Take One Arranged Marriage…

by Shoma Narayanan

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said briefly, but she could see he didn’t mean it. ‘I agree it’s not such a big deal, so let’s just stick with getting you a car, shall we?’

  Tara nodded silently, not wanting to push him any further. The tension seemed to leave Vikram’s body, but he didn’t say anything, merely nodded back and left the room.

  For the first time they went to sleep without touching each other. Tara stayed awake for a while. The honeymoon was definitely over, she thought, and it was time she started concentrating on her studies. That was why she was here, after all, she told herself as she turned over and tried to go to sleep. She’d been prepared to make adjustments when she decided to marry him, and she could easily have avoided the fight today.

  She drifted off to sleep wishing Vikram had stayed awake for a little while longer so that they could have made up properly. She’d got so used to falling asleep in his arms …

  Halfway through the night something woke her up, and she sat up confusedly in bed. Vikram was saying something in his sleep, his mouth working convulsively. The words were so indistinct that she had to lean close to him to understand what he was saying.

  It was one phrase, over and over again, and it sounded like, ‘No, Vijay. No, no …’

  There was an expression of such deep pain and sorrow on his face that it scared her more than it would have if he’d been in the throes of a screaming and thrashing around kind of nightmare. She slid down next to him quickly and put her arms around him, kissing his forehead and trying to pull him closer. He didn’t respond, but as she continued to hug him his expression relaxed slowly and he drifted into normal, peaceful slumber. After a while Tara fell asleep as well.

  CHAPTER SIX

  RETURN delayed by three days—will be back on sixteenth in time for party. Tara read off her phone screen.

  She groaned. The party was on the seventeenth, and she’d been counting on Vikram getting back from China in time to brief her about the guests and tell her what to wear. They’d attended several parties in the three months since they’d been married, and she’d acquired a new wardrobe in consultation with a personal shopper Vikram had hired for her. This one was a bigger affair, though, to be thrown by the senior partners in his firm.

  Tara leaned back on the sofa and closed her eyes. Marriage had ended up being so much more and so much less than she’d anticipated. On the surface Vikram was the ideal husband—intelligent, successful, supportive of her career, wonderful in bed. The list went on. Even the slight tinge of arrogance she made so much fun of was attractive. And after that first argument there had been no more fights; he’d been unfailingly charming to her.

  She should be over the moon with joy—only, like a greedy pig, she now found that she wanted more from him. He couldn’t help the amount he travelled, she knew that, and he made an effort either to e-mail or call each day, wherever he was, and however busy his schedule. But the e-mails were always polite little three-liners that anyone could have read, and the calls were almost as bad. When he was at home he made a conscious effort to spend as much time with her as she could, but Tara kept getting the feeling he did it because he felt he had to—not because he wanted to.

  Only in bed did she feel the barriers between them drop—the sex had grown better with time as she lost a lot of her inhibitions.

  On an impulse, she picked the phone up again and dialled Vikram’s number. He’d be back in his hotel now, hopefully, and she missed the sound of his voice.

  He picked up on the fifth ring, when she was just about to give up and disconnect.

  ‘Tara,’ he said. ‘Everything OK?’

  He sounded preoccupied, and Tara immediately started to feel guilty at having disturbed him.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Sorry—are you busy? I wanted to check a couple of things about the party, but we can speak later—or I’ll e-mail you.’

  She sounded like a total loser, she thought. Next she’d be making appointments to speak to him through his secretary. Time she went in for some assertiveness.

  ‘We can talk now,’ Vikram said. ‘The party’s our regular annual bash—everyone in the firm and some of our top clients. You know most of the people already.’

  Tara made a face. ‘Lots of serious conversation about the economy and the stock market, then,’ she said. ‘And the women will be obsessing about their jewellery and their designer handbags.’

  Vikram was silent for a few seconds, and Tara wondered if he was annoyed by the implied criticism. If he was, he didn’t show it when he spoke again.

  ‘I guess,’ he said. ‘You sounded incredibly clued-in the last time, though. As if you’d been hanging around with people like that your entire life.’

