The Heart Is a Shifting Sea

by Elizabeth Flock

  Maya had always pictured Mumbai as the city of love. Mumbai, which until not long ago was called Bombay, and before that Bom Bahia, Boa-Vida, Mambe, Mumbadevi, Heptanesia, and many other names that captured the city’s glamour. A city ruled by the Portuguese, and then given to the British as part of a marriage treaty, before it wrested itself independent with the rest of the country. A city renamed Mumbai, because a political party wanted to rid the city of its British history, though many locals still used the sexier Bombay. Even Mumbai’s nicknames were seductive: the City of Seven Islands, City of Dreams, and City of Gold. It was the home of Bollywood and all the most filmi love stories. It was the gateway to all of India. If there was anywhere to be in love, it was in Mumbai.

  Veer, who had lived in Mumbai all his adult life, saw it differently. To him, Mumbai was first and foremost a trading city, a city of transaction. A big and bursting city of eighteen million, it was India’s financial hub and the source of much of the country’s wealth. Bollywood didn’t mean big romance; it meant big money. Mumbai was every good Marwari businessman’s dream. It was called “the Gateway to India” because so much trade flowed through the city’s port. And Mumbai was just one big island now, with the center of the city at its tip.

  There was also a monument called the Gateway of India at the southernmost end of the city. It was a basalt arch structure, and it stood proudly between the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel and the shore of the Arabian Sea. The arch had been built to commemorate the visit of the British royal couple King George V and Queen Mary, who were not supposed to marry but fell in love and did. Just before the monsoons started, kite birds always circled the Gateway of India monument, filling the space between the water and arch with the beating of wings. They often landed at the arch’s base, where the muddy water met the land. Or they perched on the trash gathered there in ugly clumps or on the residue of those who used the sea as their toilet.

  All of downtown Mumbai was like this: dazzling from one view, horrifying from another. Downtown, the city fell easily along the curve of the shifting sea. In the daytime, the melting heat created a foggy haze that gave the illusion of a dreamscape.

  At night, along Marine Drive, which followed the shape of the coastline, the road’s streetlamps lined up to look just like a string of pearls. Farther inland, the Victorian and Indo-Saracenic buildings maintained a crumbling dignity and beauty. They sat beside open green cricket maidans and blocks filled with Irani cafés, tourist stalls, corner shops, and beer bars. Between it all were the hawkers of the city’s favored street foods: deep-fried vada pav, buttery pav bhaji, and spicy-sweet pani puri, with mango lassis and masala Cokes to wash it down.

  Mumbai was dazzling despite the clear signs of the city’s rapid deterioration, the unrelenting honk of taxicabs, and the smell of human waste. Even with the sting of polluted air and the memories of the violence that came before. There was no privacy, and no space. But the lack of space offered reassurance that everyone was in this city together: majority Hindu and minority Muslim, wealthy and famished, native and migrant, hopeful young men and bent old women, all brushing up against one another. Touching was a way to speak when more than a hundred languages were spoken. Or it could be a way to hurt children, women, or neighbors. Nothing was simply good in this city. Beauty and brutality were intertwined. But it was a city that was Maya and Veer’s now, together.

  The suburb where Veer’s parents lived was crowded and noisy, and almost twenty stops north on the Western Railway line from the center of the city. It was nowhere near Mumbai’s Marine Drive, where lovers went to walk hand in hand. And it looked nothing like the downtown with its wide and airy streets. Instead, like most of the city, its roads were clogged with cars, motorbikes, and rickshaws that darted across the street like cockroaches at dusk.

  Farther into the suburb, past the shops selling fabric by the yard, liquor by the peg, and flowers by the garland, it was mostly new construction. These buildings were low and painted in unimaginative hues of brown and tan and gray. They were often covered in paan, the favored betel leaf and tobacco combination that when spit looked just like blood. The tallest structures in the suburb were the glittering new malls, plastered with advertisements in garish colors and signs that promised objects few could afford. The shorter structures were the chawls, or tenements. Even smaller were the shanties, made of bamboo, tarps, and corrugated metal, which lined many of the suburb’s lanes. Downtown Mumbai was overpopulated, but the suburbs seemed on the verge of collapse.

