Maya and Veer, 2014 to 2015
“The bite wounds on your lower lip
So distress my heart
That it seems we are still one
Though we’ve been so long apart?”
—Jayadeva, The Gita Govinda
Veer made plans to take Maya out to dinner, which he never did, at a restaurant in Juhu by the sea. But it rained so hard that day, and the night before, that the roads were flooding, and they saw Juhu would take hours to reach. The morning paper reported that the runway to Juhu’s airport had turned into a lake. It warned that because of all the rain, a crocodile had walked on land and dragged a woman washing clothes into the water. And it noted that in the west-central part of the country, because of the monsoon, it “rained happiness” but “poured worry” too.
Maya and Veer decided to go to the mall for dinner instead, a common refuge when the city got too hot or rainy. On the road, motorcyclists held umbrellas, riding one-handed, or drove with plastic bags over their faces. Rickshaw drivers unfurled their rain flaps, though they never kept out all the rain. As they sat in traffic growing hungry, Veer brought up a recent visit with his aunt. “Janu told her he wanted to drink alcohol,” he told Maya, dropping his voice low. “He said he wants to drink it since ‘it’s not a big deal, and Maya and Veer and Subal always do it.’” Maya made a face. “Now she has some masala,” Veer said. Maya nodded; he was right. Gossip like this could lead to trouble. Janu is too smart, she thought, turning to look at him in the back seat. They’d have to start disguising their drinks at restaurants.
But all gossip was forgotten when they got inside the mall, which was huge and new and gleaming. Banners hung in the mall’s atrium boasting of an upscale Chinese restaurant and Italian ristorante. As rain dripped from the ceiling, a sinewy man crouched with a bucket and rag and wiped up every drop. Maya and Veer wandered from floor to floor, Janu running with delight in front of them. He was four now, and excitable and curious about everything.
They chose an all-you-can-eat Indian restaurant, which Veer preferred, with gaudy colored pendants hanging from the ceiling. As they ate pani puri and other chaat, a DJ put on a sixties-era British love song for a couple’s anniversary, and Janu begged them to dance. “Not yet,” said Maya, who was busy checking and rechecking her phone, as Veer went up to the buffet for more food.
After dinner was over and Janu was allowed to get up, he ran over to a tarot card reader. The reader, who was fat and had a lazy eye, told Veer, who asked for a reading, that he should start preparing for a worsening future. Veer only laughed at this. Afterward, the DJ switched to Punjabi music, and Veer and Janu began to dance. Maya, who had gotten a text from Subal after a long silence, began to film them on her phone.
On the way home, they let Janu sit in the front of the car and put the seat all the way back. Veer sang made-up lullabies to help him sleep. “Bana,” he sang, “soja bana.” Janu’s eyes began to close. It had stopped raining, and a light fog hung all around them. “Laddoo,” Veer sang. “Pyaar.”
Janu, who was old enough to sleep in his own bed now but didn’t, slept that night pressed against the curve of Veer’s back, clutching a piece of Maya’s hair in his hand.
***
The road to Pune was covered with a misty fog, the kind that suggested ghosts and apparitions. Maya chattered as they drove, her anticipation of the trip ahead loosening up her tongue. She had seen very little of Subal that month. His visits had become even more erratic after he quit his new job, which never paid him. To see Maya, he had to drive more than an hour in traffic. But now they’d have an entire two days together.
“I’m driving, Maya,” Subal said, annoyed by her constant chatter, and reached over to slap her thigh.
The road began to wind through the mountains, from which were suspended ads for the phone company Tata Docomo and the Indian whiskey brand Royal Stag. The fog made it appear as if the letters were hanging in the sky. T-A-T-A, and then air. The fog thickened as they drove, and soon all Subal could see was white. Maya, who craned her neck forward, spied a mountain peak through the haze. “Look at that,” she said. “Let’s go up there. To the top.”
Subal nodded but didn’t say anything. After a few minutes, he pulled over at a rest stop known for its stale idlis and watery sambar. As she went inside, he didn’t follow her and instead took deep drags of a cigarette.
When they reached Pune, a city polluted by scooters and motorbikes, Subal let Maya out of the car. He had a business meeting and didn’t want to be late. After he’d quit his job, his usual bluster had disappeared, along with his proclivity for jokes, and his baritone voice had become strained. But he had an idea for a new business venture, and the meeting was to raise money for it. He tried not to think about how much depended on it going well.
When they met up in a café later, Subal told Maya the man had promised him a five crore investment, a sum so sizeable it gave him pause. Instead of excitement, he felt only worry, a pit in his stomach like the stone of a mango. And Maya was so congratulatory it made him feel worse. She also had a business meeting that afternoon, with an engineer to troubleshoot an app she’d bought for her preschool. As she pulled out her phone to confirm the time, Subal stared at her.
“Why can’t you get the problem fixed over the phone, Maya?” he asked, his voice edged with suspicion. “I don’t understand.”
Maya explained that she had tried that already, and it hadn’t worked. Subal was not convinced.
“Do you like someone there?” he said, his voice getting louder as they walked out to the car. “Is that why you’re going?”
“What? No. No.” Maya dropped her phone into her purse as if it was hot.
As Subal got in the front seat, he told Maya that she would have to hail a rickshaw to her meeting. “Good-bye,” he said, and shut the door, leaving her standing in the middle of the road, motorcycles and scooters whizzing past her. Maya steeled herself not to cry.
When she messaged Subal later, he told her he would sleep at a cousin’s house and she would have to find her own accommodation. What did I do wrong? she thought. I haven’t done anything.
Last-minute bookings for hotels in Pune turned out to be pricey, or the hotel had no vacancy, or it was in a dangerous part of town. As Maya kept searching, she began to feel anxious. It wasn’t safe for women to roam alone after dark. She ended up asking for help finding a hotel from the engineer, whose name was Mohan. Mohan was several years younger than Maya and drove a Royal Enfield motorcycle. He wore a soul patch and an earring and had an open, boyish face. Maya wouldn’t allow herself to think he was good-looking.
