My So-Called Bollywood Life(11)

WINNIE COME HOME RIGHT NOW


YOU ARE NEVER ALLOWED TO LEAVE THE HOUSE AGAIN


WE ARE GOING TO SEND YOU TO BOARDING SCHOOL IN INDIA


THE NUNS IN INDIA WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU


HOW DARE YOU TRY TO RUIN THE FAMILY NAME?????-?????-??


IF YOU ARENT HOME IN TEN MINUTES IM CALLING THE POLICE TO GET YOU AND THEN WE WONT BAIL YOU OUT OF JAIL!!!!!-!!!!!-!



“I feel like I’m missing something,” Dev said.

“You are,” Bridget said. “Winnie’s mom is like a champion texter. She texts her friends all day and her family overseas. She knows very well how to use emojis, stickers, filters, GIFs, and especially caps lock. If she’s texting Winnie in all caps, it means Winnie is dead meat.”

“I gotta go,” Winnie said. She had five minutes to get home, when it usually took fifteen. She was hoping that the threat of calling the police was subject to Indian Standard Time, which gave her an extra two hours.

She took her backpack from Bridget and slung it over one shoulder. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, and brushed past Dev. Thinking about him had to wait, getting in touch with Raj had to wait, and, most importantly, film club had to wait. Right now, Winnie Mehta had to face the grand high executioner.





4





HUMPTY SHARMA KI DULHANIA / HUMPTY SHARMA’S BRIDE





Parents in Bollywood movies. Scary. Super scary, and sometimes super accurate. Other times…well, not so much.





After shifting her car into park in the middle of her driveway, Winnie ran to the front door and kicked off her shoes in the foyer. She heard her mother’s voice from the kitchen.

“Vaneeta Mehta,” she said in a clipped accent. Uh-oh. If Winnie’s name sounded like a question, her mother wanted to know if she was hungry. If her name sounded like a command, then the gods were about to duck for cover.

“Just get it over with,” she whispered to herself. “Like ripping off a Band-Aid.”

Sita Mehta stood at the kitchen island, flipping rotis in a shallow pan. Her bangles jingled as her fingers moved deftly from raw dough to flour to rolling pin to stove.

Winnie’s father, Deepak Mehta, sat at a bar stool across from her. His glasses were perched low on his nose as he read a finance magazine. He tapped his toe to the old Indian music coming through the speakers in the walls and ceilings. A slim remote sat at his elbow next to a cup of chai.

    The kitchen was filled with the scent of fresh Indian bread and curried vegetables.

“Dinner already?” Winnie asked, putting on her best cutesy voice. Like that would help, she thought. She could tell by her mother’s body language that she was in deep cow dung.

“Come here.”

Winnie’s father shot her a warning glance over the edge of his magazine but quickly looked down again.

Oh yeah. Deep, deep, deep cow dung. Her palms started sweating as she inched forward.

“What’s…what’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong?” her mother replied sweetly. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong.” She pinched dough from the mixing bowl and rolled it into a tiny ball in her hand. Then she slammed the ball down onto the counter in front of her.

“I got a call from Binnie Auntie, who got a call from Minnie Auntie, who got a text from Raj’s mother, who was upset that someone took Raj’s movies from his room while he wasn’t home. That woman actually had the nerve to tell Minnie, who told Binnie, who said to me that they thought my daughter was the one who stole something!”

Winnie flinched as the rolling pin made a loud cracking sound when her mother dropped it onto the dough ball. She began pushing the ball into a thin, flat circle. Her father brushed some of the flying flour off the edge of his magazine page and kept reading.

    “I told Binnie,” her mother continued, “my daughter would never steal from someone. And besides, Raj may not be her boyfriend right now, but they’ve been destined to be together since they were children. They played with colored powder at our Indian Society Holi festival. They lit firecrackers on Diwali. I did the carpool with Chaya for years so they could ride to school together. There must be some misunderstanding, and that bowlegged, hook-nose, bad-hair-dye woman who buys her clothes from a secondhand trash store doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

Winnie prayed that her fear wasn’t obvious. “Uh, thanks, Mom.”

The rolling pin made another whacking sound against the counter, and her father’s teacup rattled this time. She watched in admiration as he calmly lifted the cup and took a sip.

“Well, I thought that was the end of that conversation with Minnie—”

“Binnie.”

“Whatever. But do you know what she told me?”

“Uh, no…”

“She said that Minnie told her that the Shahs’ neighbor watched you, criminal-in-the-making, taking things out of Raj Shah’s house. What do you have to say to that?”

    “It could have been one of Raj’s other girlfriends,” Winnie said with a shrug. “According to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and Snapchat, we aren’t together anymore.”

“Vaneeta Mehta, do not lie to me! Did you steal from Raj Shah?”