Harit Uncle sighed. “Don’t worry, beta. It is not a big deal. I am much more concerned that you Indian kids here get a good education.”
Prashant had to stop himself from asking what Harit Uncle’s kids were studying. Obviously, he didn’t have any: he was unmarried. Harit couldn’t remember the last time he had met an Indian man this age who didn’t have a wife.
Wait a second.
Holy shit, this dude was gay.
Of course—he was wearing way too many accessories. Uncles were supposed to wear dress shirts—open at the collar—the skeletal silhouette of a T-shirt underneath them, and some gigantic wristwatch. Maybe a gold chain, though this seemed to be an accessory indigenous only to those who smoked. Yet Harit Uncle was wearing not only a blazer but a tie and a cardigan, as well as tinted eyeglasses, a slender watch, and actual loafers with tassels on them. There was also some kind of cologne in the air, as well as—what was that? Something sweet, like flowers.
Oh—it wasn’t just cologne. It was whiskey. Prashant was playing chauffeur to a gay alcoholic.
*
“Why didn’t you tell me you had a problem with this earlier?” Ranjana said as she was peeling a marigold-shaped bindi from its sticky backing and affixing it to her forehead. The first time she had ever noticed a worry line was when she was performing this action, and over the past few years, a single, small bindi had gone from covering one line to two.
“You said you were having a get-together! Not a welcome party.”
“It isn’t a ‘welcome party’ at all. It’s a get-together. Haritji is simply getting together, as well.”
“It’s not right. You know it’s not right.” Mohan was standing in his V-neck undershirt and briefs, both off-white with use, both marked here and there with faint spots of indeterminate origin.
“It’s only a big deal if we make it a big deal. He’s lonely, ji. You remember what it was like.”
“Heh? What what was like?”
She sighed, focused on digging the right earrings out of her jewelry drawer. She had to remind herself that Mohan hadn’t gone through her experience. He had never felt the kind of despair she had upon arriving in the States, what with his job and the quick assimilation it required of him. (She had this thought almost weekly, even though they had been in this country for years. It was astounding how many times you could discover anew the same revelation.) As much as she wanted to remain in this argument, she knew that her approach was inherently faulty. There was so little in common between Harit and Mohan, and she was trying to plan this party according to her logic, forgetting that she was an outlier and that Mohan, who had always viewed their community as solace, was unlikely to understand, let alone share, her empathy.
They were having yet another get-together in an ocean of get-togethers, and Mohan, in his half-dun undergarments and matted chest hair, was echoing his usual worries. How many years would it take for Indian people here to realize that they had to leave at least a bit of their Indian decorum behind? All of the women had smartphones, for God’s sake; surely, this was evidence enough that they had moved beyond the past. To have a stranger in their midst—even an Indian stranger—seemed enough to put Mohan over the edge, and Ranjana found this ridiculous.
She was both sad and glad that Seema and Satish couldn’t make it tonight. They were out of town, visiting relatives in Pittsburgh, and Ranjana could have used Seema’s moral support. At the same time, though, she felt protective of Harit and didn’t exactly need Seema’s gossip and scrutiny right now, especially after how Ranjana had felt at their own house.
It wasn’t that she didn’t love Mohan. She did, indeed, love him very much, or at least cared for him so much that the idea of love entered the picture—even if he could be so cold. The fact was, though, that she was interested now only in surprises. Once she saw that she was capable of not only changing but of discovering new things about herself—things long since abandoned, or perhaps never even considered—she was no longer interested in people who wanted only stability, who did not want to discover who they were but who wanted to live comfortably by firm principles.
There was nothing for it but for her to seize upon the first full set of earrings she could find, a tawdry pair of faux pearls that looked like pieces of a candy necklace. As Mohan moved on to grumbling about something involving Avnish Doshi’s “money-making house-flipping plan,” Ranjana tugged on the earrings. Over time and age, the hole of each earlobe’s piercing had come to resemble the mouth of the man in Edvard Munch’s The Scream. When a party was beginning with fierce antagonism toward her earlobes, there was little hope for a smooth evening ahead.
*
Harit had never been in a confined space with a younger person like this—not since he had been young himself—so he held on to the revelation about Prashant’s switch in major as if it were a source of oxygen. It was clear that Prashant hadn’t meant to divulge this fact, but it was also clear that both of them were enjoying some relief from its admission. Contrary to what Harit often thought, he wasn’t totally out of it: he knew very well that literature was not a common course of study for Indian kids, and he could only wonder what Ranjanaji would make of Prashant’s confession. She seemed like a supportive woman, and perhaps she would delight in her son’s unique choice. But even before arriving at the gathering tonight, he knew that the other Indians there would frown upon it, and he felt sorry for the boy.
He felt a bit calmer by the time they pulled in front of the house. He understood, however, as he got out of the car—feeling as if his body were moving of its own accord while his mind exercised above it—that the car ride was to be the least uncomfortable part of the evening. Here was the real challenge: an entire houseful of new people. It was enough to send him screaming back into his sari. He soon saw, though, the benefit of having been sent for by the hostess’s son, which was that he was the first guest to arrive.