For several hours that night, Mohan drove Maya from hotel to hotel to check prices and vacancy. He kept apologizing that he couldn’t let her stay at his home, which would not be appropriate for a woman traveling alone. At last, they found a reasonable hotel in the shopping district. Maya thanked him profusely for his help. In his formal, polite way, Mohan told her it was nothing and waited outside until she got up to her room.
Upstairs, Maya flopped, exhausted, onto her hotel bed and ordered room service, Indian-Chinese. She thought of how Subal loved Indian-Chinese, and then she could not stop thinking of him. She checked her phone, but he had not messaged her. She tried hard not to get upset. She pictured herself standing like an idiot in traffic and grew angry. Veer had not messaged her either. When she fell asleep, her teeth were clenched.
The next morning, Subal came to pick up Maya at the hotel and acted as if nothing had happened. He was smiling and talkative and told her all about his visit to his cousin’s. Then he peppered her with questions. But Maya wouldn’t answer. As he got onto the highway, she refused to answer, sitting still in her seat. Eventually, he fell quiet and pulled over at the same rest stop with the watery sambar. As Maya went to the bathroom, he sucked down another cigarette.
Back in the car, Subal asked how Maya had found her hotel, and she told him about the night’s adventure. She said there had been almost nowhere to stay and that she had asked the engineer for help.
Subal let loose. He called Maya stupid for not booking a hotel in advance. He told her it was unsafe to roam around the city at that hour. He implied she was a randi, a prostitute, for calling the engineer.
He saw on her face that he had gone too far. “Okay, Maya, I need to close my mouth.”
“You need to use your head and then maybe you wouldn’t use your mouth,” she snapped back. Her voice was bitter, but then it faltered. “Your behavior, the things you say, you can’t keep doing them and expect me not to break,” she said, and began to cry.
“Okay, Maya,” Subal said. “I am wrong . . . Okay, Maya, I am wrong. Okay, Maya, I am wrong.” He went on like this, like a broken record on a British-era gramophone, while Maya said nothing. Finally, he stopped talking. The car was silent as they passed back into Mumbai city limits.
When Subal dropped her off at home, he said he would understand if she “walked out” of what they had. Maya didn’t answer and slammed the car door behind her.
Later that week, she was at university, trying not to think about Subal, when the phone rang. It was Veer, calling in the middle of the day, which he never did.
“Mayu,” he said, “I’m on my way back from the factory. Are you home? I thought we could have tea.”
Maya held the phone away from her, astonished, and brought it back up to her ear.
“No, Kancha. I’m at school,” she said. She was always at school at this time. “I—I need to stay here. But Pallavi is at home. She can make you tea.”
There was a pause, and the silence seemed to stretch for a long time.
“No, that’s okay,” Veer said. “I only wanted it if you were there.”
***
In the weeks after the Pune trip, Veer—who saw Maya was upset over something she would not share—began to pick fights with her at home. He asked why she was always on her phone at night, out with friends after work, and why they never went on vacation. After Maya finally agreed to plan a trip, they settled on Alibaug, an old, dusty coastal town a few hours away.
On the way there, Veer drove fast, though the roads were winding. As they approached Alibaug, he hit a stray dog as it ran in front of their car. He said it could not be helped and did not stop. He said he was sure the dog kept running after it was hit. Many people hit dogs and kept going. Maya and Janu did not look back. It was better not to spoil the day.
They checked into a guesthouse that was cheap and basic, but the outside was lovely, with hammocks, tall trees painted red, white, and yellow, and palm trees that hung very low. The coast was not far away.
When they reached the beach, the sun was falling deep in the sky. Janu ran onto the sand and begged to ride a pony. The horse was pure white with a colorful saddle and was making trips up and down the beach. They gave Janu a few rupees and told him to go ahead. After the pony ride, Janu dug deep holes in the sand, and Maya walked toward the surf. Veer started to follow her but hesitated. He had always been afraid of the water. The force around the ocean was not good for epileptics, or so he believed. He feared another seizure. When Maya turned back and saw his trepidation, she took his hand in her own.
Together, they walked toward the water, navigating around shells and fallen coconuts. The sun was setting now, and the surf was frothy. The tide was coming in, the water covering their feet. As they looked out at the sea, Veer let his hand drop from hers, and they turned back toward the sand.
“Bana—” they called, and Janu came running.
***
As Janu had gotten older—he was now almost five—he had grown very close with his mother. At home in the mornings, while she was reading the paper, he often sat on her lap until she scolded him to go get dressed for the day. When they were riding in the car to school with their driver, Maya would lean on Janu’s shoulder and say, “I love you,” pouting her lips into a kissy face. Janu would always say “I love you” back, and squish his lips the same way. He’d often wrap his arms around her face and draw her close until they got to school.
Over time, they had developed a kind of sympathetic relationship. If Maya stayed home from work because she was feeling sick, Janu insisted he was sick and couldn’t go to school either. If she stayed out at night, he couldn’t sleep. He’d toss and turn and even wet the bed. If she ate nonvegetarian food, Janu insisted he also had to eat it. Janu called his father, who was in Africa for work again. On WhatsApp, his father’s away message was “DND”—Do Not Disturb. But Janu wanted to disturb him. He called and called and got his voicemail. “Papa, family,” Janu said into the phone, his voice serious, his long eyelashes flapping. “Family means relationship. Relationship with Mama, Papa, Grandma, Grandpa, all. Work in this country. A family means a relationship. And you don’t leave the people you love. You work in the same country. Where you live. Not another country.”
