Take One Arranged Marriage…

by Shoma Narayanan

  It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her that he’d decided to cut down on travelling, but he held back. ‘You’d probably get tired of me if I was in town all the time,’ he said instead, deciding to see how things went before he committed to something that might end up worsening things between them in the long run.

  Tara shrugged. ‘Perhaps. We might run out of things to say to each other.’ She felt terribly let down. For a second she’d actually thought he was going to admit to being more than casually fond of her. Evidently not. She caught his eyes wandering towards her hair again, and rapped out angrily, ‘Stop. Staring. At. My. Hair.’

  Vikram laughed. ‘I’m trying to get used to it. Come here.’ He held a hand out to her and she came unwillingly.

  ‘Everyone else says it looks good,’ she muttered as he pulled her close. ‘Not that they’d have to “get used to it”.’

  ‘Everyone else isn’t married to you,’ Vikram said, nuzzling her neck. ‘Who’s everyone else, anyway? I thought you’d been buried away in the institute?’

  ‘There are other human beings there, you know,’ Tara said, breaking away from him. She still felt annoyed, and a little tearful, and she didn’t want to get close to him until she’d regained control over herself.

  ‘Ah, really?’ Vikram said, teasing her now, his lips twitching slightly. ‘Like the sixty-year-old professors you told me about?’

  ‘Not all of them are sixty,’ Tara said. ‘And it’s the other research students I hang out with, not the professors.’

  Vikram frowned. It was logical, really, that there’d be other students her age, but most of Tara’s conversation about the institute was centred around the near-mythical figure of Dr Shanta, her research supervisor. He hadn’t really thought of her having friends there.

  ‘Why don’t you invite them over some time?’ he asked. ‘These guys you hang around with?’

  ‘Not posh enough for you,’ Tara said briefly. ‘You’d find them nerdy and boring, and they’d be scared stiff of you.’

  ‘I’m sure I wouldn’t,’ Vikram protested. She was making him out to be some kind of control freak snob. ‘If they’re your friends I’ll get along with them fine. Go on—invite them over.’

  ‘They’re just guys I work with,’ Tara muttered. She thought of Ritu. ‘My real friends are back home. But if you really want to meet this bunch, Dr Shanta’s invited us over to her Holi party this Saturday. I said no, because I didn’t think you’d be interested.’ She looked up just in time to catch the appalled expression on his face and began to laugh. ‘Oh, dear. Obviously Holi parties aren’t your thing. Let’s just leave it, shall we?’

  ‘No, we’ll go,’ Vikram said. She was right—he hated the festival. But he didn’t want to back down now. Noise, people rubbing colour into each other’s faces, kids running around with water guns … It was his idea of a first-class nightmare.

  ‘You don’t have to,’ Tara said, coming closer to him and putting both hands on his chest, sliding them up slowly to meet at the back of his neck. ‘I’ll even admit you’re not as much of a snob as you look.’ She stood on tiptoe slightly, reaching up to touch her lips to his and run her tongue seductively along his lower lip.

  ‘We’ll go,’ Vikram said and, picking her up bodily, carried her across to the nearest flat surface—which happened to be a sofa. Carefully, he deposited her there, and started removing her clothes one by one as she struggled and laughed. Then, when every stitch of clothing was gone, he covered her body with his, absorbing her moans into his very skin.

  At the back of his mind nagged the thought that perhaps, already, he was allowing himself to care too much.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SATURDAY morning dawned bright and sunny, but Vikram groaned as he got out of bed.

  ‘We can still cancel,’ Tara called out from the bathroom.

  He shook his head. He had another reason for wanting to go now. Ever since he’d come back he could feel his reactions to Tara going out of control, and he badly needed to put some distance between them. He couldn’t think of a better way to do that than to attend a noisy, rowdy party thrown by a bunch of post-grad students he’d never met before.

  ‘You brought colours?’ Vikram asked later, raising his eyebrows as Tara slid into the car’s passenger seat next to him.

  ‘It’s a Holi party,’ Tara said patiently. ‘You’re expected to bring colours. Besides, these are organic. Dr Shanta said she’d throw out anyone who gets chemical colours.’ She rummaged in the eco-friendly cloth bag at her feet. ‘I even got a water gun. Recycled plastic.’

