Everything Happens for a Reason

‘Oh, you’re home,’ I announced, looking up at him sheepishly. ‘I’m so sorry. I must have been really tired. What time is it? I’ll get up now, get dinner ready.’ My head still spinning and heavy with sleep, I swung my legs off the couch and started to make for the kitchen.

‘Don’t worry,’ Sanjay said, grabbing my arm. ‘Forget that. Come, I want to take you out for dinner.’

‘But why? It’s nobody’s birthday.’

‘Never mind,’ Sanjay replied. ‘We’ll go out and enjoy ourselves. They’re all coming back tomorrow. It’s our last evening together like this.’

It was my first look at an American buffet. Before I was married, when friends and relatives had returned from trips to the US, they would almost invariably talk about the food. ‘Big big plates,’ they would say, recalling the highlights of their trip. ‘Big big portions. So much to eat. So easy to become fat.’

Here, on counters that lined the length of the restaurant, moist yellow kernels of corn sat next to glistening green peas. Slices of blood-red beet were arranged near broccoli shaped like miniature trees. And all those beans – kidney and black-eyed, chickpea and lima.

‘And see, this is only one section,’ Sanjay said. Holding plastic trays, we walked to an area where large stainless steel vats steamed with soup – minestrone and split pea, clam chowder and chicken noodle. Further down, there were trays of cheese-laden breads and garlic rolls, pizza slices and spongy muffins filled with fruit. Jellies wobbled and white cream on cakes twirled and swirled. After all those cookies at home, I wasn’t even hungry, but this seemed too good to pass up.

‘So, what did you do today?’ Sanjay asked, when we’d sat down and he was slicing into a stack of tomatoes. ‘Are you finding that you are getting more settled in?’

I wished, at that moment, that I could have been like the smart lady with the perfect English accent on Cheers, who always had something funny to say, or the cheerful red-haired mother on Happy Days. Instead, I told Sanjay about someone calling to offer me a credit card, which had been the highlight of my day, but that the offer was revoked when I told her I’d never had one before.

‘Actually, I think I’m a little nervous,’ I said, revealing something to Sanjay that I had just begun to know myself. ‘I’m worried about your family coming tomorrow – if we all will, you know, get along.’

‘I understand,’ said Sanjay, nodding. ‘You’ll do fine. They’ll grow to love you,’ he reassured, squeezing some mustard out of a packet onto a portion of French fries. He raised his earnest face and looked straight into mine. ‘You just have to obey them, keep quiet, smile, and everything will be great,’ he said.

The spoon of split pea soup I was holding close to my mouth suddenly stopped moving, lingering on the edge of my lips. I had known in principle that this was how good daughters-in-law behaved, but had never thought my husband would be actually giving me instructions.

‘What if they tell me to do something and I can’t obey them?’ I asked him, fearful. ‘What if, no matter what I do, they are still never happy with me?’

‘My parents are reasonable people,’ Sanjay said. ‘As long as you don’t argue with them, everything will be fine. And there is no need for you to argue with them because, as I say, they are reasonable people. I told you, just stay quiet, and obey. Come, are you finished? Let’s go home.’

The next day at the airport I dutifully bowed my head to greet my husband’s parents, something I knew they would expect me to do first thing in the morning and last thing at night for at least the first year of married life.

My father-in-law had been trundled over in a wheelchair; usually, he was quite happy with a cane, which he felt he needed after a fall in a slippery bathtub a few years ago (after which, this being America, he sued the builder of the house). But he was never one to reject a free ride, so when it was offered to him by way of a wheelchair, he wasn’t about to decline. Malini and I hugged awkwardly, she staring at my daffodil-yellow sari and me at her slim-fitting velvet tracksuit.

We made our way to the car park opposite the terminal, and began unloading the mounds of luggage. Inside those suitcases were dozens of packets of masala and chevda, the foods that no bonafide Indian home should be without, and all the silks and brocades that my in-laws had accumulated in Delhi, as part of my dowry and on their own.