  ‘The people I used to hang out with wouldn’t know a bear market from a woolly rug,’ Tara said. ‘I bought a whole bunch of magazines when we came to Bengaluru. Every kind—business, current affairs, society magazines—and then I read them from cover to cover and looked up everything I didn’t understand on the internet.’

  ‘Effective,’ said Vikram. He hadn’t realised that she’d put in so much effort, and he felt oddly touched.

  Tara laughed. ‘It was like a crash course in materialism. My parents would be proud of me—I’m finally using my studying skills for something practical.’

  ‘Your parents are pretty proud of you already, and with good reason,’ Vikram said. ‘I know you’ve had issues with your dad, but he’s probably your biggest fan.’

  ‘Really?’ Tara said disbelievingly. ‘He’s managed to keep it a pretty closely guarded secret so far, then.’

  ‘He probably didn’t want your head turned by idle flattery,’ Vikram said.

  Tara could visualise him smiling his slow and unconsciously sexy smile.

  ‘But he’s told me so many times about the grades you’ve got, and what a support you were to him when your mum was ill.’

  Tara felt a little glow of pleasure suffuse her. ‘I guess all parents think their kids are the greatest,’ she said. ‘Whether they admit it or not.’

  ‘Oh, mine never did,’ Vikram said lightly. ‘They thought I was self-centred and overly ambitious. Marrying you is probably the only thing I’ve ever done that they’ve whole-heartedly approved of.’

  ‘That’s not true!’ Tara protested. ‘Your parents really care about you. It shows every time they look at you. Especially your mum.’

  ‘I guess she can’t help it, poor thing. Natural maternal feelings and all that. And besides …’ He hesitated a little, and his voice changed, the artificially light-hearted tone growing sombre. ‘After Vijay I’m pretty much all they’ve got. But they don’t approve of me, all the same.’

  ‘I’m sure they cared for you just as much before as well,’ Tara said. She was now feeling her way through the conversation, and she wished she could see his expression to figure out if she was saying the right thing. ‘They must have been disapproving when you were younger and rebelling against them.’

  ‘That’s just it. I wasn’t rebelling,’ Vikram said. ‘I genuinely didn’t give a hang about what they thought. I went ahead and applied for a law degree without consulting them—not even my dad. And after I left home I didn’t visit or call unless I absolutely had to. I was so busy trying to get a winning position in the rat race. Then I started dating a girl they didn’t approve of. My mum made an incredible effort to get to know her, and just when they’d begun to understand each other I announced that it was all off.’

  He’d paused and, remembering an earlier conversation they’d had, Tara asked, ‘Why didn’t they approve of Anjali? Because she wasn’t from the South?’

  Vikram obviously remembered the conversation as well, because he said, ‘No, I think I was over-simplifying the issue when I said that. Vijay was seeing a girl who wasn’t even Hindu, and my parents loved her from day one. They’re not narrow-minded in the least.’

  There was a little silence as Tara waited for him to continue.

  ‘Put very crudely, Anj
ali was high-maintenance,’ Vikram said finally. ‘She was the youngest in her family, and she’d been petted and spoilt her entire life. She expected a lot from our relationship. My parents knew me well, and they were pretty confident it wouldn’t work out.’

  ‘Were you in love with her?’ Tara asked.

  ‘I was initially—or at least I thought I was.

  But after a while the whole thing seemed utterly pointless. Emotional scenes aren’t my thing, and I’d be treated to one almost every time we met. To be fair to her, it was far more my fault than hers—I neglected her shamefully—and I was incredibly relieved when she decided to call it quits.’

  Tara digested that slowly. She wasn’t sure whether he’d told her about Anjali as a warning, or to distract her from the earlier part of the conversation about his parents. Probably the second. With several thousand miles between them he couldn’t use sex to lighten things up when the conversation turned too personal.

  ‘Have I succeeded in completely ruining your good opinion of me?’ Vikram was asking, his tone casual.

