Chapter 9
Simran sits on one side of a booth at Dosa House, Leo next to her, their hands clasped under the table. Kavitha sits across from them. No one is speaking; only the cacophonous clank of dishes and cooks calling out orders fills the silence.
Leo’s gaze flicks between her cousin and her, but both remain silent, just like in the awkward car ride over. “Listen, I know you and I just met,” he says, leaning his elbows on the table. “But Simran’s told me a lot of stories about you. It’s great to meet the legendary Kavitha.”
“I wish I could say the same, Leo,” Kavitha replies. She catches herself and adds, “I mean, I’m sure you’re nice.”
“I am nice.” He leans back against the booth, giving Kavitha his full attention. “And you can ask me anything. I’m an open book.”
Oh god, he is an open book. And he’s here with Simran’s family, where she most wants to be closed off.
Kavi’s gaze pings between the two and she sits back, arms crossed. “Are you together?”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Depends on how you want to define it but anywhere from a few days to”—he checks his watch—“an hour.” Simran watches her cousin’s jaw loosen as she puts the pieces together: This is something new, trying to find its footing, not a secret Simran has kept from her family for years.
“So why are you here?” Kavitha asks.
Leo takes a sip of water. “Sim took off and then I got the vibe she was avoiding me.”
Simran squeezes the hand that’s tucked into his.
She was avoiding him, and though she knows he means it when he said he forgave her, she feels the prickle of guilt anyway.
A giant masala dosa is set down in the center of the table and Kavitha tears off a quarter of it with both hands before nudging the plate towards Leo.
“She does love avoiding things,” Kavitha says to him.
Leo grins. “She sure does.”
Simran huffs. “Can we talk about something else?”
“Exhibit A,” Leo tells Kavitha around a mouthful of potatoes. Simran rolls her eyes.
“And that! She loves rolling her eyes!” Kavitha says, and Simran would be more annoyed except that there’s a smile on her cousin’s face aimed in her direction for the first time since she’s been back.
“It’s practically a hobby,” Leo agrees.
“When we were kids, her dad teased her that they’d get stuck like that one day. She went a whole month extremely freaked out, until she realized everyone else knew that wasn’t possible. Oooh, she was so mad.”
Simran is mid–eye roll before she realizes both Leo and Kavitha are peering at her, waiting for this exact reaction. She purses her lips instead. Leo smiles at her cousin and says, “Thank you for telling me that, Kavitha. You might be my new favorite person.”
She giggles. “You can call me Kavi. That’s what people I like call me.”
Leo’s smile grows at the same rate as Simran’s frown; these two are more than getting along.
They’re dangerously close to being in cahoots—and yet she is still being iced out.
Her scowl deepens when Kavitha directs the next question to Leo and not her.
“So why’d she run through an airport to apologize to you? What’d she do?”
Leo tells Kavitha, in all its disastrous glory, how he showed up unannounced with Veena finding him, and Simran’s subsequent lie.
“I really am sorry, Leo,” Simran says, rubbing his forearm. “But Veena perima would have freaked out if I had told her who you really were.”
He puts his hand over hers. To Simran’s surprise, Kavitha chimes in. “She’s right. We’re not the type of family who sits down at the breakfast table and talks freely about who we’re dating.”
“My mother is a therapist. I get it: boundaries,” Leo says.
“It’s more than that. This is like a cultural-generational wall,” Kavitha says.
“In my mother’s head, she’s actually deeply permissive.
The idea that we’d want to marry anyone outside of the community has never even occurred to her.
So if she vets and chooses someone—and even lets us spend time together before we get married—she can’t fathom that we’d want anything more. Who needs passion or chemistry?”
Simran chuckles but shakes her head. “It’s not always like that. My parents wouldn’t have cared.”
“Fair enough. Some Indian parents are chill. Yours were,” Kavitha says. She turns back to Leo and gives him a pointed look. “Mine are not.”
“I get it,” Leo says. “I mean, I’m obviously not South Asian—”
“Hot tip,” Kavitha interrupts. “That’s a real white person term.
I get that it’s there so everyone doesn’t get called Indian when there’s like ten other countries they could be from.
