Chapter 2
In life and in engineering, Karthik Murthy found that keeping and following a clear set of principles made everything a lot easier. The rules of engineering had come to him naturally. They were sharp and sure. Specific and defined. Life, however, tended to be more complicated. The real world presented too many variables. Too many outcomes he couldn’t predict. And unfortunately, he was once again stuck in a situation with no clear path forward.
He stood outside a modest, two-story redbrick home in suburban Dallas. A home that his mother believed was the home of his future bride. Of course, she had thought that about the last seven homes they had visited over the past month. But this time, she said, she was absolutely sure they were about to meet her soon-to-be daughter-in-law. Guilt singed his conscience, but he just nodded and rang the doorbell. There was no way this woman, or any woman, would ever become her daughter-in-law, but he couldn’t say that. He had no choice but to play along and hope this would all be over as quickly as possible.
He pasted on a smile as the door unlocked with a mechanical click. An older woman in a cotton mint-green kurti and jeans waved them inside.
“Welcome, welcome. I’m Radhika.”
She hugged his mother, shook his hand, and led them straight to the living room, where several cups of tea and an assortment of snacks waited for them on the coffee table. He scanned the food quickly, pleased to see that the samosas were smaller than normal, the way he preferred. It meant a better fried-pastry-to-vegetable-stuffing ratio than the larger ones he’d had at yesterday’s meeting.
He was wondering how many he could take while still being polite, when an amused snort broke his train of thought.
“You hungry?”
Karthik flushed. “Sorry, I—” He looked up at the woman standing in front of him, and whatever he’d been about to say left his mind.
She was stunning. With her long, curly hair and big brown eyes, he thought her objectively beautiful, but it was her wide, uninhibited smile that made him pause. She was vibrant. Brilliant. He felt dull by comparison.
“No, it’s fine,” she said, waving a hand dismissively. “I was just joking. Go ahead and start.”
Karthik shook his head. These meetings followed a very rigid agenda. They weren’t supposed to go this way. “No, we can only eat after the introductions.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
Why?“That’s how it’s usually done.”
She shrugged, then gestured toward the entrance of the room, where her parents were greeting his mother. “My parents really won’t care,” she said, handing him a plate. He took it automatically.
She looked at him expectantly, then frowned. “Really, go ahead.” She grabbed a plate of her own and started adding samosas to it. “I’ll join you, if you want. The only thing you can’t have is—”
“You must be Meghna,” his mother said. “I’m Shanti. Karthik’s mom.”
Meghna. Her name was Meghna. Karthik was sure his mother had told him that before. She had probably shared the woman’s biodata or a résumé, but Karthik never paid much attention to the emails his mother sent about these meetings. He wouldn’t be marrying any of these women, so there wasn’t any point.
“Nice to meet you, Aunty,” Meghna said as she handed his mother a cup of tea. The two of them took a seat on the opposite couch, and Karthik sat down as well. He grabbed his own cup and blew across the surface.
So far, none of this was going the way he’d expected. His mother was supposed to introduce him to Meghna. Before he had tea. Or the snacks. She wasn’t supposed to assume they had already introduced themselves. He frowned. Should he have introduced himself?
Meghna’s parents joined them, her father greeting Karthik with a firm handshake before sitting down next to his daughter. He whispered something that made Meghna laugh, then passed a cup of tea to his wife.
The conversation quickly shifted into familiar territory, and Karthik breathed a sigh of relief. It was time for the parents’ small talk, which meant he wasn’t required to participate. He filled his plate as the parents talked about what part of India they were from, why they had come to the United States, and how difficult it was to care for their aging relatives while living halfway around the world.
His mother then provided a truncated version of his résumé: where he had gone to school, what he did for work, where he lived. Meghna’s parents quickly did the same.
He learned that Meghna worked as a middle school English teacher. Her parents said it matter-of-factly, but he knew the subtle signs of parental disappointment well. Even if he hadn’t, Meghna’s body grew tense when her parents talked about her job.
