by Sonya Lalli
Praise for Sonya Lalli
“Sonya Lalli’s charming novel explores how our relationships define us. Through honesty, humor, and vulnerability, Serena Singh reminds us that new, fulfilling connections are possible at any age. This equal parts relatable and entertaining story is a delight from start to finish!”
—Saumya Dave, author of Well-Behaved Indian Women
“Heartfelt and forthright, Lalli’s culturally rich work of women’s fiction is exceptional.”
—Booklist (starred)
“From yoga studios to finding oneself in trips abroad to online dating, Lalli gives readers a wonderful novel about love and belonging and meaning of happiness and home.”
—Soniah Kamal, award-winning author of Unmarriageable: Pride and Prejudice in Pakistan
“Anu’s struggle to find herself is wrought with obstacles, and sometimes frustrating, but the resolution of her story is both satisfying and realistic. A moving look at one woman’s journey between her family and her desire for independence.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Sonya Lalli offers up a tale of familial pressures, cultural traditions, and self-discovery that is equal turns heartbreaking and hilarious. . . . Lalli tears down stereotypes with humor and warmth.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“An engaging love story that delivers on the promise of true love forever. . . . The Matchmaker’s List comes through in spades (and hearts).”
—NPR
“Lalli’s sharp-eyed tale of cross-cultural dating, family heartbreak, the strictures of culture, and the exuberance of love is both universal and timeless.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Berkley Titles by Sonya Lalli
The Matchmaker’s List
Grown-Up Pose
Serena Singh Flips the Script
A Holly Jolly Diwali
BERKLEY
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
penguinrandomhouse.com
Copyright © 2021 by Sonya Lalli
“Readers Guide” copyright © 2021 by Sonya Lalli
Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lalli, Sonya, author.
Title: A holly jolly Diwali / Sonya Lalli.
Description: First Edition. | New York: Berkley, 2021.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021022207 (print) | LCCN 2021022208 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780593100950 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780593100967 (ebook)
Subjects: GSAFD: Love stories
Classification: LCC PR6112.A483 H65 2021 (print) | LCC PR6112.A483 (ebook) | DDC 823/.92—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021022207
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021022208
First Edition: October 2021
Cover art © Stephanie Singleton
Book design by Elke Sigal, adapted for ebook by Kelly Brennan
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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For Simon
Contents
Cover
Praise for Sonya Lalli
Titles by Sonya Lalli
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Readers Guide
About the Author
CHAPTER 1
We need to talk.”
I paused the television just as Matthew McConaughey pressed his palm against Jennifer Lopez’s flawless cheek. Mom and Dad stood at the bottom of the stairs dressed up for the party I’d already thought they’d left for. Their faces were stone, and when Dad put his arm protectively around Mom’s shoulder, my stomach bottomed out as I imagined the reasons for said “talk.”
They were getting a divorce.
I sank farther into the couch, mentally shaking my head. This was unlikely. Most Indian couples their age, however miserable and fluent in English, refused to learn the d-word. Besides, my parents’ marriage seemed to be a happy one. Trust me. My bedroom was just down the hall from theirs, and sometimes I could hear how happy they still made each other. Ugh.
One of them was sick.
My hands trembled just thinking about this scenario, but then I remembered they’d both had physicals the month before, and their doctors had said everything was just fine. I should know. I drove them both to and from their appointments so they didn’t have to pay for parking.
Jasmine.
Yes. Jasmine. My whole body relaxed when I realized the most likely scenario was that my older sister was up to something again. On the verge of a scandal. Had broken up with her deadweight boyfriend du jour. (Oh god. Let it be that!) Or maybe she was just being a run-of-the-mill pain yet again, and my parents wanted to vent about it before they ran off to whatever function was on that evening.
“Yes?” I asked, satisfied I was ready to hear the answer.
Silently, they trundled toward me, but instead of taking one of the many seats in our living room, they chose to stand directly in front of the TV.
“What is up?” Dad asked cheerfully. “Busy?”
“Very.” I laughed. “What is up with you?”
He glanced at my mom, who was clearly about to do the heavy lifting. I blinked at her, and although I was curious what it was Jasmine had done to upset them again, I was ready to get back to The Wedding Planner.
“We are worried about you, Niki.”
I scrunched up my face. Hold on a second. They were worried about me?
