Unmarriageable(30)

‘I can’t wait to fall madly in love,’ Lady said. ‘Acha, Jena, do you love Bungles?’

Jena tossed a cushion at Lady. ‘Mind your own business. And forget love-shove – why aren’t you studying your algebra? Your teacher at school told me you’re very good with equations if only you’d apply yourself.’

‘Who cares about equations?’ Lady said. ‘I don’t need equations to be happy. I need love to be happy. I’m not going to marry anyone unless I fall in love, love, love. First comes love, then comes marriage.’

‘First comes marriage, then comes love,’ Mrs Binat said sternly as she summoned the giggling, eye-rolling Lady to snuggle with her on the sofa, after which mother-daughter switched the TV channel from sports – despite Mari’s outcry – to the Indian film channel, where Sridevi and Jeetendra were dancing-prancing-romancing around trees to the ludicrous love song ‘Mama Mia Pom Pom’. After a few sullen minutes, Mari curled up on her mother’s other side, even as she asked God’s forgiveness at wasting her time over frivolous fare. Qitty joined at the far end of the sofa and opened up Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Jena took out some grading. Alys and Sherry murmured that they were going to feed birds and headed towards the graveyard.



In the graveyard, Alys and Sherry took a path that led to a cluster of family tombs in a roofed enclosure. They sat in a patch of late-afternoon sunlight on the cracked marble floor. Alys told Sherry she’d caught Darsee looking at her a few times.

‘Oof Allah, he likes you,’ Sherry said, taking out her cigarettes. ‘He loves you. He wants to marry you. He yearns for you to have his arrogant babies.’

‘Ho ho ho. Ha ha ha. You should become a comedienne.’ Alys shook her head. ‘He was, no doubt, checking to see how crooked my nose is, how crossed my eyes are, and whether I have all thirty-two teeth intact. I was talking to Sarah—’

‘How is she?’

‘Good. Her mother is adamant that she drop future PhD plans, because, she insisted, no one wants to marry an overeducated girl in case she out-earns her husband, which will drive him to insecurity and subsequently divorcing her. I told Sarah to forget her khayali non-existent husband’s self-esteem and work towards her dreams. We were talking about thesis topics and Darsee asks me, “How do you know all this?” Literally. As if I’m some ignoramus.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Reader’s Digest and Good Housekeeping.’

Alys and Sherry exchanged high fives.

‘How did it go with the potbellied Prince Charming?’ Alys asked.

Sherry gave a small laugh. The potbellied prince had brought along sixteen family members, for whom Sherry and her younger sister, Mareea, had to scramble to fry up double, triple batches of kebabs. Then, after serving everyone chai, which took a good hour, Sherry was told she had to take a reading test. The potbellied prince produced a conduct book of Islamic etiquette, Bahishti Zewar – ‘Heavenly Ornaments’ – and made her read out loud, in front of everyone, the section on how to keep oneself clean and pure before, during, and after sex.

‘My father left the room, lucky him.’ Sherry exhaled a smoke ring. ‘But no one thought to stop the reading. I suppose they were picking up tips.’

‘You should have just stopped,’ Alys said.

‘The reading was the easy part,’ Sherry said. ‘Next test was massage.’

She’d had to massage his ropy, sweaty, oily neck for several minutes while he shouted, ‘Left, right, upper, lower.’

‘You should have pinched him,’ Alys said.

‘I did,’ Sherry said. ‘I even dug my nails into him. But he seemed to enjoy both.’

The real shock came when he was leaving. He’d looked straight at her, removed his dentures, which Rishta Aunty had neglected to inform them he wore, and wiggled his tongue in an obscene manner.

‘Anyway, he rejected me.’ Sherry lit another cigarette with trembling fingers. ‘He telephoned to inform us that, although I’m a competent reader, my fingers do not possess the strength he, at age sixty-one, requires, and also I’m too thin and don’t earn enough to compensate for my lack of a chest.’

‘Would you have married the potbellied pervert if he’d said yes?’ Alys asked quietly.

Sherry sighed. ‘There’s no dashing Bungles waiting to de-pigeon me. I’m down to either perverts fluttering my feathers or a lifetime of listening to my brothers groan and moan about having to look after me in my old age. These are the same brothers whose nappies I changed, snot I wiped, whom I taught to walk and talk. I’m tired of them treating me like a burden and I’m sick of my parents’ morose faces, as if every day I remain unmarried is another day in hell for them. Honestly, Alys, Jena needs to chup chaap, without any frills, make her intentions clear to Bungles, before it’s too late.’

‘It is a truth universally acknowledged,’ Alys said, ‘that hasty marriages are nightmares of bardasht karo, the gospel of tolerance and compromise, and that it’s always us females who are given this despicable advice and told to shut up and put up with everything. I despise it.’

‘Me too,’ Sherry said. ‘But I’d rather bardasht karo the whims of a husband than the scorn of my brothers. Not that I blame my brothers. It’s my duty to get married and I’m failing. I’m a failure.’