It wasn’t easy facing that kind of pressure. Those expectations. And it was even harder to not let the desire to please them, to make them proud, affect your decisions. To choose what you wanted, knowing that doing so would result in their disapproval. Or, as had been the case with Karthik’s father, his disinterest. His neglect.
“I’m sorry your husband had to stay back in New York,” Meghna’s mother suddenly said. “We would have loved to meet him.”
Karthik’s mother smiled, but the strain on her face was obvious. At least to him.
“He really wanted to come,” she said. “But unfortunately, he had to stay back for work.”
As his mother absently twisted the thin gold band on her ring finger, Karthik wondered whether she had just told the truth. Prioritizing work over family was par for the course with his father, but he wasn’t sure if his dad had asked to stay home in New York or if his mother had asked him not to come. Either way, it was for the best. His father had a way of bringing out the worst in him.
Karthik turned his attention back to the snacks on the table, ready to sample some more. He grabbed a jalebi and a couple mini samosas, but when he reached for the pani puri, Meghna shook her head. She checked to make sure their parents weren’t looking, then ran her finger quickly across her throat in a you’re dead gesture. He retracted his arm immediately and took a second look at the pani puri, trying to figure out what was wrong with them.
“Meghna, why don’t you show Karthik the study?” her mother said. “There’s such interesting art on the walls there. Isn’t that right, Akshay?”
“I don’t know what you—” Meghna’s father started, but Karthik’s mother quickly interrupted.
“I’m sure you’d love to see it,” she told Karthik.
Meghna’s mother nodded her head so emphatically, Karthik worried her earrings might fly clear across the room.
“Oh, right,” Meghna said after a moment, looking as if she was barely holding back a laugh. “The paintings in the study. They’re really something.” She got up and gestured for him to follow.
Ah, yes. This phase of the meeting. The one-on-one conversation. He always felt bad about this part. Well, really, he felt bad about the whole thing. Wasting her time. Her family’s time. Disappointing them. And his mother. But he didn’t know what else to do. How else to go about it. Or get out of it.
He joined her, walking the short distance across the hall to her parents’ study. Once there, they stood silently at the entrance, looking at the three framed print copies of Monet’s Water Lilies arranged on the opposite wall.
“So, this is it,” he said.
“Yeah, that’s it.” Meghna shrugged. “I’m pretty sure they came with the house, but I guess they had to make up some reason for us to talk alone. At least that’s how I’ve heard these things are supposed to go.”
He nodded. She was right. This was exactly how it was supposed to go. They were finally back on track. And that meant it was time to break the news. After seven meetings, he’d figured out a pretty reliable script. Reactions had been mixed, but he’d learned it was best to do it right at the beginning. To just get it out there and … What had she just said? That’s how she’d heard this was supposed to go? She couldn’t mean—
“Is this the first time you’ve done this?”
She let out a small laugh, then lifted a shoulder. “That obvious, huh?”
“No, it’s just … You’ve really never done this before?”
“Nope. Never. Have you?”
“This is my eighth meeting this month,” he said.
Her eyebrows rose. “Eighth?” She walked over to a pair of brown overstuffed chairs, sat down, and crossed her legs. “So, you’re an old pro, then,” she said, her voice light and airy. “You’ll have to tell me what usually happens next.”
He took the seat across from her. He could do that. By now, he could recite the normal agenda in his sleep. “We get about twenty minutes alone. Then our parents come by with some excuse to call us back. They have a few more minutes of small talk and then it’s time for my mother and I to leave.”
“But eight meetings in a month?” she asked. “That can’t be what people normally do. It sounds like a lot.”
“I don’t really know.” He didn’t have anything to measure it against. “How many do you have next month?”
“None. This is the first time my parents have ever asked me to meet anyone. They haven’t set up any others.” She scrunched up her nose. “At least, I don’t think they have. They haven’t mentioned any others.”
