Everything Happens for a Reason

Looking back, I believe that that was the precise second that my married life began.

Until the start of my new life in America, I had never experienced jet lag. It was, to me, a concept as foreign as seasickness and being hung over, all of which only sophisticated people ever talked about. My first collision with jet lag made me believe that there is something to be said for being confined to the same time zone for all one’s life. I couldn’t wait for evening to come so I could finally sleep, but what seemed like an eternal night ended abruptly, hours before dawn. It was when I felt most vulnerable, most alone, still subtly shocked at the sudden transformation of my life.

But when Sanjay and I were awake and alert, he said that showing me around helped him to see old things as new again, that he loved the look on my face as I marvelled at the cut-price offers on batteries and baby lotion at the 99-Cents shop, and the warehouse stores – which were the size of Bihar, I thought – where people bought twelve-packs of pizza. American supermarkets were the stuff of legend in India, sightseeing venues in themselves. To me, it was like wandering through a giant lit-up refrigerator. Apple sauce, which doesn’t even exist in Delhi, here took up an entire lane. Even half these bottles wouldn’t fit into Jagdish’s, the dried goods store near my old home where the servants buy sacks of rice and dals and packets of stiff Indian-made chewing gum.

On my first visit to our neighbourhood supermarket, the day after we arrived in America, I shuffled down the aisle, pulling my sweater tightly around me as I approached the frozen foods section, with its big, frosty bins in the centre. I reached in and pulled out boxes of ice cream and pies, chicken and gravy, peas and potatoes and corn, incredulous that all that food could come out of a small square of cardboard and that there was no chopping or dicing involved.

‘Discounts, special offers, extra savings,’ said the cashier as I paid. ‘Just fill in this form, and join our club.’ I smiled with pride as I signed the application, impatient to call my parents and tell them that I was, so soon into my life here, a member of something.

At home that evening, Sanjay showed me how to make tofu burgers and fruit smoothies. He spent three hours filling my head with so many DVD-CD-TV-VCR-laptop-desktop instructions that, by the end, I was dizzy. He showed me where all the light switches were and how to open the garage door and what to do if the alarm system went off. He demonstrated the function of the waste-disposal system, and seemed baffled that I had never seen one before.

‘Don’t you have garbage disposals in India?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘It’s called the street.’

But I remained perplexed, scared to touch anything for fear that it would cause the house to collapse or the kitchen to explode. I asked Sanjay where the torches were, and he had no idea what I was talking about until I described them.

‘In America, they are called flashlights,’ he said. ‘What do you need one for?’

‘For the blackouts.’

‘That’s what happens when you have too much to drink. Here, we call them power outages. And they almost never happen. You keep forgetting, you are not in India any more,’ he said to me gently, laughing.

When Sanjay went off to work the following day, I began my role as wife in earnest. I started to unpack my personal belongings, all the accumulations and acquisitions of almost a quarter-century of living, pared down to two suitcases. Sanjay had cleared out a small section of his wardrobe, which was barely enough for the contents of my trousseau. It had stretched my parents, but they had given me six each of evening ensembles, saris, and daytime outfits – the wealthiest Delhi brides got upwards of twenty each, while the poor were lucky if they received two. I somehow had to find space for all this in a sliver of cupboard no wider than my own person. When Sanjay had showed me proudly how much room he had made for me, I had asked him meekly if perhaps he could afford a little more, but he showed me his dozens of knitted sweaters and suits and bulky winter jackets, and told me that, for now, I would have to make do.

By the time my in-laws returned, it was up to me to see to it that the house sparkled like marble in the moonlight. As is the custom for a bride, my trousseau consisted almost entirely of new clothes, but I had thankfully thought to pack two old outfits for days such as these, ‘heavy cleaning days’. I shrugged into a pale green salwar kameez, a traditional tunic top and flared trousers, which was flecked with old corn oil and turmeric stains that the dhobi wasn’t able to remove.

Comfortably clad, I moved sofas and cleaned underneath. I placed a ladder in front of the wall unit, and wiped on top. I scrubbed toilets and vacuumed carpets and threw out old newspapers. I even mopped down the dusty floors in the garage, astonished all the while that with two women living here, the house had been allowed to get this dirty. It was almost as if they were waiting for me to arrive.

The last room left to clean was that of my sister-in-law, Malini. At the sagri ceremony before the wedding, when the family of the groom celebrates and welcomes the arrival of a bride, she had garlanded me and placed a kiss on my cheek, and seemed almost to mean it. I remembered looking down and catching a glint of something on her stomach. For a moment, I thought that perhaps a chunk of glitter had fallen from my hair onto her belly, but upon closer inspection saw that Malini had a ring pierced through her navel. As she caught me staring, my eyes agog, she covered herself with her sari, and quickly moved away.

