The Ashreen Hour
After you dive into Ashreen’s story below, please go and check out Story Press by Ian. The stories are down-to-earth, character-driven, and the perfect length to read over your morning coffee. Ian’s tale, The Man in The Woods, elucidates the writer’s plight beautifully.
In a different life, before the New York City move, Ash Mehta was Ashreen Kapoor. At the age of 25 on a scorching July afternoon in 1995, her mother sat her down on the balcony and handed her that day’s issue of the Hindustan Times with choice matrimonial ads circled in red pen. Ashreen rubbed her salty hand on her jeans and flipped through the pages.
Just yesterday, Ashreen had rejected Rahul’s love marriage proposal. This no sullied a lifetime of cheating at school tests, skipping class to watch adult movies in the cinema, and drinking beer in the park with friends. Ashreen’s father had slapped her hard after the revelation that she had a boyfriend, and then slapped her again when she pointed out she no longer did. Ashreen wished that Rahul had not gone and proposed. It was the envisioning of a future with him that had killed the fantasy of youth and uncertainty.
Ever since the fiasco with Bhai’s engagement, Ashreen had little interest in the process of finding a match. Handsome and educated as he was, Bhai’s arranged marriage had been an ongoing family project for three years. He must have rejected one hundred girls for some reason or the other before proposing to Rachna, the niece of a filmstar. But then she ended things a few days after their recent engagement party. Relatives had been openly voicing that he was ‘marrying down’ because he was more attractive and wealthy than her: he met one hundred girls and this is the best he could find? Rachna must have heard the whispers—well, the openly-voiced comments—because she distanced herself completely after that night. Ashreen had quite liked her, too. Rachna had one of those fearless laughs that did not care what others thought about her. But she must have cared, in the end.
Ashreen furrowed her brows at the newspaper listings, trying to distinguish one from the next. Doctors, chartered accountants, lawyers, all tall or with unlisted heights. All claiming to be handsome. The descriptions started to blur, and then something unusual happened. One of the listings started to glow in a golden light. The words on that small square were radiating real gold light. Mesmerized, Ashreen pointed at the ad. Later, she would never be sure if the workings of Fate had called upon her to select Shyam’s listing or if the trajectory of her life were simply held in line by a hallucination.
*
On an August evening, Ashreen curled her hair, applied her red lipstick and black kajal, and put on a chiffon sari with a subtler set of family jewels dangling from her ears like two ruby winks. After three unsuccessful suitors—two from ads and one recommended by a friend of her mother’s—all these larke wale seemed to blur together into the same intangible shape of a future, coming and going in a procession of rejections. Ashreen knew that this man was going to be no different, just as she had known that she was never going to share a future with Rahul. She had lost track entirely of which man correlated with which one-sentence description; she was no longer sure whose listing she had pointed to so confidently just a month ago in a moment of heavenly clarity. There had been no clarity of any sort since. But her mother had kept the process going and had been calling this suitor’s parents for weeks, asking biographical questions, mailing each other photographs, deciding on whether or not they wanted to meet, and then, finally, arranging a meeting in her drawing room.
Now that the suitor, his parents, Bhai—whose presence she had insisted on—and her own parents were seated around their coffee table, Ashreen felt tense. Just last week, she had met the most handsome man she had ever seen at a restaurant. He had ordered a drink for himself, so she had asked for a Bloody Mary. Later, his mother had called her mother to say that the whole arrangement was off because she had consumed alcohol. The situation felt unfair, but Ashreen’s father placed the blame entirely on her. Was she not serious about finding a match? That shared drink had cost her a handsome husband and earned her a slap.
At present, the suitor nodded at Ashreen respectfully. “It’s so nice to meet you,” he said politely. He was not as handsome as the man she had met at the bar or as fit as Rahul, but he held her gaze with a gentle smile.
“Our Shyam has been looking forward to meeting her,” the suitor’s mother said dryly. Ashreen repeated Shyam’s name three times in her head. She was distracted because his mother had been looking her up and down as though she were a vegetable at the market. Was she pretty, fair, and tall? Only the best for their son. Perhaps her personality would make up for her height.