I helped my father-in-law into the front passenger seat, and my mother-in-law into the back. Malini got in on the other side. Sanjay was revving up the engine as I squeezed the last little sack into the boot, and slammed the lid down. As soon as I did so, Sanjay, thinking everyone was in, drove off, leaving me standing there. He was the only one who realized I was missing, just as he was turning the corner, and came back to fetch me.

‘Sorry, my mistake,’ he said, as I opened the door and got in, my mother-in-law looking displeased as she made room for me.

At home, I carted the luggage off into the bedrooms, rubbed my mother-in-law’s feet, and began reheating dinner – which had been ready since eight this morning.

‘You know, Ma, Priya has been working very hard for your arrival,’ Sanjay said, as she enjoyed a cup of tea. ‘She’s been really great. The house is spotless, no? And she’s learned to do all the grocery shopping and everything. She knows to buy only generic brands, and she uses coupons and all.’

I smiled, touched by his observation.

‘Hah, hah, very good,’ my mother-in-law responded. ‘What’s for dinner?’

I had prepared South Indian cuisine in honour of their arrival. I lay the platters of steamed idli and spicy sambar on the table, which I had covered with white paper doilies. The bright overhead light shone on the condiments and cutlery, making the table setting look like something that might be photographed in a magazine.

Dinner was over quickly, with none of those lingering conversations I had seen on those daytime movies, the ones where brandies were poured and dainty chocolates devoured. My dreaded first night at home with the in-laws seemed to have gone off OK.

Now, I just had the rest of my life to worry about.

3

It’s true when people say marriage is ‘hard work’. There are floors to scrub and shelves to dust and mirrors to wipe. There are onions to chop and spices to sizzle and pots of tea to brew. There are a hundred things to do every day, none of which, I soon realized, had anything to do with the actual marriage itself.

At least that was what my marriage was like.

I knew, in marrying Sanjay, that I was going to be part of a traditional joint Hindu family, two generations under one roof. My own parents had done it that way back in Delhi, as had everyone I knew. In many Hindu families, for a son to have his own home is somewhere between a scandal and a tragedy. Male children are born to care for their parents, and then they marry and bring a wife into the house. She is expected to be ‘homely’. In America, that means ‘not good-looking’. In India, it means ‘taking care of the home and being there all the time’ – with the exception of dashing off to buy peas.

So it wasn’t as if I hadn’t been prepared for any of this. In India, where labour is cheap, we could say things like: ‘I’ll send my man to pick you up.’ There, you can live well as a member of the middle class. In America, everything always seems to be a struggle, what with terrifying taxes that you can’t corrupt your way out of, and car registrations, and electricity bills.

Thankfully, my mother had groomed my sisters and me for what she called a ‘domestic life’.

‘Darlings, you have to learn how to take the entire skin off an apple before it turns brown!’ she used to say to us, as we endured potato-peeling and parsley-chopping rituals.

All of which, I have to say, has now come in very handy.

But nobody ever tells you what really happens when a marriage begins; when the wedding reception is over and the gifts are cleared and a girl moves in with a boy – and, in my case, his entire family. Nobody prepares you for that. Like a Hollywood ending, you never know what happens after the credits have rolled and it’s the morning after the couple have walked off into the sunset.

Like all other girls of my age and background, my view of marriage was shaped by commercials and Indian soap operas, where men never saw their wives looking anything other than flawless. There were no acne breakouts, no runny noses, no belching or burping in marriage. I imagined that my future husband would always be clean, sweet and smiling. I would always have waxed legs and a pristine complexion. We would never have a moment’s silence between us. He would garland me with gold chains and I, petite in his oversized pyjama shirt, would kiss his stubbly cheek every morning.

But my marriage, as tender as it could occasionally be, was nothing like that.

It was, in the end, a guy in a vest, scratching himself, and a girl wondering what to make for dinner. For us, there were no trips to Ethan Allen for mahogany bookcases, no putting up pictures together and standing back, arms around one another, looking at the straight and perfect job we had just done. There were no nose-nuzzling nights with a bottle of wine in front of the fire. It was about me being absorbed into the life of Sanjay and his family, without leaving much of myself behind.

