Out of the several gold rings that were in the box, Jarminder selected one of them. “This is the ring I have promised you. It belonged to Papa’s mother. I’m going to tell you what she told your father when she gave it to him to give to me … A ring has no beginning and no end. Because of this, it is limitless. The kara you wear represents your unbreakable attachment to God. And this ring will represent her unbreakable attachment to you. With your father’s and my blessing, may your marriage be eternal.”
She hugged Omkar again and cried before she handed the ring to him. Neeraj patted him on the arm. Unlike Jarminder, his sentimentality only smoldered beneath the surface of what he would willingly show.
Omkar’s parents didn’t sleep much that night after their son left their room. They held each other and allowed themselves to be tossed between the vacillations of worry and excitement.
Omkar also found it difficult to sleep. Given that the dark could not compete with his happiness, he switched on the lamp beside his bed and examined the ring. A thin gold band joined up to a larger piece of gold that had been cut into a marquise shape and bent in order for it to conform to a finger. The gold had been carved with such detailed, symmetrical filigree that Omkar could not memorize its design. Emanating from a ruby set deep in the center, four inlays of watermelon tourmaline extended to the perimeter of the ring, like petals.
The moonless acres outside his window contained a thousand people just living their lives. None was as happy as he. Through the floor, he could feel Aria in the room below him. He could feel the tempered busyness of her sleep. Omkar could feel the seed of his youth cracking. Inside it, the stirrings of the man he was born to be.
The oil of his mother’s tears lamented the death of his childhood. Though it was daunting, he found the pressure of love’s responsibility to be divine. The summer of his life now hung on a single answer … An answer to a question that Omkar had not yet even asked.
CHAPTER 36
Six yards of royal sheen sprawled out across the bedroom. Aria had imagined a sari to be an exotically sewn garment. Instead, it was simply yards of radiant fabric.
Omkar stood in the doorway, watching Jarminder fuss over which sari to give her. She settled on one that was the color of ripe plum with gold embroidery on its edges. She handed Aria a matching blouse piece and petticoat and told her to put them on in the bathroom. When Aria returned, Jarminder kneeled on the floor in front of her, three safety pins between her teeth. She took one end of the sari and began aggressively tucking it the entire way around the waistband of the petticoat. When she had made a full circle around Aria’s waist, she took the embroidered end of the fabric and began pleating it.
Watching her hands molding the fabric, Aria felt like she was peering through a telescope across the oceans to a different time and place. Jarminder’s veins netted her hands like the consecrated, colluvium-laden waters of the Ganges; the invisible scar of patriarchy evident in the way that she moved them. With the pleated end of the fabric held firmly in her hand, she twisted it behind Aria, pulling it across her right leg and over her left shoulder. Making sure that the pleated fabric fell just below Aria’s knee level, she stood up and took one of the safety pins she had been holding between her teeth. She pierced it into the fabric on the underside of the blouse just over Aria’s collarbone, fastening it to the fabric that she had just draped across Aria’s shoulder.
Again she took hold of the fabric, this time the embroidered top edge just beneath where she had pinned it. She pulled it tight down and across Aria’s back, around her hips to the front again. Jarminder tucked the fabric into the petticoat, rolling it toward her to expose the underside of the petticoat. She took a second safety pin from her teeth, pinning the silky fabric of the sari to the cotton of the petticoat, and re-rolled it toward Aria’s navel.
Thinking she was done, Aria moved away from her to go look into a mirror. “No, no, it isn’t ready yet,” Jarminder said, afraid that Aria would see her work before it was done. Aria stood back in front of her. Jarminder kneeled down again and gathered the loop of fabric that was now hanging in the front of the skirt and straightened it so that the edges of the loop perfectly matched. Just as she had done previously, she began pulling the fabric back and forth between her outstretched thumb and fingers, making sure the pleats she created by doing so were the same width and length. She took the final safety pin from her teeth and used it to pin the pleats together before forcefully tucking the section she had pinned into the petticoat and standing back to examine her work.
Aria felt like she had been wrapped in a sensual cocoon. The way the fabric hugged and pulled at her curves made her feel statuesque. She stepped in front of the full-length mirror hanging in Jarminder’s bedroom. Wrapped in thousands of years’ worth of tradition, Aria felt more feminine than she ever had before. Even though she didn’t have a single drop of Asian blood in her veins, it was the mystic spirituality of her own femininity that was staring back
