My Last Love Story

by Falguni Kothari

  LSKS was an acronym for, Loko shu keh shey? Or, What will people say?

  It was the most common rhetoric Gujju parents—any parent, for that matter—badgered their children with.

  My parents had plagued me with such questions in sigh-worthy regularity. What will people say, Simi, if you dye your hair purple? What will people think, Simeen, if you fail your exams? Don’t be rude to your grandmother’s sister’s grandniece’s mother-in-law. Behave. Behave. Behave yourself in public.

  I started giggling. I was that flustered.

  “Don’t encourage him.” Zayaan looked thoroughly disgusted with us.

  We could do that to him. Only Nirvaan and I could ruffle Zayaan’s feathers that easily. Any minute now, he’d start lecturing us in Farsi.

  Nirvaan’s arm snaked around my middle, pulling me back against his chest, as he sniggered like a college boy. His breath tickled my ear, making me whimper. Zayaan’s eyes went dark and glittery as he glared at us—not angry, not envious, but something in between.

  My face was probably scarlet by now.

  “What I’ve learned with this time bomb ticking inside my head, chodu, is that life is too short to live in regret.” Nirvaan’s laughter faded, his voice went low and hoarse, and I stilled in my husband’s arms. “Life is so fucking short, my loves. So, fuck the world and its fucking rules.”

  Like a maestro at the helm of an orchestra, Zayaan steered his ruffled feathers back to smoothness. “Easy for you to say, chodu. You’ll be dead. We won’t be.” He broke off and clamped his jaw shut in an obvious effort not to say something regrettable.

  There was a lot of that going around between the three of us—regret, broken words.

  It wasn’t the first time we’d had this conversation. It wouldn’t be the last, not with Nirvaan trying to cram a whole lifetime into one year or less. Both men were right in their own ways, but Zayaan’s point was undeniable. What Nirvaan expected from us would get tongues wagging, and they’d never stop. I didn’t want to care what the world thought of me or how I’d chosen to live my life. But did I really have the luxury to be a part of this world and not care?

  I frowned into my sake. Experience had taught me to care, to be careful, and to be private. I couldn’t change who I was, not even for my dying husband. But dare I try? I raised the sake cup to my lips and took a swallow.

  And what of the child? The child who, if conceived, would be Nirvaan’s and mine…and Zayaan’s, too, in a way.

  What would people say about such a child?

  We got home earlier than expected. The guys’ intense exchange hadn’t ruined our dinner exactly—we’d managed to slide the conversation back to a glossy, innuendo-filled level again—but it’d left us not quite in the jolly mood to go clubbing, like we’d originally planned.

  I tucked the groceries away and then headed for the bathroom for a much-needed soak in the tub and some much-desired time alone. As my body relaxed in the warm pool of foamy water, I tried to do the same with my mind, immersing it in the historical thriller I’d downloaded on my Kindle. Every so often, I was jarred away from the intrigues of Napoleon’s court by the sounds of laser guns and bombs exploding beyond the powder-blue walls of the bathroom.

  The guys were trying to obliterate each other via their gaming avatars. I winced at a particularly loud bomb blast, followed by a string of clipped curses and a bout of heated argument about the best way to circumvent land mines and storm alien territory without getting blown to bits. Whoever had penned the phrase boys and their toys had known the male yins of the universe well. I remembered my mother muttering something to the effect in reference to my father and brothers pretty much every day.

  I had a pair of them—brothers, I meant. Surin and Sarvar were both much older than me, and ever since the fatality that had taken our parents, they’d become more parents than siblings to me. I’d had a third brother, a sickly boy named Sam, who hadn’t survived his first year in this world. I had him to thank for my existence. If Sam hadn’t died, I wouldn’t have been born, as my parents had wanted no more than three children.

  When I was little, my brothers would tease me about being a replacement, the spare wheel, the girl who’d destroyed the manly kingdom of the three Batliwala brothers. I’d scream for them to take their hideous words back, sob as if my heart was breaking, until the day my mother had sat me down and opened my eyes to the bullshit that was the male psyche.

