Well-Behaved Indian Women

by Saumya Dave

  “What is her prognosis?” Simran asks.

  He looks at the ground, and his voice softens. “This type of cancer is aggressive. We were fortunate to find it before it spread, but in most cases, things wi—”

  Simran stands up. “How much time does she have?”

  “Without treatment, maybe a year.”

  “And with treatment? She will have treatment.”

  “Please,” Nani says, holding up her hand. “I have no desire to be poked and prodded and harassed just for a few more months. I want to go in peace.”

  “Go? How can you just say that as if you’re heading to a coffee shop?”

  Simran runs through the Kübler-Ross stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Which stage is appropriate for her right now?

  “Because I can,” Nani says, crossing her arms like a four-year-old not getting her way.

  “So you’re not even going to try to fight it?”

  She shakes her head. “You won’t understand this yet, but when you’re my age, and at peace, you’ll know when it’s your time.”

  “No. I’m not buying into any of that. It’s not your time now.”

  Nani turns away from her.

  “At least tell Mom,” Simran says, knowing that Mom would make it her mission to consult the most aggressive surgeons and oncologists in the world.

  “She has enough going on. You all do. What’s the point of me being eighty years old if I’m going to burden my family?”

  “You’re never a burden,” Simran says.

  “And you know I prefer my space,” Nani says. “I don’t want any of you hovering around me and feeling sorry for me all day.”

  “At least tr—”

  “Simran, no.”

  “It’s important you stay calm, Mimi Ben,” the doctor says. “You’re still weak.”

  “Then we need to not discuss this anymore,” Nani says. “It’s only going to make me more irritated.”

  So they don’t.

  The doctor shuffles outside, muttering something about waiting for the lab results. A nurse in a periwinkle sari comes into the room. She rolls a rusty cart that has a tray of steaming daal baath. Nani waves her hand. The nurse takes it away.

  “Now, tell me something else,” Nani says, turning toward Simran. “Anything else.”

  Simran stares at her. How is she supposed to talk about anything else? How can she pos—

  “Simran, now. I mean it,” she says.

  Simran brings up whatever comes to her mind: the latest Amitabh Bachchan movie, Indian politics, the newest gossip about her friends. She even tells Nani she’s thinking of writing an article about girls’ education in India.

  Somewhere between Sheila’s mom trying to set her up with Karan and Vishal’s latest date, Simran blurts, “I found pictures of Mom from her first wedding.”

  To her surprise, Nani turns to her and says in a calm voice, “I thought you would.”

  “You did?” Simran asks. “Why’s that?”

  “Because I know your habit of looking through things. And that this would all come out anyway. I told your mom to tell you sooner.”

  “Tell me what, exactly? That she neglected to mention another husband?”

  And before her grandmother answers, Simran says, “Oh my god. She left him the way she’s going to leave Dad. This is what she does, isn’t it? She’s one of those Madame Bovary type of women.”

  Maybe her mother’s the way Vishal used to be, before he started dating Ami: with one eye on the present and the other elsewhere, always on the lookout for something better.

  Simran can’t look at Nani so she focuses on the wall behind her, with its extra sockets and knobs for oxygen tubing.

  “She’s not one of those women, Simi,” Nani says. “There’s a lot that you don’t know.”

  She tells Simran everything: her mother’s arranged marriage to a controlling man, how she ran away multiple times, their family’s social isolation, Simran’s dad meeting her, with his own baggage, and the life they built together after Nana passed away.

  Simran listens to Nani in silence, as though she’s talking about someone else, and is overcome with a mixture of betrayal and anger. She doesn’t know her mother. Maybe she never did. She feels a part of her sinking as an array of childhood memories run through her mind. All those times Mom pressured Simran to be this way or that way and she was hiding this? How easy it was, to just see her mother for who she claimed to be, to not ever consider the history she left behind.

  A heavy pang of sadness settles over her chest as other thoughts come into focus. Her mother tried to protect her from her past. She lived in pain, in a way Simran would never have to and could never fully understand. Simran wishes she could replay every conversation, every piece of advice, every moment of disappointment. Maybe there’s more to every single thing Mom ever told her.

  “This doesn’t make any sense.” Simran slumps into her wooden chair. “I need to call her.”

  “No, not yet,” Nani says. “She’s going to be livid with me when she finds out I told you, and I’d rather not hear any of that today.”

  Nani looks toward the other side of the room, where there’s a pale blue curtain pushed to the wall, an empty bed on the other side of it. “You know, I’m the one who made the mistake. She didn’t know what she was doing. None of us did. We all jumped from our father’s house to our husband’s. And we were taught not to defy anyone, to just deal with everything and keep it to ourselves. Was she depressed? Of course she was. But people in India barely believe in depression now, and they definitely didn’t then. She was trapped. I should have realized it earlier. Done something.”

  “Do you think there was anything you could have done?”

