by Nisi Shawl
The first boy won’t stop bragging. The second only wants to know what you can cook. The third is engaging till you tell him your degree is in performance arts. Then he says, “I thought you went to a real college.”
You dream of running from princes armed with ladles and calculators, of pulling banana leaves over yourself and hiding in damp, summer-smelling earth.
Ram’s auspicious name brings you out of hiding. His statistics are encouraging: MBA, in charge of his father’s restaurants in California, green card holder.
Emailed pictures tell you he’s tall, with an easy smile and Bollywood charm. The hint of grey over his ears adds distinction. He’s wearing a kurta, blue-green as banyan leaves, over jeans. The photos do look a bit lightened, but darkness hardly matters in a man. You wonder what he makes of your pictures, whether he’ll get in touch. You wonder how American he is.
He emails.
He asks what you think about the different dance forms you’ve studied. He says he’s glad you wear traditional clothes; nothing can match their elegance. He asks if you’d be willing to leave Mama and Papa behind to go into exile with him; to come home, as they did, only in old age. He doesn’t ask if you can cook.
You talk on the phone. His low voice, his foreign vowels, make your toes curl.
You’re scared of a decision made too soon, and he’ll agree to wait. But Mama and Papa are old now, stooped and translucent, and Mama says plaintively that she wants to hold a grandchild before she dies. And how, after all, could Ram and Sita go wrong? He flies in for a visit.
At dinner, you talk over candlelight. He tells stories that make you laugh and grins when you do: “Arrey, she threatened to sue because she thought the chili was a tomato!” Candle shadows dance across his face. “We’re not entirely pakka; one of our best cooks is Pakistani. But the only thing he terrorizes is the paneer. He’s a good guy actually.”
You’ve set a date before the candles sputter out.
Wedding preparations whirl you through the next months; they set you down on the divan three days before the wedding, with henna-covered hands stretched into a patch of hot sunlight and time, finally, to fret. The swirling patterns smell of wet earth. Hidden in their perfect shadows, drawing your eyes, one man’s initials mark you.
Ayah, silhouetted, dabs sugar water on your hands and tells you not to scratch.
Mama reads out loud, voice quavering. She reads the stories she used to tell you at bedtime: Sita following Rama into the jungle, Sita keeping patient house for Rama and his brother. Sita obeying, Sita turning aside arguments with a gentle smile, Sita’s staunch loyalty.
Ayah sighs. “Never underestimate those virtues in a marriage,” she murmurs. You wonder, too late to ask, how she knows.
3. Exile
Rama was the eldest of his brothers; but one of his father’s junior wives, wanting her son to be king, prevailed upon her husband to exile Rama for fourteen years.
Ever obedient to all his parents, Rama left. His brother Lakshman would not part from him, so they and Sita lived together in the jungle. The princes learned to be hunters, the princess to keep a house.
§
You join your prince in California, land of pink-skinned people and red-skinned trees and green card applications, to live in a golden house in the hills; burned yellow stucco, bamboo floors, golden tones in Persian rugs and Ravi Varma prints. It even smells lemon-gold; citrus fresheners are plugged into electrical outlets in every room.
The front windows look onto a spill of iceplant, unnaturally green. To the back grow colors of tarnish—rust and verdigris clawed with old-silver branches, sage soft and white as oxidized lead. Swimming pools sprouting, copper sulphate blue. You polish every figurine and oil lamp before they turn into the hillside.
When Mama phones, you describe the house. “What about Ram, beti?” she asks.
The bedsheets are creamy, soft as rich soil, but your first night under them was painful. Worse, it was awkward; Ram too anxious to laugh at the absurdity of it, trying too hard for you to relax, gone when you woke. He’s been working late, most nights, too tired when he gets home to do more than cuddle. You say, “He has a lot to catch up on.”
You don’t say that you’ve mostly been relieved.
“It takes time,” Mama says, “and work. Love is the result of a successful marriage, not the cause.”
