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January 23 - February 3, 2021
I.I.H., for the uninitiated, stood for Ideal Indian Husband.
Pappa put his hand on Rishi’s shoulder and squeezed once, briefly, before letting go. “You have everything you need?” Pappa said “everything” with a meaningful weightiness, and Rishi nodded solemnly, knowing what he meant.
He could swear, as he drove down the tree-lined street in the late morning light, that he saw dozens and dozens of flickering ghosts—his grandparents and their parents and their parents—watching him, smiling. Escorting him to his destiny.
Dimple had to actually roll up the car window while Mamma was talking this morning so she could leave on time. Even Papa had given up and gone inside after twenty minutes. The woman was relentless, with the jaw muscles of a jungle predator.
She really did love her family, so much, but being at home was starting to feel like wearing an iron corset, painful and breathless and pinchy in all the wrong places.
“Hello, future wife,” he said, his voice bubbling with glee. “I can’t wait to get started on the rest of our lives!” Dimple stared at him for the longest minute. The only word her brain was capable of producing, in various tonal permutations, was: What? What? Dimple didn’t know what to think. Serial killer? Loony bin escapee? Strangely congenial mugger? Nothing made sense. So she did the only thing she could think to do in the moment—she flung her iced coffee at him and ran the other way.
And then she was just there, right in front of him, like some sort of huge cosmic coincidence personified.
His expression was solemn, like he was holding something that could shape fortunes and mold destinies.
Speak first, think later, that was her default setting, no matter how she tried to control it.
His eyes reminded her of old apothecary bottles, deep brown, when the sunlight hit them and turned them almost amber.
Anxiety’s fingers became claws.
The fog coated the sky and filtered through the trees around them so it felt like they were encased in a tiny gray bubble.
But that was Rishi . . . he was like a pop song you thought you couldn’t stand, but found yourself humming in the shower anyway.
Like his heart was wrapped in microwaved Nutella.
He was lucky; his lack of caring made him supremely un-nervous.
Rishi stared at her like she’d just told him a giant meteor was headed for the Earth and there was nothing to be done about it.
