No One Can Pronounce My Name

by Rakesh Satyal

  The end of dinner was refreshing, much less shaky than its beginning. They had, against expectation, enjoyed an enlightening time overall. Ranjana was surprised to see that Harit had a personality. She knew many Indians who existed merely as auxiliary characters. They reacted to others passively and held their beliefs like canned goods that they might consume later, perhaps years later. There was survival but not life. Harit, for all his reticence predinner, for all the nervousness that he exuded, had become someone to like. He had asked questions. He had stepped outside of himself. He had been bold enough to ask after her husband—Ranjana realized as she slung her purse over her shoulder that neither he nor Teddy knew what her husband’s name was—and Ranjana had found, in those knowing glances, a true connection with him.

  Whether or not this was because they were both Indian was uncertain. After her disorienting night at FB, Ranjana knew that her connection to Achyut was tenuous, and she knew instinctively that Teddy saw her as a means to an end more than a friend. Harit, however—he had the honesty that both Achyut and Teddy were missing.

  This was not, she believed, a homophobic reaction. She had not absented Achyut and Teddy because they were gay; in fact, Harit himself could even be construed as effeminate in his movements. It was the intent of Harit’s behavior that she preferred. He wanted to do the right thing. At any given moment this evening, he had wanted to do the thing that would most please his companions. It was commendable.

  They were in the lobby of the restaurant. “What do you say, kids? A nightcap?” Teddy asked, pulling his jacket as closed as it would go. Though already rotund, his stomach showed the addition of their meal.

  They had met at eight to accommodate Harit and Teddy’s work schedule, and it was nearing ten now. Ranjana could not stay out. “I must get home. My husband will be home from tennis soon.” She deliberately withheld his name. There was something to be said about mystery for mystery’s sake. It was one of the few truly notable things that Roberta had said when leading their writing group.

  “Well, it was a great pleasure, my dear,” Teddy said, presenting his hands so that Ranjana could place one of hers in them.

  Ranjana, just to see that look of unrest on Teddy’s face again, dove a handshake forward and watched him flicker to receive her movement. “A great pleasure to meet you, too,” she said.

  “Are you on Facebook?” Teddy asked while she was already turning to Harit.

  Ranjana puffed out a laugh. “I have an Internet-savvy son, Teddy. So, no.” (A lie.) She turned to Harit and switched to Hindi. “Ji, wonderful to meet you.”

  “Do you have an e-mail address where we might reach you?” Teddy continued. Ranjana realized that if she had given her e-mail to Teddy the other night instead of her phone number, he would have already located her Facebook profile. He was a voracious social animal whose age would not prevent him from having a firm footing online. In fact, it would spur him on. She did not really want to give him her email address, but Teddy was nothing if not persistent.

  Ranjana opened her purse to pull out a small notebook and pen, but Teddy plucked one of La Ronde’s cards from the nearby hospitality stand and gave it to her. She wrote, “Mrs. Chaudhury, hecate868@gmail.com,” and handed it over to Teddy.

  “Thank you, Teddy. Shukriya, Haritji,” she said. Then she swerved out of the restaurant and to her car.

  * * *

  Teddy asked Harit if he wanted a nightcap, but Harit cut him off with a pointed Teddy. Teddy nodded, the type of nod that went up and down and sideways in quick alternation.

  “I gotcha, dear,” Teddy said.

  “But I had a lovely time, Teddy. Thank you.”

  “You two really seemed to hit it off.” They were at Teddy’s car now, flanking it and speaking over the roof.

  “I cannot remember the last time that I met an Indian like that.”

  Teddy opened his door and unfettered the locks. They both slid into the car.

  “Like what, exactly?”

  Harit thought. “She seems very … American.”

  “But she’s not even on Facebook.”

  “I don’t mean like that. I mean that she really lives here. She belongs here.”

