A Bollywood Affair

by Sonali Dev

  She had punched the address into his GPS, a routine they had fallen into on their drive to the wedding. They had driven for an hour and he hadn’t looked at her once. He hadn’t said one word to her since she had pushed him into the car and shut the door behind him and then fitted herself into the seat next to him. The waves of anger rising from him were as palpable as the silence between them. The pain on his face almost made her regret what she had done.

  Almost. Because deep inside she knew what she had done was right. She also knew without a doubt that this was exactly what Samir needed and she wanted him to have it. She realized suddenly that she wanted him to have everything. From the deepest part of her heart she wanted him to be happy. She hated that he was not. It wasn’t like he wasn’t capable of happiness. It was almost as if he held himself away from it just the slightest bit.

  He felt undeserving of it, mistrustful of it, and the unfairness of that made her want to shake some sense into his stubborn head. The kindness inside him, his generosity, was beyond anything she had ever encountered. Even after she had told him she wanted nothing from him but his friendship, she had leaned on him far more than any friend had the right to and he had let her. Her own hypocrisy, her stupidity, baffled her. What kind of idiot doesn’t see what’s right in front of her face? No matter what she felt for him. No matter how different their worlds were, one thing she knew was that she was done pushing him away.

  Samir jammed his foot into the accelerator and sped along like the madman he had turned into. Next to him Mili sat in complete silence, her fingers clutching the leather seat. She was trying to not let her terror show on her face, but as usual the canvas of her face painted each and every one of her feelings in vivid color. Good. At least that fucking pity was gone. He wanted her to talk to him, so he could put her in her place, blow her to shreds, ask her to shut up.

  Suddenly the most horrible thought struck him. “Mili?”

  She sat up straight but she didn’t respond.

  “If you’re lying to me about the dying thing, I’m going to kill you.”

  “What kind of person do you think I am, Samir?” She had the gall to sound hurt.

  “Just the kind of person who would make up something like this to get me to do what she thought I needed to do.”

  She squirmed in her seat but even she couldn’t argue with that. “You’re right, I would. But I’m not lying, Samir. I’m sorry.” She reached out and touched his arm. When he didn’t yank it away like he wanted to, she wrapped her arm around his and sidled up to him. And he knew without the shadow of a doubt that she wasn’t lying.

  She held on to him like that until they pulled into a muddy farm lane that cut through fields and led to a small cottage.

  Behind the cottage loomed a huge red barn.

  Everything inside Samir went cold. He stopped the car right there in the middle of the gravel road, raising a cloud of dust around them. The entire sweeping sight in front of him: blue sky, red barn, yellow house, green grass—it was all washed in gray shades of twilight. But Samir’s mind colored it in, painting it with colors from another time, colors that were buried under his skin. And the force with which they rose to the surface sucked everything out of him. He sat drained of all feeling, unable to move forward, his arms and legs numb with cold.

  When Mili tightened her hold on his arm, he realized he wasn’t alone.

  “I can’t do it, Mili. I don’t want to. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  She didn’t respond. His words hung in the air. Her hand moved up and down, the gentlest strokes. He removed it from his arm, but he couldn’t let it go. He held it in his lap, clutched it like his life depended on it. Stupid, weak bastard.

  “You shouldn’t have done this. You had no right.” Now he couldn’t turn around and he couldn’t go in.

  “Let’s go in just for a few minutes. Then we’ll leave. I’m right here with you. Turn the car back on, Samir.”

  He turned the ignition and put his foot on the accelerator. The little house grew and grew until they were outside the porch. A woman sat on a rocking chair. She was wrapped up in shawls and knitting under the bright patio light that made her silver hair glow. Her eyes hitched on Samir over her half-moon glasses, but her hands never stopped.

  Mili waved at the woman as if she’d known her all her life. “Kim?”

  The woman put her knitting down and stood.

  Mili turned her wide eyes on Samir. Unconsciously, he stepped out of the car and went around to let her out. She laced her fingers through his and clung to his arm. They climbed the patio steps.

  “Mili?” This Kim person walked up to them.

