Chapter 5
A few hours before the text…
She’s running toward him.
Her dark hair’s flowing behind her, along with her dupatta. Her traditional Indian-style lehanga is whipping around her legs. Her arm is outstretched toward him just as his. She’s trying to catch up to him. She’s trying to take his hand, but I don’t think she will.
I think she’ll miss it.
Because he’s on the train that’s leaving the station and she’s not fast enough to get there in time.
So when she does, when she does catch up to him and their hands meet and he grips her fingers oh so tightly and pulls her on board, I take a breath that I’ve been holding throughout this scene. A deluge of happy tears flows down my cheeks and my skin bursts with goose bumps.
Every. Time.
Every single time I watch this movie—and I’ve seen it thirty-seven times including today and all with my biji—I think it won’t happen. I think they won’t get their happy ending, that she’ll miss the train and the love of her life will be gone forever. And then she’ll have to marry the guy her father wants her to and she’ll spend her life heartbroken and pining for the guy she’s in love with.
But thank God, it’s a movie.
A Bollywood movie at that, where happy endings are almost guaranteed.
Not in real life, though, is it?
In real life, the guy you love turns out to be a big jerk and you end up regretting the day you ever met him. You end up regretting all the things you’ve done in his name and all the hearts you’ve broken.
In real life, you have to face the consequences.
Which is why as I watch the credits rolling on the TV, I blurt out to my biji, “I’m doing it.”
We’re sitting side by side on the bed with a large pink-colored margarita glass between us that we’re sharing and two straws coming out of it. I’m in my heart-print bikini and so is my biji; although hers is a one-piece. We both have pink-colored, heart-shaped glasses on, and we both are sporting blood-red lipstick. We are absolutely twinning in her old age home room and pretending to get tans because in reality, it’s fucking snowing out there and we’re trapped.
At my announcement, she looks at me.
Even though I can’t see her eyes behind her glasses, I know she’s studying me shrewdly. She’s in her eighties, but my biji is a very sharp woman. She just knows things without me having to tell her. And her knowledge about human emotions and life’s curveballs is unparalleled.
I love her to pieces.
She’s been with me almost all my life. She moved to America after Dada ji, my grandfather, died when I was about three or so. And since my mother never liked her, she always made sure that Biji stayed in a different house than us and always supervised our visits. And then when the time came, my mother sent her to live at an old age home. Just like she sent me away to live in Bardstown.
Although since my biji’s home is in Bardstown too, I don’t mind it all that much. I hate that she has to live here, though. I wish she could stay with me, but my mother would never ever agree to that. She already thinks I’m the way I am because of my biji.
The only consolation that my biji lives with strangers is that these strangers love her too. Well, I mean she has not one but two boyfriends—one younger than her by five years and from Nebraska, and the other older by two and from London. They both adore her equally and know that my biji is a firecracker who doesn’t believe in commitments, not after her being married to the love of her life. There’s another resident here with his eyes on my biji, but she isn’t interested in him all that much. He’s from India and she says she’s already dated, loved, married an Indian and so she needs variety now.
Anyway, back to her and her scrutinizing eyes.
“Doing what?” she asks.
I take an innocent—not—sip of my margarita before mumbling, “Saying yes.”
I keep my eyes trained on the rolling credits on purpose and thank God for my shades. Because I don’t want to look into her eyes directly. I know what I’ll find: disappointment and displeasure. And while I can deal with my mother’s disappointment—it hurts like hell but still—I can’t deal with the same from Biji.
“Tell me you’re joking,” she says.
“Well, I would”—I take another sip and still keep watching the TV—“if I could.”
“Look at me,” she commands.
“No, thank you.”
I can feel her staring very severely at me. “Isadora.”
“Biji.” I employ the same tone.
“Look at me,” she says again.
“I think I’m fine.”
She sighs sharply. “Isadora, meri bacchi, aakhein idhar kar.”
So that was Hindi.
I don’t understand Hindi all that much or Punjabi, predominantly spoken in the northern part of India where my biji and my mom are from, that my biji also speaks in sometimes.
This I understand, however.
Meri bacchi means my girl, spoken affectionately most of the time. And the other part, even though I don’t understand quite literally, I can deduce from the context. She’s probably asking me the same thing—to look at her—like before.
“You know, Biji, this is really not fair.” I squirm in my seat a little, still stalling. “You know I don’t understand Hindi all that much and it makes me feel very stupid when you?—”
“Haye Rabba, iss ladki ke natak,” she mutters. When I go to tell her that I don’t understand that either, she doesn’t let me. “It means stop being a drama queen because I know you understood what I said before. You’re not an idiot. Unfortunately, neither am I. So can we get to the point?”
Sighing, I do as she says and finally look at her.
She points to my shades and I reluctantly push them up.
Then, she asks, “Why?”