  Vikram groaned again, throwing the car into gear and moving forward.

  Tara was looking critically out of the window. ‘Holi isn’t such a big thing in this part of the country, is it?’

  ‘Not really,’ Vikram said, concentrating on the road. ‘It’s more of a North Indian thing. I haven’t played it in years—though Anjali did try to drag me into something last year.’

  ‘You didn’t go?’

  ‘I couldn’t. Lisa was going through a tough time and I had to be with her.’

  Tara gave him a quick look. No wonder Anjali had been ‘clingy and insecure’ as Lisa had described her—being Vikram’s girlfriend while he rushed around playing nursemaid to another woman had to have been tough. He was looking rather grim now, but she risked another question. ‘Did they get along? Anjali and Lisa, I mean?’

  Vikram shook his head. ‘Anjali didn’t like Lisa taking up so much of my time—she even accused Lisa of wanting me for herself.’ His jaw tightened slightly. ‘There was quite a scene.’

  How surprising, Tara felt like saying, but she kept her lips carefully buttoned together. Knowing Vikram, she could imagine him not having bothered to explain why Lisa was so emotionally dependent on him. Poor Anjali, she thought, feeling quite indignant on her behalf.

  ‘Say it,’ Vikram advised, sounding amused. ‘I can tell you’re bottling up some perfectly scathing comments.’

  Tara flushed. ‘I was just thinking that you and Lisa are rather hard on Anjali, that’s all.’

  Vikram took his eyes off the road to look at her, and all traces of amusement had left his voice when he said, ‘When has Lisa discussed Anjali with you?’

  Oops. She hadn’t told Vikram about Lisa’s visit, thinking that it might worsen the situation between the two of them. Now he sounded positively furious.

  ‘She came by the house once when you were away. It was the day after the party. She wanted to apologise for creating a scene. And we’ve talked on the phone a few times. She only mentioned Anjali once.’

  Vikram’s lips thinned. ‘I’m sure she said enough that once.’

  ‘She only said that Anjali was a little insecure,’ Tara said, wishing she hadn’t brought Lisa into the conversation. ‘She wasn’t criticising her, or anything. It was a passing comment.’

  ‘If Anjali was insecure, it was far more my fault than hers,’ Vikram said tightly. ‘I should have told her right up front that the kind of true love she was looking for wasn’t something I believed in.’

  ‘As in you don’t believe it exists? Or you don’t believe it’d have worked for you?’

  ‘Both.’ There was a little pause as he navigated a busy crossing. Then he said, ‘I don’t think the kind of love they talk about in romance novels and Bollywood movies is something I’m capable of. And people who claim to be in love are often deluding themselves. Look at Lisa—if Vijay really was the love of her life, she wouldn’t be marrying Kunal now.’

  Tempted to jump to Lisa’s defence, Tara held back. Presumably Lisa could take care of herself, but Vikram’s saying he didn’t believe in love was deeply disturbing. It was something she’d said herself in the past but, looking back, she realised she hadn’t really meant it. She’d been going by what she’d seen of her parents’ marriage, and had assumed that love had no place in a practical world. Her views had changed a lot since then—she was only a few steps away from falling in love with Vikram hers
elf, and the only thing holding her back was his coldness.

  ‘And so you settled for an arranged marriage?’ she said, just to make sure.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied.

  Tara clenched her hands in her lap. So that was that, then. And he’d been upfront about it from the day they’d met. She only had herself to blame for the nasty cold feeling that was settling around her heart.

  It was ten-thirty by the time they reached the students’ hall where the party was being held. A couple of vaguely familiar-looking young men came up to Vikram, one of them leaning up respectfully to put a tikka on his forehead and a small smear of colour on his cheek. Tara had disappeared into the hall, and for a second Vikram felt a few decades older than his real age as he contrasted the polite smiles of the boys next to him with the utter pandemonium inside.

