38. Mihir
MIHIR
T he next afternoon, I paced my hotel room, waiting for Sona to show up. I had two hours before the meeting, but my nerves refused to calm down.
In my excitement last night, I had wanted to call my parents, but I worried I might misrepresent my feelings. Waiting another day wouldn’t hurt.
I called Sona.
“Where are you?” I asked impatiently when she answered her cell.
“Almost there. Mumbai traffic. But we have time, don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried,” I snapped, and I could feel her smiling through the phone.
Before Sona arrived, it started to rain. She’d warned me about the Mumbai monsoon. It had the potential to turn into Venice, she had joked. If that happened, we’d have to postpone our meeting. I cursed the weather and myself, and everything around me, knocking my knee against a table while I was at it. Then I cursed aloud some more. When Sona’s knock sounded on the door, I was limping.
She frowned. “Now what?”
“Don’t ask,” I said, closing the door behind her. “I’m worried about the rain.”
“Yes, I am too. The forecast says it shouldn’t last long, but the downpour is heavy enough to clog the roads and back up traffic.”
“Just my luck,” I said with a clenched jaw.
“Don’t be grumpy. We’ll get there, even if it takes us forever to get back. I promise.”
It could’ve been Sona’s prescience or her experience with the city’s weather, but the rain did let up while we drove, very slowly, to the café. As we drew closer, my heartbeat turned erratic. I gripped Sona’s hand and didn’t let go.
“Everything will be alright. Don’t worry,” she said as we entered the café. She paused and turned to me, then brushed the hair from my forehead. “Nothing that happens today will change who you are. You are an arrogant, conceited jerk with a killer smile and great hair. No one can take that away.” She turned before I could reply. “There she is.”
Sona began walking toward a sharp woman in a saree sitting with a straight back, reading on her phone. My heart pumped, thudding so loud, I could feel it in my mouth, in the vein in my forehead.
Sona pulled me along when I stopped walking. “Sharda Tai,” she said softly, and the woman looked up. One glance at me, and she stood promptly.
“This is Mihir,” Sona said in Hindi. “He speaks Hindi.”
The woman nodded.
I brought my palms together and bowed. “Namaste.” I didn’t know of any other greeting. What was a good way to greet the mother one has never met?
She smiled, almost laughed. “No need for that,” she said in Hindi, but it sounded different, accented.
“Shall we sit?” Sona suggested as we continued gazing at each other.
“You are tall,” my mother said with a fond smile.
“How are you?” I asked with all the correct words used for addressing one’s elders. Kaisi hain aap?
“Well. I’m very well.” Her smile, like her posture, suggested poise, a self-assured personality. “How are you?”
“I’m well too.”
“I’ll get us coffee. What can I get you?” Sona asked my mother.
“Regular with milk.”
“Black,” I said, and my eyes followed Sona all the way to the counter. “I found you because of her.”
“She’s a nice girl.”
I nodded. “What can I call you?”
Her back straightened further. “People call me Sharda or Sharda Tai. I’m used to it now.”
I nodded. It sounds formal, I wanted to say, but I didn’t know the Hindi word for formal. “What would I have called you if I had grown up with you?”
She held her head high, but her eyes sank to the table for a moment. “You wouldn’t have. That’s why I gave you up.”
“Yes, my parents told me everything.”
There was a spark in her eyes when she looked at me again. “Tell me about them. Tell me about your life.”
“They’re the most wonderful parents one could have,” I said with a smile but quickly backtracked. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
She put up her palm. “It’s okay. I understand what you mean, and I’m happy. You are happy, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Aai, I’m very happy,” I said, and we both shifted in our seats. “I’m sorry. That’s what Sona calls her mother, so I thought…”
“That’s alright. I don’t mind. I like how it sounds.”
“I like it too.”
From the corner of my eye, I caught Sona stalling, trying to give us more one-on-one time.
“Your father wrote to Kamte bhau. He shared the doctor’s letters and pictures with me. I knew you were loved.”
“Yes, but they didn’t tell me. I was very angry when I learned. I felt like they cheated me out of knowing you.”
She shook her head morosely. “They didn’t. I did. It was a very difficult time.”
“Yes, they told me.”
“Good. They’re good people. Did they tell you they used to send me chocolates?” She smiled.
I smiled back. “No.”
“I was barely seventeen, and I’d never tasted good chocolate. Those chocolates made me feel special, like someone cared about me.”
“Dad told me how brave you were.”
She gave a light shrug. “It wasn’t bravery so much as… I’m trying to find the word for it…” She looked around for Sona.
