I shook my head as if to clear the cobwebs that had settled in as soon as I saw Adarsh. “Ma, I’ve already decided. Actually, there is nothing to decide.”

“Just talk to him,” Ma cried out. “What do you lose?”

“Does Nanna know about this?” I asked.

“No. Your Thatha and I thought it was a good idea.”

I sighed. “I’ll talk to him, but not here,” I said even before she could let the triumphant smile form on her face. “We’ll go out and I’ll talk to him. You handle Thatha about that.”

“And you’ll be good to him? Right? Speak properly? No nonsense?”

I grinned; she had to push for that extra mile. “Ma, don’t you think I’m doing enough?”

Ma frowned and muttered something that I thankfully couldn’t catch. Thatha was called into the kitchen by Ma while I asked Adarsh if he wouldn’t mind going out.

“Sure,” Adarsh nodded and then followed me onto the veranda. I slipped my feet into the Kohlapuri slippers that I had just taken off. I had bought them a few days ago when I got home and they were already showing serious signs of wear.

While Adarsh buckled his leather sandals, I asked him if he knew of a place where we could have a cup of coffee and talk.

“Sure, we can drive,” Adarsh said, pointing to a black Tata Sierra parked outside the gate that I hadn’t noticed when I’d come back.

We didn’t speak as Adarsh drove to a chaat place.

“I love chaat,” he told me. “As soon as I got here I ate chaat.”

“I lived on chaat and ganna juice while I was in college,” I said. “When I got to the U.S. I was skinny. I looked like I was a refugee from one of those sad African countries.”

“Can’t bulk up just on chaat and sugarcane juice,” Adarsh concurred. “But if you add beer to the mix…” We laughed, almost companionably.

The chaat place was a small restaurant. Not your regular roadside chaat, this one was a step up. There were probably fifteen tables covered with red-and-white checkered vinyl tablecloths. Each table had a small plastic vase where a dusty plastic red rose stood upright proclaiming its artificiality.

Adarsh asked for two bottles of water as soon as we got in. The place was practically empty except for a man sitting at a table in a corner reading a newspaper. We found a table by a window looking out at the busy road where Adarsh had parked the black Tata Sierra. A young boy of maybe ten or eleven years old, wearing a pair of oversized khaki shorts and a dirty white T-shirt, put two bottles of water on our table. A small white-and-red checkered towel rested on his shoulders and he took our order on a small notepad with a ballpoint pen that had been resting against his ear.

“Just chai? No chaat?” Adarsh asked when he heard what I wanted.

“I just had a masala dosa at Minerva. Went there with my aunt,” I said, but my mouth watered when Adarsh ordered pau bhaji.

“The best pau bhaji is still in Bombay,” Adarsh said when the busboy was gone. He then took a swig from the bottled water. “So, why did you want to see me?”

I rested my chin on the palm of my left hand, moving my head slowly as my hand pivoted around my elbow and smiled at Adarsh.

“You didn’t want to see me,” he deduced, and sighed. “Your mother and your grandfather-”

“Plotted behind my back,” I finished. “Yup. I’m horribly sorry and to make up for it, chaat is on me and we can stop by this place I went to the other day and even have ganna juice.”

Adarsh’s eyes glinted with good humor. “You don’t want to marry me. Is that it?”

“Well… ” I started and paused when a big smile broke on his face. “I don’t.”

“Okay,” he said, and took another swig of water.

“You don’t seem too broken up about it,” I said, slightly miffed that he was taking my rejection so well.

“I’ve seen five girls and I liked you the best, but I’m not in love with you,” Adarsh said.

That was the good thing, I thought, about men like Adarsh. They treated arranged marriage exactly the way it should be treated, without too many emotions messing with their decision-making process.

“Any of the other four girls to your liking?” I had to ask.

“Yes,” Adarsh said with a smile. “Her name is Priya, too, but she’s shorter than you are and definitely has less… of that spark.”

“Is that a polite way of saying I have a short temper?”

“Well… I just saw a spark of it here and there,” Adarsh said with a grin. “So, your family forced you into that pelli-chupulu?”

“Yes and no,” I confessed. “I could’ve-no, should’ve-fought against it but I wanted some peace and I didn’t have the courage to tell them about my boyfriend.”

Adarsh put the bottle down and made an annoyed sound. “You have a boyfriend? And why the hell didn’t you tell me when I told you about my ex-girlfriend?”

He had every right to be mad so I continued humbly. “I was scared,” I admitted the truth. “I was scared of hurting my family and I ended up hurting you.”

“Humiliating me,” Adarsh amended. “Goddamn it, what’s wrong with you women? I mean, I agree that arranged marriage is archaic but, Priya, you work in the United States. You are a grown woman. Why the hell are you playing these stupid games?”

“Not games, Adarsh,” I said, keeping my voice calm even though I wanted to rage at him. How would he understand how much I was afraid of losing my family? How could he understand that?

“Then what?”

“He is American,” I revealed. “And I told them yesterday but they don’t want to come to terms with it. They dragged you here hoping I would give in. Be charmed by your ultra-good looks and the rest of the package.”

We fell silent when the busboy brought Adarsh’s pau bhaji and my chai. He ignored his food while I blew at the hot tea to cool it.

“I’m so sorry,” I apologized.

“I’m so fucking tired of women like you,” Adarsh muttered.

“Women like me? Excuse me, but you don’t even know me,” I said, putting my cup down with force that caused some of the tea spill on the saucer.

“Why are you so scared? My ex-girlfriend wouldn’t tell her parents about me. She was scared because they expected her to marry a Chinese guy… And that’s why we broke up, because I got sick of her not accepting me,” Adarsh said.

“And you told your parents about her?”

“Yes,” Adarsh said. “I told them when things got serious and we moved in together, but Linda just wouldn’t do it.”

“I’m sorry,” I repeated sincerely. “I told my family yesterday night. I’m going to tell them again today… I don’t know what else to do. I’m scared that I’ll lose them if I tell them and I’m scared I’ll lose Nick if I don’t.”

“Oh, you’ll lose him if you don’t,” Adarsh assured me and dug into his bhaji. “Want a bite?”

I shook my head. “So am I forgiven?”

“Hey, who am I to judge. I’m the one finding a wife like I would a job,” Adarsh said, and then chewed on his food with relish.

“You think the other Priya will work out for you?”

Adarsh nodded, his expression amused as well as confident. “She’s twenty years old, lives with her parents. Just finished her degree, so yeah, I think she’ll work out. She likes to run and hike, I kinda like the same things, so… we’ll go camping a lot.”

“I’m glad and again, I’m really sorry for having put you through this,” I said.

Adarsh shrugged nonchalantly. “As long as you pay for the chaat and provide me with the promised ganna juice… I have no complaints.”

I tried to call Nick once more and still got the answering machine and voice mail. It was hard not to panic. I checked my email in the hope that he had sent something but I couldn’t access the account as the ISP of the Internet café I was going to was down.

Not wanting to go back to Thatha’s where I would have to deal with some unsavory questions, I decided to go to my parents’ house instead. Nate was there and if he wasn’t, I knew the neighbor always had a key to the house. I could sneak in and get some quiet time. And I could check email from Nate’s computer.