Destination Wedding

by Diksha Basu

  “We used to have a golden retriever actually,” Mrs. Sethi said.

  “Oh, sorry, I—” Mr. Das began, unsure what his apology was going to be.

  “No, no. It was a terribly foolish idea but I had always wanted a golden retriever, ever since I was a small girl, and my husband bought it for me after our wedding. I loved that dog so much. It probably wasn’t ideal for him but we took him up to the hills as often as we could.”

  “How long were you married for?” Tina asked.

  “Tina!” Mr. Das said.

  “No, it’s okay, you can ask,” Mrs. Sethi said. “Thirty-four years. A long and mostly happy marriage, one daughter. She lives in San Francisco. And one golden retriever who died twelve years ago. That’s my history in a nutshell. And now back at zero, trying desperately to find what’s next.”

  “Tina Das! Incoming!” a voice shouted from the middle of the green to their right. Tina turned around in time to see a Frisbee heading straight for her. She hadn’t caught a Frisbee since her days at Yale and she wasn’t sure if she was still capable of it, but this one was expertly thrown and landed almost directly in her hand. She held it and looked up and saw Rocco waving from across the field.

  “Come here!” he shouted. Karan, Kai, Marianne, and David were all standing around him and they waved. A blue sheet lay out on the ground in front of them, littered with bowls and bottles and plates and glasses. Two women in matching saris sat a bit of a distance away under the shade of a tree. Even though they sat separately, they were very clearly part of this same group. Karan’s help, Tina assumed.

  “At least throw it back, Das,” Rocco shouted. “Stop staring at us blankly.”

  Tina threw the Frisbee back toward Rocco.

  “Is that David Smith?” Mr. Das asked. “Did he see me trip on that dog? Because that dog’s leash was particularly long. In any case, it’s really animal cruelty to keep dogs like that in India. It wasn’t my fault. Who expects to run into a golden retriever in the middle of Lodhi Gardens?”

  “Animal cruelty is pushing it,” Mrs. Sethi said.

  “Come join us,” Marianne shouted. She waved them over. “All of you.”

  “We have beers,” David added on. “And fried potato tikkis with coriander and mint chutney that’s absolutely delicious.”

  The two women who were sitting under the shade came rushing over with a large blue cooler that they had been sitting next to. They took out proper white ceramic plates and beer glasses and wineglasses and set them all out for Tina, Mr. Das, and Mrs. Sethi. They served them the fried potato patties crushed with the chutney on top and garnished it with leaves of fresh coriander.

  “Drinks?” Karan asked.

  “These aren’t quite the picnics I had in my youth,” Mrs. Sethi said. She lifted her glass of wine to Mr. Das’s bottle of Bira beer and said, “Cheers.”

  Mr. Das and Mrs. Sethi sat on the sheet and Tina kicked her sandals off to throw the Frisbee around.

  “What did you mean when you said you were desperate?” Mr. Das asked Mrs. Sethi. Mr. Das had never been comfortable sitting cross-legged on the ground and with age this had only become more difficult. But he didn’t know how else to sit. It would look too dainty if he sat with his legs together under him and he wasn’t flexible enough to sit with his legs straight out. He was sitting uncomfortably, cross-legged with his knees practically up at his chin, looking around for a solution, when one of the women with the cooler came over and handed him a plump pillow. He gratefully accepted and sat down on it and placed his beer on the ground next to him.

  “Never could sit well like this. I don’t know why Americans call it Indian style,” he said.

  “Do they?” Mrs. Sethi asked. “Indians like us or Indians like Native Americans?”

  “Hmm, maybe the latter. I never thought about that.” Mr. Das shrugged. “So you meant what, exactly?”

  “About what?” Mrs. Sethi asked.

  “When you said you were desperate,” Mr. Das said. “Like to meet a man?”

