Unravelling, page 1
UNRAVELLING
PREETHI NAIR
Copyright © 2024 by Preethi Nair
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
For you, reader – when you think that it’s all over, may you find the courage to blossom.
CONTENTS
THE BEGINNING OF THE END
1. YARD ONE
2. YARD TWO
3. YARD THREE
4. YARD FOUR
5. YARD FIVE
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Preethi Nair
THE BEGINNING OF THE END
The sari that I had chosen for my fortieth wedding anniversary was bought in Mumbai on one of our recent trips. The shopkeeper reiterated that it had taken the sweat of twenty women, and over a month, to handcraft. I didn’t believe him. These days, I can spot a lie from a mile away. More so if it is delivered by a man with a thickset monobrow – the tension of a lie is held just above the eyebrow.
“For a forty-year wedding anniversary, ma’am, you deserve only the best. The colour is suiting you very much,” he said, draping yet another sari against me. “Feel: Benares silk, perfect for your auspicious occasion.”
It was a beautifully embroidered sky-blue sari. I shook my head.
“Ten women hand-stitched the work on this. See here.” He briskly fanned out the sari’s pallu to reveal a row of intricately stitched golden elephants.
“No brocades, please, and no blue.”
“But such a good colour for your complexion, ma’am.”
Let me explain. In the Indian skin colour chart, used mostly for matrimonial purposes, my complexion would be referred to as “wheatish”. This terminology is for anyone who does not fall under the “fair” category but is slightly higher up than “dusky”. For those unaccustomed to arranged marriages, Indians have a colour chart to match prospective partners; think of it as a Dulux colour chart – or indeed, for those who are more upmarket like my daughter, Farrow and Ball. The lighter the shade of skin tone, the better the marriage prospects. “Fair” trumps an MBA. You may read in a potential bio data (CV for getting married): “Dark but has MBA”, and you can be sure that this candidate will unfortunately go to the bottom of the pile.
In spite of being “wheatish”, I too would have gone to the bottom of the pile had I had an arranged marriage, or I would still be on the shelf with a sack of old chapati flour, as family background and social standing are very important when matching up prospective candidates. Compatible horoscopes are also taken into account. I would have fallen at this hurdle too: I have what is known as a Mars defect, the consequences of which are likely to cause your husband’s premature death and untold destruction to the family. I bypassed the arranged system by opting for a hasty “love” marriage in a cold, damp registry office.
“No, not this sari,” I insisted.
The seller speedily reached for another sari. “Abundant green, ma’am, for fertility.”
“Do I look like I am at an age to have more children?”
I am fifty-nine. I look fifty-nine. I am not an age-defying celebrity who is about to have twins.
My husband laughed. I smiled at him laughing and was about to add a joke to the comment when the seller raced to the glass cabinet and back with the speed of Usain Bolt.
“For you,” he said, trying not to wheeze as he ceremoniously held out an orange sari.
As soon as I saw it, I knew it was the one. The poet Rumi has a saying, “What you are seeking is also seeking you.” And when I saw the sari, it was an immediate moment of recognition.
“Georgette,” he stated as he draped it against me. “Made for you and you alone by the handiwork of twenty women.” He skilfully unfolded more material. “See, like the rising sun. You are a rising sun, ma’am.”
Ordinarily, I would have made a comment about me being a rising sun, but the sari was so breathtaking. It had crystal sequins that shimmered as they caught the light. But even more beautiful was the memory that the rising sun briefly evoked.
My grandmother and I were sitting on a red tiled floor in her bedroom as she delicately unpacked her wedding sari to show me. It was her second wedding sari; she had been widowed and as a widow was not allowed to marry again, but she defied custom and remarried.
“I defiantly chose red because the sun always rises. Always, my little one, no matter how dark the nights. Remember that.”
Not long before she died, she handed me that wedding sari and asked me to wear it when I got married. Back then, I thought it would be worn when I married my first love, Deepak, but fate had other plans. Well, it wasn’t really fate, it was my sister. People have the power to subvert your destiny if you allow them to. The red wedding sari was carefully packed away and later used by my daughter as a decorative tablecloth for her twenty-first birthday party.
Yes, this orange “sunrise” sari was definitely it. I gathered the fabric in my hands and smelled it, half expecting it to smell of my grandmother, but it smelled musty, as if it had been kept in a cabinet for far too long. It smelled as if it wanted to be transported to Harrow on the Hill and given a new history.
The seller raised one side of his furry eyebrow and tilted his head with great agility towards my husband, Hiten.
“The sari is your wife’s second skin, sir, and for such an occasion money should not be an issue.”
Before I had an opportunity to respond, Hiten took out his wallet. With lightning speed, the seller snatched my husband’s money. “Thank you and wishing you forty more years together, sir.”
