by Ajay Patel
“Yeah. That name rings a bell,” Amit responded vaguely, affirming the stereotype that every Indian knew every other Indian.
“Well, Jayesh was engaged to her,” Rocky directed the word ‘her’ in a warning manner towards the woman across the room.
“And?” Vijay asked, ignoring the theatrics.
“A week before the wedding, this girl’s friends all fly in and they all go out for some wild bachelorette party. They drank all night, and when she came back, she made an ugly scene. She said she finally had come to her senses and realized that Jayesh was a stupid idiot and that she was calling off the wedding!” Rocky said dramatically. “Can you believe it? She did this with less than a week left before the wedding!”
“Are you sure about this?” Vijay asked Rocky, not wanting to believe the beautiful woman across the room was capable of such a despicable act.
“Well, everyone tried to keep it quiet. But stuff like this just gets out. You know how the Indian community is when it comes to finding out about juicy scandals,” Rocky responded. “And that’s not even the worst part! Jayesh had gone all out to get her this special engagement ring because she demanded something that was hugely expensive,” Rocky continued. Amit looked at Vijay with a grin, having had his assessment of her being high-maintenance confirmed. “But when she called off the wedding, she kept the ring!” Rocky ended in a “can you believe it” tone.
“Hey, I remember hearing something about this!” Amit said as this last fact had been the subject of gossip for many months taking on Indian urban myth proportions.
“Gentlemen,” all three of them turned their heads towards her, “There is one woman who has no need for finger jewelry,” Rocky said, pointing at Madame-Ex as she walked out of the room, no doubt ready to devour another victim.
3
Love at 21st Sight
More than a year had passed since the days of Indian beauty pageants and parties. Spring arrived bringing with it the Indian wedding season. Vijay was booked for nine straight weeks having to go to one wedding or another. But it wasn’t just a matter of attending the weddings. There were bachelor parties, engagement parties, and other wedding related events, both on the bride’s side and the groom’s side, that would require his attendance as well. However, this spring was special because Amit was getting married.
It had all started when Amit met Sonia a year and a half ago at an Indian professionals happy hour. Sonia, lonely, because she had just moved to Los Angeles from New York, came to the happy hour in hopes of making new friends. She met Amit at the bar and from that evening on they were inseparable.
Vijay met up with Amit at Anastasia’s Asylum, a small eclectic neighborhood coffee house, which unlike Starbucks, was designed for quiet long discussions and not for fast food coffee distribution. They had spent many an evening listening to music and talking about life here. They didn’t do this much anymore. It seemed to Vijay that ever since Amit had met Sonia, they spent less time hanging out. Now the everyday normal things that gave birth to deep philosophical discussions were no longer held between them, but rather between Amit and Sonia instead.
They sat in the front room of the coffee house in two well-worn overstuffed armchairs with their half-finished cups of coffee resting on a television stand with a chessboard top. Amit by now had brought Vijay up to date on all of the wedding tribulations.
Vijay asked him after both of them contemplated in silence for a few seconds, ready to launch into a new subject of conversation, “Did you know that she was the one when you first saw her? You know, love at first sight?” Vijay was an ardent believer in such things.
Amit took a moment to respond, which clued Vijay in that the answer would come with complications. “There’s no doubt that I liked her the first moment I saw her,” Amit started unconvincingly, noticeably using the word “like” in place of “love”. Then, as if he were about to reveal some deep rooted secret, he leaned over to Vijay and said, “Honestly, and just between you and me, if you were to have asked me that night I had first met her whether I could see myself marrying her, I probably would have said no.”
“So you fell in love with her over time?” Vijay asked with a questioning look, assuming that if Amit was in love now and if it hadn’t happened immediately, that it must have happened slowly.
