“I’d like to build this next phase of my life with you too,” she says, returning his shy smile with her own. “So, we will put the engagement back on?” Sophie asks. “Our families will be so happy.”
“I never thought the engagement was off,” he says. “My family never told anyone anything different. Now it’s just up to them to find the next auspicious date.”
The conversation has been less businesslike than their first and made Sophie feel as if they, rather than their families, were making the choice.
“We’re lucky, I think,” she says. “We’ve gotten to know each other better than most of our friends and relatives were able to do before their own marriages.”
“Yes, I suppose we have. Hopefully that means we will have a better marriage than some of them. That was one of the things I craved from my years in England: a marriage to a partner that was more than a parental decision to join two families. I knew I could never date and have a truly Western experience, but I wanted to know more about my wife than her biodata notes before agreeing to marry.”
The look on his face conveys the sentiment she now feels: all families are dysfunctional in their own way but still find a way to love each other somehow. Marriage isn’t meant to be perfect, like in the movies she saw as a child. It’s complicated and messy and often a gamble. For Nita, it hadn’t paid off in the end. Sophie hopes she will fare better. The one difference between her and Nita is that Nita still had her own family to fall back on if the marriage failed. Sophie is on her own, but then again, maybe not having a safety net is what will ensure that her marriage succeeds.
“I know we are not married yet, but I have one request of my new husband,” Sophie says. “And it is an unconventional one.”
Kiran raises an eyebrow.
“I’d like to live here. In this house.” She looks around her, a memory evoked from each place her eyes land.
It is customary in their community for a newly married couple to move into the husband’s parents’ home so that they can care for his parents as they age. It is less common for a couple to move into a place of their own, and unheard of for a couple to move into the wife’s childhood home. But Sophie cannot bear the thought of selling this bungalow, which harbors the last memories of her parents, and seeing strangers live among these walls. Or even worse: tear them down and build new ones. Sophie wants nothing more than to spend the rest of her life in this house and watch their future children play cricket in the yard and laugh while rocking back and forth on the hichko in the front.
“I am the eldest son, and my parents are very traditional,” Kiran begins. He clasps and unclasps his hands as he ponders his words. “This is important to you?”
Sophie nods emphatically. “This house is all I have left of my family. Without it . . . well, I can’t imagine my life without it . . .”
“Okay. Then we will find a way.”
Sophie’s heart leaps at knowing she will still have her home and her last piece of her parents. Kiran is making a big sacrifice, and she takes comfort in knowing that if they both compromise, their marriage might have a chance. She hopes they will have children who will run around this house, and maybe even a little girl whom Sophie will teach to brush her hair with 101 strokes every night. Now, with Kiran, maybe Sophie has a chance to live out the dream Papa had for this house when he first married. And the dream she feels is slowly starting to seep into herself as well. She can build a new family here while feeling the spirit of the first family she once had and lost.
52
Two weeks later, after what was a long engagement by Ahmedabad standards, Sophie is getting ready for her wedding. She put a smile on her face during the sangeet yesterday, twirling around with the other guests as they did garba and raas, and she knows to smile through the tears today. Her tears are not out of fear of what her life ahead will hold. That would be normal on a day when she is marrying a man whom she has known only a short while, but she appreciates the fact that she is situated differently than other brides before her, because she knows her groom better than most in her position.
Her tears today are in memory of her parents. Her fois have showered her with the same affection with which they’d showered their own daughters on their wedding days, but Sophie still feels the loss of her parents. Nita is not there to make suggestions about how to be a wife, but maybe that is better, given that Nita might not have been the best person to dole out such advice. Papa is not there to tell her how proud he is of his beautiful daughter. Sophie is marrying into another family, which will do their best to love her as their own, but it’s always different when people don’t share the same blood. Kiran’s family will always choose Kiran, just as Rajiv’s family chose him when Nita ran off. And she does not fault any of them. The bond between blood relatives should surpass the bond of marriage, and it is what she has always expected.
Sharmila Foi shuffles into the room, her bangles jingling as she approaches with a large red velour box. She kneels before Sophie, careful not to undo her pleats as she bends. Sophie is dressed in a red-and-white sari with a thick red border, and her arms and feet have intricate designs made with mendhi. She knows the patterns have meaning, but she never learned what they are. She touches the places where her name and Kiran’s are woven into the intricate design, wondering how long it will take him to find them when they are alone together after the reception. Sharmila Foi unlatches the gold-colored hinges and reveals a very elaborate diamond set. It is heavy and intricate, the stones glinting in the sunlight streaming through the window. Sophie thought she had seen all the family jewelry when they did an inventory after Papa died, but she would have remembered seeing something so grand.
“Where did that come from?” she asks.
Sharmila Foi unscrews the backing of the ornate earrings and hands one to Sophie to wear. “This set has been sitting in my safe for a very long time. Until this day, actually. Nita had put it aside when she left, telling Rajiv that this was for your wedding day. He did not like keeping anything of hers in the house, so he gave it to me many years ago, and I’ve kept it safe since.” She comes behind Sophie and helps clasp the necklace.
Sophie looks at herself in the mirror and brushes her hand against the diamonds and gold dangling from her neck and ears. Sharmila Foi then hands her matching bracelets. Four delicate bangles with diamonds embedded into them to create shine but still be smooth when Sophie runs her fingers over them. My everyday bangles, Sophie thinks as she carefully takes them into her hands.
“These are the wedding bangles Nita had made to give you on this day.”
Sophie removes Nita’s gold bangles that she has been wearing since Dao gave them to her, takes the new ones, and alternates them with the old before putting all eight bangles on her left wrist. She eyes herself in the mirror with her new jewels adorning her body. Nita believed she was never coming back when she left. Sophie had never thought differently, but having the weight of Nita’s final gift to her makes her feel as though her mummy is here. That she always intended for a part of her to be with Sophie on this special day. And even though she knows so much more now, for today, she wants to remember Nita as she always had. The spirited woman who loved to paint and always had time for Sophie’s questions. The woman who Sophie always believed would have given anything to share her daughter’s milestones with her. Surviving tuberculosis. Her high school graduation. Passing her accounting exams. Learning how to make her first rotli. And, of course, her wedding day. The woman who, in her own way, loved Sophie as best she could.