Chapter 29
Day after the wedding
The day after the wedding is a slow one.
Geeta and Rishi have opted for a farewell brunch in the backyard of Iyer House, without any dances to perform or rituals to follow or patriarchal traditions to deconstruct.
In Geeta’s words: “We’ve been doing that for four days straight.
All I want is to eat every potato in sight.
” The guests are dressed casually, while the family wears bright colors in place of the bejeweled, intricate outfits of the past few days.
Simran feels the sense of an ending—the jubilant highs of the wedding, but something else too.
Leo hasn’t shown up yet, Simran notices, as more and more people file through the house out to the backyard.
She doesn’t know if he’s left already. When she goes out to the front porch, she spots him next door, clothes rumpled, expression subdued, waiting in the Chopras’ drive-way with his luggage.
This can’t be it, he hasn’t even said goodbye.
For a moment, she’s sure he’s going to come up to her and break into an easy smile and they’ll fix this crack between them before it grows too wide.
But all he does is give her that same look he did last night—hurt and something sharper.
Anger, perhaps. The car pulls up, and this time, Leo doesn’t turn to look back at her; he just gets in. There’s no hope to hook her heart on.
Simran has that acute sense of ending again.
Her and Leo, those berry-sweet flushes of something new and good giving way under the weight of his insistence and her resistance.
She goes back into the house, schooling her face into a polite smile for all the guests.
But inside, she’s crumbling. She can’t believe she’s lost him.
It’s another gorgeous day and it only makes Simran feel more dour.
Grabbing a plate and loading it up with idli and vadas, she glances around.
The only free seat at the Iyer table is next to Kavitha and she doesn’t feel like being subjected to her cousin’s reinstated silent treatment.
She goes to a table at the back, joining some distant friends of her aunt who don’t even let her set her butt fully onto the seat before they’re telling her that now that Geeta is married, it’s her turn next.
Maybe Kavitha’s glares would have been better.
She’s just finished eating when Rahul, who seems unable to shake his role as messenger, comes up to the table to say that Veena perima is asking for her in the kitchen.
Even the short walk back to the house makes her think of Leo, and their dance practice on the back deck.
She feels haunted by his absence already.
“Ahh, Simi, good, come, stand right here,” her aunt instructs when she gets there.
Simran does as she’s told, her, Geeta, and Kavitha all in a line, Veena perima grabbing her arms and adjusting her so she’s angled differently.
Her aunt looks to the ceiling, sniffs the air, then checks her watch for the time before forging ahead, apparently satisfied with whatever conditions she was looking for.
She goes to a cupboard, pulls out a glass bottle of salt and then a flat tub of dried red chilies.
When she grasps a tight handful of both and comes to stand in front of the three of them, Simran realizes what she’s doing.
She’s taking out nazar. Veena perima takes her full fist and raises it six inches from Geeta’s forehead, then bends down and waves it over her daughter from head to toe.
She then circles Geeta and does the same for her back.
When she’s done, she repeats this for both Kavitha and then Simran, going on her tiptoes to reach the top of her head.
Simran’s mother used to take out nazar slightly differently but the intention is the same: to remove the evil eye when someone has been looking particularly lovely or having a good streak of luck.
Simran would like to be skeptical of it, but as Veena perima conducts her ministrations, she feels a shiver rumble under her skin like a recognition: She is now protected.
“You girls looked too, too beautiful at the wedding,” she says. “Everyone was talking about it. And now with this baby, our family is having blessing after blessing. We must not forget to stay humble and gracious to God and remember that the tides can always turn.”
Now that the stress of the wedding is behind her, her aunt has realized what her children have been saying all along: There’s going to be a grandchild in the family.
It’s a mea culpa or as close to it as Veena Iyer will ever get.
But she won’t apologize for her actions.
She expects everyone to get over it because she has. It’s so typical.
“Thanks, Amma,” Geeta says. She steps forward and hugs her mother from the side as the older woman pats her arm.
“With me as a grandmother and Geeta as a mother, this baby is going to be so stunning, we’ll have to take nazar every day,” Veena perima says slyly.
Kavitha guffaws. “Amma, did you call yourself hot?”
“Aiyo, no. ‘Hot’ is such a bakwaas word.” Veena perima’s mouth twists into a smirk. “I am calling myself stunning.”