“What does she do?” Shyam’s father asked.
“She’s a travel agent. Mukesh and Sons’ International Travel Agency. Very reputable,” her mother responded.
“Has she traveled a lot?” Shyam asked, impressed.
“She likes home,” her mother said. The room was quiet. It was funny how a woman who did not care for travel had selected a career that revolved entirely around researching and calling and making bookings in foreign countries, drafting itineraries to see monuments, and opening doors to the world faraway. Funnier still that she had selected a career that would cease to exist in a decade or two.
“Shyam has just come in from New York! Very jet-lagged,” his father said with a smile. “He’s a doctor, you know?”
Ashreen leaned back into her seat. She recognized the type. They talked about America as though she were marrying for the visa, like leaving her country was all she had ever wanted, thirsty for an entirely different life on a land that was not her home. Her best friend, Radhika, had always wanted to marry someone from abroad. Radhika claimed that she would rather be in any sort of situation in America than happy in India. Ashreen had planned plenty of client trips to New York—honeymoons, even—and felt as though knew more than enough about the place. India was home, and a man would have to be pretty exceptional for Ashreen to leave all that behind.
“Very impressive,” Ashreen’s mother said.
“Can she cook?” his mother asked. “You know how girls are these days. Too fast.”
Nobody spoke for a moment before Bhai said, “she knows enough.”
“I don’t need a cook, Ma” Shyam interjected, “you’ve taught me well enough.”
“Do you like cooking?” Ashreen’s mother asked, her gaze directed at Shyam.
“Very much!” Shyam said, turning his focus to Ashreen, “What do you like to do?”
Ashreen knew that the truth would not be appropriate, so she spoke half of it: “I like to dance.” He did not need to know about the hotel bars and discos.
“She’s very social,” Ashreen’s mother cut in before any more questions could be asked.
“She has barely spoken a word,” Shyam’s father pointed out dryly.
Ashreen wanted to scream. The room listened to Shyam’s mother stir a spoonful of sugar into her chai.
“Why don’t we go to the balcony so that the two can talk amongst themselves? You know how it is with the family there,” Bhai suggested.
The respective sets of parents exchanged looks, Shyam’s mother nodded, and the five of them eased themselves up to leave the room. Bhai gestured to the nearby exit, funneling the parents into the wet, windy outdoors. Bhai shot Ashreen a look she could not read and pulled the glass door shut behind him, dimming the conversation outside to a faraway chatter.
Shyam stirred his chai intently even though he had not added any sugar. Ashreen stared at her lap. In the distance, they heard the creaky swing of a door. Rani approached bouncily from the hallway, wagging her tail behind her. Shyam was reaching for a spoonful of namkeen from the table and froze abruptly upon seeing her, retracting his hands and spilling it onto the carpet. Rani lunged towards it and ate it up vigorously.
“You’re scared of dogs?” Ashreen said, laughing despite herself.
“Does she bite?” Shyam asked, sitting stiffly in place.
“If a thief came to rob this house, she would try to become its friend.”
“So what about the sign outside? It said ‘Beware of dog’”
“That’s how we make sure she doesn’t befriend any thieves.”
Shyam exhaled, sinking into his chair with a laugh. “I just thought she was violent. God, no, I love dogs. You know, in New York, I once judged a dog show.”
“What on earth is a dog show?!”
And then they started talking. The conversation lifted off with surprising ease. Maybe he was not so bad, after all. He could make her smile and laugh, a feat that many of her past boyfriends had not achieved in their propensity for drama, cheating, and proposals she did not want to accept. He told her about his childhood in New York City, imbuing her with a sense of wanting to leave home for the first time in a way that her travel job had not managed to inspire for years. She had never heard abroad described with casual sincerity and nostalgia, only with a disconnected sense of mystery. Shyam smiled at her as he talked—a full, warm smile—and she wondered if everything would not be so bad after all. If they could love each other.
