One Indian Girl(89)

Brijesh stood next to me. He looked at me and grinned. I hid a smile; after all, they were my aunts.

I checked my phone. It had two messages each from Neel and Debu. I didn’t open them. Instead, I placed my phone in Aditi didi’s handbag.

‘Your turn is coming soon,’ Aditi didi said.

‘Didi, I don’t feel like it,’ I said.

‘What? Your cousins are already backstage. They have waited for this moment since they came to Goa,’ she said.

‘All the best,’ Brijesh said as the time came for me to go backstage.

‘Can you get me a drink, Brijesh?’ I said.

‘Huh? Yeah, sure. What do you want?’

‘Anything.’

‘Whisky?’

‘Sure,’ I said.

He returned from the bar with a large peg of Black Label. I chugged it in one shot.

‘Take it easy. Don’t be tense. It’s just a dance,’ Brijesh said.

‘It’s not the dance. We have to talk,’ I said.

Pinky came and tugged at my lehenga. I had to go.

‘We’ll talk later,’ I said.

‘What? Sure. Hey, rock it!’ Brijesh said.

On my way backstage, my mother stopped me.

‘What were you doing?’ she said.

‘What?’ I said.

‘I saw you. You asked Brijesh for whisky and drank it like a cheap bar girl. In front of him?’

‘So?’ I said, confidence soaring after the whisky shot. ‘I wanted to loosen up before the dance.’

‘Do you have any brains? Your in-laws are watching you. What will they think? Their bahu drinks like a jungli bewdi.’

‘Mom. My would-be husband gave me the drink. If he doesn’t have a problem, what’s their problem?’

My mother gave me a dirty look. Pinky pulled my hand.

‘My suggestion, mom, is go get a drink for yourself. You need it,’ I said to my mother as I left the function room.



I survived the stage. I did not let my choreographer down. I remembered all my steps. I nailed chittiyan kalaiyan, even though I found it more challenging than foreclosing the assets of a distressed Chinese factory. The audience cheered. Mickey kept repeating ‘one-two-three-four and turn round and round and one-two-three-four’ from behind the stage.

The song ended. My cousins and I finished our performance with a huge group hug. The audience broke into applause.

Why does one have to get married to have so much fun? Why can’t extended families just get together once in a while and dance for no reason?

The crowd gave us a standing ovation. Brijesh clapped the hardest, perhaps not expecting his investment banker bride-to-be to break a leg on stage as well.

‘You were fabulous. You are a good, good dancer,’ he said.

‘Oh no, I suck. Those four minutes took four hours of merciless practice.’

‘I couldn’t do that even with four months of training,’ he said.

A waiter with drinks passed us. I stopped him and gave Brijesh a glass of whisky.

‘Drink up,’ I said.

‘Are you sure? We still have to meet so many people.’

‘You will need it. We need to talk,’ I said.

‘What?’

Before I could answer, lights dimmed in the function room. A DJ took over. The stage now became a free-for-all dance floor. In Punjabi weddings this means first the kids take over the floor. Then their elder teen cousins come and kick them off the stage. Next, all the uncles get drunk and shove the teenagers off. Finally, the uncles get so drunk that they even drag their wives, or the aunties, on to the stage.

Brijesh and I also danced to a few songs. Brijesh was right. He couldn’t dance. Imagine Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg trying to do bhangra. You get the idea.

After three songs, I whispered in Brijesh’s ear, ‘Brijesh, let’s step out and talk.’





39


My ears felt a sense of relief as the DJ’s music faded out as we left the function room. We came out to the Marriott garden, dark and silent at night. The December air had a mild chill to it and I rubbed my hands together.

‘Where are we going?’ Brijesh said.

‘Out of sight,’ I said. I found a palm tree with a bench underneath it. We sat down, adjacent to each other, facing the sea.

‘Isn’t it nice to just breathe?’ I said.

‘It is, but they will look for us,’ Brijesh said. ‘A search party will be sent soon.’

‘It’s all a bit crazy. This whole jingbang of two clans. Getting too much now,’ I said.

‘Don’t worry, in two days all the guests will be gone. Just you and me then.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. I wondered how and where to start. He continued to talk.

‘And soon we will be on a plane to Bali,’ he said.

‘Yeah, Brijesh, about that. . .’ I said.

He ignored me and continued to talk, all excited. ‘And once we get back from Bali to SF, I have lined up apartment viewings that weekend. Hope that’s okay?’

‘Brijesh, I can’t do this,’ I said.

‘What? Too hectic? Okay, we can see apartments later. It’s just that my current apartment is too small and. . .’

‘I am not talking about the apartment hunt.’