  Without letting his hand go, Mili gave the woman a one-armed hug. “This is Samir.”

  He focused on Mili’s voice, focused on how she said his name, focused on her fingers slotted between his.

  The woman squeezed her palm against her mouth and looked at Samir as if she could not believe what she was seeing. His stomach turned but he knew this wasn’t the worst of it.

  “Kim, is he here?” A thin, faded voice called from inside. The urge to turn around and run was so overwhelming he almost obeyed it. But the voice dug into his head and held him in place. Mili squeezed his hand.

  “She’s been waiting for you,” Kim said, stepping inside the house.

  Mili ran her hand up and down his arm. He had to move. Move, he told himself. She tugged gently at his arm and he followed her.

  “Sara, he’s here.” Kim spoke before they entered the room.

  It was dimly lit, the air thick with the astringent smell of disinfectant and medicine. The bed was metal, one of those hospital beds you could crank up and down. A sickbed. A dull numbness spread through him.

  He looked at the yellow floral stripes on the curtains, the powder-blue walls, the graying white sheets, the floral comforter. All those flowers to cheer the space up. He looked at the thin body on the bed but he could not look at the face.

  “Samir.” She said his name like a foreigner. Rolling the r around her tongue and extending it.

  Mili moved toward the bed. He let go of her hand. “Hi, Sara. I’m Mili.”

  “Hi, Mili,” the raspy voice said. “Kim, could you sit me up, please?”

  Kim rotated a crank and the bed folded into a seated position with a metallic groan.

  “How are you feeling, Sara?” Mili placed a hand on her foot. Such a familiar gesture.

  “Right now better than I’ve ever felt in my life.”

  “She hasn’t sat up in months,” Kim said.

  “This is Kim, my sister. Samir, this is your Aunt Kim. She’s your godmother.”

  Samir didn’t move. His godmother. The person responsible for his welfare if his parents died.

  “How was the drive?” Kim asked.

  Mili replied. Then Kim asked another question. Then Mili. They went back and forth. Their voices buzzed around Samir’s head. He didn’t hear a word, just the occasional mention of his name and the occasional expectant pauses.

  The raspy voice spoke again. It wasn’t wet like he remembered, but parched, scratchy and dry as sandpaper. “Are you two hungry? You must be hungry. Kim made chicken curry. I gave her my recipe.”

  “Mili’s vegetarian.” Finally he found his voice.

  “I’m sorry. I should have asked on the phone. Kim can fix something else. Maybe some da-hl.” She said the word like she had a right to say it but it sounded foreign in her mouth.

  “We ate before we left. Please don’t worry about it.” Mili’s voice fell calm and soothing on the festering, wounded feel of the room. Why wasn’t she making her big admonishing eyes at him?

  “Maybe Samir is hungry. Do you like chicken curry? Your father used to love chicken curry.”

  He felt short of breath. “I’m vegetarian too.”

  “Yes, of course you would be. How is Lata?”

  Samir looked up at her.

  She wore a black knitted cap. No hair stuck out from under it. Her eyes brimmed w
ith tears, but she smiled when she caught his eye. “It looks like Lata kept her promise. You know what she said to me? ‘I’ll raise him like my own son, but I cannot let him eat meat.’ ”

  “That does sound like something my mother would say.”

  She flinched. “She kept her promise, then?”

  “No. She didn’t treat me like her son. She treated me better than him.”

  “You have no idea how happy that makes me.”

  Samir turned away from her and walked to the window. It was dark outside, but the black-on-black outline of the barn loomed in his vision like a surreal painting. A sudden memory of the dank, cold barn flashed in his mind, blasting open the hollow inside him. This was bullshit. What was he supposed to say to this woman? He felt nothing for her. Nothing. What had Mili expected to accomplish by bringing him here?

  “Kim, could I have a glass of water, please?” He wanted to be annoyed at Mili’s voice, but it was the only thing that made sense. “I’ll go with you to the kitchen and get it.”

  He turned on her. “No, Mili, I don’t want you to leave. You wanted this. Now you can’t bear to watch?”