  Then he caught sight of fifty-year-old Dr Shanta, pelting one of her students with water-filled balloons, her grey hair streaming out behind her. When in a Holi party … He grabbed the young man nearest him and, taking a packet of powdered colour, liberally smeared a fistful on his cheeks.

  ‘Happy Holi,’ he said to the flabbergasted boy, and strode into the hall to find his vanished wife.

  Tara was being chased by a bunch of girls whom she’d unwisely attacked first with her water gun. ‘Help!’ she squealed, flinging herself into Vikram’s arms.

  He laughed, shielding her with his body as someone threw an entire bucket of coloured water at them.

  Tara emerged from the dunking, shaking her hair and wringing the water out of the hem of her kurta. ‘Just you wait,’ she called out at the giggling girls, grabbing a few packets of colour from a nearby table and running after them.

  ‘Such a vibrant, enthusiastic girl,’ Dr Shanta said affectionately as she came to stand next to Vikram. ‘She’s one of my favourite students.’

  Vikram turned to smile at his wife’s research supervisor. ‘She’s very grateful for all the help you gave her when she applied for her PhD.’

  Dr Shanta waved her hand impatiently. ‘Help—shelp,’ she said. ‘The girl is brilliant. And her stupid parents were doing everything they could to hold her back.’ She glowered into the distance for a few seconds, and several students who caught her eye by mistake melted away. ‘Some people don’t deserve to have bright children. I was so glad when she called and told me she was marrying you. I wanted her to have time free for her research, not be slaving away at a part-time job to make ends meet.’ She fixed Vikram with a firm eye. ‘I hope you’re not treating her career as some kind of hobby that’ll keep her busy until you decide to have children?’

  Normally Vikram would have resented the question, but it was difficult to resent anything Dr Shanta said. She so obviously had Tara’s interests at heart.

  ‘I don’t understand the field too well,’ he said honestly. ‘But I don’t regard Tara’s career as a hobby. It’s such an integral part of who she is.’ He smiled briefly. ‘I don’t think she’d have married me if it weren’t for her wanting to come here and work with you. As for children—it’s not something we’ve discussed yet. I’m in no hurry—I’m not sure I even want children.’

  Dr Shanta gave him a sharp look. ‘Tara wants kids, from what I understand, so you’ll end up having them. It’s not like you men have to do any of the work anyway. I understand wanting to have children. I have children of my own. It’s just that so many of my brightest female students are now housewives because they felt they couldn’t manage a family and stay committed to research work. I’d be very disappointed if Tara went that way.’

  ‘I’m sure she won’t,’ Vikram said abruptly.

  He hadn’t known Tara wanted kids, and he felt a little aggrieved at her discussing the topic with Dr Shanta without ever having mentioned it to him. Then his sense of fairness reasserted itself. It was likely she’d just been answering one of Dr Shanta’s pointed questions. She probably wanted kids some time in the future—most women did. She was way too young to be thinking of them now. One of the reasons he’d wanted to marry a younger woman rather than someone near his own age was because she’d be in no hurry to have a family.

  Kids. He knew one of the reasons his mother had wanted him to marry was because she desperately wanted grandchildren. A mirthless smile crossed his face. Dr Shanta didn’t need to worry about Tara neglecting her research because she had to manage kids—they had a ready-made baby-minder in his mum.

  He was confident of controlling his feelings towards Tara, but kids were something else altogether. You couldn’t stop yourself from loving a child, and he wasn’t sure when he would be ready for that kind of emotional complication. Very briefly his mind flashed back to the day his parents had brought Vijay back from the hospital. He’d been seven, and his mother had been worried about how he’d react to having a sibling after being an only child for so long.

  The baby had seemed so tiny, wrapped up in a little shawl, his little hands balled into fists. He’d been fast asleep, not opening his eyes even when their mother had put him gently into Vikram’s arms. Vikram remembered the sharp current of love and protectiveness that had run through him—he’d resisted when his mother tried to take the baby back.

  Vikram looked blindly at the group of students still happily chasing each other around. His brother and he had been unusually close, in spite of the age difference. Oh, they’d fought, and at times Vijay had deeply resented his big brother bossing him around, but he’d missed him terribly when Vikram had moved out of home. And even several years later, when he had a choice of cities in which to do his MBA, he’d given up a better institute in Ahmedabad and come to Bengaluru so that he could be near his brother.

