Chapter 26
As the marriage rituals finally come to a close, another one begins—usually one of Simran’s favorites—where both parties attempt to fight over the groom’s shoes; his side to protect them, the bride’s side to hold them hostage until the groom and his parents negotiate an acceptable sum of money for their return.
More important than the money is the pride at stake.
It can get ruthless, sometimes downright vicious.
At their cousin Kaira’s wedding years ago, a preteen Geeta, Kavi, and Simran watched in awe as the bride’s side wrangled eight hundred dollars to return the shoes, a sum that has now become legendary.
Simran once sprinted, shoes in hand, through the marble-floored lobby of the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Mumbai with the other side in hot pursuit, nearly knocking over a guest who turned out to be the ambassador to Germany.
Today she’s not in the mood. But before she can signal to Leo to avoid getting caught up in the joothe shenanigans, he’s been pulled out the side door.
Simran steps off the stage and follows them out, watching as Rahul and Prateek, Rishi’s friend, and several other cousins wheel over an electrician’s ladder borrowed from a nearby utility closet.
It appears their plan is to hide the shoes in a sconce of a chandelier, high enough that only Leo on a ladder—a strangely frequent combination—can reach.
Suddenly, a few of Geeta’s friends and cousins from Ashok uncle’s side come storming down the hallway, rushing the guys.
It’s all-out war, especially when twelve-year-old Shweta swipes the left slipper from Prateek’s hand and jets off.
Rishi’s friends take off after her with the rest of Geeta’s group on their tail.
In all the commotion, everyone has missed that Leo, still at the top of the ladder, is holding the right shoe.
When he spots Simran, he immediately climbs down to her.
“This is nuts,” he says, waving the shoe.
The hallway is empty. Everyone is either still inside for the ceremony or chasing each other through a different part of the hotel.
“Are you okay?” Something inside Simran releases at the sound of his voice and Leo’s face shifts to alarm.
He tugs on her upper arm and pulls her into his chest. “Talk to me.”
“She sold our house, Leo,” she says. “My parents’ house, where I grew up, in Chennai. She sold it and she never even asked me.”
“Oh, Sim.” His voice is gentle, as if he’s trying to soften the sharp corners of what she’s up against. “I’m so sorry.”
The rich material of Leo’s kurta is scratchy beneath her cheek.
“That’s the whole reason I came back here.
I wanted the key to the house. I wanted—I needed to go back there, to see it again, to be in the place where my parents were alive.
I feel like it might have helped me, I don’t know, move on?
Or at least live with it more easily.” It’s the first time she has said it out loud and it feels like she’s giving up the hope the house held for her.
“I wanted to bring you there.” Leo’s arms tighten around her and she tightens hers back.
“Maybe she had a good reason.”
She purses her lips. “Don’t do that. I know you see the best in everyone but you don’t know her.
She sold it to Kamal’s family. And then she put him in the wedding to walk with me.
She’s been planning this the whole time.
It’s just so manipulative—” She sputters.
“It wasn’t hers to give away. It was mine and it was all I had left of them. ”
“What about your dad’s record player that you told me about? Maybe there’s more of their stuff here,” he says. She stiffens and he rubs a hand along her back. “You have every right to be upset. I’m not trying to take that away. I’m just hoping there’s something to salvage.”
“If there was, I wouldn’t have left seven years ago.” She wants to move past this topic, lighten the heaviness. “Guess that means Operation DDLJ is officially a failure.”
But his face pinches and in that moment, she realizes just how seriously Leo was taking it.
He’s become too invested in their plan, despite her warning that Veena perima would never come around.
She had gotten so swept up in how different being back had felt.
But ultimately, everything always ended up the same. Because of her aunt.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“Why are you sorry?” she says. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”
“I don’t think that’s true.” At her raised eyebrows, he says, “I have been lying to your aunt since the moment I met her.”
“Because we made you,” she dismisses.
“When you tell her,” he says, “I’ll apologize for not being honest from the start.”
Simran pulls away slightly, frowning. “Tell her?”
“About you and me.”
Simran drops her arms, shaking her head. “No, Leo. You don’t get it. I don’t want her to be part of any more of my life. It’s why I stayed away for so long. We’ll go back to Toronto and we can live our lives far, far away from her opinions and plans.”
“That’s not going to solve anything,” Leo says.
“Aren’t you angry at how she’s treated you?” Simran asks, squeezing his arms as if to infuse her hurt into him.
He shakes his head. “No, not angry. Maybe a little sad at how this has all played out.”
She shakes her head, not needing to hear more. “I hate that she made you feel that way,” she says. She starts pacing, feeling Leo’s eyes follow her as she wears down a three-foot section of the stone-colored carpet.
“Look, the wedding is almost over,” he says after a few moments.
“Fly back with me tomorrow, instead of at the end of the week. We’ll decompress in Toronto, hang out with Liv and our friends.
You can catch up on work. Once all this has passed, your family will be calmer too.
Then we can come back to Iyer House and tell Veena aunty together. ”
Simran stops and faces him. “I’m not telling her. And I’m not coming back here. It’s clear to me now that this place holds nothing for me.”
“Sim.”
Something about the way he’s trying to whittle down her anger only makes her feel it more. “What?”