But us South Asians? We’re specific—to the region.
Like, we’re Tamil. Rishi’s family is Punjabi.
There’s a whole North-South divide thing and a bunch of other stuff you’ll have to learn at some point. ”
Leo cringes as he says, “I was also wearing shoes in the house.”
“Ahh, that’s a big no-no,” Kavitha says, gentle pity etched on her face.
“Oh, what’s that?” Leo says, watching Simran dip her idli in a crumbly brown powder.
He does the same with his, taking a bite just as she says, “Wait!” Immediately, he begins to tear up. He frantically grabs for a glass of water.
“Dude, we call it gunpowder,” Kavitha says.
“Eating it is a skill,” Simran says. She hands him a plain idli and he shoves it in his mouth. As Leo recovers, she tells Kavitha, “Not just that. Leo also corrected her when she said his name wrong.”
Kavitha groans. “Maybe your worst mistake yet,” she says. “You do not correct Veena Iyer. You merely operate your life around her misinformation.”
“Noted,” Leo says glumly.
Simran rubs his back. “It’s okay. Perima will forget about you with all the wedding stuff happening.”
“Wait, he’s not coming?” Kavitha asks. She leans back against the booth and crosses her arms. “He has to come to the wedding. I won’t let you lie to our family.”
“We just talked about how we don’t tell them who we’re dating,” Simran says.
“Not casually, no! But if it’s someone important, you should.
And there’s a difference between outright lying and telling them at the right time,” Kavitha says.
Leo is quiet, watching them bicker, but Simran knows he heard Kavitha say “if it’s someone important.
” She meant what she said in the airport.
But that doesn’t mean her aunt needs to know about them right now.
“You asked me what I wanted from you,” Kavitha says calmly. “This is what I want. Leo comes to the wedding and you tell the family you’re together.”
“Kavitha, ni yenna solren? Yosi.” She doesn’t realize she’s slipped into Tamil until she sees the confusion on Leo’s face. “Think about what you’re asking for. You heard what a terrible impression Leo made. That’s why I said I didn’t know him—”
“Wait a minute,” Kavi says. Her head lifts, a smile stealing over her face. Simran has seen that look before. “My mother thinks you two are strangers.”
“Yeah …” Simran says, wary of her cousin’s tone.
“That’s it!”
“What’s it?” Simran asks. This change in Kavitha from sullen to plotting is startling. “Why do you look like the Brain when he’s cooking up a scheme to try to take over the world?”
“Because, Pinky …” Kavi’s gaze locks onto Simran’s. “I have a scheme.”
“To try to take over the world?”
“To win over Veena Iyer.”
Simran scoffs. “It would be easier to take over the world.”
Simran glances around the darkened room, everyone’s faces lit by the glow of the huge, clunky TV in Rishi’s childhood bedroom.
It’s been a few hours since they left Dosa House.
Once the engagement party ended and Geeta had gone back to Connecticut because she had a shift in the morning, Kavitha, radiating maniacal glee, had dragged Rishi, Simran, and Leo into Rishi’s childhood bedroom and, without any explanation, put DDLJ on.
The familiar strings of the mandolin play and it feels so right, her cousin sitting cross-legged on the floor below her, Rishi sprawled to the right, and Leo’s arm pressed against hers.
This is her favorite movie, yes, but it’s also a favorite experience, layered with the memories of the hundreds of times she’s watched it before, most of which were with her cousin.
Years ago, Rishi had even driven her, Kavi, and Geeta to a special screening and the theater had felt more like a party, with everyone singing along, hooting and cheering during the most iconic moments.
She hasn’t seen it even once since she moved to Toronto—now she realizes why.
Watching this movie without Kavitha would be like watching it on mute, a key part missing.
She turns her attention back to the movie as the two main characters, Simran and Raj, traipse through misadventures in Europe, annoying each other until they fall in love.
They separate at the end of the trip because movie-Simran has to go to India to marry the man her father has chosen for her, the son of his best friend, whom she’s never met.
“So not cool of her dad,” Rishi observes.
Kavitha elbows him. “Shhhhh.”