A Bollywood Affair
Page 30
Virat looked up from rubbing Rima’s feet. “Oh, a nurse told you that, did she? Was that before or after you turned on the Sam-charm?”
“He’s a married man now, Virat. Don’t say things like that. Where’s your wife, Samir?” Rima said with such teasing deliberation Samir turned to Virat, who was grinning like an idiot without a care in the world.
“You told her!” Relief flooded through Samir. Walking on eggshells around Rima had felt just wrong.
“Everything,” Virat said. “Should have done it a lot sooner.”
Rima gave Virat one of her caressing smiles and Virat slid up the bed and kissed her. With too much tongue for a hospital room, if you asked him.
An overwhelming urge to see Mili surged through Samir.
“And you’re okay, Rima?” he asked. As okay as she could be with Virat cutting off her air supply.
She looked up with fuzzy eyes. “Of course I’m okay. They were kids and it’s not like Virat knew when he met me.”
“I worship you. You’re a goddess. Did I tell you that?” Virat said, reaching for her again. “I told you, Chintu, luckiest bastard on earth.”
“Undoubtedly,” Samir said, pushing him away and giving Rima a hug.
“Go find your own woman, Chintu,” Virat said, smiling, “this one’s mine.”
“Try and stop me.” And with that Samir ran down the hall all the way to the Baby ICU.
He had switched baby-duty with Mili before going to see Rima. Now Mili was switching with Baiji. Baiji patted Samir’s cheek and gave Mili a knowing look before she went to her granddaughter.
Mili blushed. Furiously.
“What was that about?” Samir asked, watching the color suffuse her cheeks and dying to trace it with his fingers, with his lips.
Mili narrowed her eyes at him. “You’ve been bribing your family, haven’t you?” Her lips quirked and her tone flashed with her usual spark. And no, Bhai wasn’t the luckiest bastard in the world. He was.
“I would if it put that smile on your face.”
She looked away, still blushing, and watched Baiji pick up his niece, who usually was impossible to look away from. But with Mili in her bright white kurti over jeans, with her hair springing out of that stupid braid and framing her face, he was having a hard time looking at anything else. She waved at Baiji and Samir wondered what had happened between them.
“How’s Rima?” she asked, and then raised a brow at him when he smiled in response. “Can we go see her? She wanted a baby report.”
“She’s a little busy right now. But I’m starving. You want to run down to the cafeteria? Javed said they have the best samosas.”
Her eyes actually sparkled and anticipation reared up inside him like a fire-breathing dragon who’d slept too long. He took her hand and walked to the elevator. She didn’t pull away and the dragon let loose another huge flaming breath.
She watched the elevator doors and rubbed her eyes. His heart squeezed. She hadn’t left the hospital in two days. Hadn’t left him. “I’m so sorry you had to go through this. You look exhausted.”
She gave him a sideways glance. “You don’t look so great yourself.”
“Thanks a lot.” The elevator opened and they entered. It was empty. He found himself praying for a power outage.
She smiled. “I don’t mean that literally. Although, what’s with the beard?” She threw a pointed look at his jaw and her eyes hitched on his lips.
Every cell in his body leapt toward her. He used all his strength to hold it back. “I don’t know. I haven’t felt like myself lately. No point looking like myself then, I guess.”
She swallowed but she didn’t look away.
“Mili, what you did for me, for my family—I don’t know how I would have got through this without you. I don’t know how I could ever thank you.”
Her eyes flashed fierce one moment, soft the next. “Actually, I know exactly how you could thank me.”
“No.”
She blinked up at him and he almost smiled. “But you don’t even know what I was going to ask for.”
“I’m not taking the haveli back, Mili.”
“You can’t just give me something so big, Samir.”
The elevator stopped and they stepped out. By some miracle the corridor was isolated. This was definitely his day. “Mili.” He opened his mouth then closed it again, suddenly nervous. “What I did, I could never tell you how sorry I am. I understand that you can’t forgive me. I can’t forgive myself. But let me make it right. Please.”
Mili waited for him to say more. She prayed. She held her breath.
He didn’t.
Had she really thought she couldn’t forgive him? Had she really thought she could live without him? “Is that what you want, Samir? My forgiveness? I don’t need the haveli for that. I know now that you didn’t mean for it to turn out the way it did.” How had she ever thought he would knowingly hurt her? “Of course I forgive you. You’re free.” She stepped away from him and then instantly regretted it.