*
October’s stuffy cold rolled in sooner than Ashreen had bargained for. She sat on the balcony with Bhai and took a long drag of her cigarette, staring blankly at a Fair & Lovely ad in the paper on the table and thinking about a golden vision she had experienced months ago.
“Ashroo, just because my last engagement ended, doesn’t mean you can take forever to get into yours. We don’t actually have to go in order, you know?” Bhai said.
“You should’ve chosen the first girl we saw, the one with the—“
“—if you tell me one more time that I should have chosen the mango-nosed girl, I will never sneak you cigarettes again.”
Ashreen grinned at Bhai.
“It’s a yes from their side,” Bhai finally said, extinguishing his own cigarette. “Mama told me his mother called a few hours ago. They’ll want to hear back tomorrow.”
“It’s only been two months! And don’t even get me started on how much I hate his mother.”
“Don’t even try to change the topic. In arranged marriage time, that’s more than enough and you know it.”
Future in-law aside, Ashreen and Shyam had certainly covered a lot of ground very quickly. They had asked each other the big questions and the small questions. She could practically write a biography about him. Introvert, loves reading and cooking, hard-worker, family-oriented, wealthy. Yet that felt like the problem. That there would be no more to know. With Rahul, there had been the possibility of new discoveries every day. Those days, just being in Rahul’s presence, she had found herself sitting straighter and twirling her hair and laughing and asking questions. The night could take the two of them anywhere—to an unaffordable hotel bar with friends or to a different park in a distant neighborhood. There was nothing unpredictable with Shyam. The man had never even had a drink without his parents present!
“But he’s so…simple, bhaiya,” Ashreen said. “And I don’t know. New York just sounds…miserable.”
“Simple toh hein. But think about what I said to you after his family first came over.”
“Look at the heart. Don’t look at the rest,” Ashreen mimicked in a low-pitched voice, trying her hardest not to laugh afterwards. “Mama and Papa practically want us married as of yesterday.”
“Ashroo, you’ve got to take this seriously. What do you want?”
“I’ll talk about Shyam if we talk about Sarika,” Ashreen grinned widely.
“You’re impossible! You know you have to decide by tomorrow, right?” Bhai exclaimed. Ashreen held her grin and he sighed. “What? What else is there to say about Sarika?”
“Arre, don’t look so depressed. You’ve been dating her for a month now. You’ve got to take this seriously,” Ashreen mocked.
“Fine! You get one question. But if I answer it, you have to get serious with deciding about Shyam.”
“Deal.”
“Ask me, then.”
“Why are you still seeing her?”
“Ashreen,” Bhai warned. “What are you asking?”
“I’m just saying! As your sister, I will tell you that I think you should go talk to Rachna. Nothing has happened that can’t be undone. I know you still lo—“
“Ashreen. I am happy with Sarika. And if you love me, you will support me in this. Now, can we please talk about Shyam?” Rani wandered onto the balcony, playfully approaching Bhai for attention. Bhai scratched her under her ears and she tilted her head sideways to accommodate the affection. “What’s holding you back?” Bhai asked, pulling a cigarette out of his box.
“There’s no…magic in it, Bhai. The love. It’s missing.”
Bhai brought the cigarette to his mouth and lit it. “Ashroo, you said no to Rahul,” he pointed out, “and he’s engaged now.”
“He’s what?!”
“I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want you to feel bad. This just happened yesterday.”
“Who is he engaged to?!”
“I don’t know. Some arranged girl.”
“How did I not know? He didn’t even invite me!”
“You said no to him.”
“I did….”
“Ashroo?”
“Hahn?”
“What are you going to say to Shyam?”
Ashreen had been hoping for a sign. A golden answer. But none had come forth and Rahul was now engaged. Ashreen looked out at the neighborhood. She had spent practically all of her days in that park, hand-in-hand with Rahul and her group of friends from childhood to young adulthood.
“Schedule the roka. I’m going to say yes.”
