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.
The spoon of split pea soup I was holding close to my mouth suddenly stopped moving, lingering on the edge of my lips. I had known in principle that this was how good daughters-in-law behaved, but had never thought my husband would be actually giving me instructions.
‘What if they tell me to do something and I can’t obey them?’ I asked him, fearful. ‘What if, no matter what I do, they are still never happy with me?’
‘My parents are reasonable people,’ Sanjay said. ‘As long as you don’t argue with them, everything will be fine. And there is no need for you to argue with them because, as I say, they are reasonable people. I told you, just stay quiet, and obey. Come, are you finished? Let’s go home.’
The next day at the airport I dutifully bowed my head to greet my husband’s parents, something I knew they would expect me to do first thing in the morning and last thing at night for at least the first year of married life.
My father-in-law had been trundled over in a wheelchair; usually, he was quite happy with a cane, which he felt he needed after a fall in a slippery bathtub a few years ago (after which, this being America, he sued the builder of the house). But he was never one to reject a free ride, so when it was offered to him by way of a wheelchair, he wasn’t about to decline. Malini and I hugged awkwardly, she staring at my daffodil-yellow sari and me at her slim-fitting velvet tracksuit.
We made our way to the car park opposite the terminal, and began unloading the mounds of luggage. Inside those suitcases were dozens of packets of masala and chevda, the foods that no bonafide Indian home should be without, and all the silks