Asha and Chetan met, ironically enough, at an Indian function. She had fled the aunties who were helpfully pointing out that she was old enough to marry, and had fetched up behind the function hall. Her annoyance at seeing someone else there was matched only by his. She held up her hands defensively.

“I’m not a twenty three year old IT graduate your mom wants you to check out, I swear.”

He laughed outright at that, and it was a particularly nice laugh. “Sorry, yeah, I know… it’s just, I’ve been standing here for three minutes and FML finally loaded on my iPhone, so I was going to get pissed off.”

“Oh!” he added, as though he’d just figured out the Grand Unified Theory. “I’m Chetan. Sorry. Should’ve introduced myself.”

She grinned at him. “It’s cool. I’m Asha.”

---

Casual inquiries about him revealed that the only reason Chetan was at the function at all was because his mother had finally been re-accepted into the fold of her (and Asha’s) Hindu Tamil community. Thirty years ago, she had run away to marry a Muslim man and – this was where the aunties became particularly indignant – remained happily married to him and had successfully raised an LSE boy and a Purdue girl, both of whom were perfectly normal children.

Asha listened to all this with a carefully cultivated air of boredom. Didn’t she know Anusha, Chetan’s sister, from somewhere in school? Nope, they were both International School brats. Dance class, maybe, Asha suggested. Oh no, said Hideous Pink Sari Aunty, they’ve been traveling for years, living in Dubai or something.

“Very quiet, they all are,” the HPSA observed with satisfaction. “That boy, Chetan – at least the children have proper names, no? - is so quiet, he reads all the time.”

Asha added him to her Gmail chat that evening.

---

If she’d been asked, Asha would probably have denied any initial romantic interest in Chetan. What she was fascinated by was his deviance, whether it was earned or not. She almost envied his exclusion from the community, even as she hobnobbed with aunties and uncles. He was already distanced, he had no relation to them, while she – attracted by the familiarity, repelled by the hypocrisy – struggled to decide if she should remain or stay.

There was something comfortingly familiar, and yet disarmingly exotic, about Chetan. She didn’t have to be his cultural tour guide, but at the same time, he was liberal minded enough to be an excellent conversationalist. He was, occasionally, charmingly awkward, but unlike other Indian boys she’d met, he never ceased to be comfortable around her.

Following what seemed to be a time-honored tradition, Chetan eventually moved to the US to finish up a Master’s in Economics. Perhaps not-so-coincidentally, he landed up at the university Asha was in, completing her degree in biochemistry. They spent a lot of time postponing assignments to hang out in coffee places together. Saturday evenings were reserved for experimental Indian cooking, which improved slowly over rambling discussions of religion and literature. At the end of a year, much to no one’s surprise but their own, Asha and Chetan discovered that they were quite definitely in love.

Five months after Asha’s graduation and Chetan’s employment at Chase, Chetan proposed. Asha couldn’t quite see why he needed to ask, so she said yes as soon as she could get a word in edgewise.

The only snag was that her parents hadn’t the faintest idea who Chetan was.

---

Asha wasn’t stupid. She presented Chetan to her parents as though he was a project proposal at a board meeting: the good first (character, education, employment, reliability), then the bad (religion, caste, unorthodox family), and finally the ugly (they’d fallen in love and she wasn’t about to marry anyone else).

Her mother seemed horrified and slightly resigned at the same time. “I knew this would happen to you in the States, what else have you been doing behind my back?” she’d ask tremulously. Her father, on the other hand, seemed quietly relieved that he didn’t have to go to the bother of finding her a husband himself.

After two tentative meetings between both parental units, Asha had had enough. “I propose we run away and get married,” she suggested, as they sat on his couch pretending to watch TV.

“Not particularly fair to either of them,” said Chetan thoughtfully. “I mean, your parents probably planned out your wedding before you were old enough to wear a sari. Mustn’t disappoint them.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Asha snapped. “As if that’s going to be worse than my marrying you.”

“Think about it,” he insisted, angling his head to stare down at her.

Asha stared. “Why are you being so nice? I mean – they threw your mum out, and she’s the sweetest person I know, just because of whom she married. They brought you back like they were doing you a favor. Why aren’t you angry?”

Chetan shrugged. “They’re your people. Mine might do the same. But then they’re my people.”

Asha regarded him. “You’re mad,” she said finally.

Chetan grinned. “And you’re marrying the madman.”

---

The wedding was loud and crammed full of people even Asha’s parents hadn’t seen in ten years, as though they were trying to make up for Chetan’s imperfections by being as ostentatious as possible. Asha fumed slightly more each day of the week, while Chetan behaved like a perfect gentleman, earning major brownie points from her parents.

People Asha had no intention of ever meeting again came up to congratulate her, inspecting Chetan greedily as though he were some foreign species that she’d taken a perverse fancy to. When they departed, she could see them scurrying away to discuss the matter further. She wouldn’t have minded nearly so much if it weren’t for the fact that they did it during the ceremonies, as they devoured huge heaped banana leaves of wedding food, and in earshot of her mother, who was already a nervous wreck.

Chetan caught her glaring, and winked. Asha tried to remind herself that at the end of the day she’d be spending the rest of her life with him, after all.