While Janu was close to Veer, he could also be distrustful of him. On the rare times Veer watched him, the day would always start out well. They’d often practice exercises together. “First exercise continuously begin,” Veer would call out, like they did at school, and Janu would show off a somersault or jumping jack, wearing only his white undershirt and chaddis. “Wahhhahahah. Tom Cruise or Salman Khan,” Veer would say, grinning, and Janu would giggle.
Or Veer would help him with his homework, or they’d drive around their suburb and Veer would buy Janu gifts—a giant Spider-Man balloon or an Avengers or Minions toy. But inevitably Veer would get distracted by a work call, and Janu would be left to play by himself, his balloon deflated on the floor. Veer was working harder than ever again, and it showed on his body. He had lost weight, but his paunch had come back. His hair had grown long, he had a scraggly beard, and he’d developed dark circles under his eyes.
On these days, by the time Maya got home from work or errands, both of them might be in a bad mood and fighting. Veer had been trying to work or read the newspaper, and Janu annoyed him. Or Veer had flicked Janu’s ear in an awkward attempt at play, and Janu had recoiled, saying, “Hey, don’t disturb me, Pop.” Or Janu had been allowed to play with his dad’s phone as a distraction, but then the battery ran down and Veer tried to take it back. “Dirty, dirty fellow,” Janu shouted one night, with startling intensity. “Liar on a fire.” “Matkar,” Veer shouted back. On these days, when Maya walked in the door, both seemed relieved to have her home.
Still, at night, it was not Maya but Veer who rubbed Janu’s feet, singing him old Bollywood tunes or made-up lullabies. “Bana,” he’d sing, “soja bana . . . Laddoo . . . Pyaar.” When Janu got overtired, it was often Veer and Maya together who got him to stop crying. While he remained a good-humored, independent child, he still got fussy at nighttime. When he cried like this, Maya would lift him up off the couch, and Veer would take him into their bedroom, patting him on the back, saying, “Bash, bana, bash bash bash.” And if they ever asked Janu whom he loved more, the old, joking question they had first asked when he was a baby, he would still raise both arms in the air.
***
By September, several months after the Pune trip, Maya and Subal had stopped talking for good, and Veer began to ask where he’d gone.
Perhaps he’d noticed that Maya no longer went out with him or was on her phone far less at night. She had even unpinned the photo of Subal from her office wall. “He’s busy,” Maya said.
A few weeks later, he asked again. “He’s busy,” she repeated.
It happened in fits and bursts, but when Subal and Maya finally ended things, Maya had cried for days. One of the last times she saw him, they had lunch, and as Maya followed him out of the restaurant, she fell down the stairs and hit her arm on the wall. On the floor, she clutched her elbow in pain. “Tell me what happened,” Subal said, sitting beside her, his voice soft. “How did you hurt yourself?”
By then they’d both known they were over.
He struck me to my core, Maya thought now. I feel wrecked, snapped like a tightrope. But after a few weeks, she decided she couldn’t keep crying and that she would not think of him again. She blocked him by phone, on Facebook, and WhatsApp. For months, Subal tried different ways of reaching her, until Maya asked Ashni at work to send him a message: “Maya has taken really long to get over you and she has suffered enough and so have you. It’s time you move on.” Maya had not gotten over him but thought she had to pretend.
It was worse for Subal. He had stopped sleeping at night. It’s like I have fallen on my head, he thought. Or like she has shut a door on me, locked it, and thrown away the key. He wondered if she had written him off as a fat, old man; he had always worried that she was younger and so beautiful. He had several boxes of belongings at Maya’s preschool, and he called her and threatened to come to her school and burn them. He said he’d walk off into the woods and never come back. He knew he was acting like a fool. But in her, I found the best in life, he thought.
Maya thought otherwise. She could see that Subal came into her life for a reason, to teach her how to love again. But in the end he had shown his true self, and she didn’t like what she saw. And now, it was all over.
After a month, Veer asked Maya again, “Where is Subal?”
“We don’t talk that much anymore,” she said. “We’ve had some disagreements.”
After that, Veer didn’t ask again.
***
Veer called Maya from Africa to tell her that his father was buying them a giant flat. Or multiple giant flats. A three-bedroom-hall-kitchen for Maya, Veer, and Janu, another for Veer’s brother, and a third for himself and his wife. All in the same apartment building. Veer’s parents would be just a few floors away.
Veer tried to sell Maya on the benefits. The house would be closer to her preschool. It would be far fancier and larger than what they had now. And Maya could design and decorate it any way she wanted. Still, Maya thought it sounded like hell—or a trap. She couldn’t imagine living in the same building with her in-laws again. When she had visited them recently, they’d been cold to her, and Veer’s father said she did not come to see them enough. She told Veer she’d move into the apartment on one condition: “If you don’t get me out of the house in the next two years, I’m going to walk out of it.”
Veer had expected this kind of response from Maya and didn’t let it worry him much. He was thrilled about the flat. A 3BHK, 1,800 square feet—three times the size of their current apartment. It would be evidence they’d made it beyond middle class, that perhaps they were even rich. It would show off the money he had worked so hard with his father and brothers to make. And now that a new house was within reach, Veer focused on his goal of having Maya open her own school. Not a franchise, but a school she ran—a school from which only she took money. If Maya did that, she could live independently of him at last. And perhaps he could retire alone to the shack by the sea, which he still dreamed of, selling beer, whiskey, and coconut water on the first floor to keep busy, and living alone on the floor above.
Maya went to see her astrologer. On this visit, the astrologer told her she would not leave Veer. He said they would continue to live unhappily together and never get divorced. At least for now, Maya thought the astrologer was right. There was something about Veer that wouldn’t let her leave him, some vestige of the man she’d fallen in love with on the banks of the Musi River and promised herself that she’d marry.
After she and Subal ended things, Maya had begun to think about trying to kill herself again. She thought about jumping off a ledge. The astrologer knew this, even though she hadn’t mentioned a word about it. “Don’t do that,” he told her sternly. “If you think about it again, you tell me.” She promised him she would.