§
Carven rosewood is scattered through the house, the images familiar, beloved, absent only in the kitchen of flat glass and steel. You dust battles out of myth, running pink microfiber over maces, demon tusks, four-armed gods. Like the maids do at home.
You pull out your old Ramayana comics, the ones with pages falling out. Ram finds one on the bedside table. “I used to love those when I was a kid,” he says.
“They’re not bad for adults either,” you tell him.
“They made me think I’d turn blue someday.” He picks one up, traces a line with one fingertip; his smile is half embarrassed, half wistful.
§
Ram warns you of a party next weekend. “Just another type of work,” he says. “Schmoozing. Ranjan’s always are. I’m sorry we won’t get the evening together.”
You start to smile at the prospect; you’ve hardly talked to anyone except for Americans so incomprehensible you’re amazed both of your languages are called English. But there are lines between his eyebrows. You finish the smile, say, “You’ll have to make it up to me.” The worry lines ease.
You practice walking in heels till you’re confident that you won’t stumble or put a heel through chiffon. They’re for the beaded blue sari with the strappy blouse, and the long earrings heavy with sapphires, the ones that make you look like Aishwarya. You hope.
You dream of heels sinking into damp soil. When you try to pull free, the tarnished ground shakes under you. You’re not sure, later, if you dreamed the quake.
§
You can’t help tensing up in the car, though Ram knows what he’s doing. They drive on the wrong side of the road. It would be easier if you were in the back seat, with a driver up front. But normal people don’t employ chauffeurs here.
And only fobs call them drivers.
At the party you smile through the laughter at “Ram and Sita,” take the violently pink cocktail someone hands you. You’re fairly sure that refusing to drink is fobbish, too. You sip. It even tastes pink.
The rest of the party is a happy blur. You’re never more than slightly tipsy—you know better—but that little bit helps. And it’s a respite from being a jungle housewife. You have missed getting to know people. You have missed having a chance to sparkle.
Ram gets quieter, seems more tired, as you become central. You want to tuck him into bed; but at least you’re taking some of the burden off him.
But he is frowning all the more on the way home, and his lips are one thin line. Eventually he says, “Was there a single man there you didn’t flirt with? Oh right, there was. Me.”
§
You make naan bhaaji and pistachio mitthai as Mama and the cook taught you, sending smells of cardamom and cumin and chili through the house. The calming fresh-earth smells of home, your spell to repair whatever went wrong. But by the time he gets back the naan is leathery, the bhaaji needs reheating, and the pale-citrus scent has taken back over. He doesn’t complain; he doesn’t say anything at all.
You bite your tongue, tell yourself that Sita in the stories wouldn’t snap at a silent husband. And you did misjudge the timing; overcompensated for the help you’re used to at home.
Except that this is home.
§
You catch him before he leaves for work. He is heavy-eyed, the frown etched deep into his forehead. He reaches out a hand. “Sita…”
Arms crossed, you say, “What did you mean, flirting?”
His hand drops. He turns away. “You’d like a definition? Try the dictionary.”
The door snicks shut behind him before you can respond, and you find yourself shaking i
n fury. Sita might not have lost her temper in the stories—but in the stories Rama never sulked. You want to knock the ground out from under his smug feet, shake his perfect façade of a house loose. You want him running home to the mess you’re feeling—
And with a rumble too huge to hear, the world drops away.
He bursts into the kitchen just minutes after the shaking stops, eyes wide and tie as crooked as his paintings. He says, “I came as—we were right at the epicenter.” He hugs you tight. “That was a big one. You must have been so scared.”
You are one huge pounding heartbeat, but you’re not the least bit scared.
§
You dream of kneeling in yellow dust, citrus-scented, trying to coax a banana plant to grow. Next to you, Lakshman builds a sandcastle. It slides into an undifferentiated hill each time his hands move away.
A paintbrush lies between you, caked with paint; the tip is a single, unbending clump the color of dried blood.
§
He turns up the next day; in the waking world he has a round baby face and an incongruous mustache. You offer him bhel, coffee, sweets.
