by Nisha Sharma
“What about Raj?”
Winnie pulled up his profile on her phone. Bridget leaned in, eyes squinting.
“ ‘With my girl to get ice cream. Jenny is as sweet as her favorite kind: strawberries and cream.’ Ugh, barf!”
“I know, right? That has to be the most disgusting flavor ever.”
“I’m surprised she could taste anything with all that lipstick getting in the way,” Bridget said. “Who would’ve thought Raj would date someone like Jenny after you? Especially since he looks like the poster boy for an Ivy League these days. All old money.”
Winnie’s stomach twisted when she read the post again. “Who cares? His sappy update was definitely useful. I was in and out of the house in five minutes.”
“Winnie!”
“What? I told you. Not one of my best moments.”
“Fine. If I’m blackmailed into doing this, let’s get it over with. Best friends help each other bury the body, right?”
“Right,” Winnie said with a grin. Some of the pain she was feeling dimmed as Bridget stepped up next to her and grabbed the shovel.
They took turns digging until the hole was at least three feet deep. Then, with some huffing and puffing, they dragged the boxes filled with DVDs, Blu-rays, and external hard drives to the edge of their amateur grave.
Winnie looked down at the contents of her loot. On top of the pile sat the 2007 ten-year-anniversary collector’s edition of the movie Dil To Pagal Hai, the infamous film that had an eerie similarity to her horoscope. Winnie had purchased a copy for Raj when they first started dating.
She ran her finger over the faces on the cover. Shah Rukh Khan, the hero of the movie, sporting a massive mullet, had his arms around the heroine’s waist as she curved against him in her shiny black unitard with matching sweatbands. As far as Bollywood flicks went, it was a classic late-nineties love triangle.
The part of the story Winnie had always loved was when the hero recognized the heroine as his mystery woman from the sound of her bracelet jingling as she walked away. The bracelet in the movie was nothing like the one Raj had given her, though. Maybe that should’ve been a clue that Raj was wrong for her.
Winnie threw the DVD into the hole and flinched when she saw the bright neon, jewel-toned cover lying against the stark brown dirt. Seeing one of their favorite movies like that was harder than she expected.
“Come on,” Bridget said softly. “Keep going. It’ll get easier.”
Winnie resumed tossing the contents, silently saying goodbye to the memory associated with each movie. No more dates, no more dances, no more future together at the same college in New York. She’d just have to do it all alone.
When they finished filling the hole, Bridget wrapped an arm around Winnie’s shoulders and squeezed. “We’re good, right?”
“I really don’t know,” Winnie said after a moment. The whole experience had been a bit cathartic, but like any good movie, there was still a lot of plot left to work through. “Now that I’m done, I should probably start thinking about Monday. I don’t know how we’re going to be co-presidents of the film club if Raj makes things awkward.”
Bridget rubbed her arm. “Don’t worry about that now. Enjoy your moment of revenge. It’ll all be a bad dream when you’re studying at NYU. You’ll be rocking in film school while Raj will still be mourning the loss of the stuff that you bought him. No pictures because you don’t want evidence, but definitely commit this to memory.”
“To memory, huh?”
“Yup, this is the end of something, right?” She motioned to the hole, to the empty boxes and the shovel. “The end of something is like a shooting star. Gone in a second.”
“Okay,” Winnie said with a whoosh of air. “Okay, I can remember this.” Winnie cupped her hands in front of her eyes in the shape of a heart. She saw only images of famous actors and actresses, movie titles, and taglines in a blur of color. She jerked her hands apart, tearing the makeshift heart in two. She was able to see the full picture now: the displaced dirt and the poor condition of the movies. Things were always clearer in panorama.
“Got any last words?” Bridget said.
“Yeah. Yeah, I do. Fin. After all, this is the end, right? So…Fin.”
Winnie picked up the shovel.
2
WHAT’S YOUR RAASHEE? / WHAT’S YOUR HOROSCOPE?