With Subal gone from her life, Maya had begun going out with other men. Married women in the city, it seemed, were no longer out of reach. She went out with Mohan, the engineer from Pune. She texted with a man she had gone to school with, who now lived in Berlin. And she Facebooked with a philosophical motorcyclist from New Delhi. Each of these men provided her with a kind of companionship Veer didn’t, and she only occasionally thought about hisaab, and whether her behavior was about a debt to repay.
As if she had a sixth sense, Maya’s mother called around this time to ask what was going on in her daughter’s marriage. But she could tell something was wrong because Maya was never with Veer when she called. Maya decided not to lie to her. “If someday I get up from this marriage, I don’t want you to be shocked,” she told her mother.
“It’s very easy to get up and leave,” her mother said, “but what are you going to do next?” Maya was quiet. Her mother continued, “All relationships are the same. They might be in different degrees. But they all require the same amount of work and understanding.” Her mother had been married to Maya’s father for thirty-five years. She implied that there were almost always other people in a marriage, and that this was something you got over.
***
In January, when Janu turned five, Maya wrote him a long, mushy letter, telling him that he taught her “what it meant to love someone more than I could ever love anyone else.” Veer’s hardworking, hard-drinking cousin gave Janu a gift of four lovebirds. The birds were chartreuse and russet brown and aquamarine blue. They had beady, watchful eyes, short beaks, and downy bodies. She and Janu named them Eenie, Meeny, Miney, and Moe. Janu liked the blue lovebird best. The blue lovebird was the smartest and soon learned how to open the cage with its beak. “You are very naughty,” Janu told the bird. But Janu liked that his bird was so smart.
Maya started coming home to find all the lovebirds out in the house. Pallavi had to catch them one by one and put them back in their cage.
One day, a lovebird went missing, and then another. Maya realized it was because Pallavi was leaving the door to the porch open when she took the clothes out to dry. On another day, they came home to find them all gone.
On the day Janu had turned five, Veer had turned thirty-nine. He was now working so hard his family, friends, and colleagues began to worry about him. He kept saying he wanted to make enough money for Maya to start her own school, and so that Janu didn’t want for anything. He hoped to be able to give away money like his grandfather had. He felt exhausted and drained but told himself he was fine. I am a Marwari, I am never exhausted from work, he thought. He told himself he had to surrender his emotions, including the emotion of being tired. My DNA is muted, he thought. I am more of a robot now.
But Veer did get emotional sometimes. He couldn’t always be a robot. He felt this way when Maya didn’t give him any time or when she stayed up late typing on her phone, which she had recently resumed doing. Sometimes, Veer snapped at her: “Are you going to take a sleep or just check your Facebook all night?” When he did this, Maya waited a few minutes so she wasn’t giving in so easily, and then quietly followed him to bed.
Maya was also working harder. Her preschool had expanded, and she had had to hire a babysitter for Janu. The school continued to attract new students every month, but she still knew every child’s name; this was important to her. She often made spot visits to the classrooms to talk with the children. Whenever parents of prospective students visited, Maya or Ashni gave them a speech about how the school would change their child’s life. Though Maya didn’t like the performative nature of this, she believed in what she was saying. “You will feel good when the child comes home and you see them doing things they couldn’t do before,” she or Ashni promised, and by the end of their speech, the parents were hooked. Any good parent in Mumbai now wanted their child to learn English, and at an international-style school, which would ensure a high-paying job in their child’s future.
Over the years, Maya had grown into a tough but fair principal. During meetings with the teachers, she spoke in a no-nonsense tone: “Nobody is taking a leave on that Saturday. Check karo. Chutti nahi milega.” The girls listened with serious expressions, arms folded behind their backs. Maya told a girl who had begun coming late to work that it could not continue. When the girl made excuses, Maya cut her off: “I understand, but other girls will do it and it will become a trend.” The girl promised not to come late again. Another teacher asked for a salary increase, and Maya explained when and why she would get it, or not. At the end of meetings she asked: “Any doubts?” There weren’t any.
But Maya was also their friend. She ate lunch with her staff every day, which her father taught her to do so that they would respect and work harder for her. At lunch, the younger teachers told Maya and Ashni about their love lives and problems with their parents when they tried to date across community lines. “This is a boyfriend-friendly workplace,” Maya said, and she and Ashni sometimes gave them advice. But when one girl showed Maya and Ashni a sexy selfie, Maya drew the line. “Don’t show that to the boss,” she said.
That year, Maya and Ashni decided to put on a huge Annual Day celebration for the school, for which they set an extravagant budget of 1.5 lakhs. They hired a professional choreographer for the children, bought elaborate costumes, and rented a large auditorium. It was not easy to wrangle 140 wailing children to sing and dance, but at least Maya had Ashni to help. The theme of the performance was “What I want to be when I grow up,” and the kids danced in different costumes—policeman, artist, teacher—professions beyond the traditional careers of lawyer, doctor, and engineer. At the end of the song the kids said in unison: “Whatever I want to be at the end of the day, I want to be a good human being.” Many of the parents cried.
At the very end, the teachers performed a surprise skit for Maya, a tribute to how she had started the preschool from nothing, conducted the office with resolve and fairness, and how they were all one big happy family. As Maya watched the women sing and dance, she also began to cry. Though it had been a hard year—perhaps a hard stretch of years—she felt content knowing she had created the school she’d always wanted.
It was not long after Annual Day that Ashni let Maya know that she was leaving the preschool. Her husband told her she had to quit to run his family business, which was a women’s clothing shop, so that he could take a job he liked better. At first, Ashni resisted. She was not a woman to give in. But Ashni’s husband and his parents kept pressuring her, and eventually she gave her notice, like all the timid girls from conservative families had done. Maya was upset over losing Ashni, who was smart and frank and confident and had become her closest friend. They had become even closer after Ashni confided to Maya that she was seeing another man.