Leo’s mouth is set in a firm line, the furrow between his brows deep. “You have to tell your aunt we’re together before you just cut her out of your life.”
She picks furiously at a cuticle, refusing to look up at him. “I can’t. I don’t want her anywhere near my life.”
“The last time you left like this, you nearly lost Kavitha.”
“It won’t be like that this time,” Simran insists. “Kavitha and me are separate from how I deal with Veena perima.”
“Does Kavitha feel that way?” Leo asks.
Thunderous footsteps sound down the hallway, and out of instinct, they take a few steps away from each other just as Prateek and Rahul come around the corner, careening towards them. Shweta, followed by two of Geeta’s friends, eyes maniacal with adrenaline, is hot on their heels.
“Leo, think fast!” Prateek says, tossing him the other shoe. He catches it easily and both he and Simran stare down into his hands, a little mystified at how he ended up with the pair.
“Run!” another one of Rishi’s cousins says, coming up to him and grabbing his shoulders, tugging him into the chase. Leo is pulled into the stampede, throwing an alarmed look back at Simran.
“Take the shoes!” he pleads with Rahul.
“No way! You’re the best runner of us all!”
They disappear around the corner with the girls trailing them, as Simran stares at the empty space where Leo was just standing.
She walks in their direction, trying to find Leo again but after a few minutes she realizes she’s too far behind.
She has no idea where they ran off to. She turns back to the wedding hall, relieved that their disagreement was interrupted.
A warm hand clamps around her wrist and she’s tugged backwards, into a supply closet.
“Sorry,” Leo says, panting slightly. “Took me a minute to hand the shoes over to Shweta.”
Simran frowns. “But she’s on the girl’s side.”
“Rishi told me that if it comes down to it, I should take your family’s side over his, to get in good with Veena aunty.”
Simran pinches the bridge of her nose, filled with affection and frustration at Leo’s commitment to Operation DDLJ, even after everything her aunt has done.
“You’re not going to win her over, Leo,” she says. His shoulders slump. “I don’t get why you have such a problem with this. I’m choosing you over everyone else.”
He throws his hands in the air. “I don’t want that!”
“You don’t want me to choose you?”
“I don’t want you to choose at all,” Leo says. The closet is low and cramped, lit by a single bulb that casts shadows along the metal shelves and over their faces, shrouding their expressions. He says, “I want you to have everyone you need in your life.”
“It’s too late for that. And I don’t need her,” Simran says, crossing her arms over her chest.
He scrubs a hand over his face. “I can’t imagine what you’re feeling and I won’t pretend to. But I doubt your aunt did any of this to hurt you.”
Simran is shaking her head even before he finishes talking.
“You said it yourself. You don’t know what it feels like—because you don’t know her.
Why wouldn’t she sell my house without telling me, let alone asking me?
This is the person who never talked about my parents after they died.
The sister and brother-in-law she lived with for two years!
Not even once, Leo. It was like she erased them from her mind. ”
That’s the poisoned root of the thorny relationship between her and Veena perima.
Not her authoritarian rule or insistence on controlling Simran’s life.
How can they ever have a relationship when she doesn’t feel the gaping hole that Simran does?
Her aunt doesn’t hate her own birthday, her aunt isn’t weighed down by loss, her aunt is living her life and matchmaking Simran as if her parents never existed.
She almost wishes she could forget her parents and live unburdened too, except that even if it hurts for the rest of her life, she’ll never abandon their memories.
She’s their only child. If she doesn’t remember them, who will?
“Sim.”
“What?” she snaps, angry at him now for pushing this when she just wanted him to support her.
“You’re crying.” He reaches a hand up to wipe away a tear.
She steps back, banging into a shelf. The contents rattle. “It’s nothing. I’m fine. I just miss my parents.” The last sentence slips out of her mouth without her meaning to say it.
Leo’s jaw sets at an angle. “That’s why I don’t want you to lose more of your family. Please tell them.”
She looks away from him, down at her hands. The mehndi is a startling, ruddy brown against the light skin of her palms. “You’re asking too much.” She means it like an off-ramp, to stop them from where this is going.
“You promised,” he says, voice quiet but with an edge. “Last night.”
She knows she’s going back on what she said.
But that was last night, the room upstairs a portal to some other, magical world.
Here, now, in the real world, the knotted mess of loss and resentment that binds her aunt and her is too complicated to undo.
It’s beyond what she’s capable of. The buzzing in her head is now a raging river.
“This is not about us, Leo. Please. Just leave it alone.”
She moves to cover her face with her hands, but Leo pulls them away, making her look at him—his eyes are steely, so unlike his usually warm gaze. “Simran. I’m not going to drop it.”
“They’re not your family! They’re barely mine!” she says, voice rising. “I can’t give you this, so, please, stop asking.”
He lets out a humorless laugh. “Well, at least you’re finally being honest.” He crosses his arms and steps back, away from her. “And it’s not that you can’t give me this. It’s that you won’t.”
She stares at the ground, but she can still feel the heat and hurt of his expression on her face. His hands are clenched at his sides. She knows he’s waiting for her to say something to him. But she’s so tired. She’s been tired for sixteen years.
After a few moments, he makes a frustrated noise and walks out. She sinks to the ground as the closet door closes with a metallic snick.
She’s too wrung out to cry.
But then she does anyway.