Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty

KIRAN

She didn’t tell anyone of her plans—not even the CMC. Rather, she practiced in the mirror and envisioned how the conversation should go on the phone.

Ma. Baba. I love you. You are my world, and I have always respected all you’ve given up for me. I remember the nights when Baba worked all day and then came home to help me study. I remember the nights Ma made dinner and fed me by hand because I felt taking time to eat was a waste when I could be studying. Every move you have made has been to give me a better life. I hope that you trust I carry you with me every day. You must trust my judgment—that I would never do anything to hurt you. I know that when Kirti got married, it was devastating for our family. The panchayat changed our lives when they told us to disown her. But you live in Delhi now, and while I know that doesn’t change mentality or the connections you hold to Ramnagar, I hope that it frees your burden. And I hope the move will let you accept me…because I’ve started seeing someone, and he’s an American.

Ma and Baba would protest. They would ask how Kiran would raise children with Indian culture if she was in America. In her mind, she formulated a response.

I know you’re shocked and you’re afraid. I’m a little scared too. But Nash is open to raising children any way I would like to raise them. And I have Payal, Sonam, and Akash as my best friends. Despite growing up in the West, they are aware of our traditions and our cultures. They can help me. I am confident that I can make you proud.

Kiran visualized the conversation more than ten times in front of the mirror, coming up with counterarguments for the inevitable arguments Baba and Ma would bring up. She thought through the entire problem like she would consider a project. What was the problem? What was the next step? What if that step failed? What was the backup?

But Kirti had dragged it out for nearly a year, sneaking out to see the man she loved and exchanging letters through friends when Baba and Ma had tried to confine her to their home. There was deceit and pain involved with the way Kirti had conducted herself.

Kiran didn’t want to do the same thing.

When her heart had stopped pounding and she was confident in her canned responses, she slowly dialed the number for the apartment in Delhi.

Kiran heard fumbling on the end of the line as Ma pushed the speaker button and moved around. She heard muffled shouts for Baba to come join her in the living room and that Kiran had called.

Kiran took a stabilizing breath. Her entire prepared speech flashed before her eyes…and then fell to pieces as she blurted out, “I wanted to tell you that I’ve found someone. He’s American.”

Silence followed.

Kiran paused. Everyone knew she wasn’t a mischievous person…and she certainly wouldn’t play a prank with a subject that hit so close to home.

Kiran recoiled as though her father had yelled at her in person. He hardly ever raised his voice. The last time she remembered him yelling was at a vendor who had cheated another shopkeeper in Ramnagar…when she was ten.

Now both of her parents were worked up. Kiran winced at the turn of events she hadn’t prepared herself for. She had fervently wished the conversation would go according to the script she’d imagined, and this was unfurling at a rapid-fire pace out of her control.

Kiran felt as though she’d been beaten with a bamboo stick in a public place.

The anger shifted to worry, and it would shift back again. Kiran was sure of it.

With Baba’s final words, the line went dead too.

Kiran stared at the phone in her hand, wondering if the unreliable line had the misfortune of disconnecting after such a dramatic and heartbreaking sentiment. But when she called back, there was no answer.

The phone rang and rang.

Finally, someone picked up.

Then, the line cut again.

Our daughter is dead to us.

* * *

Like she’d looked forward to her chai dates with the gang, she counted down the days to the weekend—not only to relax but now with the added benefit of seeing Nash. The CMC was like a love affair she never got tired of with new stories to tell and new facts to learn about one another. But now, a real one was growing, and Kiran wasn’t sure what to make of it.

She only knew she didn’t want to lose it. Nash was built into her life now.

It had taken her that long to process the livid reactions her parents had. The words played so many times that they served as dull background noise on repeat as she got up in the morning, showered, worked, ate, and made the attempt to function as though her life hadn’t been upended. As though her heart hadn’t shattered and like it wasn’t taking all of her willpower not to call them and beg for forgiveness.

They didn’t mean it. They couldn’t mean it.

Silence followed her statement.