*
New York City has always made promises to newcomers with no intention of follow-through: opportunity, wealth, fame, happiness, and the like. A decade ago, the city had owed none of those things to Ashreen, who had come in expecting nothing at all. Yet she found her expectations unmet anyway—the small things she had not even thought she needed to hope for. Children, a stable career, friendships. She was now 35 and in a small apartment which Shyam never left outside of work hours. At least I’m still married, she would tell herself when Bhai would text her a particularly bad divorce update about Sarika.
But even that started to feel like a larger burden after she ran into Rahul. She had not truly realized the extent of her unhappiness until after that interaction. It was meeting him that planted a seed of doubt from the past, the notion that an alternate reality would have made her a different, fulfilled self.
She had been reading a magazine on the subway when she heard a familiar voice call her by her whole name. Ashreen Kapoor. Nobody had called her that in a very long time. She had been Ash since the move and Mehta since the marriage. When she had looked up, not having placed who had said her name, she had been met with the gaze of the past. Of Rahul. Here, in the present. He looked like he had not aged a day with his same crooked, boyish smile and large, bright eyes. She had asked how his marriage was going and he had casually—no, happily—mentioned a divorce and split custody. He had asked how she was doing and she had said that she was doing well. She had said they should catch up while he was in town and gave him her number just before he got off at the next stop. He had looked back over his shoulder and smiled at her on his way out.
For days, she practically watched her Nokia phone, waiting for a message. After the fifth day, she realized that there was going to be no message. She wondered if she had scribbled down her number correctly on that strip of magazine she had ripped off. Still, she waited for a message. And in the waiting, she grew older.
She imagined what it would be like to have married Rahul. And then, chiding herself for childishly dreaming about the unchangeable past, she imagined what it would be like to divorce Shaym and marry Rahul. That fantasy was a lot more dangerous because it felt plausible. Maybe she and Rahul could be happy. Maybe she could love him—not in the way that she loved Shyam, the way you are supposed to love a husband—but in the way that young people love. Maybe she could get pregnant. The imaginary world grew ever more appealing and intricate as the mundane realities of her life started to feel distant.
What was she doing in this marriage with Shyam? Clearly, he cared about her. He came home every day from work and cooked her dinner. He made love to her as though she were not infertile. He talked to her about the books he was reading before he fell asleep and asked her about her day. Surely, that was love? But did she feel the same?
The Rahul fantasy enveloped her every thought until the dinners tasted like nothing, his book descriptions started sounding like wikipedia summaries, and his questions about her day felt repetitive and irritating. She had not been in the mood for sex for months.
And so Shyam and Ashreen had a conversation about divorce.
*
Something very strange happened on the day that everything was set to end. In many other respects, it was a very ordinary day. Shyam made Ashreen breakfast and coffee as though he had forgotten that this was the end for them. He was telling Ashreen about a patient of his who would not seek help for her cancer. She was half-listening as she looked at the paper and an ad on the page started to glow in golden. The words in that small square of space were radiating real gold light.
DR. RACHEL ELLENS: COUPLES THERAPIST.
She found herself pointing at the ad, wondering if she had imagined it or if the same forces of Fate that had brought her to Shyam many years ago were at play, guiding her to her future.
“What is it, Ash?” he said, looking at what she was pointing at. “Couples therapy?”
“Couples therapy,” she repeated, listening to the idea herself.
He frowned and looked down. “I thought you wanted to leave me,” he said quietly. She sipped the coffee he had made her. Hazelnut creamer and foam, just the way she liked it.
“I thought I did, too,” she said quietly.
“Do you…mean that you want to try?”
She looked down at the ad again. The golden light had gone. She could convince herself that she had imagined the whole thing. Or she could accept that she had seen it. A moment of clarity, like the one she had experienced so many years ago. It was all down to her in the end. She furrowed her brows.
“What book are you reading right now? Maybe I could try it out, too.”
Question for You
How did you meet your significant other? Does your story feel like the workings of fate to you? Or was it simply by random chance?
Fate (do tell!)
Random Chance
I have yet to meet my significant other
Ashreen’s Song
“Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like.”― Lemony Snicket