That would make me almost one hundred. I don’t want to live until a hundred. I don’t want these lines to make even deeper tracks on my face; the left side is already lopsided like a stroke victim’s. I haven’t suffered a stroke, but it is from years of a slight, uneven smile that time has caught up with. My friend Pushpa says it is because I predominantly chew on the right side and she has sent me a YouTube channel link on facial yoga to correct it. I haven’t opened the link yet. Pushpa also uses Crème de la Mer on her face. It costs around £200 a pot but if you look at Pushpa’s face, it is not really worth it. Good old turmeric does the job, but even that is now being packaged up and being sold for hundreds. I tell you, the man in marketing will find any way to make you part with money. But I don’t have to worry about ageing too much: long life doesn’t run in my family. Everyone gets their one-way ticket by sixty-five.
Hiten’s side is different. My mother-in-law is eighty, with no imminent signs of making it to the transit lounge. I certainly don’t want to live to a hundred. Just give me ten, maybe fifteen more good years.
I slowly put on my sunrise sari ready to go to my “surprise” fortieth anniversary party/vow renewal. It was truly glorious, but I didn’t feel glorious. I stared in the mirror again, not recognising the woman who was staring back at me. I looked more like a sunset, and was the bun in my hair too big, too ridiculous? Just as I was about to undo it, Hiten strode into the bedroom and presented me with a diamond necklace. It wasn’t from one of his own jewellery shops but from Tiffany’s.
“You look beautiful, Bhanu. Still so very beautiful.”
No, I don’t. I look like an ageing drag queen, I wanted to say. And… I know about the wedding ceremony and the party. Can we not do this? I don’t think I can go through with it.
Instead, I smiled. “Is this really for me?”
“Who else?” he asked, undoing the clasp effortlessly. He placed the necklace around my neck, and we stood in front of the mirror.
“It’s beautiful. Thank you,” I said, touching his hand. It was beautiful.
“Like you,” he repeated. “You’re still hot.”
“And not just with flushes,” I added in an attempt to lift my mood.
Hiten laughed heartily. I wanted to top it off with, And does my bun look big in this? but he would not have got the reference and it would have killed the laughter; I know my husband’s limits.
“Forty years! Remember the start. Now look at us. Not bad, eh, Bhanu?” he asked, still laughing.
The start… It was 1978 and Pushpa’s twenty-first birthday party. She had arranged a gathering of her friends in a bowling alley. I was running late and turned up in a flowery, orange-and-green miniskirt. I also had cropped hair, so everyone turned and looked at me. Some of the girls gasped. Pushpa introduced me proudly as, “The Twiggy of the Asian community. Everyone, this is Bhanu. My friend from college.”
I smiled awkwardly.
A few of her male friends gathered around me to offer me a bowling ball and to show me their techniques. One of the girls, Manju, kindly offered me the long scarf from her salwar kameez to wrap around my skirt.
I could sense his presence. He was watching me from a distance and then I saw him out of the corner of my eye. He was the spitting image of John Travolta with his jet-black hair and freshly starched white collar – like Concorde wings, they were. He was definitely going places. He then got up, rolled the ball, knocked down all the pins and glanced at me.
“Three consecutive strikes are known as a ‘turkey’,” he stated.
I ignored him and picked up a small bowling ball. I could feel his eyes watching me and I did not hit a single pin because I couldn’t bend very far in my outfit.
He strutted confidently past me and delivered two further strikes.
“I’m as good as my word. So, when I say I am going to marry you, it means I am going to marry you.”
‘You’re The One That I Want’ started playing and he began singing along. He didn’t care what anyone thought and when it came to the part about the power I was supplying, he made some thrusting motions towards me.
“Come on, Bhanu, do something,” Pushpa encouraged.
I didn’t know if I was supposed to sing Olivia Newton-John’s part, but I felt it was time to leave.
I got my coat and went to exchange my shoes. He followed me. He apologised for the strange movement that he’d made and then gestured to the space between the two of us, saying, “You have to admit – it is electrifying.”
I didn’t say anything and continued putting my shoes on.
“At least let me take you home. It’s late.”
“No thank you.” I rummaged in my handbag for a bunch of keys. I wasn’t going to use them on him; I just liked to be prepared and feel secure, especially when I walked on my own.
“I am going to accompany you to the station,” he insisted.
I liked that he used the word “accompany”, and so I nodded at him.
“I saw it, I saw that look, so I know there is hope,” he exclaimed excitedly.
“There was no look.”
“There definitely was.” He smiled.
Hiten has aged better than the real John Travolta, and with no plastic surgery required. He has got a very natural look: salt-and-pepper hair, and still that mischievous sparkle in his eyes. He and my daughter Anita have organised the surprise Hindu vow renewal and party at The Grove in Hertfordshire. Though technically, we never had a Hindu ceremony so it’s not really a renewal. It is our Hindu wedding. The Grove was a wedding venue that I had spotted for Anita, but she didn’t get married there so I had it in the back pocket for my son’s wedding.
Anita, in spite of being “fair”, possessing an MBA and working as an investment banker, did not do well in the traditional marriage system. Don’t get me wrong, it was not for a lack of trying on my part; I was like Cilla Black, setting her up on dates every week, and there was a queue of men who were waiting to marry her. She rejected every one of them and then got married to white Hugh. Those unaccustomed could think, Jackpot! That’s white on the colour chart. No, to marry a white, English person is still considered by many in the community worse than marrying someone who is dusky.