So I was sure that Malini would hate knowing that I had been in her room, and I had to confess that it was more my curiosity than any slovenliness on her part that drove me in here. I looked around and wondered what it must have been like to have grown up here, in America. The room was dark, with thick yellow curtains blocking out the sunlight. A slim bed rested against a wall, with a matching dressing table and bedside cabinet next to it. Furry teddy bears and monkeys spilled over the light orange flowered eiderdown, and a stack of Teen People magazines lay neatly on a side table. On the dressing table were photos in frames – Malini with Sanjay or with her parents, another as a lone Indian girl in a group of Americans. I didn’t remember her being this pretty. Her hair was cut short and smooth in a modern style, her teeth white and shiny, no doubt using one of the three thousand types of toothpaste you can find in America. In all the pictures, she was wearing jeans and a short shirt – pink in one, white in another, floral in one after that. I knew I shouldn’t, but I felt compelled to open her wardrobe and look through it: there were jeans and cute tops and small jackets, the kind of smart clothes that I had seen people in the supermarket and on the streets wear.

Later in the week, as I took out another load of trash, the postman was stuffing mail into the box outside. I had seen him from the window, but this was the first time I was standing so close to him.

‘Hey, how’s it going?’ he asked. ‘How many days a week do you work here?’

‘Pardon me?’

‘I didn’t know that the Sohnis had hired a maid. Good idea – they seem so busy. How often do you come?’

‘I’m not the maid,’ I replied quietly. ‘I’m the wife.’

2 (#ulink_1859d55e-e0db-51f3-9d80-cda9c7bada00)

Within days of arriving here, I knew what Sanjay meant when he talked about America and its ‘bumper-sticker mentality’.

‘See,’ he said, pointing out certain vehicles on the streets as we made our way to the DMV, the Department of Motor Vehicles, so I could apply for a driver’s licence. ‘Here, everybody wants to tell everyone everything. Even the cars have something to say.’ In twenty minutes, I counted fifteen such displays of personal information brandished on the back bumpers of vehicles – someone boasting of a child’s academic achievements at school, their pride at being an American, or, alternatively, exhorting everyone to ‘Give Peace a Chance’. People lumbered by alone in huge cars that blocked roads and took up one-and-a-half parking spaces. They ate and drank and watched TV and talked on tiny phones as they drove what looked like streamlined tanks, their interiors larger than a family of four in India would live in.

People in this country were not shy, and did not expect others to mind their own business. I would queue at the past office, clutching close to my chest envelopes and packets addressed to my family in Delhi, and by the time I was at the counter, I could have penned a thesis on the person in front of me. A typical ‘Hey, how are you?’ thrown my way would launch a mostly one-sided conversation revealing their last divorce and an argument with their doctor about how to treat a hernia, all while I stood and nodded politely.

At the gym, which Sanjay insisted I join, telling me that everyone in America exercised, modesty was a non-issue. In the changing room, as I slipped into my workout clothes behind the safety of a toilet cubicle, women stood naked as they slathered their legs with moisturizer, or combed the wetness out of their hair, talking with each other about cardio, carbs and calories. They had no body hair except where they should have it, unlike myself and all the other women I grew up with, who went to salons where ‘full body waxing’ was a standard request. At my jazzercise class, they wore skin-tight shorts and bra tops, while I huffed and puffed in track pants and a thigh-length T-shirt, hiding in the back next to the dark blue mats. Afterwards, I refused even to take a shower there, noticing that the curtain barely covered the width of the shower stand

After Sanjay left for the office every day, to the bag importing business he ran with his father, and once the day’s housework was done, I had made a habit of enjoying the solitude of my life. Television became my best friend, as I marvelled at the cleverness of Claire Huxtable and the frothy antics of Lucy Ricardo and the dry sophistication of those Designing Women. This was, I was sure, how the real America lived, with charming coincidences and laughs every second, fascinating people and clever situations round every corner.

Unlike everyone on television, I wasn’t ecstatically happy as a newlywed. There was no giggling, romantic haze. But I had never expected that, so my state of modest contentment and growing adjustment seemed perfectly acceptable. My grandmother used to tell my sisters and me that constant, uninterrupted joy was a myth, and fundamentally bad luck.

‘The more you laugh, the more you will eventually cry,’ she used to say. ‘Tragedy always visits people who are too happy.’

