The Heart Is a Shifting Sea: Love and Marriage in Mumbai

by Elizabeth Flock

  Since Maya asked him for a divorce, Veer had adopted a harsher view of marriage. He questioned whether it was a viable institution for the modern age. Perhaps the four goals of life could be achieved without marriage, because marriage only complicated life and friendship. But if you did get married, and stayed married, he thought a husband and wife should try to keep the friendship intact. They shouldn’t bring up the past too much. They should try to allow each other to be independent and live their life in the present day. And so he didn’t say anything about Subal.

  On the subject of cheating, he felt different ways on different days. Or at least he expressed it differently. Sometimes, he said that it was more relevant that a husband and wife be happy. If he didn’t know about an affair, then he didn’t mind. “It is just normal human nature to want to explore greener pastures,” he said. If someone had an affair, that was a subject that should be raised at an appropriate time, when both people felt comfortable addressing it. Some of the old books sanctioned extramarital affairs, including the Mahabharata, which taught that life was complicated. The Mahabharata also said your dharma wasn’t always easy to find, and that sometimes rules should be bent or broken.

  But there was also the Ramayana, an epic that taught the opposite, and said that you should always follow the rules and do your dharma. In the Ramayana, decisions were far more black-and-white. If a spouse wanted to sleep with someone else, perhaps it was better they divorce first. Not like I’m safe here and playing there, Veer thought. It should not be at the cost of the family.

  Sometimes he grew more philosophical on the subject. “Time should only change our selection of things,” he’d say, his voice growing sad and tired. “Not the people around us.”

  * * *

  May 8 was a date Maya and Subal would not forget—the day of the Big Bang. May in Mumbai was known for the intensity of its heat, and the day was sweltering. They were back in Aksa at The Resort. The hotel was quiet except for the crash of the ocean waves.

  The Big Bang, as in: after so much built-up tension, an explosion of feelings between them. Everything out in the open at last. Out in the open for them but not for others to see.

  Afterward, Maya left to pick up Janu from school. She brought him back to The Resort, to a small park beside the hotel pool. For a long time, Maya watched Janu play on the merry-go-round. She looked out at the sea, and then over at Subal, who stood at a distance looking at her. He held her gaze for a long time. While he felt happy, he was also a little unsettled, because he thought he didn’t deserve her. And it seemed impossible this could end well. But Maya felt only at peace. She wanted to hold on to the moment and the calm it gave her for as long as she could.

  Like Veer, Subal traveled a lot—often to Jaipur and Indore up north and to Bangalore and Goa down south. After the Big Bang, Maya began sending him flowers everywhere he went.

  She had always gone overboard in her affections, for all of her friends, male and female. She loved the bhakti poems and the old stories about devotion. And with Subal, she felt compelled—as she once had with Veer—toward a showy, demonstrative kind of love.

  Maya went through local vendors to make sure she found the freshest flowers in every city. Later, she also began sending desserts. In Goa, it was chocolate bebinka, with its layers of butter and sugar. In Pushkar, it was kaju barfi, the native cashew sweet. In each place, she made arrangements so the bouquet would be waiting for him in his hotel room. And in each place, Subal sent her a photo of himself smiling with the gifts.

  Sometimes, Maya also sent gifts to his workplace. His team of accountants began to expect them. They would be sitting in a board meeting and a local delivery boy would bring in a dazzling bouquet. At their annual meeting in Jaipur, which more than one hundred people attended, Maya sent a three-tier, sixteen-kilogram cake, which cost her a staggering fourteen thousand rupees. When these deliveries arrived, Subal felt not like a middle manager but a CEO. But as time passed, even her extravagances began to feel routine, and he didn’t always send her a photo in return.

  Subal sometimes sent Maya flowers—on her birthday, or if there was a positive development at the preschool, which kept attracting more and more children; even Janu had enrolled. Or Subal sent her books, in English, Hindi, or regional languages, several of which Maya knew. Maya gave Subal a copy of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, one of her favorite books, and on an inside page, she wrote: “To Subal . . . This book has all of life in it.” Gibran said that a friend was all of a person’s needs answered, “your board and your fireside.” He said that in friends you found peace.

