Chapter 7
ALIA
I’d like to have amnesia. Then I could honestly tell Amma I don’t remember receiving her message about a relationship assessment quiz. My thumb hovers over the settings of the new matrimonial profile she created last week, slipping and hitting the delete button. Oops.
Heaving a small bag of oranges, I walk through the brightly lit store in search of Irsia.
An employee announces something about a pasta sauce spill in aisle eleven while my eyes scan the rows of products I’m passing by.
God, I hope she’s found the sago I’ve been craving.
I need a good hit of sabudana khichdi soon.
Boba is almost as good, but the spicy potato and tapioca dish speaks to the Maharashtrian side of me, carrying echoes of a happy childhood I’m eager to relive.
Amma, my sweet mum, has sent me multiple voice notes to walk me through the process so that I finally can master the art of non-clumpy sabudana. It was also accompanied with yet another matrimonial profile, which I’ve ignored since.
I find Irsia amidst the root vegetables, spot-checking each onion before placing it in her cart.
I’m taller and athletically built with straight dark tresses, but Irsia is my opposite: petite yet curvy with a bouncing mass of coils and waves.
I’ve always thought her hair was as moody as her, ranging from wild disarray to orderly perfection.
Where I’m calm and more likely to blend into the background, my beautiful older cousin once filled every room she occupied with energy and laughter.
Both of these have been missing since the unexpected demise of her husband two years ago.
Only ten months older than me, she is far too young to have lost her life partner already.
It’s the only reason I even returned stateside after leaving Namik: to move in with her.
We needed each other then, both mourning the loss of a part of our identities, both feeling stuck and stranded in a society that seemed to only have two emotions when it came to a divorcée and a widow—judgement and pity, respectively.
Being roommates with my cousin and best friend has started my healing. But Irsia. . .
With a sigh I feel in my bones, I walk toward her. The buzzing of my phone stops me from falling into the maze of my emotions and I accept the reprieve it offers. My eyes quickly scan the notification from a dating app I signed up for, tapping open a meet-up request.
I’ve exchanged messages with this guy and he seems nice enough, at least, to dip my toe into the dating world.
Another banner pops up at the top, notifying me of a new email.
Chills strike me when I catch sight of the name of the sender before I swipe to clear it, but it’s too late. My heart clenches in discomfort.
My old coach from India? I have no idea why she’d message me after so long.
We’d kept in touch minimally, mostly due to effort on her part.
It still hurts to think about cricket and, though I know I should be an adult and see what she has to say, I’m not ready to face that part of my past yet.
I’d rather fail at kissing another man after tonight’s date instead.
“Toss a coin.”
I glance up from staring at the cucumbers to see Irsia picking out avocados nearby.
“Hmm?”
“Whatever has you overthinking so hard you’re biting your lips off while death clutching a bag of clementines—decide by tossing a coin.”
“I. . . it’s a date.”
She turns toward me, one brow raised. She looks exactly like her mother when she does that; it makes me sweat like I’m doing something wrong.
“Nice guy?”
“Seems like it,” I shrug, tugging at my collar and hoping she doesn’t notice my ears burning. Truth is, I have no clue what he’s really like. I’m desperate to make a connection that doesn’t end with me feeling like an absolute loser. He’s the first guy to show interest.
“Send me his number and your location pin just in case.”
If it’s not Rohan worrying about me, then it’s Irsia.
She gives me room to breathe though, unlike Ro, who assumed responsibility for being unaware of the messy state of my marriage.
He thinks he neglected me and should’ve intervened before things got as bad as they did.
How do I explain to him that I hadn’t known to reach for support?
I’d kept it all in. . . until I couldn’t.
When I finally told him, he became my shield.
“I’m not sure I should go,” I say, tossing my oranges in her cart as we navigate to the checkout counter.
“Why not?”
“Don’t really feel like it.”
The frown she shoots me makes me nervous and I studiously avoid looking at her. The cashier rings up our items and I get busy bagging them, sending off a silent prayer of thanks to the grocery lords for putting an end to the conversation.
The day is bright, streets busy with folks rushing home from work and parents picking up their children from school. Irsia and I settle on a sedate pace as we head down the street to our apartment, lugging our grocery bags between us.
“You should go.”
I sigh.
“You need to move on from Namik.”
“I’m not exactly pining for him,” I mutter. I never loved my ex-husband, though it was not for lack of trying.
“I’m not saying you’re stuck on him. But you are stuck, Aloo. Because of him, because of whatever you experienced. I’m not saying you need to fall in love today, but a single date is low stakes.”
For Irsia, maybe it is. I’ve never dated. Ever.
