The Fat Indian Girl (#4)
The gang meeting
Meera is looking at the stage, where Sara and her to be husband Mohnish are looking into each other’s eyes, they both are a little teary eyed, Mohnish gently takes Sara’s hand and slides the shining solitaire onto her ring finger, in slow motion. He wants to make sure he makes the most of both, this moment and the whopping twenty lakh rupees, that he spent on that ring.
Sara is blushing throughout the engagement ceremony she takes Mohnish’s hand in hers and looks at the audience, to make sure all eyes are on her, she gently slides his ring onto the ring finger of his left hand, she continues to hold his hand after that. Now this hand and the five foot eleven inches’ man to whom the hand belongs to, is hers for a lifetime.
Sara and Mohnish are like chalk and cheese, Sara is the most temperamental person Meera has met in her life. Anger is her favourite emotion. She is either angry or smoking. Sara thinks everybody is an inefficient-good-for-nothing-emotional fool. It’s a wonder how she ended up with the world’s most calm and emotional person ever. Mohnish is the kind of person who will say sorry to you even for being two minutes late to a movie that is yet to start in another fifteen minutes. Whenever he is going to buy himself a drink he will ask every person personally whether they want something. If they say no, he will still make sure he still gets at least two glasses of whatever he’s drinking anyway. Mohnish is stuffed with both manners and money.
Sara often tells Meera in private, “I am giving that man some backbone to stand up for himself”, although Meera seriously doubts this claim because Sara is always scolding Mohnish for something or the other, which she feels emasculates him more than making him more of a man, but well.
Like the other day Meera, Sara and Mohnish had gone for a movie together and for some reason, their e-tickets were not being processed by the theatre’s archaic computer. Sara got really angry at Mohnish for not being able to speed up the entire process by being firm with the theatre staff. She said, “Just tell them to make it fast, why are you always so soft, if you talk like this you think they will listen, shout at them a little, we are getting late for fuck’s sake!”
Meera often secretly wonders if she needs somebody to give her some backbone too. Maybe she does, sometimes when her hairdresser is giving her flicks that are too short, she is not able to say, “aise mat kaato (don’t cut like this)” and if she gets the wrong dish at a restaurant and it looks appetising, she doesn’t bother to return it. Maybe Meera needs a boy who has Sara’s personality, but the thought of dealing with Sara’s anger issues scares Meera, she prefers to stay out of Sara’s way when she’s pissed.
Meera is still looking at the much-in-love couple on stage, she feels really happy for Sara. Meera is about to cry — her eyes are getting watery and her nose is taking a pinkish hue.
Sara and Meera have always done everything together, she might call Sara her girl-best-friend. Meera considers only Rajeev her true best friend, nobody understands her better than Rajeev, she does not discuss any serious stuff with Sara, even though Sara tells her everything about her life and fights with Mohnish.
Maybe up until now Meera never had anything worthwhile to tell Sara. She did not consider the fights with her mother and her frustration with her career important enough details to tell anybody but Rajeev.
Sara and Meera meet once or twice in a month to discuss the lives of other members of the gang and Sara’s relationship with Mohnish and also, to get drunk and dance on Bollywood music.
Speaking of the gang, one by one all of them arrive, there is Ridhima, she is the kind of woman who will always have boy trouble in her life (not with the same boy), then there is the angst-ridden Ruhi, she is heard quoting Vonnegut a lot, and we have the globetrotting Naina, who always has some story or the other to tell from her travels to overseas or around the country.
Sara seems to Meera the most normal among all of them, Meera likes all of them but she doesn’t really know what to talk to them, they have all grown up together — they went to the same school. After school, they all went their separate ways, now they meet on special occasions like birthdays and engagements.
Sara and Meera are similar. Despite Sara’s weird temper, she is a no-nonsense person which Meera likes, also Meera has a habit of occasionally blowing up, which Sara understands. But that rarely happens, years of living with her mother has rendered Meera very tolerant towards all sort of dramatic situations and people, the only person she gets pissed regularly at is Rajeev.
Once Meera brought Rajeev along when the gang was having one of those let’s catch up meets and Ruhi gave a big speech on how as women we should have each other’s back and we don’t need to men to support us, which annoyed Rajeev who argued that all that the gang does when they meet is talk about men so they are hypocrites, and then Ruhi and Rajeev fought, which annoyed everybody else.
After that day, Meera never asked Rajeev to come with her to her meetings with the gang, but she wishes he was here at this engagement then she would have somebody to talk to. The problem with Meera is she doesn’t like talking to anybody. Even at home, she has a nearly silent relationship with her mother where they either talk in arguments or curt nods.
When Meera was growing up, Roma was still getting over her divorce and most of the time she stayed plonked on the bed, Meera got used to getting by in her life without telling anybody about what happened in her day. As a result Meera never formed the habit of talking on the phone for hours to anybody. And then in the early 2000s texting entered everybody’s life, which was an absolute boon for Meera, now she could just chat with people instead of forcing herself to talk to them.
Meera is still looking at Sara while pretending to listen to members of the gang, who are playing let’s-catch-up with each other.
Sara and Meera had their first shot of Smirnoff vodka together, got their first period together and they even smoked their first cigarette together. Meera stopped smoking after she realised it was causing breakouts on her skin, with all the fat she was accumulating, her smooth skin is something she needed to desperately protect.
Sara is a chain-smoker and it is shocking for Meera to see that Sara could stand on the stage for such a long time without excusing herself for a smoke break. Maybe she is wearing nicotine patches under her blouse or something, thought Meera.
As she is looking at Sara and Momo, that’s what they everybody calls Mohnish, Meera suddenly starts feeling jealous, she starts thinking of herself standing on stage in the beige Ghaghra choli, smiling at the guests, shyly blushing, and then her fiancé holds her hand, while they both give each other knowing smiles that say, ‘you are mine’!
Meera wakes up from her engagement daydream when she hears Ruhi yelling on the phone — “my mother fucking landlord” Ruhi mouths while holding the phone and nearly screaming in it, “but I paid the rent, you can’t do this”.
Meera is feeling slightly guilty for feeling jealous of Sara. She wants to distract herself from feeling so uncomfortable and teary-eyed, so she gets up to find the bar. Also, Naina has now started describing how weddings in Tamil Nadu have this ceremony where the bride and groom break papads on each other’s head or something like that, it is getting too much for Meera to listen to. Meera goes to the bar counter, (thank god Sara’s parents are heavy drinkers, so at least there is an open bar at the engagement) she asks for a large peg of whiskey.
That’s when he enters the bar area and sits right next to Meera.
Karthik Damani, Meera’s first (to be) boyfriend. Karthik looks like he is straight out of a Sooraj Baratiya (90s Bollywood) movie, clean-shaven, hair parted on both sides with what Meera hopes is a gel and not coconut oil.
The first time they went to watch a movie, she found out it was oil, she had to ask him to never put oil in his hair when they’re out on a date, ever again.
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