Everything Happens for a Reason. Kavita Daswani
I helped my father-in-law into the front passenger seat, and my mother-in-law into the back. Malini got in on the other side. Sanjay was revving up the engine as I squeezed the last little sack into the boot, and slammed the lid down. As soon as I did so, Sanjay, thinking everyone was in, drove off, leaving me standing there. He was the only one who realized I was missing, just as he was turning the corner, and came back to fetch me.
‘Sorry, my mistake,’ he said, as I opened the door and got in, my mother-in-law looking displeased as she made room for me.
At home, I carted the luggage off into the bedrooms, rubbed my mother-in-law’s feet, and began reheating dinner – which had been ready since eight this morning.
‘You know, Ma, Priya has been working very hard for your arrival,’ Sanjay said, as she enjoyed a cup of tea. ‘She’s been really great. The house is spotless, no? And she’s learned to do all the grocery shopping and everything. She knows to buy only generic brands, and she uses coupons and all.’
I smiled, touched by his observation.
‘Hah, hah, very good,’ my mother-in-law responded. ‘What’s for dinner?’
I had prepared South Indian cuisine in honour of their arrival. I lay the platters of steamed idli and spicy sambar on the table, which I had covered with white paper doilies. The bright overhead light shone on the condiments and cutlery, making the table setting look like something that might be photographed in a magazine.
Dinner was over quickly, with none of those lingering conversations I had seen on those daytime movies, the ones where brandies were poured and dainty chocolates devoured. My dreaded first night at home with the in-laws seemed to have gone off OK.
Now, I just had the rest of my life to worry about.
It’s true when people say marriage is ‘hard work’. There are floors to scrub and shelves to dust and mirrors to wipe. There are onions to chop and spices to sizzle and pots of tea to brew. There are a hundred things to do every day, none of which, I soon realized, had anything to do with the actual marriage itself.
At least that was what my marriage was like.
I knew, in marrying Sanjay, that I was going to be part of a traditional joint Hindu family, two generations under one roof. My own parents had done it that way back in Delhi, as had everyone I knew. In many Hindu families, for a son to have his own home is somewhere between a scandal and a tragedy. Male children are born to care for their parents, and then they marry and bring a wife into the house. She is expected to be ‘homely’. In America, that means ‘not good-looking’. In India, it means ‘taking care of the home and being there all the time’ – with the exception of dashing off to buy peas.
So it wasn’t as if I hadn’t been prepared for any of this. In India, where labour is cheap, we could say things like: ‘I’ll send my man to pick you up.’ There, you can live well as a member of the middle class. In America, everything always seems to be a struggle, what with terrifying taxes that you can’t corrupt your way out of, and car registrations, and electricity bills.
Thankfully, my mother had groomed my sisters and me for what she called a ‘domestic life’.
‘Darlings, you have to learn how to take the entire skin off an apple before it turns brown!’ she used to say to us, as we endured potato-peeling and parsley-chopping rituals.
All of which, I have to say, has now come in very handy.
But nobody ever tells you what really happens when a marriage begins; when the wedding reception is over and the gifts are cleared and a girl moves in with a boy – and, in my case, his entire family. Nobody prepares you for that. Like a Hollywood ending, you never know what happens after the credits have rolled and it’s the morning after the couple have walked off into the sunset.
Like all other girls of my age and background, my view of marriage was shaped by commercials and Indian soap operas, where men never saw their wives looking anything other than flawless. There were no acne breakouts, no runny noses, no belching or burping in marriage. I imagined that my future husband would always be clean, sweet and smiling. I would always have waxed legs and a pristine complexion. We would never have a moment’s silence between us. He would garland me with gold chains and I, petite in his oversized pyjama shirt, would kiss his stubbly cheek every morning.
But my marriage, as tender as it could occasionally be, was nothing like that.
It was, in the end, a guy in a vest, scratching himself, and a girl wondering what to make for dinner. For us, there were no trips to Ethan Allen for mahogany bookcases, no putting up pictures together and standing back, arms around one another, looking at the straight and perfect job we had just done. There were no nose-nuzzling nights with a bottle of wine in front of the fire. It was about me being absorbed into the life of Sanjay and his family, without leaving much of myself behind.
Sanjay had promised me that when his family returned from India, they would throw a grand reception to introduce me to all their friends. I had already selected the sari I would wear to the party, a cream chiffon one that had been a gift from my meddlesome Aunt Vimla, and the one thing about her I actually liked. I would wear it with the gold I had been given on my wedding day, and I would be poised and pure and everyone in my in-law’s Northridge circle of friends would marvel at how Sanjay Sohni had found such a nice wife.
But my mother-in-law told me, a week after their return, that there would be no such party.
‘Enough money was spent in India at the wedding,’ she said, referring to my father’s expenses and some imaginary ones of her own. ‘No need to do anything here. Bas, you’ll slowly meet people. Our friends will have lunches and teas. Then they can see you. Anyhow, you are busy with the house. No time to socialize.’
Sanjay was one of the last in his group to get married, so we instantaneously had a young-couple clan to be a part of. Every few Saturday nights, once I had prepared dinner for my in-laws and cleaned the kitchen, Sanjay took me out with his friends. We went for dinners in loud restaurants where all the boys drank beer and paid me no heed. There was Rajesh and Naresh and Prakash, married to girls named Seema and Dina and Monu, and they looked me up and down, with no attempts made to be subtle about it, each time we met. All the wives worked, and seemed proud of it. When they weren’t talking about bad bosses and car payments, they gossiped about other girls. They wore quite smart Western clothes, and seemed to have forgotten the days when they were new to America from India, and had dressed traditionally, just like me. They were Indian girls, but American now, and I knew when I met them that they would never become my real friends, because whenever I saw them they made me long to be with my sisters again.
Whenever Sanjay wanted to see these people, I went along with him. When we returned home, I told my in-laws that we had had a nice time, and said nothing as Sanjay lied to them about how much dinner had cost. I set the alarm clock for early the next day so I could get up and make tea. Then I touched their feet, even if they had already gone to bed. Between that and picking up the trail of clothes and other items Sanjay would leave in his wake, I knew I would be spending much of my marriage at a ninety-degree angle.
I was a good Hindu wife. This is just what I did. Dutiful, devoted and ever so downtrodden, but always happy and smiling. I was to do what my in-laws said.
And now, I was to go and find a job.
Vivacious! was my favourite magazine in the whole world. When it arrived every month at our home in Delhi, I would tear off the Cellophane covering, sit down with a jug of nimbu pani and not get up again until I had read the issue cover to cover. There were none of those ‘Ten Wicked Ways to Please Your Lover’ columns like I was embarrassed to see that American magazines are filled with. Instead,