Sister of the Bollywood Bride

by Nandini Bajpai

  “What happened last time?” I asked. “Why did you pull out?”

  “You remember that?” she asked. “You were so little!”

  “Remember?” I asked—she thought I’d forgotten? “Of course I remember. I was really excited about going to India, you know.” That had to be the understatement of the decade. “Vinnie helped me shop when she came home for Thanksgiving. I bought gifts for Ari and Avi with my allowance. And then you canceled.…”

  I could feel her eyes on me but kept mine firmly on the road. “Vinod said you took it well,” she said finally.

  “What does Dad know?” I said. “The pea coat you saw in my closet—Vinnie bought it for me as a birthday present, for that trip.”

  “It looks brand-new,” she said.

  I shrugged. “I was so disappointed about the trip that I never wore it.”

  “Okay,” she said. “That’s just tragic. You would have looked so cute in it, Mini.”

  “It’s too late now,” I said, keeping my eyes firmly on the road.

  “I don’t think I ever saw you for more than a day after that,” Masi said. “You were always off to summer camp or something when I visited.”

  “I didn’t…” There were tears glinting at the ends of my lashes but I didn’t brush them away. Maybe it was time to have it all out. “I didn’t want to see you. Before that, I thought you were the only person who got me. Dad and Vinnie were always on about engineering and medicine and stuff. You were the one creative person in my life, and you clearly wanted nothing to do with me.”

  “But I did!” Masi said. “I came the next summer, but you weren’t there.”

  “I just couldn’t…,” I said, “… you know, get excited about doing stuff with you only to have you bail on me—again. That’s why I signed up for summer camp. And it was great!”

  “I was disappointed about that trip as well, Mini,” Masi said.

  “Then why didn’t you come?” I flung at her.

  She said nothing.

  I waited in bitter silence. What possible reason could she have?

  “You want to know?” she said. “Okay, I’ll tell you!”

  Oh, this ought to be good!

  “That November—they found a cyst in my mammogram,” she said. “A large one, and it was irregular so they were afraid it could be something more.”

  No! The word screamed in my head. My knuckles were white, I was gripping the steering wheel so hard. Of course! The hushed phone conversations with Dad that I tried so hard to overhear—that’s what they had been about. How bad had it been?

  Meanwhile Masi was going on explaining—how it changed her priorities, how she put her business on the back burner, let her nanny go, started packing lunch for Ari and Avi with her own hands, how she made sure she picked them up after school, spending every moment she could with her family, and how she made sure she had checkups every few months for years.

  “The first time, they put me through a bunch of tests, including a biopsy. It looked like it might be cancer…”

  My heart was pounding. Please, not that!

  “They removed it, but it turned out not to be malignant. But that’s why I canceled the trip, the deals, and your holiday. It wasn’t even a year from the time Megha passed. I didn’t want you to know—it would have scared you. Vinod agreed.”

  Oh, crap, was there any danger of a recurrence? The car behind me changed into the next lane because I was going way too slow. I’d better pull over before I drove into a tree. An exit was coming up and I took it and parked at the first gas station off the road.

  Masi was looking worriedly at me.

  “What’s wrong? Do you need gas?” she asked.

  I climbed out of the driver’s seat and walked over to her side. She had gotten out, looking puzzled and concerned. I probably confused her even more by wrapping my arms around her in a tight hug.

  She hugged me back, and then I was sobbing all over her pashmina wrap. She felt so tiny and fragile.

  “You’re okay now, right?” I asked her. “It never came back?”

  “I’m fine, beta,” she said. “I’m fine—really!”

  I let her go and stood there awkwardly trying to explain.

  “Masi, I never thought…,” I said. All these years I had blamed her and refused to communicate with her—and she had just been trying to protect me, while dealing with way more crap than anyone deserved. I may be taller than her but right then I felt about two inches high.

  “Silly kid,” she said—her eyes wet with tears too. “It was just a scare. There’s no need for you to worry—I promise.”

