Chapter 23 #2
“Amitabh,” she says, turning to the Home Secretary with the seamless, unhurried pivot of a hostess changing the direction of a conversation the way a surgeon changes instruments.
“Casey was telling me the other day about the complexities of practising medicine internationally.
The visa requirements, the licensing reciprocity, the bureaucratic challenges.
It's all so terribly complicated, isn't it?”
Casey was not telling her this. Casey has never discussed this topic with my mother. She has manufactured this conversational on-ramp from whole cloth.
Verma nods, his heavy eyebrows drawing together with gravity as he settles into his area of expertise.
“Immigration is indeed a complex landscape. Particularly for medical professionals. The regulatory frameworks between nations are not always aligned, and there can be... consequences for practitioners who find themselves on the wrong side of documentation requirements.”
“Consequences,” Mother echoes, and her eyes, casual and bright, drift to Casey. “How interesting. What sort of consequences, Amitabh?”
“Well, in the most serious cases, visa revocation. Professional licensing complications. There have been instances where physicians from allied nations have found their credentials questioned due to irregularities in their immigration status. It can be quite career-limiting.”
The table has gone quiet. Priya's hand has moved to her notebook. Daadi's eyes are fixed on Mother with an expression I cannot read. Dev is staring at his plate. Rohan is watching Casey.
Casey is still eating biryani.
He is sitting there, in the middle of a geopolitical threat disguised as dinner conversation, calmly, methodically eating lamb biryani, and his expression is so placid, so completely, transcendently unbothered, that he looks like he has been asked about the weather and is thinking about what to have for dessert.
“That sounds really challenging,” Casey says, between bites.
“The bureaucracy must be a nightmare. In Canada we have a similar problem with cross-provincial licensing. I had a buddy who transferred from Ontario to British Columbia and the paperwork took nine months. Nine months! He said it was worse than medical school.” He shakes his head with genuine sympathy. “Governments, right? No offence, sir.”
“None taken,” Verma says, and something in his expression shifts.
He is recalibrating. He was expecting Casey would become nervous, defensive, would recognize the implied threat and respond with the appropriate anxiety.
Instead, Casey has just compared the Home Secretary's immigration enforcement apparatus to provincial paperwork and has done so with such genuine, completely unironic friendliness that responding with a threat would feel like kicking a dog.
Mother's smile has frozen by approximately two degrees.
“Of course,” she continues, her voice still light, still casual, still devastatingly precise, “these complications can become particularly acute when personal relationships cross international boundaries. Mixed-nationality partnerships can create all sorts of unexpected regulatory exposure.”
“Oh, totally,” Casey agrees, nodding with enthusiasm.
“My buddy's wife is from the Philippines. The spousal visa stuff alone was a full-time job. She had to submit like fourteen forms. Fourteen! And they lost three of them. She had to resubmit. Can you imagine?” He turns to Verma with the open, friendly expression of someone who has found a fellow bureaucracy sufferer.
“I bet you deal with this all the time, sir. The paperwork must be unreal.”
Verma is struggling. I can see it in the way his heavy eyebrows are doing something complicated, torn between the political persona that arrived at this dinner with an agenda and the human being underneath who is being disarmed by a six-foot-three Canadian who has just turned a veiled deportation threat into a sympathetic conversation about paperwork solidarity.
“The volume is... considerable,” Verma concedes.
“I bet. I read somewhere that India processes something like ten million visa applications a year. Ten million! That's the population of a small country. You must need an army of people just to handle the filing.”
“We have a substantial administrative infrastructure, yes.”
“Incredible. And you oversee all of that? That's amazing. My mom runs a gift shop and she says the inventory management alone keeps her up at night. I can't even imagine scaling that to ten million.”
He has just compared the Home Secretary's portfolio to a gift shop's inventory system.
He has done this with complete candour. There is not a trace of irony in his voice, not a flicker of sarcasm in his expression, and Verma, who has spent three decades reading political subtext, cannot find any, because there is none.
Casey is not being political. He is not deflecting.
He is genuinely, authentically, enthusiastically interested in the administrative challenges of Indian immigration policy, and the sheer, unprocessable earnestness of it has broken Verma's threats like water hitting a circuit board.
Across the table, Priya has her fist pressed against her mouth. She is either containing laughter or containing a scream. Possibly both.
Rohan has closed his eyes and is smiling at the ceiling with the blissful expression of a man watching performance art.
Daadi taps her cane once on the floor. I glance at her.
Her eyes catch mine, and for the first time, I see something in them that I have never seen directed at me from my grandmother: amusement.
Not the dry, sardonic wit she usually deploys.
Genuine, happy, eye-crinkling amusement, the kind that means she is enjoying herself, and the thing she is enjoying is watching a golden retriever of a Canadian dismantle the Home Secretary of India with kindness.
Mother takes another approach. “Amitabh, perhaps you could share your thoughts on the importance of... cultural integration for foreign nationals who find themselves connected to prominent Indian families. The expectations. The responsibilities.”
“Actually Meera, you know,” Casey says, before Verma can answer.