  But Maya didn’t see any of this, not at first. She saw only that she had made it to Mumbai, City of Dreams, with the man she married.

  * * *

  Veer’s parents’ home was a joint family arrangement. Though Maya had finished college and earned a master’s degree, it was assumed that she would not work, except to help cook for the household of seven. She often started preparing food at sunrise along with the other women, kneading the roti and adding spices to that morning’s meal.

  She was also expected to wear saris, a change from her school-going Western dress. She didn’t know how to tie one, which was always difficult for girls the first and even tenth times. She didn’t own many clothes, traditional or Western, but she was always careful with her appearance. On a visit with Veer to see his grandmother, she chose a plain but smart-looking sari and thought the visit went well. That night, Maya remembers his parents bursting noisily into the house after work. They would not speak to her, and after a little while the other members of the family began treating her coldly.

  What is happening? Maya thought. In her childhood home, people talked about issues and moved on. Here, it seemed that problems festered.

  The next day, Maya overheard Veer’s parents say that his grandmother scolded them about the sari she had worn. They agreed that Maya went out “wearing clothing not fit for a new bride.” They said that it “spoiled our name” for Veer’s new wife to dress in plain clothing. Panicked, Maya went into her bedroom and dialed Veer at work.

  “I’m new to their ways. If there’s a problem, have them talk to me about it,” she said. “I’m willing to compromise.”

  “Mayu, it’s a family. These things keep happening,” he said, which Maya didn’t find helpful at all.

  “Talk to them. Please.”

  But when Veer came home he didn’t.

  Veer didn’t like to confront his father, an imposing man with a thick belly, dense mustache, and lazy eye just like his son’s; some said he resembled a traditional Bollywood villain. Veer and his father had always been close, and they had become closer still after the death of Veer’s mother from cancer a decade and a half ago. The stepmother who replaced her was a tall, cruel woman with a hard face and quick tongue. Veer and his brothers seemed only to tolerate her. Some said she had turned Veer’s father into a harsher man. Still, Veer always listened to his father.

  Maya bought better-quality saris after that and worked harder on her cooking. When Veer was at work, she tried not to call him, even if his parents shouted at her, as they had increasingly begun to do. It helped that Veer sent her loving messages when he was away.

  Hi jaana, he’d write. My life.

  I think I am already missing you a lot & so lil out of place as well.

  Mayu . . . I miss you yaar . . . yu dint send me even one mms.

  When Veer finally came home from work at the end of the day, Maya tried not to complain. She could tell how exhausted he was. She noticed his fraying dress pants, sweat-stained shirt, and belt that often missed a loop. And when he smiled and crawled into bed beside her, Maya felt their joint family home was not as bad as it seemed.

  But she sometimes grew restless in the afternoons, when Veer and his father and brothers were at work, and the other women in the house took their daily naps. In these hours, Maya would flop down on her stomach in her bedroom and open the laptop Veer had given her to use. She would have liked to surf the Internet—maybe even look at porn, which more women in the country were watching. But the
laptop was primitive, and it took forever to boot up or load a page, so videos were mostly out of the question. When she was able to get into her e-mail, she sometimes sent messages to school friends or waited for a message from her father, who had not spoken to her since her marriage.

  But her father didn’t e-mail or call. She received one unexpected note, from a college boyfriend, who wrote: “I sent a gold watch to your friend’s address for you. I am still waiting.” For a moment, she wondered where that relationship would have gone. No, she thought. He is nothing like Veer.

  It was not long after Maya began using the laptop that her father-in-law called her into his bedroom. Grim-faced, he stood flanked by Veer and his older son.

  “Put your laptop and your phone on the bed,” he said, and Maya obeyed. “Now what?” she asked.

  “In our house,” Veer’s father said, “we don’t bring up daughters-in-law to use gadgets or to be technologically advanced.”