  Apparently I’m not great at figuring things out. I jump to stupid conclusions and clam up and stop communicating. I had been so wrong about Masi and lost so much time because of it. Could I have been wrong about Vir too?

  So this time I called him.

  “Mini?” he said. “Is that you?”

  “Yeah,” I said. I looked down at the notes I’d made to get me through the call.

  “I know I’ve been acting strange, but I saw the pictures of you with Koyal and other, um… girls—and I freaked.”

  “Understood,” he said. “I should have told you.”

  “It was a total shock,” I said. My voice kind of broke at that point. Hold it together, Mini, I told myself.

  “I understand,” he said. “But Mini,” and here his voice took on an aggrieved tone, “you should hear me out, instead of just assuming…”

  Really?

  After all the things he kept from me, this was all my fault? I hung up the phone, my hands shaking.

  I could kill that guy!

  This was much, much harder than I thought it would be.

  The phone rang.

  “What?” I snapped.

  “Look, I know this is not the best time!” Vir said.

  Too right, it wasn’t.

  “It isn’t,” I said. “I’m really busy right now, Vir. I want to get through the wedding, we’re having all kinds of problems with the—”

  “Weather, I know,” Vir said. “I’ve seen the news reports. And I’d like to help—please. If there’s anything I can do, just let me know.”

  Wait up. What problem with the weather? But if he was offering to help, I wasn’t going to say no.

  “Fine,” I said.

  “And when this is over, let’s sit down and talk about this rationally,” he said. “It’s not how it looks—I promise.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Could there be a rational explanation?

  I hoped so.

  For now, I had more important things to deal with. Like looking up the weather forecast.

  “It can’t get all the way here, can it?” I swiveled from the Weather Channel reporter on the television screen to look at my dad and back again. “It’ll break up and just turn into rain, right?”

  “I expect so.” Dad didn’t seem worried. “What are they predicting?”

  “Shhh, listen!” I said.

  The reporter was wearing a rain slicker and leaning into the wind, his wet hair sticking to his face. He had to yell to be heard over the storm. “Hurricane Indra has hit Puerto Rico, knocking out power lines and ripping up trees. Computer forecast models showed Indra moving northwest over the Dominican Republic and then heading toward the Florida peninsula, possibly arriving there on Thursday.”

  The screen changed to a map showing several possible storm tracks over the mainland. Most of them went over Florida, then took a left overland, heading toward Texas.

  “It’s not tracking north.” I exhaled. “We’ll be fine if it keeps going west. But just think about all the people who have weddings planned along its path!”

  “I’m sure they’ll manage,” Dad said, wiping his glasses before looking closely at the storm track. “Just relieved it isn’t heading here. I think we’re safe.”

  “Not yet,” I said, and made a mental note to review the rain plans for the wedding, just in case. “The storm track could still cha
nge.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “Hurricane Bob!” Dad said. “That’s the one I’m thinking of!”

  We were driving to the airport to pick up Beeji, Bauji, and Bade Bauji. The weatherman on the radio was recapping the hurricanes that had brushed New England in the past—a total of four in the last half century—Hurricanes Donna, Bob, Irene, and Ingrid.

  So there had been hurricanes in New England in my lifetime—who knew! I guess you just don’t pay attention when you’re younger. According to radio guy, there was some possibility that the hurricane in the Caribbean could hit New York and even make it all the way to Massachusetts.

  As if!

  This was the first hurricane of the season and they were all just panicking for nothing. Weren’t they?

  “Was the last one bad?” I asked Dad.

  “Don’t remember,” Dad said. “It did a lot of damage but on the Cape mostly, not inland. We just got rain and wind. I don’t even think I took the day off work.”

  Which isn’t saying much—Dad never takes a day off work for anything.

  “So is Bade Bauji going to be wearing jeans and a jacket instead of his khadi kurta?” I asked. It had been ages since I’d seen him.

  “He said he didn’t want to risk being frisked by security because of his clothes, so he bought a special outfit for the plane trip,” Dad said.

