“Please . . . Will you two keep shanti now and do your arguing later?” Nimita said. After a few minutes Chiraj got up, saying he wanted a glass of water, and didn’t come back. For the next hour and a half, I fanned Nimita and Girishji, handed them napkins often, and never once complained about the perspiration trickling down from my face to my neck and finally down my back. My head felt as though it were being baked by the flames of the fire.

Once in a while Mohini came near me but left quickly, dabbing her forehead with a lace handkerchief and complaining about the heat.

Now that Nimita was getting married, Mohini could be seen and admired. Mummy had assigned her to greet the guests, so she had the perfect excuse to mingle with them and eat mango-saffron ice cream. I wished that during those three hours Mohini would transform from a single body to a double body!

In the evening there was the ceremony of vidai, or saying good-bye. The band rose and played some of the most melancholy tunes I’d ever heard. It sounded more like we were at someone’s funeral to me. The brass shehanai player was particularly determined to play long, wailing sounds as Nimita and Girishji walked toward Pappa and Mummy to bow down and touch their feet. Mummy and Pappa blessed the couple, and then Mummy took Nimita in her arms, and they both cried. After that, the newlyweds bowed to Foi, Fua, and the other elders, and then began walking toward a marigold-and-rose-clad car.

Mohini held my hand, tears tumbling down her cheeks. Chiraj and Vivek stood on the other side of me, looking forlorn. Before getting into the car, Nimita turned around and rushed back to us. We, the five of us, held each other in a circle of ten arms.

Before the wedding, I had been afraid that I wouldn’t be able to cry at the vidai, and wondered what I would do if my eyes stayed as dry as the Thar Desert. After all, Nimita was going to live right in Mumbai, and we were going to see her as often as we wanted. But I knew that as Nimita’s sister, I must cry, so I’d made plans to dab spit on my cheeks. I didn’t need to, though, because when Nimita got into the car, I could only see her through a veil of tears.

three

THE DAY AFTER the wedding, our neighbor Hema Auntie stopped by.

“It was a fabulous wedding. You didn’t do anything less because of . . . you know what I mean. . . . He must have felt like a groom-king, despite the fact that . . . you know what I mean . . . he doesn’t have any family.”