the bidding of her dad, she made some tea and started
serving us one by one. Along with that we were offered
some savory to munch on.
We exchanged glances and polite smiles. She seemed just
as comely and demure as she was in the picture I had got
from my mom. She had nice large brown eyes and very
light skin. When she smiled she displayed a perfect row of
pearly white teeth. When I first saw her my pulse started
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racing. Then there was generally an uncomfortable silence
from both of us, as the others started interacting with each
other.
The whole process was most painful and embarrassing for
me. After suffering through it for about an hour, I heaved a
sigh of relief when my mom requested their leave. The
bidding of good byes lasted another fifteen minutes, before
we were finally on our way home.
After some 5 miles of driving in silence, my mom finally
tapped me on the shoulder and asked, “Well, what do you
think? We don’t have all month, you know? We need to let
them know by tomorrow”.
Mukesh intervened like a fire fighter, saying, “They have to
let us know first, if it is okay from their side, is it not? Why
this hurry?” That seemed to make sense.
Within half an hour of our returning home, there was a call
from Rajesh Dhillon. They were happy to meet all of us and
would consider it an honor if we would agree to this
marriage. Mukesh answered the phone. He responded
saying that I was away visiting the temple with my mom
and we will let him know our reaction by the following
morning.
I insisted that I needed to meet Seema alone and should take
her out by myself a few times before deciding on this issue
of a lifetime. That idea seemed outrageous to my mom and
Nirmala. Mukesh abstained from voting, a great diplomat
that he was.
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RAJ DORÉ
“One does not do such things in India. What kind of a girl
will do that? Would you want to bring such a girl into our
family? This is not your America, you know? You can take
her out all what you want, after getting married”, they
yelled at me.
I was quite adamant. After plenty of wrangling and
cajoling, Nirmala-bhabi agreed to talk to Ranjana Dhillon.
They negotiated and came up with a game plan. Sangeetha
and Arun were coming from Seattle, the next day. It was
agreed that we could go out as six-some, Sangeetha, Arun
& Seema from their side and Mukesh, Nirmala-bhabi and
myself on ours. Oh Boy! Were they doing me a great favor
by leaving out the parents and rest of the township.
But they wanted to announce a formal engagement by a
week from Wednesday. Then the wedding had to take place
within a month. Since I was due back in Dallas 3 weeks
thereafter, it left barely 2 weeks for honeymoon.
I even heard them mention if honeymoon was all that
important and necessary. After all so much work had still to
be done, like getting the trousseau ready, sending out
invitations and arranging a grand reception etc., etc., not to
mention visits to the American Consulate to arrange visa
formalities for Seema. It was planned that she follows me
first as wife of a student. Later Sangeetha would sponsor us
both for a Green Card in the U.S.
Since the whole course had already been charted out
between the two ladies, there seemed little, if at all any,
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room for me to do anything by way of choice or deciding. I
thought to myself, if this is what is happening to an adult
male like me, what would be the state of Seema, the girl I
was destined to marry?
of the way people get married in the West and in India.
Arguments were flung at me that after all plenty of arranged
marriages turn out to be just fine whereas even after dating
and courting 4 out of 5 marriages in the U.S., end up in the
divorce court within the first 10 years.
“Look at our parents and us. Didn’t we do well?”
I felt like responding ‘It is not how long but how good your
married life is. There is more to marriage than remaining
un-divorced.’. I was in a terrible minority to enter a fight.
High points of the outings were a picnic to a Lake near
Faridabad one Sunday morning and a dinner at the rooftop
restaurant in Hotel Intercontinental. We also took in a
musical concert at Sapru House and some movies. Seema
and I were left alone often to interact, when the other 2
couples purposely wandered away at some excuse.
On my part this seemed like as good a deal as any. She was
very good looking, no doubt. She had lived in the U.S.,
when her dad was in Washington DC, even if she was very
young at that time. Which means she must be familiar with
the life in America, hopefully. With a good educational
background, she must find plenty of opportunity to advance
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RAJ DORÉ
in a career if she chose. Her very influential family
connections could not hurt either.
