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Priyanka herself, and she wore western style clothes,
but with a small red tikka mark between her eyebrows. The
stewardesses spoke German to one another and Priyanka tried to
guess at what they were saying. The German language was more
clipped with hardened sounds, unlike the rush of jumbled sounds of
Indian languages like water rushing over stones.
    After the stopover, different people joined
them. The Indians became fewer, now most of the plane seemed to be
Americans. For that flight Priyanka slept with her head in her arms
on the open tray table. She woke as they started down toward
Boston.
    Suddenly she was nervous about how she looked
after sleeping. She made her way to the bathroom and finger combed
her hair for a few minutes and re-plaited it. She smoothed the
pleats in her sari. Her aunt had insisted that she wear a sari on
the flight, to look her best when she arrived. What she meant was
to look traditional, like a good girl who wouldn't cause any
trouble and that's exactly what Priyanka had always been.
    There was nothing Priyanka could do in the
bathroom to quiet the fury of nerves in her stomach. In just a few
minutes she would meet the man she would spend the rest of her life
with and all she knew of him was printed on the back of his
photograph that was in her bag. She had spent the nights since she
found out looking at that picture and trying to imagine what kind
of person he was. He was older than her, but younger than she
expected and he looked a bit shy in front of the camera. She was
surprised by how handsome he was and she hoped it was an up to date
photograph. In situations like these, you never knew what people
might do. It was not the usual way, to go sight unseen to a new
place.
    Ever since her parents had been killed in an
accident, Priyanka had lived with a distant aunt. She brought with
her a bad horoscope, additional expense, and the taint of tragedy.
Daksha Auntie worried how she would marry Priyanka off from the
time the girl arrived at eleven years old. Daksha Auntie wanted
people to believe that she loved and cared for Priyanka, but in
reality she wanted nothing more than to be rid of her and she
resented any expense that Priyanka took as coming from her own
children. Daksha Auntie and Babu Uncle started looking for matches
when Priayanka turned eighteen, but found nothing until she was
twenty.
    Daksha Auntie had not told her much about her
groom. He was an NRI, living in America. He was a doctor. It all
sounded like a very eligible man. There had to be some catch,
something Daksha Auntie wasn't telling her for him to agree to her
horoscope.
    “You will go to America and meet him there,”
Daksha Auntie told her, “This is the best offer we will get for
you.”
    “What's wrong with him?”
    “What makes you say something is wrong? You
are an ungrateful girl for all the work that we do for you. You
will go there and you won't make a fuss. Lucky girl that you should
go to America and marry a doctor. Everyone we know will be
jealous.”
    But Priyanka knew something wasn't right. A
man as good as Auntie described would have no need to scrape the
bottom of the barrel to find her, poor and with tragedy in her
horoscope. Most NRIs returned to India to find their brides,
married while there, then brought them back. Why had her groom
insisted she come alone to the other side of the world with only
his picture? This was not how things were done. Daksha Auntie
didn't care, she would take whatever offer she could get for
Priyanka.
    Daksha Auntie gave Priyanka only one gold
necklace set. She was surprised to receive even that. If things
went badly, this necklace set could be sold to get Priyanka out of
difficulty. Girls with mothers went to their husband's homes with
as much jewelry as the family could afford, for protection and also
for show. No one cared enough about Priyanka for that. She packed
the necklace set in her traveling bag. She had seen enough American
movies that she didn't want to wear the