Chapter 4
Thirteen days until the wedding
In the Bollywood movies Simran loves so much, there is no shortage of what she thinks of as heroine songs, where the female lead and her hopes and dreams are introduced to the audience.
There are anthems for plucky dreamers, bangers by self-assured sirens, and hymns from purehearted ingenues.
But there are no songs for the world-weary survivalist returning to the site of her deepest grievances.
All these tunes dedicated to women eager to take on the world and not a single catchy bop for a woman who has to do something she really doesn’t want to.
The taxi she caught at Newark pulled up to her aunt and uncle’s house in Addison, New Jersey, a few minutes ago.
The driver clears his throat twice before finally saying, “Miss, are you going to get out?” It’s on the tip of her tongue to ask if she can stay in the back of his car with its cloying pineapple-scented air freshener that is giving her a light headache.
“I have a mission,” she mutters to herself. As she opens the car door and gets out, the driver says in a cheery voice, “Good luck!”
She looks up at Iyer House, a two-story construction with a half-gable roof, sloping down to its best feature—the huge backyard and deck.
The front porch wraps across the house, and the scent of the freshly mowed lawn prickles at her nose.
She walks up the wide steps and stops outside the front door, pulling out the house key she’s not sure she has the right to use but does anyway.
Except—it doesn’t fit. She tries the other side up but the key still doesn’t slide in.
When did they change the locks? The front door is new, she realizes as she takes a step back—the same maroon color as its predecessor, but sleeker, no scuffs from all the times Kavitha’s tuba case banged against it.
The handle is smooth brushed metal and gone is the ancient, mildly phallic door knocker that they used to giggle over.
Before she can ring the bell, the door flies open. Standing in the doorway is her uncle, Ashok, tall, lanky, and silent.
“Simran,” he says, his hushed voice lifting in surprise. “You’re here.”
She bends down to touch his feet and he pats the top of her head. As she straightens, she says in Tamil, words rusty like a gate opening after a long time, “Neenga eppadi irukkeengey, Peripa?”
“Yelaa sowkyam, ma.” Everything is good, dear.
When she was younger, Ashok peripa would always gently pinch her cheek between his index and middle fingers and she’d be put out by it, the way growing kids are when adults do something that reminds them that they’re still children.
Now, as he steps back to let her in, she feels the phantom motion on her cheek.
Up close, she’s startled to see how time has pulled her uncle down.
His skin sags, more wan than in her memories, and his hair is all salt, no pepper left.
He moves slow and stooped, like a great tree.
She knew the triple bypass he’d had five years ago was major, but medical factoids hadn’t painted the living, breathing—effortful and audible—picture she has now.
Simran looks around the living room. “It’s still the same,” she says.
It is just as she knew it would be: the plastic coverings on the large leather sectional that squelch and squeak with the smallest of movements; her uncle’s rocking chair in the corner next to his record collection and player; and, in another alcove, the three-foot-high bronze Nataraj statue that doesn’t quite cover the Dyson vacuum docking station behind it.
The house has always overflowed with objects, almost choked by the sheer quantity, with shelves and display cases holding not just too many books squeezed in like Tetris pieces but tangles of wires, mementos cluttered together, and paraphernalia shoved into every free nook and cranny.
Everywhere the eye looked, things on top of more things.
“Ashok, challo! We’re going to be late!” Veena perima calls. She comes thumping down the stairs before stopping at the sight of Simran, catching her balance on the banister. “Simi? You’ve come!”
“Hello, Perima,” Simran says, stepping forward and touching her aunt’s feet before bringing her hand to her chest. She knows what will come first: a single-sentence assessment of her looks that is actually a dismissal of her lifestyle.
Instead, when she straightens, her aunt cups her face.
Simran has not been touched this way in years, the way no one except family can touch you, wholly familiar and without needing permission.
Her aunt’s eyes—large, round, and perfectly in the middle of her large, round face—scan her and she whispers, almost to herself, “You’ve grown up so much.”
And then, brusquely, “Yenna, yelachu poittai! You’re too thin! Toronto mein good food nahin mila, kya? Why didn’t you use the recipes I taught you?”
Simran smiles, vindicated even as the familiar braid of English and Tamil and Hindi, so interchangeable in this house, tugs at her unexpectedly. There’s nowhere else she’s ever heard it. “Where is everyone? Geeta, Rishi … Kavi?”
Her aunt, short but powerful, like a cannonball, goes to sit on the couch. “They’ve already gone to the temple for the engagement ceremony along with Manjula and Ravi. We’ll take you with us—po, quickly quickly and change. We are already late.”
Going upstairs to leave her bags triggers a vivid memory: the day Simran got accepted to college and made it known she would live on campus, instead of at home like Veena perima had wanted.
They had clashed a thousand and one times in the two years Simran had been living at Iyer House, ranging from asides and eye rolls to skirmishes to full-on battles—and this was the biggest one yet.
To Veena Iyer, daughters lived in their parents’ house until they married and moved to their husband’s house—unless the daughter was Geeta and got into an Ivy League in another state.
To Simran, this was that frustratingly outdated, often contradictory thinking her aunt embraced.
This woman believed deeply in educating her daughters and giving them autonomy and confidence to pursue careers, but also that they should be married at a young age to have children in order to fulfill her idea of true success.
Her aunt felt that to be a loving, close family meant to constantly be in everyone’s business, flinging her opinions and pressing her wants upon them but never, ever talking about actual feelings or emotions.
But most egregiously, her aunt treated Simran exactly like she treated her children.
Which Simran wasn’t. The first time Simran had thrown “You’re not my mother!
” into the heated air between them, her aunt’s mouth had become small, like an animal curling in on itself.
This time, it bounced like a rubber bullet off her armored skin.