The man was from the village where Ashni was born and someone she knew from her school days. Ashni said he treated her like a princess. He told her he loved everything about her. Any time Ashni went home to see family, she now made plans to see him too. Soon, she began flying home just to see him. She even got a tattoo for him, after seeing Maya’s treble clef. Ashni’s tattoo said ishq, which was Arabic for “love,” but a selfless kind, a love without lust. She told Maya she felt guilty that she needed both a man who obsessed over her and the man who was the father of her child.
But Maya told her not to, because she was not the only one.
***
Maya and Veer’s ninth wedding anniversary came and went. Veer didn’t come home until very late from work and didn’t mention the day. But this year, Maya didn’t let it bother her. Her teachers held a little celebration. Friends commented on their Facebook walls, and both she and Veer thanked them. It was enough. She no longer needed Veer to pretend that they were something they were not. She had other friends, other men, who told her that she was smart and beautiful and gave her nicknames like rani, or “queen.”
She couldn’t tell these men everything, though—not the secret things from her childhood that she’d never been able to tell Veer. She knew they wouldn’t understand. And so instead she told them to Ashni, who remained her close friend.
It had first happened when Maya was between six and eight years old, with the man who worked at the stationery store. Her mother used to give her two rupees to buy paper or a pencil there. Several times, the man tried to kiss and grope her, and Maya didn’t know what to do. Once, when she had been gone a long time at the store, her mother came and brought her back home. “Next time there’s a stranger, you be careful,” her mother said, and didn’t give Maya two rupees for the store again.
When Maya was a little older, eleven or so, a neighbour who was fifteen or sixteen touched her on the terrace of her house. The other kids were playing downstairs. Again, Maya didn’t know what to do. This time, Maya’s grandmother came to check on her, saw what was happening, and stopped it. Afterward she told Maya, “Any time you do anything like that, I’m going to tell your father.” Maya was confused. She didn’t think she had done anything wrong; the boy had. But now it seemed it was her fault, and that she could not tell anyone if it happened again.
The next time was with a family friend. There was a couple who lived nearby, and when the husband went out of town, Maya’s parents often sent her over to their house to keep the wife company. They even had her spend the night to help the woman fall asleep. Sometimes, the husband came home very late at night, and Maya woke to find him trying to put his hands up her shirt or down her pants. She was not yet fourteen. When this happened, Maya stayed frozen; her bones felt like they were made of lead. She was certain his wife was awake and knew what was happening. And yet his wife still asked that Maya come over when her husband was away.
Finally, Maya told her parents she was not comfortable going to their house anymore. Then the man came to Maya’s house instead and groped her when her parents left the room. After several visits like this, Maya got up the courage to tell him: “Don’t touch me. Bas ho gaya, abhi, if you do it again I’m going to go and tell someone.” He stopped touching her after this. She never told anyone else about it. She was sure that if she had, she would have gotten in trouble.
“Maybe it’s why I go from man to man,” Maya told Ashni after she finished her story. Maybe it’s why she had been attracted to Subal, then left him, and was now drawn to other men. It was her hisaab to fulfill, or it wasn’t.
Maya needed someone to tell her that she did not owe a debt—that it wasn’t her fault what happened. And that perhaps she was attracted to other men for other reasons. But Ashni was quiet. These were things people didn’t talk about.
***
Just after the fourth anniversary of Maya’s preschool, Veer was diagnosed with diabetes, type 1. Previously, he had been diagnosed with type 2, which was caused primarily by being overweight or lack of exercise. But now his doctors told him they’d been wrong. They said his diabetes had become so bad that his “pancreas was basically dead.” The word dead was not lost on him, or on Maya. They told him he’d need to change his diet and life if he wanted to make it to old age.
I need to make myself a little more healthy, Veer thought after the diagnosis, trying to keep himself calm, so I can live enough to have some wonderful times with Janu.
Veer went away to a diabetes camp for four days, and after coming back made more dietary changes. He arrived home with bags and bags of groceries, much of it fresh produce. He said that he could no longer drink milk and that he was going to become a vegan. He asked if Maya could prepare him a raw diet.
And he vowed he would no longer work so hard. He had never felt so happy as he had at camp, because—for the first time in a long time—he had had time to sleep, work out, and eat well. He had had time to think over many things. “You know, Maya, when you take out the T in trust it becomes rust,” he joked.
Maya laughed. The diagnosis had washed away much of her resentment. At least for now, when he needed her, and maybe couldn’t live without her. She told herself she had been silly to be so angry. And they were moving to the new house soon.
A few weeks later, as Veer snacked on namkeen, him on one couch, Maya on the other, they discussed the move. “This is not how we should eat, without drink,” he said, and went into the linen closet, which doubled as a liquor cabinet.
“Where will we hide the liquor in the new house?” Maya asked, taking a sip of the whiskey he’d brought out, which she did not like. She preferred sugary rum with sweet lime, the drink she and Subal used to have together. But Veer kept only scotch at home, favoring the expensive stuff.
“It’s okay, it’s kept inside the cabinet,” said Veer.
“But if your parents find it, they will throw me out,” Maya said. “And they will kick your bum so hard you will not walk.” They both laughed and then fell quiet. “Even my dad would be upset if he knew I drank,” she said.
“Oh, yeah?” Veer got a mischievous look on his face. He sat up, put down his drink, and took out his phone. Maya watched him, waiting for the joke. “Actually,” he said, “I will call your father and tell him you are drinking.”
Maya raised her eyebrows at this.
Veer began speaking into his phone, in the accent of a busybody neighbour, the kind who gossiped while chewing paan, so that it sounded like he had marbles in his mouth. “Hello, Uncle, how are you? . . . Haan, toh, do you know what your daughter is doing here?” Veer was chewing so much pretend paan he could barely be understood.