  “If you want me to stay, I’ll stay.” She sank into the chair by the bed. “I thought you might want some privacy.” She tried to calm him with her gaze. She was insane if she thought that’s all it would take.

  “We have nothing private to talk about. In fact we have nothing to talk about.” He turned to the woman on the bed. “You look like you need rest. I’m sorry Mili called and bothered you. We’ll leave now.”

  “Why didn’t you ever reply to my letters?” she said as if he hadn’t spoken.

  You mean the ones you never wrote.

  “I must have written at least a hundred letters.”

  Since you dumped me and walked away. “Why?”

  “Why did I write to you?”

  He couldn’t respond.

  “Or why did I give you up?” She started coughing, a hollow hacking sound, like rocks in a tin can.

  Mili rubbed her shoulder and offered her a glass of water from the nightstand. She pushed it away and tried to speak again.

  He didn’t want to hear it. “You’re not strong enough. And it doesn’t matter anymore. Mili, let’s go.”

  Mili was at his side in a moment.

  “Your father and I fell in love,” she said, pushing back another coughing fit. “I knew he was married. He was always honest with me about it. We tried to stay away from each other, but we couldn’t. We knew he would go back when he was done with school. I thought I had two years and I chose to take what I could get. He didn’t want to but I didn’t give him a choice.” She stopped to take a breath. This time Kim offered her water and she took a sip.

  Her chest heaved from the effort, but she went on. “I never expected to get pregnant. Everything changed after you were born. I was terrified of losing him. As the time for him to leave came closer, my mind started to close in on me. I couldn’t handle it. I slit my wrists. It was the only way I knew to make him stay.”

  Kim, who was sobbing hard now, left the room.

  Sara spent another five minutes coughing. Mili left him and went to Sara and held her as she sobbed between hacking fits that pumped nonexistent breath from her lungs. Samir couldn’t move. He felt like someone had smashed him into the floor with a sledgehammer.

  “He was not a drinker,” Sara said finally, her voice stronger this time, more determined. “He got into his car drunk only once, just one time, and everything ended. You were four years old. I couldn’t take care of you. I couldn’t even get myself out of bed in the morning. Taking you back to Mir’s family seemed like the best thing for you.”

  Samir couldn’t listen anymore. He turned away and headed for the door.

  “Once you met Lata you wanted nothing to do with me,” she said to his back and he stopped. “You took to her like a fish to water. You were the most beautiful child, a spitting image of your father, who was the most handsome man I ever met, and the kindest. She couldn’t keep her eyes off you. When I left, you didn’t even leave her side to give me a hug. Years later when I wanted to bring you back, you didn’t want me anymore.”

  He turned around. That hadn’t changed. He wanted nothing to do with her.

  She started coughing again, but this time her coughing wouldn’t stop. Kim came back into the room and turned on a nebulizer. Liquid hissed from the plastic funnel into her nose and mouth and her chest stopped heaving.

  She moved the nebulizer away and spoke to Mili instead of him. “One more day. Please stay just one more day.”

  Mili didn’t answer. She didn’t turn pleading eyes on him. She looked to him to see what he wanted. What he could take.

  He wanted to say no. The house suffocated him. He was choking on all the things she had told him. And Mili waited for his answer. “Fine. But we leave tomorrow morning.” As soon as he said it, he wanted to take it back.

  Mili’s eyes misted over. She looked at him as if he were some sort of fucking hero and he couldn’t take it.

  He looked away, furious. He would never forgive her for this.

  23

  The choice was between sleeping in his childhood nursery and the threadbare couch in the living room. It was a no-brainer. Mili took the nursery and Samir took the couch. It was hard to fit his body on the tiny thing but he didn’t expect to sleep much anyway. All he wanted to do was get through this night, get through tomorrow morning, then drop Mili off and go back to his life, to his family and his work. All the things he himself had built, not the lot that had been shoved down his throat.

  He didn’t expect it to but sleep did come.

  And with it came the nightmare.

