One Indian Girl(3)

I went to the Mehta–Gulati check-in desk. All my family guests had checked in. Some did grumble about sharing a room with three others but most seemed fine. Mom said that the grumblers were the jealous types, the relatives who couldn’t stand the fact that we had reached a level where we could do a destination wedding in Goa. The supportive ones, according to mom, were those who understood what it was like to be the girl’s side.

‘Do not use this “girl’s side” and “boy’s side” logic with me again. I don’t like it,’ I said. Mom and I were sitting in the lobby, ensuring that the staff readied the special check-in desk for the Gulatis.

‘Can you stop waving your feminism flag for a week? This is a wedding, not an NGO activist venue,’ my mother said.

‘But. . .’

‘I know you are paying for it. Still, beta, protocol is protocol.’

‘It is a sexist protocol.’

‘Did you figure out your parlour appointments? Aditi also wants hair and make-up all six days.’

I love how my mother can throw another topic into the conversation if she doesn’t want to answer me.

‘Of course she does,’ I said.

‘Now go change,’ mom said.

‘What?’

‘You are going to meet the boy’s side in jeans and T-shirt? And look at your neck!’

‘Again you said “boy’s side”. And what’s wrong with my neck?’

‘There is no jewellery. Go change into a salwar-kameez and wear a chain from my jewellery box.’

‘I have just arrived. I am working to settle the guests in. Why am I expected to doll up? Is the boy expected to dress up right after he gets off a flight?’

My mother folded her hands. When logic fails, she does this, brings both her hands together dramatically. Strangely, it works.

I relented and stood up. She handed me the key cards to her and my room. I went to her room first. I took out a gold necklace, the thinnest and least hideous of them all. Why am I agreeing to this? I wondered even as I wore it. Maybe because I failed when I did things my way. All the women’s empowerment and feminism bullshit didn’t really take me anywhere, right? Maybe Kamla bua and mom’s way was the right way.

I went to my room. Four huge suitcases were crammed into the walking space in the corridor. Two giant bags belonged to my sister, who had essentially packed a retail store’s worth of dresses for herself.

I opened one of my suitcases, took out a yellow silk salwar-kameez with a slim zari border. My mother had told me, no cottons this week. I undressed. I looked at myself in the mirror. My wavy hair had grown, and now reached my shoulders. I looked slim—the two-month diet before the wedding had helped. The black La Perla lingerie I had purchased in Hong Kong also gave a little lift here and a little tuck there. Expensive underwear can make any woman look sexy, a little voice in my head said. Some men in the past had called me sexy, but they could have been biased. Why am I always so hard on myself? Why couldn’t they have genuinely found me sexy? Well, it didn’t matter now. I would be undressing in front of a new man soon. The thought made me shudder.

I walked closer to the mirror. I saw my face up-close. ‘It’s all happening, Radhika,’ I said out loud.

Hi, I am Radhika Mehta and I am getting married this week. I am twenty-seven years old. I grew up in Delhi. I now work in London, at Goldman Sachs, an investment bank. I am a vice president in the Distressed Debt Group. Thank you for reading my story. However, let me warn you. You may not like me too much. One, I make a lot of money. Two, I have an opinion on everything. Three, I’ve had sex. Now if I was a guy you would be okay with all of this. But since I am a girl these three things don’t really make me too likeable, do they?

I am also a bit of a nerd. My sister, Aditi, and I went to school together in Delhi at Springdales, Pusa Road. She is just a year older than me. My parents wanted a son for their firstborn. When Aditi came, they had to undo the damage as soon as possible. Hence, my father, SBI Naraina Vihar Branch Manager Sudarshan Mehta, decided to have another child with his homemaker wife, Aparna Mehta. Sadly for them, the second was also a girl, which was me. It is rumoured that they tried again twice; both times my mother had an abortion because it was a girl. I confronted her on this topic years ago, but she brushed it off.

‘I don’t remember, actually,’ she said, ‘but I am happy with my two daughters.’

‘You don’t remember two abortions?’

‘You will judge me, so no point telling you. You don’t know what it is like to be without a son.’

I had stopped asking her after that.

In school, Aditi didi was a hundred times more popular than me. She was the girl boys had crushes on. I was the girl who started to wear spectacles in class six. Aditi didi is fair-complexioned. I am what they call wheatish in matrimonial ads (why don’t they call white-skinned people rice-ish?). We look like the before–after pictures in a fairness cream ad; I’m the before picture, of course. Aditi didi started dieting from age twelve, and waxed her legs from age thirteen. I topped my class at age twelve, and won the Maths Olympiad at age thirteen. Clearly, she was the cooler one. In school, people either didn’t notice me or made fun of me. I preferred the former. Hence, I stayed in the background, with my books. Once, in class ten, a boy asked me out in front of the whole class. He gave me a red rose along with an Archies greeting card. Overwhelmed, I cried tears of joy. Turned out it was a prank. The entire class laughed as he squeezed the rose and ink sprayed across my face. My spectacles protected my eyes, thankfully.