Destination Wedding

by Diksha Basu

  “Right? And think about the settings—castles, palaces, this—Colebrookes, farmhouse parties, seven-star hotels, yachts off the Bombay coast glittering in the Arabian Sea, and private jets to Umaid Bhavan. Bachelorette parties in the Maldives. But also conservative aunts and uncles, love marriages versus arranged, coded words for sex, brides smoking cigarettes in secret with mehndi up to their elbows, and taking swigs of whiskey from the groom’s flask before walking in with their eyes lowered to the floor demurely.”

  “And handsome bodyguards with earpieces,” Marianne said, flipping over onto her stomach and pushing her hair behind her ears. “You have so much energy! I take it the food poisoning has left your system.”

  “I spoke to Rachel last night and she’s already enthusiastic about it,” Tina said. “I need to go find Bubbles. This is it.”

  She got up and threw on a pair of jeans, a black, long-sleeved T-shirt, and a pair of brown boots and rushed out of the cottage. Marianne touched her finger to her nose. It still felt tender. She tried to gently twist the small diamond stud but it hurt too much. It was stuck—what a metaphor—too painful to take out, too painful to leave in. She dropped her head back onto the bed and closed her eyes to snooze a little bit more.

  “I’m looking for Bubbles,” Tina shouted to Rajesh on the lawns outside. She got closer to him and said, “Do you know where she is? Are you wearing fake eyelashes?”

  Rajesh reached up to his eyes and said, “Oops, forgot to remove those.”

  He pulled them off and dropped them into his shirt pocket with a laugh.

  Tina looked at him closely, his lips stained red, bits of brown makeup caked into the laugh lines around his eyes.

  Rajesh held his finger up to his lips and said, “Shhh,” and winked at her.

  “Why are you wearing fake eyelashes?” Tina asked.

  “Practice,” Rajesh said. He checked over his shoulder and leaned into Tina and whispered, “At night, I’m not Rajesh, your butler, I’m Raat Kumari, your night goddess.”

  “What?” Tina said.

  “I perform. And tomorrow night, Tina, I am Zara, Bollywood superstar, item-girl extraordinaire, thirty-seven-year-old who pretends to be twenty-four years old. My biggest performance to date.”

  “You’re going to pretend to be Zara?” Tina said.

  Rajesh laughed and said, “Isn’t it brilliant? Don’t tell anyone. Bubbles is in a bit of a bind and I’ve been doing drag for the last five years. I can transform into Zara spectacularly. Wait and see. You won’t even know it’s me. Bubbles is a genius. You were looking for her? I think she’s in the sauna sweating out all the champagne she’s been drinking.”

  “You’re moonlighting as a drag performer for Bubbles?” Tina said. She shook Rajesh by the shoulders and laughed. “No, no, this is too much. This is spectacular. This is made for television. Rajesh, thank you, I have to go.”

  Tina ran in the direction of the main clubhouse and the women’s saunas. She quickly said hello to the woman at the front desk, shouted out her cottage number, and went straight into the sauna.

  Bubbles lay on the top bench of the sauna on a zebra-print towel in a leopard-print, one-piece bathing suit. Her hair was spread out in a halo around her and her long, lacquered nails were clacking against a flask filled with water and sliced lemons that she had balanced on her belly. She was wearing large, round Fendi sunglasses and had wireless headphones in her ear. All her various pieces of jewelry were carefully placed around her on the bench.

  A young Indian woman sat on the perpendicular lower bench, naked except for a pair of white bathing suit bottoms, her brown hair pulled into a topknot. She was flipping through an issue of Vogue India. Her abs were tight and slim, her breasts round and firm, a thin gold chain with a moon pendant lay against the glistening sweat of her chest. She looked up right as Tina, still fully dressed, was staring at her and said, “Can I help you?”

  “Um, no, sorry,” Tina said.

  “You’re not supposed to wear so many clothes in the sauna, you know?” the woman said.

  “How are your abs so toned?” Tina asked, still staring.

  “Pole dancing and Pilates. There’s a new studio in South Ex called Shine. It’s run by Ilya from Russia. You should try it,” the woman said. “Could you maybe stop staring at me? It’s making me rather uncomfortable.”