I’d been so busy making cricket my life that boys were a distraction I never had time for.
Like so many other Indian women in arranged marriages, I went into one with a man I didn’t know very well—and with no relationship experience whatsoever, not knowing how to recognize red flags or when to call it quits.
I lost myself trying to uphold a relationship which didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell.
So every date, as far as I’m concerned, is high stakes and cause for anxiety. Because I have no idea how to be on a date. What if I mess up? What if I become the cautionary tale he tells his next girlfriend as they laugh about the socially inept woman who once tried to make herself seem intriguing?
The ‘what ifs’ in my head crush me beneath their weight and my chest tightens, trapping my breath within. I blow a cool stream of air out through pursed lips, reminding myself what my therapist told me to do when anxiety comes knocking.
Just keep breathing, breathing, breathing. What do we do? We breathe.
Did my therapist also recommend I sing it like Dory? No. It happened once and now I can’t do it any other way.
“Alia, are you okay?”
My sweet cousin blinks at me, brows furrowed in concern.
“Just breathing. I’m good.”
I distract her by asking about her work instead and, for the rest of our journey home, Irsia regales me with the drama from the last party she photographed.
I’m chortling at her ridiculous imitation of the two horrified women who’d shown up wearing the same couture dress as she unlocks the front door to our apartment.
I follow her down the foyer and into our kitchen, dumping the bags on the clean island counter.
From where I stand, I have a good view of the open layout of this place I call home.
A few steps away from the kitchen is a comfortably sized living room with a TV mounted on the wall.
The hallway past that leads to two bedrooms with an ensuite each—a massive luxury in this city.
As much as I love it, I only wish the circumstances for our living together had been different for Irsia.
She flicks open a carton of cherry tomatoes, popping one in her mouth.
“Wash them first!” I scold, making her grin. She passes me the box and I run it under cold water, tapping it on the side of the sink before dumping the tomatoes onto a chopping board.
“Salmon tonight?”
I nod, knocking my knife on the board. “I’ll get the salad going. Marinade is in the fridge.”
“I love that you’re my roommate, and it’s definitely not because you’re always experimenting in the kitchen.“ Irsia grins, happily waving the jar of sauce I’d made for us. She gets busy slathering it onto the fish.
“Do you think you’re ready to date?” I ask eventually.
“Are you trying to gauge your readiness by mine, Aloo?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I feel like I want to take the next step, but I also don’t.”
Irsia hums in implicit understanding. If anyone comes close, it’s probably her.
She seems content and anyone watching would think she was okay.
I know otherwise. I’ve seen the faraway look in her eyes when she’s surrounded by family, because she’s missing the one person who’s no longer there.
I’ve heard her quiet sobs in the middle of the night, after she thinks I’ve gone to sleep.
I’ve crawled into bed beside her when the pain of loss rendered her immobile.
We are both heartbroken. She’s grown quiet and I’ve become afraid. Afraid to make mistakes, afraid of becoming too reliant on my family and achieving nothing of worth in my life.
Irsia sprays the baking tray with oil, plopping the marinated salmon on it before addressing me again. “Dating can be fun with the right person. It’s hard to step into, but you’ve got to start. You’re only twenty-six.”
“So are you.”
Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes when she turns to look at me.
“I have memories of Samar. Good memories. I’m not dating because it’s unlikely I’ll find love again.”
“Is that what you want?” I ask, tossing the makings of my salad into a large bowl so I have something to occupy my hands.
“No.”
I place the bowl on the counter, unsettled by her answer. “Aren’t you lonely, Ish?”
“I am,” she admits, wrenching our fridge open to pull out two ginger beers. She shoves the door close with her shoulder and leans her back against the stainless steel, sighing. “Some days are worse than others. But our situation is not the same.”
“We’re both alone.”
“My loneliness is because I lost someone I loved. And I know I was loved deeply in return. Namik never loved anyone but himself. You deserve the experience of a good relationship. Don’t give up before you even start.”
I can’t deny it. Looking around, I know I’ve missed out on a lot of life people my age take for granted.
“Give yourself a chance, Aloo. This time, you get to pick. Find yourself a gentleman,” Irsia suggests, swinging a ginger beer toward me.
I lunge to catch it, using muscles that haven’t been engaged in a long time.
In the few seconds it takes for the bottle to settle into my hands, I relive the feeling I used to have on the pitch: my palms on fire after I’d captured a particularly tough ball, holding it securely within my fist while the flush of victory overtook any pain from the force of contact.
My arms tingle with the ghost of those memories and I can’t help but consider this a good sign.
A sign I could be victorious once more.