“I've been thinking about that a lot, actually.
There's so much to learn. Arjun's been amazing, and Priya's been drilling me on family history, and Kavita taught me how to identify the chilli blend in the curry, which I think might be a bigger achievement than my medical degree, honestly.” He turns to Kavita, who is still hovering near the service door.
“Right, Auntie? That chilli test was no joke.”
“He passed on the first try,” Kavita announces to the table, with the pride of a woman endorsing a protege. “First try. The London boy needed three attempts.”
Dev, from the far end of the table, raises his wine glass in a gesture of good-natured surrender. “It's true. The Mathania blend defeated me twice.”
The table laughs. Even Verma laughs. The tension that Mother has been carefully building for the past fifteen minutes does not break.
It evaporates. It simply ceases to exist, dissolved by the golden, completely un-strategic force of a man who treats every person he meets, from crying toddlers to cabinet ministers, with the same genuine, disarming, irresistible warmth.
Mother sets down her water glass. The clink against the table is precise and final.
She looks at Casey across the table, and I see it, the same expression I saw after the dinner confrontation, the same complex, shifting, hard-to-read recalibration as her strategies keep running into a wall made of sunshine.
“More biryani, Casey?” she asks, and her voice is neutral, and her smile is measured, and the question is a white flag so subtle that no one at the table would recognize it as such except me and Priya, who exchange a glance so fast it is almost telepathic.
“I would love more biryani,” Casey says, beaming.
“This is the best thing I've ever eaten.
After Kavita's samosas. And the jalebi. And the Laal Maas.” He pauses.
“Okay, everything here is the best thing I've ever eaten.
India has ruined me for Canadian food. When I get home, I'm going to look at a Tim Hortons and weep.”
Verma laughs again. He is fully laughing now, the political mask abandoned, and he turns to Mother and says, “Meera, your son has excellent taste. This young man is delightful. I’m sad to have missed the engagement party, now.”
Mother's expression performs a manoeuvre so complex it would require an advanced degree in facial micro-analysis to decode.
She has invited the Home Secretary to intimidate Casey, and the Home Secretary has just declared Casey delightful.
She has deployed a nuclear option, and Casey has absorbed it like an oversized, biryani-eating sponge.
“Yes,” Mother says, and the word costs her something. “He truly is... something.”
After dinner, Verma shakes Casey's hand for an unnecessarily long time and tells him that if he ever needs anything during his stay in India, he should not hesitate to call.
He gives Casey his personal card. His personal card.
The Home Secretary of India has just given his personal phone number to the man he was brought here to intimidate, and Casey accepts it with the same friendly, genuine gratitude with which he accepts everything, from samosas to surgical consultations to the undying affection of eighty-pound goldendoodles named Oliver.
I walk Verma to his car with Mother. The night air is warm and jasmine-scented.
“Charming young man,” Verma says to Mother, shaking her hand. “Very charming. You must be very pleased to have him join your family.”
Mother smiles. It is the smile of a woman whose most powerful weapon has just been turned into a groupie.
“Delighted,” she says.
The car pulls away. Mother and I stand in the courtyard. The silence between us is heavy and loaded and ancient.
“He compared the immigration enforcement apparatus to a gift shop's inventory system,” I say.
“I am aware.”
“You invited the Home Secretary to dinner to threaten my fiancé, and my fiancé made the Home Secretary give him his personal phone number.”
“I am aware of that as well, Arjun.”
“He asked Verma about paperwork. Paperwork, Mother. He expressed genuine sympathy for the filing volume.”
Mother turns to me. The candlelight from the house catches her eyes and the complicated, exhausted, grudgingly impressed expression on her face.
“Your fiancé,” she says, and each word sounds like it has been dragged from her at considerable personal cost, “is the most disarming human being I have ever encountered. And I once negotiated a land dispute with the Rajasthani state government.”
“He made Verma laugh. Nobody makes Verma laugh.”
“Goodnight, Arjun.”
She turns and walks back into the house, her burgundy sari rustling against the marble, her spine straight, her dignity intact but visibly battered. I watch her go.
Then I go upstairs, and I find Casey sitting on the edge of the bed, grinning, holding the Home Secretary of India's personal card between two fingers like a magician who has just pulled it from behind someone's ear.
“So,” he says, “that went well.”
I cross the room. I take the card from his fingers.
I set it on the nightstand. I climb into his lap, which is a physical manoeuvre that requires his hands on my hips and my knees on either side of his thighs and an almost complete abandonment of every principle of dignified behaviour I have ever held.
“You,” I say, my face inches from his, “are the most ridiculous person I have ever met.”
“I made the Home Secretary give me his phone number.”
“You compared his department to a gift shop.”
“Your mom's face, though. Did you see your mom's face?”
“I saw my mother's face. I will be seeing my mother's face in my nightmares for years.”
He grins up at me, golden and warm and so absurdly, magnificently, defiantly himself that my chest feels like it's going to split open.
“Not a lapse in judgment?” he asks.
“Not a lapse in judgment,” I confirm, and I kiss him until neither of us can remember the Home Secretary's name.