would it be like? He’d have to show her the best things about the country he called home. Let her taste the coconut-seeped curries of Kerala. Visit a roadside dhaba in Punjab where the paneer melted on your tongue. Show her the famous Madurai temples in his hometown, but also his favorite Ganesh temple, the tiny one near his apartment.
She’d have to see the flower vendors at Gandhi Bazaar, with their overflowing baskets of marigolds and roses, and eat chaat from his favorite cart in Vijayanagar. She’d take his India, place it in her mouth, and suck the joy of his country like a mango seed.
And end the tour by seeing what other flavors they could search out in the curves of each other’s skin.
What the hell was wrong with him? That couldn’t happen. Obviously, it couldn’t. And yet the thought snaked through him, a depraved viper swallowing his brain whole. He slumped over on the table, his elbow on the cold metal, his palm catching his forehead.
“Are you okay?” Emma had pulled her laptop up and slid it over toward him.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine. Just forgot something.” Like my mind.
“Here you go.”
Rishi took a deep breath.
On the screen were two beautiful young women, Lakshmi and Radhika. Both with master’s from good schools. Lakshmi was educated in the UK, Radhika at the Indian Institute of Technology—a school he hadn’t gotten into. Radhika’s family ran a large textile-export company; Lakshmi’s family owned a gold store.
Perfection. Just as he’d expected Emma would deliver.
But why did he feel nothing as he looked at their faces?
Of course, it was unlikely there would be a spark, a small fire that churned inside him when he looked at the photos. As his mother always said, you grew into love. It didn’t just happen at first sight. That was lust, right?
And family came first, didn’t it? He needed to find someone they would embrace. Someone who would understand his family situation and be supportive. Someone his sister’s future family would approve of too. He couldn’t end up like Sudhar. And he couldn’t put his family through that twice.
He had to find a woman who could relate to his world. A woman who would please his mother with her knowledge of prayer and ritual. A woman who would be a partner and challenge him, educate him, make him be a better person. Maybe she was out there, and maybe Lakshmi or Radhika was “the one.” They’d grow into their relationship. He hadn’t even met them yet, and he was already doubting. Why?
“Thanks for doing this. They seem to be perfect.” He slid her laptop back to her. “Will you email that to me when you get a chance?”
Emma looked up. “Huh. Did I say that right?”
“What?”
“I’m trying to learn Hindi.”
He couldn’t believe it. She was trying to pronounce yes.
Rishi laughed and shook his head. “Sort of. More like haah.”
“Haah.” She tried again. “Well, I thought if I’m here in India, I might as well try. Plus, my Indian movie watching is exponentially increasing. It would be cool to understand what they’re saying some of the time and not have to rely on the subtitles.”
“Have you watched a lot of them?”
“Just a few. A lot of girl hates boy, boy hates girl, and then somehow they’re thrown together because of a late train or evil landowner and fall in love.”
He didn’t usually watch the romances unless his exes dragged him to one. He opted for comedy or action films, plots where a vigilante saved the day and restored justice to the oppressed. They had fewer songs and more realistic plots. In reality, most people were thrown together by carefully constructed family orchestrations. That was reality. Bollywood romances were the fantasy.
“Did you like them?” Rishi asked, curious if she felt the same way about Indian movies as she did about their coffee. Too sweet for her tastes. The memory of watching the film version of the Kama Sutra flashed in his mind. Had she seen that? Not that he would ask.
“They were okay, but like every romantic comedy ever, I don’t believe people fall in love like that. It’s unbelievable. How can they hate each other, then have a lot of ridiculous arguing, and bam!” She slammed her palm on the table. He jumped in his seat. “With one word or look, they’re suddenly in love.” Emma locked eyes with him for a moment and then glanced back at her phone. “Or maybe it’s a hair swish that does it. There is also a lot of hair swishing.”
“Hair swishing?”
“Yes, the slow pan on a girl as she turns around, the focus on her hair like it’s a whole other character?”
Rishi could only laugh in response. “The amount of effort my mother puts into my sister’s hair, it is like another child of hers.”