  Veer’s father had heard rumors that Maya was miserable in the joint family home. He had heard she wanted to leave and take Veer with her. And so now he thought he would have to cut off her ability to communicate with the outside world.

  “Is that what you called me here for?” said Maya, growing petulant with her in-laws for the first time. It was true she had told a friend, one of the witnesses at their wedding, that she was unhappy with her living situation. But she had never said she was going to leave the house or break up the family.

  “See, is this how your wife talks?” said Veer’s father, turning to Veer, who didn’t know what to say.

  “You’re just standing there,” Maya said to her husband, accusingly, “while they’re treating me like dirt.”

  Veer looked at her but didn’t say anything. He had always felt that it was better not to speak up during conflict. It is better to keep a horse’s view, he thought. If he was doing the right thing, and not speaking ill of anyone, that was all that mattered.

  He also knew that everyone would have their own spin on it. “If we re-create it after five years,” he would later say, “everyone will be putting their own masala on it. What is the pull or push on these people? I don’t want to know. I don’t want to be involved.” But Veer was involved. After Maya handed over the phone and laptop, life in the joint family home only grew worse. In January, a month in which many Mumbaikars take vacation, Maya told Veer she needed to get away. She said she would go mad if she didn’t.

  Veer’s father tried to prevent them from going. He said that Maya was sick and couldn’t travel. For once, Veer stood up to him. He argued that the trip would be their honeymoon, which every new couple deserved.

  That month they flew to Mussoorie, a hill station at the foothills of the Himalayas, once used by the British as a getaway. In Mussoorie, the temperatures were cool and the clouds sat low over the mountains. Maya and Veer visited temples and shrines. Their days were filled with happy wandering. Before they left, they had their picture taken beneath a waterfall. The water was so white and the exposure so bright that it looked like a backdrop of snow. They both wore small, hopeful smiles.

  But after they returned to Mumbai, Maya saw that nothing had changed. She realized that Veer would continue to be away for long hours at work, and that while he was gone his parents would verbally abuse her. Like many women in the country, she saw that she would never be allowed to work. She made plans to visit her father and make amends, but Veer’s parents told her she could not go. Considering a future she could not bear, Maya picked up the inhaler she was prescribed for her asthma and swallowed all the medication inside.

  This time, Maya intended more than a message. She was hospitalized for three days, during which time Veer hardly left her side.

  On the third day, Maya woke up in the hospital room to find her mother and father standing over her. “Who has been taking care of you?” her father asked.

  “Veer,” she said. He had been good to her.

  After she felt well enough, Maya’s father brought her home to Veer’s parents’ house. He laid her on her bed and went out in the hall to talk to Veer’s father, who told him he believed his daughter’s hospitalization had been a stunt.

  “No,” Maya’s father said. “Maya is very sick. She needs to be taken care of. She has lost seven kilograms. I will take care of her, and then send her back to you.”

  From the bedroom, Maya heard Veer’s father start shouting. After marriage, a girl belonged to her husband’s parents, not her own. Unless she was pregnant, it would not be acceptable for her to go back to her childhood home in Hyderabad. But as Veer’s father became more and more worked up, he said that he wanted Maya out of his house. “Take your daughter,” he shouted, as Maya remembers. “You have not given her any values. She does not respect anyone. Take her wherever you want to take her.”

  Maya’s father dropped to the ground at this show of fury and began kissing the man’s feet. He begged to be able to take his daughter back home with his permission, not his anger. Maya, who was still groggy from medication, dragged herself out of her bed. She could not reconcile the father she knew with this fawning display.

  “Don’t kiss his feet for me,” she told him as she came into the living room. “Get up. You don’t deserve that.”

  To Veer’s father, she said, as coldly as she could: “What you give to me, I’ll give back to you.”

  Maya’s father left the joint family home, perhaps knowing he could only do more harm by staying. The next day, he called Maya to tell her that he and her mother had decided to go back to Hyderabad and leave her with Veer’s parents. “We don’t want to break your house,” he said, his voice weary. “But can I see you and Veer before we go?”