  The question seemed serious though, and Tara took heart. ‘At least you’re honest,’ she said. ‘That’s a quality that will last, hopefully. And I can sympathise with your not liking emotional scenes. They’re not my thing, either—though I think a good fight now and then is healthy. Helps to clear the air.’

  Vikram began to laugh. ‘You’re adorable,’ he said. ‘I suppose you have a little timetable mapped out in your head? Are we overdue for a fight now?’

  ‘Terribly,’ she said. ‘You’ve been a big disappointment that way. You’re so reasonable and accommodating all the time.’

  Vikram shut his eyes for a second. She expected so little from him, he thought. Since they’d come to Bengaluru he’d been travelling almost all the time, and when he was in town he worked crazy hours. By any standards he was a far cry from the perfect husband.

  ‘Send me a list of topics you’d like to fight about and I’ll be happy to oblige,’ he promised. ‘Anything to make my perfectly practical and sensible young wife happy.’

  ‘That makes me sound like something you ordered from a catalogue,’ Tara said, sounding deeply disgusted. ‘Practical and sensible, indeed. You might as well say I’m house-trained and don’t chew the doormats.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ Vikram said. ‘It’s a compliment. If anything, I’m the mail-order husband—you picked me out from an ad in the paper, remember?’

  ‘All six foot two inches of you,’ Tara agreed. ‘Well, if I was doing an appraisal, the way they do in offices, I’d say you’ve met expectations so far.’

  ‘Not exceeded?’ he asked.

  She could tell that he was smiling again. ‘Noooooo,’ she said. ‘There’s still scope to improve. You could buy me that two-wheeler, for example.’

  ‘Two-wheelers are dangerous,’ he said gently. ‘I need to ring off now, sweetheart. It’s really late here.’

  ‘Goodnight,’ Tara said. ‘Dream of me tonight.’

  ‘I will,’ he said, his voice soft and almost tender.

  Tara put the phone down, feeling very mixed-up. Her heart had gone out to Vikram when he was talking about his parents, but she wasn’t sure about the Anjali bit. He’d said that he’d been negligent and callous with her, but it didn’t sound as if he planned to change his ways. And he’d said that ‘practical and sensible’ was a compliment. For a few seconds she’d felt quite unreasonably annoyed, and not sensible in the least.

  But then he’d called her ‘sweetheart’, and her defences had melted immediately. He wasn’t given to using endearments—not even in bed—so surely it meant something? Or perhaps it had just slipped out unconsciously because he was feeling fond of her for being so ‘sensible and practical’ as compared to his ‘high-maintenance’ ex? It was all very confusing, and the feeling that she was slowly but irrevocably falling in love with her husband didn’t help.

  Sighing, she got up to get her dinner. Marriage was turning out to be a lot more complicated than she’d anticipated.

  Vikram got back into Bengaluru only a few hours before the party, with just enough time to get home, shower and change. Tara had got ready early, and was typing away at an article she was writing for a scientific journal. Vikram paused at the door of her study to look at her. She was wearing one of the outfits the personal shopper had chosen for her: a silvery-grey cocktail dress that stopped just short of her knees. Her hair was done up in some kind of complicated pleat, with a few stray strands escaping around her temples, and she looked heartbreakingly lovely. A frown tugged at her forehead as she stopped typing and pored over one of her reference books, chewing her pencil thoughtfully as she read.

  Vikram toyed briefly with the idea of taking Tara upstairs, slowly sliding the dress off her, undoing the clips that held up her hair so that it flowed over her naked shoulders … It was an overwhelmingly tempting thought, but he was late already and he couldn’t afford to miss the party.

  He cleared his throat, and Tara looked around.

  ‘Oh, are we ready to leave?’ she asked, getting to her feet and shutting the laptop.

  She leaned on him briefly as she slid on her peeptoe heels, and Vikram’s resolve almost slipped again. He opened the door and stepped out, taking a few quick breaths of the cold air before Tara joined him and they got into the car.

  Vikram’s confidence in Tara was justified. She was a hit with everyone at the party.

  ‘Lovely wife you have,’ said Justin D’Souza, one of the founding partners of the firm to Vikram in an undertone. ‘Manages to get along with women as well as she does with men, and that’s not an easy thing for a girl that good-looking.’