  Nani sighs. “I like to think there was something I could have done, but I really don’t know if that’s true. We . . . women . . . are raised to be polite. To change our shapes and be accommodating and not threatening. And as much as I liked to think that I was a good role model for her, I now see that maybe at the time, I wasn’t strong enough to teach her how to be honest with herself. Have a sense of conviction. Forget about pleasing others. So, despite what was against both of our true characters, Nandini became like me as a married woman. Obliging. Deferential. But she seemed better, stronger, when she became a mother. She was so determined to make sure that you didn’t have to struggle, even if that meant she had to put aside some of her own things for a while. But then again, she also felt the need to prove to everyone that she was an adequate mother. She was always torn that way.”

  The last few months flash through Simran’s mind like a silent film: her mother’s reaction to Neil, her insistence Simran get married before anything catastrophic could happen, the contradictory advice toward dealing with in-laws and her career.

  Simran folds her hands over Nani’s. She leans back and closes her eyes. She looks at the empty bed, unable to process anything, except the beep, beep, beep of the monitor.

  * * *

  — —

  Nani refuses to let the cancer impede her for the rest of Simran’s trip. Not when she has to stop during their morning walks to catch her breath. Not when she can’t finish a small bowl of daal baath because her stomach is bloated. Not when pangs of pain and nausea wake her up every night.

  By the end of Simran’s second week, the girls at school are used to her being at Nani’s side. Simran and Nani come and leave at different times each day, both of them in charge of their own tasks. Nani knows how to keep the girls entertained. She lets them interrupt her with questions, follows their tangents.

  Simran helps them practice English and stay focused. They establish a rhythm Nani struggled with maintaining. Sometimes, they review essays that were assigned earlier that day. Other times, they discuss the boys they have a crush on. There’s no structure or analysis or m
easurement to their methods. The only certainty of each day is that most of their time will be filled with the girls sharing their opinions on everything: the latest Shah Rukh Khan movie they hope to see, arranged marriage, what it’s like to get their period and be pulled out of school, their parents’ stress over their dowries, what they hope to be when they grow up.

  In the evenings, while Nani watches soap operas, Simran looks up these topics online. Hours pass in a blur of essays and articles and interviews. Nani and Simran debate over the lack of data on girls in rural India and how likely it is for things to change. Simran starts to feel something in her take root and sprout in a way that hasn’t happened in a long time.

  “Are you married?” Pallavi asks one day. She’s the clear alpha of the group.

  Simran pictures Kunal’s bushy eyebrows, the scruff around his lips. “No, I’m not yet.”

  “But you’re . . . old,” she says, covering her mouth after the words come out.

  Simran laughs. “I know it seems that way, but there’s never a right age to get married.”

  “My sister used to say that, too,” Pallavi says. “So she said no to this guy who asked her for marriage. And then he tried to throw that stuff in her face.”

  “Stuff?” Simran asks, and Nani mouths, Acid.

  “Is your sister okay?” Simran asks, picturing the horrific images she’s seen of victims of acid attacks.

  Pallavi nods. “She didn’t get hurt on her face, only her neck. We thought she was lucky.”

  “It’s too common. Unfortunately,” Nani says.

  “So is your sister married now?” Simran asks Pallavi.

  Her coconut-oiled braids sway as she shakes her head. “Nobody wants to marry her with the burns on her neck. She helps my parents make clothes, but that’s all she can do in her life. Mummy and Papa paid dowry to one family, but they just stole it and then pulled out of the wedding deal. . . . That’s why my parents said I have to get married soon.”

  “What do you mean, ‘soon’? How soon?”

  Pallavi glances at Nani, then Simran. “Mummy and Papa said I have to leave school by the end of the year.”

  “What? Why?”

  She looks at the ground and starts making circles in the dirt with her feet.

  “Pallavi, why?”

  “I have to get married and help out at home. They can’t pay for school anymore. We don’t have any money left.”

  “But you want to be a doctor,” Simran says, leaning down to be at Pallavi’s eye level. “Don’t you?”

  Pallavi shrugs. “They said I can’t.”

  Before Simran can say anything else, Nani grabs her arm. “We have to go.”

  Nani motions toward the school entrance, where a man is watching them.

  Simran uses both of her hands to help Nani stand up. They walk as quickly as they can with Nani’s shuffled steps.

  “Ek minute, Mimi Ben! Mimi Ben!”

  “Are bapre, what now?” Nani mutters as she prepares her fake smile.

  Simran turns around to see Deepak Bhai, the school’s principal, approaching them. He has a shiny, black, middle-parted toupee and a round red rose that make him resemble the guy from the game Operation. With his toupee, wrinkled hands, and shiny cheeks, he could either be thirty-four or fifty years old.

  “Kem cho, Mimi Ben?” How are you?

  Nani nods. “Majama. And you?”

  “Fine. Can we talk for a second? If you don’t mind?” He motions toward the empty part of the playground. With his protruding stomach and thick wrists, he could be the poster man for how fast food has ruined India.

  “Yes. Simran can come with us,” Nani says.

  Once they’re away from the girls, Deepak Bhai says, “I know we’ve had this conversation before, but, well, I don’t know how to say this. Again.”

  Nani cranes her neck toward him. “Just say it.”

  Deepak Bhai looks at his feet. “Some of the parents are very concerned with your . . . role . . . with the girls. They have been, and you know that. But now the complaints are getting worse. More, eh, aggressive.”

