Chapter 12
The Performance
Casey
Ihaven’t attended many significantly formal events in my adult life.
The most recent one was my cousin Mike’s wedding in Gravenhurst, Ontario.
The venue was an old Legion hall. The catering was a taco truck.
The best man’s speech included the phrase “and that’s when the canoe tipped over” and the bride’s uncle played the spoons.
The DJ played “Man! I Feel Like a Woman” three times because Shania Twain is from Muskoka and it is apparently a provincial legislation that no wedding held in the region is finished without a minimum of two Shania songs and a standing ovation during the key change.
I caught the bouquet, which I was told was “non-traditional” but Mike’s blushing bride Shelly said the rules are the rules and I had to keep it.
The flowers died in my apartment three days later because I forgot to water them.
Oliver ate one of the roses, which led to a five-thousand-dollar emergency vet visit to ultimately learn that my dog was constipated.
Five thousand dollars. For constipation.
I could have bought him a lifetime supply of canned pumpkin puree for that money.
This is nothing like that event.
The central courtyard of the Kapoor estate has been transformed into something that I think exists on a plane between “wedding reception” and “the kind of regionally significant party that gets described in history textbooks.” The entire space is draped in emerald and gold silk to match our suits.
Lanterns hang from the neem trees, dozens of them, casting warm, flickering light that turns the sandstone walls to liquid amber against the dark night sky.
The raised platform at the centre is carpeted in deep green, flanked by cascading arrangements of white roses and jasmine and marigolds that are so lush, so impossibly abundant, that the air is thick with their perfume.
A live sitar player is seated in the corner, accompanied by a tabla drummer, and the music is threading through the courtyard like smoke, intricate and haunting and completely unlike anything that has ever played at any event I’ve attended.
In comparison, the other events I’ve attended usually have a DJ named Darren who takes requests and plays “Sweet Caroline” at least twice.
There are seventy-two people here.
I know this because Arjun told me the exact number, along with their names, their family positions, their known alliances, and their probable opening conversational gambits.
I’ve retained roughly forty percent of it, which I’m choosing to consider a solid B-minus.
My former professors at McMaster would call it a failing grade, and I would like to sincerely apologize to my first year anatomy professor, Dr. Hendricks, wherever he may be.
We entered together. That part was easy, or at least it looked easy, which is the only thing that matters.
Arjun took my hand at the door of the guest suite, and we walked down the stone corridor and through the archway, and the courtyard opened up before us in all its lantern-lit, silk-draped, jasmine-soaked glory, and seventy-two faces turned toward us at once.
Seventy-two pairs of eyes. On me. On the gold suit. On my hand in Arjun’s.
I’ve been stared at my whole life. When you’re six-three and built like a piece of industrial equipment, people look.
They looked when I played hockey. They look in the ER.
They look on the subway, where I take up approximately one-and-a-half seats and spend the entire ride apologizing to whoever is next to me with my body language.
But this is different. This is seventy-two people evaluating whether I’m worthy of one of their own, and the evaluation is not casual.
It’s comprehensive, and backed by centuries of aristocratic quality control.
I smile. I smile like my life depends on it, because it sort of does, and I hold Arjun’s hand, and I walk into the party like I belong here, because the man beside me asked me to.
The first forty-five minutes are a gauntlet.
We work the room together, and I use the word ‘work’ in the same way you’d use it to describe a long shift in a busy ER: methodically, one crisis at a time, with triage protocols.
Arjun is my attending physician in this scenario.
He steers; I follow. He angles us toward safe conversational harbours and away from known hostile territory.
He introduces me with a clipped, precise economy of language that somehow conveys ‘this is my beloved fiancé’ and ‘do not test his or my patience’ in the same breath.
I shake almost nine thousand hands, which I know is mathematically impossible but I stand by it.
I accept compliments about my suit with what I hope is appropriate humility and not the bewildered gratitude of a man who usually dresses in scrubs with cartoon dinosaurs on them.
I deploy ‘namaste’ with the correct hand positioning, which I practised in the bathroom mirror for ten minutes while Arjun watched me with an expression that started at mortified and slowly, reluctantly migrated toward something that I have decided was impressed.
What nobody tells you about working a party as a couple is that it is a full-contact sport.
Every time we change direction, Arjun’s hand lands on the small of my back to steer me, and the force of his palm through the gold silk is so specific, so concentrated, that I can feel the exact shape of his fingers printed against my spine.
When the crowd thickens near the rose arrangements, he steps closer, close enough that his shoulder presses against my arm and I can smell the citrus soap under the jasmine, and my entire nervous system narrows to the four square inches where his body is touching mine.
I’m sure he has no idea he’s doing this to me.
This is just Arjun navigating a room the way he navigates an OR: with precision, efficiency, and a complete lack of awareness that every controlled, deliberate touch is sending my pulse into a rhythm that would get me pulled off a treadmill test. At one point, guiding me past a cluster of uncles near the fountain, his fingers slip from my back to my hip, just for a second, just to angle me through the gap, and the contact is so low that I lose the thread of whatever the uncle next to me is saying and have to nod three times in a row and hope it wasn’t a question.
I navigate a conversation with a retired brigadier general who wants to know my opinion on India’s defence budget.
I don’t have an opinion on India’s defence budget.
In fact, I’ve never had an opinion on India’s defence budget.
I tell him I’m a paediatrician and that the only budget I’m passionate about is the one that determines whether my hospital gets new ultrasound machines.
He stares at me for four seconds, then laughs so hard he spills his whisky on a nearby auntie.
I survive an encounter with Cousin Ananya, who corners me near the rose arrangements and spends six unbroken minutes trying to determine the provenance and approximate cost of my suit.
I tell her Tarun made it. She asks if I know how much Tarun charges.
I tell her I don’t, which is true, because Arjun handled it and I suspect the answer would make me physically unwell.
She narrows her eyes and retreats, unsatisfied, and I watch her pull out her phone, presumably to begin textile analysis.
I’m cornered by Auntie Kavita, who has somehow transported an entire tray of samosas through a formal engagement party and is pushing them at me with the focused, irresistible force of a hostess who has elevated food-based hospitality to a martial art.
I eat three. They are, again, extraordinary.
She pats my cheek and again tells me I’m a “good, solid boy,” which at this point I believe is the Kavita equivalent of a knighthood.
Sunita finds me near the fountain and casually asks whether Arjun and I have discussed where we’ll live after the wedding, what our combined income is, and whether I’ve had a comprehensive health screening and a prostate exam in the last twelve months.
I answer: “Toronto, none of your business, yes, my cholesterol is excellent, and Auntie, I love that you’re worried about my health, but no.
” She blinks, smiles, and I see her thumbs start moving before she’s even turned away.
I’m once again the talk of the WhatsApp group before I have time to finish my samosa.
Through all of it, I’m watching Arjun.
He’s performing. He’s performing with the flawless, practised rigidity of someone who has been attending these events since he was old enough to hold a teacup without spilling, and the transformation is both impressive and heartbreaking.
The Arjun with me at this party isn’t the Arjun who wakes up with his face pressed into my chest every morning and grips my shirt like I’m going to disappear.
This Arjun is polished, commanding, and cold.
He works the room with the critical efficiency of a military operation.
He speaks in clipped, elegant sentences.
He smiles at exactly the right moments with exactly the right spirit, and none of it reaches his eyes.