★★★★★
It’s a new era in Bollywood. Astrologer priests no longer dress in lungis and work in isolation. It’s the 21st century, and sometimes astrologers can look like you and me.
Winnie cracked open her bedroom door and listened for the sounds of her parents settling down in the living room. When she heard the opening music of Indian Idol starting, she knew that they’d be preoccupied long enough for her to have a private conversation.
She settled on the center of her bed with her laptop and clicked on the v-chat icon so she could connect with the username she’d gotten from her grandmother. Even though it was early morning in India, twelve hours ahead, Winnie hoped the famous Pandit Ohmi would take her video conference call. She’d never spoken to the priest directly, but she figured that since her mother talked to him every two months or so, he wouldn’t mind talking to her, too.
She straightened her shoulders and yanked up the neckline of her shirt to cover any exposed cleavage. While she waited for the feed to load, she wondered if he’d be offended because she wasn’t dressed like she was going to temple. Her head wasn’t covered, and her arms and legs were bare. Winnie’s parents hadn’t prepared her for this sort of thing, and she’d never been around to watch her mother talk to Pandit Ohmi. She should’ve checked online. After her conversation, she’d blog about it so other people could know what to wear when telling off an Indian priest/astrologer.
The slender face of a grandfather-like man filled her screen. A long line of red powder streaked up the middle of his forehead from the center of his bushy eyebrows to what would’ve been a hairline if he wasn’t bald. He peered at her through silver metal-framed glasses that looked like they’d seen better days. The hair sticking out of his nostrils flared.
“Is that the young Vaneeta Mehta?” he asked in Hindi. “Yes, it must be you. But yet it is not Vaneeta. Winnie is what you go by. Your grandmother has called you that since you were in diapers, nah?”
“Whoa.” Maybe she looked more like her grandmother and mother than she thought. They did share the same wide-set eyes and thickly arched eyebrows that were whipped into shape thanks to frequent trips to a threading salon.
When his forehead wrinkled, Winnie cleared her throat and responded in the same language. “Yes, I am Winnie. I hope I am not interrupted, but I don’t know if there is a right time I could talk in you. I have request.”
Okay, that sounded weird even to her. She knew she was screwing up her verb tenses again—and maybe some other stuff, too—but hopefully he got the gist.
Pandit Ohmi steepled his fingers and nodded. “You can speak in English. I understand that as well as your Hindi.”
Thank the gods, Winnie thought. She could understand the languages that her parents spoke, but actually speaking Hindi and Punjabi was a little trickier.
“Okay, awesome. Uh, thanks for answering my call. I wanted to talk to you about the janampatri reading you did for my mother when I was a baby.”
“Oh ho,” he said, clucking his tongue after a pause. “So sorry about the death of your young romance.”
“My mother already got to you? Great,” she said, and dropped her head into her hands.
“She’s concerned for you. And no, I haven’t spoken to her yet. Your face has a story written onto it that I read very quickly.”
Winnie heard a few clicks as he leaned in closer to examine something on his computer monitor. “Ah, here is your family file. Mm-hmm, it looks here like your love story has changed in the last year, but your overall celestial alignment hasn’t altered. Your star chart provides the same prophecy it did seventeen and a half years ago, ex
cept now you have already met your love.”
“No way. How can Raj still be the one when it doesn’t…I don’t know, feel like he’s the right guy anymore?”
“Who says it’s still Raj?”
Winnie sighed. “But, Panditji, it can’t be anyone else. Trust me, I know. Raj is the only one who fits your profile, and he has changed in the past year.”
“We all change. That is what growing up is all about.”
“Not like this. Okay, let me set the scene. His dad is an engineer who registered this patent and made a ton of money. Raj now wants to be an engineer, too. It’s like he never wanted to be a film critic like me, even though we’ve been talking about that for our entire lives, and…” She trailed off when she realized what she was saying. Pandit Ohmi was the root of her problem, and if she gave him too many details about her life, then he could use them against her by creating another dumb prophecy for her mother to harass her about. Shifting on the bed, she pushed her long hair over her shoulders. “Never mind. Basically, Raj isn’t for me.”