  “Gosh, no, absolutely not. I didn’t say I was desperate. I think I said I was desperately trying to figure out what’s next for me. As in, I still feel young, you know. I can’t imagine this is it. It isn’t about a man but something feels missing in my life and I’m desperate to figure out what that is. That’s why I volunteer, that’s why I’ve joined a book club, that’s why I traveled to Portugal with my daughter. But everything has felt like a temporary fix so far and I’m worried that someday in the not-so-distant future, I’ll wake up one morning and not find a reason to take a shower and put on proper clothes. That makes me panic.”

  “But—” Mr. Das started but was interrupted because the Frisbee came flying in his direction and landed a foot away from his face. He groaned at the thought of getting up and throwing the Frisbee with David and Mrs. Sethi watching. But before he did that, Mrs. Sethi jumped up gracefully, picked up the Frisbee, and tossed it back toward David. It was a perfect wrist flick and Mr. Das looked up in awe. Mrs. Sethi looked at him and said, “I even briefly joined a Frisbee club for senior citizens! Come on. We’ll get older faster just sitting here.”

  Mr. Das hesitated. He had watched some Ultimate Frisbee videos on YouTube and thought it looked like a silly sport but it also looked rather difficult. Mrs. Sethi comfortably kicked off her sandals to play but Mr. Das couldn’t imagine his bare feet touching the grass and the dirt and, in all likelihood, that awful golden retriever’s feces. But he also couldn’t continue to sit here while David looked about four minutes away from tearing off his shirt and leaping into the air to catch the Frisbee.

  He got up and joined everyone. His daughter tossed him the Frisbee and it fell about six feet away from him but everyone cheered and he ran over to it and picked it up and tossed it to Rocco and it didn’t land nearly as far and everyone cheered again and Mr. Das, for the first time, was excited about his Fitbit count increasing naturally.

  A full forty-five minutes later, as the sun was starting to set, one by one they dropped out of the game. David first went to get a beer and stayed sitting, chatting with the two maids under the tree. Then Rocco and Tina came back to where the sheet was and refilled their wineglasses and sat down together. Marianne, Kai, and Karan followed.

  Tina was flushed from the game, her shawl off her shoulders. She rummaged in her purse and pulled out a black hair tie to tie up her messy hair.

  “Where are the bride and groom?” Rocco asked. “I’ve barely seen Shefali since I’ve been here.”

  “And you probably won’t much more except for a brief handshake and picture on a stage on the wedding night,” Tina said.

  “How many people have they invited? More than a thousand, would you say?” Marianne asked.

  “Easily,” Tina said. “Shefali always wanted a huge wedding but I think she’s regretting it now. She messaged me this morning that she’s checked into the Taj to be by herself for a night.”

  A newlywed Indian Christian couple—long white dress for the bride, black tuxedo for the man—posed for a picture on the crumbling steps in front of one of the tombs from the Mughal Empire. Was it the Mughal Empire? Maybe not. But if she said it confidently enough, people would believe her. The photographer looked Hindu. Although how did one look Hindu? Tina thought. Why did she assume he was? Because he didn’t look Muslim or Sikh or Christian so he was Hindu by default in India.

  Could she make a documentary about different religions in India? Tina wondered. No, she answered herself quickly, she knew absolutely nothing about that. It would be one episode at most and even that would just be filled with every single stereotype she could think of.

  “I’m enjoying seeing what a normal Indian family is like,” Marianne said.

  “Shefali’s family is anything but normal,” Tina said.

  “Pavan’s mother asked me if I wanted her to arrange an elephant painti
ng afternoon—real, live elephants,” Rocco said.

  Tina looked over at Rocco, now shirtless. Of course, why wouldn’t he be? Around them Indian men were already in sleeveless sweaters for their evening walks, preparing for the coming winter, but Rocco was shirtless. He reached across Tina to pick up a bottle of water and Tina could feel the heat coming off his body.

  She flashed back to that night in London, how drawn she had been to Rocco from the start. Her body had leaned toward him and then, to make matters more complicated, he had been funny and charming and interesting. She remembered standing beside him on the road across from Liberty, his face lit up with passing headlights and his own laughter as he told her about—what was it?—how the one bad habit he had picked up in India was the tendency to stand too close to others in lines.

