by Leah Franqui
Swati wanted to have opinions about big things in complicated ways. She didn’t want to just have a feeling that something was bad or good, or wrong or right; she wanted to talk about the nuance, the details, discuss economic policies and the intricacies of myths and music composition, but she was starting so late, and she was so worried she would get it wrong, say something stupid. She could talk about the world immediately around her, the little things in her realm. She could correct someone’s seasoning in a papad ki sabzi, she could critique a neckline on a kurta and a child’s behavior during Diwali, but it was a small circle of the world. Rachel could talk about words being used correctly and could tell you why. Very average. Now it sounded wrong to Swati.
“Let’s hope so,” Rachel said flatly, responding to Swati’s statement-as-a-question.
“What do you usually make yourself for lunch?” Swati asked, idly curious. What did people eat in America? Burgers, she supposed. Not very healthy.
“Oh, a chopped salad, a soup, something like that. I’ve tried baking my own bread, but the oven makes it tricky. It’s a shame, though, baking bread is something that makes me really happy,” Rachel said.
Swati was affronted. She was asking about lunch, not happiness. Why did Rachel think everyone cared so much about what made her happy? But part of Swati also wondered about the way Rachel could just talk about these things, personal, selfish things, and feel no shame. What must that be like?
“That sounds like such a lot of work, cooking,” Swati said, but Rachel just shrugged. Rachel seemed to like doing things that were exhausting, even when there was a perfectly comfortable way to do them. It was a strange quality, someone who liked tiring themselves out. It was the way you would treat a child, trying to get them ready for bed, making sure they spent their energy.
“What makes you happy?” Rachel asked, and her directness, along with her question, made Swati blush violently. What a thing to ask someone, someone twice your age. She had never asked anyone that question.
“I don’t know.”
“Surely something does.”
Swati thought desperately.
“I like shopping,” she offered weakly, after much consideration.
“That’s it?” Rachel said.
It was a rude response, but it made Swati laugh. “I suppose.”
Rachel leaned back in her seat, looking at Swati carefully.
“You know, I always thought you were so happy with your husband. At least, that’s what Dhruv always told me.”
All the blood that had rushed to Swati’s face in her blush drained from it now. To talk about these things? In public? What was Rachel thinking?
“Dhruv doesn’t understand anything,” Swati said, her voice an angry whisper. “And I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Sometimes an outside person—”
Swati shook her head at Rachel’s words. Outside people were the last people to tell something to. “You aren’t outside. You are my daughter now,” Swati said. Well, it was true, she had married Dhruv and become the property of his family, no matter if she was white or not. Rachel’s face twisted a bit at the word daughter, but Swati was thinking about her words and barely noticed.
“What else did Dhruv tell you?” she asked, her voice still low and quiet. She shouldn’t continue talking about this, but she was curious. What had her son said of her to his wife? An Indian girl might never have answered so directly, but Rachel wasn’t like them. How many other mothers-in-law could ask such an honest question? She might as well take advantage of it while she could.
“He always said yours was this great love story. That you saw each other on the day of your arrangement and fell wildly in love and used to sneak off to meet each other at the movies.”
“I see.” Swati supposed she couldn’t blame her son all that much. He was only repeating Vinod’s version of the story, which had grown romantic and rosy with time. She had never understood why he had told their story that way; it made no sense to her and seemed at odds with his literal way of seeing things, but perhaps he had become sentimental in his old age. Perhaps some secret part of him had always wanted a love story. Or perhaps he really thought that this was true. It was that last idea that was the saddest to her, that two people could live under the same roof, share a life, and yet think that life was two completely different things.
As far as Swati was concerned, her relationship before marriage with Vinod had consisted of three supervised visits with at least thirteen family members present watching her as she served tea and sweets. They had gone to the movies, yes, with at least four of her male cousins present, and sat in separate rows. Swati hadn’t liked the sound of his laugh, but he hadn’t laughed much, so that was a relief.
She hadn’t really had a choice about him. So she had tried to like what she could and ignore the rest. And if that was love for him, she was sorry to have broken his heart. But it wasn’t love for her, not anymore.
“I guess it wasn’t?” Rachel asked. Swati struggled to gather her words. To speak ill of Vinod to someone would go against everything she had ever been taught that she owed her husband. It would be disrespectful, to tell Rachel what she really felt. And yet she was amazed that Dhruv, who had watched their near-silent marriage over the first eighteen years of his life, had believed his father, had carried forth his myth of romance.
She couldn’t say that it had been a bad marriage. In fact, most of her life with Vinod had been a good one. They had married when she was nineteen. Vinod was a Marwari living in Kolkata who worshipped at the same temple as her family; who worked at his family grocery business, which was right next to her father’s own kitchen-supply store; and whose grandparents came from the same village her own had left. He was clean, well-off, and didn’t smoke, drink, or eat meat. Later she would find that he did, in fact, do those first two things, but in a discreet way, which was all that mattered, really.
“It was normal,” Swati said, but Rachel didn’t understand her, she could see. She tried again. “It was what I thought it should be. But I did not—I was not in love with Vinod. I have never been in love with anyone. Vinod just likes to say it because it is a nice story. Maybe he thinks that is what you want to hear.”