  Veer felt caught in the middle. On one side were his parents and on the other were Maya and her parents, he thought, and everyone has their own cycle and mood. He knew people didn’t change, especially Indian elders; instead, they only kept pushing. Though he saw that his parents were torturing his wife, he also believed that drama toward daughters-in-law was part of the Indian lifestyle. Even these days, when Indian women were becoming more assertive, many of the TV soaps were still of the saas-bahu genre, in which the controlling and cruel mother-in-law treated the daughter-in-law like dirt. This dynamic existed even in the old songs and the folktales. Most girls just dealt with it. But Maya, when pinched, blows up, he thought. When handed drama, she became insolent and angry. Veer knew his parents would hold on to these first impressions of his wife for a lifetime. And now Maya was forcing him to get involved, which he did not want to do.

  “Are you coming?” Maya asked.

  “I’ll ask my father and come down,” Veer said, but several minutes passed before he appeared. When he did, he took her hand and said, “Mayu, let’s go back home.”

  “No,” she said, her voice firm. “I have to meet my father.”

  “Don’t do this,” he said. “You will create a scene.”

  “I need to meet my father,” she repeated.

  Veer’s cell phone rang, and she could hear his father shouting as he picked it up. “You can’t control your woman,” his father said, his voice like a threat. At the same time, Veer’s stepmother came out and ordered them back inside.

  “Who are you to stop me?” said Maya.

  In Maya’s memory, Veer’s father came out next, and the four of them began pushing and shoving on the street. Maya wrenched her arm free to put a hand up for a passing rickshaw, which screeched to a halt before them. As she and Veer climbed in, his father tried to get in with them. Maya turned to her father-in-law and addressed him icily. “There is a policeman there,” she said, pointing to a uniformed man down the road. “And if you don’t get out, I will file a complaint against you.”

  “So this is the culture you were brought up in,” Veer’s father said, and let the rickshaw go.

  In the rickshaw, Veer turned to Maya and asked, “What have you done? You’ve blown everything.”

  Maya began to cry. “What do you mean?”<
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  “I don’t know if we can be together anymore,” Veer said.

  “Why are you saying this?” Maya was sobbing now. But she knew. To Veer, like many Indian men, family was everything.

  Inside the house, Veer’s father called Maya’s grandfather in Hyderabad. Over the phone, he rained abuses on her grandfather for how she was raised. And while Maya and Veer’s rickshaw steered through the trafficked streets to meet her father, whom they found crying inside a café, her grandfather’s blood pressure shot up and he had a stroke while still clinging to the receiver.

  * * *

  The week after the incident, Veer sent his wife an e-mail from work that began: “Dear Maya.” He almost never addressed her as Maya, not since he had started calling her “Mayu.” In the e-mail, he wrote that his parents were “broken from the inside,” and that an episode like this could not happen again. He said they must think in the present and plan for the future. He ended the e-mail with “love always,” but his sign-off didn’t seem convincing.

  The drama in the household was not over, because every morning, Maya woke up thinking of the long years ahead. Years of his parents berating and belittling her, and Veer keeping silent. One day, she walked out of the joint family apartment and took a bus to Pune, a three-hour ride from Mumbai, and Veer had to come and take her back home. In the middle of the night, she woke up screaming, and was put on antipsychotics and antidepressants. She went to the doctor, feeling unable to breathe, and Veer’s father followed her inside the office to prove she was making it up. The doctor, a sweet, white-haired man with a large nose and wide smile, told Veer’s father, “Leave now, you’re only making it worse.”

  In the end, Maya and Veer moved out of the joint family home. At first, they moved to a temporary apartment, and then another, and finally to the new apartment they’d call home. More couples in the city were choosing to live apart from their parents and in-laws, despite how the conservative politicians and older generations railed against it, blaming the creeping influence of the West. But couples often did not move far away. Maya and Veer moved only a suburb over from Veer’s parents. When at last they moved out, Veer’s father and stepmother seemed glad to see Maya go.