  “I really nuzzle my belly into the lumbar of the person ahead of me,” he had said. “So nobody else can squeeze in. It’s terrible but it’s necessary for survival in India. Otherwise I’d never get to the front of the line.”

  Tina laughed and then there was a break in traffic so they ran across the street and into the cobbled streets of Carnaby and Rocco had pressed up behind her and held her hips with his hands and whispered, “See? Nobody can get in front of me now.”

  * * *

  —

  THEY ALL SAT TALKING and drinking as the sun dipped first behind the ruins across the park and then out of sight completely. As darkness fell, the voices around them seemed to get louder even though the world seemed to disappear around them. Small lights lit up the paths around the garden and the monuments were aglow in the distance. Tina wondered what it would be like to get up from here and go home instead of to Colebrookes. To go to a one- or two-bedroom rented apartment in Hauz Khas or Defence Colony. Maybe her full-time staff would be there making dinner.

  “Do you have a cook in Bombay?” she asked Rocco.

  “I have someone who comes in the morning to clean and cook lunch but I usually make dinner myself,” he said. “Why?”

  “Is that nice?”

  “I guess. I don’t think about it that much, it’s just sort of how things work here. She’s nice, though—Jessie. She does all my shopping and keeps the fridge stocked and the apartment tidy. It’s weirdly intimate. I once noticed her smelling my clothes to figure out if they were dirty or clean. But we only overlap for an hour or so in the mornings. I pay for both her kids to go to school.”

  David got up and walked over to the sheet where the rest of them were sitting.

  “Well, I’m off. You kids have fun. Neel, you too,” he said.

  “Where’s my mother?” Tina asked.

  “At a textile exhibition of some sort. Not my thing so I decided to explore the city, and then Rocco and Kai invited me along to the gardens. But I have the car so I have to go pick her up.”

  “Radha and her textiles,” Mr. Das said. “Good luck carting back everything she probably bought today.”

  “From an exhibition?” David asked.

  “There are always sales,” Mr. Das said. “David Smith, I still have boxes full of her textiles in my garage because she insists her apartment is too small—I can barely squeeze the car in. Do me a favor and come get those boxes sometime.”

  “No, sir,” David said. “I have boxes full of my ex-girlfriend’s hobbies still sitting around my spare bedroom. For a while she was really into cross-stitching feminist slogans so until she comes to get those boxes, you’re stuck with the textiles.”

  Mr. Das raised his beer and said, “To exes and their hobbies.”

  “Nevertheless, she persisted,” David said and pretended to doff a nonexistent hat at Mr. Das and went off in search of the exit. Mrs. Sethi stood up and said, “I should really head home as well. If I leave any later, I’ll be sitting in traffic for hours.”

  Mr. Das quickly got up with her and said, “Come, I’ll walk you to your car and leave from there as well.”

  “The adults are gone, who wants to smoke pot?” Rocco asked.

  “We’re all in our thirties,” Marianne said.

  “Actually, I’m forty-one,” Rocco said.

  “Not for me. Pot slows you down,” Karan said. “I’m off too. Marianne, I’ll pick you up around nine.”

  The two maids rushed around filling the cooler and putting the trash in large plastic bags and started yanking on the sheet they were sitting on until Tina, Marianne, Rocco, and Kai had to get up so they could fold it and put it away and hurry off behind Karan. Tina slapped her hands close to Rocco’s leg to kill a mosquito.

  “Got it,” she said. “My mosquito-killing skills are unparalleled.”

  She brushed the back of his calf and added, “Sorry, I think the carcass got caught in your leg hair.”

  Rocco looked down at her and smiled.

  “Just any excuse to touch me,” he said.

  “What?” Tina felt caught off guard. Was he flirting? Was she flirting? Of course she was. He was so handsome and so effortless and that night in London needed a fitting conclusion of some sort. Or maybe it was the wedding and the newness and the nostalgia of India all mixed together throwing her off. Weddings, especially destination ones, were never about wise choices; they were about panicky introspection. That’s all it was. But still she smiled and locked eyes with Rocco for an additional moment and said, “Any excuse at all. There wasn’t even a mosquito.”