“Because I want to. Because I think it’s the right decision for me,” I say.
“Right decision,” she repeats.
I nod. “Yes.”
“Saying yes to his ultimatum is the right decision for you?” she asks again.
“You know, you can ask it a hundred times, in a hundred different ways. My answer is not going to change.”
“Explain it to me then,” she pushes.
“Because I want to move on, okay? It’s high time, don’t you think? I should move on with my life. It’s been a year, and it hasn’t happened yet. And it’s not going to happen ever. So I’m getting smart.”
I sit back and slurp my drink from the straw.
Because I think she should be happy after what I’ve told her.
For the past two weeks, ever since the charity event, I’ve been thinking about what to do. How to tell Shepard the truth. If I should tell Shepard the truth. In between rehearsals, classes, homework that I mostly neglect in favor of rehearsals—because hey, we’re finally doing a show and I got the lead role—I came to the decision that if I say yes to his ultimatum, there’s no need to tell Shepard anything.
When I decided that, I knew I’d have to tell my biji because I tell her everything. And I knew if I went the self-care route, she’d be totally on board.
My biji is a big believer in self-happiness.
She thinks the first thing and the most important thing that you could do in life is love yourself and care for yourself. Go after what you really want and what your heart desires.
I guess it comes from living in a society and time where women weren’t valued all that much. Where they didn’t have a voice. My biji was never given a choice on what to do with her life—be an actress; or where to go—she always wanted to travel, but she lived the majority of her life in a very small village in Punjab; who to marry—she says she was in love with this guy in town, but she never had the chance to tell him before she was married off at the ripe old age of sixteen to my dada ji. Although she did eventually fall in love with Dada ji, it was very hard for her in the beginning and it made her feel suffocated.
“And there’s no other reason?” she inquires.
I keep my eyes on the TV. “Absolutely not. As I said, it’s the right decision. Shepard is the right guy for me.”
“Is he?”
“Yes.” I begin counting on my fingers. “One, he’s amazing. He’s funny and he makes me laugh. I never feel awkward around him. Or shy. I never blush like I’m some innocent who’s never heard the F-word. I’ve heard it. I’ve said it. I’ve never done it, but so what? It’s disgusting when I blush over it.
“Two, he’s easy to talk to. It’s not like I’m pulling teeth while I’m talking to him. He answers my questions. He doesn’t hide things from me or act like he’s so superior and condescending. Three, he’s kind. He doesn’t insult me or humiliate me or make me cry. And yes, he’s not that into plays and books and acting, and he kinda gets bored when I tell him about the scene we’re workshopping or the character I’m trying to nail down. But that’s okay. Not everyone’s going to be interested in art and theater. But despite all that, he supports my dreams. But most of all, Biji, he wants me. He wants to be with me. He likes me. He likes me so much that he gave me an ultimatum, okay? And for the first time in my life, I’d like to be with someone who wants me back and not chase after them and their love and approval like I’ve always done. There. Are you finally happy now?”
Okay, after this, she should definitely be happy.
Everything I’ve said is true.
Shepard is amazing. He does make me laugh. Exhibit A: he made me laugh at the charity event when everything felt so awkward and heavy. He is easy to talk to. Exhibit B: He confessed about his twin ritual the first time we’d met. Our conversation flew even when we were strangers. Whenever I talk to him, it’s not like I’m trying to bang my head against a wall, trying to get information about him. He laughs with me. I don’t have to rack my brain to come up with the last time he cracked a smile. He jokes around and his jokes aren’t mocking. They aren’t condescending.
And it’s a good thing that he doesn’t make me blush or make my heart race. Who wants to live with perpetually flushed skin and a pounding heart? It’s like walking on tightrope all the time.
It’s not comfortable.
It makes you act like crazy and do borderline compulsive, stalker-y things.
So this is the right decision for me.
Only that’s not why I’m making it.
But my biji doesn’t need to know that.
“Yes,” she says at last, turning back and sipping on the drink.
“You are?” I ask, surprised.
She takes another sip. “I am. Because I agree.”
“You agree with what?”
“That it is high time.”
I smile, relieved. “It is, right?”
“Yes.” She keeps her eyes on the TV as well. “Because maybe ab uss khote de puttar nu akal aayegi.”
“Biji,” I say, exasperated. “You know I don’t know what you just said.”
Well, except for khote de puttar. Which more or less means asshole.
I also know who she’s talking about because she’s used this term before in his context.
She huffs. “I meant maybe now that asshole will get his head out of his ass. When you’ve moved on. Enni changi kudi hai meri and if he can’t see that, then aag lage usko. And to translate, it means if he can’t see how amazing my granddaughter is, then he can go to hell. But not before he learns his lesson first and comes to you begging.”