“Yeah, I think you’re right,” Amit replied thoughtfully closing his eyes. It was almost as if he were mentally checking his day planner to see if he had noted when that feeling had suddenly come about. “But you know, I’m glad it happened slowly like that. Instant attractions can be dangerous.” He leaned forward in his chair after seeing a questioning look on Vijay’s face. “Think about it logically. When you meet someone that you fall in love with in the first second, you haven’t fallen in love because she’s got a great personality or that you have a lot in common. In that first second, the only thing you can fall in love with is how she looks.”
“And this is a problem because...?” Vijay asked, not necessarily seeing the flaw in the love at first sight concept.
“It’s just that…” he was temporarily lost for words to go along with the idea in his mind. “Let me give you an example,” he took a different approach. “Do you remember my older sister’s friend Usha?”
Her name brought instant recognition to Vijay. “We only talked about her for three hours the first time you pointed her out to me. She’s amazing!” Usha was tall, beautiful and engaged to be married by the time Vijay had met her much to his great disappointment.
“She’s no longer married,” Amit replied quietly. “I just found out that she filed for a divorce last month.”
Vijay sat there silent, first in shock and then depressed. Their story was the classic example of love at first sight. Usha’s husband, Chirag, had told a friend when he had first seen her, but long before he had ever worked up the nerve to speak with her, that he had just met his wife. She, too, told everyone that she was already planning their wedding in her mind the very night they first met. To this day, Vijay often wished for something just as magical.
“They looked so incredibly happy together,” Vijay shook his head slowly in disbelief, feeling like a child would when first told there was no such thing as a Santa Claus.
“That’s the whole problem with this love at first sight thing,” explained Amit. “It’s based on ‘sight’—immediate physical attraction. They were so blindly in love because of their physical attraction for each other, that they ignored all the other differences between them. But it was these differences that turned out to be time bombs in the relationship that exploded later on when the attraction started to fade.”
“Maybe there is something to the concept of getting to know someone and growing to fall in love with them like you and Sonia did as opposed to falling in love with someone at first sight,” Vijay said.
“You know, the way you say it, it doesn’t seem exciting and romantic. In fact, it sounds downright geriatric! No, I think of it more as love at twenty-first sight,” Amit said grandly.
“Love at twenty-first sight,” Vijay repeated thoughtfully, staring at his cup of coffee. He still doubted the concept, but sincerely hoped that it would work for Amit.
4
Love at First Sight at Last
Vijay adjusted the buttons to his kurta pajama while looking in the mirror. The shirt was made of plain beige raw silk with a subtle gold pattern around the collar to match the three buttons in the front. While the pants were of similar material, they were tight fitting, unlike the shirt, which hung loosely down to his knees like a Nehru jacket. It was the Friday night before the wedding and he and Amit were getting ready in a room adjacent to the hall where the garba raas program, one of the numerous pre-wedding related events held the night before the ceremony, was about to take place.
Looking at his reflection in the mirror, Vijay thought back to his cousin Sejal’s wedding when he and Jennifer had caused such a stir. It had been over two years ago and much had changed since that day. Back then, Vijay wa
s as whitewashed as an Indian could be. But now, as he looked at himself in the mirror in his Indian clothes, he saw that a dramatic change had come over him. His ties to Indian culture had grown stronger with each passing day. When Vijay had tried to explain this change in him to a friend of his, she explained that when a person approaches their thirties, they come back to their culture, and when a person approaches their sixties, they come back to their religion. The first half certainly seemed to be holding true for Vijay.
Having earlier peered through the door at the crowds arriving, he realized that so many of his friends were Indian now. The similar experiences and cultural values had made it so easy to become friends with them. The common “I had to go through that too!” and “did your parents make you do this?” had served as a built-in foundation to start his new friendships. It then hit him as he stood there looking in the mirror. He realized that this common foundation with other Indians was that intangible piece that he had been lacking with Jennifer.
Could it be? Had he changed? Were his parents right all along? Continuing to stare at his reflection, he came to a revelation. He wanted to share the rest of his life with someone who was Indian. For the first time, he realized he didn’t want this just because it would make his parents happy. He wanted to marry someone Indian because, for some reason that must have been growing inside him these last two years, it would make him happy.
