SERIAL : 38

INDIAN IN COWBOY COUNTRY

LABOUR DAY

“Brahmarpanam literally means ‘offering to God,’ and the Sankrit words mean:

The offering is God; the act of offering is God,

Offered by God in the sacred fire that is God

He alone attains God,

Who in all his actions is fully absorbed in God.

I am the all-pervading cosmic energy,

Lodged in the bodies of living beings.

United with their ingoing and outgoing life breaths,

I consume all the various foods.”

Satish added, “Before the Brahmarpanam, what we had in front of us was food. After we say it, it becomes consecrated food.”

“We don’t need to say formal prayers, just a sincere prayer from our hearts, thanking God and asking God to bless the food,” she said.

Pauline said, “Honey, it is so deep, it brought tears to my eyes.”

“Yes,” conceded Miriam, “It was beautiful.”

Susan and Serena joined in to praise Monica’s rendition when Clyde jumped in and asked, “When are we going to eat?”

Satish stood up and described all the dishes on the table. Monica added, “I apologize if you find it too hot and spicy.”

“Don’t worry, honey,” Pauline said, “I’ll eat anything as long as I don’t have to cook!”

“Bon appétit,” declared Darrell as he served Serena a spoonful of mutter paneer.

“This smells delicious. Can you pass me some naan bread?” Susan asked as she served herself some chicken curry, aloo gobi and raita.

Miriam and Dan focused on the spicy vegetable biryani rice and the chicken curry combination.

“This Tandoori chicken is delicious. Best barbecued chicken I’ve ever had,” Clyde said, as he bit off a mouthful.

“But, I thought you were a vegetarian, Monica,” Dan said.

“Yes, I am,” Monica confessed. “Satish made the meat dishes. I made the vegetarian ones.”

Instantly, all the wives turned on their husbands and began to reproach them for their lack of culinary skills.

For the next two hours, in an atmosphere of banter and camaraderie, these five couple sat at the table, enjoyed each other’s company, and learned about how each pair had met.

“I met my wife at a honky-tonk in Pasadena,” volunteered Clyde. “She was the purtiest girl on the floor. I asked her if she would dance with me, and we’ve been dancing together since then.” He then took Pauline’s hand and kissed it.

She said, “He’s so romantic.”

All the men in the room knew that Darrel had met Serena during one of his trips to Houston, but he had not divulged the details. The attractive spouse volunteered, “I met him on a delayed, late-night flight to Houston. He sat next to me, and during the entire three-and-a-half-hour flight, he ignored me. He had a window seat and, alternatively, he kept reading some kind of a journal and sleeping.

When we landed, he helped me with my hand luggage. He said nothing as we both waited at the baggage claim belt, when we discovered that our luggage had been lost, and when we stood in line to fill out the airlines forms.

“He was ahead of me in the line, and after he finished filing his claim, he left. However, when I left the counter and turned around, I found him standing there. He asked me, in a most understated way, if I wanted a ride to a hotel or something.

“It was past midnight and I was not sure if it was safe to take a cab. He looked decent and respectable, so I accepted. We were staying at different hotels that were close to each other. During our half-hour ride, he said almost nothing.

“Then, when he dropped me off, he asked me if I would join him for drinks the next day. I was inclined to say no, but then something told me that there was perhaps another side to this man. I said yes. He swept me off my feet the next day, and we were married in three months.”

“I had allergies and I was loaded with antihistamines,” Darrel explained.

“That is such a great story, and so romantic. Somebody ought to make a movie of it,” Pauline said. “Susan, how did you and Sam meet?”

“I was his student,” Susan said. “He was an adjunct professor at U of H, where I had come to do my masters in accounting. He taught me during my first semester, but for a year and a half after that, he ignored me. When I was about to graduate, he came for campus interviews, to hire accountants for his firm. Instead of hiring me, he referred me to another firm, and then asked me out on a date.

“Both of us knew that we were right for each other but we vacillated for two years whether we should get married. You know how it is; he is an African American and I am a Singaporean. We are from different worlds but we could not live without each other. So the last time he proposed to me, I accepted.”

She took Sam’s hand and held it. He turned to her and said, “Love you, babe.”

“Who’s next?” asked Serena. “Monica, Dan?”

“Let me go last,” Dan requested.