“So gracious a hostess,” he says, “but I need a nap. I’ll settle in my normal room, acha? You won’t even know I’m here.” He runs a hand through his curly hair and sighs. “Gods know Ram won’t.”
You smile politely, wishing you could unhear that.
He grimaces. “Shit. Blame it on the jet lag, okay?”
At dinner he tells Ram, “I missed you.”
Ram laughs. “Of course you did. You’re surely not here to get away from anyone.”
Expression fades out of Lakshman’s face. He stares at the potato on his fork while he mushes it against the plate. “I wasn’t just—ah, forget it.”
Ram’s smile does not show teeth. “And yet. She’s our mother now.”
Lakshman mutters, “Our mother wasn’t a—”
“Don’t,” says Ram.
§
Lakshman’s up early the next day. He’s not a quiet riser. You stumble out of rice-paddy dreams into the hall as Ram says, “Where are you going?”
“Coming in with you,” says Lakshman.
Ram laughs. “As if I’m going to bore you off,” he says. “Sleep in. Have fun.”
“I am here,” Lakshman says, “to help.” There’s a note in his voice that strangles yours.
“And you’re helping by being here.”
You find Lakshman, later, slumped in front of a Hindi film. His eyes are slitted, one hand holding his face up. Thinking he’s asleep, you back out.
You’re pulling the door shut when he says, “Good thing we’re both decorative, isn’t it.”
§
You replace all the room fresheners with sandalwood scented ones. You arrange huge red roses in a new vase and hope Ram will bring you their replacements.
§
“So why not dance professionally?” Lakshman asks over dinner. His eyes start on you, but he’s looking at Ram by the time he stops speaking.
In that moment you hate him. Because he’s poking at this, because Ram hasn’t, because the sweets he brought are covered in silver foil and smell of home. Because Ram is home early today. You focus on tearing your paratha into bits. “It hasn’t come up,” you manage.
“You know what they’re like,” Ram says. “No respect for their own traditions, let alone ours. They’d think she was just an entertainer. They wouldn’t get it.”
Lakshman snorts. “In San Jose?” he says. “You wouldn’t see three white faces in the audience.”
“There’s plenty of them,” Ram says, “who look pretty much like us.”
You say, “I’d rather not go on a stage, anyway.” You wonder if that’s true. Your paratha is a shredded mess. “But I might teach, sometime.”
“Not that you’d have to,” says Ram.
You nod, get up to get everyone’s lassi.
Lakshman comes with you to take a glass. His hands are unexpectedly soft, and far too close. Lips brushing your ear, mustache hairs bristly against your skin, he murmurs, “Never going to happen.”
You bite your tongue, give Ram his glass with the best smile you can manage. A dozen stories remind you that Sita thought of Lakshman—always, properly—as a brother.
You suggest to Ram that night that Lakshman may be happier helping at the restaurant. He sighs. “Nobody’s happy working in a restaurant,” he says. “But Lakshman would cut his hand off for me—and laugh, and insist he was tired of that hand anyway.”
You dream of serving golden mud on supple banana leaves, their green too bright for California, the dirt too dead for the jungle.
§
You wake to Asha Bhosle remixes on full volume, bass rattling walls, shivering the air, humming in your chest. You’d yell at Lakshman—but he’s not in the living room, so you dance instead, your own improvised semiclassical through the jungle in your mind; you end on your toes, arms thrown out, breathless, laughing.
“It’s a damn crime,” Lakshman says from the doorway, “to keep you locked away here.”
Ram brings you orchids, orange-gold, elegant, bare of leaves. “I’m glad he’s here,” he says. “I’ll have time—soon, surely—but till then, I’m so glad you’re not lonely.”
4. Capture
Sita saw a deer one day, a glimpse of brushed gold that bounded into bushes and jungle vines and vanished in their shadows. Normally Sita cared little for pretty possessions; duty ornamented her more truly than any bangle or earring. But she wanted that deer and could not stop wanting.
The deer ran from Rama without panic or hesitation, and he realized it was an unnatural creature. So he shot it.