  As he spoke these words, Harit heard how American they sounded in and of themselves. The rhythm of them, what they conveyed, was American. The sense of belonging itself—it was something that preoccupied so many people in this country. It was why every immigrant he knew felt a social obligation not only to belong but also to know, to the exact emotional fiber, where he belonged. That had been the basis of his anxiety during dinner—determining where he’d belonged at the table and at the restaurant. Now he just had to figure out where he belonged everywhere else—at home, at the store, and beyond.

  When they pulled up in front of Harit’s home a few minutes later, Teddy said, “We will have to do this again soon.”

  “If Ranjanaji wishes to see us again, she will be in touch with us.”

  “No, dear, that’s why I got her e-mail. I’m going to send her a message when I get home.”

  Harit wanted to challenge this. He wanted to explain to Teddy that it wasn’t proper. He was already trying to imagine what the interaction would be between Ranjana and her husband, the professor. A man accustomed to problems and solving them, finding weaknesses and correcting them. It would be so easy for him to detect the slightly suspect behavior of his wife. Indeed, Harit was now assuming that Ranjana had detected in the evening the same kind of comfort that he had experienced. And he was assuming that she carried in her body the same tingling that he felt as he bid Teddy good night and walked up to his house in the dark. Interactions like this evening’s, which made you feel appreciated and listened to, had no other result but to change your life for the better.

  But as Harit turned the key in the back door, he found his comfort overtaken by the oppression of his home.

  * * *

  Mohan was not yet back from tennis. The silence was all the more pronounced following the rattle and hum of the evening. Ranjana wanted to call him on his cell and find out just how long he would be; she felt a great urge to write, if only about the evening and not about the supernatural, but she also didn’t want to begin if Mohan was due in the door five minutes from now. Then again, it had been so long since she had phoned him like that. They had not shared a sense of urgency—apart from being parents to Prashant—in years. To call Mohan would be to disrupt this long-standing state.

  She picked up the phone and called him anyway.

  “Hello?” Mohan asked, as if their home number hadn’t popped up on his phone. Was he even really at the club? Or was he with her?

  “Ji, your food is getting cold.” It was the shoddiest lie. Normally, she heated up his food when she heard his car pull up; or, if she had made it fresh that evening, she knew to keep it on the burner. No wonder he met this comment with confusion:

  “Heh?”

  “Will you be home soon?”

  “I am in the locker room, yaar. I’ll be home in the next half hour, forty-five minutes.”

  “OK.” Good.

  “What did you make?”

  Oh, dear. What was she planning on serving him? She took a second to remember what was in the refrigerator but panicked. “Rajma,” she said, even though she hadn’t made any.

  “Perfect, ji. I’ll pick up some yogurt.” Then he hung up.

  Ranjana slapped the counter and harrumphed. Now she couldn’t write at all. There was no rajma prepared, but her husband was bringing yogurt for it.

  Somehow tipsy on the few sips of wine that she’d taken at dinner, she spent the next half hour rushing around to make the dish. Later, as Mohan was sitting at the kitchen table, spooning the red beans into his mouth and chatting about the match, Ranjana wondered which might taste saltier—this quick dinner or the tears of joy she would shed when she finally finished writing a book.

  THEY DID NOT SEE EACH OTHER for a few weeks. Teddy e-mailed Ranjana that first night, of course—alr
eady suggesting dates in the next “fortnight” when they might meet again—but she deflected his invitation by saying that she had to go out of town unexpectedly. She didn’t give a reason, thinking that the ball would stay in her court and she could reach out when her curiosity about Harit’s well-being grew great enough. But the following week, Teddy found her on Facebook. A little note was embedded in his invite: “If you made it from Delhi to Ohio, Facebook is a piece of cake!” Ranjana had to laugh in spite of his persistence. She e-mailed him back and wrote, as charmingly as she could, that she had been admonished by her son not to engage with Facebook for fear that their social circles would intersect online. She thanked Teddy for the sentiment and wrote, “Hope all is well on your end.”

  He disappeared for a while after that. She returned to her routine—the office, Mohan, and, with less frequency, her writing. Achyut had inspired her to write, but now he had retreated from the forefront of her mind.

  Actually, he had brushed her off. A few days after the night at FB, he had called her and begun berating her without even saying hello.

