Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 12: The Diwali Visit

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 12: The Diwali Visit · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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My Playful Wife, Episode 12, The Diwali Visit,
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written by Mia. Diwali came late that year, pressing
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into November, the city going gold and loud for
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a week before the day itself. I have always loved
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the approach to Diwali more than the day. The
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day is a peak, and peaks are exhausting, but
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the week before... When the markets stay open
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past their hours and the sweet shops put on extra
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hands and every balcony in the colony begins,
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one by one, to outline itself in light, that
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week has a quality of accumulating promise that
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the day can only spend. Saloni and I had our
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rituals for it. We bought Diaz from the same
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man we bought them from every year, a man who
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recognized us now, and set aside the unpainted
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clay ones she preferred. We strung the lights
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along the balcony railing on the same evening
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we always did, me on the stool holding the wire,
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her below directing me with the precision of
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a woman who could see the final composition in
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her head and would not settle for approximately.
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This year the rituals had an undertone of preparation
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because Piyush was coming and he was bringing
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Mira. He arrived with her on the third. I had
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built up a picture of her in the weeks since
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Saloni first set a girl from his office, and
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the picture was wrong, as such pictures always
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are. I had imagined someone louder, someone who
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matched my brother's openness with openness of
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her own, the two of them a pair of unguarded
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people falling unguardedly toward each other.
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Mira was not that. Mira was 24 from Mysore, with
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a composed manner and a pair of sharp eyes and
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the particular quality of a person who does not
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miss things. An engineer, like Piyush. They had
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met on a project, she told us later. bonded first
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over a shared and specific hostility toward a
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kind of badly written code that apparently has
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a name and a long history of human suffering
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attached to it, and graduated from professional
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sympathy to something else over the course of
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three months. She was not beautiful the way Selene
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was beautiful. I record this not unkindly. Saloni's
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beauty is the kind that rearranges a room, that
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makes people sit slightly differently when she
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enters, and it would be a strange and unfair
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standard to hold anyone else to. Mira was the
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other kind, the kind that becomes more interesting
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the longer you look at it, that reveals itself
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slowly, thought moving visibly just under the
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surface of the face, so that watching her listen
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was nearly as engaging as watching her speak.
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By the end of four days, I had stopped being
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able to remember why I'd thought, at the door,
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that she was ordinary -looking. The face had
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reorganized itself in my understanding around
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the intelligence behind it. She shook my hand
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at the door with a firm, dry grip and said, I've
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heard a lot about you. All good things, Piyush
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said quickly. Too quickly. The reflex of a man
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who has spent some months managing what could
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and couldn't be said. Some good things, she said,
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and smiled. A slow smile, arriving a beat after
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you expected it, and then arriving completely.
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I liked her immediately. It was not a complicated
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liking. There are people you have to decide to
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like, and people the liking happens to you before
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you've decided anything, and she was the second
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kind. Saloni received her the way Saloni received
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everything, with a warmth that was wholly genuine
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and a competence that made the guest feel she
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had always been expected, that a place had been
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kept for her since before anyone knew her name.
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She had prepared the flat with care that went
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past the obligatory. Flowers, the good sheets
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on the guest bed, the small soaps she kept for
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occasions set out in the second bathroom. The
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kind of cooking that begins two days early, that
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fills the flat with the layered evidence of its
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own making, the marinades resting, the soaking
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lentils, the particular smell of a kitchen that
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has been told something important is coming.
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She had thought about what a young woman far
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from Mysore might miss, and made one thing toward
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it, a coconut -leaning dish that she set in front
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of Mira without comment on the first night and
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watched for one unguarded second. To Sealand.
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It landed. Mira looked up at her with a flicker
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of surprise, the specific surprise of being read
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correctly by a near stranger, and something opened
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between them in that look that the next four
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days only widened. I watched all of this from
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slightly outside it, which was where I had learned
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to do my best watching. That first evening, while
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the two women were in the kitchen, talking about
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something I couldn't hear from the living room,
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their voices weaving a conversation that had
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the texture of two people finding each other,
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testing a sentence, and adjusting the next one
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to fit, Piyush sat beside me on the couch with
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a glass in his hand and the slightly stunned
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air of a man whose two worlds are in the next
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room getting along. She's good, I said. Yes,
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he said. I looked at him. He was watching the
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kitchen too, watching Mira specifically, and
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on his face was a thing I recognized, the specific
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helpless attention of a man who cannot quite
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believe his luck and is afraid that examining
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it too closely will make it go away. She knows.
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I said, lo. He didn't pretend not to understand.
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That was new in him, and I marked it. The old
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Piyush would have bought himself a second with
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a nose what? No, he said. Some things. Not everything.
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Not everything. I nodded. I had thought about
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this in advance, knowing it would come, and I
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had decided what I felt before I had to perform
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feeling it. It doesn't matter, I said. It really
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doesn't. What's between you and her is yours
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to shape. You don't owe her a museum of your
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whole history on the third month. You owe her
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honesty going forward. That's a different thing,
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and you can give her that. He looked at me with
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the expression I'd seen on him a hundred times
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this year, the one trying to calculate the depth
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of what I was telling him, whether it was the
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real floor or just a floor I'd painted on for
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his comfort. Thank you, he said, for everything
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the two words could be made to hold. Stop that,
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I said. Cook the dal tomorrow. You promised.
