India Becoming: A Portrait of Life in Modern India (21 page)

Veena said she found his attitude refreshing. She appreciated how understanding he was about the whole thing. I said it sounded like he was maybe more concerned than he was letting on. He didn’t sound that relaxed about it to me.

She thought for a moment. “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe you’re right. But he’s got a point, you know. I guess I can’t go on like this. I guess I better start figuring out what I want. I’m acting like a horse with blinkers on. I don’t want to see the dilemma, I don’t want to face the problem. I know it will just confuse me and I’ll get all riled up. But I guess I can’t avoid it. I need to look at the issue more closely.

“At some point, I’m really going to have to make a decision, or at least put a time frame on things. I can’t just go on like this, drifting, forever.”

Banu had pulled her children out of their school in the city. She’d
put them in a Montessori school outside town. The new school was set on the grounds of a five-acre farm. It was green, the air was breathable, and there wasn’t a car or bus in sight.

Like Veena—like pretty much everybody I knew in Bangalore—Banu complained about the pollution and congestion of the city. Bangalore was a victim of its own success. It had grown too fast, and the government hadn’t managed to keep up. The air quality was abominable; families with young children worried about an epidemic of respiratory illnesses. The infrastructure was creaking, in some cases virtually nonexistent. It was always astounding—and more than a little depressing—to get stuck in one of Bangalore’s blackouts or on its potholed back roads. Bangalore was the showcase for India’s new economy; its woes kind of made you question the solidity of that economy.

Banu said Bangalore’s overdevelopment was enough to make her occasionally miss Molasur. Whenever she went to the village, she felt like her lungs were expanding. She loved watching her children play in the fields. They’d pick mangoes, they’d ride around on Sathy’s tractor. The children were marked by the time they had spent in Molasur. They loved nature; they had a hard time dealing with the harshness of the city.

Banu took me with her to pick the kids up from their new school one afternoon. She said I lived in the country; she thought I’d appreciate the school. We made our way—slowly, painfully—through the crowded streets of Kamanhalli, and then we emerged onto a new
highway that was being built to connect the city to the airport. We passed by apartment blocks, hospitals, and small shops and then, gradually, as we drove farther out, the land opened up. There was less concrete and steel, more green. There were fewer motorized vehicles, more bicycles, and even the occasional bullock cart.

I hadn’t seen Banu in a while, but Sathy had kept me updated on their marriage. He was gloomy; he complained that Banu kept changing her mind, asking him for new things. Now, as Banu and I spoke on the drive to their children’s school, she seemed more sanguine. “Things have become much clearer for me,” she said. “I guess it’s true I was confused, but I don’t feel like I’m confused anymore. I know what I want now. I know what’s good for me, and I know what’s good for the kids.”

She said she had decided that she would stay in Bangalore and build her business. But she didn’t want Sathy coming up on weekends anymore. It was pointless: he was always thinking about work, taking calls from people in the village, and he never had enough time for the kids anyway. She had decided that the best way was for the kids to alternate between her and Sathy. They would spend a month with her, and then a month with Sathy.

I said it sounded like a difficult arrangement to work out. I asked what she planned to do about their school. She said she’d thought it through and this plan made the most sense. The kids were getting to an age when they needed to see more of their father. On the other hand, the family also needed an income. This way, they could go to Molasur and be with their father, and she could stay in Bangalore and earn money.

She said that this latest decision—and the clarity that had led to it—had made things better between her and Sathy. Before, they
used to “pick on each other, shout and say all kinds of nasty things in front of the kids.”

“Now I’m calmer,” she said. “I’ve learned to appreciate Sathy’s good traits. You know, I’ve realized that he’s a very egotistic person, but basically, inwardly, he is very soft-natured and affectionate. He’s very smart, too. I used to get so irritated with him, I used to feel resentful. I’ve sacrificed a lot. I’ve given up things that no city girl would ever give up. But now I speak more softly with him, and he also speaks more softly with me. I think we see each other’s qualities better now.”

We turned off the airport highway, down a dirt path that led by farmhouses, a country club, and a few fields where cows and goats were grazing. We passed by several schools; they all had green campuses, with big lawns and old trees. Banu wasn’t the only one who wanted to get her kids out of the city.

Darshan and Thaniya’s school was lush and expansive; it reminded me of the landscape around Molasur, except that it was cooler, less humid. The buildings were made of natural materials—thatch, stone, terra-cotta, bricks. Darshan was on a lawn, kicking a ball with some friends, and when he came over, greeted me as “Akash uncle,” Banu left to talk to a group of teachers.

I told Darshan he was lucky to have such a beautiful school, and he agreed. He said the teachers were good, too; they gave students individual attention. I asked him if he missed the village. “Of course,” he said. “That’s like my home. This is a new place—I’m just a visitor here.”

“What do you miss most about the village?” I asked. “The fields,” he said. “Riding around the farm on a tractor.”

