Every weekend I would call home, or if my parents were at Thatha’s house, I’d call there and we’d talk. I looked forward to calling my family on Saturday nights, sometimes on Friday nights if Nick and I were home. Would I miss that large telephone bill at the end of the month?

Ma walked into Ammamma’s room and threw her hands up in exasperation. “You also want to wear that hideous sari, Sowmya?” she asked. “She looked like someone’s grandma; you will look like her grandma’s grandma. Wear that yellow sari with the red border.”

Sowmya’s face fell. “But, Akka, I like the blue-”

“Wear that red border one,” Ma said forcefully. “Or do you want to go through another sixty-five of these?”

“Ma!” I cried out at her rudeness, but Ma just waved a hand and said, “Hush, what do you know? You just got here, maharani, and you are lucky that Rice Sarma’s son was in India at the same time. Sowmya doesn’t have those benefits.”

Sowmya pushed her sliding glasses up her nose.

“Ma,” I protested again, now embarrassed, and Ma shushed me again.

“Mahadevan Uncle called your father. Looks like they will make a proposal by tomorrow morning,” Ma said, gleeful triumph in her eyes coupled with a challenge for me to refuse this prize stud she’d found me.

I looked at her with wide eyes. “What proposal?”

“Farming proposal!” Ma said indignantly. “Marriage proposal, Priya. That is what we do. We see a family and the boy and then they make a marriage proposal and we accept.”

“Whoa… who said anything about accepting?” I demanded.

Sowmya raised both her hands. “Akka, they’ll be here soon and I need Priya to help me get ready. Neelima left with Anand, and they won’t be back until tomorrow, so I really need Priya.”

Ma looked at me and then at Sowmya. “I told you, Priya, no nakhras, your father might tolerate that nonsense, but I will take my slipper and beat the living daylights out of you if you continue to misbehave.”

I blinked and shook my head. I was not going to dignify that lame threat with a response.

“Remember that,” Ma added ominously before she left.

“She thinks that I’m still ten and she can hit me,” I muttered. “Why do Indian parents think they can beat their children into submission?”

“That is how it is,” Sowmya said wisely. “Now tell me, will I look good in this yellow and red sari?” she asked, as she draped the sari in question over her shoulder.

The “boy” who came to see Sowmya was definitely not a prize stud. His name was Vinay and he was soft-spoken, true to his name, but the rest was a far cry from anyone’s Dream Man. He was extremely dark (even darker than I), a little on the short side (but still taller by at least a couple of inches than Sowmya); he wore glasses, which were as thick as Sowmya’s, and to add to the interesting mix of physical traits was the small patch of balding hair that he was trying to hide with the classic and unsuccessful comb-over.

Sowmya served him and his parents the bajjis and ladoos while I served them tea, happy to be of help, since Vinay was Sowmya’s suitor, not mine. Vinay’s parents seemed like very nice people, polite and nonconfrontational. Vinay was thirty-five years old and was looking for someone who was homely and religious. Not too religious, though, just enough-should know how to do puja and keep madhi. Sowmya was par excellence at both. While Sowmya’s grandmother, my great-grandmother, was alive, Sowmya was asked time and again to keep madhi; that is, to cook right after she took a bath before touching or doing anything else and preferably in wet clothes. Sowmya flat out refused to cook in wet clothes as great-grandma expected, but she knew the ins and outs of all the religious nooks and crannies.

They didn’t want a working daughter-in-law, Vinay’s parents said. They wanted grandchildren soon. Oh, Vinay is still single because he was so busy with his career. Couldn’t be that busy, I thought cynically, after all he was just a small-time lecturer at some out of the way engineering college.

While I served tea, Sowmya sat demurely looking at her painted nails as her fingers fondled the yellow tassels at the edge of the red border of her sari.

“Do you play any instrument?” Vinay asked Sowmya and she nodded.

“I play the veena,” she said.

Jayant had brought the veena out from storage just that morning and Sowmya and I had dusted it clean. Thatha had been informed from a good source that the “boy” liked music and since Sowmya could play the veena, everyone thought it would be a good idea to keep it handy.

I slipped out of the living room into the backyard when Sowmya started playing. As the notes filtered through the house, it was obvious that the veena idea was a bad one. It had been almost three years since Sowmya had touched the musical instrument; she needed practice and a lot of it.

I found Nate in the backyard tying his shoelaces by the tulasi plant.

“Where’re you going?” I asked.

“Home,” he said without looking at me.

“Oh.”

He stood up and then looked me in the eye. “You should tell him, Priya. You should tell him.”

“I have told him,” I said, and when he looked at me suspiciously, I spilled the truth out. “The email bounced back, but I will send him another one. I will call him and tell him. Ottu, promise. I will.”

Nate shook his head.

“And even if I didn’t tell him, I don’t see what the problem is. It’s not like I’m going to marry Adarsh or anything,” I said belligerently.

“No, but you definitely gave everyone the idea you would marry him,” Nate pointed out. “Look, none of my business, but I just think that… I don’t know what you’re waiting for. They’re going to make a proposal, what do you plan to do then? Not say anything?”

Sowmya stopped playing the veena, just as I got ready to lay it on Nate. Who did he think he was? Some laat-sahib, some big shot who could tell me what to do and when?

“I just feel bad about all of this,” he said before I could yell at him. “I wish I could help, Priya, but I’m just going to go home and enjoy the house without Ma.”

“I’ll call you, as soon as…,” I said. I knew he was being honest with me because he cared about me.

“You’re going to break Nanna’s heart,” Nate said. “That’s going to be hard.”

“Yes, and Thatha’s,” I said. “But what has to be done-”

“Priya?” Lata came out and I bit my lip. How much had she heard? Did we say anything incriminating?

“They’re leaving and your mother wants you there,” she said, and then smiled at Nate. “Going, Nate?”

“Yes,” Nate said casually. He winked at me before leaving.

“He is so aloof,” Lata complained. “As if we are not good enough.”

“He just likes his own company,” I defended Nate immediately. “And he is not aloof.”

“Oh, come on, he has always been in his own world, not interested in the family or anything,” Lata said, and then sighed. “Of course, you don’t see anything wrong because you are his doting sister.”

“There is nothing wrong with him,” I said annoyed.

The family was not fond of Nate. It was as if he was more Nanna’s son than Ma’s. Even Thatha was more close to me than to Nate. It probably was because Nate spent more time with his friends and on his own than with the family. Nanna always said that he didn’t blame Nate. “He isn’t married to your mother, he doesn’t have to be in her parents’ house all the time,” he would say.

And to be honest, Nate didn’t even try to get along with Thatha or Ammamma or anyone else. He spoke to Anand once in a while and got along reasonably well with him, but the rest of the family could go hang itself and Nate wouldn’t give a damn, as he always said.

After the guests left, everyone congregated in the living room. Thatha opened his pouch of tobacco and started rubbing some in the palm of his hand. “Nice family… enh, Sowmya?”

Sowmya nodded.