by Ajay Patel
Amit would later tell Vijay that he had never been more in love with Sonia than he was at that precise moment on their wedding day. As the sheet dropped in the mandap, however, Vijay too, experienced something incredible. He had wanted to see the face of the second voice, and as the sheet came down, he did, with his eyes resting on Rina. Just as the day before, they exchanged looks only for a second. After catching glimpses of each other, they quickly averted their eyes in embarrassment. Vijay would later recall that whenever Amit would describe the feeling that he had felt when he first saw Sonia in the mandap, that it struck him that he had felt the same emotions when he had gazed across into Rina’s eyes.
The ceremony concluded two hours, four rounds around the fire, and three resulting false fire alarms later. Vijay kept glancing over at Rina more regularly, disregarding his role as best man. Rina too, seemed to be doing the same. Perhaps the emotions of the wedding had taken hold of them.
The polite clapping by those in the seats around them awoke Vijay from his love struck stupor. The wedding ceremony had just finished and Amit and Sonia were officially, well, in the eyes of the Hindu gods and the Indian community, married.
Everyone in the mandap rose from their places. Vijay looked around. “Let me find Rocky,” he said to Amit, “and I’ll bring you your shoes. I’m very disappointed in you Sonia,” he said taunting as he rose from his seat. “I would have thought your side would have made more of an effort to get Amit’s shoes.” Vijay had expected a tussle as often had happened in past weddings when the initial transfer of shoes had been completed. “But then again, I guess we always knew that it’s the guy’s side that’s superior!”
At that moment Rocky came up to the mandap motioning that he wanted to urgently speak with Vijay.
As Vijay approached him, he sensed something had gone awry. “Do you have Amit’s shoes with you?”
Rocky just shook his head.
“What! Did they send a lot of guys after you? How could you lose them!” Vijay exclaimed agitated.
“I didn’t lose the shoes, I lost Nina and Swati! We were all in a safe room in the back and there were some boxes that Swati said the family needed to be moved for the reception. I looked around to make sure none of Sonia’s family was around, and gave the shoes to Nina to hold while the guys and I quickly did the work. As soon as I went to the boxes, I turned around to ask them where we should move them, and the girls were gone! I wonder if Sonia’s cousins are chasing them somewhere trying to get the shoes back!” Rocky said worriedly.
Just as Rocky finished his sentence Swati’s voice called out loudly from behind Sonia, “You know those guys from the groom’s side. They may be big and strong, but they sure aren’t very smart!”
Sonia was laughing as Nina picked up from where Swati had left off. “We wouldn’t want your honeymoon to be ruined because Amit couldn’t leave without his shoes, so we’ll be happy to give them back…”
“For the right price!” Swati finished with a mischievous tone. At that moment Swati raised her arms with each hand holding onto a shoe. Evidently, the girls had become double agents, pretending to be on Amit’s side when they really were doing shoe service for Sonia’s side.
All of the people from Sonia’s family began cheering and whooping while Amit looked at Vijay, Vijay looked at Rocky, and Rocky just looked embarrassed.
7
A Proposal for a Proposal
Vijay hurriedly drove to his parent’s house to change his clothes for the evening wedding reception. His one of a kind custom tailored wedding clothes, brought for him by his mother when she last went to India, would be replaced by a standard black tuxedo that he and twelve other friends and relatives would be wearing to coordinate with Amit.
Shantiben came out to greet him when he walked through the door, her eyes lighting up with delight seeing her son in the Indian clothes he had worn at Amit’s wedding. The only thing that would have been better for her was if he were dressed for his own ceremony as opposed to his friend’s wedding. “Hello, did everything go good?” she asked.
“It was fun,” Vijay answered quickly as he rushed up the stairs two at a time. After participating in the negotiations for Amit’s shoes and the necessary photographs taken after the ceremony, he only had enough time for a quick shower and change before he would have to go back to the reception.
“Remember!” she called, trying to catch his attention before he made it past the upstairs hallway, “You are to be coming back at home tonight to be meeting our relatives tomorrow. They are to be coming for lunch so please to not making any plans, okay?” she requested, looking up the stairs at Vijay.
“I’m all yours tomorrow!” Vijay promised, as he headed to the bathroom near his bedroom. After showering, Vijay put on his tuxedo and rushed down the stairs only to run into his parents in the family room eagerly waiting for him.
“Hey! Look at Mr. Shahrukh Khan!” his father pointed in his direction comparing him to the hottest Indian movie star of the time. “We need to take a picture of Vijay, quick! Not only is he home, but he actually looks good too!” He joked to Shantiben.
“I gotta go, can we do this some other time?” Vijay said looking at his watch impatiently. As the best man, he felt an obligation to get to the reception before the bride and groom arrived and he was already in jeopardy of not meeting this deadline. More importantly, however, he wanted to see Rina again and explore the strangely wonderful feelings that had been awoken in him.
However, there was no dissuading them, as they kept insisting on taking just a few quick pictures. His father quickly went searching for the camera in one of the drawers behind the wet bar that had never served a drink with alcohol since Vijay could remember. After finding the camera, he directed Vijay to stand in a corner and pose.