  Mean to begin with or not, Sarvar had become the kind of brother every sister should have. He didn’t hover or smother, yet not a day passed when I hadn’t poured my heart out to him. Sarvar was my anchor in the ocean of life, a safe harbor for tempestuous times. Lucky for me, he lived in San Jose, close enough to meet when we wished.

  I have the Desais to thank for it. Ever generous and helpful, they’d somehow convinced Sarvar to move to the States right after my marriage. They’d sponsored his legalization documents and whatnot. They’d even offered him a managerial job at one of their motels/hotels, but he hadn’t taken them up on it. These last six years, Sarvar had expanded our family’s plastic business across the Americas, and so far, both my brothers seemed satisfied with the results. It’d been my father’s dream to expand Batliwala Plastics outside of India, and I felt incredibly proud that my brothers had made it come true. I liked to believe, in a small way, I’d had a hand in it, too.

  Surin, seven years my elder, still lived in Surat, close to the factory we’d almost lost right after our parents’ deaths. The Desais hadn’t been able to convince him to immigrate to California. To leave India would mean selling Batliwala Plastics or trusting someone else to run it, and Surin would cut off his right arm before he did that. He’d fought so hard to keep the factory, sustain it, and make it prosper. He’d shed sweat, blood, and youth for it. He’d never leave it in someone else’s care. He couldn’t even bring himself to take a decent holiday with his wife and kids for fear the factory would collapse in his absence.

  I hadn’t seen Surin in over three years because of that. He wouldn’t come to California unless there were an emergency, and I couldn’t go to India until…Nirvaan let me.

  At times, I missed Surin as violently as I missed my parents. And then there were days when he’d cease to exist in my American reality. As if being out of sight, out of tangible reach, he’d become a ghost in my mind.

  I stared at the words I held between my hands, unable to decipher them, as my mind slowly clouded with memories. My parents. My brothers. Surat. My life there. All I’d lost. All I’d gained. Nirvaan. Zayaan. My life here.

  I leaned over the edge of the cast-iron tub and set the Kindle down on the closed toilet seat. My movements upset the cooling water, and waves splashed against my breasts and back in protest. I pulled the plug, watching the water spool into the sieve and gurgle down the drain. If only I could rid myself of ghosts so easily.

  I stood up and stepped out of the tub. Naked and shivering, I walked across the beige-tiled floor into the shower. Under a pounding hot spray, I soaped and loofahed my body. I can’t pinpoint when I started crying or if I cried at all. When my eyes stung, I convinced myself it was the soap. My breath hiccuped, and my skin puckered, but I stayed under the shower until the Antarctic threatened to melt through it. I got out then and wrapped myself in a towel. I didn’t look in the mirror, not even when I brushed my teeth and my hair. I refused to give my weakness a form, an image, another ghost to remember.

  I slipped on a nightshirt and went straight to bed. I didn’t wish the guys good night. I couldn’t. Nirvaan would know I’d cried, and it would upset him, make him feel guilty, and sad, maybe even mad. He would leave his game and his buddy to come comfort me. He would try to bring me solace with gentle words and lust-filled kisses. He might even succeed. He’d assure me that everything would be fine, convince me that I was stronger than this.

  Maybe I was. My shrink certainly believed so. But I didn’t want to be strong. I wanted to run and hide, escape my reality, banish all feeling.
I wanted to smash open the translucent perfection of my snow-globe world and simply walk away.

  But I couldn’t do that. Not tonight. Not ever, if Nirvaan got his way and I had his baby.

  So, I lay in bed, stiff under the gray-and-yellow summer quilt, and wished for things I’d never had—like a normal life.

  Sleep was a chameleon tonight. Sly and still, it kept changing color and time to hide from me. I counted sheep until my mind began to drift toward warmer shores, black-sand beaches, and home.

  My fifteenth birthday had dawned hot and oppressive over Surat, and it had remained so until its phantasmagorical end.

  Summers were murder in Gujarat—arid, dusty, and energy-draining. But I hadn’t complained about the weather that year. That last of May’s days, my first birthday without my parents, I’d had many other concerns besides harping over a bit of sweat and grime.

  Like the home I hadn’t allowed myself to like.