---

One and a half years passed in relative bliss before either of them really got used to the idea of marriage.

Asha refused to attend any Hindu events her friends or relatives invited her to. Chetan couldn’t understand it. “Look, it’s been at least a year. It’s not like they’re going to be as obnoxious as before. And besides, you grew up with these kids! Don’t you want to see them again, catch up, all that?” But Asha insisted that the only thing that’d happen would be a repeat version of her wedding, on a smaller scale. They’d gabble away in Tamil, a language Chetan had only the barest grasp of, and analyze the way the two of them walked, talked, touched.

Funnily enough, she had no qualms attending events with Chetan’s family. All right, the extended family could be a little too cosmopolitan for her sometimes, and she always felt as though his cousins made it a point to be better dressed than her. But they all spoke to her in English instead of Hindi, and his parents were sweethearts. Every now and then, catching Chetan’s wide grin in the middle of a crowd of people, she’d feel a pang of envy – that he worked so well with them, accepting them, being accepted.

---

She was just about to call and ask why Chetan was running late when her cellphone rang, and an apologetic voice informed her that her husband was in the hospital after a truck ran into his car.

Asha tried to breathe while a voice screamed You idiot, Chetan! in her head. Fifteen minutes later she was terrorizing the hospital receptionist, trying not to think about every Bollywood movie where the major characters ended up in ICU.

Chetan hadn’t, thankfully, although his situation wasn’t much better. Asha thought she’d been holding up well enough for the both of them until she went to sit next to him. He looked terrible, with a broken leg and a horrifying bloodied bandage at his temple. He was unconscious, which was the worst part, and medical equipment beeped ominously. A doctor explained that Chetan was in no immediate danger, while Asha took deep breaths and nodded calmly.

All of which made it much worse when Chetan slipped into a coma later that night.

---

By the next morning, Asha had called Chetan’s parents, who couldn’t fly back from visiting Anusha until later that day; had spoken to her horrified mother, trying to get her voice under control; had tried not to yell at the nurses who came in to check Chetan’s stats and could never tell her anything definite besides the fact that nothing had changed. She’d refused point-blank to leave, which left her sitting exhaustedly on an uncomfortable chair, staring at his unresponsive face.

She barely registered the strident voice before the door to the room swung open and a matronly Indian aunty bustled in.

“Meena aunty?” said Asha blankly, as the apparition settled down with a huge bag and closed the door in the nurse’s face.

“How is he?” said Meena aunty, in what she probably believed was a hushed voice.

Asha swallowed. “No change, they said. But apparently it’s not a deep coma. They don’t … think it will lead to significant brain damage.”

Meena aunty nodded with satisfaction, as though she was diagnosing him herself. “Not to worry, he’ll be completely fine. You remember Sudha’s brother-in-law, no?”

“Er, no, not exac -”

“He also had a car crash and went into a coma, but after three days – completely fine. Don’t worry, nothing will happen to Chetan.”

Asha felt her eyes prickle at the reassurance, but had to ask. “Why – I mean, I didn’t expect that – I didn’t know you would be visiting – ”

Meena aunty looked faintly affronted. “Well, when your mother told me about it, I obviously had to come, no? We’re only two miles away and I’ve known you since you were this small. As if I can’t even do this. I don’t know why you didn’t call us anyway.”

Asha couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

“Listen,” said Meena aunty briskly, “you’re not doing anything useful if you keep sitting here and staring at his face. Look at you, you haven’t slept or eaten or anything, have you?”

She began pulling out Tupperware boxes of idlis and rice and sambhar. “Go wash your face and I’ll keep an eye on him. When you come back we can eat – oh, come now, it’s all right.” Because by this time Asha had dissolved into tears.

Of course Meena aunty would be there, though she’d never understand why Asha hadn’t called her. And of course she’d talk and judge and gossip, Asha thought, through the crying she couldn’t seem to control. What was it Chetan had called them? Her people. The same people who’d made her business theirs and so turned up at hospitals with packed idli lunches; who invited her to their parties and poojas not really because she was a black sheep but maybe, just maybe, because they were reminding her that she didn’t need to be. They’d claimed her for themselves, and so she was theirs to take care of.

---

Chetan woke up after two nightmarish days, and Asha was too relieved at his recovery to stop him from making fun of her sudden realization. “Now you’ll have to invite them home,” he pointed out gleefully, “and they’ll have all these stories about what you did when you were small.”

“Or,” Asha returned sweetly, “they’ll want to know when we’re having kids,” and watched as Chetan’s face took on a hunted expression.

She ended up inviting several aunties and the corresponding uncles over. And in between asking after their children and unleashing her still-nearly-perfect Tamil, Asha began to feel as though she’d been gently slotted back into place.

And then, in the lull of conversation between the females, Sudha aunty cleared her throat. “So,” she piped up brightly, “it’s been almost two years, no?”

A dull sense of horror began to creep over Asha.

“Oh, yes!” Meena aunty exclaimed. A gaggle of women smiled conspiratorially at Asha. “When will there be children?”

Notes:

idlis: small steamed rice cakes
sambhar: a spicy stew mainly eaten in South India

Photo Courtesy: rx_kamakashi