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He laughed, the tension going out of his shoulders
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all at once. I didn't promise. You implied it.
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In Bengaluru on the phone. You said, and I quote,
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I make a dal now, biya, you wouldn't believe
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it. That is a promise in all but grammar. It's
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a good doll, he said, defensive and pleased.
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Prove it. The four days of the visit had a completely
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different quality from any visit that had come
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before, and the difference was not only the obvious
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one, that the charge was gone, that no one in
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the flat was holding a current. The difference
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was Mira and what Mira did to the geometry simply
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by being a fourth point in it. For seven months,
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the geometry had been a triangle, and triangles
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are unstable. A triangle is always two against
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one waiting to happen, always a tension looking
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for somewhere to resolve. A fourth point makes
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a different shape. It makes a thing you can actually
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live inside. With Mira, there we were no longer
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three people each privately tracking the other
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two. We were four people in a flat at Diwali,
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and the ordinary arithmetic of four, pairs forming
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and dissolving, conversations splitting and recombining,
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gave everyone somewhere to put their attention
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that wasn't the old wound. The thing I had not
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predicted, the thing I should have predicted,
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knowing who my wife is, was how completely and
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naturally Celonie turned toward Mira. Not with
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warmth only, with something more considered than
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warmth. With the full attention she reserved
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for things that mattered, the attention I had
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watched her give to a length of fabric or a problem
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in a design, or lately, to me. By the second
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day, they were laughing together in a way that
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required no audience and admitted none, the laughter
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of people building a private grammar. By the
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third, Saloni had taken Mira to the fabric market,
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Lodge Puttnugger, the same lanes the rose -dark
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silk had come from, though I don't think she
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planned the symmetry, and come back with something
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she'd bought specifically to show her, a cotton
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block print she unrolled across the bed for Mira,
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with the particular pleasure of a person sharing
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the thing they love with someone who has turned
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out to be able to see it. I was not on that outing.
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I had been invited, lightly, and had declined,
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lightly, because I understood that the outing
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was theirs, and that my best contribution to
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it was my absence. When they came back, flushed
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from the November cold and the crowd, both talking
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at once about a shop and a man and a price they
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had jointly defeated, I felt a thing I had not
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expected to feel watching my wife befriend my
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brother's girlfriend. I felt glad. Plainly, uncomplicatedly
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glad. The shape was getting more populated and
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more stable and more alive, and I was inside
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it rather than bracing against it. On the fourth
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morning, I came into the kitchen to find them
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both at the table with Chai, deep in a conversation
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that had clearly been running for some time before
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I arrived, the conversation of two women who
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have found in each other something neither was
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looking for, and both, it turns out, needed.
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They didn't stop when I came in. That was the
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marker. A month ago, Three months ago, conversations
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would have adjusted around my arrival, made room,
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changed key. This one simply absorbed me. Saloni
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pushed the third cup toward the empty chair without
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breaking her sentence, and I sat down inside
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it and was, for a little while, a fourth voice
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in a thing that had started without me and didn't
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mind that I'd joined. Piyush came in behind me,
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hair flat from sleep, and saw it. The three of
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us at the table, his girlfriend and his brother
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and Celonie, all folded into one easy morning.
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Something in him relaxed that had been held tight
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since the moment they'd arrived. A held breath
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I hadn't fully registered. He was holding until
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I watched it go. He made the dial that night.
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It was, against my expectations, and to my genuine
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surprise, very good. I told him so, and he was
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insufferable about it for the rest of the evening,
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and I let him be, because a younger brother who
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is insufferable about his doll is a younger brother
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who is, by every measure that matters, all right.
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On the night of Diwali itself the flat filled
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with light. Saloni did the diyas the way her
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mother had taught her. She told me this once.
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Years ago, in passing, and I had not understood
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until this year that almost everything she did
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with her hands was something a dead woman had
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taught her. A specific order. A specific under
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-the -breath prayer. The small clay lamp set
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along the windowsills and the balcony ledge,
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and the threshold, the threshold one most important
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of all, the light at the door that says to whatever
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is passing in the dark, here is a house, come
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in, you are welcome. Mira helped her. I watched
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the two of them move along the ledge with a box
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of dias between them, Saloni pouring the oil,
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Mira setting the wicks, the older woman teaching
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the younger without ever making a lesson of it,
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like this, see, not too much oil or it drowns,
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and Mira nodding, taking it in, the way she took
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everything in, for keeping. Piyush and I did
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the string lights, which is to say Piyush held
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the ladder and issued instructions, and I did
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the actual work, which is the correct and ancient
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division of labor between an older brother and
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a younger one and felt, that night, like a kind
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of homecoming. We had strung lights together
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as boys. We had not done it as men, somewhere
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in the years we'd stopped, the way you stop doing
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the small shared things and don't notice the
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stopping. There was a moment. Me on the ladder
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and him below with his hand on the rail steadying
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it. When I looked down at the top of his head
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and felt the whole length of our shared life
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telescope shut. The boy who'd cried at cartoons
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and hidden a cat in his hostel room. The man
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holding a ladder for me on a Diwali balcony in
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the flat where his life and mine and Saloni's
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had collided and somehow not destroyed each other.