Sanjay had promised me that when his family returned from India, they would throw a grand reception to introduce me to all their friends. I had already selected the sari I would wear to the party, a cream chiffon one that had been a gift from my meddlesome Aunt Vimla, and the one thing about her I actually liked. I would wear it with the gold I had been given on my wedding day, and I would be poised and pure and everyone in my in-law’s Northridge circle of friends would marvel at how Sanjay Sohni had found such a nice wife.

But my mother-in-law told me, a week after their return, that there would be no such party.

‘Enough money was spent in India at the wedding,’ she said, referring to my father’s expenses and some imaginary ones of her own. ‘No need to do anything here. Bas, you’ll slowly meet people. Our friends will have lunches and teas. Then they can see you. Anyhow, you are busy with the house. No time to socialize.’

Sanjay was one of the last in his group to get married, so we instantaneously had a young-couple clan to be a part of. Every few Saturday nights, once I had prepared dinner for my in-laws and cleaned the kitchen, Sanjay took me out with his friends. We went for dinners in loud restaurants where all the boys drank beer and paid me no heed. There was Rajesh and Naresh and Prakash, married to girls named Seema and Dina and Monu, and they looked me up and down, with no attempts made to be subtle about it, each time we met. All the wives worked, and seemed proud of it. When they weren’t talking about bad bosses and car payments, they gossiped about other girls. They wore quite smart Western clothes, and seemed to have forgotten the days when they were new to America from India, and had dressed traditionally, just like me. They were Indian girls, but American now, and I knew when I met them that they would never become my real friends, because whenever I saw them they made me long to be with my sisters again.

Whenever Sanjay wanted to see these people, I went along with him. When we returned home, I told my in-laws that we had had a nice time, and said nothing as Sanjay lied to them about how much dinner had cost. I set the alarm clock for early the next day so I could get up and make tea. Then I touched their feet, even if they had already gone to bed. Between that and picking up the trail of clothes and other items Sanjay would leave in his wake, I knew I would be spending much of my marriage at a ninety-degree angle.

I was a good Hindu wife. This is just what I did. Dutiful, devoted and ever so downtrodden, but always happy and smiling. I was to do what my in-laws said.

And now, I was to go and find a job.

4

Vivacious! was my favourite magazine in the whole world. When it arrived every month at our home in Delhi, I would tear off the Cellophane covering, sit down with a jug of nimbu pani and not get up again until I had read the issue cover to cover. There were none of those ‘Ten Wicked Ways to Please Your Lover’ columns like I was embarrassed to see that American magazines are filled with. Instead, I read features with titles like ‘Ghee – Not Just in Your Mother’s Kitchen’. There were articles about at-home pedicures (or at least how to train the maids to give them), the importance of yoga in prenatal care, and how curtains can be made from those unwanted silk saris. Delhi socialites were interviewed about their most memorable parties, and Hindi movie-stars about how grrreat their co-stars were in their latest films.

When I was still a single and carefree Delhi girl, I had been priming myself to ask my father if I could apply to Vivacious! for a job. I had realized, as I flicked through the crisp pages of the magazine, occasionally holding it up to my nose to smell the new print, that I wanted to write those stories. I had composed plenty of essays for my degree in English literature, for which I almost always got at least a B-plus, so there must have been some ability in me to put words together. My father, I knew, would probably refuse, and repeat to me that ‘no woman in this family has ever worked outside the house – and look, your sisters are all at home where they belong’, which is something he said to any of us when we brought up the subject. And I had to confess that it was not important enough to get into an argument about. Still, there had been no harm in asking again.

But then marriage happened to me. Literally. This profound life change fell upon me as suddenly and fatefully as buckets of dirty water sometimes tumble from buildings upon Delhi pedestrians, as they walk by drinking coconut juice and eating tamarind-soaked rice crispies.

So the night that my mother-in-law suggested I look for a job, my first thought was to reprise my former ambition of being a journalist. My grandmother used to say to me, ‘After marriage, do what you want. Nobody wants a working girl as a bride, but maybe later, if you are lucky, your husband will permit you to have your dreams.’

I had hoped that my in-laws would reward my proven subservience by acquiescing to a small request that I had.

