would be here, it would be localized, and yet it would be so far away.
The next day, on the ride to the airport, Shyamal had on his white baseball cap, the same one he wore when we played tennis. He had a box in his lap, a painting from Jaipur he’d bought at a discount. We pulled up to a terminal, and I heard a deep sigh from Shyamal.
“Is this you, Dad?” I said.
“Yes,” Shyamal said.
The driver found a parking spot on the sidewalk to unload my father’s bags. There were honks and whistles surrounding us, just as there were in Kolkata when we had landed weeks earlier.
When he was all set, I turned to him and said, “Okay, Dad.”
“Young man,” Shyamal said, as we both went in for a hug. It was our first full embrace since I was in college. When we’d landed in India, he offered an awkward side hug and a tap on the head. But now he patted me on the back three times and kissed me on the cheek. Then he slapped me twice more for good measure.
He turned to Wesley with an exaggerated, “And?”
She came in for a hug of her own. “My sweetie,” Shyamal said, kissing Wesley on the head.
We had the driver take a picture of the three of us. There was a part of me that hoped he would be a version of my dad and would take the picture like my iPhone was a point-and-shoot, so that the moment would last an hour instead of a second. Unfortunately, the driver knew how to operate a zoom lens.
We had to go to our terminal. Shyamal, not one for deep emotions, forced a grin, but I could see he was trying to hide his sadness. I could see the longing etched in the wrinkles on his face. Me too, for that matter. It was back to real life for all of us.
“Okay, Dad. We’ll talk to you when we land, okay? Safe flight,” I said, giving him one more hug and climbing back into the car. Right before Shyamal headed inside, he smiled and performed an uncoordinated shimmy with his body. I have no idea what he was trying to do, but I appreciated it nonetheless.
“He can’t stop smiling. Look at him,” I muttered.
As the car started moving, I stared out the window. Wesley was crying.
“What a couple of weeks,” I said to her.
“Are you okay?” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. I took her hand and kissed it. “I have you with me.”
Fourteen
“For me, I didn’t have a choice.”
Mom, why would you say something?” I asked Bishakha, dumbfounded, clutching the tiny box in my pocket.
Wesley, my mother, and I were sitting in my mother’s bedroom in New Jersey several months after returning from India. Wesley and I were mostly recovered from our trip and had gotten back into our normal routine. In the weeks after we’d landed at Newark Airport, I faced questions about the trip from co-workers and friends, which I didn’t know how to answer. There was no way to succinctly do so. I just kept saying, “It was not a relaxing trip” and left it at that, which was probably for the best. When colleagues ask you a question about vacation, they don’t actually want to hear the details.
Bishakha had just returned from India as well. She’d had to sell property belonging to her mother, who died when I was in college. My grandmother on my mother’s side was the only grandparent I had ever met, and it was when I was very young. I barely remember her.
Before Bishakha left for her first trip to India in a decade, I had a request for her.
Back when Wesley was picking out rubies and sapphires for her family in Delhi, she had said offhand to no one in particular, “These rubies would look good on a necklace. Or earrings. Or a ring.”
I know nothing about jewelry. I never ever buy it. If I was to go buy earrings right now, it’s more likely I come back with pushpins and not know the difference. But when Wesley said that, my ears perked up and I made a mental note.
Rubies. Ring. Got it.
Wesley wasn’t subtly telling me to propose. She didn’t even remember the comment. At least, she said she didn’t remember. But I filed it away for proposal purposes. Anyone who was willing to run an emotional ultramarathon with me in the way Wesley did was a keeper.
So when Bishakha informed me