How to Be Single (42 page)

“And her age. He does not need a young wife,” her father added.

Everyone nodded their heads gratefully.

“He lived in the States for two years. He's very modern,” Amrita's father told me.

I felt extremely awkward being there, in the middle of all this. I didn't know where I should be when the man and his family arrived.

“Would you like me to go outside or to another room when they come…?”

Amrita's mother looked at her husband. The husband thought for a moment. In that moment's pause, I jumped in with “You know, when the family gets here, I'll just go outside and get some air. So you can have your privacy.”

The mother and father looked at each other. The father bobbled in agreement. “You can go in the other room with Amrita, while we talk.”

The doorbell rang and Amrita's mother went to the door. Amrita nervously waved for me to get up and we scurried into a nearby bedroom like two teenage girls.

We waited there, sitting on the bed cross-legged.

“What are they talking about?” I asked.

“The parents have to make sure they like each other. This is very important. They both must feel we come from good families.”

“And what makes a family seem like a good family?”

“Well, first, these men are all from the Brahmin caste, like my family, so that already is very helpful.”

“Does the caste system really matter anymore?”

“Not as much as before, but with things like marriages it does.”

“Really?” I thought the whole system was long gone.

“In a way, yes. The Brahmins, my caste, were the priests and teachers, the intellectuals. Then you have the people who were the farmers. Then the people who were the laborers. It's very similar to your country, with the blue-collar and the white-collar workers, but here it comes from a long tradition, and we've given them names.”

“But what about the untouchables. Is that what those people are? The ones on the street?” I asked Amrita.

“Yes.”

“So they are born poor and they're going to die poor, with no hope of advancing themselves?”

Amrita bobbled her head. “The government is starting to help them, but this is what they know.”

I didn't want to get into a political argument with her while she was backstage before her big date, but still, it was a hard topic for me to comprehend. Amrita could sense my disapproval.

“You tourists, you come to Mumbai and you see the poverty and you take your photographs. You go home and you think you've seen Mumbai. But that's not all Mumbai is. That's not all that India is.” She sounded defensive. I thought I should change the subject.

“So, what else do the families talk about together?”

“They want to know if the father has a good job, if the other siblings are responsible and have good jobs. Mostly, they want to know if they are all well educated. That's very important.”

After an hour, Mrs. Ramani knocked and walked in.

“You can meet him now,” she said, with a timid smile on her face. “His family is very nice.”

Amrita looked at me, gave a little shrug of “here goes nothing,” and walked out the door. I sat back on her childhood bed. I was exhausted. I sat there for a few minutes staring at the wall in front of me. Just as I started to drift off, the door opened again and Mrs. Ramani came in.

“His family has left. She is going out for a walk with him. Come out and sit with us.”

I quickly jumped up, trying not to look as if I had just fallen asleep in their home.

“Thank you. That would be nice.”

I sat down on the sofa. Amrita's family was still all assembled. We were just awkwardly staring at one another, so I decided to jump right in with my so-called “research.”

“I find it interesting how important a role astrology plays in marriages here in India.”

Mr. Ramani bobbled his head emphatically. “It is everything. We saw matches online, from very good families, from our community, with good jobs. But the horoscopes were not compatible. So it could not be.”

Mrs. Ramani bobbled in agreement.

“We don't have that in America. It's a very odd concept to me,” I said.

Mr. Ramani got up and started to walk around the living room, explaining it all to me like a schoolteacher.

“It's very simple. A marriage must be composed of three things: you must be emotionally compatible, intellectually compatible, and physically compatible. If you don't have all three, a marriage will not work.”

I was surprised by the “physically compatible” part. I had assumed that the sex life of the couple was the least of anyone's concerns.

“Relationships start out very fast, with a burst, a lot of attraction, but it does not last. This is because they were not compatible. The horoscopes can tell you if they will be truly compatible. Who can predict that? Not the couple. Not the family. But the horoscope can.”

As he was talking, I became more and more intrigued. If this was true, then it meant that these people had figured out years ago something that still perplexed us stupid Americans. How do you know if your relationship will last? If you were to go solely by the incredibly low divorce rate in India (1 percent), one could assume that they might be on to something. Of course, there are many more factors at work, such as how different their expectations are when they go into a marriage, as opposed to ours. I decided to continue my probing.

“If you don't mind me asking, where does romance come into this?”

Mr. Ramani kept pacing around the room. What appeared at first to be his enthusiasm for teaching me about Indian culture now seemed to me to be nothing more than a case of nerves. It dawned on me, as I watched him yank his hands in and out of his pockets and walk around the room, that he was simply a nervous father waiting for his daughter to come home from her date.

“Romance. What is romance? Romance means nothing,” he said, as his lips curled upward in distaste.

Mrs. Ramani seemed to agree. “This is a very Western idea. With Indian marriages, you don't think about romance. You think about taking care of each other. I take care of him,” she said as she pointed toward Mr. Ramani, “and he takes care of me.” She put her hand to her heart. I smiled agreeably. The image of Thomas taking care of me when I was having my panic attack on the plane quickly flashed in my mind. It felt like a tear through my flesh.

Mr. Ramani continued. “These men you see, who try to be romantic. They say ‘Honey baby this, honey baby that.' If he can say ‘honey baby' to you, that means he can say ‘honey baby' to the next girl. These words don't mean anything.”

