Poles Apart

Chapter Forty

"Well, for one, I think my family's opening up to the LGBTQ+ community at this point," he says. "They keep asking if I'm gay.

"And what do you know the struggles of singles, Arvi? You're engaged to be married and I don't suppose you've ever been single."

I let out a sarcastic chuckle at the assumption, but Vishal is too lost in misery to care. "I've been waiting to get married since I finished Engineering college. When I asked my mother about finding me a bride, after my graduation, she beat me up with a broom and asked me to finish my MBA first."

I cover my mouth, unlike the others, trying not to laugh out loud. "Two years later, I'd finished an MBA, and landed a job at Zēlos. This was ten years ago. Now I'm thirty-five and still single; so single, my mother doesn't care for caste anymore. And when we go to see girls and their family hears that I'm a marketing manager at Zēlos, they ask if I do the inventory here.

"Who came up with the idea that marketing means salespersons?" he sighs. "They think calling someone a marketing executive is a fancy substitute for the word salesperson."

~.~.~.~.~

I cut my workday short to go shopping for the wedding.

"Where's my mother?" I ask Lakshmi Aunty, gulping down a glass of water to calm myself.

"What are you angry about?" I hear my mother's incredulous voice, as she walks to the living room. "I should be angry with you, I told you we were to go shopping today."

"Ma, you called me twenty-five times in two hours," I point out. I can't believe this. Who would be angry if not me? "When are we going shopping, anyway?"

"I called twenty times only," my mother insists. "And if I've called that many times did you not think it would've been important?"

"You called more than twenty times," I argue. "And the house and everyone in it is perfectly intact, why did you call me that many times?"

"We were supposed to go shopping for your wedding, Arvi. Have some interest in your wedding, at least," she taunts.

I narrow my eyes at her, placing my hands on my hips. "When did you tell me about the shopping trip? An hour ago?"

"Did I not tell you last night?" my mother fights back.

"No, you didn't tell me last night," I ridicule her. "I can't listen to the thoughts in your head, Amma, you need to tell me."

"I absolutely told you."

"Madhu," Thathayya reproves. "Why are you both fighting in the middle of the day?"

"Your daughter called me twenty-five times while I was in a meeting," I tell him before my mother can respond. "After I told her I was in a meeting."

"You should've called me after your meeting was over! Why didn't you?"

"Because I was still in the meeting," I tell her, defensively. "If I told you I'd call after the meeting was over, I would've called after the meeting was over."

"You couldn't take one minute away from your meeting?"

"But I told you I was in a meeting, and that I would call you. Why did you have to call me twenty-five times? Do you know how scary that is— to see twenty-five missed calls from my mother?"

"I wouldn't have had to call you so many times if I could reach you!"

I sigh. She simply does not understand. Receiving twenty-five missed calls from my mother after telling her I was in a meeting, while there is an ailing man at home does not give one much space to think about trivial things such as wedding shopping.