Kiran squeezed his arm, hoping he was right. For the last two days, she’d walked around with an anvil on her chest, wondering if she had destroyed her family forever. She hadn’t spoken to anyone about it, hoping that the situation would resolve before she ever had to utter the words out loud that her parents had wished she was dead.

With Nash, meeting the CMC was a gut check. An insistent voice in the back of her mind grew louder by the second to include him in parts of her life that she’d cordoned off from other boys. The CMC held a sacred spot in her life—only the worthy crossed the gates to meet her friends. Perhaps it was silly and not a big deal at all to others, but to Kiran, meeting her best friends was like finding a room containing the Holy Grail—a coveted space that only the brave and pure could enter.

Maybe them loving him would make the sting of her parents hating him hurt less.

Maybe for one night, she could forget how much it was tearing her apart to have them so angry at her and have her other family accept him instead.

Nash grinned. “Same thing.”

On Saturday, she called Payal at ten in the morning.

She had gone from zero to sixty so fast, Kiran felt whiplash.

The irony in Payal, who had never been to India, telling Kiran about Indian clothes wasn’t lost on either of them, and they both laughed.

She knocked on Kiran’s door at precisely 6:00 p.m.

Kiran couldn’t argue. Soothing tingles ran up her spine as Payal told her to look up, look down, turn, and suck in her cheeks. The bristles of the makeup brushes Kiran used made her wonder if Nash had shaved the fuzz that had grown on his jawline when they’d seen a movie the weekend previous. Her toes curled underneath her chair as she imagined the scruff running against her skin, prickling it in all the right ways. Payal’s deft fingers smudged her eyeliner and smoothed out any blemishes in her makeup.

Over the years, Kiran had come to embrace the way her hair fell in waves, reining it in with smoothing oil and allowing it to remain natural unless it was a special occasion. Payal, however, had deemed tonight worthy of a blowout that belonged at the Oscars. Using a giant round brush, she pulled Kiran’s hair into a pouf on the top of her head with the rest of her hair cascading down her back in a fountain of jet black. It was longer straight, and Kiran marveled at how glamorous she looked with this tiny change in her routine, though it took too long for her to care to do it every day.

Kiran slipped the georgette fabric over her head, pulling it over her nude lace strapless bra and underwear. Brightly colored rhinestones, beads, and sequins curled their spiraling design along the border of the black dress, down the one shoulder, across Kiran’s breasts and around her back. Kiran was reminded of the head of a peacock near her shoulder with a sparkly plume wrapping around her opposite side. The high heels added two inches to her frame and elongated her legs, giving them a soft shape she loved when she glanced in the mirror.

Payal had done a marvelous job of accentuating Kiran’s eyes with enough black eyeliner to tar a highway—giving their gradual curve a dramatic overhaul as the liner swept up at the outer corners of her eyes and created a perfect teardrop-shaped gaze. Mascara turned her gently lifting eyelashes into ski jumps that granted Kiran a sultriness that she wore effortlessly. Her lips wore a mauve stain that contrasted with the gold in her skin and dusted onto her eyelids. The black dress hugged her curves in all the spots that Kiran felt most confident about—her B-cup breasts, her flat but wide hips, and her exposed arms that emphasized the long muscles dancing had contributed to.

There was no doubt about it: Kiran was, and felt, sexy. Her fears about feeling uncomfortable in a dress that showed more skin than usual evaporated. She was empowered. She was a force. She felt like a goddess.

Kiran complied. An attractive Indian man gave her a second glance as she hailed a cab, giving her cheeks a pink tinge of happiness.

The cab drove to Hell’s Kitchen from the East Village. She spotted Nash from a block away, his height and messy hair giving him away.

Dressed in a fitted forest-green dress shirt and black dress pants, he could only be described as elegant. His hands were tucked into his pockets, a glint from his watch gleaming in the evening light. His skin, which Kiran always admired for its smoothness, was tinted bronze in the green of his shirt. His hair was gelled in the front, in a style Sonam used to call the frat-boy look but that Kiran secretly loved as the perfect balance of boyish and put together.

Nash’s eyes followed the cab as it pulled to a stop. Kiran swiped her credit card, tipping the driver her typical 20 percent before shifting her weight to the edge of the seat and keeping her legs together so passersby didn’t get a glimpse of her girlie bits.

