Affirmation of the day: I have a strong will — and I
can do anything if I put my mind to it.
TAJ PALACE HOTEL, 12:03 A. M.
I’ve always found luxury hotels alienating, all that fake art and overstuffed
furniture. To make things worse, they’ve given me a suite so vast that the
edges fade into darkness, and I barely take up a third of the massive bed. It
only amplifies my loneliness, and the old desires are strong tonight: I need
arms to hold me. A warm body to comfort me.
I roll over, check my phone for new messages. Nothing.
It’s been twelve hours since I met Ali — but he hasn’t texted me. I know
he’s still awake, thinking of me, working up the courage to write back.
Maybe I’ll help him. A sexy selfie, perhaps? Stretched out on the bed, hair
tousled, pouting at the camera? Easy enough, as I’m wearing just a Tshirt ... Nope. Too
direct. Too gauche. Don’t want to freak out this sensitive
long - haired boy.
Got to be patient. Not my strong suit.
What am I doing back here? I thought I could handle it — I really did —
but after a week in Mumbai with my family, I feel like I’m losing my mind.
We flew over in the jet from New York. It’s one of Papa’s shiny new
toys, a Gulfstream G650, tricked out with white leather seats, and he
couldn’t stop boasting: “The biggest windows of any private jet. Did you
know fresh air is piped in every two hours? The food is by this French chef,
Emmanuel Pic — one Michelin star.”
And it got worse from there. At least on a commercial flight, you can
curl up in your own first - class pod and ignore everyone, but the Gulfstream
is set up like a living room, and we all had to sit and eat an endless fivecourse dinner
while the flight attendant reverently called out each tiny dish
— “Chicken supreme with sake! Roasted parsnips with curry and walnuts!
Yuzu entremets!” And during the meal, Maryam plied Papa with flattering
questions about his current projects and listened earnestly to his
interminable r eplies. She really knows how to act like the dutiful daughter.
After a while, I couldn’t take it. I went into the restroom, dug through
my handbag, found two stale Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups (the jumbo - size
ones) and crammed them into my mouth. Literally. Something I haven’t
done in years. This is the effect these people have on me.
As I ate, I could imagine my shrink: Dr. Bajaj with her round, maternal
face, saying soothingly, “Farhan, you must forgive your sister for what she
did to you. She was just a child. Without forgiveness, there can be no
healing.” Dr. Bajaj is the one who gave me this drugstore diary, with its
lilac cover and corny affirmations. She says that putting emotions down on
paper helps us to s eparate from them. Yeah, well, easier said than done.
I went back out into the main cabin and drank three glasses of Mouton
Rothschild at an unseemly rate.
An eon later, we landed in Mumbai. Flunkies greeted us at the airport,
and Papa grinned from ear to ear and pretended to be a son of India, when I
know he hates it here and is in protracted litigation with the government
over back taxes. And then the salty sea air of Mumbai, the smell of cooking,
the crowded streets, all began to work on me. The memories I had stashed
away resurfaced: I remembered the last time I was here, thirteen years ago,
to shop for my own wedding.
Back then, my friends were already calling me, telling me that my
fiancé, Zafar Dewjee, scion of the illustrious Dewjee family of Dubai, was
still screwing around (Russian models, mostly), but I told my friends that
they were being literal, they weren’t getting it. Zafar was a fashion
executive, son of one of the biggest garment exporters in the world, and this
was his style, nightclubs and champagne and, yes, Russian models, but he’d
told me laughingly, “That’s just optics. These models? Anorexics, bulimics.
Not one thought in their empty heads.” I told myself I’d made the right
choice, marrying a fashionista, a bad boy — so much better than settling for
one of those pious investment bankers, right? Zafar would call me from
Paris or Milan and tell me outrageous stories about high - profile designers:
“Just had lunch with Oscar. His new boyfriend is nineteen years old. Ran
into Jean - Claude at Fashion Week — man, I think he’s back on heroin.”
Back then, I could not admit Papa had set up the marriage, and that he’d
chosen the Dewjee family because they were major players in Dubai real
estate, and he wanted to get into that market. It never occurred to me I could
just say to Papa: “No. I don’t want to get married. Period.” Back then, I shut
out my doubts and concentrated on spending vast amounts of money on my
wedding clothes: Did I want silver or gold embroidery on my pink lehenga?
Back then I had a waist, I was skinny, I liked trying on one slinky outfit
after another. A kind of armor.
All this hit me yesterday in Mumbai — when Maryam and I went clothes
shopping.
Maryam was clearly the prospective bride, so the shopke epers called her
“Behenji,” “Sister,” and brought her all the sexy stuff. But me — what was I?
I could see the confusion in their faces: I didn’t have a ring on my finger —
and yet I had that post - marriage thirty pounds. I was wearing a crumpled
salwar kameez. I had my hair up in a messy bun. What should they call me?
An uncategorized woman is dangerous, especially a zaftig thirty - fouryear - old, and so
they played it safe: They called me “Bhabhi,” “Auntie,”
and brought me the loose - fitting, flowy stuff. Auntie! Me, an auntie! Was it
just the way I looked, or the way I acted, too? Was I too loud, too
authoritative, too bossy? Because that’s how aunties behave: Aunties have
become comfortably padded. An auntie eats the last three samosas on the
plate, yells at the taxi wallah trying to rip her off, offers frank advice to
young women she meets in elevators.
So, I’m an auntie? That’s the role I’m supposed to play — all because
Papa pushed me into a marriage right after I finished college?