  Around this time, Maya changed her last name on Facebook from Veer’s name to her family name. People asked her about the change. She said it was because she liked her old name better. Veer said nothing about it.

  Soon, Subal and Maya began going away together. Subal was not religious, but he knew it was important to Maya, and she convinced him to accompany her to Amritsar, which she had a tradition of visiting every year. The Golden Temple in Amritsar was the central place of worship for Sikhs, a small monotheistic people, but it also held special meaning for Maya, who believed that in some past life she was a Sikh who went to the temple.

  On this visit with Subal, the Golden Temple brought up old memories for Maya of having been molested as a child. Maya knew this happened to many Indian children, and so she thought it best to banish the memories. This had mostly worked; she hadn’t thought about them in years. But now she worried that there could be a connection between the incidents and her relationship with men. Perhaps these memories explained why she grew too attached or acted so needy. Perhaps this was why she wanted sex more than the average Indian woman. Maybe this was at the root of her unhappiness with Veer. And maybe it explained why, when men came on to her in a sleazy way and she didn’t like it, she sometimes flirted back.

  For her, the connection had to do with the concept of hisaab, the settling of accounts. Everyone had a hisaab to fulfill. Her attitude toward men could be evidence of a debt she had to repay. Maybe spending time with Subal was also about a debt. All accounts would be settled, now or later. As she looked at her reflection in the sacred pool, she thought she should feel some kind of dread. But with Subal standing behind her, all she could feel was light.

  A few months later, Subal changed jobs again, and Maya was no longer on his route to work. After starting his new job, Subal learned there were financial issues in the company. Months went by, and he wasn’t paid. He worried about how to pay his bills. He discussed his problems with Maya, who began lending him money and even sold off some of her gold jewelry to do it.

  Soon, Subal began to visit less. His calls and texts became erratic. Maya noticed that he never messaged her on Sunday, which he said was a “family day.” She began picking fights with him about his wife and accusing him of messaging other girls. Subal insisted he wasn’t and begged her to hang on. He said he needed to get his life in order, and then things could go back to how they’d been. He told her to remember the Big Bang.

  After one of these fights with Subal, Maya went on a whim to the nearby mall, where there was a tattoo parlor. She asked for a treble clef, saying that she loved music. Subal called her as the first ink was seeping in.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “I’m just shopping for my birthday,” she said, and told him the store number. When he arrived, the outline of the backward S was already imprinted on her arm.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, and looked closer. “Oh god, you are mad,” he said, and Maya knew he meant it as a compliment.

  She was mad, pagal. She didn’t care.

  Around this time, Subal also introduced Maya to his father. Afterward, he thought: You’ve finally met your match in madness.

  The tattoo hadn’t hurt as much as Maya thought it would.

  * * *

  Soon after, it was the tenth wedding anniversary party of Maya’s cousin Adit and his wife, Naisha, whose marriage had been arranged. Adit and Na
isha were new money, so it would be an extravagant affair.

  Maya, who was still in her petticoat, glanced up at the clock. Veer was late, as usual. She wrapped herself in an embroidered sari of turquoise and orange and chose gold jhumkas that dangled from her ears. She added a deep red bindi to her forehead. She took a photo of herself looking glamorous and sent it to Subal. As she set out a tiny black suit and white collared shirt for Janu, Veer finally arrived. He swept in the door singing, throwing out his hands in grand sweeping gestures—trying to make Maya laugh.

  “You’re late,” Maya said, and rolled her eyes, pulling Janu’s tiny T-shirt over his head. “Hurry.”

  Veer disappeared into his room and reemerged in a white dress suit and black collared shirt, the inverse of Janu’s. He had his hair gelled the same way.

  “How do we look?” Veer asked her, as they struck a pose together: Veer imitating Janu, and Janu imitating what he had seen in the movies.

  “We look too good only,” said Janu, who did a little hip sashay, and Maya laughed and snapped a close-up.

