Chapter 9 #2
On-screen, Raj follows movie-Simran to India, where they come up with a plan to pretend to be strangers so he can win over her family and convince her father that he’s the right man for her.
Even though it’s been nearly a decade since the last time she watched it, Simran still knows every intonation in the dialogue, every expression on the actors’ faces, every note in all the songs, as Raj slowly worms his way into everyone’s hearts at the wedding, even cracking movie-Simran’s stoic and stern father.
But then, he finds out that Raj and his daughter have been sneaking around behind everyone’s backs.
Raj is dramatically kicked out of the house, which leads to a highly unnecessary fight sequence, and movie-Simran begs her father to let her get on the train that Raj is on, as it slowly leaves the station.
Realizing that the best person for his daughter is the man who makes her happy, he lets her go, with possibly the most famous, most quoted line in the movie: “Jaa, Simran, jaa. Jee le apni zindagi.” Go, Simran, go.
Live your life. And in slow motion, she runs to the train, towards Raj’s outstretched hand, towards the life she wants with her father’s blessings, in a mirror of the scene where she and Raj first met.
He pulls her into the carriage and, parental approval secured, they go off into their happily ever after.
Kavitha stands and switches off the movie as the credits run. Turning to the group, she says expectantly, “Well?”
“Oh, we’re allowed to speak now?” Rishi asks, neck cracking noisily as he sits up.
“Not you, Rishi. You can take a vow of silence.” She faces Leo. “What do you think?”
“Me? Two thumbs up.” He looks at Simran, stretched out next to him. “I can see why it’s your favorite movie. I liked all the family stuff.”
“Family stuff?” Simran says, shaking her head as she straightens. “It’s a romance.”
“Sure,” Leo says. “But more than anything, it’s about how their love is not more important than Simran’s relationship with her family. They could have left it all behind at any point, but like Raj says: If he doesn’t get the family’s approval, they won’t ever be truly happy.”
Simran sits up on her knees, hands moving animatedly as she speaks. “It’s about how their love is strong enough that it can take anything? including Simran’s incredibly difficult family. Her father is kind of terrible. You’re cute when you’re wrong, though.”
“It’s not okay that he expects his wife and daughters to do whatever he says. But he’s also homesick and trying to return to the only life he knows. He pushes Simran into that life because he’s scared he’ll lose her otherwise. And it’s you who is wrong—twice, because I’m cute all the time.”
“But he’s so bent on making her do what he says that he doesn’t realize he’s losing her anyway!” Simran replies.
Leo shrugs. “Hurt people hurt people.”
“Okay, lovebirds, save the rest of this for when you’re alone,” Rishi interrupts.
“Yeah, this subtext is quickly becoming text,” Kavitha says. “Clearly, you grasped the plot, Leo. So I ask again: What do you think?”
“Think of what?” he asks.
Kavitha turns to Simran, who holds her hands up in question.
“Isn’t this all sounding a little familiar to you, senorita?
” her cousin asks. “Girl meets boy. Girl has prickly family who won’t approve of boy.
Girl and boy pretend to be strangers so he can win over the family and they can be together. ”
Simran slides off the bed to stand next to her cousin, mouth agape. It is infinitely familiar. “Oh my god. You want to … DDLJ our family?”
Kavitha puts her hands on her hips. “Why not?”
Because it’s ridiculous. Because it will never work. Because—
“Life is not a Bollywood movie!”
“Says the girl who just ran through an airport!” Kavitha shoots back.
“Let me get this straight. You want me to pretend not to know Simran and win over your family as a stranger?” Leo says, moving to the edge of the bed to put his feet on the floor.
“Helped by us, of course,” she adds.
“While your family hosts a multiday wedding.”
“With at least six separate events.”
“None of which I’m invited to,” Leo says.
Kavitha thwacks Rishi on the shoulder and he jumps in. “Consider yourself invited, man.”
“A wedding where you’ll have at least a hundred relatives and friends show up, all of whom I’ll need to impress,” Leo says.
“Psssh,” Kavitha says. “Try four hundred.”
Leo swallows audibly. “Four hundred people … one of whom is your aunt, who already hates me.”
“That’s the whole point,” Kavitha says. “If everyone else loves you—”
“Veena might love me too?” Leo asks.
Kavitha snorts. “No. But she might tolerate you. So … you in?”