  I couldn’t imagine anyone frisking Bade Bauji. He commanded respect. Granted, the last time I saw him I was only seven—but I’d been very impressed. And I knew his life story, of course—the story of how he founded KDH Spices.

  He left West Punjab with nothing after the partition of India. All their family property was lost after West Punjab became part of Pakistan. He started from scratch in the refugee camps in Delhi, setting up a business that sold preground spices to housewives. And then his Punjabi spices became famous! He pioneered the selling of boxed spices, basically. People could use them at home to make their own dishes taste amazing because, as the KDH tag line says, Homemade Is from the Heart. He expanded their line to all kinds of Indian dishes—chana masala, rajma, muttar paneer, sambar, tandoori, and so on. And through it all, Bade Bauji always wore the simple homespun Gandhian fabric—khadi—that he had put on as a symbol of the independence movement in the 1940s. Except now he was wearing Levi’s to avoid getting stopped and searched in an American airport. I bet he looked adorable, though.

  “There he is,” Dad said, smiling. Bauji was wheeling the cart with Beeji and Bade Bauji—who looked elegant in khakis and a bomber jacket.

  Beeji was in a starched salwar kameez, ambling along like a ship in sail. No concessions made there—and I wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of any security person who decided to frisk her!

  “Peri pona, Bauji.” Dad swiped a hand in the direction of Bade Bauji’s feet. I made a halfhearted attempt to follow suit, feeling kind of ridiculous. I meant well, but it just didn’t look or feel right if I did it.

  “No, no, beta,” Beeji said. “No need. How are you, Mini? You are looking fine!”

  Beeji was an odd mixture of very traditional and very American. She’d lived here for forty years until Bauji decided he wanted to help modernize the KDH Spices grinding operations and also help launch the new Ayurvedic spices line.

  Bade Bauji examined me carefully. “You look like your mother,” he pronounced at last in his slow, deep voice and careful English. “You have your father’s height, but you are Megha through and through.”

  “Thanks!” I said. I knew I always liked him.

  “Minnni!” Bauji said. Bauji had not changed. Same lantern jaw, same big grin—he looked like the builder he was, even though he had now decided to dedicate his life to researching and bringing Ayurvedic spices to the world. A strange thing for an engineer and builder to be into, but, hey, whatever works, right? “How’s the house looking?”

  “It could do with some work!” I said. This was our old joke. Dad couldn’t be bothered fixing anything around the house, so Bauji always sent his old subcontractors over to help out whenever anything was seriously in need of fixing. When the boiler died, when the water pipes froze, when the toilet made a weird whistling sound as it flushed, when the door stuck, when the roof tiles blew off—it was Bauji’s trade friends who showed up and fixed the plumbing, retiled the roof, and hammered open the door.

  Bauji and I had also convinced Dad to replace the windows, finish the three-season porch, expand the deck, and take care of various other home improvement projects. It was his way of being there for us even after moving away. I missed having him around.

  “I’m here now,” he said. “If there’s anything you want done before the wedding, we still have time!”

  Vinnie was here!

  Manish picked her up at the airport and brought her home after a visit with his parents in Newton. He even came into the house and gingerly petted Yogi with latex gloves on. Even though Vinnie said it was stupid to risk breaking out in hives five days before the wedding, he scored major points with me and Dad. He was trying, I had to give him that—he was definitely trying.

  As soon as he left, we went upstairs with Masi and looked at the dress. Vinnie hadn’t even seen it yet, except in pictures and video.

  “Masi, what if it doesn’t fit?” Vinnie said.

  “Arre!” Masi said. “We’re here, no? We’ll make it fit!”

  “Okay, but what if I hate it?” Vinnie said.

  “That we can’t change now,” Masi said.

  “But you won’t,” I added. “I promise, Vinnie!”

  “Okay,” she said. “Here goes!” She opened the box and lifted the tissue.

  Silence.

  “Well?” Masi said.

  “Say something!” I said, dying of suspense.

