Mimosa with Samosa, Manisha (Part-8)

So, Mr. Iyer will come to look for houses today. I don’t know what kind of a character this person is, but just to be on the safe side, I get my clickety-clakity black high heels and a black Armani A-line dress to go with the grey skies. I pull my hair into a tight pony tail, and wear a Movado with a diamond. Accentuate that diamond with a pair of cubic zirconia earrings and a pendent that look like diamonds, and stuffed my blackberry in a Gucci purse and get going. Jignesh look at me as if to say you could have dressed up like this and we could have gone out for a mini vacation, but I know what happens on our weekends that I am home.

Parents and kids will be dropped off at the temple so that they can socialize while the kids learn singing and dancing, and Indian culture. We will go to Costco and Trader Joes to do the weekly groceries. I will be in my sweats, without a shower, without make up, and he will be in his shorts and a T-shirt, unshowered as well. We will do groceries, and come home, clean up everything, pay the bills, discuss financial matters and it will be time to pick the kids and parents. Before we snap our fingers, it will be Saturday night, and if we are not invited to one of our friends house for a potluck, we will be hosting one.

Sunday morning will either be after party clean up, or a lazy day with everyone sitting in front of the TV, and me working in the kitchen, or looking up MLS. Sometimes either Vani or Neena send emails, or call for a while, but other than that, there is really nothing much. In between somewhere Jignesh will want to have sex, and we just do it. No noise, no voice to our feelings. Just a physical act. One wall is shared with kids, and the other one with parents. Not a word about how it was, or what we want. A toy would satisfy our needs better in a bathroom than us together.

I don’t know if all arranged marriages are like this, or is it just mine. At times like this, I do feel that having sex with your partner before marrying is vital. May be that is the reason I didn’t freak out when Madhuri said that she was pregnant. In the back of my mind, I always wanted her to explore her options before settling down, but safely. I am glad that my daughter didn’t end up like me, listening to parents and ending up with someone who can’t even pleasure you, and still keeping your mouth shut, because that would be a silly complaint to make.

I wonder what happens when we see our counselor on Friday evening. Would he ask us why agreed for an arranged marriage? Would he try to brand us as victims of a culture, or would he laugh at the insensitivity of the practice? Would he wonder why we have parents living with us each moment of our marriage shared with them? Would he ask Jignesh to loosen up? Would he ask me to stop nagging? What would that experience be like? On one hand I am glad it’s not an Indian who will blurt it out probably in a potluck party in a half drunken state, but on the other hand, I would have been comfortable with someone who knows what it is like to grow up in a country that is set on morals that are a world apart from the one you live in. Jignesh might have his fears also, but he never talks. So I will never know. The counselor will know more than me. Or I will know more through the counselor.

I slip out of the house with no guilt for skipping my grocery duties of the day, ignoring the whining of my mother-in-law about her poor dear son has to take care of the house as well as work. They don’t really care that I work at least five hours a day, including weekends, take care of the house and them, and the kids, shuttle them all around the town for their various classes. They think that just because I put on pretty clothes and a pretty lipstick, my job is a cushy one, and I get paid to look pretty and giggle with my clients. If that were the case, I would not be a realtor. I would be a Geisha. I am stuck in a career that is perfectly alright with my lack of ambitions and my lifestyle. I am not complaining, but it gives me no happiness to be around people who think that there is no energy or intelligence or skill needed to run this career, or at least put it on a cruise control.

Mr. Iyer was waiting for me at the local Starbucks coffee shop, and told me to join him there before we set out on our house hunt. Typically the clients come to my house first, and we discuss the areas, the price range, I run fake paperwork to come up with a preapproval number and pretend to go through a lot of documentation to get information on property taxes, mello roos for the area. But Mr. Iyer said he doesn’t want to do all that gimmicks and he knows what he can afford. Oh, he was rude enough to say that he didn’t need a realtor to tell him how much of his money should be invested in real estate, and I wasn’t angry at him at all. I smiled at his rudeness and the amount of my commission for a job that didn’t need me to pretend to do a lot of work.

I didn’t know how he looked. I didn’t want to ask him to send his picture. That would sound like an internet date. He knew how I looked probably, going by his internet knowledge. My name and a realtor tag shows at least fifty of my pictures, all probably ten years old. Still he will be able to recognize me. I walk into the Starbucks store, imagining some well dressed middle aged guy looking like Kamal Hassan in his Dockers and Polo Ralph Lauren T-shirt, and here he was, the only Indian guy meeting the profile of Mr. Iyer sitting in a designer sweat suit and sneakers reading Wall Street Journal with a cup of coffee. Suddenly I felt over dressed, but then reminded myself that I am a professional, and I need to portray a serious image at all times with clients.

“Mr. Iyer?”
“Yes?”
“I am Manisha Shah, your realtor”
“Oh yes, Mona! I didn’t recognize you”
“Sorry, the pictures are a little dated”
“Oh no, you are prettier than the pictures project you to be”
“You are being generous”
“No, if I were to be generous, I would tell you that you are one MILF, but since we are meeting each other under an ethical relation, I shall just tell you that you are a pretty woman”
“Thank you”
“So, shall we go?”
“Yes, I brought a list of houses we will see today. I will give them to you as soon as we go to my car. You let me know if you want to see all of them, or focus on a few”
“Let’s get that list and go in my car”
“I don’t let my clients drive. It’s part of my job description”
“I don’t feel comfortable sitting in a car watching a woman drive, unless that woman is heavily into role playing and wants to chauffer in around the city”
“You leave me with no options Mr. Iyer”
“R, call me just R Mona”
“Sure R”