  “Sorry, so sorry. You’re very beautiful,” Tina said.

  Bubbles took one of her headphones out, pushed her sunglasses onto her head, leaned up on one elbow, and said to Tina, “Why thank you, darling.”

  “No, not— Never mind. You’re welcome, Bubbles. I’ve been looking all over for you.” Tina could feel her pants starting to stick to her. Two drops of sweat dripped down her back. “Gosh, it really is quite hot in here,” she said and pulled at her shirt collar and blinked twice to stop feeling dizzy.

  “Bubbles, are you interested in television?” Tina asked.

  “I don’t watch too much,” Bubbles said. “My favorite one is where all these washed-up stars live in a house together and behave badly. But I also love singing competitions and talent competitions. You know, there’s a seven-year-old boy in Chennai who can play two pianos at the same time. I also love cooking competitions, especially the ones where children compete. And you know that American show in which people claim they’re in love to get Green Cards? Genius. And those housewives all over America, love them. I also managed to illegally download the show about those huge, fat, fat people who get gastric bypass surgery and they eat only McDonald’s food and one-liter Pepsi Cokes and cry. And that RuPaul woman. Or man? I don’t know but she is so beautiful, I could watch her for hours. Anyway, like I said, I don’t watch too much.”

  “Would you want to be on a television show?” Tina asked. She was worried she was about to pass out. She used her palm to wipe her forehead dry.

  Bubbles sat upright now, pulling both her headphones out, and said, “Be on one?”

  “A wedding-planning show. Where you plan and execute expensive, lavish, over-the-top Indian weddings in exotic locations with fake British soldiers and imported flowers and Bollywood stars,” Tina said. She wiped her brow again. “I don’t feel so good. I think I’m still dehydrated from the food poisoning.”

  “You don’t look good,” the young woman said to Tina, setting her magazine aside. “I think you should step out of the sauna and drink some water.”

  She got up and pulled the sauna door open and helped Tina out.

  “I was born for the screen,” Bubbles shouted. She tried to get up to follow Tina out but her bathing suit strap had snagged on a broken piece of wood on the bench. “Damn it. Tina, wait!”

  Tina sat down against a locker while the Indian woman got her a small bottle of water.

  “Have you had your arm hair lasered off?” Tina asked in between sips.

  “Drink the whole bottle,” the woman said. “And yes. I’ve had everything below my eyelashes lasered off. You should try it.”

  The woman from the front desk came into the locker room and said, “Ma’am, are you okay? We just saw you on the cameras and you really are not supposed to enter the sauna in street clothes. It can be very dangerous. You need to get some fresh air.”

  The woman gave Tina a Parle-G biscuit and helped her out of the clubhouse.

  “You should go and lie down for a while,” she told Tina. “You’re the one who had loosies yesterday, aren’t you?”

  “Loosies?” Tina asked. “That’s a disgusting word. I had a slight upset stomach, yes. Why does everyone know about it?”

  “Go get some rest,” the woman said. “I’ll have my colleague bring you Electral.”

  A few minutes after Tina left, Bubbles flew out of the locker room, still trying to put on all the jewelry she had removed in the sauna. The clasp of her most expensive diamond bracelet was so fiddly she always re
gretted removing it.

  “Where did she go? What television show was she talking about? I want to be on television. I’ll come up with a catchphrase! Something about a good catch—is that good?” she asked the woman at the front desk.

  “Ma’am.” The woman jumped up. “Ma’am, you aren’t allowed on the grounds in just your bathing suit. Ma’am, please return to the locker room.”

  * * *

  —

  FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, BUBBLES TRIVEDI stood outside Tina and Marianne’s cottage in her sunglasses, wearing a dusty pink kaftan with a beige fur shrug around her shoulders. A white suede Fendi purse dangled off her right shoulder with a beige fur ball keychain attached to the external zipper. Her skin and hair were still slick with sweat. She knocked on the cottage door. Marianne opened it.

  “I, darling child, am your subject,” Bubbles announced.