The deer screamed out in Rama’s voice.
Lakshman was supposed to take care of Sita, but when they heard that scream, he drew a protective circle around her and ran out into the forest.
§
Remixes wake you again; an invitation. You hesitate on the threshold. Lakshman looks at you out of the corner of his eye, grins, and starts singing along with Asha in a squeaky voice. You join in on the male part, voice wobbling with laughter. When he attempts to dance as the girl, you lose the tune entirely.
Halfway through the second song, Lakshman has to lean against the wall to catch his breath. You keep dancing, feet lighter than they’ve been in months.
You spin, and catch the hopeless wish in his eyes.
§
You can draw a circle of space around yourself, keep Lakshman out of it, but not without him noticing.
“Just tell me what I did,” he says.
You can’t answer.
He looks away, mutters, “Or is it what Ram doesn’t do?”
That note again; jealousy. Did you encourage him? Did you want to?
In the old tales, this could never happen; in a film, it would be the scene before he died, and grief would bring you and Ram together.
If this were a film, you’d have just killed him. You reach out for the wall, needing strength, insight, a different tale. Needing.
The ground below you grumbles. Just a little shake; a reminder.
Lakshman looks around, disconcerted. You pull yourself straight. “Your elder brother,” you say, “works gruelling hours so we don’t have to. It’s time you gave him a chance.”
You’re not sure it’s Lakshman you are telling.
§
“Come on, no, let me take over,” he says to Ram. “Just for a couple of days. You haven’t even had a honeymoon.”
Ram says, “You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“And that’s the problem. Look, what can I really screw up in two days?”
“I would like to see Napa,” you say dutifully.
Ram looks from Lakshman to you, then back again. He rubs the bridge of his nose. “Okay, come in with me for now,” he says. “but promise you’ll tell me if it’s too much, acha?”
Alone, you fill the vase with sunflowers and dance to them.
§
&n
bsp; “He’s managing,” Ram says.
You’ve heard some variant of this every few hours all weekend. Ram checks his phone constantly, and he’s called home “just in case” at least six times. You’re pretty sure he won’t notice a redwood till the photographs are printed. You say, “Maybe because Lakshman likes people.”
Ram frowns, bewildered. “I like people fine,” he says. “Just not when they’re being asses.”
§
Lakshman’s grin and gestures are huge when he tells Ram how the weekend went. Ram’s frown just grows. “I’m glad it wasn’t horrendous,” he says. “You never know with Saturdays.”
Lakshman laughs.
Later, he asks you how the weekend was; you tell him it was nice. His grin falls abruptly away. “No fibs,” he says.
You aren’t about to tell him you dreamed of dancing around redwoods with Ram—a Ram with hair long enough to curl, with a quick grin, with no worry between his brows. The silence drags out.
Lakshman says, “This is…you’re not…” He grabs at his hair. “Look. It’s your life, but he’s my brother. If you don’t tell him, or do something, I will.”
You visit a therapist in a glass hospital drenched in soothing music and diffuse light. She smiles kindly, and she enunciates without talking down to you; you would like to like her. But what can you say to her, this golden stranger? Truth would betray every vow you’ve made; besides, her concern is a role. How do Americans manage it? You leave her bewildered and don’t go again. Nor do you tell Ram.
You make sure to smile brightly around Lakshman, to laugh at everything, but his face grows longer and more drawn, and when he’s home Ram’s worry lines deepen. You tell Lakshman it’s all sorted out now.
He says, “You think I can’t see what it is?”
Two days later he tells Ram he’s going back to Mumbai. The brothers, both full of silences, look more alike than you have seen them outside dreams.
The night Lakshman leaves you find a small vial, stripped of labels, on your bedside table.
5. Ravana
While both the men were gone, ten-headed Ravana came to the cottage disguised as a wise man; and Sita, compelled by the laws of hospitality, left her circle to care for the guest. The moment her foot touched ground outside Lakshman’s white line, Ravana snatched her up and carried her away to his palace.
