Ammamma banged her hand against the arm of the sofa she was sitting on. “Very nice. If this works out… a big burden will be off our heads. I can’t wait for this marriage to take place. Ten years… ten long years… Now I want to see my Sowmya married.”

“They will definitely ask for dowry,” Jayant said. “Do you know what they want?”

Thatha put the tobacco inside his lower lip and sucked the tobacco into his mouth. “From what I hear they are not greedy people. And whatever they want, we will give… within reason, of course.”

Sowmya fidgeted with the gold bangle she was wearing. “He lives with his parents,” she said quietly.

“And…?” Thatha demanded immediately.

Sowmya just shrugged.

“Why? You don’t want to take care of his parents?” Thatha asked, chewing the tobacco noisily. “Sowmya?” he asked again when she didn’t respond.

“No, nothing like that,” she all but whimpered.

“So, do we have a problem, Sowmya?” Thatha asked.

“No,” she said after a minute’s hesitation.

We all knew she was lying.

“Grooms are not lining up outside the gate, you know,” Lata said as nicely as she could to Sowmya when the three of us were in the kitchen. “And his parents seem like nice people.”

Sowmya shrugged as she squeezed the pulp out of the tamarind, which was soaking in water. “Priya, large pieces, Ma. We need large pieces of tomato for the sambhar,” she told me, and threw the pieces of tomato I had diced into the sink. “You don’t even know the basics, Priya,” she complained. “You have to learn to cook… And if you don’t… just leave my kitchen.”

I wanted to leave her kitchen as she suggested. It was there just for an instant, the prick of pride, piercing and slamming against ego. I let it pass.

“I’ll do it properly,” I said, and showed her as I cut the tomatoes into large pieces. “This will do?”

Sowmya nodded without looking at me.

“He is a nice boy,” Lata said, looking up from the pearl onions she was peeling.

“He is thirty-five, dark, balding, and he wants dowry,” Sowmya said, tears glistening at the edge of her eyes, threatening to fall. “And he wants his wife to take care of his old parents. Haven’t I done enough? How many people do I need to take care of? What about me? Who will take care of me?” The tears fell.

I wanted to console her, but I didn’t have the words. What would I say to her? Wait for number sixty-six; maybe that will bring better luck?

Sowmya sat down on the floor and buried her face in her hands. “He asks if there is problem.” she sobbed, “There is always a problem… I am the problem. Can’t wait to get rid of me, she keeps saying.”

“They don’t mean it that way,” I said lamely.

“What would you know?” Sowmya flashed at me. “You have Mr. Mercedes wanting to marry you and you have an American boyfriend who wants to marry you. You have all the choices and…” She stopped speaking as she saw the shock on my face and then on Lata’s.

“American boyfriend?” Lata said, catching the most important part.

“I was just making a point,” Sowmya tried to backtrack but it was already too late.

“Yes,” I said boldly. No point in lying anymore, I realized. It was time. I should have done this as soon as I got to India. I shouldn’t have waited. “But please don’t tell anyone anything,” I pleaded. “I want to be the one to tell them.”

Lata nodded and then threw her hands up in the air. “You girls complicate your lives,” she said in exasperation. “When I was getting married it was simple. The first groom who said yes, it was yes. With you-”

“It is not like I have been saying no, Lata,” Sowmya pointed out.

“I know,” Lata said, and sighed. “Our choices are so pathetic. Look at me, pregnant for the third time so that your father can have a grandson, so that Jayant can feel that he is for once closer to his father than Anand, so that when the old man dies he will leave something more to us than he plans to. Disgusting lives we women have to live.”

“We make our own choices,” I said.

“No,” Sowmya said as she stood up. “No, we don’t. If I had a choice, I would have gotten a job, gotten outside the house. Who knows, met someone. But Nanna wouldn’t have it.”

“You have choices,” Lata said, looking at me. “And you are going to blow it. An American boyfriend?”

“I didn’t plan it,” I told her what I had told Sowmya. “It just happened.”

“Have you slept with him?” Lata asked.

“None of your business,” I said without thinking. “That’s very personal.”

“There is no personal for women,” Sowmya piped in. “My father knows when I menstruate because I have to sit out, they know who talks to me and who doesn’t, they know what movie I see and with whom, they know exactly, down to the paisa what I spend on anything. Personal! My foot!”

I had never seen Sowmya so riled up, but then I had never seen her as a real woman with feelings and emotions, always as Sowmya, everyone’s punching bag. The one you could dump on, the one who put up with everything. I think all of us had forgotten that beneath the thick glasses lay the perceptive eyes of a woman. Not some bride-to-be but a grown woman who was as angry at the world as I was but had more of a right to be so.

I found Indian rituals appalling but I didn’t have to live them; Sowmya and Lata did. My life was better and my choices infinitely more appealing than theirs. My parents had given me this and I owed them the truth about my personal life. They needed to know and soon that Nick existed and because he did exist, I could not marry Adarsh or any other good-looking Indian “boy.”

“Where did Natarajan go?” Ammamma asked. Both Thatha and Ammamma refused to call Nate anything but Natarajan. Nate they said was too anglicized and in any case why would you shorten a nice God’s name like Natarajan?

“He had some studying to do, so he went home,” Nanna made the excuse. “He wants to catch up with next semester’s syllabus.”

“What a hardworking boy,” Ammamma said, buying into the cock-and-bull story. “See, Priya, that is the kind of boy girls want to marry. And Adarsh is like that. His mother told me that he used to study until four in the morning every day to pass the BITS Pilani entrance exam. Hardworking boys make good husbands.”

First, BITS Pilani, unlike all other engineering colleges in India, did not have an entrance exam; admission was granted based on 12th class exam results. Second, I couldn’t figure out the connection between hard work and good husband; I knew several hardworking guys at work who I was positive would make awful husbands.

“Pass the sambhar, Priya Ma,” Nanna said, looking at me curiously. “So, what did you think of Adarsh?”

“What do you mean, what did she think?” Ma demanded. “She-”

“Radha, I want to know what she thought,” Nanna interrupted Ma. It was a ploy; he knew I couldn’t speak my mind here, in front of all these people.

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I spent all of ten minutes with him. It’s hard for me to say what he’s like.”

Ma’s face twisted and she glared at me.

“No, seriously,” I said, “you expect me to marry this man and I don’t even get a chance to talk to him before Nanna shows up asking if he wants chai.”

“How much time would you need?” Thatha asked. “A whole day? A year? Priya, marriage is what all that time is for.”

“Not in my world,” I said easily. “I don’t want to risk marrying the wrong man because tradition expected me to not know him before marriage. I can’t take that chance.”

“We all took that chance and we have done just fine,” Ammamma said.

I shook my head. “Please, I don’t want to discuss this.”

“Why?” Ma asked.

I was about to tell her exactly why when in pure movie fashion, the phone rang. Sowmya got up and went into the hall to answer it. It was for my father.

Nanna came back, a 1,000-watt smile on his face. “They said yes,” he said, beaming at me, and I felt as if a basketful of raw mangoes fell on top of my head.