  A bhel puri seller walked over wearing a metal table like a necklace. On it were steel containers with puffed rice, tomatoes and cucumbers, and coriander and onions, the various spices, and a little bag with his money. He stopped and looked at this group. No, he decided, they weren’t the type to buy bhel puri on the street; they looked the type who would pay ten times what he would charge to eat the same snack in a fancy hotel. He had become good at reading people over the years and very rarely missed a sale. That, combined with his perfected price discrimination, meant he had recently bought a scooter for himself and his wife.

  “You’re forty-one?” Tina asked Rocco.

  “Forty-two next month,” Rocco said.

  “That’s not so old anymore, is it? I still think I’m twenty-two sometimes,” Tina said. “Although apparently my elbows no longer look twenty-two. Has Rajesh been offering everyone beauty secrets?”

  “No,” the others said.

  Tina rubbed her elbows.

  “I, for one, am glad I’m no longer twenty-two,” Marianne said.

  “I guess it does sound old. What are you supposed to be doing at forty-two?” Rocco asked. “Aren’t you supposed to have three children and a tucked-in T-shirt?”

  “You’d look good with your shirt tucked or untucked,” Tina said. Then she peered into her empty glass and added, “That’s probably my cue to stop drinking. Off I go.”

  She picked up her purse without looking directly at Rocco.

  “Same. I’ve got to get ready. Karan’s taking me to a party,” Marianne said.

  “Everyone knows, Marianne,” Tina said. “But I don’t think everyone’s as worried as me because everyone doesn’t know about the time you disappeared for five days in college with that Saudi prince. Are you sure you don’t want to be twenty-two again?”

  Marianne picked up her purse and said simply, “He was Pakistani. And everyone’s a fool in college.”

  * * *

  —

  TINA AND MARIANNE SAT in the car in silence. Finally, Tina said, “It’s never a good idea to drink during the day.”

  “Right,” Marianne said. “Especially in the hot sun.”

  They lapsed back into silence. Tina caught Sunil’s eye in the rearview mirror and quickly looked away and out of the window. Could he smell the alcohol on them? Did he care?

  Marianne looked down at her phone and opened the favorites in her contacts list. Her parents, her brother, the landline to her office, Tom, Tina, an
d the bodega at her street corner that would deliver for her if they weren’t too busy. What a comforting list of favorites, she thought. Tom would still be asleep, the light starting to creep into the apartment. He would be wearing a pair of boxers and sleeping on his stomach, his arms above his head.

  Outside, traffic was starting to get heavy and the car inched along, the lights of other cars lighting up Tina and Marianne’s faces. Tina looked out of the window. Suddenly, a dirty face pushed up against her window, a boy’s hands shading his eyes so he could look into the car and ask for money. Sunil noticed and drove forward a few feet. The little boy followed the car. He looked past Tina and registered Marianne’s white skin and rushed around the car to her side and pressed up against Marianne’s window. Marianne looked away, looked down at her feet, looked out past Tina’s side of the window. The same thing had happened in Karan’s Jaguar this morning and when she put the window down to hand the child twenty rupees, the car had suddenly been surrounded by little faces and little hands begging for more and she had been terrified. She focused hard on looking away.

  “For God’s sake,” Tina said. She reached into her purse and pulled out a five-hundred-rupee note, leaned across Marianne, put her window down a few inches, and slid the note out to the little boy without letting her hands touch his. The little boy let out a large whoop and came over to Tina’s side of the car and did a little dance for her. Tina kept looking at him as the car drove through the intersection and back to Colebrookes.

  WEDNESDAY EVENING

  Colebrookes: Across Town, Alone in Her Bedroom, Shefali Is Googling Every Man She’s Ever Kissed

  “DID YOU TRY THE COCONUT oil?” Rajesh asked as Tina and Marianne returned to the cottage. “Here, I’ve brought you beet juice. I call this special juice my unbeatable glow. You can drink this instead of sleeping and look well-rested.”

  “I’m not tired, though,” Tina said.