Amit came in through the door, saw Vijay transfixed at his reflection, and said with an impatient laugh, “Come on! Let’s go! Staring at the mirror isn’t going to improve anything!” Vijay flashed him a sheepish grin, having been caught in the act.
When they walked into the main hall in their kurta pajamas, three of their female friends started yelling out catcalls trying to embarrass the both of them. The girls were originally Amit’s friends but were now Sonia’s friends as well.
They strutted over to them and Amit said in a macho voice, “You think we look hot, don’t you? Is that why you were calling us over?”
Nina, the most vocal of the three, responded with a laugh, “We only asked you to come over because Swati wasn’t sure if Vijay’s outfit was the same one that she wore at the last wedding she went to!” She was giving them a hard time because although Indian women usually dressed in traditional clothing for functions, men generally did not, preferring their normal business suits to the dress-like kurta pajamas. Evidently Amit and Vijay’s feelings of awkwardness in wearing these clothes had been apparent and the girls were eager to exploit that fact in friendly fashion.
Swati added, “You know, Nina, now that I see it from a little closer, I think the one that he’s wearing is cuter than the one I have. Vijay, you must tell me when you go shopping so that I can learn from you!” she said in an exaggerated tone.
“You can tell us,” Ami joked, “Did you get it from India Sari Palace?”
“Or maybe from Chetna’s Women’s Fashions?” Nina contributed.
“No. He must have gotten it from Victoria’s Secret!” Swati said with a big laugh. “Funny, they always look better in the catalog!”
“Is that what you said when you tried on the Wonderbra?” Vijay finally fired back with a grin and a high-five to Amit.
With that parting shot, they left the women to meet some of the other arriving guests. As they were walking away, Amit asked Vijay, “Hey, what do you think of Ami? She’s cute and more importantly, she’s single. I bet with a little make up, or well, maybe with a lot of make up, you could make yourself attractive enough so that even she’d like you!”
Vijay shook his head with a grin, as if the idea was so patently out of the question to be even taken seriously. “She just isn’t what I’m looking for.”
“What exactly is it that you’re looking for again?” Amit asked, curious. They hadn’t had this discussion for a while now.
“Honestly, I don’t know. I just feel that when I meet the right person, it’ll feel right. And all I can say is that these last few years I’ve met most everyone in this room and I haven’t felt that right feeling with anyone.” Vijay said with a sigh.
This had been troubling Vijay for some time now. At wedding after wedding, one by one, his friends were all getting married. Tomorrow, Amit would be married as well. As each wedding wound down with a reception, and when the first slow dance was played, Vijay became more and more conscious of the fact that everyone in his group of friends was slowly no longer just friends, but one-half of a couple that attended every event and party together as a unit. Vijay had exaggerated dreams often about how one day everyone he knew would be dancing as couples, and he would be left standing just off of the dance floor with arms folded, alone.
As the guests continued to trickle in, the Indian musicians began to tune up and readied themselves to play. They expected over three hundred people to attend. The grown-ups, just as with their kids, however, operated on IST. Because of this, when the first steady dhol drum beats began, only half of the guests had arrived.
The music became louder and the garba started. As was tradition, Amit and Sonia started the first circle of folk dancing. After only a quarter of a round had been made a good forty ladies joined in the procession as three independent concentric circles revolved at different speeds in alternating directions. The men generally did not involve themselves in the garba, being content to stand, arms folded, along the periphery talking to the other men and watching the women dance.
After a few rounds had been completed, Vijay joined Amit in the innermost garba circle in a show of male solidarity. His five minutes of practice benefited him greatly as he didn’t bring his circle to a crashing halt. In fact, he found himself enjoying the rotating dancing around the room. It gave him an opportunity to check out all the women that were in attendance, as each one of them flashed by as if they were on a conveyor belt for his inspection.
