this will work?”
Aunty Shilpa was frowning at the piles of paper scattered in front of her. Her face was paler than usual and the lines on her face were more entrenched. I sat close to her, making sure her teacup was always filled.
Franky went over the forms, forms which had taken him three weeks to sort out with the banks. I’d learned quickly that between a visa, an air ticket and “government and administrative fees,” the money I’d made from selling my cakes wasn’t enough to get away to Dar es Salaam as quickly as I’d planned.
I had no choice but to dip into my parents’ account. Each day of waiting for Franky to work his way through the “damn bank bureaucrats,” as he called them, made me more and more nervous. And now, I had seven days before my wedding day.
When he finally had everything in order, he read the papers out loud to Aunty Shilpa and me. The documents were written partly in English and partly in Konkani, both of which I could read but the language was far more complex than anything I’d learned so far.
Just when I thought I understood one sentence, the next would start with “notwithstanding the above, it must be duly noted that...and that...and that…,” and I felt hopelessly lost.
“This is the language of businessmen, not girls,” Fartybag said with a condescending sniff from his corner when Aunty Shilpa and I stopped Franky for the hundredth time to ask a question.
“I see the company paid Asha’s parents in British pounds and American dollars to a London bank,” Franky said, licking his lips. “All we’re going to do is make simple transfer of money from Asha’s parents’ account in London to new account in Goa, and we’re converting it into rupees. Nothing more, nothing less, madam.”
“How do we know there won’t be any problems?” Aunty Shilpa asked.
“No problemo is my motto, madam,” Franky said, flashing his yellowed teeth. I wished he wouldn’t do that.
Aunty Shilpa looked even more skeptical.
“Let me assure you,” he said, taking off his glasses and speaking slowly to make sure we’d follow. “You have absolutely nothing to fear. Positively nothing. I know exactly what I am doing. As I have explained to you already, you will really have a big problem if you leave the money in these foreign banks until Miss Asha is eighteen. Are you willing to trust these foreign banks, madam?”
Aunty Shilpa looked unsure. I wasn’t sure either.
“Are you willing to make her lose everything to foreign fees, and taxes, and even expropriation?”
“What’s that?” Aunty Shilpa and I said together.
“They can take your money and run away anytime. You will never know. Never know. Who knows how much they’ve already taken out without anyone knowing, huh?”
“Won’t they write to me or something?” I said. “I’m sure Papa and Mama wouldn’t put their money in a bad bank.”
Franky sighed. “You are a very smart young lady, Miss Asha, but I must humbly say, also little naive. But then, you are still young. Never trust these foreign banks, that is what I say. Worse than vipers. Vipers, I tell you. I know because I am forced to do business with them on a daily basis. At the Good and Fast Immigration Broker, that is all I do, fight with these banks. English banks, American banks, Australian banks, even Japanese banks. Thieves, I tell you.”
A loud, smelly pop came from Fartybag’s direction. We ignored him.
“Best thing to do now is to take everything out and make sure you put it in safe place right here in India where we can see it. And put it in rupees, not this foreign money. Then you can decide to do whatever you want with it.” Franky nodded his head sideways. “That’s the smart thing to do, no?”
“I guess so,” I said slowly. Aunty Shilpa was still frowning at the papers.
With my parents’ money, I could pay off the marriage broker and pay those “extras” to Aunty Shilpa’s doctors, nurses, clinics, and other people in between, as needed. I could also whisk everyone away—Preeti, Aunty Shilpa, and even Grandma if she’d come—with me to Tanzania, where I remembered life as being much safer.
There were no school monitors or marriage brokers over there, no men who drank feni and attacked girls. There were no boys who harassed girls at bus stops either. For the first time in my life, I felt I had all the answers.
“First, we need to pay off the marriage broker to stop the wedding and make sure there’s enough left for emergencies and such,” I said, giving Franky a discreet nod. He didn’t nod back. The day before, I’d told him, in no uncertain terms, that we must not talk about Aunty Shilpa’s sickness in front of her. I prayed he remembered that conversation.
