Somebody else's life

I wrote this during finals and never posted it...

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I have no time to read for fun. I have way too much work to do.

Well, maybe I can sneak in a short story here and there. I picked up Karma and Other Stories by Rishi Reddi and the story I read today is about a 22-year old girl named Lata who is a bit of a rebel in her Indian community. She goes to the functions and wants to teach classical dance, but -- gasp -- cuts her hair short and dates a blond guy with an earring. He breaks up with her because she can never bring herself to tell her parents about him.

The boyfriend part happens in the past. In the present, Lata's best friend is marrying a guy that her parents set her up with. Lata resisted her own setup. When her parents invite the Canadian doctor to dinner and inform her the next day that "He said yes!" she says no and they stop speaking to her.

It left me feeling grateful that my parents accept JW so completely. I always give his family credit for being so open to me, but my parents deserve a lot of credit too. No arranged marriage for me. They supported my decisions and my autonomy.

Then I realized I was revising history.

On my nineteenth birthday, my mother called and told me I had better start looking for a husband, because the good ones would be snapped up and I'd be scraping the bottom of the marriage barrel in a few years.

On my twenty-first birthday, my mother called and asked if I remembered this guy who had come to dinner forever ago. Let's call him Saurav. "Do you remember Saurav?" she asked. I pictured an old guy with a beard. He had come to our house when he first arrived in the U.S. for grad school. I was in high school when we met and he was in his twenties. "Yeah, why?" "He's doing his postdoctoral work at Caltech! Computer engineering. You know, he was at the top of his class at ITT. Number one. It's very difficult to do that. Top in all the exams." "Good for him," I said, wondering why she was telling me the resume of some random guy.

"So... he wants to meet you," she said. "Meet me? I thought we already met." "Yes, but that was years ago. Now he wants to meet you." "Meet me? Why would he want to meet me?" "Why wouldn't he want to meet you?" she trilled.

"WAIT," I said, catching on.

"You're twenty-one! It's time to think about getting married!"
"I'm twenty-one. I'm not ready to get married."
"Just meet him!"
"He lives in California," I said, stalling.
"You're moving to California after gradution," she pointed out.
"Northern California."

My parents came to visit me at school a few days later and my mother brought up the subject of old bearded Saurav, top of his class, again. Finally I told them. "I can't meet him. I have a boyfriend."

JW and I had been dating for two years. I had met his entire family.

My parents didn't stop speaking to me, but they were not very happy. At least they were nice enough to him when we all went out to lunch together.

They warmed up to him as they got to know him better, and by the time we got engaged they had already been prodding me to marry him for a while. They definitely do get credit for getting over it. Now they love JW and his family. It's been so long, I just erased the part where my parents were searching for a suitable boy.

I saw Saurav again a few years later. He's a professor now. He didn't seem so old and bearded now that I was an adult. I actually liked the guy.