In the end, Simran won, using the trump card of her inheritance to pay for college.
She accepted Rutgers’s offer of enrollment the very next day and, four months later, moved into the dorms where Olivia had been assigned as her freshman-year roommate.
Fifteen minutes later, Simran finds herself in the middle row of the family minivan with her uncle driving and her aunt in the passenger seat, demonstrating her astonishing ability to multitask as she talks on speakerphone to someone at the venue, texts Geeta that they’re on their way, and yells at the driver who just cut them off.
She twists around to look at Simran at one point and asks, “I only saw one suitcase in the hall. That’s barely enough for a few weeks, no? ”
It takes a moment for Simran to understand what her aunt means. “Perima, it is only for two weeks.”
Her aunt frowns before holding up a hand. “It’s okay, we’ll ship the rest home from Toronto after the wedding.”
“Perima—” Simran says, needing her aunt to understand that in no way is she back for good.
But she’s cut off because they’ve arrived at the temple compound, an impressive space smack in the middle of suburban New Jersey.
In the center is the main worship area made of white marble carved like a traditional South Indian temple; several small cement buildings, not nearly as grand, dot the verdant grounds, including a function hall with a wall of panoramic windows that overlook a babbling brook.
Outside it, a letter board surrounded by shoes proclaims IYER-CHOPRA ENGAGEMENT.
As they head in, Simran scans the crowd, determinedly avoiding any eye contact to discourage anyone from coming up to talk to her.
She doesn’t need to worry—no one is talking to her.
They’re talking about her. Her reemergence has sent the guests into a frenzy of whispers and texts.
Gossip Girl has nothing on Indian gatherings and, to her annoyance, she knows her aunt will be attuned to every word, caring too much about what her community thinks.
More and more people crowd into the room, making it harder to find Kavitha.
On a dais at the front of the space is the betrothed couple with their parents on either side of them.
Geeta is resplendent, as always, in a black Mysore silk sari with a filigree-gold blouse underneath.
Next to her, Rishi looks sharp in his dark purple sherwani set.
The priest begins the prayers to bless the union and the long set of rituals commences.
It’s been years since Simran has attended a religious or cultural event—though she has Indian friends in Toronto, they’re tightly woven into their own families and communities and she’s a bit of a lone duck.
She breathes in the scent of sandalwood agarbathi, golden and warm, as her ear recognizes a familiar rhythm in the hypnotic intonations of the priest, ending each stanza with a declarative “Svaha!” A stream of commentary and movement from the guests create constant murmuring white noise, even as these sacred rituals—the ones everyone has gathered here for—continue on.
No one onstage is bothered by it, because that’s how it always is.
Simran is comforted and amused in equal parts.
Finally, towards the end of the ceremony, everyone pays attention long enough to cheer for Geeta and Rishi as they exchange rings.
As Simran saw on Instagram, Rishi proposed down on one knee under the northern lights in Iceland months ago, but this is the engagement that legitimizes it for the families and the community.
The guests line up, waiting for their turn to step on the stage and congratulate the couple and their parents before snapping poorly angled selfies they’ll later post on social media with captions like “AT GEETA AND RISHI’S NICHYATHARTHAM.
HE IS PUNJABI SO THEY CALL IT ROKA. NICE CEREMONY.
UPMA TASTED GOOD. ASHOK IS MY BUSINESS PARTNER. ”
Simran hangs back in line, keeping her chin down, but she scans the room. Still no sign of Kavitha. Someone tugs at her elbow—it’s Rishi’s brother, Rahul, younger than him by a decade, bringing her to the front. Geeta beams at her, perfect white teeth rivaling a movie star’s.
“You don’t have to wait in line, Akka! You’re family,” she says. Simran smiles. Maybe things will be different between her and Geeta now. They hug and Geeta says, “Even if you didn’t RSVP.”
Maybe they’ll be the same.
Geeta waves to someone behind them, her bangles tinkling, before she turns back to Simran.
“It’s fine. Of course, we’ll have to call the planner and get everything figured out: how we’re seated, make sure you’re color coordinated, who you’ll walk into the ceremony with—because you and Kavi can’t walk with Rahul, you’re too tall for either of them. ”
“Speaking of, where is Kav—” But Geeta has hit the time limit on talking to Simran and gets firmly instructed by the event coordinator to move on to the next guest.
Simran takes a step over, grinning as Rishi pulls her into a bear hug.
As they separate, Veena perima’s voice, demanding and commanding, reaches them from a few feet away, declaring to the semicircle of guests standing around her, “It’s so important to marry your daughters into families who share your values.
You know, five years ago, Rishi asked for my permission to date Geeta. ”
Simran looks back at Rishi, amused. “Nice of you to ask permission to date Geeta six years after you started dating Geeta.”
“It’s been a long, treacherous road,” he says.
He looks different than when she last saw him—back then, he used to gel his hair like a skyscraper.
Now he has close-cropped sides with artfully curated stubble—he no longer looks like the boy next door.
“There were a couple of times I thought we may not survive. Like every time I got on that ladder to sneak into Geeta’s room. ”
“Dating one of Veena Iyer’s daughters should count as an extreme sport,” she says.
“But in the end, I got the girl and I got the gold,” he says, grinning as he holds up his left hand, where a thick signet ring with a chunky sapphire in its center sits comfortably on his fourth finger. “Women have been gatekeeping how awesome engagement rings are.”
They chat until Rishi is pulled away and Veena perima puts Simran to work, handing her a steel plate with coconuts, betel leaves, small containers of kumkum, and a bunch of bananas, and instructs her to take it to the priest waiting at the back of the room.
Simran does as she’s told, opening the side door for the priest to exit when she hears someone else approach.
She stays there, holding it so they can come in.
And a few seconds later, in through the door walks Kavitha.