I may as well have been hunched over, clasping a cane, shuffling off into the next room. For an Indian woman, I was not just spinsterly; I was positively old-maidish. Knowing this made me laugh – but only because I’d cried enough about it in the past.
Marrying me off now, at this appallingly late stage, would require a miracle.
And some savvy marketing.
And a flattering photograph.
A couple of hours later, a driver appeared to deliver an envelope containing a photograph of the banker from Spain, and to pick up mine. I tentatively pulled out the colour print. It was a picture of him taken in an outdoor café: ‘Barcelona, July 2000’ was inked across the back. He was wearing a Ralph Lauren polo shirt tucked into blue denim jeans. He was smiling, one finger resting lightly on the edge of an espresso cup, the sun shining down onto his black hair, a light shadow falling over part of his face. A good face it was, too. Open, kind, intelligent. He seemed nice, somehow, not like the sort of narrow-minded chumps who were on the prowl for another maid, another mother.
‘You like him, no?’ my mother asked when she saw a satisfied smile appear on my face.
‘Well, he looks like a nice guy, Mum.’
It had suddenly become a situation full of possibilities. The possibility that my father would finally stop moaning about how I kept ‘wasting airfare’, that my mother’s friends would stop ‘tut-tutting’ their way through their card-playing sessions about poor, perennially unmarried me. And, most importantly, the possibility that I could find someone for me, even if I wasn’t the ideal Indian woman – someone with the talents of Martha Stewart and the body of Claudia Schiffer, a vegetarian teetotaller who never stopped smiling, praying, pleasing and nodding. That despite all this, maybe, just maybe, there was someone who wanted me anyway. As my more supportive relatives would always say: ‘Beti, the boy destined for you is already born. He is somewhere in the world. We just have to find him.’
The sun set, and a light breeze came in through the open windows. My father was asleep in his armchair, my mother went off to nap in the bedroom, and the boys were out somewhere. I was eating dokhlas – spongy semolina snacks served with a cool mint chutney, and watching rehashed coverage of the Tommy Hilfiger fashion show on CNN. I remembered being there, standing way at the back as all publicists do, ensuring that the Vogues and Elles and In-Styles were all happily seated. All the front row divas looked bored and constipated, as if they were doing the world a huge honour by simply showing up. All praying that they would be the ones seated next to the celebrity-of-choice at this particular catwalk show, maybe bold and brassy Samuel Jackson, or skinny, pretty, sad-looking Gwyneth Paltrow.
That had been my life – catwalks and cocktail parties and being able to say that I had been in the same room as Angelina Jolie. It was fun and frivolous, but that was it. The other day, I had read some of the pages in my journal from last year: ‘Yes! Got the last Kate Spade bag in the Barneys sale!’ or ‘Why did I spend $1,500 at Patagonia when I hate hiking?’ or ‘Exhausted from power yoga, and not helped by the three Raspberry Stolis I had afterwards.’
There were no words about being moved in deeper ways, except for those occasions when I might have attended a meditation class and returned home vowing to change my life, become connected with the greater universe, find inner peace. But then The West Wing came on, and all was forgotten. Mine had become a life lived on the outside. And if I tried to probe to see what was beneath it, there would only be concealed neuroses and petty jealousies and more dysfunction than I could deal with. So instead, I’d have a Cosmopolitan, buy a pair of shoes, whatever. It was, essentially, a biodegradable life, one that, if I let it slip from my grip, would merge with the dirt and disappear, leaving nothing behind.
I needed a change. And perhaps that change could begin with marriage.
I said a silent prayer that the nice-looking man from Madrid would call. I hadn’t even heard his voice, nor did I know anything about him beyond the basics. But he seemed closer to ‘the one’ than anyone I had come across in a long time. Like the struggling ingénue who has already written an Oscar-acceptance speech, I had yet to meet this man, but I had already named the children.
My parents finally stirred awake from their afternoon nap. ‘Did they call?’ my mother asked me. I shook my head. They all knew that for every hour that passed, it would be less and less likely that the phone would ring. I then realized that although I had liked the look of him, perhaps he didn’t like the look of me. Could that be? I had sent along my most appealing photograph, taken in Central Park on a sunny afternoon, me in a summery pink top and white pants, subtly conveying some of that fluffy-marshmallow element, just in case. In the picture, my black hair, lightly tinted, looked shiny and lush under the sun, my smiling face a vision of relaxed happiness. And I didn’t look too dark-skinned either. How could anyone not like the look of me in that photograph?
I attempted to busy myself with various things, but every time the phone jingled, I stopped what I was doing and I prayed that this would be the call.
It never came.
Late the next afternoon, Aunt Jyoti stopped by for tea, and settled onto the sofa in preparation for a no-holds-barred gossip session that would last at least three hours.
‘I hear the parents of that Madrid boy have been making inquiries about you,’ she said to me, with the air of someone who had obtained classified information from the Pentagon.
‘Oh, yes, we spoke to them yesterday,’ my mother interjected, surprised. She had wanted to keep this quiet until something ‘worked out’, so ashamed had she become of the litany of failed alliances that trailed behind me. But Bombay was a small town when it came to things of a matrimonial nature, and it never took more than about four minutes for news of pitches and proposals to spread. I began to feel like one of those screenplays that get touted around Hollywood agents and studios and producers; everyone takes a quick look and passes, yet they continue knocking about ad infinitum.
‘We exchanged pictures,’ my mother said, figuring she may as well tell her sister all. ‘We liked his. We didn’t hear back. Maybe they didn’t like how Anju looked. Oh well, can’t be helped – these things happen.’ For my sake, my mother forced a couldn’t-care-less attitude, although I knew she was deeply disappointed. At last, she had come across someone her daughter seemed interested in, and this time they weren’t interested. Karma, she thought. That’s what everything comes down to.
‘It’s not her looks,’ Aunt Jyoti said. ‘The family made inquiries and heard that she has been living alone in New York for some time, that she was independent-type. The boy says girls like that can’t be moulded. He wanted someone a bit more traditional-type. What can you do? You have to live with it.’ My mother and aunt looked over at me with pity and tendernesss, as if I were a quadriplegic.
‘That is so not on!’ I cried out. ‘I mean, this guy went away to university in the States, right? His sister is there, right? So what’s the hypocrisy all about?’
‘Anju, beti,’ Aunt Jyoti started. ‘It’s not that. Boys feel it’s OK for them, maybe even their sisters, but in the end, they don’t want to marry a girl like that. He just doesn’t like it that you have been living alone there, without your parents, for so many years. He feels that by now you will surely have become too much independent. I told you years back when you were going that this would happen. Now see? That’s why I would never let my daughters go off like that,’ she said, casting a look of disapproval at both my mother and myself, and recalling proudly how