After over an hour of dancing, the music, having reaching a fevered pitch, suddenly stopped, leaving everyone breathless from the exerted activity. As Vijay and Amit walked off the floor, Vijay felt an urgent tug on his arm. He turned around and was face to face with Anjali. Anjali was Amit’s eldest sister by three years. Her features were dramatically different than Amit’s, she was much heavier after having given birth to two kids.
“Vijay, come on! We need to go backstage and get ready for the performance! We’ve been looking for you for the last half hour!” Anjali said frantically while pulling Vijay towards the back of the auditorium. She turned around and said with the force of a movie director with a production to complete, “Amit, stop hanging out with Vijay and go over to your wife-to-be! You have to go sit over there! Move!” she pointed to two chairs that had been set out in the middle of the auditorium.
“We still have time to have a quick rehearsal with the others while the other performances take place.” Evidently their production was next to last on the list of performances. “Come on, follow me quickly!” She led Vijay to the backstage area where Anita, Amit’s other sister, who although two years younger than Anjali, could have passed as her skinnier twin, was playing tapes of Hindi music and coaching a group of other people in hurried fashion.
During many garba and raas programs a tribute was often held for the benefit of the groom and bride. At this time, close friends and family members performed, gave speeches, sang, or danced. Because Vijay had become good friends with Amit and because he had attended a number of Amit’s family parties, he had also become friends with Amit’s sisters. So when they were planning a performance, they had insisted that Vijay participate in their production.
“What can I do? I don’t know how to dance, and believe me, you don’t want to hear me sing!” Vijay had protested to Anjali and Anita when they had first asked for his participation.
“Don’t worry! You won’t have to do anything complicated. You just need to lip sync a few lines from a popular Hindi film song as a part of a skit with others,” they had replied, trying to secure the bodies necessary to have the performance.
&n
bsp; Vijay wasn’t exactly thrilled with the idea but finally consented because he knew how much Amit would appreciate it. In fact, he had kept the two lines he was supposed to lip sync on a scrap of paper in his wallet and had forgotten completely about his promise to perform. He now found himself backstage with the others in the skit trying to get his part down.
The rehearsal didn’t give Vijay much confidence in the group’s talents, especially as each of them jokingly told the others that it was more the thought and effort that mattered than the actual performance. These were surely words to indicate that the performance would be comedic, whether that was the intent or not.
“Hey Anjali. It might help me if you actually told me what my lines mean,” Vijay said as he went over his role in the skit with the person performing immediately before him.
Anjali came over. “Oh that’s right, you don’t understand Hindi. Well you know that this performance is the story of Amit and Sonia and how they meet and get married. It starts with Amit dating a bunch of women and it never working out. Then, when Amit feels that there’s no hope of ever finding the right person, he meets Sonia, they fall in love, and they get married. It’s all based on clips of popular songs from Hindi movies.”
“And where does my line fit into this fun little story?” Vijay asked with a roll of his eyes.
“Your line comes at the point when Amit has met a bunch of women who don’t work out and he feels like he’ll never find the right person. Literally, your main line is pyar har kisi ko nahin milta which translated, means ‘Not everyone is meant to find love.’ So just try to act really sad and melodramatic when it’s your turn,” she said hurriedly, leaving him to address some other lip sync emergency.
As Vijay sat trying unsuccessfully to rehearse his line, a feeling of sadness and despair filled him. How appropriate, he thought to himself. His line was about as accurate a reflection of what his life was all about as any. As friend after friend had paired off and gotten married, Vijay had in the back of his mind wondered who he would be ending up with. He never had an answer to that question. Now, with these lines on paper in front of him, he began to think that maybe the sad truth was that this was some cosmic way of letting him know that he wasn’t meant to find love. He stared at the words written on the torn piece of paper. Feeling sad and for the first time, lonely, he went on stage and lip-synced his lines almost too perfectly.