  We’d lived in a four-bedroom flat on the tenth floor of a high-rise complex erected along the Tapi River. In addition to being the diamond and textile capital of the world, Surat had just been declared the cleanest and fastest-growing metropolis in India. As a testament to my father’s success, my family had, only recently, moved into the new cosmopolitan digs from a demographically Parsi neighborhood across town. We’d just begun the process of getting to know our neighbors when tragedy had struck.

  With my parents gone, and both my brothers still earning their college degrees and living away from home—Surin had boarded with our father’s brother in Mumbai and Sarvar had lived in a boy’s hostel in Ahmedabad—my maternal aunt and uncle had imposed themselves in our home. My brothers were deemed too young and foolish to shoulder the responsibility of raising a young girl, so Uncle Farooq and Auntie Jai had thought it best to supervise my guardianship.

  But that was only a pretense, we’d eventually realize. The real reason for the sudden familial love was my father’s business, which Uncle Farooq wanted to usurp.

  Barely twenty-two, naturally, Surin was confused. He didn’t know whether to finish his studies or take over the business. He wasn’t ready to be the head of the family. Relatives from all over the world advised him in various capacities, but finally, any decision that impacted the three of us was on him. For six months, he’d tried to make sense of our father’s affairs, and from what I overheard him tell Sarvar late one night on the weekend before my birthday, he was afraid the business was crumbling about his ears. The factory workers, suppliers, and clients who’d had implicit faith in my father’s business acumen had none in a mere boy’s, and orders had begun to drop like overripe fruit from trees. He’d decided not to go back to college by then.

  Surin was overwhelmed by his responsibilities. Sarvar was worried about our future. So, I worried, too.

  I didn’t like my uncle and aunt. I’d never liked them, but I didn’t tell my brothers that. I had no wish to add to their burdens. My mother had never spoken against her older sister, but I knew they hadn’t gotten along either. I didn’t like how Uncle Farooq spoke to Surin, as if he were an idiot. I didn’t like how nosy my aunt was about my parents’ life insurance policies and our material holdings.

  If Surin didn’t ask them to leave soon, I planned to run away. Where? How? When? The logistics didn’t matter. I felt trapped in my aunt’s presence. I wanted things to go back to how they’d been. I missed my mother terribly.

  I didn’t want to celebrate my birthday that year. Friends from my old neighborhood offered to treat me to lunch, but I refused.

  “I am in mourning,” I told them.

  The truth was, it pained me to see them. They reminded me of my old life, of my parents and happy days, and I couldn’t bear it.

  My brothers overruled my wish not to celebrate. They even brought home a birthday cake, as if we were a normal family. We went out for dinner, and I got money as presents, no other gifts. No one knew what to buy for me. It was always my mother who’d bought the gifts in our family even if the name tag on the gifts stated otherwise.

  That night, Smriti invited me to a beach party. Smriti was a neighbor, and as she was my age, I’d interacted with her off and on since our arrival in the building complex. Before I could think of an excuse, Sarvar urged me to go and have fun. Surin frowned, clearly unsure of whether to allow poor hysterical me out of his sight since I’d spent the day locked in my room, weeping. But much to my disgust, he, too, nodded and smiled in encouragement. It was the one and only time I wished my aunt would butt in and barricade me in my room. But, nope, she didn’t.

  Unbeknownst to me, Surin had already asked my aunt and uncle to leave our home. Within a month, they’d be gone for good.

  I squeezed into the backseat prison of a silver-colored Maruti, jammed from door to door with five other girls.

  “Whose party?” I belatedly asked.

  “Nirvaan from C building,” replied Smriti, the designated driver.

  Smriti and I resided in Ram Bhuvan B, and besides her and a few of her friends, I knew no one.

  “He moved to California two years ago and comes down every summer to meet his grandparents. He throws the best parties. They’re wild and…” Smriti paused to grin at me through the rearview mirror. “There will be lots and lots of booze. Imported.”

  All the girls in the car giggled at the revelation, except me.

  “I know what you’re thinking. Gujarat is a dry state, so no boozing. But who follows rules these days, na?” Smriti said when I remained silent and slightly horrified by her disclosure.

