replied, perplexed.
‘Creativity takes courage.’
‘Does it?’
‘I don’t know.’
He grabbed my hand, told me that he loved me, that he was sorry and would do whatever it took to make it up to me, that it would never, ever happen again. That we could start over. He said he would do absolutely anything to make me happy. And I wanted to believe every word of it, I wanted to believe it was all going to be all right, but I couldn’t because it wasn’t all right. And what if my dad was correct? What if love was fleeting and understanding was what was really important. If Jean understood me, I mean really understood me, he wouldn’t have done that. What if in a few years he found someone else again? I took a deep breath, moved my hand away from his.
‘You’ll need these back,’ I said, handing him his keys and then heading towards the door.
‘Nina, I love you,’ he shouted.
I closed the door behind me, fighting back the tears. The sad thing was I loved him too, but it wasn’t enough any more.
When I got home my mum was sitting downstairs with the contents of the jewellery box sprawled across the floor.
‘All for you, when you get married,’ she said glancing up at me. ‘Raj’s mother called to tell me it had gone very well.’
‘Yes, it went well, Ma.’
I didn’t need love, I decided then, I needed understanding; so I called Raj and asked him if he wanted to go for a walk in the park with me.
I wished I had had the luxury of a whole string of dates with Raj before having to make a decision but arranged introductions didn’t always work like that; well, especially in our family they didn’t. So if you see someone twice, especially in the space of two days, it’s a given that you’ll be walking around a fire with them and feeding each other sickly sweets on your wedding day, unless, that is, you want to deal with a distraught mother who says you have brought shame and disrepute on the family.
But how exactly events precipitated themselves that Sunday is beyond me. The walk in the park had gone well and by the end of the afternoon Raj wanted to know if there was possibly a future for us. At that time I couldn’t answer the question but by the evening I was somehow engaged to him.
It started in my absence when my dad was going through my things looking for my car insurance papers. He had taken my car out and bumped it, and true to his impatient nature couldn’t wait a couple of hours for me to get back and sort it out. While rummaging through my things, he came across letters from Jean. Letters that had been sent earlier that week, telling me how sorry he was and how much he loved me.
Putting together the fact that I wasn’t married at twenty-seven, the Zee TV lesbian talk-show incident, and believing Jean to be a woman, he almost had a heart attack as he finished reading how much Jean loved me.
He screamed at my mother, calling her to witness the evidence, and told her it was all her fault, that she had spoiled me and let me get away with ‘the murder'. They were both pacing the house, waiting for me to get home.
Raj had given me a lift back and, thank God, I hadn’t asked him in. My dad opened the door before I had even had a chance to put the key in the lock.
‘We’ve found out about you and the Jeannie,’ he shouted. ‘It is shameful. How will I hold my head in the community if anyone finds out?’ he ranted as I walked in.
My mother was weeping in the corner, refusing to look at me.
‘You don’t understand, Dad …’
‘No, Nina, you can not deny it,’ he said, pulling out the letters from his pocket and throwing them at me.
‘It’s not what you think, it’s …’
‘How can you do this to us, after everything we have done for you, it’s … it’s …’
‘It’s a man, Dad. Jean is a man. You met Susan, my friend Susan, who was pretending to be Jean who’s a man.’
My mother wailed even louder, the wedding sari ripped to shreds in her mind.
‘Don’t worry, it’s finished, and anyway, if it wasn’t why would I be seeing Raj?’
As they took a moment to think about this the doorbell went.
My dad answered it.
‘Hello Mr Savani.’
‘Oh Bhagavan, what more today? My daughter told you I have paid all my tax bills.’
Oh God, Jean, I thought.
‘Nina,’ Jean said seeing me by the door. ‘Who was that man who dropped you off?’
Dad looked confused as my world caved in around me.
‘Nina, I love you,’ Jean shouted.
My dad looked over at my mum who had gathered herself together. ‘Kavitha, the taxman is saying he is in love with Nina.’
‘He’s not the taxman, Dad, he’s Jean, “the Jeannie”.’ I turned to Jean. ‘What will it take for you to leave me alone, Jean?’
‘I won’t, not until you tell me that –’
‘I’m marrying someone else,’ I blurted.
My mother looked at me, wiping her tears with the end of her sari.
‘His name is Raj and he’s an accountant,’ I continued.
Jean looked at me, incredulous. ‘The man in the car?’
I nodded. And then he walked away. And soon after I’d said it, I wanted to shout out, ‘Don’t go, Jean, it’s not true.’ But my mother had somehow managed to wrap herself around me and was weeping with delight.
Dad thankfully thought that Jean had fallen in love with me the day he had met me at the door. It was understandable, he said, as I got my looks from his side of the family. Mum said that we’d have to keep it all quiet so as not to disrupt the wedding plans. But then she would say that as she kept a lot of things quiet. And me, I called up Raj later that evening to ask him if he felt he might be lucky the third time around.
My dad was right: in life you can’t have everything you want – it was better to make it as pain-free as possible.
The next morning I woke up feeling very dazed, and for one moment I breathed a sigh of relief thinking that agreeing to marry an accountant and being an unemployed owner of a studio had been a nightmare. The moment I realised it was true, I wanted to smother myself with the pillow.
‘What a bloody mess, Ki, suppose you’re unable to help me out here?’
She would be laughing at the mess, telling me to get out of it and give Jean another chance, but it was too late – wedding plans were already being put into action.
My mum was like a contestant on The Price is Right who had