Needless to say, she knows everything. She knows the whole story. Mostly because even if I wanted to hide things from her, I wouldn’t have been able to. As I mentioned earlier, she knows everything and she definitely knows everything about me. She knows about how I ran into Stellan that night, how instantly obsessed I became with him, how different he’d seemed to me. How then I went to Shepard to make Stellan jealous.
She told me, numerous times over the past year, that I should come clean to Shepard. That I should tell him everything, confess my feelings for Stellan, but I didn’t listen. First because I was convinced that Stellan would come around, that he would come back to me begging and crawling. And after that because Shepard had become my friend, truly, and I didn’t know how to tell him. Every time I pictured telling him, I’d see him look all betrayed and angry, and I’d just chicken out. And after, after that, when I realized that he wanted me as more than a friend, there was no way I was going to break his heart.
In any case, she knows.
And she has grown increasingly unhappy with him over the past year. Him being the love of my life who doesn’t want anything to do with me. She thinks he needs a bigger push.
“But I wish that was why you were doing it,” she finishes.
“What?”
She turns back to me and pushes her shades up. “That’s not why you’re saying yes, however.”
“I don’t?—”
“You’re not saying yes because you want to get smart and you want to move on or even light a fire under his ass. You’re saying yes because you think it’s your fault.”
I squirm in my seat and look away. “That’s not true.”
“Oh, my baby, I wish it weren’t true, but it is.”
“Biji, I?—”
“Because I know you. You’re saying yes because you don’t want anyone to get hurt; you think it’s your fault Shepard fell in love with you and you want to make amends.”
I stubbornly remain quiet.
And she stubbornly goes on, “I know how you think, meri bacchi. How you like to take the blame on yourself when more often than not, it’s not yours to take. And I also know where that comes from, who’s responsible for it.”
I swallow thickly then.
As the spot around my elbow smarts with a dull pain.
My bruise—something I hadn’t noticed until I got back home that night—is gone now. But the slight pain remains. Probably because I had one more encounter with my mother when she’d dropped in unannounced to check on things; she does that. Thank God, I didn’t have rehearsal that day, so I was home when I should’ve been. Even so, while she was leaving, she dug her nails in the same spot, worrying the wound.
My biji doesn’t know that, though.
No one knows what my mother likes to do out of the public eye.
Which is how I want it to be.
She already doesn’t approve of how my mom treats me and growing up, always made sure to shower me with love and care when my mom didn’t. But if she knew how angry my mom gets and what she does when she gets like that, my biji would lose it. But mostly, it’ll break her heart and I don’t want that to happen.
Not because of me.
So I keep it a secret.
Besides, it’s not as if my mother actively beats me, she just… grips me too hard or smacks me a little here and there, and mostly those bruises and stings go away in a few days. And I become good as new.
But back to the situation at hand.
“I can’t hurt him,” I tell Biji.
“I know.”
“He’s my best friend.”
“I know that too.”
“He didn’t deserve what I did to him. How selfish I’ve been all this time. He didn’t deserve to be played with. And that’s what I did. I played with his heart. I played with his feelings. I deliberately sought him out. I deliberately went after him knowing that it will create rumors. I held his hand; I danced with him. I smiled at him, flirted with him. I did it all because I… Because I wanted his twin brother. I made him fall in love with me. So now it’s up to me to fix it. It’s up to me to grow up and stop being selfish.”
I need to face the consequences of what I’ve done.
I’ve used a man.
A good and kindhearted man.
I cannot let him suffer for that. I absolutely cannot hurt him by telling him the truth, no. Maybe one day, I will tell him. But by then, we will be firmly in a relationship, and I will be the best girlfriend he could’ve ever imagined.
Because that’s step two of my plan.
Step one is saying yes.
“But more than that,” I keep going, pain stabbing my chest. “I know.”
“What do you know?”
I look at Biji. “I know what it feels like when you want someone and they don’t want you back. I know how painful that is. How it makes you ache. How you pray and hope. How every night you ask the sky, why me; what’s wrong with me; why can’t I get lucky in love; what can I change about myself to get that; what can I do; why can’t he love me, why can’t anyone love me. Why… And when no one answers, it hurts.”
It hurts so badly.
It makes you question everything about yourself, about your life. And in my life, I know that my biji loves me, but she’s the only person. Maybe my dad loves me a little, but he loves my mother so much that I don’t think he can be disloyal to her by loving me. And we all know that what my mother feels for me is so far away from love that it’s not even funny. And while I know Shepard is loved by people, his family, going through unrequited love is something else altogether. It is arguably the worst kind of love there is. The loneliest kind of love there is and I’ll be damned if I let him go through that.
So there’s only one solution, isn’t there?
All the love that I have in me, I will give to him.
He’s the only one who deserves it anyway.
Biji keeps looking at me for a few beats. “I hate my daughter. I do.”