“What I want to hear?”
“You are American. That is what American stories are like. Maybe he made it like that.”
“Oh,” Rachel said, her mouth forming a circle. “But, if it’s not true, that’s sort of, well. Uncomfortable.” Swati was confused. “I mean, he’s like, taking away your narrative. Your story.”
Swati shrugged. Who cared about such things? Stories didn’t matter. But then, she was always annoyed when Vinod said romantic things to her in public, things she didn’t want or need, things he never said to her in private. It was like he was performing and she never understood why.
“I wonder why Dhruv didn’t tell me,” Rachel mused, her face unhappy.
“He didn’t know,” Swati offered. “Children don’t see their parents. They are in their own worlds.”
“I saw my parents. At least, I think I did. Do. They fight, they make up, my mother worries, my father ignores, they are both afraid that they’ve passed their problems along to their children, they are both probably right.”
Swati was so uncomfortable that her legs prickled; she wanted to get up, to leave. Why was Rachel saying such things? Children shouldn’t know such things about their parents.
“That’s somehow insane to me,” Rachel muttered, shaking her head. “To live in a house, to be the product of people and not know them.”
“Not everything has to be so, so known,” Swati said, mortified, irritated, needing this conversation to be over, this lunch to be over. She had been a good mother, she had protected her child from the reality of his parents as people. That was what it was to be a parent, to hide your personhood and care for your child.
The waiter took away the remains of her now-deconstructed curry and Rachel’s salad. Swati was annoyed by all of i
t, the conversation, yes, but especially the food. A wretched thought struck her. Without someone to make food she would be stuck with meals like this forever. Certainly the idea of cooking her own lunch every day filled her with horror. She did not like cooking, not much, anyway, and the work that went into it overwhelmed her now. She had cooked when she was younger, yes, she had had to, but the idea of it now, with her older body, was horrifying. What would she do? What would Rachel cook? Would it be vegetarian? Would she want to eat it? Perhaps she could persuade Rachel of the benefits of a cook. A few hours a day, nothing like a live-in. Surely she would see the benefit of that? After all, everyone liked being served.
“Are you ready to go?” Rachel asked, her voice cutting through Swati’s wondering. As they left, Swati lingered in the air-conditioning before joining Rachel in the heat, her brow already beading with sweat. If only she had ended the meal with some curd, which would have kept her cool. This outside food was terrible for the body.
Despite her physical discomfort, to which walking to the market ten minutes away only contributed negatively, Swati found herself in awe of her new daughter-in-law as she watched her shop. Among the stores selling wicker items and synthetic saris and cheap lenghas and gold jewelry and dry goods, the eggs sitting in infinite rows, the Maggi noodles and mustard oil bottles and baskets and baskets of rices and dal and chana and dried Kashmiri chilies and wine stalls with men counting out their rupees for country liquor and small bottles of whiskey and gin, Rachel moved fast, dodging scooters and bicycles and honking cars and winding rickshaws, looking for what she needed.
What did all this look like to her? Swati wondered. She had seen some movies set in America, and everything looked so orderly there. The shops where you bought food were air-conditioned and white and everything was all together. How had Rachel understood what to do here? Had it all been chaos to her? And how did she have so much energy? She moved from place to place vigorously, immune to the heat, and eventually directed Swati, weak from the humidity, to sit as they picked out pillowcase covers to swaddle their newly acquired pillows in an air-conditioned shop in Pali Naka Market, a strip of produce sellers who had not only the traditional Indian vegetables but exotic things like beets, bok choy, and kale. Rachel knew all this, and she told her mother-in-law how she had discovered it, how she had tried this store for sesame oil, this one for cheese, how there was a better place farther away but it was more expensive, how this one had more kinds of pasta and that one would sell you pav, the soft bread that was a remnant of the Portuguese conquistadors in India.
How had she done so much so fast? Mumbai was hot, year-round, and massive, and the smells were assaultive, and Rachel didn’t speak a word of Hindi, but there she went, throwing herself into it. Swati didn’t understand how she could be so brave, so confident, and she felt small next to her. It had taken all the strength Swati could have mustered to get from Kolkata to Mumbai. She didn’t have anything left. How was the girl still going in this sweaty mess of a place?
At one point, Rachel stopped to take a photo of a man sitting in a paan stall, bright with the colors of the cigarette packets he sold and the many ingredients that made up the mouth freshener, mint and rose and betel leaves, with packets of fennel seeds hanging like streamers around him. The stall was small, so to save space the seller, as most did, sat on a panel, leaving another panel free to mix paan, his legs curled up, his body fitting neatly into the space. He looked, to Swati, like every other paan seller she had ever seen, and she looked at Rachel, confused.
“What happened?” Swati said.
“Why do you say that? ‘What happened?’ Dhruv says that, too, when I do something. Nothing happened. I just took a photo.”
“Why?” Swati said. There wasn’t a mountain or a bridge or a monument or anything else worth taking a photo of.
