‘I see,’ I said, using Yusuf’s tone, Yusuf’s words, probably even adopting Yusuf’s expression on my face as I lined up the spoon with the fork and the knife. ‘When’s the wedding?’
‘May,’ said my brother.
‘I see,’ I said again. ‘And, um, what’s her name, this future sister-in-law of mine?’
‘Aanchal,’ he said, and when he said it, a little proprietary smile turned up the corners of his mouth. He couldn’t help it. I wanted to be happy for him, but I was too busy being pissed off.
‘When did this happen? When were you planning to tell me?’
‘Well, that’s why we came to Bombay. The engagement isn’t formal yet, but we’ll have a proper ceremony next month.’ He reached out and took my hand. ‘We’re family. I couldn’t tell you this over the phone.’ I wanted to cry at the tenderness in his voice which is weird, because I practically never cry.
‘And I wanted to tell you in advance so you could get leave from work,’ said my mother briskly. There’s no room for sentiment in my family, if there had been, we’d have fallen apart a long time ago.
‘You will come, won’t you?’ asked my brother and I saw that for all his bluster, all his Head Of The Household airs, he was worried that I wouldn’t go, that I had cut myself off so much that I wouldn’t make it to my own brother’s engagement party.
‘Of course she’ll come,’ said my mother and he shot her a quick annoyed glance, and I suddenly realized that we were brother and sister and how many other people can you say that about?
‘Of course I’ll come,’ I said, squeezing his hand. ‘Shall we order a bottle of champagne to celebrate?’ That came out before I could help it. I was used to being out with Yusuf and having champagne appear without even having to think about it. Their faces changed a little bit and I said hurriedly, ‘Or not! Who needs champagne? We can toast with water!’
‘No,’ said my brother, ‘let’s get the champagne. Mummy, you’ll also have?’ She began to giggle, even the thought of alcohol made her giggle and this made us laugh and he waved the waiter over and got a bottle. The cheapest on the menu, but still. This felt familiar, the cold bubbles in the glass, the nice restaurant, I could almost be with Yusuf right now.
Which reminded me. I excused myself and went to the bathroom and dialled his number. He picked up on the second ring and waited. I could hear him breathing. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, for the first time in my life to a boyfriend, ‘you should have come.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I should have realized you need alone time too.’ I smiled into the phone, imagining him smiling into the phone too. What a pair of idiots.
‘My mother and my brother are here,’ I said. ‘My brother’s getting married in May.’
‘Congratulations,’ he said. ‘Do you want to come over after and celebrate the fact?’
‘Sure,’ I was grinning now and I could hear the grin in his voice too.
‘Okay, Shay, see you soon.’
When I rejoined the table, I was still smiling, and my mother, tipsy off a couple of sips, winked wildly at me and asked, ‘When will you be giving us reason to celebrate, my darling?’
I looked at the two of them, so happy, so pleased with this family reunion and I considered the fact that I was happy too, with my double life. Family on the one side, illicit love affair with a much older man on the other, and I took a large sip of my champagne and said, ‘I’m not in any hurry.’ Because I want my cake and I want to eat it too. What a stupid expression though. Whose cake do I have if I’m not allowed to eat it? This is my goddamn cake, I’m going to go face downwards in it and emerge with my eyelashes covered in icing. When I’m eating my cake you can bet I’m going to have a second helping.
Epilogue
If she moved very slowly, perhaps the throbbing in her head would stop. She tried it, slowly shifting the blanket off herself, opening one eye and then another. The caked mascara on her eyelashes had clumped, gluing her lower lids to her upper ones. Next to her, the back of Derek’s head as he slept face down on a pillow, one arm, freckled and with small blonde hair through which the sun filtered, thrown over her stomach. She looked with love at his arm, his hand buried in the blankets, and then at his head, the spot that was thinning and she rolled over carefully and pressed a kiss on his back. Derek murmured something, crooking his knees, his arm moving so she was pressed against him, knees to knees, breasts to back, lips to shoulder. Her own hands, brown and red with henna, looked startling in contrast to his paleness.
She turned her palms up, gazing at the patterns, and found what she was looking for, a Derek worked through the mound of Venus and on her fingertips, letters spelling out Amisha. Last night, drunk as all hell, they had giggled through another bottle of champagne and she had held out her hands saying, ‘Find your name! It’s how we break the ice!’ and he had said in a low, throaty voice, ‘I know how we can break the ice’, and carried her to bed, where they had rough, quick sex, her hands clutching the bed post, and not caring who heard her, she had screamed in pleasure and a little bit of pain and they had rocked together, his eyes holding hers the entire time.
But oh God, maybe they shouldn’t have drunk so much. She had a vague memory of a bottle of tequila being brought out by someone—was it one of Derek’s brothers?—and Shayna had stood on the table and performed a sexy, gyrating dance and all the men had watched her, except Derek, who had been chatting with Shayna’s boyfriend, a middle-aged guy who welcomed her back and let her sit on his lap and play with his tie like she was twelve.
