The Man in 16C

By C. Christina Fair

More than twenty-five years have passed since we first met, and I still do not understand what drew me to Gurmit so tenaciously. Gurmit was wont to insist, “Chris. We were together in a past life, and something went tragically wrong. We are forced to get it right in our subsequent lives.” I used to rubbish his explanation for our inexplicable bond but I have no better explanation.

Our story in this life began at O’Hare airport in March 1994. For me, it was lust at first sight. There is no other way to describe my visceral reaction to the man I saw standing ahead of me at our San Francisco gate. I immediately fixated upon his dark black, soft, uncut beard tucked up under his chin. His pink, supple lips. A generous topknot was gathered up into his sloppily wrapped pale blue turban. He was several inches taller than me with his turban. I overheard him speaking in a luscious—but not posh—British accent. He was the most handsome man I had ever seen. And when confronted by his beauty, I felt my stomach seize up. The smell of the coffee wafting from the Starbucks nearby made me nauseous.  I was suddenly conscious about my unwashed waist-length hair, my unfashionably long shabby dress with knockoff Birkenstocks, the nails I bit down to the nub with chewed up cuticles and my face, which was speckled with red pimples unmasked by makeup.

I listened closely as he approached the staff at the gate.  I overheard her assign him seats 16C and D. Evidently, he wasn’t alone. I wondered if perhaps he had a wife. After he left the counter, I next approached the gate agent and requested 16B. She smiled knowingly and said in a distinctly flat Chicago accent, “Honey, that seat is taken but I’ll get you as close as I can.” She winked at me as she gave me 14A.

I followed him back to where he was seated in the lounge. He was with a portly, stygian, clean-shaven man. They were speaking in Punjabi, which was a language I was studying in my doctoral program in South Asian Languages and Civilisations at the University of Chicago. I discerned from their conversation that the man was his uncle. Gauging from his accent, I surmised he was born in India. I tried to make eye contact with the man in the turban, but he didn’t notice me notice me. Why would he? I was unremarkable and he was engrossed in the conversation with his overbearing uncle.

When it was time to board the plane, I was close behind him. I wanted to find a way to strike up some small talk, but the uncle was a formidable adversary. Daunted, I continued eavesdropping on their conversation. They were going to visit relatives in San Jose. I noticed that there was no wedding band on either of his meticulously clean hands. I felt queasy—in a good way. I was twenty-three and inexperienced, but I knew I wanted him.

Once the flight reached cruising altitude, I pulled out a notebook, tore out a piece of paper, and wrote to him in Punjabi, “If you’re not married, you can call me when you reach San Francisco. I’ll be at this number… Don’t be freaked out if a man answers. It’s my friend Gene. I’m staying with him.”

When the flight attendants were up and about, I folded the missive and turned on the call light. An officious flight attendant arrived. “Ma’am, can you hand this to the man in the light blue turban in 16C?” She smiled wryly as she took the note from my hand. Then I watched in agony as she made her way to 16C. Suddenly, I was struck by the horrifying thought that this British-born Sikh may not read Punjabi. But…his older uncle, with the Indian accent, likely did.

As soon as the seat-belt light went off, I practically ran down the aisle to reach the man struggling to read my note. “Hi. I’m Chris. I sent that note,” I said out of breath, pointing to the offending letter with my left and extending my right hand in a shake.

The man was befuddled but not displeased. “I’m Gurmit. Nice to meet you,” as he extended his own hand. Ignoring the curious uncle, I explained the content of my note as my face flushed deep red, and my hands trembled. My heart was leaping out of my chest. I pulled back my waist-long hair and blurted out quietly “I am in San Francisco for the week. I’d like to meet you if you are game. My number is in the note.”

I bolted in terror before he could respond. I had never been so impulsive before, and I was mortified by the thought of rejection after making such an ass of myself. But he was evidently intrigued if the curious grin on his face was any valid clue. Back in my seat, I was seized by thoughts of this Gurmit and what I should’ve said instead of running back to my seat.

The plane landed. He made eye contact with me and smiled as we disembarked. My friend Gene was waiting for me at the baggage claim. We continued to his apartment in the Haight. During the drive, I blubbered, “Gene, I did the craziest thing on the plane. I sent this note to some British Sikh dude who was totally hot. I told him to call me here if he wants to hook up.” I blurted it out in one breath hurriedly to preclude Gene from interrupting with his usual “You did what?” Gene’s stiff posture slackened, from which I concluded he was impressed and appalled at the same time. “How do you know you didn’t give my number to some psycho?”  Gene thought the

whole thing was a cockup and was dubious that the dude in the turban would call. Nonetheless, he offered suggestions on tourist sites.