“Veena wants GILF status,” Kavitha jokes.
“What’s GILF?” her mother asks.
“Uh, never mind, Amma,” Geeta says, nudging Kavitha, and they both crack up. Even Veena perima chuckles. But Simran can’t bring herself to join in. Everyone is just moving on like nothing happened. Again.
There may as well be a storm cloud rumbling over her head.
Murmuring an excuse, Simran shuffles out of the kitchen and goes up to the balcony, the only place she can stomach being right now.
But sitting down in the corner, the wall scratchy against her back, all she can think of is Leo, even though he was only here once.
She showed him parts of herself that she’ll never show anyone else.
He learned languages for her. Does none of that matter now?
She knew from the beginning that him being here was a mistake.
Everyone thought they knew better than her, but none of them had been broken in the ways she had.
None of them knew that you could hurt so much that you never find the bottom of it, a fall so endless that the gravity of grief becomes your only constant.
She pulls out her phone to distract herself, automatically opening her work email even though she’s on leave.
There, she sees a message marked by the red exclamation point of death and the subject line: “Please Read Immediately.” A stone of unease forms in her stomach.
Somehow, she knows what it is before she even reads the words.
Due to budget cuts, her position has been eliminated.
The email from puli Paulie has an undertone of vindictive glee as he informs her she should come clean out her desk as soon as she’s back in Toronto.
First Leo and now her job. The realization cracks through her like a fissure: Her life in Toronto has completely fallen apart. She has nothing to go back to—and she can’t stay here. She’s not just alone; she’s also lost.
Suddenly, the music from brunch cuts out mid-song, catching Simran’s attention.
She stands, feeling a prickle of dread at the back of her neck, and leans over the railing, looking down into the backyard to see the crowd surge like a tidal wave around one table.
People’s voices rise like alarm bells and her heart starts beating fast as she leaves the balcony, taking the stairs two at a time.
The throng of guests parts for her and fear feels like ice water flooding her insides when a few people place their hand on her back and push her forward.
Finally reaching the front of the cluster, she sees Veena perima bent over someone in a chair; Rishi, neck craned and searching the crowd; and Kavitha, kneeling on the grass. When her aunt looks up and sees Simran, her face crumples.
Throughout the years, Simran has seen her Ashok peripa in varying degrees of reticence.
He’s been quietly content, like when they used to listen to those Kishore Kumar records together.
She’s seen him drunk, once, when India won the cricket World Cup in 2011, and even then, he danced tipsily but silently as the other uncles gathered in the backyard cheered at the top of their lungs.
She’s never, ever seen him like this: ruddy from his wide forehead to the skin of his ankles, shoes off because his feet are grotesquely swollen, slouched on a chair, face tight and knotted.
He clutches the left side of his ribs as he struggles to breathe.
There’s a hush, rare for a group this large, even rarer when those people are Indian. The only sounds are the tinkles of jewelry and the low murmur of worry passing between guests.
“What should we do?” Veena perima asks helplessly, and Simran is at a loss. Veena Iyer does not solicit opinions.
“Just give him some Eno,” someone calls from the crowd, apparently thinking this is an open forum.
At that moment, Geeta runs out from the house and makes her way through the crowd.
“Let her through!” Simran shouts. “She’s a doctor!”
Geeta comes towards them briskly. Her voice is still remarkably calm but hollow. “Rishi, call an ambulance!”
“Geeta, what’s wrong with him?” Veena perima’s voice is fraught.
Geeta cups her father’s cheek. “Appa? Appa, you’re going to be okay, just hold on.
” She takes his pulse, fingers at the fleshy part of his neck, eyes on her watch.
She looks up. “His heart rate is elevated, breathing is visibly stressed, and the pain seems to be concentrated on the left side. It could be …” She doesn’t finish the thought but Simran knows everyone has heard it.
Another heart attack. “Let’s get him inside. ”
Rishi and another of his friends help half-carry Ashok peripa into the living room.
What feels like endless minutes later, the sirens of an ambulance slice through the quiet neighborhood.
Two paramedics bring out a slim stretcher on wheels that rattle as it passes through the doorway of Iyer House.
They deposit Ashok peripa, his large body slack and weighty, onto it.
Instructing a mute Veena perima to follow them to the hospital in her car, they wheel him into the back of the van.
The doors shut with a click that feels too final and the ambulance zips away.