The monotone cadence of the priest’s chanting soothed Emma and made her feel completely out of her element. As the priest approached them, Rishi moved his hands from the points of prayer and over the flame of the lamp and then put them up over his head like he was smoothing down his hair while the priest chanted and held the domed instrument over Rishi’s head.
Emma’s head was still turned to Rishi when the priest stopped in front of her. Fumbling, she laid a hundred rupees on the tray. She put her hands over the fire as Rishi had done, bowing slightly. The prayer. The prayer! Please, God, let us all be happy one day together. The brass dome grazed the backs of her hands as the priest shuffled away.
That they could all be happy one day? That’s what had come out of her in the moment? Where had that come from?
She gazed at the statue of Durga, the goddess she’d just prayed to. There were multiple statues, carved in a dark stone with the age of centuries imprinted into them. This larger one had an eroded nose and chin, filed down from moisture, a green silk sari wrapped around her. Thick garlands of roses, tulsi leaves, and jasmine weighed it down.
A man lay down in front of the statue, his face touching the floor. Emma questioned her recent overuse of hand sanitizer, trying to keep a host of germs away, while this man fully embraced them, kissing the temple floor where millions of people had walked in their bare feet.
Maybe he believed that fate would keep him from getting toe fungus on his lip. All these people believed in fate, and she had eschewed it for so many years. Fate was the antithesis of her life—this idea that how you made yourself meant nothing in the face of the things that just happened to you, that your life was sorted and predestined. That she and Rishi were always going to have these feelings between them. No matter what had happened in her past, or his, or what course their lives took, they would find themselves drawn to each other, unable to reconcile the reality of their different worlds. But not able to stop themselves, and for her, not able to stop thinking about him.
And there was the fact that he was always going to get married to please his family. Maybe he’d stalled it, but could he really not follow through with his family’s wishes?
Maybe with her prayer she had just been caught up in the moment, like this no-fear-of-the-foot-fungus guy.
“Rishi, how old are these statues?”
“The gods? Almost a thousand years old, I think.”
A thousand years old? Emma’s brain searched for what else in the world was a thousand years old. A push from behind made her stumble as a wave of people came toward the priest’s area. Her eyes searched for Rishi as she felt a tug on her arm. They squeezed through the mass of moving bodies toward the faint light that came through the exit door.
“That was intense,” Emma said, catching the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. If Rishi hadn’t guided her out of there, she could imagine being pulled under a human tide.
“It’s a famous temple, so it can get kind of crazy.”
As they walked farther down the hill, they found themselves before a giant black cement cow statue.
“This is Nandi,” Rishi said.
“And who is Nandi?”
“Nandi is Shiva’s bull, and how he travels throughout the world.”
“What’s this?” Emma asked, pointing to something that looked like a stone birdbath with a narrow dome on top of it.
“That’s a Shiva lingam. It’s the male part of Shiva. It gave birth to the world.”
“I love that there are monuments to godly penises at temples, and buffalo demons.”
“Hinduism is complex. That’s why you can’t convert to it. It would take too long to catch up with all the nuances.” He winked at her.
Emma laughed, but then it quickly fell apart. His religion. His culture. His family. Her prayer that they could all be one.
She swallowed as she leaned against a nearby brick wall, staring at the Shiva lingam. “Rishi, I know it’s been like three weeks or something, but I just need to come out and ask what’s going on. With us, with your marriage plans, with your family and the results I found for you. I like you, and the last few weeks have been amazing, but I just don’t know what we’re doing, and I need to ask you about it. I thought I’d wait and see if maybe this feeling was just going to go away, or maybe you’d declare you were marriage-free or something, but I just have to ask because I think about it, and, well . . . it’s bugging me. Big-time. More like haunting me. And/or torturing me.” And now she was rambling.
She looked back at the giant stone penis and waited for the fallout.
Rishi took a deep breath. So Emma felt the same way after all. It shouldn’t have surprised him, as their thoughts and movements seemed to mirror one another’s constantly.
“I know that was a big rambling mess, I just . . .” She shook her head.
“No.” He grabbed her hand. “It wasn’t. I feel the same way too.”
“So, what do we do?” She sat down on the nearby bench.
“I need to talk to them. My parents. Tell them to stop trying to fix me up. I’ve been thinking about it.” He smiled, hoping that would ease some of the difficulty for her. It couldn’t have been easy to be interested in someone with familial expectations like his.
“But what about your brother and what happened to him?”
“That needs to get resolved too. Like you said, the whole thing is ridiculous.”
“You know, I told you about my parents passing away when I was a kid. Not having a family is hard. Luckily, I had my grandmother, but when she died a few years ago, I had nothing.” She looked away, at the town below the temple grounds. “I have nothing.”
Rishi pictured giving Emma a family she deserved. His mom showing her how to cook something in the kitchen as Emma balanced a toddler on her hip. Rishi swooping in to grab their child, to join Dharini and Sudhar bickering in the living room. His dad telling him how happy he was that they had so much joy in the house.
But how much of a fantasy was that?
“You have me, and that friend you’re always talking about,” Rishi said, wanting to put his arms around her, choking back the desire to touch her in public like this.
