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‘Or?’
‘Stick my tongue out at anyone,’ I said, scowling and sticking my tongue out.
‘You will?’ she asked.
‘Smile.’
‘And?’
‘Touch feet of Dadi and Nani?’
‘And?’
‘Not talk much.’
‘And?’
Was there another ‘and’? I thought. I had hardly paid any attention to Mum as she had trained me for the ‘Session with the Dixits’, as she liked to call it.
‘And?’ Mum said, stopping now, the living room just a few steps ahead of us.
‘I will be nice to Purva,’ I said, scowling even more.
Mum seemed satisfied. ‘Let’s go in,’ she said.
And in we went.
2
7.15 p.m.
‘Bahu,’ someone said in a feeble voice as soon as I walked into the living room, flanked by Mum on both sides. I am not kidding, Mum can be on both sides of me at the same time. No, really, I’m serious. It’s just another of her superpowers.
I looked around, smiling awkwardly at everyone, too dazed to really notice the faces, desperately clutching at the sari that suddenly seemed too loose around my waist.
‘Focus, Kasturi, focus!’ I said to myself. ‘You are a woman of the twenty-first century; you can handle this. You can handle anything.’ I was vaguely aware that the tall, broad form of Purva was standing somewhere close by. So dazed was I that I did not even acknowledge the man I had decided to marry. Also, in all fairness, it had just struck me that I needed to pee very urgently.
Next to Purva was his mum, the only person other than Purva and my own family that I recognized. She smiled sweetly at me and kissed my forehead.
‘Yo! Bhabhi Jaan!’ said a voice that was, rather disturbingly, as familiar as it was unfamiliar. I turned around and came face to face with a man who looked like Purva. Only he was not Purva. I looked at him puzzled and spotted Purva smiling widely in the background. This was one introduction he had been dying to make.
‘Kasturi, this is Vikram, my brother. Vikki, Kasturi…’ said Purva, in his characteristically quiet voice. My eyes darted from one face to the other. How could two different people be so similar, I thought, struck again by the two faces that looked at me with almost identical smiles plastered across almost identical faces. I had seen pictures of Vikki, of course, but seeing him in person was another surprise altogether.
My parents have been lovely and whatever I might say about my mum, I have had the most perfect life with them. Except for one thing that I have always missed. It is a void that friends, toys and cousins have not been able to fill: a sibling.
‘Hello!’ said Vikki, taking my face tenderly in his hands. ‘How did a monkey like Bhaiyya find someone as beautiful as you?’
I giggled.
‘My bhabhi gorgeous-est,’ said Vikram, his face shining with such love that I felt my throat tighten. I knew it right then, in that one moment, that Vikki and I would be friends for life.
‘Bahu,’ said the same voice that had called out to me earlier, feebler this time, but tinged with unmistakable annoyance. I would have barely noticed it, had not everyone begun to stare at me. Mum nudged me and began to nod her head so vigorously in the direction the voice came from that for a second I was worried that her head would drop off. I brushed away the gruesome image.
‘What? Bahu? Me?’ I said indignantly to myself and turned around to face an elderly lady who had found herself the largest, most comfortable sofa our drawing room had to offer.
Naniji? Or Dadiji? Seeing that both the grey-haired lady and Purva’s mum had the same hawk-like nose, I concluded that it was the former.
Would it not be absolutely fabulous if I scooped towards her feet, saying, ‘Charan sparsh, Naniji’? I would then be the would-be bahu – note the ‘would-be’ please – who not only does charan sparsh at the drop of a hat but also knows all the relatives by face. Do they even make those anymore? Oh yes they do! Meet Kasturi Shukla. Tada!