‘Absolutely not!’ my father-in-law shouted when I mentioned it, reacting as if I had told him I wanted to become a stripper. ‘I’m not having a daughter-in-law do that kind of nonsense work. Reporter-beporter, hah! This is a small community, and I will not let people say they have seen the wife of my only son with different men, meeting them alone. Maybe you’ll have to do interviews in hotel rooms? Maybe they will give you alcohol? Then what will you do? If you were a doctor, something respectable, I would not have a problem. But none of this going here and there by yourself. I will not tolerate it. You must find a simple job.’

New brides were not supposed to argue with their in-laws, so I deferred to my husband, hoping he would step in. But he said nothing, keeping his eyes on his plate the entire time, playing with a paratha.

‘Fine, Mummy, Papa,’ I said quietly. ‘As you wish.’

It was disappointing, but I took comfort in my grandmother’s words as she would observe any of life’s minute dramas and greater mysteries.

‘Things come about the way they are supposed to,’ she would often repeat. ‘Everything happens for a reason.’

5

Those words wafted around in my head as I sat in my car in front of a gleaming chrome and steel building in Beverly Hills, about to go into my fifth job interview in ten days. The sun was glinting off the mirrored surface of the building with such brightness that the number on the top of the entrance was momentarily hidden, so I couldn’t be sure I was even in the right place. It looked, well, too nice. I had so far been turned down for salesgirls positions in three stores – the interviewers had each time surveyed my drab, shapeless Indian outfit and told me the position had already been filled. And the owner of the local 7–Eleven rejected my application because I had ‘no experience’, even though I reminded him that I had quite a way with a broom, and was pretty sure I could master the cash register in no time.

Apparently, in this country, having no job before the age of twenty-four isn’t the soundest recommendation, and the current flat economy didn’t help. Had I been in India, the only reason I would be out seeking work was because a search for a husband had, for whatever reason, been deferred. There, to be twenty-four and gainfully unemployed was a good thing.

I checked my watch. It was exactly nine o’clock. I was on time, and, as sophisticated as this place looked, it was the correct address. I took a deep breath, said the prayer invoking Laxmi, the Goddess of Prosperity, that I always said before one of these, and went in. Hopefully, today, She would listen to me.

‘Um, hello, I’m here to interview for the receptionist position,’ I said to the security guard in the cool marble foyer, pulling out the newspaper ad. He made a call, and then gave me a ‘Visitor’ tag, which I plastered on my tunic top. In the elevator, I checked myself in the mirror, smoothed down my waist-length hair, wiped off a bit of lip-gloss that had somehow landed on my chin, and hiked up my drawstring trousers so they no longer puddled around my ankles. The red powder that I wore in my hair parting to signify my status as a newlywed wife was still bright and intact. It always drew stares, and many times gasps of concern from strangers who thought that perhaps my scalp was bleeding. In the concentrated light of the elevator, it looked almost sinister. The pendant of the Hindu goddess Durga around my neck shone under the spotlights. The small heels of my slightly scuffed beige shoes added a bit of height to my frame, and I noticed that I still hadn’t regained the weight I’d lost since my wedding, which explained why my trousers – drawstring notwithstanding – couldn’t stay up.

When I got out, I saw the words Hollywood Insider scrawled in brilliant blue across a set of double glass doors leading to an office. Inside, two girls were sitting on a dark orange sofa in the reception area and on a corner table was a stack of job-application forms. I picked one up and started to fill it out. I had the contents of these almost memorized by now.

The girls, obviously friends, were fashionably dressed and lively, chatting to one another with confidence.

‘I’m sure one of us will slam-dunk this,’ said the first girl. ‘I have to admit, things are really looking up for me since I started on the Zoloft.’

‘Yeah,’ said the other one, chewing gum. ‘Can you imagine who we could meet? You know, Colin Farrell could come in through those doors any second.’ At that, they both giggled and pretended to swoon, while my only thought was: Colin who?

Sitting behind the reception desk was a woman who looked at least fifteen months pregnant, trying to get comfortable in her chair. I glanced around at the smooth, shiny marble floors, the glass-enclosed offices on either side of me, the huge framed magazine covers featuring famous people that lined the walls. The receptionist, who introduced herself as Dara, asked to speak to each of the other girls first, individually. They conversed quietly while I scribbled my details down on the form. Name: Priya Sohni. Age: 24. Languages: English, Hindi, Conversational French. I left blank the space next to ‘Experience’.