“Yes,” said Veer, putting on a different accent, that of Maya’s father, proper and refined. “She works for an international preschool.”
“She is doing VERY international all right.” Now Veer was practically spitting the imaginary paan. “Drinking ALL the international drinks.”
“Ah?”
“ALL the pubs of Bombay exist ONLY because of her. And she is eating chicken tikka BESIDES.”
“Nahi!” said Veer, as Maya’s father, scandalized.
“HAAN.”
Maya laughed so hard she almost fell off the couch, and Veer was glad he could still make her laugh.
At first, the new diabetes diagnosis made them fight less often and without bitterness. But this didn’t last long. Soon, Veer told Maya that he could not eat the food she made, and Maya told him that Pallavi would make his dinners from here on out.
As life became unsettled at home, Pallavi became unpredictable in her work. She would show up in the morning but not at night. She would wash the dishes but not clean or start the laundry and then rush out the door. Or she wouldn’t come at all, saying she had something else she had to do. It turned out life was also unsettled in her home.
After a few months, Pallavi told Maya what was going on: her husband was having an affair with her sister-in-law, and her sister-in-law had gotten pregnant. “Leave him,” Maya told her. But Pallavi couldn’t. All the money she’d saved cleaning houses was in a bank account in his name, as was her family land back home.
Pallavi seemed most distraught that the affair was out in the open. The whole family knew, which was shameful. Even the brother—the husband of the sister-in-law who was sleeping with Pallavi’s husband—knew and didn’t seem to care. Maya was sure it was because they all wanted access to Pallavi’s money, little as it was. And now, in some twisted way, the sister-in-law and her husband could claim it.
That Sunday, Pallavi didn’t show up to work or call. Her phone was switched off, as was her husband’s. Her two sons showed up at Maya’s door to ask if she had come to work, which worried Maya. She waited all day for Pallavi to come, and the next morning went to Pallavi’s shanty, but the shanty was locked and no one seemed to be at home. In the afternoon, Maya sent Janu’s babysitter to look for Pallavi, but she could not find her either.
When Pallavi finally reappeared two days later, she said her husband had been fighting with her. She said he would not let her leave the house or make a call. That was why the shanty was locked and her phone was switched off. Perhaps the boys had been locked outside. The fight was about the other woman, because the illegitimate baby was due soon.
Still, Pallavi did not leave him. It wasn’t just the money—she also said it would be hard on her boys. Maya was thankful Pallavi did not have a girl child to complicate matters. If a woman left her husband, it was often hard to get a daughter married. But a divorce wouldn’t affect the boys much. Boys were privileged. No matter how rich or poor, this held true.
Maya had seen it in her own life. Though she had been smarter than her brother, getting far better marks in school and continuous praise from her teachers, her parents sold land so that he could have an education in the United States. Maya, meanwhile, was sent to the local college.
“Leave him,” Maya said again. She urged Pallavi to move houses when she and Veer moved and bring her two boys with her. Maya said she could start anew. Pallavi told her she’d consider it and began showing up on time again.
Despite the diagnosis, Veer soon returned to his old work schedule. His businesses depended on it. “I have taken too much of rest,” he said. He also began to worry about Africa, where in one country a new government had made business uncertain and a businessman owed him twenty-two lakhs. “I will block him,” Veer announced one day, with uncharacteristic bitterness. “And I will make him bleed from his neck.”
Veer’s pants were falling off him now.
***
In the new apartment, there would be three bedrooms: one for Janu, one for Veer and Maya, and a third bedroom for guests. Or one bedroom each for Veer and for Maya.
Maya learned that Veer’s father had given the other wives in the family 50 percent ownership of their apartments, while she had been given 10. Her father told her he wouldn’t attend the housewarming unless Veer’s father invited him, which Maya knew would never happen. All these years later, the two men still didn’t get along. Veer’s goal in marriage of bringing two Marwari business families together had never materialized. And Veer’s father had said recently that he still believed daughters-in-law required discipline. He said he and Maya were bound to fight again in the new house. No, thought Maya, feeling anxious. I don’t want to fight. I don’t want to move there.
But in a strange way she also looked forward to the new apartment and its certainty of conflict. Maybe the fights would get so bad she’d work up the courage to leave Veer. Only if he gets better, she thought. Only if it seemed like the right thing to do. Her feelings toward the new house, like everything with Veer, were convoluted. Since he had become sick, she did not know what to think.
Though she feared the new apartment, she threw herself into the decorating, picking out color palettes and window designs and Western-style furniture. She dreamed of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and walk-in wardrobes and a superhero theme for Janu’s room. When she visited the apartment, she saw how posh the building was, though it was still under construction. There was already a security guard, bamboo plants lining the entrance, and glass doors and marble everywhere. The apartment itself had giant windows that looked out onto the city. She could see palm trees and pink buildings and the wavy hills beyond, though there were no nearby apartments with windows like tiny plays. It would be a dream home for most women.
Before the move, Veer’s old friends Raj and Anika, one of the couples who had been witnesses at their wedding, came for a visit.
Raj and Anika lived a quiet life in Jaipur, where they ran a small shop together, from which they sold Rajasthani clothing. They were kind, down-to-earth people—Anika in her motherly way, though they had never had children, and Raj with his wide-set face and intense, perceptive stare.
They had not seen Maya and Veer much since their wedding. But after spending several days with them, they were convinced the marriage was in trouble. Maya and Veer did not seem to see each other. When they spoke, they often seemed on the edge of a fight. Raj and Anika agreed they had to intervene. One night, Raj stayed up late drinking scotch with Veer—though Veer wasn’t supposed to drink with his diabetes—and after an hour of talking, Raj took his chance. He asked why Veer seemed not to care about Maya anymore.
“See, I don’t have affection for anyone,” Veer told him, with unconvincing bluster.