He shook his finger at the screen, and the gold ring on it glinted. “I think I understand. Your and your parents’ star charts are the most beautiful I’ve ever read. You’re afraid that if it comes true, you’ll be disappointed because it’s a choice you didn’t make. But wouldn’t you be equally disappointed if it didn’t come true? Finding a jeevansathi is a gift that many people aren’t fortunate enough to receive.”
Jeevansathi. Life partner. Soul mate. She looked over at her dresser and saw the promise of Raj’s silver bracelet. Keep cool, she thought. Keep it cool. He might be super accurate, but he was wrong about this. He was wrong about her.
“Listen, I know you did this huge awesome prediction for my folks before they first got married, but I think you’re wrong this time around. I think that you watched Dil To Pagal Hai one too many times and maybe superimposed that Bollywood plotline onto me and thought, hey, this is totally plausible. I appreciate the peace of mind you give to my mother, but please don’t talk to her about my soul mate story deal anymore. I’d like for my folks to eventually get over it, you know?”
“Vaneeta, you want to study the arts?”
Shouldn’t he have known that already? And how was that relevant at all? She bit back her snark and answered him anyway. “Sort of, yeah. Movies. I want to study them.”
“Your father wanted to be in the arts. He didn’t do it.”
She softened a little bit at the thought of her dad and the way he lit up like a Diwali candle whenever he spoke about movies. “He wanted to do something in the film business, but it didn’t work out. Everyone told him that he had to go with his prophecy that you predicted based on his star chart.”
“Don’t you think marrying your mother is a choice he willingly made?”
Winnie’s father never said he regretted getting married, but sometimes, when they watched movies together, his face would glow, and then he’d get so sad that even she could feel it, while sitting inches from him on the couch. Now that Raj was no longer in the picture, Winnie could see that if she hadn’t loved film more than she loved her boyfriend, she could’ve ended up in the same situation. The thought made her sweat.
“He loved my mom.”
Pandit Ohmi grinned and waved a hand at the camera as if shooing her off. “Yes, and he still loves movies. You’ll make him very proud with whatever you do, but I hope it’s because you get a happily-ever-after by choice or by chance. Your astrological chart shows that there are a lot of pitfalls in the next few months that can prevent that from happening, but I am confident that you will find your way.”
“Wait, pitfalls?” Her mind raced with everything that could go wrong. Everyone at school could turn on her for crushing Raj’s heart, even though he was the one who cheated. The film festival could be a horror show. If they made enough money at the fund-raiser dance to even have a festival.
Or worse. She might not get into NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She’d be stuck going to a local school where she had to be a theater major and commute from home instead of dorming.
Nope. Not happening.
“Don’t tell me—I’m not interested.” Winnie scrubbed her hands over her face. She couldn’t get herself wrapped up in Pandit Ohmi’s storytelling. She needed to do her thing and ignore the Hindu stuff.
Pandit Ohmi laughed. “Sometimes ignorance truly is bliss.”
“Thanks for the tip, but all I’m asking is that you stop telling Mom about the prophecy.”
“Take care of yourself, Vaneeta Mehta. Say hello to your parents for me.”
Winnie closed the v-chat window. She shouldn’t care.
Before she could get up and get ready for bed, her phone vibrated.
“Hi, Nani,” she said when she answered.
Her grandmother’s nose filled the screen. “Hi, beta,” she shouted. The Hindi word for “child.”
“Nani, first, you’re calling from Long Island, not India. I can hear you just fine. Second, the phone is too close.”
Nani pulled the phone away. Her shining face was creased with very few wrinkles for a woman in her late sixties. Her hair was streaked with orange from the henna she used to dye the few gray strands, and she wore what looked like a velvet tracksuit.
“Is this better?” she said, still yelling.
Winnie grinned. “It’s fine. I miss you.”