When she extended her leg out of the cab door and pulled herself gracefully to a stand, Nash’s mouth dropped open.

Kiran burned from the sear of his wide-eyed gaze as she walked across the crosswalk toward him. His hands had pulled from his pockets and frozen at his sides as though he were trying to capture her in them. She grew conscious of the subtle sway her hips had taken on in these heels and loved the way his eyes grew as she approached him.

He parted his lips to speak, but his voice cracked. He cleared his throat and opened his mouth again.

Kiran bit her lip shyly, but unable to hold back, she smiled so big that her cheeks nearly ached.

Nash seemed unable to gather his thoughts, and the wave of happiness in knowing that she could cause any semblance of speechlessness in him was overpowering.

She brushed her hair onto one shoulder. “Thank you. The green is flattering on you.”

They took their seats, overdressed for this particular theater but content in their togetherness. Nash murmured that the cast of UCB often got chosen for SNL skits and that many famous comedians of the last ten years had gotten their start performing improv at these very theaters. As the lights dimmed and the actors came out to perform their improvisation routines, she could see why.

The actors ran with the most mundane of topics—often asking the audience to choose a word and then formulating an entire skit around it. Kiran marveled at the improvisation talents they had, amazed that they could roll with an unexpected change in direction or create a joke with such fluidity. It was inspiring in a way. For someone who did well with routine and order, she was dazed by their ability to put together magic out of nothing, with no blueprint to follow.

She loved the way her and Nash’s eyes met when they laughed too hard, sharing in the moment as though the show was solely for their benefit. While the rest of the audience wore jeans and Saturday night outfits for club-hopping and going to a bar, Kiran felt like royalty with a prince by her side.

The magic of laughter making their sides ache caused a flood of happiness in Kiran. The final rounds of applause for the cast were raucous, and she fervently wished the night wouldn’t end.

And it was only beginning.

They chattered for a bit about various acts, with Nash being partial to one about a powerboat and Kiran asking questions about slap bracelets, a concept she couldn’t grasp.

Nash burst out laughing. “You don’t slap yourself. Well, sort of.” He demonstrated by sticking his arm out and mimicking a whipping action. “You have this plastic stick, and it bends into a circle when you whip it against your wrist.”

She’d arrived from India the week before, armed only with a suitcase full of clothes and a carry-on full of textbooks from her two years at an international boarding school where she’d completed her junior and senior years. While she’d offered tentative smiles at the girls who looked like her, she was overwhelmed with the whiteness and how different she seemed compared to the other brown girls.

She’d never experienced that before.

Eighteen-year-old Kiran wasn’t nearly as confident in her ability to fit in. Like all freshmen, she was enthralled at the freedom this newfound country offered—and was determined not to take advantage of it. She’d already been without her parents. She was here to make their lives better. But it didn’t change that she was in a new country with no family nearby and too many quick American accents to keep up with when her English still contained remnants of Ramnagar and Delhi.

As the freshmen introduced themselves, all eyes fell on Kiran as the introductions turned to her.

She caught two girls meeting each other’s gaze and stifling laughter at her accent. The mockery immediately made her stop.

Another girl, Indian perhaps, with flared jeans and a tight black T-shirt, gave them a death glare. “Do you mind? Everyone listened to you go on about how you wanted to be a teacher, Carly, so you should probably quit being a jerk and pay attention.”

The girl turned bright red under the unexpected scrutiny and immediately stopped laughing.

Her boldness had empowered Kiran to continue about her goals of working for a bioengineering group. For the rest of the meeting, Kiran snuck glances at her savior. Sonam’s hair was the kind of curly Kirti would have loved—a little wild and a little careless. Her neighbors in Ramnagar would have condescendingly called her “healthy.” Kiran called her beautiful. With big, watchful eyes and a sharp tongue, she consistently kept the group giggling at her smart-ass remarks and intelligent commentary.

At the end of the meeting, all the girls on the floor began to pair off, heading to whatever social plans they had the night before classes. Kiran hoped to look welcoming so someone would talk to her, but she was a fly on the wall.