His curiosity was piqued. “Would you go on more, if they asked you to?”
“Maybe. I think so,” she said.
He frowned. None of this was adding up. Most of the other women he’d met had understood the process. Been invested. But Meghna … It was almost as if she’d shown up today just for the hell of it. To see what would happen.
He froze. Had she even agreed to this? Maybe her parents had just sprung it on her. He considered for a moment, then nodded. That was more likely. She didn’t seem like the kind of person who would want, or need, her parents to set her up.
To confirm his new hypothesis, he asked, “Why would you say yes to any of this in the first place?”
“Why would you say yes?” she parroted back.
“I have a good reason,” he said. “But if you wanted to get married, I wouldn’t think you’d need to … I mean, you seem like you have … like you could …”
“Are you saying I look like I date around a lot?”
Karthik’s cheeks warmed. “That’s not what I meant.”
“No, it’s fine.” She leaned back in her chair. “Suffice it to say whatever I’ve been doing hasn’t been working. And you don’t know me—maybe I’m incredibly traditional.”
He looked at her skeptically. She grinned.
“What? You don’t think I’m very traditional?” she asked.
“You could be,” he admitted. “But if you were, this wouldn’t be your first meeting. You’d have started years ago.”
“Wow. You’re calling me old now?”
What?A bead of sweat formed on his forehead. “No. Definitely not. That’s not what I said.”
Meghna crossed her arms. “It’s what you meant, though.”
He shook his head, but couldn’t figure out how to respond. Should he apologize? Yes. That was a good idea. He’d apologize and then he’d find a way to get back to his script. He could still salvage this. He could still— Was she smiling?
“You were joking,” he said carefully. Slowly. Just in case he was wrong.
“Yes,” she said with a laugh. “I’m just giving you a hard time. You’re right. I’m not super traditional. But you don’t seem that traditional, either. At least, your family can’t be that traditional if they’re fine with the idea of you marrying someone who’s only half-Tamil.” She pointed at herself.
He shrugged. He knew that some of the more traditional families preferred, sometimes required, that their kids marry someone within their same ethnic group, but his mother had never placed much emphasis on that. And his father … Well, Karthik didn’t particularly care what his father thought.
“At this point I think my mother would be happy if I married anyone,” he said. “And if I was marrying someone Indian, that would just be a bonus.”
“I’ve never asked my parents about it, but I think they see it that way too. But back to you, what’s your ‘good reason’ for agreeing to meet eight women in one month?”
He grimaced. “Okay, maybe calling it a ‘good reason’ was going too far, but my mother asked me to and I—”
“Couldn’t say no?”
“Yes. No. It’s—” He ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “The last few years, all my mother has wanted to talk about is when I’ll get married. Every time she sees me. It’s the only topic of conversation. And I know she means well, but I don’t plan on getting married.”
Meghna cocked her head to the side, studying him closely. As if he were a slide under a microscope. He resisted the urge to fidget.
“You don’t want to get married?” she finally asked.
“No.”
“Ever?”
“No.” He swallowed. He wished he’d been able to bring this up at the beginning. Now he was so off-kilter he couldn’t remember what he usually said. How he usually explained this.
“Oh,” she said. “Okay. Does your mother know that?”
He held back a sigh. “I don’t know how to tell her,” he said. “The way she talks about it sometimes, it seems like my future marriage is the only thing she’s excited about, the only thing she’s looking forward to. I don’t want to take that away from her.” His father had taken enough. Not to mention that the last time Karthik had tried to have this conversation with her, it hadn’t … It hadn’t gone well.
“I love her,” he said. “But I wish we were able to talk about something else. Anything else.”
Meghna nodded, listening intently.
“Last month, she told me that if I agreed to meet a few of the women she had selected, she’d never bring up the topic of marriage again. So, I said yes. I told her I’d meet anyone she wanted for a year.”
“A year? That’s so long.”