Anyway, I mentioned The Grove to Pushpa, saying that’s where I would want my son Hari to get married to the wonderful Sarah (also white), and then lo and behold, that’s where Pushpa organised her son’s wedding last summer. It was arranged in the sense that Pushpa had introduced them both through the community network (which consists of nimble-fingered Indian women who can swipe left or right in an instant and who can recall the bio data of any individual in the community, including any anomalies, quicker than AI). I was more upset about the fact that Pushpa hadn’t told me until I saw the invitation.
“What does it matter, Bhanu?” she asked me. “Your Hari is so laid-back he won’t be getting married for another five years and anyway, English people like to do things their own way; they don’t want our interfering. You saw that with Anita.”
I didn’t tell her that Sarah wanted to have a Hindu ceremony. Best to keep some things back.
Anyone would have thought it was Pushpa’s wedding; she hurried along with the photographer and the happy couple to have pictures taken. Hiten and I strolled into the gardens and then Anita and our granddaughter Leyla joined us. We sat listening to the string quartet playing Bollywood themes and admired the water feature. Then I sighed, “I thought we would have ours here.” What I meant was, I thought Anita would have had her wedding at The Grove and I knew that I should have corrected myself there and then, but I got distracted by Leyla, who was trying to jump into the water. Anita had misunderstood me, it turned out, thinking I was referring to the fact that my husband and I hadn’t had the traditional Hindu wedding ceremony and that this was where I would have wanted it.
Anyway, before I knew it, Anita was secretly liaising with my husband, booking the venue, the catering, the Bollywood orchestra, the priest, and sorting out the guest list. That’s my daughter: you give her a target and she will get the job done.
I accidentally heard her on speaker as she was talking to my husband.
“Daddy, Daddy. I thought of giving the tables names of all the places you and Mummy have been to the last couple of years: Costa Rica, Mauritius, Hawaii.”
“Don’t add the latest Caribbean cruise,” he requested.
I put down my Bran Flakes. I don’t normally listen in on conversations, but I just had to double-check what I was hearing.
“Of course I won’t, Daddy.”
He didn’t have a good time on that Caribbean cruise.
“And Hari said he will put together the music.”
My son Hari has a talent for rapping and mixing and is an all-round good entertainer. He’s also in IT and good with PowerPoint.
“I have got the priest sorted and they will allow the fire,” she added.
That’s when I spat out the Bran Flakes. A priest? A bloody priest? Excuse my language.
“Mum is going to be beyond surprised! In fact, she’ll be ecstatic; she’s waited forty years for this.”
Well, actually I haven’t. I was quite relieved that we hadn’t formalised our wedding as, technically, in the eyes of God or the gods, my husband and I are not married. A Hindu marriage is only valid when certain rites like Saptapadi or seven steps are performed. This ceremony is where the bride and groom take seven steps around the holy fire (Agni) and make seven vows that are roughly:
1. To nourish each other physically, mentally and spiritually
2. To grow together in strength and to be faithful
3. To preserve wealth and prosperity
4. To share joy and sorrow
5. To care for the children and parents
6. To be together forever
7. To remain lifelong friends
First of all, number five is the one I know I am unable to commit to; I don’t want to take care of his mother. She is pretending she has Alzheimer’s, and has forgotten or is pretending to forget the deal we made over thirty years ago that I would never have to look after her. Moreover, I think she is trolling me by leaving completed sudoku puzzles all over my house – puzzles that even Carol Vorderman would have trouble doing.
The vows, as I said, are a loose translation. For example, the literal translation for point three is, “to protect the cattle and the agricultural business”. Speaking of livestock, on some of these vows (notably number two), one could say the horse has well and truly bolted. I’m referring to my husband’s infidelities.
Not that I am without fault; for most of our married life, I have created a parallel imaginary existence with my first love, Deepak. It is the only way I have survived my marriage – talking to Deep as if it was him that I had married and sometimes, in difficult situations, pretending that he was by my side.
The thing is, I bumped into him yesterday and even though I was always imagining our re-encounter, I never actually truly believed that he would reappear in my life, and certainly not the day before the vow renewal ceremony. It wasn’t how I’d imagined it would be; I had turmeric-stained hands, was wearing elasticated tracksuit bottoms and looking quite dishevelled. Deep didn’t seem to care.
“Come away with me,” Deep whispered as he took my hand in Starbucks.
Imagine, me running off at fifty-nine! What would other people think? What about my family? Anyway, I love my husband, I do. I really do. I am not some naïve twenty-year-old with fantasies of what love might be like; those days have gone, like the aforementioned horse. No, I am happy in my marriage. Of course we have had our ups and downs like any other marriage, but I am happy. I’m not running off with anyone. Unfortunately, I am unable to lie in front of the holy fire and this is the part of the ceremony that is making me feel incredibly nervous. Or perhaps “nervous” is not the right word – shit-scared would probably describe it better. The fire god Agni has never let me get away with anything other than being truthful. On the other hand, the fire symbolises burning all the impurities between the couple, leaving truth to unite them and this, symbolically, is possibly worth doing.