“What about your father?” I asked. He nodded, but he didn’t
say anything. He looked away. I thought maybe it wasn’t a good question to ask.

Banu came over, told Darshan one of his teachers wanted to see him. When he was gone, I told Banu about our conversation. I said I thought Darshan missed his father.

“I know he does,” she said. “I think it’s especially difficult for him. He’s really at the stage when he needs a father’s influence. You know, fathers are more analytical than mothers. They’re more practical and organized.

“I know my plan won’t be easy. Sathy is opposed—he thinks it’s just a ploy to have him do more work. But I really think it will be better for the children. I care about families too much to not have them around their father.”

I must have looked skeptical. Banu turned to me with eyes that seemed almost beseeching, maybe a little sad, and said: “Akash, I’ve learned to accept that our situation isn’t ideal. One reason I’m calmer now is because I accept that I can’t have an ideal family setup. It’s too much pressure for me to have to take care of the kids on my own. It’s too exhausting. I want a career, and I want my children to have a father. I used to think I couldn’t have both. Now I hope I can.”

Darshan and Thaniya came over, waved good-bye to some of their friends. “See you,” the friends said. “Bye, dude,” one said. It started raining, thin, hazy drops that were more like dew, and we got into our car and drove back to the city.

The pressure on Veena and Arvind to get married was growing
. One evening, Arvind’s father telephoned him and said: “Look, you
have to set a date, don’t delay anymore. If you delay any further, your mother says she won’t visit you in Bangalore.”

They’d been lying in bed on a Sunday afternoon. Arvind got off the phone, turned to Veena, who was still in bed, and, with a shrug, said: “I guess we better figure out a date, man.”

They both acted nonchalant about the whole thing. Veena said she didn’t care about the institution of marriage; she was just doing it to make the families happy. She had resisted marrying Arvind for a while because she wanted to make sure she didn’t repeat her last mistake. But now, after living together in Bangalore, she felt more sure about him. She realized she could relax with him. “I felt like maybe I could build a life with this man,” she told me. “I was enjoying our time together. I could talk to him. Even our silences were comfortable.”

They had wanted a low-key, nontraditional marriage. But by the time Veena invited me to the wedding, in a text message she sent to let me know it would happen at six on a Sunday morning, their parents had managed to convince them to have a more elaborate ceremony.

The ceremony took place in a wood-paneled hall in a hotel outside Chennai. Veena and Arvind sat on the stage, with musicians and two shirtless priests with holy ash across their chests. The priests recited
shloka
s at a frenetic pace, struggling to be heard over the tabla and horn players. They spent a lot of time giving directions to Veena and Arvind, guiding them through the ceremony.

Arvind was dressed in a white
kurta
; Veena was in a red sari with a gold border. Her neck and arms were covered with gold jewelry. Arvind looked relaxed, and he smiled out at the crowd a
lot. Veena looked less relaxed; she kept her eyes mostly on the ground.

The music was loud; it reverberated off the low ceiling. I’d been up late the night before and had a little too much to drink. My mouth was sour. There was a trigger-happy cameraman in front of the stage and he kept letting off flashes of light. The room felt stuffy, hot. The music was in my head.

The horns reached a painful crescendo. One of the priests held his arm up in the air, as if he’d just won a boxing match. Veena and Arvind garlanded each other; they were officially married.

Family members flooded the stage, trading gifts and congratulations. Veena and Arvind stayed on the ground, sitting, exchanging more garlands, smiling and laughing intimately, as if at a private joke.

I stepped out of the marriage hall, away from the horns and flashing lights, into the corridor outside, where European tourists in shorts were milling around, trying to peek into the wedding. Soon the crowd started spilling out. Veena and Arvind followed. They were tied to each other with a string. Arvind pulled Veena down the corridor, to a hotel room.

When I next saw them, Arvind had changed into a three-piece beige-and-white suit. Veena was in a new red sari. “Congratulations,” I said, and shook Arvind’s hand. He smiled broadly.

“Congratulations,” I said to Veena, and she gave me a cynical look, although I thought she looked happier than she had on the stage.

“You seemed less relaxed than Arvind up there,” I said.

“That’s because he didn’t have two hundred kilos of gold
weighing him down!” she said, and they walked back to the stage, where the cameraman with his hot flash awaited eagerly.

A few months after the wedding, I met Veena in Bangalore. She
looked tired; she had circles under her eyes. She said work was stressful, the hours were long. “Sometimes I wonder what I’m doing,” she said. “I feel like a cabbage. I come home in the evenings and I can’t even read a single page of a book. I just conk out.”

“Are you getting tired of life in Bangalore?” I asked.

“No, not really,” she said. “I still have a long way to go in this city. But I was thinking that maybe one day—who knows? Maybe one day when I’ve made a lot of money I’ll retire and live somewhere peaceful and green like you do.”