“I’m afraid, miss,” Franky said, shaking his head, “that will need a lot of money and it is not all that simple. Nothing is simple these days. I did my calculations. Your parents had money, but not enough to stop a wedding and all the peripheral and emergency things, I am so sorry to say.”
“What’s all this perife…peri….?” Aunty Shilpa stuttered.
Does he mean there’s not enough to pay for Aunty Shilpa’s health costs? I peered at Franky, but his face was blank.
“How much do we need for the emer… to help, I mean to stop the, er, wedding and all that?” I said, struggling to find the right words.
“Ten lakhs,” Franky said.
“Ten lakhs!” I exclaimed.
“Why do we need that much?” Aunty Shilpa asked giving Franky a dubious look.
“If your mother didn’t already sign the legal papers with the marriage broker, madam, this would be very easy thing to do. Now, it is not going to be cheap to break the contract.”
“Maybe I can’t read, but I know a lakh is a lot of rupees,” Aunty Shilpa said.
“What will happen if we don’t pay the broker?” I asked.
“Marriage is serious business in this country,” Franky said in a firm voice. “That is why we men take care of these things. It is not like the haggling for vegetables at the market that you women do every day. The broker can take you to court for breaking a contract, and then you will pay millions of lakhs. Your parents had money, but not that much, Miss Asha.”
I listened with a sinking heart. Banks accounts, contracts, business arrangements, and courts were a whole new world to me. Judging from Aunty Shilpa’s face, they were to her as well. I wished I could ask more frank questions off Franky, but I also needed Aunty Shilpa here to sign the papers, and I didn’t have much time left.
“In this country,” Franky was saying, “it is major offense to break a marriage contract. I can assure you that you will be held in the highest legal liability. Liability, I tell you. It will definitely mean prison.”
“Prison?” I looked at Franky with wide eyes, wondering what Grandma had got us into.
“How much did Asha’s parents have?” Aunty Shilpa asked. We’d been asking this question all morning. Franky said the money was held in several accounts in different currencies, so he had to add them all up, and it was all rather complicated.
“Ah, that is a very good question,” Franky said, picking up his oversized calculator for the tenth time that morning. He stared at it for a moment, scratching his head. He took his notepad and scribbled numbers on it, mumbling to himself, and he punched numbers into the calculator, one by one, as if he was afraid he’d miss the correct button. After a few hmms and umms, he put his calculator away and looked up with a sigh.
We looked at him expectantly.
“Well?” Aunty Shilpa asked.
“I am really sorry to say that you will need to find another way to pay off the marriage broker in full.”
“Oh, no!” I said.
“Not to worry,” Franky said, rubbing his forehead. “My job is to think of options. My motto is no problemo. There is always a solution, that is what I say.”
He shuffled the papers around and picked one up. Leaning back in his chair, he read it silently to himself, moving his lips as he went through each line while we waited quietly.
In the background, I could hear Rambo’s booming voice and machine gun fire coming from Fartybag’s corner.
“The problem,” Franky said thoughtfully after a few minutes of intense reading, “is that Kristadasa’s family wants to expedite this wedding. He is my neighbor, you know. He told me that he is very anxious for this marriage to take place sooner than later. Plus the marriage broker is a very respectable and powerful man in town. This does not make it easy for us.”
He put the paper back on the desk and leaned forward. Aunty Shilpa and I leaned toward him.
“So?” Aunty Shilpa asked.
“We will have to act fast and quietly if we want to succeed. You only have seven days left, miss.”
“What do we need to do?” I asked, panic rising inside me.
“Do you really want to stop this arrangement?”
“Yes!” I said. Why is he even asking?
“Here, first let’s have a cup of tea,” Franky said, passing Aunty Shilpa a teacup. He looked at me expectantly. I shook my head impatiently. This was no time for tea.
“This is serious business we’re talking about now,” Franky said, pouring himself a cup. “We must make these decisions mindfully, and with the blessing of Lord Vishnu, we will solve your problems. That is what I say.”
Aunty Shilpa took a sip of her tea with shaking hands. She was a nervous wreck.
It had taken me days to convince her to come and speak to Franky. Fartybag’s father had been specific. I had to find a relative over the legal age of eighteen if I wanted to access the money my parents left me.