Vijay, in a clowning mood, decided to be difficult. He gave them a number of side poses, trying to look like he was James Bond. For some reason, his parents didn’t find it very amusing. Unfortunately for them, there were only three exposures remaining on the film when they had started. Before his parents could even substitute a new roll of film in the camera, Vijay was out of the door racing in his car towards the reception.
The reception was an elegant affair at the same hotel. More guests were expected at the wedding reception in comparison to the wedding for the sole reason that Indian weddings tended to be long and boring while it was at the reception where there would be food, alcohol, dancing and action. Guys told other guys on the way to Indian wedding receptions that “it’ll be a great way to meet women!” while women told other women that “it’ll be a great way to see what other women are wearing!”
As soon as Vijay arrived, he ran into one of Amit’s uncles who told him that Amit was looking for him. Vijay threaded through the crowd until he reached the outside hallway where he found Amit and Sonia together with a crowd of other relatives and friends.
Upon seeing Vijay enter into the hallway, Amit approached him anxiously, “There you are! We were waiting for you so that we could start the introductions!”
“Sorry. I got caught up with the parents,” Vijay apologized, explaining to him that even he wasn’t immune from having to take pictures.
At that moment someone came up and told them to get ready because they were going to announce the wedding party and the newlyweds. This caused a panicked stir among the group in the hallway as everyone tried to figure out who should be walking out with whom. The deejay assisted in this process by announcing over a microphone the entrance of certain people from the wedding party, which resulted in a scramble to find the people announced so that they could be pushed through the doors into the main room. Before Vijay even realized what was happening, the deejay then announced the best man and the maid of honor.
It was then that Vijay first noticed Rina was also standing in the hallway. She had been speaking to Sonia’s parents, blocked from his view. She wore a midnight blue satin length skirt lengha and a matching half-sleeve velvet blouse. The lengha had
sparkling yet subtle silver embroidery in floral print with a net-like silver crepe chunni draped from her right shoulder to her left hip. Her hair was up showing off an exquisite necklace consisting of a chain of square cut diamonds interspersed with blue sapphires and a pair of diamond hoop bali earrings hung from her ears perfectly matching her ensemble. After the deejay’s announcement, she and Vijay were pushed together by the front door for their entrance. Vijay instinctively offered his left hand to her. Meeting his hand with a smile, Rina put her hand in his. It felt surprisingly familiar and overwhelmingly perfect.
“Shall we?” Vijay asked her. The bedlam in the hallway and the clapping in the room were sounds that he had silenced in his mind so that he could focus on her answer.
“I’d love to” she replied back with a shy smile. After countless embarrassed and furtive glances and coded sentences that weekend, hand in hand, they had finally arrived.
They spent the entire evening together getting to know each other. Rina seemed so perfect to Vijay, and the feeling appeared to be mutual. She held on to every word that Vijay said, and the attraction on her part became more evident.
As they learned more about each other that evening, the distance between them kept being shortened until, although not touching, they were within intimate proximity of each other. It felt comfortable yet exhilarating. It had not been a feeling that Vijay had felt in a long time, nor was it a feeling that he thought he would ever feel again since he had broken up with Jennifer. But here it was again, and if anything, even better. While it had taken Jennifer and him months to slowly find that they were mutually attracted to each other, he had amazingly felt it instantly and more powerfully with Rina.
Later in the evening after dinner, the deejay announced the first dance and Vijay and Rina rose from their table along with all of the guests to move to the dance floor. As the music started to play, Amit walked, with Sonia by the hand, to the middle of the dance floor and started their first dance together as a married couple.
Halfway through the song Amit’s parents and Sonia’s parents awkwardly joined them on the dance floor, embarrassed at having to show such a public display of emotion, but nonetheless laughingly urged out by their children and other relatives. As the song continued, Vijay looked at the ring of people around the dance floor and the happy couples dancing. And then his eyes rested on Rina standing by his side.
She must have felt his gaze, for her eyes looked up to meet his. Together, they walked onto the dance floor to join the family members. Vijay’s days of standing along on the side of the dance floor while watching the happiness of other couples on the floor were finished. He had met someone special now to share in the dance.
In a fluid, almost practiced like symphony of movements, she put one of her hands into his, he ran his right arm around her waist, and she rested her head on his shoulder. They swayed to the sounds of music. She felt so perfectly right in his arms. With a spark of an idea coming to mind, Vijay shifted his head a little to the right and whispered into her ear without thinking twice, “Will you marry me?”
Her reaction was both startled and disbelieving. Those are not words a woman hears often. “Excuse me? Did I hear you right?” she asked lifting her head up from his shoulder to look into his eyes.
He looked back at her and said with a sincere smile, “I can’t explain it, but something amazing seems to have happened to me when I saw you, and I think you feel something too. Sure, it’s only been a few hours, but think about it! It would make for such a great story!”
“How so?” she asked, still trying to figure out from where Vijay was coming.
“Look, if for some reason things don’t work out, this would all be our private little joke! But if it did work out, and the more I’m with you the more I think that could happen, we could say that we knew we were going to be married from the first moment we met! We could honestly say that it was love at first sight!” His discussions with Amit on this subject and the benefits of falling in love over time were washed away by his attraction to Rina.