  “Excuse me?” Marianne said.

  Bubbles lowered her sunglasses and looked at Marianne.

  “No, not you. Your friend. Where’s Tina? My entrance was for her sake,” Bubbles said, shaking her head. She looked over Marianne’s shoulder. “I’m going to be a television star.”

  “Come on in. Tina’s lying down but she can barely contain her excitement,” Marianne said. “I’m off to have breakfast and a facial but please try to keep her calm. She had a rough day yesterday.”

  Bubbles grabbed Marianne’s left hand and said, “Unmarried. Perfect.”

  “You know that already,” Marianne said.

  Bubbles ignored her, pulled out another business card, and handed it to Marianne. “You message me when you’re ready to get married. I’ll put up the best show you’ve ever seen. You seem the kind who would want to get married in some ramshackle barn outside Manhattan.”

  Marianne studied her card and said, “You’re not completely wrong. Do you know a good barn?”

  Bubbles tapped her card with a long pink fingernail and said, “Just call when you’re ready. I’ll find you the best barn in all the land.”

  “You’ve found your star, darling child,” Bubbles said again, this time to the correct person. “The Wedding Planner. My Big Fat Indian Wedding. Destination, colon, Wedding. The options are endless.”

  “You’re interested?” Tina asked. She had stripped down to her underwear and bra and was lying in bed with a damp cloth on her head.

  “Sauna heat just stays with you, doesn’t it?” Bubbles said. She leaned down close to Tina’s bed. “It does not smell great in here.”

  Bubbles walked over to the windows and opened them up and propped the front door open with a chair.

  Tina sat up in her bed and said, “This works, right? I mean everyone’s already done the documentaries on India’s truck drivers or, I don’t know, pesticides in local alcohol, or sex workers’ children.”

  “Born into Brothels. A thousand times over,” Bubbles said.

  Tina was surprised Bubbles had heard of that documentary.

  “Even I’ve heard of that documentary,” Bubbles said, reading her mind. “But a grand extravaganza of a show about elaborate Indian weddings is exactly the need of the hour. And whether you like it or not, that’s what you know. That’s what you have an understanding of. And social commentary can also be made by turning the lens on wealth, you know.”

  Tina pulled at a cuticle on her right thumb and stared at Bubbles. Bubbles tapped at her own temple and said, “Not just a pretty face.”

  She was wearing a heavy gold necklace that looked like a lizard wrapped around her neck. Its eyes were large red rubies.

  “We could give you a catchphrase,” Tina said.

  “You’ll be surprised to hear I don’t hold back on camera,” Bubbles said. “I have lots of raunchy jokes to share.”

  “I could have jump cuts of street scenes—a husband in a wheelchair under a bridge, a woman roasting corn, a little girl begging—as a white limousine drives past with the bride shouting at her makeup artist,” Tina said. “India, the land of contrast.”

  “You know, my niece married a New Zealander and for their wedding, we flew in the entire Indian and New Zealand cricket teams to Andaman for a cricket match and then they attended the wedding as guests. And last year at a wedding in Udaipur, Rihanna came,” Bubbles said.

  “You brought Rihanna to India?” Tina asked, getting out of bed. There was too much to do to waste time recovering from food poisoning. She walked over to her suitcase and took out a dress and pulled it on.

  “Not exactly but I was at the wedding. My point is that weddings are so over-the-top these days, especially Indian ones. My neighbor’s son’s wedding—not even one of the more lavish ones, it was done just in Neemrana, but the white horse that he was riding in on got scared when one of his uncles fired a gun and took off galloping with my neighbor’s son sitting on his back. Imagine if you had managed to capture that on camera,” Bubbles said.

  “And people would agree to this,” Tina said. “I mean, look at Shefali—she would jump at an opportunity like this. And why should India only get poverty if other countries are allowed complex and varied representations? Look at Japan! First it was only anime and porn but now they’ve got Marie Kondo.”

