=== 2 ===
It was her inner drive to make anything possible, set high goals and achieve them at any cost, and of course those magical lines sung by Sinatra’s hypnotizing voice “if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere…New York, New York” that makes her want to stay here forever. “No, returning to India is out of question”, she said. Then after a pause she continued, “What’s there in India, why should I go there, a place where there is no respect for woman, where people treat us like dirt.” Deep down her, she knew that all has changed. She wanted to say “India is polluted and dirty and backward and traditional and what not”, that the problems they would face in India would make their life miserable, the population, the people, the stench, the filth, everything about the place makes her not want to go back. But she knew it was not true, she knew if they move to India, they would at least live in a cozy apartment with their parents and relatives to make their house a home, take care of their yet-to-be-born children and teach them their mother-tongue, a maid to do the work at home, unlike her tiny apartment here, where she doesn’t cooks, eats out all the time, and then to compensate for her unhealthy eating habits, work out 6 hours a week, a 2 mile jog everyday and then complain about not having enough time to do anything else. It’s just that she is not able to face the fact that she has to decide whether to continue to live here, and try to follow her dream which is, she is not entirely sure what; or move back to India, with the man she loves the most and may be start all over again, this time as a wife.
“Can we talk about this when I’m in India for my cousin Anant’s wedding?” Sandeep smiled, and nodded. He knew how it would end now. He knew how Sujata didn’t like to come out of her shelf and imagine. He used to tease her by sating “you always think, but you never imagine”. And here she was, ready to imagine how this decision could change her life forever.
Her day, just like every other weekday, started with the morning coffee and 2 hour of routine daily chores. Wearing a black formal trouser and a beige cotton shirt, a black jacket and copy of Economic Times on one hand, her bag and keys in the other, she looked herself in the mirror once; press her lips against each other to make sure the lipstick gloss is evenly spread, she walked across the drawing room reached the front door, stopped there for about ten seconds, looked around to check if everything that she needs is with her, ticked the items in her daily “to-bring” checklist, she closed the door and walked towards the elevator. Waited till it came up, moved in, and pressed “-2” to get to the car park in the basement. Her Black Honda CRV was parked exactly in front of the elevator, the area which Sandeep bought by paying a lakh extra over the regular price of 2 lakhs for a single car park area. The distance from their other parking area to the elevator was not much, it’s just that Sujata hated to walk even that long inside the building’s basement because it was not properly lit, and there was only one security camera for the whole floor. She checked herself again in the mirror and started the engine, and drove away to office.
Sandeep and Sujata were at the car showroom deciding which sedan she must get. She said “I don’t care what car it is as long as it is Black”.
Sandeep suddenly remembered Model T, but then shoving that thought out of his mind he said “Black, Again? What’s with you and this color?” Sandeep asked. He knew her favorite color is Black, and she wanted almost everything in black. Sometimes even brown works as well, like the color of his skin, but the she likes him more when he too is wearing black.
“Why don’t we just pick another monster truck? “ She was referring to the Tata safari which Sandeep bought, by selling off their Maruti Esteem. “Sujata, you know we needed a bigger vehicle, and it’s not Detroit to call up an 1800-GET-ME-A-DAMN-SUV and get the thing delivered to your place. That’s the most reliable and safest vehicle on the road. Here in India, people do not really consider moving onto the kind of vehicles they need at various stages of their life, like a Roadster in college, a sedan for marriage, an SUV when they have their first kid, and eventually settling to a cult Merc when they’re fifty. This is the closest I can get to American way of thinking”.
