too soon. Let’s wait a few months. I hope you’ll still be there by then.’
‘I hope so also,’ I said. ‘But you know, there is one thing. I know it’s my first day and all, but I think I’ll be needing some new clothes. The people who work there are very fashionable. Not that I have to be very fancy-fancy or anything, but just something that looks a little more decent than what I have now. Do you think that would be OK?’
‘I think so,’ Sanjay said, wrapping his arm around me. ‘We’ll talk to Mummy and Papa about it and get their permission. You know how they feel about Western clothes. But maybe they’ll agree. Then this weekend, if we have time, we’ll go shopping.’
I was up at six the next morning, making the tea, which I stored in a Thermos, pending the awakening of the rest of the household, and left slices of bouncy white bread ready to be toasted in the miniature oven. Then I got going on dinner, which wasn’t to be served for another fourteen hours, but at least prepared all the vegetables and left them covered in the refrigerator so my mother-in-law could cook them later. I unloaded the dishwasher from the night before, put everything away, cleaned the counters and was running upstairs to take a shower when Malini emerged from her room.
She was in a pair of white pyjamas with little red lips printed all over them, the top held up with two small straps, her nipples showing through underneath. I knew she was only wearing them because her parents were still asleep. As soon as they awoke, she would run into her room and throw on a dressing gown. Now, she yawned and stretched, revealing the tiny silver ring clipped through her belly button. I looked down at my high-collared floral nightgown and felt like an overstuffed chintz sofa.
‘Have a great day at work, bhabi,’ she said. I had always thought that she looked, dressed and sounded like one of those girls on Beverly Hills 90210. I couldn’t know for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if, when nobody was looking, she acted like one of them too.
‘Thank you, Malini,’ I said, as I sprinted back into our bedroom. ‘You have a nice day too.’
I found a place to park in the shade right beneath the building, and noted that it was exactly nine seventeen. I pulled out a Wet Wipe from the glove compartment, and ran it down my hair, removing the sindoor I had just applied before leaving the house. I had a small silver container of it in my bag, and would replace it later before I went home.
Office hours were nine thirty to five thirty, so I was early. I even had time to do what all the other early arrivals around me were doing – buying coffee and a pastry from a stall on wheels outside the entrance to the building.
Settling in behind my desk, I sat and waited for the phones to start ringing, for people to start coming through, for deliveries to pile up. At nine thirty on the dot, it seemed as if the whole place jolted awake and came to life. I could hear phones jingling all over the office, and the little system on my desk was flashing and beeping too. The doors swung open every minute or so, the reporters and researchers and photographers filing in, carrying computer bags and trendy totes and chatting with each other, occasionally and unthinkingly throwing a smile my way. I sat behind my desk and wanted to greet them all individually, making eye contact and nodding my head eagerly.
‘Good morning,’ I said, as they whisked by me, on their way to their offices. The only people who stopped to chat were Lou and Jerry, both asking me how I was settling in or if I needed anything.
‘I’m doing fine, sir,’ I said to Lou, who had already asked me four times not to call him that.
It wasn’t too hard to feel invisible; all day long, people stood around me and chatted as if I wasn’t there.
‘So, did you get your period yet?’ one girl in a short white skirt and black boots asked another. ‘You must be freaking out! Does Simon know? Are you gonna tell him, or wait until you know for sure? I mean, you don’t want him to marry you only because you might be pregnant, right?’
I cowered beneath the counter, answering phones, but couldn’t help overhearing every word.
‘He’ll probably dump me,’ the other girl replied. ‘Don’t think he’s ready for any big commitment, you know? I’m screwed,’ she said, turning paler than she already was and shaking her head. ‘Anyway, forget all that. How are you and Patrick doing?’
‘Yeah, great. He wants to go on holiday, asked me to pick where. There’s a place I keep hearing about, but don’t know too much about it. The West Bank?’
Later, in the elevator, I saw the same two women, still talking. When I got in with them, they stopped for a second, looked me up and down, and proceeded on their conversation, evidently deciding that I was too simpleminded to pay any heed. I stood in one corner, staring down at the light blue-with-black-trim salwar kameez, which was one of the nicest outfits from my trousseau. I thought I looked smart, and was hoping that the girls might comment on the exotica of my dress sense, but they said nothing, instead carrying on with their chat about missed menstruations and sun-tanning on the Gaza Strip.
Deanna was my only real link between the desk that I sat behind, and the far more vivid world that seemed to exist beyond it. During her four-a-day visits, she would tell me stories about people I hadn’t spoken to, and give me glimmers of insight into the lives of colleagues that I would probably never meet.
‘And that girl, Aimee, you know, the one who covers the nightclub scene, tall, skinny, blonde, beautiful, makes you sick just to look at her? You know? Anyway, she snuck her boyfriend in here, and was caught making out with him on the desk of the photo editor, who now wants to move out of his office because he says he can’t imagine using that desk again! Can you believe it? Hysterical!’ she said, as I stared at her, baffled at the things that went on in corporate America.
‘And,’ she continued, pausing for emphasis, ‘that overweight movie reviewer – you know the one, really serious, thinks he knows everything, total snob – he’s about to get fired because they found out he was taking money from a studio to write good reviews. Isn’t that outrageous?’ she screamed, giggling.
‘Not really,’ I replied, whispering. ‘In India, everyone does that.’
If everything were exactly according to the order of Hindu cultural law, I shouldn’t really be living in America.
I shouldn’t really even be married.
I am the youngest of four girls – which some would say is a disaster in itself. But, until a couple of months ago, I was also the youngest of four unmarried girls, which is something that parents with a weaker spiritual constitution than mine might forever be on Prozac for.
Where I come from, these things happen chronologically. Sisters get married in succession. The youngest waits her turn.
But by the time I was twenty-four, and my sisters still weren’t married, my parents just didn’t see how they could turn the offer down.
My mother never listened when she was told she had been cursed. Multiple girls, no sons, everyone kept saying, as if she needed reminding. But she simply shrugged, smiled, shook her head and patted ours. She called us her ‘little Laxmis’.
‘Just you see,’ she said to all those who tut-tutted at her perceived misfortune. ‘My girls will bring us great luck and joy. Just you see.’
She