  “Let’s go, you two.”

  They were among the last guests to arrive at the party. At the entrance, a larger-than-life-size photo of Adit and Naisha greeted them. The real Adit and Naisha, somewhat smaller and dressed in Indian finery, stood beside it. The room was draped in purple and gold, and a stage was set up for speeches and dancing. Seated women in heavy saris commented on “how much bhabhi has changed” and “how beautiful she looks in her expensive clothing.” Naisha smiled demurely as she greeted her guests, a massive Rolex on her wrist.

  After a few minutes, the lights in the hall went down and a slide show began. First came photos of Adit and Naisha in different poses and on different vacations, standing beside their rotund, red-cheeked son. Then came slides with messages typed in fancy cursive, a series of clichés in English: “You are better than precious diamonds to me,” a slide from Adit read. And from Naisha: “They say the first year is the hardest for a wife, but you made it a piece of cake.”

  As the lights came up, Adit stepped onstage. In a shiny sherwani suit, he looked out at the audience and began his speech: “When my parents told me to meet her, I told her: ‘I might stay in Bombay or go. So I’m not sure.’ I said, ‘What do you think?’ And she said, ‘Let’s take it step by step. Let’s take that approach.’” Adit gazed over at Naisha, who sat, hands folded, beside the stage. “These were words of wisdom. I wish I could be like her,” he said, and paused to take a deep breath. “This was an arranged marriage. But it is a love marriage now.”

  The room burst into applause, and Maya and Veer politely joined in. Adit grinned and held out a hand for Naisha to join him onstage.

  Maya used to be skeptical of arranged marriages like Adit and Naisha’s. She saw the practice much as the Western world did: antiquated and lacking romance, unfathomable for her own life. She had always thought that love, wild and untethered, should come first. But now she’d begun to think she was wrong. Perhaps it was all a matter of compatibility, and a marriage arranged by the people who knew you best had just as much chance of working. It seemed to Maya that any marriage was a kind of arrangement, or became one. And in this room, after ten years together, Adit and Naisha seemed to be in love.

  Maya and Veer’s tenth wedding anniversary was only a couple of years away. She doubted that they would celebrate. Not like this. She didn’t know what Subal and his wife did for anniversaries. She didn’t like to ask.

  * * *

  A few days later, Maya stood in front of the mirror, fidgeting. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and tucked a strand of loose hair behind her ear. She tried on a dress and complained that it made her look fat. She settled on another one: gray, Western-style, and conservative. She slid her feet into plastic turquoise shoes, in case it rained.

  They arrived at the restaurant before Subal. He now worked more than an hour away.

  “Can you call him and make sure he isn’t lost?” Maya asked Veer, and excused herself to the bathroom. “Okay,” Veer said, curtly.

  When Subal arrived he greeted Maya and Veer with a toothy smile. He adjusted his belt over his ample stomach and sat down as the DJ put on an Indian remix of a European techno song. He pinched Janu’s cheek, who ignored him; lately when Subal visited he had been impatient with Janu, which Janu didn’t like. Janu made a show of playing with the table settings, taking olives from a platter and dropping them into his water glass. A TV behind them played the World Cup, which India had not qualified for.

  After exchanging pleasantries, Veer filled the table in on a recent business meeting. “I’m going to kill the bhenchod who is trying to screw me,” he told Subal.

  “Now or later?” Subal asked, as if calling his bluff. Veer didn’t answer.

  When the waiter came, Maya and Subal ordered chicken; Veer ordered palak paneer. Drinks were poured: Old Monk rum for Maya and Subal and Johnnie Walker for Veer. Janu mixed himself a mocktail of water, peanuts, and mint leaves, unconcerned with anyone at the table. Maya worried that Janu would ask for chicken in front of his father, but Janu knew better.

  “The food is good,” said Veer, looking up at Subal, who was chewing on a gristly piece of chicken. Subal nodded, and said, “But Maya’s rajma chawal is better.” Maya giggled and gulped at her cocktail. Veer looked down at his plate.