  “You know, that Marie Kondo first told everyone to throw everything away and now she’s gone and opened a shop to sell things. And she’s so small and tiny and cute, nobody even thinks to question her for one second. Now, that’s a brilliant businesswoman,” Bubbles said. She continued, “One family, they didn’t allow the widowed grand-aunt to attend the wedding because they thought she would bring bad luck to the young couple. Just imagine. And they were quite shameless about telling everyone about it.”

  “Did you do anything about that?” Tina asked.

  Bubbles hadn’t. Mostly because it wasn’t a family she actually knew; it was a news article she had read but that wasn’t the point.

  “I plan weddings, dear. I don’t interfere in personal politics.”

  “I could show the world this India,” Tina said. “Show them all this madness, the contradictions, the beauty, the chaos.”

  Tina sat down on the bed and picked up the water bottle.

  “I never realized food poisoning could knock you out so badly,” she said.

  Bubbles reached into her purse and took out a little silver container and passed it to Tina and said, “Ajwain. Take a pinch and put it in your mouth and chew it slowly to really get the juice out of the little seeds. It’ll settle your stomach.”

  “What is ajwain in English?”

  Bubbles took the container back and smelled it and said, “I’m not sure. Aniseed? No, that’s saunf—also good for digestion, by the way. Ajwain, ajwain. I really don’t know what it is in English.”

  Bubbles put it back in her purse and said, “And end of season one, we’ll cut to you being proposed to by that handsome Australian fellow. And we’ll start season two gearing up to plan your wedding in Bondi Beach.”

  “Rocco?” Tina asked. “No, he isn’t, we aren’t—”

  “We’ll break the fourth wall, show you as a producer. So along the way, during the season, we’ll make sure we catch glimpses of your romance.”

  There was a knock on the open door and Rajesh leaned in holding a tray with a red Gatorade on it.

  “Delivery for you, Ms. Tina,” Rajesh said. “From your dear friend Miss Marianne.”

  He placed the bottle on the coffee table and handed Tina a note.

  Found a Gatorade at the Colebrookes shop. It’s red flavored and about to expire and cost me an arm and a leg so you better drink it and recover soon. Try an NYC hangover cure for Delhi Belly. PS. I think the show sounds brilliant.

  “Rajesh, what’s ajwain in English?” Bubbles asked.

  “Carom,” Rajesh said.

  “I thought that was a game,” Bubbles said.

  Tina looke
d down at the note from Marianne, dear Marianne. Lucky Marianne who couldn’t see how perfect Tom was for her. Or maybe she could and she pretended she couldn’t because it hadn’t crossed Tom’s mind to propose. Marianne had always been stubborn and prideful. But Marianne belonged with Tom. Marianne knew it, Tina knew it, and Tom knew it, but Tom had no idea how close he was to losing her. Tina would fix it, she decided.

  “I have another brilliant idea,” she said to Bubbles and Rajesh. “Look at me, I’m on fire. I’m ready to fix the world today. Where’s my phone?”

  She pulled the sheet off the bed and found the phone.

  “You should use headphones when you talk on the phone,” Rajesh said. “Holding the phone close to your face too much can increase acne.”

  “Okay, thank you, Rajesh,” Tina said. “That’s quite enough.”

  Rajesh turned to leave and Tina squatted down near her suitcase and said, “Damn it, where are my headphones?”

  Bubbles snickered behind her.

  Tina rummaged around and said, “Bubbles, could you excuse me now, please? There’s something else I have to do.”

  “Yes, dear,” Bubbles said. “And I’m due for a manicure anyway. I’ll speak to you this afternoon about next steps.”

  * * *

  —

  “TINA?” TOM SAID, JOLTING awake in his bed in DUMBO. His glasses were still on his face. He could still smell the remnants of the last cigarette of the night on his breath. He squinted over at the clock and saw that it was nearing 2 A.M. He must have fallen asleep while reading.

  “Is everything okay? Is it Marianne?” he asked, sitting up and straightening his glasses, his plaid comforter around his skinny waist.

  “She’s fine. You’re flying to India tonight. I’m buying you a ticket—it’s in coach and you’ll pay me back so don’t try to take some stupid communist stand. I googled you when you first started dating Marianne, and I know you were in the Black Republicans at Penn.”