Water. She needed water. Reluctantly, she moved away from her Derek bubble and began the long walk to the nightstand by the balcony on which they had placed the extra bottles of water last night. The sun was threatening to be very bright through the blinds and she avoided looking in that direction, just head down, pour the water into a glass and glug glug. Oh God, she was never going to drink again. Would she have to throw up? She considered, taking a few test gulps of air. Her stomach twisted and she was queasy but she thought maybe a large breakfast would solve that.
‘I’m going to be so hungover tomorrow,’ she had said to Ladli the night before. Ladli had actually been staying in Goa this entire time, and she looked better than Amisha had ever seen her. She had cut off all her long curly hair so she looked elfin and small, her skin had changed to a deeper bronze and she had just acquired a tattoo of a fish on her wrist. A tall bearded boy couldn’t take his eyes off her the entire evening. ‘I might never come back to Bombay,’ said Ladli, a little tearfully, she was also pretty drunk and was sitting with her feet in the fish pond, lehenga pulled up and into her lap.
‘What will you do for a living?’ asked Amisha, and then regretted it instantly, why was she being so boring and such a mother hen? But Ladli looked grateful for the question, reached out and squeezed Amisha’s thigh. ‘You are so sweet to be concerned for me,’ she had said, smiling. ‘I’m not sure what I’ll do, maybe work in a café? It is season time and Des could visit as often as he wanted to.’ This last bit delivered with a benevolent smile upon Des, who reached out and pulled her a little bit so that she was resting against his chest. ‘We’re old friends who have just rediscovered each other,’ Ladli kept saying all night. ‘Isn’t that magical? It’s like, you never know where life will take you!’ It would have been annoying in anyone else but her, or maybe on any other day but Amisha’s wedding, she had been so happy, she gazed at all her friends with misty eyes, hoping they were too.
‘Have a Bloody Mary by the pool tomorrow,’ someone had said to her at some point the night before. At the thought of a Bloody Mary—spicy and salty with more vodka—Amisha’s stomach lurched again and she ran to the bathroom and was sick just in time to reach the toilet. She rested her cheek against the towel on the floor for a bit and groaned softly.
‘Babe?’ Derek had woken up to the sound of her vomiting and now stood, naked and bleary-eyed at the bathroom door. ‘You okay?’ he asked and she was almost irritated wit
h him. Did it look like she was okay? And then she startled herself by saying the words out loud. ‘Okay, okay,’ he said, looking surprised and putting his palms up in a calm-down gesture, which annoyed her even more. ‘Too much to drink last night?’ he asked, sitting down next to her gingerly, and making to stroke her hair. She felt too sick to move, but every touch of his hand on her head made her want to bite his hand off. ‘I’ll get you some soda,’ he said, ‘you’ll feel better soon.’ She watched his ankles leave, from the corner of her eye, and then heard him call room service. Her husband was the guy who did that for other people when they had hangovers. Her husband would never have a hangover himself, and she would have to live with that for the rest of her life.
‘The institution of marriage is just complete crap,’ said Akshara in a room across town. Ladli was now firmly ensconced in Villa Castellina and, faced with the prices at the fancy hotel where the wedding was versus practically nothing, Akshara had decided to stay budget as well. She had opted for her own room, even though Ladli had offered to share hers; staying with a newly dating couple would be far too sadomasochistic, even for her. The sight of Des and Ladli would have made any lonely person want to stab themselves in the eyeball with a plastic straw, but Akshara loved Ladli and she wasn’t really lonely, just alone. ‘I think my tattoo is healing nicely,’ said Ladli, who was sitting cross-legged on the bed, rubbing Vaseline into the fish. She flexed her forearm and winced. ‘Look, it moves!’ ‘Don’t do that,’ said Des, from under the covers. Akshara wasn’t even sure he was wearing clothes, and so she sat at a safe distance.
‘As I was saying about marriage,’ she said again, ‘I think it’s bullshit. Marriage is just, like, just an excuse! For people to party! And people to have sex! And it’s totally bullshit.’
‘Mmm,’ said Ladli, ‘it was a nice wedding though. They both looked so happy.’
‘They both looked so drunk,’ corrected Akshara. ‘Drunk people always look happy.’
‘Not all,’ said Ladli and then changed the topic. ‘Hey, are you guys hungry?’
‘I could eat,’ said Akshara. ‘I didn’t have much to eat last night.’
‘Yes, I saw you with that cute guy! Potential?’
‘Eh,’ Akshara gave an elaborate shrug, ‘I kissed him a little bit.’ The boy had been nice and respectful, but she had been drunk and a little bored, so she got him to walk her down to the beach and then she had grabbed his face and pulled him down to her and kissed him hard. She stopped him from going under her sari, but she did let him feel over her blouse. She was already trying very hard to forget him.
