“You’ve left your husband in America and come alone?” Laxman was asking bluffly.
He had materialised next to Gita under the wedding shamiana once Gita had been separated from her parents and brother.
Gita had returned to the complex to attend the wedding of one of Sachin’s younger cousins. Someone or the other was always getting married in the enormous clan. SP Chopra’s nine kids had had kids of their own – though, thankfully, no more than two apiece – and those kids needed to be floated out into the world like diyas on a river.
Gita smiled in hello and said, “What to tell you, Laxman, it’s expensive to fly –”
“Oye, bache, tell the waiter to bring whiskey for your chachiji,” Laxman said to a passing nephew.
The tone of the Punjabi man at a wedding, Gita recognised it. Her whole childhood in Delhi appeared to have consisted of such weddings, including those held in this grand Chopra complex, draped in nets of festive light bulbs, where SP Chopra, then alive, had held court in his safari suits and turban, welcoming each person individually, slapping people on their backs and laughing so hard you felt he might never stop, that he might get stuck in one of his own laughs. Overweight, hobbling a little, his mouth puffed and eyes small and folded shut with merriness, he knew everyone, greeted each person with a kind of mirthful disapproval, and somehow found time to talk even to nobodies like Gita and her parents. “What a smart girl,” he had said on one occasion, perhaps when she was only ten. “When she’s older, she can marry one of my sons.” Then, turning to her father, “They’re such duffers, nah, Prakashji, someone needs to improve them.” Swivelling back to Gita. “Will you teach them? You came first in your class, no?”
In the end, she had married one of his grandsons instead of a son.
“No, not for me,” Gita said with a smile, refusing the drink from Laxman.
“The most shocking thing is you’re calling her ‘chachiji.’” This was another Chopra daughter-in-law in her twenties, Suman, who had sidled up to them, her eyes tiny with mischief and the spiky gold fringe of her black sari afire under the lights.
“Do I have to call her behnji then?” Laxman asked, his teeth showing from under his moustache. Tall, broad, and agile, with a small mouth, he blinked chaotically. Laxman, at 33, was the youngest of SP Chopra’s six sons – not much older than Gita. He left his red tongue between his teeth after the witticism, as if to signal it was a witticism. Gita, who had known Laxman, like she had known Sachin, from childhood, noted his stylish white bandhgala with its twist of a rose in a pocket, the thick moustache that accordioned as he smiled, the trim hair. For the first time since she’d known him as a child, he seemed handsome, presentable. His wife’s style and touch, perhaps.
“You don’t have to make our glamorous American sister-in-law sound so old,” Suman said.
“There’s no hope for me. My glory days are behind me,” Gita said, though she was feeling ebullient in her wedding sari, which she was wearing for the first time since her own wedding on this very lawn.
The three of them now shifted under the shamiana, the dewy remnants of the grass trampled in all directions by hundreds of black boots and elaborate sandals while waiters zipped through the gaps with platters of kebabs, the gaps closing as platoons of guests cornered these waiters to sample their smoking wares, the other wedding-goers huddled in tight circles around aromatic smoldering sigris in the cold night or striding with anticipation toward the buffet, as if staring at the silvery lids of the platters would make them snap open and divulge their oily treats …
Laxman took a squat, chilled glass of whiskey from his nephew and handed it to Gita.
“But I hardly drink,” Gita said, grasping the glass.
“Come on!” Laxman said, his eyes flitting toward other relatives coming through the entrance. “Don’t make us drink alone! It’s a major wedding, after so many years. A daughter of the family is getting married. And it’s a tradition in our house to have whiskey on such occasions. Try it at least!”
“I’ve tried it before,” she said.
“Then give me the glass,” Laxman clucked. He took hold of her wrist. Surprised, Gita dropped the glass on the lawn. It bounced off a scaly mound of mud without breaking.
“What did you do?” Laxman asked as the liquid seeped between the puzzle pieces of the thirsty winter-cracked earth.
“I’m so sorry,” Gita said, now flustered.
Suman laughed bawdily to mask the awkwardness of the situation, her supari breath perfuming the air.
“Anand!” Laxman shouted at his nephew. “Call the waiter again.” Then he turned to Gita. “Oh, I see—you don’t drink Indian whiskey, is it? Only foreign?”
It’s Johnnie Walker, you idiot, Gita wanted to say, but remained quiet, surprised by her own anger.
“Bring me a cognac also,” Suman told black-suited Anand huskily.
“See, your sister-in-law drinks,” Laxman said, gesturing with his eyes at Suman. “What—you only drink with your American friends? Chalo. I tried the whiskey you brought for your brother-in-law. The brand was good, but when I drank it, I could tell something wasn’t OK.” He paused, smirking at Suman. “I know the techniques people use; I also used to live abroad.” Gita knew he had been posted in the US for two months of training almost a decade back and now oversaw a piddly women’s bobby-pin factory in Shahdara. “Instead of bringing two brand-new bottles of whiskey, people take one bottle of whiskey and pour it into two bottles and then add water. And then they give that as a gift here.”
“For that you still have to buy two bottles, don’t you,” Gita said.
“But your husband’s a packaging expert,” Laxman said, accurately.
Gita said, “You’re talking through your hat. We can try that bottle together and see if that’s the case.”
There was a tense pause. Then Laxman bared his small, bluish teeth and let out his thunderous laugh. “Suman, what did I say—I could get her to drink!”
And then Suman held out her palm and Laxman slapped it.
Gita eventually broke away from Laxman’s grasp and searched for her parents and brother. On this trip, she had noticed something strange about friends and relatives – a simultaneous desperation for what she could bring them from America, as well as resentment. When she had told her friend Anamika that she wanted to permanently return to India, Anamika had said, “Gita, you live there, so you see everything in a romantic way, but I guarantee it, if you move back, you’ll run away screaming.”
Why, Gita had wondered, is she treating me like an outsider after a mere three years?
Another friend, Vasundhara, had criticised the materialism of Americans and then asked Gita if she had extra forex. You could skip the waitlists for goods like fridges and scooters in socialist India if you paid in foreign exchange. When Gita had said that, unfortunately, Sachin and she were still struggling, rents were high where they lived, a Democrat was in power, taxes had gone up, Vasundhara had said sourly, “I was just asking out of curiosity.”
It wasn’t all bad, there were plenty of nice, supportive, proud people too, but of course it was the negative interactions that stood out. At these times, Gita remembered a conversation Sachin and she had had before she had left. “They’re complexed,” Sachin had explained to her. “The whole country is complexed thanks to Nehru’s socialist policies.”
Gita, who loved home, had said, “We’re a young nation. We’re growing.”
Now she missed Sachin. They had their problems, but he was the only one who could possibly understand what she was feeling, and he was thousands of miles away, in a heavy, pilled sweater, with long, disordered hair, in a big, warm, lonely house in a town that was barely a town, snow-capped houses sparsely dotted all around, and horse pastures beyond.
Excerpted with permission from The Complex, Karan Mahajan, HarperCollins India.