“It is, but I negotiated her down from three. In the end, it seemed like a small price to pay to never have to hear about it again. I just didn’t realize how efficient she would be. She’s set up two meetings a week for the next few months. And they’re all over the country. I don’t know when I’ll get a weekend to myself again,” he said.
“Can’t you back out?”
“I can. But I won’t. I told her I would do this and I’m not going to go back on my word.” Growing up, he’d watched his father make all kinds of promises to his mom and then break nearly every one of them. Karthik refused to do anything that would make his mother think he had turned out anything like his dad. He had promised himself years ago that he would do his best to be honest. Patient. That he’d try to always be there for his mother. To listen to her. Make her laugh. Do anything that would bring her the tiniest bit of happiness.
“So, you’re going to do this every weekend for the next year?” Meghna asked incredulously.
“I have to keep my end of the bargain.”
“What if you meet someone you actually like?”
“That won’t happen.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I don’t want it to happen,” he said sharply.
“Really?” she asked, her voice dripping with doubt. “You’re saying you can just will it? Just decide to control your feelings?”
“Yes.” He didn’t understand how it was even a question. Of course he could. He always had.
“Haven’t you ever felt something for someone you weren’t supposed to?” she asked. “Accidentally fallen in love with someone completely wrong for you?”
No. He’d never been in love. And to feel that way accidentally? Absurd.
“No one falls in love by accident,” he said bitingly. “Love takes time. Intention. Commitment. It doesn’t just happen.”
“I think you’re wrong,” she said.
He scoffed. “Why? Because you’ve accidentally fallen in love before?”
A hurt expression briefly flashed across Meghna’s face. Then she lifted her chin and met his gaze. “Yes,” she said.
Huh. He wondered who she had been in love with. And why it hadn’t worked out. Karthik waited for her to elaborate but was met with only silence.
“Well, I haven’t,” he finally said. They looked at each other for a few moments and the silence resumed.
“Well,” she said. “It’s probably time for us to head back.”
He glanced at his watch. “I don’t think so. They usually come get us when it’s time.”
Meghna let out a loud sigh. “What else do we really have to talk about? You don’t want to ever get married. I do. Besides, isn’t this what usually happens next?” She extended her arm for a handshake and gave him a tight, forced smile. “It was nice meeting you.”
Karthik automatically reached out to shake her hand, but he felt unsteady. Like he’d been walking down a flight of stairs and accidentally missed a step. His mind whirred, trying to come up with something to say. She started to walk past him.
“Wait,” he said, putting a hand on her arm. She glanced at him over her shoulder. “What was wrong with the pani puri?”
Her eyebrows knit in confusion.
“The pani puri?” he asked again. “The ones you warned me not to eat?”
“Oh,” she said. “Nothing. There just weren’t that many left and I wanted to have them later.”
“They’re my favorite,” he said. It was true, but he didn’t know why he had felt the need to tell her that.
“Mine too,” she said coolly. She shook his hand off her arm and continued walking to the living room, leaving him to follow her.
Later, after he’d said his goodbyes and stepped out into the oppressive Texas heat, he wondered if she was sitting inside, eating the pani puri now. He shook the thought from his mind and climbed into the rental car, trying to avoid the eager glances from his mother. She was wearing the same nervous-but-hopeful expression she wore after every one of these meetings. He hated that look. He hated letting her down. But no matter what, when she asked what he thought, he would respond, like he always did, “I’m sorry, Amma. I don’t think it’ll work out.”
So, it shocked the hell out of him when she asked the question this time and he heard himself say, “I need some time to think about it.” He had barely even processed his own words when his mother’s arms came around him, wrapping him in a hug.
“That’s good,” she said excitedly. “That’s all I wanted.” She continued, saying she would call Meghna’s mother and exchange phone numbers, so he could call Meghna whenever he wanted. If he wanted, she quickly amended. There was no pressure, she said. But he barely heard any of that. His mind was stuck in a constant refrain: What did I just do?