“This is BS,” said Raj. Among all his friends, Veer had always been the most affectionate.
“I am only into work,” Veer said, and took a swig.
Years ago, after the other Maya had ended things, Veer made two promises to himself. One: he would work day and night going forward, to prevent another crash of the family business, like the one that happened decades ago. And two: he’d stop keeping many friends. He would stop making birthday calls, or sending cards on special occasions, or writing poetry to friends like Raj. He would stop getting so attached to people.
It is better not to keep too many friends, he had told himself. If somebody like her could walk out, then anybody else could. After losing his mother and the other Maya, he thought perhaps it was better not to love anyone at all. But this was not something he could tell Raj.
The next day, after Veer went to work, Raj and Anika sat Maya down to ask her about the marriage. Raj began by telling her what Veer had said.
“Hmmm, well, Kancha is detached,” Maya said, as she served an elaborate lunch she had prepared for them of roti, rice, and different subzis. She thought there was no use pretending to some of their oldest friends.
“No, Maya,” said Raj, dissatisfied with her answer. “Kancha is not the type to get detached. He is very attached. He used to write cards to me with poems inside.”
Maya nodded. That was the old Veer, she thought.
“Kya hua, Maya? What happened?”
“Things started getting bad in 2008,” said Maya, speaking carefully now. “It’s . . . partly due to the political movements of his father and family—”
“They are crooks actually,” said Anika.
“Crooks,” echoed Raj, who had known Veer’s family since he and Veer were young.
As they spoke, Raj remembered how happy Veer’s father had been when he’d gone to talk with him about Veer and Maya’s marriage. Too happy, in hindsight, that his son was going to elope. “I believe now the reason he was so happy was because it would upset your father and bring you shame,” Raj said, thinking of how the two Marwari men had once done business together. Perhaps for Veer’s father the union was a kind of revenge.
“Hmmm,” said Maya, nodding.
“His wife is even worse.”
“Hmmm,” Maya said again. She had always wondered how much the actions of Veer’s father were shaped by the talk of his wife—the stepmother with the cruel lips who neither Veer nor his brothers had taken to. Maya remembered something that Veer’s grandmother had once told her. She said that if Veer’s real mother had been alive, everything would be different. Veer’s mother had always talked about wanting daughters she could treat as her own. Perhaps his mother would have helped Maya and Veer connect and would have worked to keep them together. If his mother were alive, maybe Veer would have worked less. But Veer’s mother wasn’t here, and Maya knew it wasn’t worth thinking about what could have been.
When lunch was over, Maya served green tea and milky chai, and the conversation moved on to astrology. They all remembered how Maya was said to have the mula nakshatra, a star that was inauspicious for girls. Girls with this star were passionate but also felt restricted by conventions. They wanted to rebel. They easily grew resentful or felt betrayed. Girls with this star also had calamitous love lives and problems with their fathers. They were questers, always on a search. Even if Maya didn’t fully believe in astrology, it was remarkable how much this star reflected her life.
And they all recalled how Maya and Veer’s stars had not matched. “Remember, all the unbelievable things happened on the night of their wedding?” said Anika. The rain. The lateness of the hour. The eight times around the sacred fire instead of seven.
“A few years back I even changed my married name,” said Maya.
“We are very worried about you,” said Anika. “We would not have put our hands there and helped with the wedding if we had not believed and been committed to helping you in your marriage.”
“What is Kancha doing?” said Raj. “I don’t even know.”
Maya nodded, but her enthusiasm for the conversation was waning. Where were they years ago, when the marriage first began to go bad?
“Maya,” said Raj, perking up. “At least go see his parents once in a while, go with Kancha.”
“No, I won’t,” said Maya, putting down her cup with finality. “Any woman would react this way under the circumstances and wouldn’t see them.”
“What about divorce?”
No. They all agreed it wasn’t an option, because Veer’s parents could try to take Janu away.
“There’s no solution, then,” said Anika.
“I will talk to Kancha again,” said Raj.
“It’s my mistake,” said Maya, who began to clear the teacups. “Because I knew who Kancha was and married him anyway.”
Anika and Raj looked at her helplessly. That night, in the middle of the night, Janu fell sick, and in the morning he vomited up his chocolate milk.
***
The next evening, Maya and Anika took Janu to the local beach just before sundown. As Janu built castles from the hard-packed sand and men hawked fresh lime soda behind them, Anika asked Maya if she was seeing another man.
“No,” said Maya, her voice tight. She was losing patience with this intervention now. It felt as if Raj and Anika were now considering her as perpetrator and Veer as victim. If Veer was sick, then perhaps she was the one to blame. They think that Kancha is in this state because of me, that I have to set him right, she thought. How am I going to do that? He’s not a child. And I’m not a god. I’m human.
Back at home, Veer arrived late from work to find Maya, Raj, and Anika sitting at the dinner table talking. Janu was already in bed. As Veer walked into the room, he began singing an old Bollywood ballad, the kind he used to sing to his grandfather. He danced past them into the kitchen and brought out four glasses, along with a bottle of Johnnie Walker Double Black.
“You can’t drink that,” said Maya.
“Doctor said I could have ninety milliliters,” said Veer.
“Sir,” Raj said, “you are lying.”
Veer changed the subject. He began singing boisterously, though there also seemed to be an edge to it. He looked tired and frail. When he stopped singing, Maya was afraid of what he might say. He drained his glass and began talking of his trips to Africa.
“It’s the best thing in the world,” he told Raj and Anika. “The best.” He paused and turned to look at Maya. “People who travel in cattle class like her would never understand.”
The room was quiet. Maya looked at her lap. Raj opened up a star sign application on his phone.
“Read our stars,” said Maya.