Serena turned in the direction of her hosts and said, “Well?” Monica nudged her husband to tell the story and he complied.

“Ours was an arranged marriage. We got married within four days of being introduced to each other,” Satish said.

There was silence at the table. They were waiting for Satish to say more. When nothing was forthcoming, Monica jumped in. “He is always so matter-of-fact,” she said in the direction of Susan and Serena, who were seated across from her.

“Satish and I knew each other as children. His father and my father are friends. When we were children we met quite often, but when he became a teenager he stopped coming to our home, and I lost touch with him for more than fifteen years.”

I used to be a stewardess for a European airline. After my mother, God bless her soul, passed away, I decided to quit my job to be with my father. Satish was a passenger on my last flight.”

“He was like you, Darrell-sleeping, silent, or looking out of the window most of the time. I did not recognize him at that time, even though his name was on the passenger manifest. He had a drink or two, and he hardly touched his food. He was polite, courteous, and not flirtatious. I noticed these over a nine-hour flight. I said to myself that he was the kind of man I’d like to marry.

“I was married before. My first husband died in a motorcycle accident six months after my mother’s death, and it took me a long time to get over it. Satish was the first man I saw who made me want to get married again.”

She stopped, and when cajoled to continue she said, “Let my husband tell the rest of the story.”

“I did not recognize her on the flight, either. She looked familiar, but then I knew her by her pet name. She was called Mona when she was a kid. I did not connect Mona and Monica.

“I was on this two-week trip to Mumbai to visit my parents, and during those two weeks my parents and sister had me visit with six women, often with their families. It was very depressing. I did not feel comfortable with any of them.

“On the day of my departure, she and her father came over around lunch time and I met her again. She recognized me from the flight but I did not. Within minutes of meeting her, I knew that Mona was the one.”

Monica jumped in. “Even after he talked with me for over two hours, he did not recognize me till I told that I was the stewardess on his flight home. He then asked my father’s permission to take me to a restaurant to talk some more. “I thought he was taking me to a restaurant at a five-star hotel. Instead, he took me to an airline ticket office at the hotel. There, in front of my colleagues and friends, he asked, “Will you marry me? I will postpone my trip right now.” I said yes, and we got married four days later in my home.”

Pauline was weeping. She dried her tears with her napkin and sobbed when she said, “That is the purtiest story I have ever heard. Don’t you think so, darlin’?” in the direction of her husband.

Clyde nodded and said softly, “Kinda gets you here,” pounding his fist to his chest.

Susan reached out to her hosts, held their hands, and said, “It’s wonderful when everything works out, isn’t it?”

Serena lifted her glass of wine and said, “Wish you the very best in life.”

Miriam raised hers and said, “That’s very sweet.”

While everyone raised their glasses and toasted their hosts, Dan asked, “Hey, do I get my turn or not?”

“Sure”, conceded Clyde, and asked him to take center stage.

He cleared his throat and said, “But, before I start, I’d like Liya and Seeta to be here.”

Monica left the table to fetch the children. As soon as the two-year-olds were seated on their mothers’ laps, he said, “I met Miriam at a synagogue.”

Clyde choked mockingly and said, “You, Dan, in a synagogue?”

Miriam jumped to his defense, “He is religious, Clyde. The rabbi told me that he was a regular.”

Clyde apologized and Dan, unperturbed, continued.

“I met Miriam and Liya, at the synagogue I attend. She was visiting her cousins in Houston and was on a four-month holiday, visiting form Israel. Liya’s father was in the army. He died more than a year ago.

“I have been seeing her and Liya since the first week she has been here, and she is returning to Jerusalem next week. But I don’t want her and little Liya to go back, so I have a proposition for both of them.”

With that, he pushed back his chair, got on his knees, and said, “Beloved Miriam light of my life, will you give me the honor of being your husband, and a father to Liya?”

Tears welled up in Miriam’s eyes. She held her daughter, and, trying to hold back her tears, she nodded. “Yes,” she said, and placed her right hand and her daughter’s right hand in Dan’s extended hand. He placed his other hand on theirs and held them and said, “I promise to honor, protect, and love you for the rest of our lives.”

He pulled two rings from his pocket and placed one with a large solitaire diamond on Miriam’s finger. Kissing Liya on her cheek, tears in his eyes, he slid the smaller ring on the little girl’s ring finger.