“Biji, that’s not?—”
“I hate what she’s done to you. I hate that all your life, she’s put you down, torn you apart. Made you feel bad for being yourself. I hate that. You should be cherished,” she says fiercely. “You should be treated like the treasure you are and everyone has failed you. Every single person in your life has failed you and I…” Her beautiful dark eyes that I wish I had well up with tears. “If I could beat some sense into your mother, I would. But nothing works with that girl. She’s always been bitter for one reason or another. Nothing we did worked with her. And if I ever meet that khote da puttar, rest assured that juttiyon se maar maar ke seedha kar dena hai maine usko.”
“Biji—”
She grabs my cheeks and squeezes them. “It means: if I ever meet that asshole, I will beat him so hard that he’ll fall at your feet and promise to love you forever.”
God, I love my biji.
She’s the best grandmother in the whole wide world.
“That’ll make a good movie story,” she finishes.
I chuckle with stinging eyes and decide to focus on good things. “Will you tell me your story? With Dada ji.”
She watches me for a few moments, her thumbs still rubbing my cheeks, her eyes roving over my face. Then she reaches forward and kisses my forehead. “Of course, my love.”
With that, she moves away and settles against the pillows. I put our giant margarita glass away and put my head on the pillow in her lap, lying on my side. And she begins as she runs her fingers along the long strands of my hair, smoothening them and slowly braiding them like she used to do with her hair back in her village where she lived with my dada ji.
“I was young. I was headstrong. I wanted to travel the world. No one had done that in our village. I wanted to be in movies. I wanted to fall in love. I did fall in love with this neighbor boy. The one thing I didn’t want to do was get married. And I specifically didn’t want to get married to this stern-faced man who came to our house one day. He looked like he’d never cracked a smile in his life, let alone laughed. And he was so tall and broad. Taller than all the buildings in our village, broader than the mountains I once saw in a book. He had this really big mustache. I swear he looked like a movie villain. A handsome movie villain but a villain nonetheless. I wanted to run away on our wedding day and when I couldn’t, I ran away on the wedding night. There was no way I was going to sleep with him in the same room. Plus, I had to go find that guy I’d loved. I was going to find him and convince him to run away with me to Mumbai. It was called Bombay back then but still. Your dada ji found me, though. But I was determined. I told him I didn’t love him. That I would never love him. I hated him for ruining my life. That if he ever touched me, I’d cut off his fingers. I’d poison his food. You know what he said to me?”
I smile, looking up at her, and ask, even though I know the answer, “What?”
“He said”—she’s smiling, her eyes full of love—“no one wants to be married to a witch, so I was free to go. Plus, my one eye was bigger than the other, my nose was crooked, and he didn’t really like how loud I laughed. It gave him a headache. So he said I could leave if I wanted to.”
“But?”
“But I had to give him six months. Because he had a reputation and if I ran away on the first night, no one in the village would ever agree to marry their daughter to him.”
What bullshit.
He wanted more time with her because later, he told my biji that he’d fallen in love with her at first sight. And he couldn’t bear to let her go. So he wanted six months to see if she could learn to love him too.
Spoiler alert, she did.
I chuckle. “Dada ji had moves.”
“He sure did.”
“He knew where to strike.”
“At my pride, yes.”
“Because you’ve got the prettiest eyes and a cute button nose.”
She laughs. “He used to kiss me on the nose. Every morning when he woke up and every night when he went to sleep.”
My heart bursts with joy. “To make up for what he said?”
“Yes. I wasn’t going to let him off the hook.” She tweaks my nose. “He insulted my looks.”
“And you have the most magical laugh,” I say.
“That’s what your dada ji used to say too.”
“I love him,” I say.
“He loved you too.”
My handsome dada ji passed away when I was very little. So I don’t remember him at all, but my biji has told me enough stories all my life that I feel like I already know him.
“I wish I’d gotten to meet him,” I add.
“Me too.”
“I love you, Biji.”
She takes me in for a beat or two. “I love you too, meri jaan.”
This I know as well.
Meri jaan means my life.
My heart. My soul.
Just like my biji was for my dada ji.
Hours later, when I get back home full of love stories from my biji, I sit in my bed. With my window open and the white curtains billowing from the winter breeze, I put my plan into motion.
I send him a text.
Isadora
Hey
I know we decided on a timeline for the ultimatum. That I’d give him an answer when he gets back. But now that I’ve made up my mind, I’m not going to make him wait another second. I know he’s busy with his practice and games and the season, and I usually try not to bother him when he’s on the road, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
Hence the text.
Only he doesn’t get back to me.
Not even after fifteen minutes. I know he’s read it, though; I can see the receipt at the bottom of my message. But I’m nothing if not determined. I’m about to send him another text when my phone chimes and I sit up in my bed.
Shepard
Hey