Nani lifted a copper tumbler to her lips before responding. “I miss my baby, too. Why don’t you call me more?”
“I talked to you last week.”
“Too long ago,” she said in Hindi. She switched to Punjabi and added, “What is happening in your life? How is this boy, Raj?”
Switching between languages was common practice for Winnie, but she almost always spoke English with her parents. Probably because they tended to make fun of her accent. But with her grandmother she could say whatever she wanted in whatever language she wanted to use while she butchered her grammar. Nani was her safe space. Always.
“Raj and I are not one with each other,” Winnie said in broken Punjabi. She then explained what had happened and how she’d asked Pandit Ohmi to stop with the prophecy talk. Nani listened, humming occasionally in agreement, until Winnie finished.
“I know you don’t like to hear it, but maybe Pandit Ohmi is right. Your destiny hasn’t changed, and Raj will stop being a bewakoof idiot boy.”
Winnie held the phone above her head. “I don’t know, Nani. I’m thinking I should focus on this film festival that my club is hosting. I’m still mad about the way Raj broke things off, but it’s time to look toward my future. I’m done with romance.”
Nani snorted. “You’re Indian! We live for romance. And when there is romance, there is passion. Where is your sense of passion right now, beta? Without both romance and passion, you’ll be as boring as Raj’s mother.”
“Nani!”
“What? I’ve met her. She’s boring.”
Winnie laughed. “I may love rom-coms, Nani, and I’m definitely passionate about film school, but I’m also aware that star charts aren’t the answer to everything.”
“And yet those star charts led me to your nana and connected your parents.”
“Luck. There is also such a thing as luck.”
Nani narrowed her eyes. “You sound like you are trying to convince yourself of something you don’t believe. I think I need to come there and smack some sense into you.”
“You should! It’s been so long since you’ve visited. What are you drinking, by the way? Mango lassi?”
Nani looked down at her cup and then up at the screen. “Oh, look at the time. I better go. Bye, beta. Love you!”
Winnie laughed. “Love you, too, Nani.” She hung up and flopped on the bed. Even her grandmother, her staunchest supporter, couldn’t see things her way. Or maybe she was having a hard time convincing other people that her star chart was wrong because she couldn’t really convince herself.
* * *
—
In her dream, Winnie ran through the fields in a pink gown with lace sleeves. Her hair was crowned with fake white flowers and a long lace veil. She could smell the sunshine and feel the spongy grass under her feet as she traveled up the gentle slope of a hill.
Winnie knew that someone was waiting for her at the top. Anticipation pumped through her, which only spurred her to quicken her pace. The train of her dress trailed behind her, and the jewel-encrusted sandals were fashionable yet functional enough for heroine field running.
In the distance, mountains rolled into a blue sea. She scanned the horizon, and that’s when she saw him. He wore black pants, a black billowing shirt, a cape, a wide-brimmed hat, and a Zorro mask.
He spun, arms outstretched.
“Shah Rukh Khan from Baazigar?” Winnie said, jaw dropping. “Is that you?” Her voice traveled over the green fields and across the cliffs.
King Khan, the superstar of Bollywood superstars, tore off the mask and lifted an eyebrow in his signature look.
“Why, yes, señorita, it is I.”
Winnie shoved her billowing hair from her face. “You quoted one of your movies! Not Baazigar, but still one of your movies. This is the best dream of my life.”
Shah Rukh Khan swaggered toward her. “I’ve come to deliver a message to you to relieve your doubt.”
“My doubt of what?”
“Of destiny,” he said. “Because those who fight destiny, who fight what’s written in the stars, always end up having the hardest struggle.”
When she reached his side, he gripped her hand and twirled her in a circle. Her veil floated around her shoulders.
“Well, I don’t like my destiny anymore,” she said when she stopped spinning. “I can change it if I want to. It’s the twenty-first century, Shah Rukh. Not everything is about love anymore. Look at the film industry.”
“You’re right,” he said, and lowered her into a dip. “So are you ready to struggle?”