  Their parents had counted on Vikram to look after Vijay—and he had, after a fashion, taking him around the city on weekends, buying him a new mobile phone and an iPod. The motorcycle was something he and his parents had argued about a lot. Vijay had desperately wanted a bike, and his parents had thought it unsafe. Vikram had thought their parents were being unnecessarily paranoid and had bought him one on his birthday—Vijay had been ecstatic. A month later he was dead. Their parents’ fears had been realised in the most tragic way. They hadn’t reproached him even once, but the guilt ate away at Vikram anyway.

  Tara realised after a while that Vikram was standing to the side, not playing Holi any longer. She stopped to look at him worriedly, but Dr Shanta gave her a little push.

  ‘Your husband can take care of himself,’ she said. ‘In any case, I’m going to call a stop to this after another five minutes. I’m too old to run around any more. Anyone who still wants to play will have to go back to the hostels. Otherwise there’s beer and biryani at my place in half an hour, after everyone’s cleaned up.’

  Most of the students were running out of organic, non-toxic colours, and were more than willing to stop.

  Vikram didn’t notice until Tara came up to him. She was wringing wet, her originally pink salwar kameez was now every colour of the rainbow, and her face had so much colour on it he could hardly recognise her.

  ‘I’m going to the women’s hostel to shower and change,’ she said. ‘We’ll be having lunch in half an hour. You can go with Deepak or Varun to the men’s hostel and clean up, if you like.’ She took in his unusually still expression, and asked, ‘Is everything OK?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Vikram said curtly. ‘I’ll see you in a bit, then.’

  When Tara rejoined him twenty minutes later he was holding a mug of beer and listening to a heated discussion on cricket. She went up to him and slipped her hand into his arm. ‘Did you get very bored?’ she asked in an undertone.

  Vikram shook his head, feeling a little guilty about his earlier brusqueness.

  ‘Not at all.’ He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. ‘You haven’t got all the colour off,’ he said. ‘There’re streaks of pink down your neck.’

  He caressed her neck gently with the backs of his fingers and she felt a rosy flush suffuse her cheeks. Even after
several months of marriage his touch had the power to make her forget everything else. ‘I’ll—I’ll scrub it off properly once we get home,’ she stammered.

  Vikram took pity on her and removed his hand. ‘I’m going to grab some lunch,’ he said. ‘Join me on the lawn once you’re ready.’

  Tara heaped her plate with vegetable biryani and plonked herself on the lawn next to him five minutes later.

  ‘Beer?’ Vikram asked, and she shook her head.

  ‘I hate the taste,’ she said. ‘I tried it a couple of times at your office parties, remember?’

  He didn’t—though he did remember her trying vodka once and grimacing at the taste.

  ‘Isn’t bhaang the official Holi drink?’ he asked.

  ‘I did suggest serving it,’ said Dr Shanta’s husband, Professor Dubey, overhearing and stopping next to them. ‘But Shanta thought it would set a bad example, and the next thing we knew we’d have students coming to classes doped out of their minds.’

  ‘Which a lot of them do in any case,’ Tara said in an undertone, once Professor Dubey moved to the next group of students. ‘I guess serving bhang would make it official.’

  Vikram laughed. ‘Dr Shanta’s quite the mother hen, isn’t she?’ he asked. ‘In spite of the tough exterior. It’s interesting to see how you fit in so well with these people, even though you’ve known them only for a few months.’

  ‘They’re like family now,’ Tara said, and then, realising how it sounded, ‘I mean …’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ Vikram said. ‘I’m not around much, am I? And my friends aren’t your type.’

  ‘It’s not that …’ Tara fumbled. But he was right, and they both knew it.

  Tara had done a superb job of adjusting to Vikram’s social circle, but given a choice she far preferred hanging out with her research colleagues, wearing old clothes and arguing about things like cricket and global warming and the Loch Ness monster. No designer dresses, no branded handbags, no long and pointless discussions about the economy and the stock market.