Now it was Emma’s turn to laugh. “Well, I’m sure she has very beautiful hair then.”
Rishi nodded. He pulled out his phone and found a picture of Dharini, then turned the screen to Emma.
“She looks so young!”
“I know. I still remember helping change her diapers.” Rishi sighed, glancing at the picture. “I can’t believe she wants to get married already.”
“How old is she?”
“Twenty-two.”
“Jesus. When I was twenty-two, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing with my life. At least she knows what she wants, I guess.”
“Yeah, maybe that’s how I should look at it,” Rishi said. Emma had a point. He should stop obsessing over the shock that his baby sister was all grown up and be happy that she had a vision for her future. Dharini was probably more mature than he was anyway.
“Okay, I guess I should get back to work. And you can start looking at these bugs. And the ladies, of course.” She cleared her throat. “Do you think that you’ll find true love with one of the women I found?”
What a weird question. It threaded a shiver up his chest. “Who knows? We’ll see what happens.” Why couldn’t they go back to talking about movies?
Silence overwhelmed the space between the two of them. They both sat holding their coffee cups and staring into them like the next move would be obvious. It was like a wall had been erected, a maze of a wall. He was the mouse, and he had to find the small nugget of truth at the end. Emma was his guide, and somehow he wasn’t as pleased about the perfect results as he’d hoped.
He got the feeling she wasn’t either.
The results of Emma’s code had been taking more brain space than he’d anticipated. It had been a few days since he’d sent the profiles to his parents, and he was simultaneously anticipating and dreading the results of them contacting their parents. He had to focus on work and not on his nebulous future.
He stared at his computer, reading through the first iteration of feedback from the team before their check-in meeting with Jas. The game design of the app wasn’t meeting Emma’s standards. She wanted this color and this interaction. The user’s performance moved them backward and forward like a Choose Your Own Adventure game, depending on what they got right and wrong. They’d done at least four iterations already as they tried to achieve her vision. Maybe she was right. Okay, probably right. But it was making Manuj and Rishi work harder to get the correct updates in.
As he tried to fix one bug out of the many, grasping at anything that could help, an instant message from Jas popped up in the corner of his screen.
Rishi, can you stop by my office when you’re free?
On my way.
Rishi was glad for an excuse to leave the nitpicky feedback that was making him dream about the project. Well, more like have nightmares. Emma, shunning him for his lack of perfection, or trapping him in the office as punishment, making their relationship like the stupid game in the app. Her green eyes lasering him into submission as he fell over, paralyzed, some pixelated cartoon version of Rishi from the nineties.
He shook his head, dispelling the vision when he got to Jas’s office.
> “Hi, boss,” Rishi said as he stood in the doorframe.
Jas waved Rishi in. “I have something I want to discuss with you. There’s a conference in Cochin in a few weeks, the International Computer Science and IT Conference, and I was wondering if you would go and help present on our work with the project?”
Rishi’s heart picked up in pace; excitement flooded his veins. He’d never been asked to go to a conference for TechLogic before, but he’d been working his ass off. At least this would be some sort of consolation for not getting the promotion. “Sure. Great! I’d love to go.”
“I’ll have my assistant make the booking. Emma and Kaushik are also going.”
Rishi nodded, but his mouth dried up as he processed what Jas had just said. “I’ll start talking with them about the presentation.”
“Great.” Jas stood up and shook Rishi’s hand. “Also, I know this year has been a little disappointing for you with the change of events, but we still consider you one of our most valued employees.”
“Thanks.” Rishi tried to smile, but “valued employee” didn’t have any money tied to it. Didn’t come with a relocation and extra pay. He left Jas’s office and walked down the hall, imagining all the things he wanted to say to Jas.
“Hey, Rishi, want to go get a coffee before the meeting?” Emma’s voice called down the hall behind him.
An invisible string pulled him back. His feet pivoted.
“Yeah, definitely.” The words just came out like that. He didn’t even think about them. What was happening to him?