He stepped closer. “Mili—”
Three nurses came chattering down the corridor. They slowed down when they passed Samir and started giggling like schoolgirls. He didn’t seem to notice. His gaze never left Mili.
Enough was enough. She reached out and slammed her palm into the elevator button.
The elevator doors slid open and she grabbed his arm and dragged him back into the metal cage. His only reaction was the slightest raise of an eyebrow. She took a step closer to him and looked him straight in the eye. “Samir, isn’t there any other way you can think of to make this right?”
His eyes widened. She loved surprising him, loved the way he looked at her when she threw caution to the wind and did exactly as she pleased. She bit her lip and smiled up at him, feeling every bit of the power she had over him. She had no idea why he had given her that power but she loved it. It made her feel as tall as him, taller even. It made the fire burning in her heart flare and lick at every inch of her.
He reached behind her and pushed a button on the panel and the elevator bounced to a halt. “You got any ideas?” The heat was back in his eyes and it wasn’t nearly as restrained as his voice. He was doing it again. He was laying himself bare in front of her. And for some reason she knew he always would.
She reached up and touched his face, his overgrown stubble as thick and silken as his hair. “Don’t ever thank me for caring for your family. They . . . they don’t feel like just your family.”
“They don’t?”
She shook her head. “And you don’t feel like my brother-in-law.”
He grinned, some of that wonderful arrogance returning to his face. He plucked her hand from his face and pulled it to his heart. It thudded beneath her fingers. “I’m not.”
She closed her eyes. Suddenly too shy to say more.
“Mili, if there is something you’re trying to say, say it. Please.” The desperation in his voice was pure pain. And beautiful.
“I can’t.” Warmth rose in her cheeks.
“Okay. If I don’t feel like a brother-in-law, what is it I do feel like?” A smile seeped into his voice.
“I don’t know.” She wanted to hide her face in his chest.
Samir lifted her chin with his finger. No way was she going all bashful on him now. “Let me give you a few choices.”
She smiled. Eyes closed. Cheeks blazing.
“The best friend you ever had? Someone whose family would kill him if he ever let you go? Someone who loves you so much he doesn’t know what to do with it? The answer to all your prayers? The person you’ve waited for all your—”
She opened her eyes and placed one finger on his lips. It was the lightest touch but his heart thumped like elephants parading across his chest.
“Do I have to pick only one?” she said.
Laughter trembled in his belly. He leaned over and dropped kisses on her eyelids, on her wet cheeks. Her skin was the softest velvet and he had craved it for so long. She pr
essed into his kisses, her smile widening with each touch of his lips. His fingers, mad with hunger, undid the twisting strands of the fat braid hanging down to her waist and soaked up the silk that tangled around them.
She grabbed on to his shoulders and climbed up on his feet just as his lips found hers, the fit so perfect he forgot to think, forgot to breathe, and lost himself in stealing his life back from her lips. It raged back through him, everything he had ever lost. He plucked it from her lips, whispered it back into her mouth. When he finally pulled away he found her eyes glazed with the same ravenous need that raged through him and he had to remind himself where they were.
She didn’t seem to care. She reached up and gave him that look, the one that asked him to bend to her. And he did because he could never refuse her anything. She dug her fingers in his hair, wrapped him up in her fierce warmth, and spoke in his ear, her whisper trembling with emotion. “You’re everything, Samir. You’re everything I ever wanted. And I choose you. You are my love, my freedom, and I choose you.” She dragged her lips across his jaw and found his lips.
His world spun. He would have to get used to that. He pulled her body impossibly closer. Terror of ever having to let her go gripped his gut. “Screw freedom,” he said against her lips. “I’m not ever letting you go.”
Banging sounded from outside the elevator. “Hello? Anyone in there? Are you stuck? Hold on, we’ll get you out.”
He groaned and Mili threw her head back and laughed, her onyx eyes sparkling, her midnight curls cascading down her back, the smell of night-blooming jasmine flooding his senses. Oh yeah, he was well and truly stuck. And no fucking way was anyone getting him out. Ever.
EPILOGUE
A single wedding altar stood on the sandy beach rimmed by a sun-drenched ocean that disappeared into the horizon. The celebratory lilt of shehnai flutes piped from speakers and mingled with the gentle crashing of the waves. An auspicious pyre dotted the center of the altar like a scarlet bindi. By the pyre sat a chanting priest and one bride and her one and only groom. A kurta of the sheerest silk stretched across his humungous shoulders. A vermillion sari edged with the most intricate gold wound around her delicately curvy body.
Around them in concentric circles of color gathered their friends and family, sipping wine and munching cocktail-sized samosas.