I thought about Thomas. How he called me “my darling.” Until his other darling came halfway across the world to take
her
darling back.

Mr. Ramani glanced at the clock. Amrita had been gone almost an hour.

Mrs. Ramani asked, “So, how old are you?”

“I'm thirty-eight.”

“And you aren't married?” The two aunts perked up at this question, looking at me and waiting for my answer.

“No, no, I'm not.” My glass of water was still on the coffee table and I nervously took a sip.

The grandmother seemed to understand what I had just said, but she spoke Hindi to Amrita's father. He translated the question she had for me. “Why are you still unmarried?” Ah,
that
question again. I considered which response I should use this time. After a few seconds, I just went with the obvious. “I guess I haven't met the right guy yet,” I said.

Mr. Ramani translated, and the grandmother looked at me sadly. One of the aunts spoke up in English. “Isn't your family looking for someone for you?”

They all looked at me intently. I shook my head. “No, we really don't do that in the States. We don't get our families involved like that.”

“But don't they want you to get married?” Mrs. Ramani asked, the unmistakable tone of worry having crept into her voice.

I am much more comfortable when I do the inquiring. I took another sip of water. “They do, very much. But I guess they think I'm happy the way I am.”

Now the uncle spoke up. “This cannot be,” he said. “The human being is designed for many things. Loneliness is not one of them.”

I swallowed hard. I tried to nod in agreement. My stomach tightened into a little knot again.

Mrs. Ramani leaned into me, and said, as a statement of fact, “We are not meant to go through this life alone.”

I tried to force out a smile, but the blood started draining out of my face. I looked at all of them staring at me. And, being the good emotional wreck that I was, tears started rolling down my face.

“May I use your bathroom?” I asked, my voice shaky. Everyone looked at one another, not sure what to do.

Mrs. Ramani stood up. “Yes, yes, of course, please come with me.”

I sobbed for a few moments in the Ramanis' toilet, as quietly as I could. After about five minutes, I heard Amrita's voice and what sounded like a lot of commotion. Bored with my own drama, I blew my nose, splashed water on my face (which, may I remind you,
never works
), and went out. Just as I got to the living room, Mr. Ramani turned to me smiling, and said, “We have a match! They are going to be married!”

Amrita was beaming. His parents were smiling and hugging their son. Her now-betrothed, a tall man with very thick black hair combed away from his face, and a thick black mustache, looked like he was about to start dancing a jig. I just stood there with puffy eyes watching the whole scene unfold before me like a Merchant-Ivory film.

When the hugging and kissing started to slow down, Amrita came over to me. She took my hand and walked a few feet away from everyone else. “He was so nice. We just talked and talked. We have so much in common. He's really funny and smart! I'm so lucky! I can't believe I'm going to get married!” She hugged me, laughing. “I would never have met this man on my own. Ever!”

I couldn't help but marvel at the speed of all this. In New York, if you like the guy a lot—you go on a second date. Here, you plan the engagement ceremony. But if you consider how truly miraculous it is to meet anyone you want to go on a second date with, maybe they have the right idea. Maybe wanting to go on a second date with someone is proof that you might as well just get engaged, give it a shot, and nail that shit down.

Mr. Ramani had taken out a bottle of champagne that he was saving for just this occasion, and Amrita's mother was handing out glasses. Both families were absolutely ecstatic. The reason was obvious: these two lost souls who were floating around for years, unmoored, loose strands in the fabric of society, who were not designed for loneliness, had now found their place. They were now a couple within two families, that would start their own family. In this one decision, in this one hour, they had given themselves a place in the world, neatly carved out, ready to go.

Besides the fact that I was intruding on an extremely private moment, I also realized that if I didn't get away from all this matrimonial glee I was going to hurl myself out a window. I asked Amrita to call me a cab, and I left as soon as I could.

And then another car ride. Luckily it was again night, so most of the children who were normally playing and begging in the streets were now sleeping on blankets or cots along the side of the road with their families. It was bedtime in Mumbai. Still, there were some older children out, and as we came to a stoplight, one little girl, her right arm amputated below her elbow, used the truncated limb to bang on the window, her left hand putting fingers to her mouth.

The cabdriver looked at the girl and back at me. “Don't give them money. It's all an act. It's all organized crime.”

I looked out the window. That was a really great act she had going there, impersonating a poor child from India who had only half a right arm.

“Why doesn't the government help them? Why are they being left on the streets?”

The cabdriver just bobbled his head. The perfect answer for what is I'm sure a complicated question. The little girl was still banging the car with her stump.

For just a moment, I imagined what this must look like. Me, this white American woman, all dressed up, staring at this child, and refusing to open the window, refusing to help. I looked at the child, this dirty girl with matted, long black hair. This was her place in the world. This was her caste. She lived on the streets and she probably would do so her entire life.

“Fuck that,” I said quite loudly, and I opened my purse and took out my wallet. I opened the car window and I gave her five dollars. And I did that very same thing to the next four children who came begging to the car during that drive. The cabdriver shook his head in disapproval, and in my mind, I told him that he could kiss my ass. Because here's what. I hate to be a cliché, but the poverty in Mumbai is really appalling. The quality of life for these people is nightmarish. The fact that no one seems to care was even more outrageous. I was the American tourist who could only see Mumbai for its poverty. I was the American tourist who would go back to New York and say, “Mumbai, oh my God, the poverty.
It's awful.
” That would be me. Guilty as charged.