“It’s cool. The way he just is tucked in there. It’s so colorful and contained. I mean, it’s sort of a shame he only has that little space, but it’s kind of cool, what he does with it,” Rachel said, gesturing to the paan seller, who thought Rachel wanted to buy something and sat up, alert, like a stray dog sensing spare food. Swati frowned at him, shaking her head, and he deflated. Next to her, Rachel was tapping on her phone.
“He thinks you want to buy something from him.”
“Oh, maybe I should. I took his photo after all.” Rachel looked concerned.
“Many people have taken your photo, I am sure. Did they pay you?” Swati said. Looking down the street, she could see someone doing it right at that moment itself, pretending to take a selfie while including Rachel in the frame.
“Oh. Really? But, why?” Rachel looked even more confused, and Swati pointed in the direction of the person, who now had dropped the pretense of the selfie and was just shooting Rachel, who waved hesitantly.
“They are like that only. Someone like you, someone fair, someone in Western clothing, something different.” Swati shrugged. Who knew why some people did such things?
“Even here in Mumbai?” Rachel asked.
“They are from these other places. Maybe they come from outside of the city. Maybe they haven’t seen someone like you before.”
“I think I should give him money, though. The paanwalla,” Rachel said, worried.
“No. Never mind,” Swati said. Rachel nodded, biting her lip, and then started typing again. “You are sending the photo?” Who would want a photo of a paan seller? Swati wondered. It was just so common. You might as well take a photo of a broom.
“I’m putting it on Instagram. What should I say? ‘Hashtag paanseller’? ‘Hashtag paanwalla’? Or is it too, I don’t know, colonialist?” Rachel said, smiling. “I know, it’s idiotic. But my friends like to see what I’m up to here. It’s pretty. I’m going to do it. You are sure he doesn’t mind?”
“Why don’t you just tell your friends?” Swati asked, curious, ignoring Rachel’s question. Who knew if the paanwalla minded? Who cared? She didn’t really understand social media, although everyone she knew was on the Facebook, putting heart images up for everything. That, at least, would be better than a photo of someone on the street.
Rachel looked away. “It’s hard to make it sound good, over the phone. Easier in a photo. Come on, we have more to get.” Rachel walked down Pali Naka Road quickly, leaving Swati gasping for air behind her.
They picked out things, sheets and towels and a pressure cooker, more than they could comfortably take home. Rachel looked over their purchases, unhappy, concerned about how to bundle it all into a cab. She had suggested a rickshaw, but Swati had put her foot down at that; they were not comfortable for her back.
“How are we ever going to get all this home?”
Swati looked at her, surprised. “They will deliver it.” Doesn’t she know that? Swati wondered. Everyone would deliver things. You couldn’t just expect people to carry their things home. What kind of place would do something like that?
“They will?” Rachel looked amazed. She turned to the shop owner. “You will? Home delivery?” Swati explained quickly in Hindi what they wanted, ordering him to be careful with their things and be fast, and he nodded profusely as they left the shop. “Do we pay them when it arrives?” Rachel asked, looking confused.
“You already paid.”
“For the delivery, I mean.”
“The delivery is free,” Swati informed her. Rachel almost dropped the pressure cooker in her amazement.
Swati was filled with a sense of self-satisfaction that was so powerful it even gave her temporary relief from the heat. Without her, Rachel never would have known this important thing. And with Dhruv at work, who could she ask? Well, now she would ask Swati.
It would be, Swati told herself, a good thing for them to have her there. She would teach Rachel how to really understand India. How to let people do things for her. Swati would have a purpose, a fundamental thing. She had to teach her daughter-in-law about the world. She would see Bollywood stars and be near her son. She would become happy
. Even if she did not talk about such things, she still felt them. Real happiness was something she could find, beyond shopping, beyond the little circle of life that she had seen. She would be close to these two happy people and learn about happiness from them. Then she would be it herself.
As the days passed, however, Swati realized that her new life, which she had immediately thought of as done and dusted, wasn’t quite so simple.
First, there was Vinod. She had hoped, even assumed, that he would, once he had understood that she’d left, accept her departure, perhaps even be relieved by it. Now he could stop pretending that there was love between them. Now he could live without her reminders, her complaints, her corrections, her dutiful attempts to keep his weight down and his heart healthy. He could meet friends for a drink at his club whenever he pleased. He could fall asleep and wake up to cricket, and never face her unhappiness at the prospect. He could have nonvegetarian food in their home and whiskey every evening. Surely the benefits of such a life would far outweigh whatever detriments there were to not having a wife around.
But apparently Vinod did not think so. He called her daily. For a few days, she had hidden from the calls, dismissing them, but then she felt she owed him something, especially as he kept calling, and they hadn’t really sorted out any of the logistics of the separation, so she answered, her voice quavering. Vinod didn’t let her say a word, he simply launched into a series of lectures connecting the Vedas to the sacred nature of marriage. Swati, confused, listened in silence, until Vinod ran out of breath.
“Well?” he said, panting.
“Very nice,” Swati said tentatively. She couldn’t very well say that religious ideology wasn’t nice, could she?