It turned out that Zafar’s lifestyle was not just optics. Even after we
married — of course I moved into his family’s penthouse in Dubai — he’d
return late at night, his nostrils raw and pink, smelling of some woman’s
cheap perfume. When I screamed and yelled, he seemed genuinely puzzled.
It turned out that in his family, all the married men were messing around,
and the wives would just turn a blind eye. Boys will be boys, right? And
when I finally snapped and left, leaving behind all my wedding jewelry,
Zafar’s family sought a quick divorce (I didn’t contest it) and put the word
out that I was unstable, that I’d been institutionalized for drug addiction. (If
only they knew I’d been hospitalized for something much, much worse.)
Now I’m an auntie. I’m thirty - four and divorced, and no Ismaili man
will touch me. I’m toxic, a dark stain on the family. That is why Papa
insisted I come along, so that Maryam’s prospective in - laws can see I’m not
a monster, just an overweight, sad woman. And I agreed to do it because
Papa said he would, in exchange for my cooperation, finance a jewelry
store for me, something I’ve been wanting forever.
But could I really do it? I was dreading the visits to the “boys” lined up
for Maryam, anticipating the whispers when they saw me tagging along:
“Oh, here comes the divorcée.” So right there, in the fancy clothing store
with Maryam, I thought, Fuck it. You want me to be an auntie, fine, I’ll play
that role to the hilt.
BOY #1
Porky little mama’s boy, lived in a mansion high up on Malabar Hill, so
much marble it looked like a mausoleum. Talked endlessly about his time at
Stanford, all the tech billionaires he played tennis with. Maryam shut down
instantly, went into her power - saver mode. I don’t know how she does it — I
would have screamed and run out of there. But I was the auntie, remember?
I ate three plates of bhelpuri and followed the boy’s mom into the kitchen.
We ended up talking about her hot flashes, and later, I heard her whisper to
her husband: “The sister isn’t so bad, is she? Quite a practical girl.”
BOY #2
Wore a woolen suit and a tie to impress Papa, I guess. He seemed to think it
was a business seminar with the great real estate mogul Abbas Khan. I
blame Papa. His ghostwritten memoir, Making It, is wildly popular in India.
Of course, it r epresents Papa as a self - made immigrant billionaire,
completely obscuring the fact that his wealthy Mumbai family bankrolled
the first distressed properties he bought in the Bronx.
The boy spoke the whole time about his plan to start a new social media
company, chattered on about A/B testing and click - through rates and KPIs. I
loaded my plate with cucumber sandwiches and sat next to the boy’s sweet,
leathery old grandmother, who had dementia. Every ten minutes, she would
whisper to me, “Who are all these people?” And I would make up different
answers: “It’s an embroidery convention. They’re here to sell carpets.”
“That bald old guy — see him? — he needs a kidney transplant.” The old lady
would nod and be satisfied — then forget it all, and we’d start again.
Still, I got huge brownie points for ke eping her calm, as only an auntie
can.
BOY #3
Was buff and handsome and wore those too - short khakis and shiny black
loafers without socks. Maryam flushed pink and came alive when he
suggested they take a walk together, and I was left alone with the boy’s
father. I asked him why onions cost so much in Mumbai, and he then
mansplained for the next fifteen minutes about monsoon rains, fickle crops,
and onion exports to Arab countries.
Maryam returned from the walk, and something had changed. In the car
she said the “boy” was not right for her. I asked for specifics, but Maryam
was tight - lipped. “Oh,” I finally said, putting it all together: the form - fitting
shirt, the bic eps, the prissy loafers. “So the guy was gay, right?” Maryam
wouldn’t answer and quickly changed the topic. She’s slippery as a snake.
Anyway, after seeing those three boys I was in a really bad mood. Until
we walked into a grand - shabby apartment right by the ocean and found ...
BOY #4
Ali. Long - haired, artsy. Gentle, dreamy eyes. Nice hands. Really cute. And
my first thought was: He’s an innocent. The family will eat him alive.
Then I saw the beautiful black - and - white photographs he’d taken of old
mansions, and something happened between us. Hard to explain. An instant
ease, and when I mumbled something about the light in the photos, he
understood exactly what I was saying. I thought, I could have made a go of
it with a sweet boy like this. But Papa chose a philandering cokehead for
me — and blamed me when the marriage failed.
So, I tested it a little bit, said some things, and each time the boy was
right there, following me, noticing me. I felt a wave of gratitude followed
by fear. Was our connection real, or was I just sad and desperate? I’m six
years older than him, for God’s sake, and I grew up in New York; he clearly
is a mama’s boy and has always lived with his parents in Mumbai.
Then I dropped chutney on my blouse and disappeared into the
bathroom to clean myself off. Finally, some privacy. I stared at myself in
the mirror: high color in my cheeks, a sparkle in my eyes. I liked the way
this boy made me feel: Wanted. Alive. Attractive. I thought to myself, Fuck
it. Don’t I deserve to live?
I texted some Mumbai friends and got the boy’s number. I took a de ep
breath and sent him a message. I wanted to study his face when he got it,
but he must have had his phone on mute. So, before we left — right at the
last minute — I took a huge risk and mouthed to him, Call me. He seemed
stunned.
I’ve been waiting all day for Ali to r eply. It is now nearly one in the
morning. I just checked my phone, and he still hasn’t written back. Have I
overreached? Have I scared off this artsy boy with my direct approach?
No. I am not giving up. I’ll text Ali. Not a selfie. Not a nudie pic.
Something much subtler, something that will speak to his romantic soul.
I know exactly what I’ll send him. And I’m sure it will work.