More than anything else I was also very very tired of the
wild geese I was chasing, trying to bed the girls on the
campus, which invariably ended up leaving me most
frustrated. I decided not to resist or fight the inevitable that
was charging toward me inexorably.
On her side Seema seemed to be generally a reserved and
shy person. Besides, her mom was quite domineering and
took all the decisions in her life. She had been quite aware
of all the details about me even before we met. Her sister
and brother-in-law also had filled her in. She did not have
too much to ask me on our outings. She seemed reconciled
to the whole idea with little opinion. I did not find that very
complimentary. Though I did find her going into some kind
of a reverie and drowned in thoughts, every so often. I
assumed she was thinking of her life as a married woman in
a foreign land.
On my return to Dallas, I had to tell Srinivas that he needs
to start looking for another place.
I saw in the Student Center Notice Board that there was a
Thai student who had finished graduation and was going
back home. He was disposing off his belongings. He was
asking $500 for a 15 year old Toyota Corolla in ‘running
condition’ with some 180,000 miles on its odometer.
I took a good look at her. She had tattered upholstery. The
glass would roll up the window only with some extra
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efforts, since it had always been kept down. The owner
believed cool Texas breeze is so much healthier than air-
conditioning. He claimed it gave him a good 25 miles to a
gallon of gas. All it needed wa
s a new battery and a couple
of better treaded tires in the next 4 months or so. The
original color was probably some shade of pinkish-red.
Now it had smudges and dirty patches all over with some
kinks and dents, making it impossible for its color to be put
in any one description.
I negotiated and brought down the price by a hundred
dollars. I had some $150 of my own savings and from
reselling the textbooks. I borrowed the remaining ransom
from Srinivas, promising repayment of $50 per month.
The Thai student carefully counted the cash and put it in his
shirt pocket. Then he shook my hands after handing me the
keys. I sat in the driver’s seat and cranked the engine. After
the 3rd attempt there was a big gurgling noise and the
engine started. As I stepped on the gas, the car started
rolling with some smoke and bursting-of-crackers noise
coming from the rear.
First the Thai student’s face lit up, as the car was really
moving. Then his face became crest fallen. He slowly
stroked the body of the car and with a sullen face told me,
“Please take good care of her”, as if he was parting with his
favorite aunt.
“Don’t give it a thought. She is in good hands. Send her
flowers for Mothers’ Day, if you wish”, I told him and
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RAJ DORÉ
drove away. I needed a car quite badly. How could I
welcome my princess without a steed?
Within about 2 months Seema arrived. She arrived with a
check from her dad for $50,000.00 drawn on his Swiss
Bank account. It was in her individual name. I did find it
somewhat hurtful that they would give a present not
including me in it. At my suggestion, she opened an account
with that money in her individual name at a bank near the
campus.
For Seema it was not an easy adjustment to her new life.
Her previous experience of living in the U.S., was of no
consequence whatsoever. She had been brought up in a very
different life-style, with parents doting on her every need
and servants taking care of all the work. Now she had to do
everything herself, that included cooking, washing, cleaning
the toilet bowl, laundry, and not excluding carrying grocery
bags up 2 floors to our apartment on the campus.
The apartment itself was very sparsely furnished on the 2nd
floor with no elevators. She had problems with people’s
attitudes toward her and her incapability to communicate
properly with any one, leave alone developing meaningful
friendship. It is one thing to know the English language, but
quite another to be able to think on the same frequency as
the other people you come in contact with.
The climate was a big change. Texas has very severe
summer and winter, unlike in India. Living cooped up in an
apartment all the time, as your only human contact is away
at work most of the time, can by quite daunting. Having to
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TANDOORI TEXAN TALES
live with a man that was a closed book, notwithstanding his
being her husband, is very challenging in itself.
She had absolutely no idea at all about what marriage and
its responsibility were all about, even for Indian life-style
and standards. She had very few skills of cooking or
housekeeping. She had been brought up with the belief that
once she gets married she would acquire all those skills at
her husband’s house anyway. So why trouble her now? Let
her have a good time while she can.