Before I knew it, it was my turn.

‘Hi,’ Dara said, barely able to move. ‘So, as you’ve probably guessed this is for my position, as I’ve got more pressing things to do,’ she said, pointing to her large, bulbous stomach. ‘I’ll chat with you first, and then send you off to human resources for a second interview. OK? Right, let’s have a look,’ she continued, scanning down my form.

‘You have all your papers? Legal?’ she asked, when she read that my place of birth was India.

‘Yes, miss, absolutely,’ I replied, nervously winding a handkerchief in and out of my fingers.

‘I love your accent,’ she said smiling. ‘Sounds real nice. So, are you familiar with computers?’ she asked, casting a curious glance towards the slim red streak down my hair parting.

‘I’m proficient with word processing,’ I said.

‘Good English, huh?’

‘Bachelor’s in literature.’

‘When do you think you can you start?’

‘Um, right away, if you would like,’ I replied hopefully.

‘That’s good to hear,’ she said, grimacing and looking down. ‘I think my water just broke.’

Five minutes later, as Dara called her husband to come to fetch her, yelling out to me, ‘Good luck with the rest of the interview!’, I was carted along to the head of human resources, an efficient-looking woman named Hilda. She had short black hair, was dressed in a business suit that seemed a bit heavy for this climate, and asked me to take a seat in her office. I tried not to get my hopes up, but this was the furthest I had ever been.

‘You know what the job is, yes?’ she asked. ‘We’re a celebrity magazine. There’s lots of answering of phones, taking deliveries, greeting visitors.’ As I nodded, she looked at my application from again.

‘It says here you’re from India. What brought you to America?’

‘Marriage. My husband emigrated from India many years ago with his family,’ I replied.

She looked up, and put down her pen.

‘Was it, an, um, what-do-you-call-them, arranged marriage?’ she asked, suddenly interested. ‘And a joint family? Like on the Discovery channel? Do you all live together?’

‘Yes, as a matter of fact we do,’ I said, my accent suddenly sounding thick and clumsy in this light-filled room with the modern art on its walls. ‘It’s quite traditional, how it all happened.’ I was conscious of my English, remembering Mrs Pereira from school, who would thwack my palm with a chipped wooden ruler if I slurred words together or dropped letters from their place. Even if I was living in America now, there would never be any ‘gonna’ or ‘wanna’ or ‘gotta’.

‘Yeah, I read something in Marie-Claire about brides moving in with their in-laws,’ Hilda continued. ‘Hafta say, don’t know how you folks do it. It’s hard enough living with just my husband, forget his parents.

‘I think you’ve forgotten to fill this in,’ she then said, suddenly changing the subject and pointing to the ‘Experience’ section. My heart sank. This was the part where I was always shown the door.

‘I didn’t forget,’ I said quietly. ‘I have not had a job before. This would be my first.’

Hilda looked stunned.

‘Not even while you were in college? Not even part time or summers? Well, that’s disappointing because the ad did say we needed someone with experience. I’m sorry, I know you came all the way in, but –’

‘Please, Miss Hilda,’ I stammered, trying not to cry, I couldn’t take another rejection, another day of going home empty-handed, and then having to start the search all over again. Already, my in-laws were complaining about how much petrol I was wasting on what they called ‘coming up and down’, as if it were my fault that nobody wanted to hire me.

‘I know I can do the job,’ I pleaded to Hilda. ‘I learn very quickly and am willing to work hard. Please, just give me a chance.’

Hilda leaned back in her chair. ‘You don’t want to become an actress, do you?’ she asked, narrowing her eyes.

‘Oh my, no!’ I replied, surprised at the question.

‘Then that’s about the only thing you have going for you. Everybody else who comes in here thinks that this will be their first step into the industry, as if they’ll be discovered by some super-agent as they’re sitting behind reception. Like the two girls who were in here before you. I knew they weren’t serious. It’s infuriating. We fill the position so often that it’s become a joke. Dara is the only one we’ve had that had a legitimate reason for leaving,’ Hilda said, shaking her head.