  “Why were you so weird to my friends?”

  Sputters issued forth as if her lips had taken on a life of their own. “I—I’m sorry, Achyut. I wasn’t prepared for everything that happened.”

  “What do you mean ‘everything that happened’? Nothing was supposed to happen except for you meeting my friends and being nice to them.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, so am I. Look—maybe this wasn’t such a great idea. I need to be surrounded with people that are supportive.”

  “I thought I was being supportive. I was trying to be, at least. Achyut, please—I was just out of my element. Please give me another chance.”

  “I’ll think about it.” He paused. “Also, I have something to tell you.”

  “What?”

  “I kind of have a boyfriend.”

  “You do? That’s wonderful.”

  “He’s great. Older. More responsible. I’m probably going to be staying at his place.”

  “That’s—I’m glad to hear that.”

  “Anyway … I’ll … let me see how I feel about things and then I’ll get back to you.” Then he hung up.

  He was still mulling things over, apparently, because she hadn’t heard a peep from him. His next appointment was several months away, so it wasn’t as if she was going to see him around the office. The incident with him seemed all at once to have been a fever dream.

  If she was being honest with herself, Achyut did not loom as largely in her estimation as he once had. Something about that night had changed her perspective. She had seen, in the neon carnival of his job, that she was one in a mere throng of admirers. She didn’t exactly feel duped, but there was something off-putting about his socializing, to say nothing of his mercurial personality, which seemed more and more volatile. She did not feel enmity toward his sexual orientation—in fact, she congratulated herself for the even logic with which she thought of it—but she did have to admit that she felt some resentment for being a person in which Achyut could have no romantic interest. She did not wish to be his keepsake. Surely this was a natural reaction to have.

  But at the same time, if she was being honest with herself, she couldn’t help but feel that Achyut’s new boyfriend would not only occupy the space that she had filled but also would be able to offer Achyut emotional and physical solace that she never could offer. And this stung.

  So she regressed to the nights before she had met Achyut and the doldrums she had inhabited soon after Prashant’s departure. Sometimes, when Cheryl unwrapped a candy and said something about the latest episode of The Bachelor, Ranjana would remember Achyut crumpled in her passenger seat as they watched the in-progress remains of Paradise Island, and she would feel physical pain. It was almost funereal—which was ridiculous. Achyut was very much alive, and she could break the détente and reach out to him. As with Harit and Teddy, the ball could be in her court, provided she wanted to put it there. But: routine.

  Then, one day, she had an occasion to socialize. Preeti Verma, a casual friend, had lost her father to cancer, and there was to be a small gathering at the temple to do a puja in his memory. Would Ranjana and Mohanji please come, perhaps with some prasad for afterward?

  “Of course, ji,” Ranjana said, her body bending in assent even though they were speaking over the phone.

  For some reason, even though Ranjana and Harit had discussed the temple at La Ronde, it did not occur to her that he might be there. There were so many different Indian circles, and Preeti seemed outside Harit’s limited orbit. So when Ranjana and Mohan stepped into the temple with a stainless steel bowl of honeydew and grapes, and some store-bought barfi, Ranjana was surprised to see him seated, cross-legged, with the other men on the right side of the room. His back was toward her, but that hair was unmistakable, the beginning of a bald spot like a moon behind clouds.

  It was uncanny how authentic their temple was, as if it had come out of a travel book. It was built on a gigantic plot of land, and this removed any noticeably American sight, so that the Indians in attendance could pretend that they were back in their home country. Even the trees that surrounded the place seemed Indian. The creek that ran behind it, the airborne dirt, the birds that flew overhead—you could swear that you were in Uttar Pradesh. And then there was the building itself. Funded with millions of dollars from the many affluent attendees, it was gilded in stone the way that a mirror could be gilded in gold. The various pieces had been carved in India, then transported on ships. Assembled, they rivaled the temples of Mahabalipuram in their ostentation, a forest of ornate stone thorns jutting every which way, here and there circling a tenderly carved deity. Wide steps flanked by humongous stone banisters jutted up into a grand threshold. The interior had a vaulted ceiling through which ten windows, like angry angels, shot sunlight onto the sprawling marble floor during the daytime. A series of six-foot-tall deities, posed as if in a godly fashion show, ran across the back of the altar. Red rugs ran askew like plush rivers. Gold exploded wherever possible. Then there were the bright swishes of the women’s georgette, the white and beige tangle of the men’s business casual.

