For all of January, I kept telling everyone who would listen—my long-suffering husband or my girlfriends who would give me half a second to speak and only because they’d paused to take a long slurp of the last bottle of Bordeaux wine from Marchesi di Barolo vineyards culled from the hostess’ most recent trip to Italy. Half a second, mind you, because I’d usually be surrounded by a dozen garrulous Indian girlfriends who’d think nothing of jumping in and interrupting me in mid-flow.
“Tsk, tsk,” I’d fume silently. None of my American girlfriends behave like this. They listen politely, courteously waiting their turn to talk.
Many times I would think uncharitable thoughts of dumping them all when I was so unceremoniously trod upon and cut off in mid-sentence. Other times, lulled by the warm notes of vanilla and voluptuous blackberry flavors in that excellent vintage, I was more tolerant. “That’s how Indians talk. All hands and tongues, and leaping headlong from one subject to the other without taking a pause.” I’d shrug and bravely arrange my features into a neutral mask. Sometimes, I would even manage a tight smile.
However, in true Indian fashion, I digress.
So, I’d tell anybody who’d give me an ear—even the bored cashier at Wells Fargo, who had a round face and narrow eyes and was wearing a lavender business suit with big shoulder pads, a gold bracelet on her right hand, and a prominent silver wristwatch on her left hand. I could tell she was counting down the hours when she could stretch her weary arms over her pounding head, slide into her car and return to her household of husband and young baby.
“I’ve been invited to seven weddings this year,” I told her in a casual tone, dramatically throwing my highlighted hair to one side, and jutting my chin out, as she was adding cash deposits for me in a desultory fashion, almost suppressing a yawn as she did so.
“Seven weddings?” she responded, suitably impressed, her lips slightly parted, her blond ponytail swinging across her shoulders as she looked back at me with wide-eyed interest. There was genuine awe and even slight fear in her face—she gawked at me as if I was a celebrity, a temperamental Priyanka Chopra who’d stalk out in a huff because she’d failed to recognize me.
I ignored the tiny sneaking suspicion marching in the forefront of my brain that her interest in the weddings was likely sparked by her interest in handling my husband’s multiple business bank accounts that now lay open in front of her. Instead, giddy with excitement, I launched into the monologue I’d been preparing for a rapturous audience of one, as my car idled at no less than four traffic lights that morning on my way to the bank.
“Yes,” I responded beatifically, scrunching my face as I thought of all the clothes I had to line up for all the functions—the Sangeet, the Mehndi, the pheras, and the Reception—at all the weddings I was planning to attend. That reminded me—I would have to stop at Fremont Bank next, to dig out my mom’s jewelry from the safe-deposit box. Then, go home and call the designer I use back in New Delhi and determine what other outfits are in the pipeline. Thank goodness for that overseas account and the rent from the apartment in Gurgaon my father-in-law left us in his will. And, since we’re counting small mercies, I think I can recycle that canary yellow outfit with red zari work that I was planning to wear to Kanika’s daughter’s Sangeet at Tella Nova winery in Livermore, and wear it again with aplomb at my husband’s second cousin’s son’s wedding at The Hyatt Regency in Long Beach. As long as I’m careful with social media posts, nobody will be any wiser. It’s new for you if you haven’t seen it before, hee hee hee.
My mind was such a happy hive of activity. The teller was still agog, waiting for me to carry on talking—everybody’s heard of the Big Fat Indian Wedding and how they last for five days or more.
In a foghorn voice that would have sent birds squawking into the air, I began to list the weddings—where and whose—for my new best friend. I darted a surreptitious glance at the badge pinned to the lapel of her suit—Angelina was her name. I blithely ignored the reality check muscling its way into my memory—of those seven weddings, I was never going to attend half. One was in New Delhi at a highly inconvenient time, another was a distant cousin’s wedding at a highly inconvenient location in Bangladesh, two others fell on the same long weekend—Memorial Day—and for all practical purposes, we would have to choose which one to attend.
In gleeful stupor, I stumbled out of the bank. I remember cranking the window down, and singing lustily to an old 80s song on my way home.
The sun gathers softly around my shoulders as I walk out to collect the mail. I crumple in my nerveless fingers a postcard informing us of the postponement of the wedding of Satbir Singh Judge and Rupy Ahluwalia to Memorial Day weekend, 2021. Bitterly, I recall how I deleted the message from Kanika that due to the corona crisis, her daughter decided to have a Zoom wedding last weekend with four guests and a photographer.
Listlessly I flick channels on the T.V. to discern what I possibly could not have viewed on Netflix. Soon I will have to get off the couch and place a WhatsApp call to my 84-year-old father who’s sheltering-in-place on the fourteenth floor of Sunshine Helios Apartments in Sector 72 in Noida, India. He told me that when he walked out to the balcony yesterday he couldn’t believe what he saw—the unwatered leaves of the banyan trees hanging limply next to the foul waters of the community pool, usually teeming with screaming and screeching six and eight-year-olds, now brimming with gravel, bits of cork, and plastic straws.
I nibble on my bottom lip—I wonder if I could have caused this with my vain and thoughtless aspirations thrust so greedily into the Universe. I don’t do weed, but I think I’m about to start.
