But not only was she not marrying me for money, she seemed positively repulsed by it. I had been dying to rid her of those two horribly drab dresses.  Now that I finally had the right to do it, she wouldn’t let me. She shrank away from the very idea of shopping or spending money.  I tried to sell her the idea in different ways. We could spend some time together away from home.  “Let’s take a walk. Shopping is hardly the way to spend time together. Besides, I don’t really need anything. Do you have to buy something for yourself?”

Giving up on the hope of her coming with me, I brought some sarees and unstitched dresses for her. But even sending her to the tailor was turning out to be a mountainous task. I finally had to threaten her rather boorishly.

“If I see you in brown or black ever again, I promise you I am going to take the dress off you. Literally!”

Sarah

He had hoped to scandalize me with a threat like that. But I knew what prompted it. He just couldn’t make sense of my discomfort with being pampered and that gnawed at him. But the more he tried to spend on me, the smaller I felt. After the wedding it would hopefully be a different matter. But I couldn’t change how I felt just then.

Still the crux of the matter was that things weren’t going well right now. He wanted to pamper me, spend lavishly on me, shower me with gifts; he probably also wanted me to look prettier, better dressed and whatever else he expected form his fiancée. It was time for me to overcome my ill-articulated hesitation and make him happy. So, I donned my laced, cream dress — which itself came as a surprise to him, “What have you been doing to yourself, Sarah? You wear such dull stuff all the time, that even thing simple thing is looking like a queen’s attire on you.” — and agreed to go to the town with him. Was he exulted? His childlike enthusiasm surpassed even that of little Ananya, who was also the part of the trip and received her own share of generous pampering from her father.

On my way back, he won’t hear of me wearing the dress I had worn to the town – my best till date. I used the store’s changing room to put on of the new ready-made salwar-kameez we had bought. I had never worn anything other than a dress before. I felt like my small frame had shrunk even further.

Was my discomfiture a sign from God? Of the things to come? In retrospect it is possible to see these connections. But at that time, I was more focused on ignoring and overcoming it.

—

Since my Bangalore visit I had known about my real family. They were rich and respected people. But knowing what they were and knowing the reason they had abandoned me had made things worse for me. Till I hadn’t known where I came from, all kinds of possibilities were open, and I was free to imagine something positive about it, although for most part I didn’t bother with it at all. But now that I knew, it made me feel even smaller. That was the reason I hadn’t told my employer, now my fiancé, anything about it. It couldn’t continue forever though. The call had come. They wanted to run some tests to figure out if my marrows matched and if I was medically fit to donate. And although I had refused to see my so called father or brother, I had agreed to help them through the person I had come to think of as the employee, the man who had left me on the church steps.

I had to go to Bangalore.

“Your family? Your real family? You know who they are?” I didn’t understand the deathly white turn his face had taken when I mentioned finding my family. I wasn’t sure what reaction to expect, but I had definitely not thought that it would scare him.

“What happened?”

“They want what from you?”

“I have a twin brother, who is ill and needs a bone marrow transplant. I am their best bet.”

“A brother? A family? You have known it for how long? You didn’t think it necessary to tell me?”

“I didn’t want to talk about it. And how does it matter?”

“How does it matter?” he paced down the room. Then he turned abruptly and by now the white of fear was replaced by the scarlet of anger on his face. “How does it matter? There is this entire clan waiting to take you away from me, and you ask me how does it matter?”

“A clan waiting for me? They had abandoned me on the day I was born. And not because they didn’t have money to raise me. But because I was a girl.”

“And now you have returned to save their son. Don’t tell me they aren’t throwing their arms, and doors, and fortunes open for you.”

I opened my mouth to make a heated reply; then closed it without saying anything.

Protim

It was what she didn’t say by closing her mouth and what she instead said through those questioning eyes of hers that brought me back to my senses. I had been driven insane by my insecurity.

“Sarah…”

“I don’t know what would be worse. Marrying for money, or marrying just to avoid desperate loneliness? ”

“Sarah, I am sorry love…”

“Love? Is it possible that I have agreed to marry you for love? Or is a poor orphan supposed to cling to anyone or anything that offers some company, even a lousy one, and copious money?”

“People don’t love me, sweetheart. I… I get scared.”

“And I? Do I love you?”

“Yes. Like nobody has ever loved me.”

“They are nothing to me. Nothing. If it was a stranger who could have been saved by my donating the marrow, you would not stop me from doing so, would you?”

“No. Go Sarah. Do what your kind heart bids you to do. Just… come back to me.”

“I am not going away from you. I love you.”

“That is what keeps me going.”

I kissed her on her cheeks. It was probably the first time I kissed her anywhere other than on her lips. My passion, it appeared, had been overwhelming every other emotion I felt for her. I needed to do better, I told myself.

“What is his name? Your… this boy’s father?”

“Rajesh Goenka.”

“Goekna!”

“Do you know him?”

“Would have run into him a club or at a party… ”

“Remember this. He means nothing to me. I haven’t met him and I have no plans of doing so. I am not meeting the patient either. I don’t need to.”

“When do you have to go?”

“Tomorrow.”

“I will book a taxi for you.”

“But…”

“I can’t come with you myself. And I am not letting you go in a bus. This is not up for question, my girl bride.”

—

To be continued