“I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” Emma whispered as their feet locked in step together. “Did you look at the profiles and send them to your family? Did my code work?”
They opened the door to the outside patio and started making two cups of coffee. “It did, or at least I think it did. I sent them over to my parents.”
Emma carried her coffee to a table, and Rishi followed. “Do they interview them? I remember my grandmother doing that with my dates for high school. I’m sure this doesn’t surprise you, but the guys I went out with were as nerdy as me.”
“Really?” He didn’t consider her a nerd. More like an annihilator of nerds who got in her way. She could star in her own app-based game: The Nerdinator. She’d throw calculators at their eyes and capture their heads between her legs. Suffocate them in her—
What was wrong with him?
He cleared his throat. “Wouldn’t your dad be the threatening, interviewing type? Although I can see my mom doing that more so than my dad. Maybe not with my sister, though.” He imagined how they’d tag team meeting any potential grooms for his sister, the equivalent of a date. But if he was honest with himself, he’d probably overtake both of them. It was his little sister, after all. “Or me. I think I would actually be the hardest on someone for my sister because I can just be real with them.”
Emma shifted in her seat and looked out over the patio toward the nearby busy road. “No, my dad wasn’t around to do that, so it was my grandmother.” She huffed a laugh and looked down at her lap. “And I don’t have any big brothers to look out for me. That would have been nice, though.”
The smile she gave him when she looked up was not a happy one. It was a sad smile. Rishi was afraid he’d crossed a line. Maybe her parents were divorced, and she didn’t like to talk about it.
“Anyway, you don’t seem like a nerd.” Emma might not be the nerdinator, but nerds didn’t have purple streaks in their hair and try to boss everyone around. Nerds didn’t have curvy bodies and dress to show it. What had these guys been like?
She laughed. “Oh yeah, total nerd. Like science club, debate team, math club nerd.”
“Debate team I can totally see.”
“And my grandmother had this shotgun over the couch in the living room, and when these poor guys would show up to take me to a dance or something, she’d pull it out and threaten them. Drill them with twenty questions. Like we ever did anything besides kiss.” She wrinkled her face up. “Actually, I don’t know if that even happened with them.”
She laughed, shaking her head like they were sharing some kind of joke. But all Rishi could do was stare at her lips. How could she not remember victimizing a poor boy with those pink pillows of doom? Or with her smile that stretched across her face? Those agile lips could wrap themselves around anything.
Again? He shook his head like he could shake her lips out of it. She gave him one of her What’s wrong with you? looks.
“Uh, so what you’re saying is that your grandmother threatened to shoot your dates when they came to your house, in case they . . . ?” I mean, what could he even say here? God help him. Hopefully she’d just fill in the blanks.
“Yeah, exactly. So anyway, I’m hoping that your parents are easier on your love interests than my grandma was.”
Her eyes were sparkling. Almost like they were on the verge of tears, but in a happy way. This was something new. This sort of joy only got released over the best tomato chutney or the crispy edges of a dosa. She wiped at her eyes. “Sorry. I get emotional over my grandmother sometimes. She was a really amazing, unique woman.”
Rishi pictured his grandmother, who had lived with his parents until a few years ago. The white-haired, able-bodied woman who had cooked breakfast and lunch with his mother until the day she’d died. She’d always sneaked extra treats for him, covered up for him when he’d been bad to spare him a smack from his father. “Did you lose her? I lost mine a few years ago. She was pretty amazing too.”
“Really? I’m sorry.” Emma’s hand stretched across the table, like she was reaching for his, and then retracted like a turtle’s neck going back into its shell, under the table. He looked up at her face, and she looked like she’d seen a ghost. “Hopefully you got to spend time with her.”
“Yeah, she lived with us and was kind of a badass.”
Emma laughed. “Yeah? Mine was a badass too.”
“Obviously.” He could picture exactly where Emma got her guts from.
“Uh . . . so what’s the whole process like to determine if a woman is ‘the one’? Do these ladies just go up to your parents and say, ‘Namaste, I’m applying to marry your son’?”
