“I won’t tell anyone,” Viren Bhai said.
10
Kissing has a glorious and convoluted history in Hindi films. Contrary to popular belief, there have been instances of lip-on-lip action on the Indian silver screen down through the ages, beginning in the surprisingly liberal era of colonialism and oppression, with a high spot in 1933’s Karma, which featured a four-minute lip-lock. Soon after independence, the 1952 Cinematograph Act brought forth a unified and reconstituted Central Board of Film Censors and less kissing. Notable exceptions included Rishi Kapoor and Dimple Kapadia’s 1973 kiss in Bobby and Shashi Kapoor’s bold kissing spree of that same decade. Generally, however, making out was frowned upon, so directors had to get creative. Kissing, and indeed sex, became something alluded to with song and dance, bees drinking nectar, fish touching lips, closeups of flowers, rippling water, birds nuzzling, tipped umbrellas, turned cheeks, and wet sari choreography. By the 1980s, actually showing two people kissing was considered unimaginative. In this repressive climate, a generation learned to squirm awkwardly at the prospect of onscreen Indian kissing. By the time Aamir Khan embarked on a kissing rampage—Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak, Love Love Love, Dil Hai Ki Manta Nahin, Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar, Raja Hindustani—it was just uncomfortable. Much later, the norms relaxed again and kissing came back in full force, with even Shah Rukh Khan getting in on the action in Jab Tak Hai Jaan. Youngsters these days grow up unfazed by rampant kissing in movies, but the older crowd still longs for the bygone days when a burning fire was good enough.
Behind the Dairy Queen, Leena licked her ice cream. It was melting fast on that hot day, and she ran her tongue along the perimeter of the cone’s opening so the butter pecan wouldn’t drip. They sat that way in the grass for a while, wordless, him watching her lick and then him licking too, until they were both done.
“That was good,” Prem said.
“Mm-hmm,” Leena said.
For almost an entire hour, they shared their likes and dislikes, hopes and dreams, though Prem had to concoct his answers somewhat to account for his lack of life plan and his hidden past. She said she wanted to open a salon specializing in Indian women’s beauty needs. He said he wanted to buy an Exxon. He said they should go to a mountaintop in Switzerland, and she said they should attend the Filmfare Awards one year. They didn’t overtly discuss spending their lives together, but that’s what was implied when Prem took her hand and said, “I hope you like gas.”
She did like it, the smell of it on his clothes when he came home at night, and emanating from his one pair of shoes placed carefully at the door. She liked that he worked hard and enthusiastically and that he was modest and meant what he said. Varsha pointed out that Prem was not very ambitious and kind of reserved, to which Leena replied, “Exactly.” Their fates were sealed when Prem gave her a mixtape containing the songs from their oily note antakshari. She imagined him spending hours at a friend’s apartment sitting on the floor next to abutting tape players, pressing rewind and stop and play and record over and over again until he got it just right, and she realized it was the best gift she had ever gotten.
Prem continued to collect her hair, which he found everywhere, though she still had so much of it on her head. They met again behind the Dairy Queen and also behind the Brunswick Lanes bowling alley, and, though they did not have a car, at the defunct Plainfield Edison drive-in. They stole glances in the apartment, and Prem soaked up the canorous tones of Leena arguing with her father about cricket matches whose outcomes had been written long ago. He found he wanted always to be in her presence. Around her, he was no longer nervous and awkward, but metamorphosed into someone charming and chivalrous. And to make matters more wonderful, she didn’t care that he was only a pumpwalla and showed no signs of wanting to leave him like the rest. He understood now why there were so many Hindi and Urdu words for love—ishq, prem, chaahat, pyar, mohabbat, aashiqui, to name a few; one word cannot contain the breadth of the emotion. By the end of summer, Prem decided to find out if she wanted to marry him, but first he had to clear up a long-standing lie.
“Is your mind out of order?” Leena said.
They were in the dairy aisle of Foodtown, where they were picking up items as yet unavailable at India America Grocers: yogurt, aluminum foil, aspirin, tomato paste, laundry detergent, etc. Hemant had sent Prem to help his daughter with the bags on the walk home, and Prem took this as a sign that he should make his move.