She watched as Ladli walked over to Des’s side of the bed, sitting down and murmuring to him, one hand tenderly stroking his hair. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she saw Des’s eyes crinkle, he was smiling at Ladli, and she bent down and kissed him very lightly. Our roles have switched, Akshara thought. Ladli is now the one who has everything, whose life is together, even when it’s really not, I mean, what is she going to do living in Goa? But she’s so much more confident than I am now, she’s sure of herself and what she wants to do and that is everything that I want. She sighed. Briefly, Mo’s face rose in front of her, Mo in the middle of telling a story, half-laughing. She missed him, she wished she hadn’t slept with him, because then she could have been enjoying his company. It wouldn’t have all gotten so complicated.
‘Everyone has to be single some time,’ said Ladli, apropos of nothing as they walked to a nearby shack for breakfast.
‘I guess,’ said Akshara, but that still didn’t make it okay.
I woke up with a start, not knowing where I was. It was an unfamiliar bed with blue sheets, sheets I did not own, and I was at the foot of it, with someone’s foot near my face. To my right was a window—fluttery cotton sheets had been turned into curtains and they were moving in the breeze. I moved a little bit, and as I did, a little plastic square fell off my cheek and revealed itself to be a rainbow.
This was what Saneru called my Big Gay Vaycay. That had quite a catchy ring to it, and it wasn’t just us; five of Saneru’s friends had joined as well, two couples, two men and two women and another girl whom Saneru called their ‘token straight’. I had never been made so much of, and I had never had such a good time.
The night before, there had been a wedding at the resort we were staying in. Since it had mostly been booked out by the wedding party, we had gotten a good rate for the three rooms we’d asked for, the only three rooms left, and at night, we had snuck into the wedding to steal some of their liquor and dance to their music. I felt daring and brave, braving and dare, as I walked around, in rubber chappals and shorts. My mother would have been horrified, but no one even noticed us. There was a large group sitting around in a circle; the bride and groom I only recognized because of the mehendi all over their palms and Saneru had gone straight up and said congratulations.
‘Thank you!’ said the bride; the groom, a foreigner, had to prop her up, but he seemed equally drunk. ‘We had a drink in your honour,’ said Saneru then, and I was impressed she had mentioned it, but the bride only waved her hand and said it was perfectly all right.
‘Why don’t you join us?’ said the groom and we sat down cross-legged on the grass at the edge of the group. I was feeling giggly, like we had gotten away with something. Saneru kept nudging me and making remarks about what people were wearing in a low whisper that tickled my ear and made me laugh even more. The others from our group had gone down to the beach with a bottle of stolen wine and I was just about to suggest that we join them, when, like magic, like fate, there you were.
You were in bronze and blue, I remember, your hair loose and down to your shoulders, it had grown since I last saw you. The Old Man was still there, he went and sat down next to the groom and talked to him with a serious expression on his face. He was still old and you were still young and still the loveliest person I had ever had the good fortune of seeing. ‘Turn up the music!’ you said, commanded, and someone with a mobile phone pushed the volume button and tinny Bollywood music poured out and around us. And you got on a table and danced, your hips moving, your arms out in bellydancer fashion, a small stone glittering in your bellybutton. People hooted and catcalled. ‘Go Shayna!’ said someone and Saneru, who has ears like a dog and eyes like a cat and knows all about us, well, all about me, turned to me and said, ‘Really?’ I shrugged, not wanting to take my eyes off you. Your arms were up now, your palms doing some complicated interaction with your face and body, twisting inwards and outwards, the mehendi on them flashing us and then turning away. And then you brought your palms together in a namaste and people clapped and you grinned like a child, and then made your way to the Old Man, where you promptly sat on his lap and played with his tie.
‘Really?’ asked Saneru again, and seeing I was mute, took me by the hand and pulled me up and we both started both walking towards the beach. I half-turned to say goodbye, but then didn’t bother, they didn’t even notice we had left. She didn’t bring you up again, for which I was grateful, I was too busy analysing what I felt—a tug in my belly at the sight of you, as always, but it felt like a different kind of tug. A goodbye tug, maybe. Thank you for letting me find myself. Thank you for being something I could think about when I had nothing else in this city. Thank you for leading me to Saneru, and this life that I now have.
I will always love you.
On my other side, the foot stirred and then disappeared. Saneru’s face appeared in its stead. ‘Wake up, Radha!’ she said.
‘I’m awake,’ I said.
Acknowledgements
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
My parents, as always, for not forcing me to be an engineer, a doctor or a lawyer, and for understanding that sitting around till 5 p.m. in your pyjamas counts as ‘research’.
Nayantara Sood, who is my cheerleader and always knows the right thing to say.
Diksha Basu, long-distance friend, long-distance writing buddy, whose incredible motivation an
d Gtalk encouragement helped me kick some deadlines in the ass.
Vaishali Mathur at Penguin, for taking this book from the baby short story it was and showing me that it could be an actual book.
TC, who is only a cat and can’t read, but who is very cuddly and supportive, nonetheless.
And everyone else (you know who you are!), who didn’t roll their eyes when I talked about writing for the hundredth time at a party, who showed interest in what I was doing, who helped me along the way to unwind by offering a well-timed glass of wine.
PENGUIN BOOKS
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First published by Penguin Books India 2012
Copyright © Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan 2012
Cover photograph by Rahul Lal
Cover design by Pallavi Agarwala
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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