“You are?”
A knowing glance passed between them.
“Care to elaborate?” I asked.
“Niki, it’s Saturday night,” Mom said. There was a tinge of annoyance in her voice, like when I didn’t rinse my plate before putting it
in the dishwasher. “Why are you home?”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I scoffed, oblivious to the point she was trying to make. “Mom, I—”
“Enough is enough.” She held up her hand like a conductor, waving me off. “Niki, you are very . . . very . . .”
“Successful?” I volunteered. “Obedient? Lovely—”
“Single,” she interrupted.
Wow. Mom burn.
Yes, I was single and had been for a while, but I didn’t know how the “very” played into that.
I tucked my legs under me. “What’s your point?”
“You know,” Dad continued, “there are apps for dating. Have you heard?”
“No,” I deadpanned. “What’s a dating app?”
“Well,” Dad started, but then Mom cut him off.
“She knows very well what a dating app is. Niki, are you on the Tinder? The Bumble? The Hinger?”
I smiled, even though I was irritated. Clearly, they’d done their research before the big talk.
“I am not,” I said flatly. “TBH, I don’t like the idea of meeting people online.”
“TBH?” Mom echoed.
“To be honest,” I explained.
“Ah, so you would prefer to meet people in person?” Dad gestured at Matthew McConaughey. “I see you are meeting so many good candidates.”
Mom grinned, and even I had to laugh at that one.
Dad burn. Very nice.
“Niki, we are not upset with you—” Mom started pacing, she always enjoyed theatrics. “We are so proud. But we have been thinking you should be . . . putting yourself out there. You understand?”
“Like, I need to start dating.”
“Hah.”
“Maybe I’m already dating. How do you know I don’t have a secret boyfriend?” I crossed my arms. “Or girlfriend, for that matter? Maybe I have several. Maybe I’m a total player.”
Mom narrowed her gaze at me. “And when do you see all these boyfriends and girlfriends? On the bus home from work? Do you sneak them into your parents’ house after you come straight home every day?”
I groaned, burrowing my face into the pillow. Another mom burn. But this one stung.
You see, they weren’t totally wrong. My friends constantly told me that I would never meet anybody if all I did was work, (occasionally) go to the gym, and socialize with the same group of people—which these days was usually in someone’s living room rather than out at bars. Diya, who was one of my best friends from college and lived on the other side of the world in Mumbai, was particularly hard on me during our weekly video chats. Her glamorous Indian wedding was just a few weeks away, and before I’d declined the invite because I couldn’t get the time off work, she’d even threatened to fix me up with one of her cousins or friends.
But what happened to the good old-fashioned meet-cute? Maybe in the produce section of my local grocery store, or if I were to drop a pile of papers in front of the office hottie, regardless of the fact that my office was, uh, paperless.
Now I was twenty-nine years old and getting zinged by my parents, the same parents who used to stomp their feet whenever Jasmine flitted in and out with a new guy. The same mom and dad who, up until today, seemed thrilled that I still lived at home, that I wasn’t in a relationship they needed to worry about.
I sighed, glancing up at them. I was annoyed but not surprised, as far too many of my South Asian friends were starting to sink in an all-too-similar boat. One day we’re practically barricaded inside with our textbooks, “boys” not only not a subject worth discussing but, more often than not, entirely off limits.
And then?
And then, as if overnight, we’re of marriageable age. Suddenly, we’re not girls in need of protection but women, and being very single was our very own fault.
“I’ll make more of an effort,” I said finally, because I did want to get married one day, and there was no point in fighting the inevitable. “But I don’t like the apps.”
“Fair.” Dad nodded. “Thank you.”
I grabbed the remote, ready for the conversation to be over, but they didn’t budge. Oh great. The talk wasn’t yet over.
“Yes?”
I was looking at Mom because she was the one who clearly had more to say. Her mouth was weirdly tense, and she was playing with the buttons on her cardigan as if they were puzzle pieces.
“Beti,” she said affectionately, which was strange, because her love language was sass. “Do you . . .”
“Mom, please. Just out with it, OK?”
She nodded primly. “OK? OK. I am outing with it. I am . . .”
“Mom!”
“Do you want us to set you up?”
My jaw dropped. Like, to the floor. I could practically hear it land on the hardwood, my jaw shattering every which way.