  After the meal was finished, the adults went out for a smoke. Janu had fallen asleep inside at the table. It was blazing hot that month in the city, and they all were sweating. Veer offered a cigarette to Maya. Her eyes were getting glassy, and her words were running together. They began to talk about marriage, other people’s marriages, and Maya said, her voice loud: “What do you all think? Is marriage shit?”

  Veer took a long drag of his cigarette, while Subal exhaled. “Partly, yes,” Subal said. “But I think later in life you could make a better decision about this, because of the growth and experience of the person.”

  “But your emotions always stay the same,” said Maya, and turned to Veer. Veer sucked hard on his cigarette and glanced toward the window. Janu was curled up on his chair. It seemed that they were on the edge of something dangerous, but talk turned quickly to the World Cup.

  Inside, Subal paid the bill, and Veer bent to pick up Janu. Outside, the night air was heavy. Maya began walking ahead, toward Subal’s car instead of her husband’s. “I’ll meet you at home,” she told Veer over her shoulder.

  Subal and Maya made it home first, and she waited in his passenger seat. After Veer parked, he came up to the car, and rapped his hand on the window. Time to come in. Janu was draped over his shoulder. Veer waited as Maya said good-bye to Subal, slowly lifting her purse off the car floor. It was quiet in their apartment complex at that hour, and the sound of the car door closing seemed loud. Without a word, Maya followed her husband and son into the dark.

  Fire in the Heart

  Shahzad and Sabeena, 1999 to 2013

  “On no soul doth Allah place a greater burden than it can bear.”

  —The Holy Quran, 2:286

  It was wintertime in the city, cold and gusty, and Shahzad was thinking of leaving his cold storage business. Though business was good—there were no malls yet or online shopping, only open-air bazaars—he often felt tired and weak at work. Years ago, a customer had told Shahzad that working with freezers would make him sick. Now, what the man predicted seemed to have come true. Every time Shahzad left work he felt dizzy and light-headed, though he was still young, not yet forty. Almost forty, and still without a child. He noticed the weakness intensified every time he headed toward home.

  But Shahzad didn’t want to leave the market, or at least didn’t want to leave one person: Diana, a local Catholic woman, and a customer at his shop, who was all fire and intensity. Diana was half-Nigerian and half-Goan and had smooth fat cheeks, siren red lips, and wild, curly hair that framed her face. She wore tight but expensive clothing and worked at a fancy advertising company downtown. Everyone in the ma
rket called her “Madhuri,” because when she laughed, she looked just like the actress Madhuri Dixit. Diana often came to buy chicken from Shahzad.

  Like many men at the bazaar, Shahzad found her attractive and magnetic. But Diana was also something else for him—more than just a pretty distraction. Shahzad had begun to think of her as his good luck charm. When he was around Diana, the market seemed not as shabby, and his chicken seemed to fly off the shelves. The day never seemed mundane or dull.

  Over time, Diana had begun bringing cakes to his shop at holiday times, and he had begun giving her a package of mutton every Bakri Eid. She was fond of mushroom and chile curd, so he started stocking these items alongside the chicken. And he began calling her “Madhuri” to her face, telling her she had the same million-dollar smile. After a while, Diana started calling Shahzad on his work phone just to talk or to confide in him about problems with her husband.

  Shahzad knew she was married, but had always assumed she was childless, until one day she brought around a fat boy with ringlets like hers.

  Soon, she confided in Shahzad that she also had problems with her son, who was fourteen. He played football well but wasn’t a good student. He would have trouble clearing his SSC exam, which was compulsory to complete secondary school. She said the son’s father was a drunk and couldn’t help. Shahzad thought he understood, because his friends had told him that Christians were like this: they needed to drink to sleep at night. Shahzad had never touched alcohol, which was haram. Because of this, he felt he was clearer of head and saw how he could help her.

  In Shahzad’s memory, it went like this: Diana gave money to Shahzad, who used it to pay off an official at her son’s school. After that, her son passed the SSC. And Diana gave Shahzad her million-dollar smile.