Omkar nearly bowled his mother over as the sound compelled both of them to rush down the stairs toward the conflict at the same time. He already knew what had happened before he saw either of them. He was already chastising himself for it.
“Papa, stop. Aria, don’t go, please, both of you … Just let me explain.”
“This girl was stealing from us. I found her in the shop. What do you want me to do?” Neeraj said, pointing the rolled-up magazine in her direction.
“I was not stealing. I was asleep,” Aria retorted.
Jarminder stood on the sidewalk in her satin robe, shocked and confused by the situation.
Omkar tried to de-escalate the tension. “Papa, Mama, this is Aria. She’s a friend of mine. We were out so late last night that I decided to have her stay here. It wasn’t her fault. If you want to blame somebody, then blame me,” Omkar pleaded.
“You expect me to believe that you made some friend of yours sleep in the storeroom? So stupid. Just how stupid do you think we are? Why are you covering for this girl? What is she to you?” Neeraj demanded.
Omkar tried another approach, hoping that by appealing to their compassion, he might resolve the conflict. “Look Papa, she has nowhere to go. She’s not like me. She doesn’t have a good family to go home to. Her family treats her badly. You taught me to be a man who doesn’t just stand by and let bad things happen to people. You taught me to do something about it.”
“You are not a man, you’re a little boy. You’re a little boy who lies to his family!” Neeraj yelled. He paced up and down, suddenly aware of the embarrassing position they were all in, standing out on the street in their nightclothes.
Jarminder appealed to Omkar in Punjabi. She told him that he should know better than to lie to his family. She told him that it was not his place to interfere in another family’s business, especially the business of an American family. She explained to him that because an American family is so different to an Indian family, he could never really know what was going on. But even as Jarminder talked, she tried to ignore the nagging feeling that some other truth lay hidden beneath his explanation. You could call it a mother’s intuition. She could feel something between Omkar and the girl now standing before them on the street. She could feel it in the carefulness her son extended toward her.
“Omkar, go back inside. It’s time for your friend to go back home,” Neeraj said, walking back toward the door of the shop in an attempt to set an example. Omkar could feel the ghost of the truth inside him lurking in the corner of his being, howling to be heard. Each time it welled up, he pushed it deeper until he couldn’t suppress it anymore. Now facing the fate that he had been trying to avoid, Omkar found himself in a lose–lose situation. If he admitted the truth, he risked losing everything but Aria. But if he maintained the lie, he would have to continue to live it. There would never be a time in the future when they would suddenly be OK with her. The pressure of avoiding the potential consequences of them finding out had become unbearable. With an air of penitence, Omkar decided to tell the truth. His first words stopped both Neeraj and Jarminder dead.
He turned toward his mother. “Actually, I have to tell you the truth. Aria is not just a friend. She is my girlfriend. Do you remember what you always told me, to listen to everybody but to do what I consider right? I have listened to you and Papa. I know why you think it is right for me to be with a girl who you would choose. But for me, Aria is right. I know what I am saying is going to upset you, but I can live with that. But the one thing I cannot live without is this girl.”
Omkar walked over to Aria and pulled her by the hand toward them, as a statement of his commitment to his decision. “This is Aria Abbott. She is the girl I love.” He waited, like a soldier, for their resistance.
Neeraj eyed Aria from top to bottom. Jarminder refused to look at her. Instead she looked Omkar straight in the eye and said, “No son of mine could make such a decision without our consent. I forbid it. I forbid this utterly and completely. You have to focus on your schooling. You are too young to know what love is, do you hear me? This can’t happen! Do you know how hard we have worked so you could have a better life – now you want to go and throw it all away on some girl?”
“She is not some girl, Mama, she is the girl I love.”
Jarminder turned her back on him as a demonstration of her disgust. “Do you even know her family? Do you even know what kind of girl she is? What kind of family lets their daughter spend the night at a boy’s house? We should never have brought you here. We should have stayed in India. We never thought that if we gave you a good education and all these opportunities, you would do something like this … That you would lie to us. That you would bring home a girl like this, a girl who is not one of us. A girl who does not even know our culture, who cannot speak our language, who we know nothing about.”
She felt deafened by the death knell of the life that she had planned for her son resounding. As far as she was concerned, only hardship awaited her son if he were to take the path that he was headed down.
“Mama, you