Lata surveyed the scene from the very front of the chaos, where her sons had obtained the plushest of sofas for her and the bride’s grandmother. Unlike the beaming grandmother, tears flowed in rivulets down the bride’s velvet cheeks. Her chest hiccupped with sobs. The bride’s brother-in-law dropped a kiss on his own wife’s head and went to the bride. He switched out the empty tissue box next to her with a new one and winked at his brother, who stared at his bride’s tears with almost absurd pride.
“Some things never change,” thought the groom’s brother.
“I still can’t believe those lashes are real,” thought the groom.
“Good Lord, he has the most beautiful shoulders in the world and I can’t wait to get my hands on him,” thought the bride.
“Please, God, let the poor fool get whatever she’s crying for this time,” thought the groom’s mother.
And she did.
A READING GROUP GUIDE
A BOLLYWOOD AFFAIR
Sonali Dev
ABOUT THIS GUIDE
The suggested questions are included
to enhance your group’s reading of
Sonali Dev’s A Bollywood Affair.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Mili believes she loves Virat without ever having seen him. But when she feels things for Samir, she is unable to categorize that as love. Although Mili’s situation is unique, do you believe conditioning by society influences whom we fall in love with? At a wider level does societal conditioning dictate our friendships and people we are drawn to?
2. Samir is still reeling from abandonment as a child and yet he puts himself in a position where Mili abandoning him is almost inevitable. Do you think we tend to put ourselves in positions where our worst fears come true? And if we do, why do you think that is?
3. Mili accepts her lot in life but she keeps working within the confines of her situation to change it. Have you ever been in a situation where you couldn’t change the source of the problem but you worked around the problem to keep going and make it bearable? And does that ever really work?
4. Why do you think Samir never tells Mili who he is? Do you believe the reasons he gives himself—his script, her injury? Could he have told her sooner? What do you believe would have happened if he had?
5. Why do you think Mili never tells Samir about her marriage? Does her lie by omission make Samir’s lie easier to forgive? Do you think that their relationship is based on lies or do you believe that the foundation of their relationship is outside of the lies?
6. Naani makes decisions for Mili she believes will benefit Mili. Baiji does the same for Samir. Do you believe families, by virtue of loving us, have the right to “do what is best” for us? What about your own family—how far would you go for those you love?
7. Why do you think the system of child marriages or even arranged marriages, for that matter, where the choice lies outside the marrying couple, ever started? What was the benefit to society? Apart from the obvious injustice of it, what other repercussions does a society suffer as a result of such a system?
8. Culturally, does the Indian community in the story seem like an isolated island? Do you believe it is more important for immigrant communities to assimilate and integrate into mainstream American society, or is holding on to their roots important and beneficial? Why?
9. Despite Mili and Samir being from India, their worlds are very different. One rural and traditional, the other urban and more Western. What do you think fundamentally attracts them to each other despite these differences? Do you believe a similarity in backgrounds/belief systems helps a marriage or is the opposite of that true?
10. Mili and her roommate, Ridhi, have both been raised in traditional Indian families but in two different countries. Both families believe the women should follow the path set for them. Both women maneuver their way around these expectations to get what they want. Do you think the burden of a set path to follow is unique to the Indian culture? Or is it something all cultures have to deal with? What kind of expectations have you had to work around in your own life? Can we ever be empowered enough to make decisions free from expectations?
11. Tradition and family values play a large part in the lives of all the major characters. How do you think traditions and family values help or hinder the characters? What is the place of tradition in today’s world?
Photo by Vernice Dollar of Studio 16
Sonali Dev’s first literary work was a play about mistaken identities performed at her neighborhood Diwali extravaganza in Mumbai. She was eight years old. Despite this early success, Sonali spent the next few decades getting degrees in architecture and written communication, migrating across the globe, and starting a family while writing for magazines and Web sites. With the advent of her first gray hair her love for telling stories returned full force, and she now combines it with her insights into Indian culture to conjure up stories that make a mad tangle with her life as supermom, domestic goddess, and world traveler. Sonali is an active member of RWA and WFWA. She lives in the Chicago suburbs with her very patient and often amused husband, two teens who demand both patience and humor, and the world’s most perfect dog. Visit her on the Web at sonalidev.com.
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 2014 by Sonali Dev
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
eISBN-13: 978-1-61773
-014-6
eISBN-10: 1-61773-014-9
First Kensington Electronic Edition: November 2014
ISBN: 978-1-6177-3013-9