Kiran had been taken aback at the language and the warmth Sonam extended. She got the impression no one said no to Sonam. “Um, what meeting?”

She pointed at a supermodel. Well, perhaps not a real supermodel, but she might as well have been. With long, straight hair, heavy eyeshadow, shimmery lips, and exactly the amount of makeup to counter Sonam and Kiran’s bare faces, Payal Mehra was breathtaking. Kiran could see that even without any makeup and even if she was wearing a burlap sack rather than the Portofino shirt, jean shorts, and sandals she was currently making a runway statement in, she would still capture the attention of anyone in a room. Payal laughed at someone’s comment, and her perfectly straight teeth gleamed in the light as she threw her head back without any inhibition.

They took steps toward Payal, with Kiran trailing Sonam like a shadow.

She had a British accent too. Kiran wasn’t sure why she found that remarkable. She’d always laughed when her boarding school classmates in Shimla had discussed British guys becoming infinitely hotter because of their classy lilt, but Kiran wondered if that applied to the entire population now.

That wasn’t the kicker, however. For Kiran, who had grown up in a village where most people spoke Hindi and who had learned English from a tutor, TV programs, and reading books, a most fascinating fact was that these girls looked like her. The same brown skin with a golden hue. The same big brown eyes. The same black hair, though Payal’s had streaks of brown in it from a summer somewhere tropical (or perhaps a great colorist). But they sounded so different. With one word, any stranger on the street would be able to gauge their background, the country they grew up in, and despite all of them being described as “the Indian girl,” each of them had a history unlike the other two and created in a different country. Kiran marveled at this concept. Until now, most of the Indians she had met were like her: homegrown. Here was an entire world of people who had been raised within one culture, encased within another.

Kiran hesitated to say her father owned a business. It wasn’t a corporation. But what the hell—they already knew she was from India. She shouldn’t be afraid of speaking out. “My baba owns a small business,” she said quietly. “It is like a small shop for all the essentials our village needs.”

She half expected a compulsory comment of appreciation, but Payal’s eyes lit up. “That’s fantastic! Small businesses in rural India are necessary. I read a whole article about it and…” She continued on and on as Kiran glowed with the feeling of being accepted.

This was where the elite went, she thought as they strolled through Duke’s campus. Academia oozed from the pores of each arched window she passed. Kiran’s sense of accomplishment grew in tandem with her gratitude toward her family for allowing a village girl like her to pursue her intelligence in greener pastures. She never wanted to let them down.

Payal had found her next target—a sole boy standing in the corner of the meeting room, holding a cup of juice. His free hand played a game on his phone, and his head remained ducked, avoiding any attention.

He was handsome, Kiran had to agree.

He was tall and a little bit skinny, with hair spiked in the front. His cheeks still held a touch of pudge, making him look even more baby-faced than his cleanly shaven jaw. He had big eyes with a fringe of dark lashes so thick, Kiran wondered if he smudged kohl on them the way the village aunties did on babies.

Her walk transformed in the short distance between them and the boy from casual to confident. She strode—Kiran might have used the word strutted—up to the boy and snatched his phone from him.

Kiran watched her like an artist inspired by a muse. She had never seen such a calculated charm offensive—Payal’s warmth radiated from her naturally with a few deliberately added embellishments, like the way she touched the boy’s arm or wound her long fingers through her locks. She was effortless.

In the years following, this encounter would turn into a CMC joke—about how Payal had erroneously thought this boy would be a one-night fling and not a forever.

Akash laughed. “Maybe a surrender flag. I’m a feminist but I’m the guy dragged here by my older sister. She’s the president of the Femme Fatales, the club throwing this thing.”

As if she’d heard him, a girl with the same dark eyelashes rose at the front of the room and called for everyone’s attention. The group hushed and found seats together near the front of the room. A welcome by Akash’s sister, Laila, was followed by another round of icebreakers. Kiran was more comfortable this time, as though she’d found her niche in the last half hour and was heartened by the warm welcome and lack of stares at being an outsider.

It was ten in the evening by the time the meeting ended.

And thus, the CMC was born.