Once at Gene’s home, I anxiously awaited a phone call that may or may not come.  Gene and I made small talk while I kept looking down at my watch. Gene would occasionally say with his familiar ‘I told you so’ voice, “He isn’t going to call you. What you did was insane.” Three hours later, the phone rang. Gene answered. “It’s for you, Chris. It’s that British guy you mentioned,” Gene belted out in complete surprise as he handed me the handset. My hands shook as I took the receiver, “Chris, it’s Gurmit. From the plane.” His voice stirred an unfamiliar feeling in my body. It was desire. “Do you want to see the sites with me tomorrow?” I excitedly exclaimed, “Absolutely! What about meeting at the Fisherman’s Warf, Pier 39, at 10 am?” He eagerly agreed.

After a restless night of fitful sleep, we met at the appointed place and hour. We spent the day seeing the tourist sites in San Francisco. Both of us preferred to see the city on foot. Sometimes we’d tuck into a cute restaurant for a bite to eat or to have a cup of coffee for me, tea for him. This gave us ample opportunities to speak with each other, cramming as much information gathering into the day as possible. Gurmit and I turned out to be the same age.  When I asked Gurmit why he came to Chicago, he explained “I am a doctor in London. I came to Chicago to learn how to treat gunshot wounds and other traumatic injuries.”

“But why did you have to come to Chicago to study this, Gurmit?”

“Because we don’t have enough gunshot injuries in London to study,” Gurmit said sheepishly. 

“Are you doing your residency to be a trauma surgeon?”

“No. I am just doing an externship in trauma work; my main medical profession is obstetrics and gynecology.”

I recoiled briefly. I had always disapproved of men being gynecologists, and I refused to avail of them. I preferred Gurmit as a trauma surgeon.

“What do you do, Chris, and how do you know so much about South Asia and Punjabi?” I explained that I’m doing my PhD in South Asian Languages and Civilisations, focusing on Sikh diasporas and the Punjabi language. Gurmit lit up. “I’m actually doing a PhD as well in reproductive medicine,” he enthused. We shared our stress of doing doctorates.

Apart from our academic interests, however divergent, perhaps the most important commonality was that both of us had recently lost our mothers to cancer. We bonded over our still-raw grief and our varied, complex relations with our living siblings. He had two sisters. I had two half-brothers. We also discussed our problematic fathers.

“Chris, I have to warn you. I come from a traditional Sikh family. My family cannot come to know of us meeting. My uncle is cool. But my father will sternly object.”

This was a chilling harbinger of things that would come hurtling our way in time. But we agreed to see where this went before agonising over his regressive father.

“Gurmit, I also have to tell you something. I don’t really know my father. He’s a deadbeat dad.”

If Gurmit was shocked by the nature of my paternity, his face didn’t reveal it.

With his family obligations in San Jose and my obligations to my friend Gene, we didn’t spend but one or two more days together that week. On the ferry from Alcatraz back to shore, our bodies grew close under the setting sun. Gurmit cupped my face and kissed me for the first time. I felt the softness of his moustache on my upper lip. My stomach fluttered as his tongue met mine and his hand moved to my lower back. We lingered in that kiss for minutes. It was not a hungry kiss. It was a tender kiss. It was a kiss that said I want you, but let’s take our time.

After we parted ways in San Francisco, we wrote letters weekly and we spoke on the phone when we could, which was very expensive in the early 1990s. We planned to meet in London a few months later, in June. I was on my way to India for the summer, where I would study Hindi and hopefully Punjabi in the idyllic—if very wet during the Monsoon—northern Indian hill station of Mussoorie. Throughout the duration of the flight, over numerous gins and tonic, I pondered what we would do and how we would do it when we met. Prior to leaving, I joked, with more seriousness than levity, with my saucy girlfriend Carmen, “The only parts of London I want to see are the walls and ceiling of Gurmit’s bedroom.” I imagined a romantic meeting at the airport.

The plane landed and disgorged its passengers. I passed through baggage claim, where I picked up my singular item: a large rucksack crammed haphazardly with Indian clothes for the summer, some notebooks, and Hindi and Punjabi grammars. I looked for Gurmit everywhere. He was nowhere to be seen. An hour passed. Then two. I felt the sour taste of panic rising in the back of my throat. Tears welled up and streamed hot down my cheeks. I was heartbroken and terrified. “What the hell have I done?” I wondered aloud.