  As she had with Achyut, Ranjana felt an indefinite tension creep into her at the sight of Harit. Having Mohan by her side made the moment all the more bizarre. Mohan had no cause for concern, she reassured herself, but she hadn’t even mentioned her dinner with Harit and Teddy to him. How could she have possibly explained it? In a way, it had been even more dangerous than the night at FB. The gay bar had been so outside her own understanding of life that it would have been hieroglyphs to Mohan. But the dinner with Harit and Teddy could at least find a footing in his mind. Two men accompanying a woman to dinner, her husband out of sight, eating at a fancy restaurant and speaking of her family unpoliced, one of them roughly her age, unmarried, probably seeking out a wife, however late in life. Then Teddy, truly different from Mohan in most ways but still his elder, capable of dispensing advice to Ranjana that she might, God forbid, take. She was kicking herself now as Mohan strode forward to shake hands with some of the other men. She made her way to the pantry, which pealed with the chickadee voices of the other women.

  She set her various parcels on a countertop and said her Namastes to the room. However mournful they were all supposed to be, there was a jollity to the union of Indian women that could never be fully dispelled. Their whispers—the hushing of their mouths using the back of one hand—came across as gossip instead of reverent intonations of pity. Sonya Mehta, the woman who had gone night-riding naked through her dreamscape, was there in full force. Instead of wearing a demure outfit—a few of the women were wearing slacks instead of saris or salwars—she was wearing a gleaming sari with so many beads on it that it looked like someone had rolled her in glue and then pushed her down a hill of rubies. Ranjana sometimes wished that she could be this selfish yet clueless at the same time; Sonya did what she did, in life as in the presence of death, and
perhaps that was why her beauty remained undiminished. It was self-consciousness that aged you, worrying about chance social encounters and your place in them that brought wrinkles as if they had been called to prayer.

  When Ranjana got back to the main room, Mohan was already seated in the middle of the men, in front of Harit. Ranjana decided to seat herself and deal with Harit later. If she stayed just behind him on the left side of the room, he would not note her presence, and she could pay attention to her real reason for being here—the puja. Preeti and her husband, Anu, were seated in front, facing the pandit, and their heads were bowed. The people at the temple had been through countless ceremonies like this, but what pleased Ranjana was how the sense of reverence, at least before the altar, was relatively consistent. Whereas the babbling in the kitchen, however low voiced, went against the solemn purpose of the evening, the sentiment in here was respectful.

  Their pandit was young, in his late thirties, a replacement for his predecessor, a beloved old man who had passed away last year, his resonant Punjabi accent still ringing in their ears. The injection of this new pandit’s youth into their ceremonies gave them all a renewed sense of faith. So many of them worried that their children were not carrying on the Hindu tradition, and seeing a younger pandit offered some reassurance. Of course, Ranjana was one of the culpable crowd. As she had half-confessed to Harit, temple had not been a huge part of Prashant’s life, even though she was somewhat exonerated due to the fact that his Hindi was not that bad. She and Mohan had been stuck in their mother tongue for many years after their arrival, her English slang coming mostly from soap operas and trips to the grocery store and telemarketing tussles over the phone, so Prashant had grown up surrounded by both languages. Sanskrit often played a greater role in temple, however, so Prashant’s Hindi failed him within these walls. That sense of ineffectiveness, for someone as smart as Prashant, was why he disliked going to temple. Ranjana could bet that, aside from the pandit himself, there was likely no one in this room right now who knew Sanskrit. She thought again of Seema’s yoga companions and, for a moment, marveled at the shattering of the tongue, language repurposed and rethought and reorganized.