When he reached her apartment, her roommate directed him to find her at Falguni’s apartment. At Falguni’s, where a classical singing lesson for three very shrill girls was mid-raag, he was sent to Tun-Tun and Tony’s. At Tun-Tun and Tony’s, they made him sit for chai. After some light gossip, they released him to look for Varsha at the Rag Shop, where she was looking for buttons. She was crouched at the end of the cotton fabrics aisle when he found her, packets of plastic buttons, cloth buttons, snaps, and studs strewn about.
“It is true,” she said before he could even ask.
A saleslady lingered nearby, so Prem pretended to inspect a bolt of plaid. “But she has not even read my letter,” he said. “It says sorry and I understand and all.”
“Ya, maybe you should have mailed that,” Varsha said and gave the display rack an aggressive spin. “Oh, come on, yaar, there are so many other choices for you here. Yesterday only, Aditi Yadhav said you are damn cute.”
“The unmarried girl who is having a baby?” Prem said.
“Maybe she is not a perfect example,” Varsha said, clicking her deadly nails on her teeth.
“Just, please, give Leena this,” he said, pulling out the letter, now somewhat rumpled, from his pants pocket.
“Prem, seriously, you are being a social embarrassment.” She collected the button packets into a messy pile and stood. “Come, let me make you meet Manaswini Bandyopadhyay. She has three cats.”
Prem sighed and said a sad thank-you, patting her on the hand before walking out of the store. Varsha called behind him, “What should I tell Manaswini?” as he went.
Prem didn’t register her words, nor those of the fast-walking Raghava Sai Shankara Subramanya, who passed him on the way to Drug Fair, nor Nathan Kothari’s who yelled something enthusiastically from the window of his blessed car, nor anyone else’s as he made his way to the Engineers’ apartment. Everyone was acting crazy, he thought. There was a rational explanation, he was sure. He would straighten it out and all would be as it was. End of story. Maybe he would watch Woh Phir Aayegi tonight. These were the things he was telling himself when Lucky, Gopal, Deepak, and Mohan tackled him to the ground.
“Man, what did you think, you were going to knock on the door and tell Hemant that Leena should marry you, a petrol pumpwalla, instead of a handsome doctor?” Mohan said. Prem’s face was pressed into the grass as Lucky sat on top of him and the others pinned down his limbs.
“Hold it together, man,” Gopal said.
“It is over, man,” Mohan said.
“They say he looks like Chunky Pandey,” Lucky said.
“Should we go for pizza?” Deepak said.
“Chunky Pandey? What a third-rate actor, man,” Mohan said.
“Don’t say such things about Chunky,” Lucky said.
“Chunky is just okay,” Deepak said, pulling a samosa from his pocket.
“A samosa was in your pocket?” Lucky said.
“I like Chunky,” Gopal said.
“We are losing focus,” Mohan said.
The roommates noticed then that Prem had stopped struggling; he was watching something behind them. From his wounded expression, they could tell it was pertinent to the reason they were on top of him. Leena and a tall, Chunky Pandey–looking man had exited a taxi and were walking up the path to Building 5. They paused when they spotted the strange pile of men who appeared to be staring at them. Leena whispered to the man, who looked directly at Prem. They disappeared together into the building.
Prem was utterly defeated. More so than when his movie production failed or when he was robbed by the brothers in tracksuits. More so even than when his father had no faith in him. Seared by her coldness, in disbelief of her perfidy and complete dearth of feeling, he gave up.
The roommates released him and tried to coax him back to their apartment, ultimately leaving him alone in the grass. He stayed there for a long time. Eventually, he walked in the direction of Beena’s, all the time asking, “How could she?”
* * *
Two weeks later, the engagement of Leena Engineer and Mikesh Aneja, MD, was celebrated in grand fashion in the side yard of Building 5. Hemant broke from his traditional tightfistedness and put on a refulgent display—a multicolored tent of overlapping Indian fabrics encircled by torches and lit from within by Christmas lights, erected by unpaid King’s Court residents—evoking on a small scale the luminous functions of India’s glitterati. Three long folding tables disguised by block-printed sheets held a buttery feast prepared by Beena Joshi, who had chopped, fried, simmered, and kneaded for two weeks without rest.
“I will absolutely no way help you with this,” Prem had said when she came home bearing three overstuffed Foodtown bags.
“What a prince you are,” Beena said, dumping the bags in the kitchen.
Prem huddled under a blanket on the couch as he had for much of the previous day and the day before that. “And I will not eat any of the food you are making for them.”
“Good, who asked you to?” Beena replied, unpacking vegetables and stuffing them into her second fridge. “What did you want me to do, say no to so much of money? Who are you thinking I am, the Queen of England? The now one, not the ruler of India one,” she specified. “If you give me how much Hemant is paying, I will gladly stop all this cooking. You think I want to make chicken makhani, chana, okra, two types roti, mattar paneer, malai kofta, and lasagna with no help, is it?”
“Sorry,” Prem said.
He retreated deeper under the blanket to ponder the meaning of his life—whether there even was one—for days, leaving the cover only as needed. His emotions followed the expected cycle, moving from denial through anger to pain, but then took a jarring detour to fear. He had tried to make himself into something in India and failed. He tried in America and failed. He had finally found purpose—Leena—but lost her too. What was left? What was the point of him? Who would even care if he left this life? And how could he be in this world without her? He wasn’t considering ending his life, per se, but couldn’t see a motive for carrying on with it either.
Beena boiled and sautéed in the midst of Prem’s misery, her own feelings vacillating between empathy and resentment. One day, when she came home from Drug Fair to find him peeling potatoes, her heart softened. “Good. You’re feeling better,” she said and ruffled his hair like he was the son she never had.
“What should I say to her?” he said.
She took out a shiny, razor-edged knife he hadn’t ever seen before and began vigorously slicing chicken thighs. “What do you mean, ‘What should I say to her?’ You should not say anything! She is engaged, it is done. You cannot go around harassing an engaged woman. It is not in our culture.”
“I don’t think it is in anyone’s culture.”
“Exactly.”
With that, Prem crawled back under the blanket.
The night of the engagement party, the tent aglow at the end of the row of apartments, he purposely worked a double shift at Exxon. He had thought the festivities, the dancing, the laughter, the overly loud music and meandering speeches, everyone donning their Indian best, would be done by the time he came home, but the revelry was still carrying on, and it annihilated him. He thought he caught a glimpse of her in purple, but quickly remembered she hated purple. Then again, maybe she didn’t.
Two weeks later, he saw her at Chi-Chi’s Mexican restaurant, on Route 1 near Woodbridge Mall, which Edisonians frequented in droves. It was a logical attraction, Indian immigrants to Tex-Mex, with its vegetarian options, beans and rice, adequate spices, and tortillas akin to roti. The principal difference from Indian cuisine, that everything was doused in cheese, was a welcome one. For these reasons, many were willing to wait over an hour for a Tampico—three cheese enchiladas, the vegetarians’ dish of choice.