Raj entered in Maya’s and Veer’s details—when and where they were born—and a wheel on the app turned around and around, calculating. The app delivered its finding: for this couple, there was no compatibility and no love. Maya and Veer both laughed, perhaps bitterly. Raj continued to read aloud. “It seems you should have a separate house and a separate car,” he said. Maya doubted this was the real reading. He is just trying to save our marriage, she thought.
Raj closed the app, and the room fell quiet again, save for the ticking of the Hindi-script clock. “Ask Maya why she married me,” Veer said. He seemed drunk from the whiskey now.
“Because I was in love with you,” said Maya.
“Was?” asked Anika.
“You asked about the past, so I am answering in the past tense.”
“And why did you marry Maya?”
“This is a bullshit question, actually,” Veer said, standing up unsteadily. “Time for another drink.”
That night, Maya went to bed upset. The next morning, she cried as Veer got ready for work. “Why don’t you just leave me?” she said. “Everyone thinks I’m responsible for your health problems or tries to blame me, so why don’t you just leave?”
“Do you have a problem with me?” Veer asked.
“No,” she said, in tears.
“And I don’t have a problem with you. You live your life and I’ll live mine.”
After Veer went to work, Raj and Anika sat Maya down again. But Maya was in no mood to be lectured. “Stop blaming me,” she shouted at them, and slammed the door as she left for work.
When she came home for lunch, she found that Raj and Anika had gone, leaving behind a note of apology. As Maya read it, she thought: I’m tired of this life, of this crap, of enduring this.
Have a nice flight, she texted them.
Nine years of damage cannot be undone by one day of talking.
***
That week, Veer told himself: If Maya leaves me, it’s okay. It would be okay. Because I have seen that my mother has left me and it is okay. Two people have left me and it’s okay. If this Maya also left him, he would be all right. His businesses would keep going, and he would keep bringing in money. He told himself that as a Marwari that was all that mattered.
Maya changed her profile photo on WhatsApp to an image of a semicolon, with text that read: “Choose to keep going.” Then she changed it to a Charles Bukowski quote about a woman that was “mad” but “magic,” there was “no lie in her fire.”
She changed her Facebook photo to a seductive photo of herself, wearing party jhumka earrings and a silk sari, staring at the camera, with kajal lining her eyes.
She talked to some of her male friends over text. One asked her to meet himat a motel for lunch, but she didn’t go. The next day it came out in the papers that Mumbai cops had raided the motel and harassed the couples they found inside. They charged some of them under the country’s old morality laws, holding them for “obscenity in public,” though all of them had been indoors.
The Mumbai High Court said it was shocked by the raids and that the police needed to understand that the city was changing. But Maya knew it hadn’t changed that much.
***
Later that month Navratri approached, the festival for the Hindu goddess Durga, the mother goddess, the power of all gods combined. Durga was creator, preserver, and destroyer. Durga was evidence that the supreme being was a woman. And Durga was related to the concept of Maya—the belief that the world was an illusion—because it was said that Durga was Lord Krishna’s illusory energy. Durga helped Krishna confuse the living beings who fell into attachment and believed that temporary attractions brought them happiness. The ones who did not understand that life, like marriage, was both magic and illusion. Durga was one of Maya’s favorite gods. To celebrate her, she decided to host a Navratri celebration for her preschool and invite all the students, teachers, and parents.
On the day of the party, Veer surprised Maya by coming home from work on time. As he got dressed in a fancy red kurta, Maya put on a flowing tie-dyed dress she had handmade from Ashni’s shop, which was prospering ever since she had taken over for her husband. Maya dressed Janu in a pink kurta that matched her own and combed his hair to one side, like his father’s. The three of them drove to the hall together and Veer helped Maya set up.
The event began with an aarti, during which Maya and the teachers passed around a lamp with a candle, clapping as they sang a chant to Durga: “Creative, creative, mother of the world . . .”
Afterward, parents, teachers, and children began dancing the dandiya raas, a devotional dance inspired by Krishna, and also the garba, in celebration of the female form. They twirled and clapped in a giant moving circle. The men wore colorful kurtas, and the women had on heavy gold jewelry and makeup and chaniya cholis, dresses that spun out like upside-down teacups. The toddlers wore kajal on their eyes, and bangles and colorful caps, and held tiny dandiya sticks. Everyone sweated in the October heat.
Maya, who preferred to watch, sat on the sidelines holding one of the youngest students. When Ashni arrived, she hugged Maya hello. “Take my photo, nah?” Ashni said. She wore tight leggings and a deep blue and turquoise top from her shop. She looked at the photo Maya took and shook her head. “Take another?” The photos were for her lover. Her husband had not come to the party.
Maya stood up and tapped the microphone. It was time to give out prizes. Ashni gave out awards for best dancers and best dressed, and then Maya took the mic again. “And now, the last ten minutes of the party will be reserved for freestyle dancing,” she said.
Veer, who had been missing during the dandiya raas and garba, now appeared on the dance floor to move to music he knew. As he danced in his long red kurta, he didn’t seem sick at all. He seemed like his old self: the carefree, affectionate boy his childhood friends had all known. The man Maya first met at a wedding, who had joked and made the entire wedding party laugh. Maya gestured toward Veer and said into the microphone: “For freestyle we will have my husband. This is my husband, Veer. I know you’ve rarely seen much of him.”
Veer didn’t react to the jab and kept dancing. He was here now. Maya turned to the DJ. “Turn up the music,” she said. The song was “DJ Wale Babu,” an addictive new pop song that sounded nothing like the old songs Veer loved. Still, he danced. “Duniya rakhun jooton ke niche . . .” “I keep the world under my shoes . . .” “Baki puri kar dunga me koi kasar jo reh rahi hai,” “The rest is left to chance.” Veer began clapping his hands, and Janu danced beside him, giggling. Maya put down the microphone and began to dance along with them. As the song ended, Veer threw his arms toward Maya, the gesture of a Bollywood hero toward his heroine. Maya moved toward him, in time.