  The dark, bottomless well, darker than any darkness. He dangled over it. His feet cycling the air desperately, his grandfather’s fingers fisted in his shirt his only lifeline. The collar choked him, made it hard to breathe, to beg. Don’t let me go. Please, Dadaji, don’t let me go. His stomach catapulted into his throat and he fell without end.

  He sat up on the couch, panting. Water flooded his lungs, burning fire up his nose and into his head. Sobs echoed around him, bouncing off stone walls.

  He wiped his forehead against his sleeve.

  It’s okay, Chintu, I’m here. Stop struggling, I’m here.

  Bhai had jumped in after him, carried him for hours on his shoulders, until Baiji pulled them out. Bhai had put him in the bucket first, let Baiji pull him out first. But the darkness of those hours had blinded Samir for days afterward. Even in the harshest Rajasthan sunlight the darkness had stayed with him. It wasn’t just the slashing belt but that darkness that had woken him screaming every night of his childhood.

  And now again. Here.

  The old bastard might have been the one to throw him in that well, to shred his back, but it was the woman in this house who was really responsible for it. And now she wanted him to somehow absolve her, to be a son? Everything she had said twisted around his throat in a noose. The labored breathing that had fueled her words pulled it tight. Mili’s face with her bleeding heart gave it the final tug.

  He never wanted to see Mili’s face again. He hadn’t felt so helpless, so desperately lost, ever. And given the kind of wimpy, pathetic child he’d been, that was saying something. He was in hell. And Mili was responsible.

  He pushed himself off the couch. He needed air. How had that woman wanted him to take his nursery for the night? It was the creepiest fucking thing he had ever heard. The idea of Mili in there was sick enough. Tucked under the quilts that had done nothing to keep out the brutal cold of his childhood in this house. He slammed his fist into the rickety screen door and stepped into the night. The humid summer air hit his face but he couldn’t pull it all the way into his lungs.

  He found a swing on the back porch and sank into it. The din of frogs calling to their mates was deafening. Despite the horny frogs, despite the sparkling fireflies, the night felt dead. This place felt like the end of the earth; there wa
s nowhere to go from here. He hopped off the swing, so on edge his skin felt too tight around him. The nightmare had left his T-shirt damp. The sultry air glued it to his body. He grabbed the edge of the shirt, pulled it over his head and dropped it on the porch before stepping onto the damp grass. The yard was overgrown and deep, edged with thick, looming woods. His bare feet began to eat the grassy earth. The breeze hit his chest but did nothing to cool him down. The faster he walked the more restless it made him. Soon he was faced with the thicket of trees. One step and he’d be inside the unending darkness, be inside the well again. This time he wouldn’t be afraid.

  The woman had actually reached for him. She had expected him to let her take him in her arms. She had expected him to let her look at him that way. With a mother’s eyes, heavy with hope, expectation, pride. And he’d let her. He felt soiled. Only one woman could look at him like that—only his mother, and she wasn’t here. She was eight fucking thousand miles away, terrified of losing him to this, this dark place, the way she had lost her husband.

  He moved to step into the darkness and heard a gasp behind him.

  He spun around. Mili’s slight form stood a few feet from him. The oversized white T-shirt Kim had given her caught the moonlight and slid down one shoulder like a Grecian toga. Her mass of curls exploded from a band at the top of her head. She wrapped her arms around herself. Even in this heat she was trembling.

  “Please don’t go in there, Samir. It’s too dark. I don’t want to go in there.” Her eyes were pools of moonlight.

  “Then don’t.”

  “I can’t let you go in there alone.” Her look was classic Mili. Fierce with sincerity. Everything out there in the open.

  His heart did an awful squeeze.

  “I can’t go back in that house.” His voice came out a whisper.

  She came to him then. Before he could move away, her arms went around his waist and pulled tight. She pressed her face into his chest, exactly where his heart throbbed out its painful beat. He wanted to untangle her arms from around him and push her away, but he stood there rooted, paralyzed, as she clung to him. For a long time he didn’t do anything, he couldn’t feel anything. Then the warm wetness on his skin seeped through his numb haze and burned a hole right in the center of his frozen chest, right where her cheek was pressed against his heart.