  Vikram smiled. ‘She’s quite something,’ he said, his eyes following Tara as she moved towards them.

  ‘Done you a deal of good, too, I’d say,’ Justin said bluntly. ‘You work too hard. You always have. And for the last two years you’ve practically lived in the office.’

  Tara had come up to them, and she caught the last part of the sentence.

  Justin beckoned to her. ‘You need to get this young man here to take things easy,’ he said. ‘You’re newlyweds. Take a vacation. Enjoy life. Before you know it you’ll be old like us and worrying about your kids and your blood pressure.’

  Tara laughed, but Justin had made her wonder. All this while she’d thought Vikram worked so hard because he had to, but now it sounded as if he had a choice.

  Justin’s wife Sharon, a maternal-looking Goan woman in her early forties, began to tell Tara about how her kids were pestering her to get them a pet. ‘I’d have agreed, but I know they’ll lose interest in the poor unfortunate thing in a week, and it’ll starve to death unless I look after it.’

  ‘I had a pet dog when I was a kid,’ Tara said. ‘I adored her. But she died after she’d been with us only a year. I was heartbroken.’

  ‘Oh, you poor thing!’ Sharon said. ‘My friend’s pug died a few months ago, and she’s been so upset her husband is thinking of getting her treated for depression.’

  ‘I can understand a kid being upset,’ Justin said. ‘But I wonder why adults are affected so badly when a pet dies. I mean, they know that animals have shorter lifespans.’

  ‘It’s more the case with dogs,’ Tara said thoughtfully. ‘People tend to treat a dog the way they’d treat a kid—and human emotions are wired to expect a kid to outlive the parents.’

  Justin looked impressed ‘That’s pretty insightful,’ he said.

  Vikram stood up. ‘I don’t think the two can compare,’ he said shortly. ‘Losing a child and losing a dog.’

  Tara watched him walk to another set of guests and her heart thudded painfully. She should have known better than to go babbling on about parents losing a kid when she knew his brother had died. And it would be impossible to apologise later. He was so closed off on the subject.

  It would never get better, Vikram thought as he mechanically responded to a remark a colleague had addressed to him. A chance comment co
uld make all the blackness and grief of Vijay’s death seem as fresh as if it had happened yesterday. Someone mentioning their own brother, an article about a road accident, a photograph of a young man with a smile like Vijay’s—all of those had the power to send him spinning back into the black void that his life had become after the accident.

  And the guilt … Logically he knew he had no reason to feel guilty, but that didn’t change the fact that he did. There was a constant gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach—a whole squadron of ‘ifs’ hammering away inside his skull. If not for him his brother wouldn’t be dead. His mother wouldn’t have that constantly haunted look at the back of her eyes. His father wouldn’t go through life like a shell of his former self.

  Vikram had had to break the news to his parents—he would never forget the look on his father’s face. A cheesy line from an old Hindi movie classic came back to him: ‘There is no burden on earth as heavy as the weight of a son’s coffin on his father’s shoulder.’ His dad looked nothing like the wrinkled white-haired actor who played the bereaved father in the movie, and he hadn’t broken down and sobbed when he’d learnt of his younger son’s death. He had squared his shoulders and put himself to the task of supporting and comforting his wife. But he’d been crushed all the same, greying almost overnight so that he looked a good ten years older than his age.

  Tara moved away from the D’Souzas as soon as she could, and went in search of Vikram.

  ‘He’s talking to Lisa downstairs,’ one of Vikram’s assistants volunteered.

  ‘I didn’t know Lisa was here,’ Tara said. She’d run into Lisa a couple of times since she’d moved to Bengaluru. Once at a party similar to this one, and once accidentally in a store. Both times Lisa had been polite, but not very warm.

  ‘I think she came with Kunal Wilson,’ the girl said. ‘They’re supposed to be dating.’

  Tara nodded and headed downstairs. She spotted Vikram and Lisa almost immediately—they were in an alcove near the foot of the stairs, and were standing very close to each other.