“I don’t know. This feels like some high-level hijinks to me,” Leo says, free hand rubbing the back of his neck.
“Well, they’re not called low-jinks!” Kavi replies.
“With that ironclad logic, how could I say no?” Leo mutters.
“Kavitha, you’re being ridiculous,” Simran says. She puts a hand on Leo’s arm. “We don’t have to do any of this. You can go back to Toronto. I’ll stay for the wedding and we’ll figure the rest out when the timing is right.”
“I know all about your timing, Simran.” Kavitha’s words are like an arrow. “Seven years of it.”
Simran falls silent. Then, changing tactics, she asks, “What about Leo’s job? And where will he stay?”
“I could work remotely for a couple weeks,” Leo offers tentatively.
“And he can stay with me at my parents’ house!” Rishi jumps in.
“Geeta’s going back and forth to the hospital right up till the wedding, but I’m here the whole time. It’ll be good to have someone else around, my parents are already driving me crazy.”
“Rishi! You support this?” Simran says. “I thought you’d hate these types of shenanigans.”
Rishi shakes his head. “No, that’s my future wife. I am very proshenanigan.”
“Damn straight,” Kavitha says, and they high-five.
“Simran, remember when Prem uncle kept telling us we were too ‘filmi’?” Simran does.
Bollywood movies were commercial and for the masses, therefore not nearly erudite enough for two young girls who should have been exposing themselves to things with artistic value, according to their mothers’ cousin.
Never mind that anything he considered to have artistic value was unfailingly written or directed by a white British man.
“He was correct: I am too ‘filmi’ and so are you. We were made for this.”
Leo runs a hand through his hair. “Keeping stuff from each other pushes people apart, not together. Can’t we just tell everyone the truth and deal with it like mature adults?”
“Wrong crowd, buddy.” Kavitha jerks a thumb at Rishi. “My mom and his mom fought about rice today.”
“Even Geeta and I hid that we were dating for years,” Rishi says to Leo. “There’s a time and place for coming clean, but after this afternoon, it’s not right now.”
Kavitha walks towards the bed. Raising a single arched eyebrow, a skill Simran’s always been envious of, she says, “C’mon, Leo. Are you really okay with your girl’s family thinking you’re some shoe-wearing klepto?”
That seems to be his reluctant tipping point. He glances at Simran and smiles. “I want it on the record that I find this objectively absurd. But, if you’re insisting this is the best way, then … I’m in.”
Simran had been hoping he would be her out. She came back for the key to her house—how’d they end up here?
Kavitha grins. “This is going to work, you’ll see.”
Simran remembers her saying that exact thing before they climbed the mango tree in the neighbor’s backyard one summer.
She almost broke her leg that day. She’s about to argue more but then it hits her: She doesn’t just want the key.
This scheme makes her and Kavitha teammates, united in the same goal, rather than Simran chasing her around like they’re in a game of tag.
Even if Simran knows there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that Leo is actually going to get Veena’s approval.
“Okay, Kavi,” Simran says, sighing. “We’ll do it your way.”
“Excellent,” Kavitha says, rubbing her hands as her plotting comes together. “Operation DDLJ is a go.”
“Why does it have a name?” Simran asks.
“All capers need a code name. Duh,” Kavitha replies, but Simran notices it’s with less warmth than when she was speaking to Rishi and Leo. “Crap, it’s getting late. Akka, we better get back.”
“You have a curfew?” Leo asks.
“Not a curfew per se. But I can tell when Amma is about to deploy her digital smothering tactic,” Kavitha says.
“She texts a couple of times, all within five minutes, and then if I’m still not back at home, she’ll start calling me, over and over again.
” Simran shudders, remembering this vividly from her teenage days.
“One time, one of the senior partners made the whole firm go to his kid’s middle school production of The Sound of Music.
My phone buzzed so much, they asked me to leave!
I never did find out how they solved a problem like Maria. ”
“They got her married,” Simran says dryly.
“Ah, the universal solution, according to both Amma and Austrian nuns,” Kavitha replies as she walks out of the room.
Rishi follows her, mumbling that he’s going downstairs to get some water, which Simran realizes is to give her and Leo a moment alone.
She moves to where he sits on the bed, standing between his legs and brushing the hair away from his forehead. His eyes flutter shut.