“But . . .” I sputtered. “You didn’t even have an arranged marriage!”
Mom and Dad snuck a look at each other, sly and knowing and with so much intimacy they really shouldn’t have expressed in front of their own child. They were both in their early twenties when they moved to the US, and their (very) old-fashioned meet-cute took place at the local gurdwara. They weren’t introduced by family or friends, so it was technically a love marriage, but from the stories I heard, they matched so well they might as well have been arranged. They were both raised in the Sikh faith. Tick. They both valued their Punjabi heritage and family values. Tick tick. So within five months of first laying eyes on each other over plates of aloo paratha in the langar hall below the prayer room, they were married.
Triple tick.
“We didn’t have an arranged marriage, no,” Dad said, looking back at me. “And we are not suggesting this for you.”
“Exactly.” Mom cleared her throat. “We are just saying if you were to be interested in meeting someone, outside of the apps, then maybe we know somebody.” She paused, searching my face. “Maybe you could go for coffee, and if you like each other, you can—”
“Bang?”
Dad blushed, while Mom pretended not to hear me.
“Niki, you can date normally. We will not interfere. We don’t even know the boy.” Mom sighed. “He is nephew of our friends. Apparently, very sweet. Modern. A doctor—”
“Wow, a doctor? Sign me up!”
“We do not approach you with this lightly,” Mom continued, ignoring me. Her voice was suddenly small and weak, and it made me feel terrible. Like a terrible daughter who, despite every effort to the contrary, had somehow still managed to disappoint them.
“You know”—she turned to Dad and placed her hand tenderly on his beard—“we were Niki’s age when we were married.”
Their body language mirrored the romantic cheek hold going on in the background between Matthew and Jennifer, and for the first time in a long time, I felt very single.
Were my parents trying to make me feel worse than I already did?
No. They weren’t cruel. They were a little cheeky, intrusive, and condescending at times, but they were good parents. The best, actually.
And I, being the good daughter that I was, told them to give their friend’s nephew my phone number.
CHAPTER 2
I glanced at the clock in the top-right-hand corner of my monitor. I still had twenty-two minutes to go, and so I decided to go through my Asana task board.
Assign engineer to ETL script for bimonthly reporting data
Oversee networking and SSH keygen for the Hadoop hardware
Chase DBAs to set up SQL credentials for new co-op
Check in with Oliver about CRM reporting design for marketing team
I was the data analytics manager at a start-up that sold e-products I didn’t fully understand, and while the work was challenging enough, it didn’t exactly stimulate me anymore. I’d been hired s
traight out of college as an analyst, and last year, when my former boss was poached by Microsoft, I was promoted to manage the entire team. Now I reported directly to Oliver Chu, the VP of R&D, or Research and Development.
For anyone not in my field, R&D was the only acronym worth explaining. My team used so many in our day-to-day work that we’d gotten into the annoying habit of abbreviating whatever words or phrases we could. There were the millennial staples like LOL, TBT, and ICYMI. The ones we’d invented ourselves, such as WNMC? (Who needs more coffee?) or WWSJD? (What would Steve Jobs do?)
And then there was the acronym I’d been using a lot these days.
FML.
I’d double-checked that I’d completed everything I needed to do that morning, and I still had twenty minutes to spare. I glanced out the window, praying for a distraction, and just my luck, Romeo was back. He was wearing his predictable uniform of jeans, a ball cap, and a bright orange safety vest, and I leaned closer to the window and rested my forehead against the cold glass as I watched him saunter up to Juliet’s coffee cart.
I didn’t know their real names, but here were the reasons I knew their love story, which played out at the coffee cart outside my office window, was as worthy as—although hopefully less tragic than—their namesakes’.
It always took Juliet less than a minute to serve most customers, but she dallied when whipping up Romeo’s order. Last Friday, it took her five whole minutes to make what looked like a straight-up Americano.
Without fail, for the past six months, Romeo had been coming by Juliet’s cart every single day. And it cost a pretty penny for one of her hipster coffees.
Their chemistry was palpable, even from my stalking viewpoint one floor up. The lingering. The smiling. I could practically smell the pheromones.
Why didn’t they just go for it?
I frequently found myself watching Romeo and Juliet chat each other up whenever I needed a mental break. Or, like today, when I had time to kill before my first date with the eligible doctor my parents wanted me to marry.