  “And why is that?” Nani asks, placing her hands on her hips.

  Deepak Bhai is sweating bullets. You’d think the guy was under one of those bright interrogation lights they show during suspect interviews on television.

  He reaches into his breast pocket, pulls out an off-white handkerchief, and dabs his forehead. He closes his eyes. Rocks back and forth. Has he fallen asleep standing up?

  Simran sees Nani trying to stifle a laugh. She refuses to look at her. That’s one thing she, Mom, and Nani have in common: they are incapable of holding in their laughter when it’s inappropriate. Once, at a wedding, the groom’s father farted during his speech. Mom glanced at Simran, and within seconds, they both ran out of the room like complete idiots.

  Simran clears her throat.

  Deepak Bhai opens his eyes. “They, the parents, don’t know what you’re teaching them. You see, for the other official teachers, there’s a clear curriculum. The parents know what the girls are learning. Whereas for you, it’s not as straightforward. And it has come to my knowledge that some of the things you’re going over with them are not so, how do you say it, conventional.”

  “What does that even mean?” Simran asks. Nani raises her hand, as an indication for Simran to stop talking, but she doesn’t listen. “My grandmother has done more for these girls than any of these teachers. They don’t even show up to school most of the time! And thanks to her, some of them are starting to learn how to write in English.”

  “Simi, I can handle this,” Nani says, her voice quiet but firm.

  “No,” Simran says. “You’ve been devoted to these girls, day in and day out.” She looks at Deepak Bhai. “Who is in charge here?”

  He dips his head down, and Simran’s worried his toupee will slip off. “I am.”

  “And who is your boss?”

  “He’s, eh, not here.”

  “What’s his name?” Simran takes out her notebook and a pen from her bag. “Write down his contact information for me.”

  Deepak Bhai’s hand shakes as he writes his supervisor’s name and phone number.

  Bharat Narayan

  91-263-6377

  Simran rips out the page from her notebook and puts it into the front pocket of her bag.

  “We’ll be going now,” Nani says, grabbing Simran’s hand as they walk away.

  * * *

  — —

  The phone is ringing when they get home. It attempts to pronounce the name of the caller. Ronak and Dad had installed the feature during their last trip to India.

  Simran runs toward it and presses the “talk” button.

  “Mom?”

  “Simran, is that you?”

  “Sheila?” Simran steps toward the barred window, the one her mother stood on the other side of after she ran away from her first husband. Now, on the other side, a thin lady with silver hair and a large maroon bindi is pushing a giant cart stacked with eggplant, radishes, cabbages, and peppers.

  “I got this number from Ronak,” Sheila says.

  “Oh,” Simran says. “What’s up?”

  “What’s up? What’s up? What the fuck is up with you? I haven’t heard from you since the engagement party. You told me you were going to India, and the next thing I know, you’re on a plane. I’m really worried about you.”

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” Simran says. She mouths Sheila to Nani, who nods.

  “What are you even doing there?”

  “Just hanging out with Nani. Getting some space,” Simran says, not knowing how to tell Sheila that she’s literally living the life of an old lady.

  “And? What about Kunal? You know, that guy who gave you a ring?”

  Simran looks at her left hand, which has
been bare since the day she left for India. “I’m sure he’s getting his space, too.”

  Sheila sighs. “Please tell me that this doesn’t have to do with Neil, that you’re over all of that. You are, right?”

  “I haven’t talked to Neil,” Simran says.

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  When Simran doesn’t say anything, Sheila adds, “Simran, I don’t understand what’s gotten into you. One second, everything is fine. Normal. And the next, your engagement party is a mess, you’ve dropped out of school, you don’t have a job, you can’t give me a straight answer about Neil, and you just run away?”

  Simran moves into Nani’s bedroom and closes the door. “I’m not running. I just needed to get away from everything.”

  “Well, shit’s hit the fan since you left. Have you seen Facebook?”

  “No,” Simran says, grateful that Nani doesn’t have a strong Internet connection (except for the living-without-Netflix part).

  “There are people from NYU who’ve written on Kunal’s wall, saying they’re sorry for what he’s dealing with and things like that.”

  “Seriously?”

  Damn social media. Can’t anyone fuck up privately anymore?

  “Yeah,” Sheila says. “I ran into Priyal and Neha and that whole group the other day. They all were like, ‘What the hell happened to Simran?’ and ‘I didn’t know she was that kind of person.’ Even Rahul was talking shit.”

  “Rahul?” Simran asks.

  Rahul went to NYU with them and now works at a tech start-up. He has the unfortunate habit of telling too many bad jokes and following each one with a Woody Woodpecker laugh.

  “Don’t worry. I bitched at all of them,” Sheila says.

  Simran pictures her scandal spreading through Manhattan, a force growing with each person it comes to. The worst part is what it’s done to Kunal. She thinks of him the way an acquaintance would. He’s hardworking. Practical. Guided by principle. A good man who does good things. Someone who doesn’t deserve this.

  “It’s been really weird not talking to Kunal,” Simran says. “Like a feeling in the back of my mind that I’m forgetting something.”