It was better, she taught us, that dull, fractious, and even miserable moments are folded into a life of moderate satisfaction.

My grandmother was never wrong.

The rain pelted down thick and hard from the skies like silvery shards of glass. Sanjay had phoned to say he would be working late with a customer, leaving me alone with tea and magazines. On the cover of one was a picture of Jennifer Aniston – I already knew the names of everyone who appeared on those glossy television shows. The actress was staring sexily into the camera, a tiny pair of jeans encasing her slender hips. I knew that she was married to Brad Pitt, who is famous even in India.

I should have been at the gym, but, today anyway, was tired of obeying the fitness instructors as they shouted their orders: ‘Activate those inner thighs! Contract those abs! Tighten! Tighten! Recover!’ I didn’t want to work my ‘obliques’, whose location in my body escaped me, despite two years of human biology class in school.

Instead, I chose to spend my afternoon reclining on the moss-green leather sofa in the den. Having finished the last of my chai, I helped myself to yet another oatmeal raisin cookie from the platter on the low glass table.

There was only the sound of the shower outside, splashing fiercely on the pavement, its defiance keeping me company. Soon, I would have to get dinner started, even if consuming all that sugar had sapped me of energy. Perhaps I would just reheat last night’s leftover grilled aubergine, and throw in some boiled potatoes and cumin to lend a different flavour. A tired Hindu bride was nothing if not inventive.

This would be my last day of indulgence. Tomorrow, my in-laws would be coming home, and their demands, I knew, would easily supersede my own. No leftovers would sully my father-in-law’s table, and my mother-in-law would not allow me to put my feet up for a second. Malini, I was sure, would have something to say about everything.

So today, I could take my final afternoon nap.

So soundly did I sleep, that I didn’t even hear Sanjay come in. When I opened my eyes, groggily and unsure, a trace of saliva had dribbled out of my mouth and onto the arm-roll of the couch, where I had been resting my head. I was still embarrassed for Sanjay to see me like this; I locked the bathroom door whenever I was inside, baffled by the practice I’d seen on those cable television shows of so many couples who did everything in front of one another.

‘Oh, you’re home,’ I announced, looking up at him sheepishly. ‘I’m so sorry. I must have been really tired. What time is it? I’ll get up now, get dinner ready.’ My head still spinning and heavy with sleep, I swung my legs off the couch and started to make for the kitchen.

‘Don’t worry,’ Sanjay said, grabbing my arm. ‘Forget that. Come, I want to take you out for dinner.’

‘But why? It’s nobody’s birthday.’

‘Never mind,’ Sanjay replied. ‘We’ll go out and enjoy ourselves. They’re all coming back tomorrow. It’s our last evening together like this.’

It was my first look at an American buffet. Before I was married, when friends and relatives had returned from trips to the US, they would almost invariably talk about the food. ‘Big big plates,’ they would say, recalling the highlights of their trip. ‘Big big portions. So much to eat. So easy to become fat.’

Here, on counters that lined the length of the restaurant, moist yellow kernels of corn sat next to glistening green peas. Slices of blood-red beet were arranged near broccoli shaped like miniature trees. And all those beans – kidney and black-eyed, chickpea and lima.

‘And see, this is only one section,’ Sanjay said. Holding plastic trays, we walked to an area where large stainless steel vats steamed with soup – minestrone and split pea, clam chowder and chicken noodle. Further down, there were trays of cheese-laden breads and garlic rolls, pizza slices and spongy muffins filled with fruit. Jellies wobbled and white cream on cakes twirled and swirled. After all those cookies at home, I wasn’t even hungry, but this seemed too good to pass up.

‘So, what did you do today?’ Sanjay asked, when we’d sat down and he was slicing into a stack of tomatoes. ‘Are you finding that you are getting more settled in?’

I wished, at that moment, that I could have been like the smart lady with the perfect English accent on Cheers, who always had something funny to say, or the cheerful red-haired mother on Happy Days. Instead, I told Sanjay about someone calling to offer me a credit card, which had been the highlight of my day, but that the offer was revoked when I told her I’d never had one before.

‘Actually, I think I’m a little nervous,’ I said, revealing something to Sanjay that I had just begun to know myself. ‘I’m worried about your family coming tomorrow – if we all will, you know, get along.’

‘I understand,’ said Sanjay, nodding. ‘You’ll do fine. They’ll grow to love you,’ he reassured, squeezing some mustard out of a packet onto a portion of French fries. He raised his earnest face and looked straight into mine. ‘You just have to obey them, keep quiet, smile, and everything will be great,’ he said.