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And I had to look back up at the wire quickly
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before my face did something I. wasn't ready
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to explain. When it was all lit, we stood back.
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The four of us crowded onto the small balcony
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and looked at what we'd made. The whole colony
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was doing the same thing. Every balcony outlined
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in light, the dark between them dense with it,
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and over the rooftops the first fireworks had
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started, the early eager ones, the sky beginning
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its long, noisy argument with itself. Mira stepped
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away to call her parents in Mysore. I watched
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her at the far end of the balcony with the phone
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to her ear, her face shifting into its daughter
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version, younger and softer and unguarded in
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a way I hadn't seen it. And I thought about all
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the families feeding into this one improvised
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gathering, hers in Mysore. Arz and Nagpur, Saloni's
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mother 15 years gone but present in the order
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of the Diyas, in the prayer her daughter's hands
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still remembered without being told. That is
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what a festival is, I think, a confluence. Everyone
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arrives carrying their dead and their distant,
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and for one night the light is asked to hold
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all of it, and somehow does. Saloni came and
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stood beside me. She didn't say anything. She
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put a sparkler in my hand, already lit, and held
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one of her own, and we stood there with our small,
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fierce, private fireworks spitting white in the
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dark while the big ones went off over the city,
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and she leaned her shoulder into mine, and I
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thought, this. Whatever this is, whatever it
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doesn't have a name for, this. Late that night,
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after Mira and Piyush had gone to bed, they took
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the guest room together with an ordinariness
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that I noted and then, deliberately, stopped
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noting, because the noting was a habit from an
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older self. Saloni and I sat on the balcony in
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the dark. The lights were still up along the
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railing, the small ones, throwing their warm,
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unsteady glow on the two of us, and on the dias
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Saloni had set along the ledge. Most of them
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guttered out now, one or two still going. Below
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us the colony was winding down from the festival,
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the last of the firecrackers somewhere streets
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away, the smell of cordite and sweets and cold
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air mixing into the specific smell of a deli
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Diwali night. She's good for him, Saloni said.
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Yes. She sees him clearly. A pause and then,
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more slowly, working it out as she said it. That's
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the rare thing. Not seeing someone clearly. Lots
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of people see clearly. The rare thing is seeing
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clearly and staying anyway. For most people,
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the clarity is what makes them leave. I looked
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at her profile in the unsteady light. The strong
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line of her nose. The loose hair. The cup held
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in both hands at her chest for the warmth. I
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know someone like that, I said. She turned, looked
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at me. Two people, actually, I said. I meant
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it two ways, and she heard both. I meant Mira,
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who saw my brother clearly, and was staying.
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And I met her, Saloni, who had been seen this
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year more clearly than she had ever let herself
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be seen by me, who had learned things about her
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that no comfortable marriage ever requires you
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to learn, and who had stayed, and who had also,
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in her own way, seen me clearly, seen the worst
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of what the year had made possible in me, and
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the best of what it had made actual, and had
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stayed for that too. The city went on below us.
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The fading Diwali lights. The dia flames bending
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in the small wind. The particular quiet of four
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people in a flat at the end of a long good day,
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two of them asleep and two of them awake on a
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balcony not needing to fill the silence. She
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leaned her head on my shoulder, the weight of
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it, familiar now, chosen. This is good, she said.
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This thing we are now. I keep waiting to find
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the catch in it, and there isn't one. It's just
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good. Yes, I said. It is. We stayed out until
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the cold one. Before we went in, she leaned over
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and pinched out the last two dias with her fingers,
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wetting them first to her lips. The small, competent
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gesture of a woman who has been ending Diwali
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nights this way her whole life, and the flames
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went out under her fingers without complaint,
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and the balcony went dark, and the lights along
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the railing were all that was left, throwing
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their warm net over the place where we had been
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sitting. Later, in bed, I wrote one line in the
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notebook by the light of the phone, quietly,
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so as not to wake her. Diwali. For points now,
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not three. A shape you can live inside, she said.
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I keep waiting for the catch, and there isn't
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one. I didn't tell her. The absence of the catch
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is the catch. It's the thing that takes the most
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getting used to. Being simply happy, with no
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tax on it. We are learning even that. I put the
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notebook in the drawer, and lay in the dark and
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listen to the flat breathe. My wife beside me.
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my brother and the woman he would marry in the
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next room, the Diaz smell still faintly in the
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air, and I thought that if the man on the plastic
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stool a year ago could have seen this room on
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this night, he would not have believed it, and
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he would have been wrong not to. To be continued
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in episode 13, What Mira Noticed. All rights
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reserved. That was episode 12 of My Playful Wife.
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If this story is staying with you, the next episode
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Links are in the description. I've Mia. Thank
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you for listening.