  “Masi!” Vinnie looked stunned. She opened her arms, at a loss for words, and squeezed Masi. “It’s so much more beautiful in real life. Thank you, Masi! Thank you!”

  “Put it on first,” Masi said, all smiles, “before you start thanking me!”

  “But it’s so, so beautiful,” Vinnie said, cradling the dress.

  “Yes, we all agree it’s beautiful,” I said. “But put it on, Vinnie. Now. We want to see—does it even fit or what? Okay, go!”

  “Okay, okay!” Vinnie grabbed the box and vanished into her room. Masi grabbed my hand and squeezed. “I’ve dressed so many brides, beta, that it’s all old to me now. All this fitting-shitting.” How I kept a straight face while she rhymed fitting with shitting, I don’t know, but she was obviously sincere, so I did. “But this is Vinnie, and I’m nervous. I’m actually nervous about this. What if she hates it, huh? Haven’t been this nervous since I made Megha’s lehenga all those years ago.”

  I patted her hand, but I was a wreck myself. Masi might have designed it, but I’d picked it out and convinced Vinnie it was the one. What if she did hate it? The door opened.

  A vision in gold and red stood in the doorway, looking like she’d stepped out of a Bollywood movie. Kajol in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Alia Bhatt in Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania, or Koyal Khanna in Meri Bollywood Wedding… all nothing to my sister, Dr. Vinnie Kapoor! I’m biased, clearly, but she looked fantastic.

  The choli fitted her perfectly, setting off her curves; the old gold glowed against her tanned, toned arms. There was a small amount of bare midriff before the lehenga hugged her at the waist and flared out in a froth of gold. The heavy embroidery at the hem made the skirt swing at the slightest movement. Oh, shoot! She had thrown the pretty red scarf in a horrible bunch over one shoulder, but we could fix that.

  “Vinnie!” I literally had tears in my eyes. “Have you seen yourself?”

  “No,” Vinnie said. “But it feels good,” she added, and gingerly walked a step or two in the not-too-high heels I had put out for her. “But how does it look?”

  “Okay, wait, first let me fix this. Turn around!” Masi ordered, then laced up the back of the choli properly and started to drape the red scarf over Vinnie’s head.


  “Wait! Put this on first!” I set a blue velvet jewelry box down on the bed.

  “Oh, right.” Masi put down the scarf and snapped open the jewelry case. “I had forgotten about this. Oh, look at this! It’s Megha’s design!” She lifted the gold necklace reverently. The gold glittered in the light. “Just look at this!” She clasped it gently around Vinnie’s neck as I held up my sister’s glossy black hair (shoulder-length now, thankfully). Masi held out the earrings and Vinnie put them in. I pinned the maangtika into place so it dangled high on her forehead, and Masi arranged the cranberry-red scarf over her hair.

  “Remember, with your hair and makeup styled, you’ll look even better,” Masi said.

  “Just look, Vinnie,” I said, and turned her around so she was facing the full-length mirror on the back of my door.

  “Wow, that’s me?” Vinnie gasped.

  “Sure is!” I said.

  She turned this way and that. “Manish is not going to believe this,” she said. “I look amazing!”

  “Okay, let’s show Dad!” I said, steering her out of the door and downstairs. “Dad, get a load of this!”

  “What?” Dad said. He was wandering around with an open plastic cup of low-fat yogurt in one hand and a spoon in the other, oblivious to the excitement upstairs.

  “Put that down first!” I said, taking the yogurt from his hand and dumping it in the trash. “It might get on the dress. Okay, Vinnie, come through!” I opened the door to the kitchen. “Ta-da!”

  Vinnie floated in, smiling happily.

  “Vinnie!” Dad was suddenly all smiles. “You look like a million bucks!”

  “Doesn’t she?” Masi said. She pulled out a fifty-dollar bill and waved it around Vinnie’s head before putting it in the slot of my MSPCA collection box. “Nazar na lage!”

  “What are you doing?” I asked. “All that waving thing?”