Sona caught her eye and walked up with two cups. Aai said something to her in Marathi while Sona placed the cups before us.
“Survival,” Sona said to me. “She says it was about survival. She had to be brave. She had no other option.”
Aai smiled. It felt good to say that word… Aai . I repeated it over and over in my head.
“I’ll get my coffee,” Sona said and walked to the register. She came back with her cup and settled beside me.
“Sona said you work with a…” I turned to Sona. “How do you say organization in Hindi?”
Sona translated it for me.
“Yes, I have been with the organization for fifteen years. Kamte bhau introduced me to it.”
“What do you do?” Sona asked.
“We advocate for sex workers’ rights—freedom from violence, freedom from harassment, a safe working environment. We have been demanding the decriminalization of consensual adult sex work while ensuring that underage girls are not trafficked.”
Of course, Sona had to translate all that for me.
“I moved out of the brothel to an apartment after I took up the job. It was easier to keep regular hours that way. But I’m still in the same neighborhood. Tell me what you do, Mihir.”
A wide smile came to rest on her face when I told her about my education and work.
“Very good,” she said. “Harvard is good, isn’t it?”
I nodded.
“Is that where you two met?”
Sona sat upright and glanced at me. “We’re friends,” she said emphatically.
Aai smiled. “Yes. Where did you meet?”
“In Dallas. She’s a friend of my friend’s wife.”
“Aah, very filmy.”
“It’s slang for movie-like,” Sona explained when I produced a confused frown. “She knows we were together.”
“How long are you here?” Aai asked. “I would like to see you again.”
My body perked up. “I haven’t booked my tickets yet.”
“I’m glad you both made the effort to find me. This is…good.”
“It was all Sona,” I said and smiled at the woman of my dreams, who remained just out of reach at the moment.
“I was scared,” Aai said. “I wasn’t sure what you wanted from me, how you would react to me giving you up.”
“I was scared too,” I replied.
Sona squeezed my hand.
We talked for about an hour until the clouds descended low on the city, covering it in a dark gray blanket.
“It’s going to rain. I should leave before the roads get blocked. You should too,” Aai suggested.
“Can we drop you back?” I asked.
“No.” She smiled and leaned in to place a loving hand on my cheek.
The warmth from her hand reached my soul, and I pulled my hand over hers, brought it to my lips, and kissed it.
“Thank you,” I said in English and touched her hand to my forehead. It was something I’d seen Mom do to her mother and Dad’s mother in deference.
Aai placed a quick hand on my head.
“Thank you,” she said in English then continued in Hindi. “I will call you for another meeting soon. Sona, can you send me his number?”
When Sona nodded, she took her hand and patted it with obvious fondness. “You’re a nice girl. I will see you both soon.”
“I want to hug you and never let go,” I said to Sona in the car on our way back.
“I’m truly happy for you. I don’t think I can express how I feel right now.”
“Oh, the quick-witted, eloquent, brilliantly verbose Dr. Thomas is scrambling for words?”
She stuck her elbow in my arm. “Hey, it happens to the best of us.”
“Have dinner with me.”
“Not today. I need to send him home,” she said, meaning Sanjay. “I don’t want him getting stranded on his way back.”
“Send him home. We’ll get a car, and I’ll drop you back.”
I think I prayed silently while she considered my proposition. “Let me call Aai.”
“Aai asked me to bring you home,” Sona said after she hung up the call. “She’s really intent on getting you married, it seems.”
“Deal. Let’s have dinner, and then I’ll come home with you.”
After a quick, quiet dinner at the hotel restaurant, we went to my room to pack me a bag for the night. Out of habit—and because I still wasn’t used to thinking of Sona as an outsider—I removed the formal shirt I was wearing and tossed it to the bed where she sat. It was unintentional, but her eyes darted to my bare chest and remained there. I heard her breathing drop in the silent room. Her eyes blinked rapidly as I undid my belt buckle. The swoosh of the belt coming off the loops was her Pavlov’s bell. I flung the handcrafted leather toward the bed to land at a distance from her. Her eyes turned to the belt, then returned to me as I undid my pants and stripped down to my boxer briefs with a slow, deliberate motion. The biggest lure was yet to come. I turned my back to her and heard a hard gulp.
As I casually walked up to the closet to retrieve a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, I heard her shuffle off the bed. I anticipated her touch on my back, now graced with a tattoo of a flying eagle, its wingspan stretching across the span of my back.
Her muted footsteps grew closer, and I felt the warmth of her hand near my body.
“What are you looking at?” I asked when I sensed her standing behind me.