  “Even government officials don’t follow rules,” added a pigtailed girl, riding shotgun, in a patronizing tone.

  “And Nirvaan has connections. I mean, his father has connections and a green card, so he’s allowed,” Smriti said smugly.

  Connections or not, dry state or not, fifteen-year-olds should not be boozing.

  What if we got arrested? Would the American boy’s father bail us out? I wondered if Smriti had thought this through.

  Too late, it occurred to me, if she was my age, she wasn’t old enough to drive.

  Crap.

  What was I doing here? Why had Sarvar pushed me out the door? Couldn’t he stand my company for even one evening?

  I wasn’t an adventuress soul. I was wary, a homebody. That wasn’t to say I was timid or obedient. I wasn’t.

  But my bratty nature had been blown to bits, along with my sense of security, the night the police had called and informed us about the accident. A drunk driver had rammed his truck into my parents’ car, killing them on the spot. The accident had happened on the highway near Udvada as my parents drove back from a visit to the Fire Temple that housed the world’s oldest Atash Behram, the sacred fire Zoroastrians paid homage to. The irony of my parents coming to mortal harm while on a holy pilgrimage wasn’t lost on me. I’d lost my faith in Ahura Mazda that night.

  So, that was how I knew if we got into trouble, neither God nor a green-card holder would come to our aid.

  I stayed quiet on the drive while the other girls laughed and yakked around me. When we hurtled down the highway past Dumas Road, I was startled out of my silence.

  “Arre! Kya jai che, Smriti? Where are you going? You missed the turn for Dumas Beach.”

  “We’re going to Dandi,” said Riddhi, the girl squashed against me. “Dumas is overcrowded, yaar. No privacy at all. Dandi is our go-to place for these types of parties.”

  What in Khodai’s name did she mean by, these types of parties?

  It struck me that I was way out of my comfort zone here, and for the rest of the hour-long drive to Dandi, I alternated between cursing my luck and crossing my fingers. I also begged my parents to watch over me as my brothers clearly were doing an awful job of it.

  The car bumped along Dandi road until the concrete disintegrated into sand. We drove past a massive black granite plaque jutting out of the ground with Dandi March and a long commemoration carved on its face. This was where on April 6, 1930, Mahatma
Gandhi had led thousands of protesters—including my freedom-fighting grandfather, Rustum Batliwala—in a Salt Satyagraha in defiance of the British Raj and their overbearing tax laws on Indians. It was a historical landmark, but contrary to its fame, it was not very touristy.

  Smriti parked the Maruti next to a jumble of cars. Remixed pop pumped out of a massive music system from the roof of a van. Bunches of girls and boys flooded around an enormous beach bonfire. Half of the girls from my group had already disappeared into the throng.

  I became Smriti’s shadow. I went where she went, drank what she drank, and danced when she danced. I talked little and tittered a lot. When you knew no one, it was easy to lose your inhibitions. I didn’t have to make an impression or accept pitiful condolences from strangers. I didn’t have to listen to geriatric aunts compare my looks to my mother’s or my nose to my grandfather’s, the same one who’d fought for India’s freedom. I was no one here, no one important. I could forget my burdens for tonight, forget that I was orphaned.

  I finally got why Sarvar had pushed me out the door—not that I forgave him for it, but I understood. There was life beyond death, and it was all around me. I tried to have fun. I tried very hard.

  “That’s him!” yelled Smriti, waving her arm in a sort of dance move.

  “Who?” I shouted back, squinting in the direction of her wave. “Nirvaan?”

  “Yeah. He’s so chikna, na?” She laughed and shimmied to the beats of a pop song.

  “I see several chikna-looking boys there.”

  There were many, many cuties to wade through. Most of the guys were shirtless. Most of us girls were in cutoffs and thin T-shirts or tank tops. It was nasty hot, even with the tepid sea breeze. The bonfire aggravated the heat, but it was necessary for light and ambience.

  My mother had loved dining by candlelight. “Firelight is a boon to women,” she’d told me once. “It erases age and enhances our natural beauty.”

  She was right. We glowed golden brown.