Aunty Shilpa had not at all been happy when I told her I was getting help from the Good and Fast Immigration Broker to escape from my impending wedding. She’d refused to be part of my plan until I rustled up the courage to tell her of the day Kristadasa attacked me.
Her face went dark as she listened to my story. She sat motionless for a whole minute with her head hung low. I stood quietly by her. When she looked up, I saw tears running down her cheek.
“Don’t worry, Aunty,” I said, reaching out to squeeze her hand. “He didn’t hurt me. I got a tiny scratch on my arm. That’s all. I hit him and ran away in time.”
“I remember my wedding night,” Aunty Shilpa said in a soft voice, her eyes far away. “It was the worst night of my life. I was only fourteen. I was so scared. Mother was in the room next door. Aunty Patel was in the next house. I thought if I screamed loud enough, they’d come and rescue me, but no one came.”
I listened silently.
“He left me on the bed with my thighs covered in blood,” Aunty Shilpa continued. “I cried all night.”
“Did he beat you?”
“Yes...in many ways,” she said, hesitating. “He came home drunk every night and he beat me inside and out, on my face, my back, my head even. One day he beat me so hard and I bled so much I had to throw away the sheets. I bled the next day, too, and when I went to the hospital, the nurse said I bled a baby out of my stomach.” She looked down, unable to meet my eyes.
I reached out and put my hand over hers, feeling numb. I may not be able to take away the memories or the pain, but I could at least hold her.
“Every night was the same,” she said in a distant voice. “I wished I was dead. That is what happens when you marry an older man. That was my life. That is the life you will have.”
I’d squeezed her hand tightly, the same way she’d squeezed mine on my first bus ride home in Goa.
“It’s okay, Aunty Shilpa,” I said. “That’s not going to happen. Everything’s going to be okay. I promise we’ll find a way.”
“Your grandma knew all along what she was putting me into,” Aunty Shilpa said, looking at me with sad eyes. “She never said a word, not before or after the wedding. When she found out I’d lost a baby boy, a boy, she said I was trying to sabotage the family. My husband hit me the hardest that night for losing a son.”
I listened in shock. I had no understanding of these horrors she was describing but I knew in my bones I was never going to face these same things.
Aunty Shilpa wiped her tears. “Oh Asha, you are much too young to understand. You shouldn’t be hearing this.”
I leaned over and gave her a hug. Whatever nightmares she was reliving, there was no going back and changing them, but I knew one thing for sure. I was not going to marry that monster who lived upstairs. No matter what, I was going to get away. And I was going to take Aunty Shilpa and Preeti with me.
“So,” Franky said, putting his teacup on his desk. “Here’s what we can do, my dear ladies. I can take out a bank loan on your behalf and add it to Asha’s parents’ funds. You can then use that to pay off the marriage broker, and anything else you need, er, emergencies and all that, including keeping Kristadasa off your back legally.”
“That’s good,” I said, feeling relieved.
“Yes, but how are you going to pay the loan back?” Franky said, giving me a serious look. “No one gives money away for free, miss. That is a problem we have to solve.”
“I’ll take another shift at the hotel,” Aunty Shilpa said. “They need help and they like my work.”
“No, Aunty, you can’t do extra work. Not in your con—” I swallowed quickly.
She turned and gave me a puzzled look.
“Because—” I grasped for words. “Because I’m going to make fairy cakes. I’ll make hundreds and hundreds. The girls at school love them, even my principal likes them.”
“Ha, my dear ladies. I am afraid that working at the local hotel and making fancy cakes will not be enough. It will take a lifetime to pay off this loan and even then, you won’t be finished.”
We looked at him in dismay.
“But, not to worry.” Franky broke into a grin again. “What I want to tell you is that I have a solution.”
“Like what?” Aunty Shilpa gave him a suspicious look again.
“I have connections all over the world.” Franky spoke deliberately as if he was about to reveal a big secret.
He paused. We waited.
“What are you trying to say, Franky?” Aunty Shilpa said warily.
“You see, madam,” he said. He took a sip of his tea and paused. “I can send Asha to work for a very rich family, overseas.”