Page 11 of The Art of Taking Second Chances

“Did something happen? Did someone touch you inappropriately?” she asked, her back ramrod straight in protective-mother mode.

“No, nothing happened. I was so happy today. I’m going to turn Baba’s dream into a reality. I’ll be the first female engineer in our family.” I burst into inconsolable tears.

Aai moved in and wiped my eyes with her saree. “Do you remember Vinu Mavshi?”

I looked up at her through my tears. Aunt Vinu was her cousin. “When Vinu got married, I was twelve. I remember feeling thrilled that I would get to wear new clothes and put mehndi on my hands. But when we visited to congratulate her, she looked sad. I thought that’s how it was supposed to be. She’d be leaving her parents’ home soon. My mother asked my sisters and me to stay over to cheer her up. That night, while my older sisters tried to console her, she wept like I hadn’t seen anyone weep before. She wept the whole night and all the way through the wedding day several months later. When I look back now, I know why. She knew she was marrying the wrong man. She’s never been happy. They have nothing in common, and some days he doesn’t even talk to her. She feeds him and takes care of the house, but she has no love. That’s her life. Back then, we didn’t have much choice. Families decided the match for you.”

“Why are you telling me this, Aai?”

“She wept because her subconscious was warning her against a bad decision, and now she’s miserable. I don’t want you to be wedded to something that will make you miserable, Tara. What’s your subconscious telling you that you’re not heeding?”

I bawled at her words, like I had just lost a loved one.

“What do you see yourself doing in a few years? If I ask you who you are at your core, what will you answer me, Rani?” Rani was her pet name for me. Queen.

“I’m an artist.” It was the first time I had acknowledged it, and in an instant, a weight lifted off my chest. In that single breath, I felt like all the pieces of my life had snapped into place. “But art is Dada’s thing. He’s the artist, not me!”

“Yet we made the same mistake with Aditya. But we should learn from our mistakes, shouldn’t we? You get to be who you want to be, my rani, because I didn’t.”

I gasped as she smiled.

That was the day my life changed. Everything good in my life came because I owned my identity as an artist that night.

But when Baba learned about this little development the next morning, he refused to pay for my college because art wasn’t what I was supposed to do with my life. I was throwing my life away on a hobby after everything he had done for us. Behind closed doors, my parents fought. It was the first and only time I heard Aai raise her voice against Baba. When he stormed out of the room, I saw Aai’s smiling face and assumed she had managed to placate him and to convince him to pay if I got in.

And I did get into that coveted program with a partial scholarship. The rest, Baba paid, I assumed. Until my accidental discovery that it was Aai who sold her jewelry to pay for my college. I had once asked to borrow her necklace to wear to a friend’s engagement party. Her first excuse, that she couldn’t find it, quickly turned into a feeble explanation that she had lent it to her youngest sister.

But one keen look at her told me that the usual gold chain around her neck and a set of her solid gold bangles were also missing. Realization struck like a lightning bolt loaded with guilt and shame. I was the reason Aai had to give up her inheritance. But she was a proud woman, so I never mentioned it again and resolved to pick up the rest of my expenses by tutoring kids. Taking my eyes off the target, even for a moment, would mean reducing my parents’ sacrifices to dust.

That’s how Amar and I became friends. I knew him from a couple of courses we had together during the first semester. When I put the word out that I was looking for tutoring jobs, he put me in touch with people he knew in the city. And he really knew people. Within a matter of one week, I had five jobs teaching art and elementary math to kids with families that didn’t haggle over my fees. They even offered to pay extra for additional coaching during examinations. At the end of the first month, with my wallet fat with cash, I took Amar out to dinner to say thank you. His kindness, along with the gentleness of his soul, took me by surprise, and I ended up sharing my story. Then, he peered deeply into my eyes and shared his deepest secret, one that he hadn’t told anyone yet. Some friendships are tethered by the soul, and ours was one of them.

Amar was a good-looking boy, tall and lanky with a head full of bouncing curls. He came from a very rich family but didn’t brag about it. That cast him as weird and invisible. I was a lower-middle class girl who didn’t speak correct English. Whoever said institutions of higher education were meant to level the playing field had clearly missed sending the memo to caste and class elitists and Anglophiles. They judged me by the color of my skin, laughed at my pronunciation, and often asked in coded language if I had gotten in on the “quota” reserved for disadvantaged castes and classes. Because with my English, I couldn’t have been talented enough to get in on my own merit.

For the most part, I refused to let the bigotry and the putdowns rile me. My maternal grandfather had been an anti-caste activist in his village, and I had been brought up with his values. I had learned to deal with the everyday microaggressions, but when I learned that my friend’s roommate at our hostel changed her sheets and washed her clothing if I accidentally touched it, the specter of untouchability rose like an all-consuming monster. I had marched into her room and lectured her on casteist discrimination and the provisions of the Indian Constitution that banned the practice of untouchability, as if irrational beliefs about human inequality could be overcome through logic and reasoning. But their judgment brought us closer—Amar, me, and four other friends who had been similarly marked for our deviation from perceived normalcy.

Sameer’s arrival on the scene a year later drastically changed these dynamics. For one, our group of pariahs was suddenly thrust into the spotlight, with the gorgeous Sameer now hanging out with us. Except for the good looks they shared, Sameer was the polar opposite of Amar. Where Amar was quiet, dignified, and talented, Sameer was flamboyant, cocky, and barely bothered to attend his classes. Where Amar accessed his wealth with humility and grace, Sameer was happy to flash it around. Sameer spent his time chasing women and trouble. Fair maidens from across the university thronged to the fine arts campus to catch a glimpse of the rich, handsome, bad boy from Delhi. For his turn, Sameer, who thrived on attention, encouraged the cortège. It completely wrecked whatever little social life we enjoyed.

The six of us, including Amar, tried our best to avoid him. We’d slip away to the library for our study group or go to the movies on the sly, then make an excuse that it was a spur-of-the-moment decision. One evening, we planned a cookout at Amar’s apartment and “forgot” to inform Sameer. When he finally caught a whiff of our evasive behavior, he took us to task one evening on the steps of our main building.

“Why are you all avoiding me?” he’d asked haughtily.

Instinctively, everyone looked at me, as if it were my de facto job to bell the cat.

“Well, Tara?” he demanded.

“Why me?”

“Everyone’s looking at you, so what do you have to say?” he asked, hands on his hips, an impatient tap in his foot.

“Rehani,” I began patiently. “You’re too popular. We can’t study or hang out without the spectacle of women draped over you.”

There were gasps, followed by a sudden stillness as everyone froze in place. I snarled at them for their betrayal while Sameer gaped at me in disbelief.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you can make other friends, no? You don’t have to be stuck with us just because your cousin is our friend.”

Now Sameer glowered at Amar. “Brutus.”

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