“Thanks.” She smiled up at him. “But I’m telling you this for a reason. Family is important, and I don’t ever want to upset your relationship with your parents. It’s hard not having people that will love you just because you’re you. Just because you share the same genes.”
That hit him, hard. Family in India was the most important thing you had. People said it all the time. It was a core of their culture. Except when family disobeyed your wishes and then never spoke to you again. Except when family meant his brother.
It was why Rishi was compelled to do the right thing in his parents’ eyes.
Why he blindly followed some of their practices—at least when he was home.
Why he had tried to accept the fact that he’d marry someone his parents would approve of.
“I think I need to go to Madurai next weekend to meet with them. I’d ask you to come, too, but I don’t think it’s going to be a fun trip.”
He imagined confronting them as they sat in the tiny room where they entertained guests.
His mother erupting in sobs, pounding the sofa.
His father stalking off to the local liquor store and sneaking two shots of brandy. A harmless gesture for Rishi, but for his father to violate his belief system and imbibe a forbidden beverage would be the worst it could get.
He wanted to make his parents happy and help his sister find the husband she deserved, but he had to think about himself too. It was his life they were holding in their hands. And he couldn’t be with Emma while they were orchestrating something in the background. And he couldn’t have them string Radhika and her family along either. He couldn’t find himself engaged in a month and still wondering if what he and Emma had experienced was something permanent and real.
“Emma, my family will always have a place in my heart.” H
e swallowed hard. “But they’ll need to make room for you too.”
Hopefully they would. The split inside him warmed as it fused together. He had to find some way to make this right.
CHAPTER 31
Rishi stepped off the train in Madurai, squeezing himself and his bag out the door, surrounded by crowds of people. The heat was immense, and the force of the sun doubled it. He brought his sunglasses out of his bag and looked around at the crowd. There was not a single pair of sunglasses in sight; everyone here was used to the sun. He put them back in the bag as he walked outside to find an auto to take him home. No reason to get charged double just for a pair of sunglasses.
Standing outside the pastel-painted brick of the Madurai train station, he stopped at the line of yellow-topped auto-rickshaws. Some of the drivers stood around, bored, spitting chewed-up betel leaves on the ground, while others jerked their heads toward Rishi and asked, “Enga?” Where? His parents’ home was almost ten kilometers from the station.
“Ellis Nagar,” Rishi said to the driver nearest him. The driver eased his head side to side and spit a stream of bright-red betel nut on the sidewalk. He jerked the handle on the floorboard and started the three-wheeled vehicle, not looking before pulling out onto the road.
Now that the meter was on, Rishi put on his sunglasses to keep the black exhaust billowing around him out of his eyes, and he sent a text to his father saying he was on his way. The driver looked in the rearview mirror and asked in Tamil, “Where are you from?” Rishi probably looked like a tourist to him, with his too-long hair and dark jeans.
“Here. Inga.”
“You don’t live here now,” the driver said, half question, half observation.
“I live in Bangalore now, but family is all here.”
“Long journey.”
“Amam.” Yes. Fortunately there were night trains to and from Bangalore and Madurai, and he could sleep through anything. The rumbling on the tracks, the snoring of the old man beneath him on the bunk, the clack of the toilet door flying open in the hall. It was only when the old man had hacked up something ferocious in his throat that morning that Rishi had opened his eyes, reality slapping him in the face, far away from his dream starring Emma.
The driver dropped him off, and Rishi approached the open door to his family home, the smell of toasted cumin seeds, ghee, and cardamom begging him to enter. He rubbed at the chipping yellow paint on the doorframe. Things seemed to have been in an ever-increasing state of disrepair in his childhood home, but his mother would never spend money on something like chipping paint. She would, however, spend money on gold bangles and necklaces that would be squirreled away in a metal cabinet. Locked up, only to be retrieved for weddings and holidays. That was an investment, she said.
“Hello?” he called out, and his mother hurried toward the door.
“Rishi, so good to see you!” she said as Rishi bent down to the ground and touched her feet. Folding his hands in front of him, he rocked back and forth on the ground three times. His father and sister also joined them in the hall, and Rishi went through the ritual with his dad and then patted his sister on her head like she was four instead of twenty-two.
“Ha ha, very funny.” Dharini reached her hand up to do the same to him, but she was a foot shorter, and he lunged out of her way.
“How was your journey?” his dad asked as they walked inside.
“Long.” Rishi smiled. “But I slept most of the night.”
“Coffee?” His mother brought Rishi a cylindrical steel cup. It was her way of greeting him in the most welcoming way possible.
“Thanks, Ma,” he said. He drank the sweet, milky coffee by pouring it in his mouth, the metal cup not touching his lips.
“Rishi, it has been four months since we saw you last. We thought you were going to come home when you returned from Seattle. You need to come back more. Your hair is so long.” His mother pulled at the shaggy hair Rishi had tried to smooth out of the way. “And you look so thin! You need to eat!” She shook her head and clicked her tongue against the back of her teeth.
Rishi glanced down at himself.