“Namaste?” Rishi shook his head and let out a weak laugh. Although he wasn’t sure if the laugh was at her choice of words or at the bizarre contact that had almost happened between them. Had Emma really just tried to touch his hand? “No.”
“But I thought it meant hello in Hindi?”
“We usually say ‘hi,’ or ‘hello,’” Rishi said, trying not to laugh at the face Emma was making, at her eyes squinting at him, her lip curled at the corner. He could see the processing happening in her circuit boards. Like a small punch in his chest, he shamed himself. Okay, maybe circuit boards was a tad harsh.
She leaned back in her chair and threw her arms up. “Why am I bothering to learn Hindi then? Everyone speaks English anyway.”
“Remember the movies? And so one day you can understand this. Tumhare aankhen bohut sundar hai.” She’d never know what he’d said; he’d said it too fast. It felt good, having the upper hand for once.
“Wait, what was that again?”
“I heard you’re going to the conference in Cochin too?” He smiled, ignoring her question.
“Rishi, tell me!” She swatted at his arm, but he yanked it away.
“Nothing . . . I was just kidding. I just said ‘so you know what they’re saying in yoga class.’” He’d never tell her he’d just said she had beautiful eyes. He didn’t even know where it had come from. Like her green lasers had transformed into emeralds.
“Yes, I’m going.” She exhaled a sigh of defeat.
He glanced at his phone and chugged his coffee. “Okay, meeting time. Let’s go.”
“Well, keep me posted on your progress with the lucky Radhika or Lakshmi.”
Rishi got up from his chair, humming a yes. He didn’t know what else to say to her about them. It wasn’t that he was hiding anythi
ng, but the whole agreement between the two of them had started out so awkwardly. Now it felt even more awkward. He’d just let his parents handle it.
They joined the others in the conference room. Manuj set up the projector and connected it to the tablet they were testing on.
“Okay, team, Kaushik and I have been able to implement fixes for a few of the functional bugs from our initial iteration of the app, so let’s show you the results.”
Emma leaned back, her arms crossed, watching Manuj demo the app. Halfway through, she asked, “What if we tweaked the code so that there was some kind of hidden Easter egg in the game? So that when you accomplish a level, sometimes you get a surprise reward. Or something cool comes up on the screen?”
“Well, we have the leaderboard in place, as well as the general awards and badges for completing content. So you want something else?” Manuj asked reluctantly. Rishi knew just how many hours Manuj had already put into designing the prototype.
“Yes, we really need to make this app amazing. Like the best app we can imagine. The stakes are really high. We need to have as much motivation as we can for people to continue to use it.”
“This is standard across our business apps. We don’t have Easter eggs.” Kaushik shook his head as if it was the silliest thing he’d ever said. “Maybe you should let us handle this.”
Rishi could see the storm brewing inside Emma. Her fingers braced at the table, and her head reared back into her neck as she stared Kaushik down.
“Kaushik, we are not shooting for ‘standard.’ We are shooting for superior. Five stars. Fun. Creative. Surprising. Life changing.” Emma leaned forward. “If you want to be ‘standard,’ then maybe this isn’t the right project for you.”
The tension in the room was palpable. Everyone seemed to be waiting to see how Kaushik, whose eyes burned with anger, would respond. If Rishi had to bet, he was sure Emma could take Kaushik down. But if the three of them were to present at the conference, that couldn’t happen.
Rishi jumped in. “Kaushik, just because we’ve been doing app development a certain way doesn’t mean we can’t change. This isn’t a business app. People use business apps because they have to. We have to build fun into this one. Look at all the most successful games out there. They’re puzzles, and you have to figure out how to unlock them. Sometimes you get bonuses. You want to find what’s hidden. But they don’t feel planned, or like a series of logical steps; they’re more like serendipity.” Rishi glanced over at Emma after he’d said this, and something like a half grin was spread across her face, like Rishi was one of her converts, and she’d finally convinced him to come to the dark side.
The Marriage Code: A Novel Page 15