All this was such a far cry from all those glamorous scenes
she had seen in the Bollywood movies, with heroes and
heroines prancing and dancing with duets on their lips in
front of big mansions.
At first married life seemed to move quite uneventfully for
me. However I did find Seema not showing much by way of
feelings or love toward me. Sex became a routine matter
and always at my initiative after gaps of several days. It did
not quite cross my mind that there could be any other man
in her life and thoughts. I kind of assumed, that must be a
typical attitude of an Indian girl.
Sangeetha set our papers for a Green Card in motion. Then
on, I was constantly and progressively being made aware,
subtly and sometimes not so subtly, that I owed them my
life, liberty and happiness, because of this.
There would constantly be phone calls at all odd times,
from her parents in Delhi or from her sister in Seattle. She
was getting directions and instructions on what to do and
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RAJ DORÉ
what not to do. My presence in her life started becoming a
non-event.
One weekend Arun and Sangeetha flew down. They shed
tears at the abject ‘deprivation’ to which their girl was being
subjected. The three of them went around shopping for
everything in my house including a new car for Seema.
There were also these catty remarks about how Arun was
able to afford so many lavish things and if I would ever be
able to do that. It meant little to them that I was still a
research scholar living on my scholarship and my self-
respect demanded that I don’t take help from anybody else.
I tried ignoring their lack of respect bordering on a
patronizing attitude toward me. Soon my workload started
increasing as well. I was under a lot of pressure to finish my
research project before funding would exhaust. Sometimes
that meant my being at the Lab almost all night. Even on
normal days by the time I came back home, Seema would
have eaten and gone to bed, leaving my dinner on the table.
I had not wanted Seema to idle away her time. So I
persuaded her to get enrolled into MBA program at the
Clarke School of Business at CHU itself. It was all within
walking distance in the campus. I thought that way she will
have some interests and diversions. That would also expose
her to the local Americans and help her get integrated here.
As days and months rolled by, Seema did finish and get her
MBA degree. It was not easy for her to find a respectable
job in spite of that. It took quite a while before a Real Estate
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company would take her in as a trainee. That did not
enamour her one bit.
Her mom kept reminding us that we should be giving her a
grandson soon. That would give her a good reason to come
visit us in America, which was one of her life’s most prized
ambitions. She came and lived with us for a few months
before and after, Munni was born. They were all quite
disappointed that it was not a boy, to inherit that big
fortune. However, they slowly got reconciled to that fact.
Now all the instructions and directions of how to lead our
lives came directly and personally from Ranjana breathing
down our necks, instead of over the phone, as was
happen
ing so far. It almost seemed like I was orbiting on an
entirely different planet leaving them to their own world,
which accidentally happened to be my house.
On Munni’s first birthday Seema’s parents sent a check for
$ 100,000.00 in Munni’s name. We opened a joint bank
account for the mother and daughter. My mom and Mukesh
sent a new dress and some toys with a friend who was
coming from there. It had become very very obvious,
especially to Seema’s family that they could pull their
weight on me and my life with total impunity. I had no
counter-weight whatsoever on my side to prevent their total
domination of my life.
Within a year, Rajesh Dhillon retired. He and his wife
started working on selling their house and coming over to
the U.S. for good. Sangeetha had started working on their
Visas. He still had some friends in the DC area. He wanted
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RAJ DORÉ
to buy a house and settle down there. But was over ruled by
Ranjana. She wanted to stay near her daughters. Since Arun
could not be shaken from his post, they decided to make
Seattle their family head quarters. Soon they would be
manipulating Seema and myself to move there as well.
After Rajesh and Ranjana settled down in Seattle, it became
a routine affair for Seema to pack up and go over there
every so often. Some times I would not even be aware of
her going until after I got home to find a note stuck on the
fridge. I was so totally engrossed in my research project that
I had no energy or time left to chase these red herrings.
Slowly but surely my Ph.D., doctorate arrived and I heaved
a big sigh of relief. The topic of my dissertation happened
to be a hot technical problem on which Texas Electronics