Several weeks earlier, when Leena had asked Prem about his relationships with other girls in America, the lie had come easily to him—like, oh no, the truth will be too much trouble at this time, so dishoom! Lie! He thought he ought to come more clean. At Foodtown, he poured out to her the list of women he had attempted to woo, beginning with the somewhat nice-looking pharmacy student, moving to the deep-voiced bank teller, all the way to Shoe Town Sushila, enumerating the varied and creative ways he’d been dumped.
“So when I asked what was your dating history, you decided that lying would be fine?” Leena said with a shake of her head and an open-palmed gesture of disbelief.
“I did not want you to know I was so rejected.” Prem scratched the back of his neck and wondered for a moment how the bit of information he was about to offer would affect his case. “But everyone else knows.”
Leena threw her hands in the air. “Oh, I see, everyone else knows! Fantastic! Really, what is wrong with your brain?”
After a protracted discussion of what was wrong with Prem’s brain in front of Roberta, the checkout lady with very high hair, they left Foodtown in bitter silence. Outside of Hit or Miss off-price women’s clothing store, Prem broke the silence with an exasperated thump of the grocery bags on the pavement. “None of the others were anything next to you.”
Leena looked wistfully beyond Prem at the cars stopped at the red light on Oak Tree. “But why not just say the truth? What else are you lying about? Are you secretly married? Do you have ten children? Do you really want to buy the Exxon? Do you even like the smell of gas?” she said.
He recognized that this was probably the correct juncture at which to talk to her about his true identity, about how he ended up in Edison, about his family’s position and wealth, and how he tried to make a movie but ended up getting a cat murdered. Yet when he looked at her face, weary and annoyed, the frustration evident in her eyebrows, he couldn’t do it.
“I’m going into Hit or Miss now,” she said. “Don’t follow me. And here, take the bags.”
* * *
September unfolded as the worst month ever, owing not only to Leena’s impenetrable barricade of silence against Prem though they continued to reside under the same roof, but also because of the renewed attacks against Indian Americans in New Jersey.
“I don’t know, I just don’t know,” Hemant sighed. He was responding to Vilayat Hussain, a bulky, mustachioed anesthesiologist awaiting US medical licensing and meanwhile employed as a custodian at J. P. Stevens High School, who wanted to know how the police could possibly say the crimes were not racially motivated when the assailants were heard yelling “dothead.” They were squeezed into the Engineers’ apartment again for a meeting Hemant had quickly thrown together. It seemed he was becoming King’s Court’s unofficial community organizer, with his outrage in the face of injustice, his judicious proposals, and his excellent flyers.
“They beat him with a bat,” Gitanjali Vora said.
“It was with bricks, eleven of them,” Mohan said.
“Eleven bricks?” Gopal said.
“Eleven guys, you donkey,” Mohan said.
“The way you said it, you made it sound that—”
“And it was in a busy area where anyone could see. Near to the Jersey City firehouse and a park also,” Kailash Mistry said.
“And he was a doctor, can you believe?” Deepak said.
“Why does that matter?” Lucky said.
“It matters, yaar,” Deepak said, biting into a nectarine.
“Okay, okay, you all are idiots,” Uttam Jindal said. “There were two separate beatings. One was killed. They kept picking him back up after unconsciousness and beating him more with the bricks. Other guy was with the bat. He is in the coma now.”
“Look,” Hemant said, “we do not know as yet if this information is correct. But we do know some action must be taken. Now, who has ideas?”
“Maybe we can tell about this to the Prime Minister when he comes in a few weeks,” Gopal suggested.
Mohan was visibly irked. “Okay, you will just walk into the White House and join Reagan and Rajiv Gandhi for tea. While you are there, please also solve this guns-for-hostages business.”
Leena tried to refocus the discussion. “Who can help me to write the letters to the mayor and congress members tomorrow evening?”
Prem raised his hand to seize the opportunity; she couldn’t snub him publicly without drawing attention to their curious dynamic. But it turned out Leena did not subscribe to this same view. “I do not need your help,” she said, barely glancing at him.
Hemant cleared his throat and lowered his voice. “Then why did you ask, ‘Who can help me?’”
Leena squiggled her mouth in annoyance. “I just meant—”
“Great, I’ll be here at seven,” Prem said.
