Talking to Adarsh had raised some difficult issues; mostly I was feeling the garden variety, old-fashioned guilt. I started to wonder how Nick had felt about me keeping him a secret for the past three years we had been dating. I knew he thought it was silly not to tell my family about him, but now I started to realize that maybe he saw it as an insult as well, just like Adarsh had with his Chinese girlfriend.

But it was still a man’s world and we women had to balance the fine line between familial responsibilities and our own needs.

I waved for an auto rickshaw to take me to my parents’ house from the Internet café. I didn’t barter with the rickshawwallah, just agreed to the forty-five rupees he asked for.

Maybe Nick was busy. My mind made up excuses for his not being available on any data line. What if he had had an accident? No, no, I told myself firmly, Frances would know if that happened and Frances had said everything was fine, that she’d just talked to Nick the night before.

What if he was with another woman? As soon as I thought it, I knew it was preposterous. Nick could never be with another woman. Whenever I joked that he should leave me and go away he would say, “Where would I go? No one will have me but you.”

We both really had nowhere to be but with each other. Relationships bound people together to the point that home was a feeling and not a brick structure. I knew where home was and it definitely was not here in Hyderabad. These people were not family. How easily they had decided to give me up. Anger ripped through me. I don’t conform to their rules, I don’t exist, not important to anyone anymore. My own father walks out and doesn’t bother to tell me whether he is dead or alive as if my marrying Nick is the end of the world.

I paid the auto rickshaw driver and opened the rickety metal gate that led to the grilled veranda of my parents’ house.

“Priya?” Mrs. Murthy who lived across the street called out from her veranda.

I nodded and then waved to her. She stood up from the cane chair she was sitting on, fanning herself rapidly with a coconut straw fan. “Is your mother back, too?”

“No,” I said. “She’s still at Thatha and Ammamma’s house.”

“They took the light off again,” she complained, vigorously fanning herself. “Why don’t you come here and sit with me for a while until the light comes back, hanh? It is cooler here than your place… I always told Radha, west-facing house, big mistake.”

It would be rude to say no. On the other hand I could have a nervous breakdown in front of good old Mallika Murthy, mother of a brilliant son who had gone to the best engineering and business school in India and now worked for a big multinational consultancy. She also had a gorgeous daughter who was married to a handsome doctor in Dubai and made an insane amount of money.

Ma hated Murthy Auntie even as she spent all her afternoons gossiping with her. They both talked about their children and tried to one up each other. Nate was in an IIT and he had gotten a better rank than Ravi Murthy in the IIT entrance exam so Ma showed off about that every time Murthy Auntie brought up the topic of her daughter, Sanjana, and her amazing husband. They were expecting a child in six months and Ma was burning with jealousy. Maybe that was why she had tried to hook me up with Adarsh who had gone the BITS Pilani-Stanford-big-company-manager job route, which made him just as desirable as the doctor in Dubai.

“Come, come, Priya,” Murthy Auntie insisted. “I have some thanda-thanda nimboo pani.”

Well, cold lemon juice did sound good and there was probably just Nate in the house sweating like a pig. So I made the big mistake of going onto Murthy Auntie’s veranda instead of my parents’. I should’ve known that she’d grill me about my personal life as she gave me the nimboo pani. It had never bothered me when I lived in India how everyone nosed around everyone else’s life; now it was inconceivable.

I remember Sowmya asking me, when I first got a job, how much I was getting paid. After two years of graduate school in the United States I flinched at the question and didn’t give her a number. I couldn’t be coy with Ma who would beat the number out of me, but if I had been working in India, I would’ve probably not even thought twice about telling anyone who asked.

The nimboo pani was a little too sweet, but it was cold enough that I didn’t complain. The heat was getting to me in more than one way. My salwar kameez had wet patches at my armpits, my back, and my stomach, and my thighs felt like they were plastered to any chair I sat on. My hair was matted against my skull and my head was starting to slowly ache because it had forgotten the taste and smell of a Hyderabad summer.

“Radha tells me that she has the perfect boy for you.” Murthy Auntie didn’t even bother to mask her curiosity. “So,” she demanded, her eyes wide, “how was this Sarma boy? Did you see him? What did he say?”

I licked my lips and stifled a scream that was lodged in my throat, waiting to get out. “He was okay,” I said, digging my nose into the lemon juice, trying not to look at her when I spoke.

“Really… just okay?” Murthy Auntie persisted. “Radha said that he was… as good-looking as Venkatesh. Personally, I don’t even think Venkatesh is that good-looking. Aamir Khan any day for me. What do you think, hanh?”

“About Aamir Khan?” I looked up at her with innocent, wide-eyed confusion.

Murthy Auntie sighed. “So, he wasn’t good-looking, hanh?”

“He was fine looking,” I told her casually.

“So”-she cocked an eyebrow-“did they refuse the match? You can tell me, really. There is no shame. It happens all the time. Of course, with Sanjana, as soon as Mahesh saw her… clean bowled, he was. Married her within two weeks, would not let us delay an extra day.”

“I heard Sanjana is pregnant. Congratulations,” I said politely, hoping that this would veer her off my marriage path.

Murthy Auntie glowed. “It is a boy, they found out just two days ago. Mahesh is the only son so his parents are very happy that he is also having a son. Very rich family… The boy will be born with a silver spoon in his mouth.”

“That’s nice,” I said, now uncomfortable. Added to the heat was the fact I had nothing in common with this woman and I had, really, nothing to say to her.

“So they refused, hanh? Did they?” she asked, her eyes jumping out of her skull, wanting to peep inside my head to find out the truth.

“No,” I said in irritation.

“They said yes?”

“Yes.”

“And you said no?” Murthy Auntie asked in disbelief. “You can tell me the truth, Priya. If they said no, that is fine, it is okay to tell me. I am not a gossip like all the-”

“I can’t marry him, Auntie,” I interrupted her and gulped down the whole glass of lemon juice. I put the glass on the cool marble floor and stood up.

“Why not? Sit, Priya, what’s the hurry?” she said, tugging at my hand.

Just seven years and all this seemed alien. This browbeating and digging into personal lives seemed alien. But inside me I knew that this was the Indian way. I could turn my nose up at it and think it was uncouth but this was how I was raised, this was how things were. It was bloody high time I accepted it and did what needed to be done.

“No,” I said and smiled at her. I was just about to make her day. “I’m already engaged. My fiancé is an American. We’re getting married this fall, hopefully in October. I will definitely send you an invitation but the wedding will probably be in the U.S. ”

Her mouth stayed wide open for almost fifteen seconds. But for the fact that I had just ruined my mother’s reputation and my apparent good name, I would’ve found it comical. It felt good, though, to have told her. I had stepped into the light, the light of truth, and it was a nice place to be.

I knew that even before I got inside my parents’ house, Mallika Murthy would be dialing the phone number of ten of her and Ma’s closest friends to inform them about my fall from grace.