“You have shamed us,” Ammamma added her two cents. “An American? At least Anand married an Indian… but you have just ruined our good name. It is not too late, Priya. Forget this American, Nicku-Bicku, and marry that Sarma boy. Good boys like him don’t come around all the time.”

I waited for Thatha to say something but he was not saying a word. He was sitting as rigidly as he had before, looking into space. I wished he would say something, anything. The two people who I had been most afraid of hurting were hurt and they were the two who were saying the least; in fact, they had said nothing.

“When are you planning to marry this Nicku person?” Ma asked.

“Sometime this year,” I said. “I know you don’t approve-”

“Approve?” Ma charged at me. “You don’t care if we approve. You don’t care if our names are dragged through the mud. You are a selfish girl, Priya, only caring about yourself. We should never have let you go to America without marriage. Your father and I were too soft and you have taken advantage of us.”

It was not like that hadn’t crossed my mind and because it had, guilt, which was already lying heavily on me, increased in weight.

Several of my classmates from engineering school in India had married “boys” in the United States, while I and a few others had not. Our parents had not insisted that marriage be a criterion for leaving their home. They could have made it an issue but they hadn’t. They had trusted me to take care of myself, to not fall in love with some foreigner, and I had betrayed their trust. That was what Ma had said when she had talked about Anand marrying Neelima, “What can we do when someone takes your trust and throws it away?” And I had done exactly that.

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” I cried out. “Ma, these things happen. I’m sorry that you don’t approve, that you feel I’ve betrayed you, but this is my life and I have to live my life, you can’t live it for me. I have to be happy and I can’t let you be happy for me. And for me to be happy, I need to marry Nick. It’s that simple.”

“Nothing is that simple,” Thatha finally spoke. “You think your marriage to a foreigner is going to be all roses?”

I shook my head. “All relationships have problems. That’s a fact of life.”

“But this relationship will have more problems than most,” Thatha said assuredly. “You obviously will not have any support from your family. I don’t know about his family but I am sure they are not completely happy about this. How can they be?”

“But they are, Thatha,” I said. “They are. Nick’s family loves me. They accept me and don’t notice that I’m Indian.”

“Then they are being dishonest,” Thatha said confidently. He couldn’t fathom that a world existed where people didn’t notice skin color and differentiate on its basis.

“They will never accept you completely,” Thatha declared. “And what will you be left with then? A marriage to a man who your family, your world, doesn’t accept and his family accepts you, but reluctantly. I promise you that if you get married to this American, your marriage will end in divorce.”

I was shocked at his cruelty. It was cruel to tell me that my impending marriage had no chance of survival. It was cruel to tell me that he would abandon me if I married Nick. It was cruel and unkind and he hit all the marks he wanted to strike with his words.

“Then it will be a risk I must take,” I said bravely and got up. “Do you want me to leave your house now?”

“Priya!” Ma exclaimed.

Thatha shook his head. “No. You are still my granddaughter.”

I nodded.

“It will never work, Priya. You cannot make mango pickle with tomatoes,” he warned. “You cannot mesh two cultures without making a mess of it. I say this because I love you. Forget about this American. They are not our people. They will never understand us. Marry Adarsh. He is a good boy and it will make your family happy.”

I shook my head.

“No, no…” Thatha said with a tight smile. “Don’t make any rash decisions. Take your time to think about it. We don’t have to say anything to Sarma-garu until tomorrow afternoon.”

I didn’t bother to tell him that I was not going to change my mind. Like my father had just a while ago, I walked out of Thatha’s house into the warm night. No one called out after me to warn me how dangerous it was to be out at night, but it was just nine o’clock and the sky was still not completely black; hints of the sun still lurked in crimson streaks around sparse sickly clouds.

I went to the telephone booth from where I had called Nick just a few hours ago and dialed my parents’ home number. Nate picked up the phone on the fourth ring.

I was sobbing and couldn’t get any words out.

Nate was in front of the telephone booth on his motorbike within twenty minutes of my hysterical phone call. It was a Yamaha, which my father and paternal grandfather had given him for his eighteenth birthday a year ago against Ma’s vehement objection. She was convinced that Nate would die in an accident on his Yamaha and hated it with a passion. I had shipped a helmet for him, which had annoyed Ma because she thought I was encouraging him but had pleased her as well, because she knew a helmet would keep her son safe.

“I know this great place where they serve very good ice cream,” Nate said when I sat behind him on the bike.

“Nate, drive carefully or we’ll die,” I all but shrieked when Nate started driving on the bumpy roads of Hyderabad. Maybe Ma had a point!

The ice cream parlor was a cozy copy of a ’50s Hollywood movie. There was a jukebox, a red jalopy in a corner, and Enrique Iglesias was telling some woman she couldn’t escape his love at the top of his weepy lungs.

“Nate,” I said mortified, “You’ve brought me to some teenage hangout?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I thought you’d like to meet Tara.”

I sniffled. “ Tara?”

“My girl…”

“I know who Tara is,” I said, not wanting him to think I had forgotten. “But I’m all blubbery and she’ll think I’m a weepy hag.”

“She already does,” Nate said with a wink, and waved at a pretty girl sitting at a table right ahead of us. “Isn’t she lovely?” he asked dramatically in a fake British accent.

“Yes, dear,” I said with a grin. This was a side of Nate I had never seen before and it was charming.

“Hi, I am Tara,” Tara said enthusiastically.

“Hello, Priya,” I said, unsure of what I was supposed to say to her. I held out my hand and she shook it.

“So, how are you doing?” Tara asked. “Are your parents mad as hell about your American fiancé?”

Well, she sure got to the point, I thought critically. Now, as an older sister, it was my job to dislike any woman/girl Nate liked, was involved with, and/or wanted to marry

“Screw them,” Tara said before I could respond. “You’ve got one life… no second chances, you know. Kis-kis ka khyaal rakhenge, haan? Who, who will we keep happy? So we have to make choices. You have to keep you happy.”

“It isn’t that simple,” I repeated what I had been telling Ma all evening.

“Of course not, that would make it too easy,” she said with a grin. “So, Nate tells me that you love pista kulfi. They make a wicked kulfi here. Why don’t I get you one while you tell Nate what you think about me?”

Nate looked at me, his eyebrows raised. “She’s very nervous. She blabs when she’s nervous.”

“She seems super-duper confident to me,” I said. “And perky as hell,” I added.

Nate’s face fell. “You don’t like her.”

I smiled. “I don’t know her and I have yet to make up my mind. So far so good.”

Tara came back with kulfi for everyone and I got a chance to see how Nate was with a woman. It was a learning experience. He was so much my father in the way he talked and carried himself, always well behaved, always the gentleman.

“I don’t want to argue about this, Tara,” he said when Tara insisted that Nate wanted to go to the United States to do his masters.