“Can I touch it?” she whispered.
“Yes.” My hands gripped the open doors of the closet as my head dropped forward.
She traced the powerful ink on my back with her soft fingers. My stomach dipped as her touch landed on my spine and glided all the way to the shoulder blade. Soft and delicious, the way I remembered it. My hands on the door clutched tighter.
I wanted to turn around, grab her in my arms, and thank her for giving me everything I had needed. My birth mother, a renewed connection with my parents, and a love that was pure and selfless.
“It’s beautiful. What’s the symbolism?”
My heart sank when I heard her question. “For me, it’s clarity. I went in seeking pain, but I found freedom, meaning, and connection. Do you like it?”
Her touch vanished. “I’m the wrong woman to ask that question now, aren’t I?” she said with a sassy edge to her voice as she withdrew to her spot on the bed.
I pulled up a pair of jeans and walked to her with the T-shirt in my fist. “You’ve missed this body, haven’t you?” I asked, leaning down softly toward her.
Her gaze traveled at a painful pace up my torso to meet my eyes.
I turned my voice a seductive octave lower. “Tell me what’s on your mind.”
“I was thinking”—her words were slow and dreamy—“that you’ve kept up your waxing routine.” Her lip curled up.
I had to laugh. “Of course I have. I’m a high-maintenance man. Now, let’s go see what you mom has planned for me.”
When we arrived, we found her parents eagerly waiting for me. We assembled in the family room, chatting and laughing while I taught them how to play poker. Sona retreated to her room for her daily meditation. We were still playing when she peeked out to announce that she was going to bed. Getting under her skin was an absolutely delightful side-effect of this entire enterprise.
Later that night, after the couple retired, I called my parents.
My parents.
“How are you?” That’s the first thing my mother asked me.
My mother.
Her concern pushed me to tears. I wept unabashedly from the shame of having hurt them. I begged their forgiveness for my cruel words.
“Don’t,” Mom said as she tried to choke back her tears. “You don’t need to apologize, my child. We were at fault. I should be saying sorry to you.” Dad stayed at her side, running a hand down her back, his eyes glassy and wet.
“But you were right about one thing,” I said. “I am your son. Nothing can ever change that.”
The past few weeks had been instructive, to say the least. Between my talks with Mikey and Grant and my heartfelt conversation with Sona, I was already reassessing my ideas of self. On this journey of renegotiating my identity, one thought kept coming back to me loud and strong: my parents loved me. They cherished me, and I fucking loved them with vigor. I was neither abandoned nor unwanted. All three of my parents had worked hard to give me the best life they could.
“Did you see your mother?” Dad’s question drew me out of my thoughts.
I told them about the meeting, and my parents smiled while they wept. “She told me everything, and I am grateful to you.”
“No,” Mom said in a stern voice. “I don’t want to hear this language of gratitude. It sounds like we did you an ehsaan, a favor. You are our son. We did what we did for us. Not for you. For us . You brought me the happiness I desired in my life. If anything, I am grateful to you,” she reminded me, and I couldn’t stop the stream of tears running down my face at her words.
How could I have hurt these kind people? I might have had evil inside me, but I also had their decency and warmth. I decided I would never let my doubts and insecurity overshadow it.
“Now, let’s talk about your wedding,” Mom said, which brought a smile to my face.
“About that… Sona’s mother has a proposal for me.”
After I narrated what had transpired between her parents and me that afternoon, they chuckled.
“They seem like nice people,” Mom said.
“They are very nice. Sona is a mini-version of them, naughty and sassy like her mother and kind and generous like her father. And brilliant like both,” I furnished.
“Well, let me know how that meeting goes. We will be happy to fly there and talk in person if needed.”
“Yes, Mom,” I said and watched her shrink in her seat.
Suddenly, she put her face in her hands and broke into inconsolable tears.
I balked in fear. “What happened, Mom? Did I hurt you again?”
She shook her head and took her time to sniff back the tears. “I thought I’d never hear that word from you again,” she confessed, and my heart lurched in shame.
“I’m sorry, Mom, but you know you won’t get rid of me that easily,” I teased.
She touched my face on her screen with her fingers and brought them to her lips. “I love you, beta.”
“Love you too, Mom. And rest assured, nothing’s ever going to change that.”
“It better not,” she threatened with a teary smile.
“I love you too, Dad,” I said and kissed him the same way Mom had kissed me.
Dad couldn’t respond from trying to check his own tears.
As I tucked into bed that night, I felt complete. The only thing left now was getting my parents the daughter-in-law they desired.