He had been lifting weights at the gym for the past year, trying to bulk up, not to seem thin. His mother always told him he looked thin, though, even when he had come home pudgy and swollen from college after eating too much fried food from the roadside stalls. It was her ritual every time he came home, one she’d likely instituted to give him permission to eat as much as he wanted of her cooking—food that couldn’t be replicated at even the best restaurant in Bangalore.
“I was going to, but we’ve been very busy with this new project, so it’s hard to take a day off. Then I went to Cochin for the conference, but . . . I’m here now.” He smiled weakly.
“Yes, brother, thank you for gracing us with your presence,” Dharini said, her palms pressed together in front of her. Definitely sealed together with irony.
“Where’s your coffee, sis?”
“I only need coffee in the morning. And at work when I’m bored.” Her head flopped dramatically toward her chest, and she let out a few fake snores.
Rishi’s mother went to finish cooking lunch, and his father went out for an errand, so he and Dharini went outside and sat down.
“Wow, so your job is that exciting. What are you doing?” Rishi asked.
Dharini explained her work, consulting on code updates for banking websites, which Rishi had to admit was not as exciting as developing an app to help people read.
“That really is boring. So we can blame the banking industry for your search for a husband?”
Dharini laughed. “I mean, I want a family and a husband, and I want someone good, so might as well start looking now.”
“Are you sure you’re my sister?” Rishi squinted at her and laughed.
She leaned forward, and her finger went back and forth between their faces. “Look at these eyes, brother. They’re the same.” Then she retreated back to her chair, looking proud.
Their eyes. Rishi opened his mouth to tell her about Sudhar’s baby. But she was definitely being kept in the dark. They all protected her like she was still a little kid.
“I saw the pictures of Radhika. She’s very pretty.”
Ugh. Already this conversation? “A girl needs to be more than pretty to marry, you know. Remember that when you’re looking for your ideal guy.”
“But didn’t you customize your search or something to find her? Like she is perfect? That’s what Amma told me.”
“I’m sorry you didn’t get to come to Seattle and visit me.” He was just going to change the subject instead of entertaining her.
“I know. Maybe next time.” She shrugged.
“Don’t you want to take some time and travel or something before you get married?” Rishi asked. She was so young. How was it possible she was ready to settle down? “Like, if you stay in your job long enough, maybe you can travel for work. I got to go to a conference in Cochin and represent the company. That was great.” What was really great was the by-product of the conference, though.
“Look at your smile!” She laughed. “Bragging suits you. Did you present all by yourself?”
If she only knew what he was smiling about. “Uh, no, there was another colleague with me, Kaushik.” The last thing he needed to do was mention Emma and have an inquisition about a foreign girl who’d traveled with him to Cochin. His face would turn into a billboard advertising all the ways he felt about her. Then the questions would build until he gave in and confessed everything, and then his family would dissolve into a puddle of tears.
He’d felt so strongly when he was back in Bangalore, crafting the perfect argument in his head about why he should wait to get married until he was sure he’d found “the one”; how times had changed, and his parents needed to realize it; how Sudhar’s marriage wasn’t all bad for them, but they were twisting it around to suit them. Now that he was here, seeing his parents and his sister and hearing about how she actually did want to get marr
ied, all those arguments twisted in his mind, their perfect endings scattering away from him.
His mother called from inside the house. “Rishi! Dharini! Lunch is ready! Saapda vaanga!”
They both walked inside. The smell of his favorite food had a direct line of communication with his stomach. Thank you for bringing me home, it called out.
Rishi sat at the table while his mother dished a small mountain of rice on his steel plate and dripped ghee on top of it. She topped it with a cup of spicy sambar, roasted eggplant, and green beans poriyal. He wished he could cook this for Emma. Maybe he could try. Was he really ready to try cooking something for this woman? He did have it bad.
Rishi dug in with his right hand, mixing everything up and stuffing pinched fingers of rice in his mouth. After finishing a cup of peppery rasam and curd with his rice, Rishi sat back on the chair, patting his stomach. His mother brought a steel tin from the kitchen.
“Now I have to go to the gym two more times next week to make up for all this food.” Rishi smiled at her. “Do you think you could write down the recipe for me?”
“Recipe?” His mother’s mouth hung open. “Dharini, did you hear what your brother said?”
“Rishi, you’re going to cook?” Dharini squinted at him in complete disbelief.
“Yeah, why not? I should try, right?”
“I can tell you. It will make a good impression on Radhika.”
He ransacked his brain, hoping for any start to this vital conversation. Being here, in their house, was a reminder of just how desperate his family’s situation had become. How much they were hoping the joining of another family would help strengthen their own.
The cushions on the sofa were faded and worn; chipped and broken tiles lined the floor. One bathroom faucet still leaked, so they’d turned off the water source to it rather than pay for repairs. The plastic chairs on the front porch were cracked and had been put back together with duct tape. And the TV looked like it was from the 1990s.
Soon he would hear how his father needed just a few more years of work. But no one wanted to hire him. No one wanted to hire a man approaching sixty when they could hire a twenty-five-year-old. How much could his promotion have helped anyway? What would a few thousand extra rupees a month do?
The Marriage Code: A Novel Page 24