Chapter 11 #2
“My mother has invited people she hasn’t seen in years. Veena aunty has people flying in from India for this thing.” He shakes his head. “And I’m going to have to pretend to recognize all of them.”
She’s not really listening, half her mind busy with admiring the perfect angle at the edge of Leo’s jaw and the other half on things she needs to do: answer work emails, send a note to her mailing list with her fall dance class schedule, text Liv back, and—
Leo trails the tip of his pinky over the length of hers and all thoughts leave her brain.
It’s a slow but deliberate stroke while he carries on chatting with Rishi as if nothing were happening.
Barely a touch. The light dusting of hair on his arms brushes against hers and his low, sure voice trickles through her.
He repeats the motion.
What is he thinking? Her aunt is right there and so are the Chopras and they’re not even supposed to know each other.
But he does it again and she sucks her lips inwards to keep from sighing, her pulse drumming just underneath her skin.
Each skim of the rough-soft pad of his finger undoes her, too much and not enough, until she’s concocting scenarios of how they might sneak away to—
“Simran!” Veena perima calls and her hand flies away from Leo’s with such a sudden jerk that she knocks the cup of chai in Rishi’s hand. He yelps, taking a step back, and all the conversations around them halt. Everyone stares.
She clears her throat and lifts her chin to reclaim her dignity, even as she feels like the steam wafting from the tea: hot and dissolving.
Mumbling an apology to Rishi and determinedly avoiding the bewildered expressions of the people in the kitchen—and Leo’s sloped, too-knowing smile—she moves towards her aunt, who assigns her the task of finding the streamers they’ll use to decorate the backyard for the mehndi ceremony taking place the following week.
Walking to the far side of the living room, she opens and pushes aside box after box in her search, jumping when Ashok peripa, who she hadn’t even realized had been sitting in his favorite chair, comes up behind her.
Simran never had the same kind of strife with her uncle that she did with her aunt, though his silence felt like a condoning of Veena perima’s ways.
But he’d taught her how to play chess on the antique set and they’d listened to classic Bollywood music together.
Sometimes, his taciturn presence airing out a room was just what Simran needed.
“Sorry, Peripa, you scared me,” she says, and he wiggles his head from side to side.
As she continues searching for the streamers, she hears shuffling behind her.
A few moments later, Kishore Kumar’s voice fills the room, singing in Hindi that this is life, the colors and shape of it, that it’s part sadness and part happiness, with sunshine and shadows in it.
Simran goes still, blocking out everything but the guitar chords that lead the song from its chorus into the verse.
In her mind, she’s ten years old doing homework in the living room, like every Sunday, and this song is one of the many her father would play through the course of the morning.
The Chennai air is balmy, and when her mother passes her, she runs a hand over Simran’s head lovingly before going to sit next to her father.
They smile at each other and talk—about getting groceries, about their upcoming workweek, the new movie her mother wants to see.
It’s the idle chatter of people who expect to have the rest of their lives to say things to each other.
The music stops abruptly with a ripping noise and Simran is yanked back into the present.
She looks behind her to see her uncle frowning down at the vintage record player on the sideboard.
The needle has jumped and he moves it, lifting the record in the air to examine it. Simran stands and walks over.
“What’s wrong, Peripa?” she asks.
“The record has a scratch on it,” he replies, and she’s surprised to see his droopy frown deepen.
“That’s okay. I bet we can find a replacement online. Want me to look?” she asks, pulling her phone out.
He touches her hand to stop her. “This was your father’s record,” he says in that gentle voice. Simran’s head turns to him as her hand drops to her side. “This was his player too. We brought it here to New Jersey after …” He blinks twice. “After.”
“Oh,” Simran says, the air in her lungs dissipating. Underneath her own flood of feelings, she’s touched by his rare display of emotion.
“I thought you knew. I have all of his records here.” He points to the shelf to the left, albums she saw and listened to hundreds of times when she lived here.
She’d never known that they belonged to her father—and that Ashok peripa had played them for the same reason that she listened to them: not just because he loved the songs but because her dad loved them too.
Simran moves on shaky legs to the player, running her hand over the stark squareness of it.
Why didn’t her uncle tell her earlier? But then again, she had never talked to him, content to let the music be the only noise between them.
She looks up to find Ashok peripa observing her. He doesn’t say anything and she’s never been more thankful for his quiet understanding. Voice hitching, she asks, “Do you—did Appa have ‘O Mere Dil Ke Chain’?”
Her uncle locates the album, pulling out the slim square from the shelf and handing it to her before sitting back in his chair.
Simran listens to that song and then the next few, unmoored in time.
Here is this artifact of her heart from the life she lived long ago, the one that included her parents.
Until now, it felt like there were no other physical traces of them left except two portraits in a room on the other side of the house.
She can touch something her parents touched, she can listen to it the way they used to listen to it.
And for once, she’s not being pulled down by grief, she’s not suffocated by it; the music, the memories—they’re airy and bright.
She didn’t know it could feel like this.
When she’s called back to the present by her aunt, asking for the streamers she’d been tasked with looking for, it occurs to her: If a record player and some music can make her feel like this, imagine how going back to her house in Chennai will feel.
The thought lifts her heart like a kite.