She shook her head and laughed not believing the strange rationale Vijay had concocted to propose to her. “Here I’ve been complaining about people who go to India to get married within a matter of weeks and you want me to decide in a matter of hours?”
Vijay just looked at her and nodded, almost as if hoping that the more the idea sunk in, the more reasonable it would seem.
“I don’t know what kind of girl you think I am,” she said in a teasing tone, “but I’m certainly not the kind of girl that accepts a marriage proposal the first time she sees a guy! I don’t even really know you, or your family, or anything!”
“Is any of that important?” Vijay asked dramatically. “Isn’t love all that matters?”
Rina looked into his eyes for a moment, evaluating the merits behind Vijay’s short, simple, yet audacious idea. Her gaze then softened as her feelings of attraction were as strong as her belief in the craziness of his scheme. “I never said that I was the kind of girl that wouldn’t consider the question on a second date though,” she responded coyly, wanting to at least keep the vestige of being hard to get.
Vijay’s hopes soared. The first song had long since ended replaced by a much faster dance song. They hadn’t noticed, continuing to dance at the same, slow, intimate pace. “Can we go out on a date tomorrow?” Vijay asked her immediately.
“Tomorrow will be here in about three minutes so I don’t think I could say I waited a day before answering. But Monday night looks good, and I’ll still be in town,” she said with an inviting smile.
And with that, the rest of the evening passed by in a blur. As Vijay waited by the curb while the parking attendant brought his car around, he took out his wallet so that he could give a tip. Next to one of the dollar bills in his wallet he saw the torn out sheet with his two lines from the skit—his cosmic message that he wasn’t meant to find love and that he was destined to stand alone on the side of life’s dance floor. He deliberately took the sheet of paper out, ripped it up, and let it scatter into the wind, as a defiant statement to the world that he, in fact, had actually just discovered love.
8
Einstein’s Theory of Indian Relativity
Vijay returned to his parents’ home at 3:00 a.m. and quietly stole in. He slowly walked up the stairs, feeling for the steps from memory, not wanting to turn on the lights and awaken anyone. Reaching his room, he collapsed onto his bed from exhaustion. Although incredibly tired, he could not bring himself to sleep. He just lay in bed reliving the evening’s events.
He had fallen in love with Rina and kept closing his eyes with a smile as he imagined her over and over again. If someone were to have asked him to describe the woman who had put the smile on his face, he would have been unable to conjure up specific adjectives. However, when he closed his eyes, she came back to him as if she were standing there, intimately close, beside him again. It was like any song he had heard on the radio. If asked to sing the lyrics, he could never get past the third word, but when he closed his eyes and played it in his mind, he could hear every word and instrument as if the song were emanating directly from the radio once more.
He awoke with a start in the morning at the sound of the front door opening downstairs. Vijay closed his eyes again when he realized that it was his father retrieving the morning newspaper. He smiled as the memory and magic of last night came back to him. He slowly woke up, took a shower, got ready, and then headed down the stairs to join his parents.
“Morning,” Vijay announced his presence as he walked into the bonus room. His father was busy reading the front page and his mother was clipping coupons. “What’s the plan for today?” he asked his mother as he stole the sports section away from his father before he had even had a chance to read it.
“Your Ghopal uncle and his daughter Shinki are coming over for visit today,” she replied. “Since you have never been meeting them, you should be staying to say hello.”
“Shinki? What kind
of goofy name is that? Is it a guy’s name or girl’s name?” asked Vijay laughing. He could just imagine a childhood filled with kids continuously calling his cousin “Stinky” just to be mean.
Shantiben complained hearing Vijay’s comment, “Shinki is girl. You know papa’s family when they are naming the kids.” Indian custom gave the father’s sister the right to name their nieces and nephews. The only restriction being that the name had to start with a certain letter determined by a pandit after consulting with certain astrological texts. Whether the name could emotionally scar the child in life evidently was not often factored into the selection of the name.
Vijay, too, had been a victim of the process because his Premlata foi, his father’s only sister, had been given naming rights. She had named him Veeral. After the first three months, however, his parents had grown weary of half their American neighbors asking if he was contagious, thinking his name was “Viral”, while the other half of their American neighbors asked if he would be subjected to unrealistic sexual expectations, thinking his name was “Virile”. Because Vijay’s middle name was his father’s name, one of their family friends would always refer to him as V. Jay. Through time the name stuck until it was regularly spelled and pronounced Vijay.
“So how come I haven’t met this Ghopal uncle and Shinki before?” asked Vijay.
“Because he has been in Singapore for more than ten years working there and Shinki only came few years ago to do her studies on east coast.” she explained. “Shinki is younger so please to be making friends with her so that she will come here more often for visits.”
Their conversation was cut short because Rohit and Vaishali had arrived. Rohit appeared in the hallway in khaki slacks and a starched white shirt. Exactly two steps behind him followed Vaishali dressed in a simple pastel colored sari. When she saw their mother she bowed her head slightly and said “Hello mummi.” She looked around the room and added “Khem cho papa, Vijay.”