To tame the panic, I flipped through the expanse of my 650-odd-page Lonely Planet India. Repeatedly. I tried to take naps, cuddled up to my ruck sack on the waiting area floor. After three hours, I wrote him off. He must have gotten cold feet, I presumed. Crestfallen, I began making my way to the ticket agent to change my flight. Then, at the last possible moment, I heard Gurmit call out “Chris! I’m over here! Where are you going, silly?” He had just arrived. He was sweaty, out of breath, and completely oblivious to the terror and disappointment I was experiencing despite my obviously tear-streaked face.  

Unable to sublimate my anger, I barked at him, “Where the flaming hell have you been? I was literally on my way to book myself on the next flight to Delhi! I was scared to death, goddamnit, Gurmit. Goddamnit!” Gurmit was sheepish. With downcast eyes, he tried to explain his inexplicable lateness.

“I’m really sorry, luv. I set off from dad’s place in Gravesend late and missed several commuter trains to London.” 

I pointed out the obvious, “If this were important, you would’ve left early, and you would have caught those trains.” I was still crying.

He offered one apology after the next, which I begrudgingly accepted. But it took several hours for me to shake off the anger and disappointment at him not being there when I arrived. There was no romantic reception.

While I was still stewing, we were making our way through a series of Tube and bus connections. “Here’s an A to Zed of London, which you’ll need while you’re here,” he said, foisting a massive tome into my hands.  I was utterly befuddled as he tried to explain this collection of endless maps and, with repeated reference to it, sought to explain to me where we were going and how.  “I know. It’s overwhelming, innit? But you’ll figure it out. You’re smart,” he said, beaming a wide, toothsome grin.

At long last, we arrived at the aging brownstone walkup in Golders Green he called home. This too failed to meet my expectations. I presumed that because he was a doctor, he had the means to have his own flat. It turns out that young doctors are not well-heeled in the United Kingdom.

 “So,” he paused with some embarrassment, “I’m renting a room from an elderly lady.” He could see the disappointment on my face. When we climbed the stairs and entered the flat, the octogenarian greeted us with tea. She was deeply chary of me from the first moment she laid eyes on me. She announced, while taking a sip of her tea, with precision in the Queen’s English, “The young lady shall not be allowed to spend the evenings in the flat.”

Without putting up a fuss, Gurmit explained to me, “You will stay with my younger sister, Saabjit. She’s only an hour away by bus. I’ll show you where she is in the A to Zed.” I shuddered at the thought of making my way here with that ominous and overwhelming volume.

Saying goodbye to the officious landlady reeking of rosewater and talc, we entered his room and closed the door.  The chemistry that overtook me at O’Hare airport engulfed me once we were alone. We kissed for what seemed like ages. Then, at long last and while looking into my eyes, he slipped my dress gingerly over my head. He undid my ponytail and scattered my hair about my naked shoulders and began to kiss my clavicle. Horribly ashamed, I said “Gurmit, I’m on my period.” To which he cheekily responded, “I’m a gynecologist. Do you think I care?”  His smile put me at ease.  He removed his turban and set it upon his desk, and untied his topknot. His long, black, thick hair tumbled below his waist, releasing a scent of coconut with which he plied his hair.

I was utterly mesmerised by the beauty of this man. I opened myself to him, forgetting my anger from several hours before. He kissed me tenderly on my lips as he entered me with his voluminous hair falling around my face. Our bodies intertwined. Our smells comingled. We made love until we were exhausted. Gurmit was the most sharing and attentive lover. He went to every length to pleasure me. After we made love, Gurmit braided our hair together in the low evening light. Then he smiled at me and said “Now I’ve got ya.” But in truth I wasn’t going anywhere…except to his sister’s house to spend the night.

During that week in London, we fell into a routine. During the day, he and I would stay together until late at night. Unable to control ourselves around each other, we made love in an offbeat section of Regent’s Park, in the unlit alcove of an apartment building in Golders Green, in a cemetery near his house, in the bathroom at a bar in Swiss Cottage. Then Gurmit would deposit me at his sister’s flat, where I would sleep until nine or so, have breakfast, then make my way over to Gurmit’s flat, where our shenanigans would begin anew.

At the end of the whirlwind week, I realised that I still didn’t know this man. I had not met any of his friends.  Our bond was largely physical. I enjoyed being in his presence, but our physical attraction to each other made it impossible to get to know him at a deeper level. All I knew by the end of the week was that I wanted more of Gurmit. I wanted more opportunities to go beyond our sexual attraction and intrepid encounters. Then, at the end of that week, I hopped on a plane and went to India for the summer.

Despite being busy with my studies in Mussoorie, I was unable to stop thinking of Gurmit. Then, after a few weeks, my period was late.  I needed to speak with Gurmit. But in those days, making international calls from India was not straightforward or affordable. One had to find an agent who would book the extremely expensive call. I called Gurmit at his flat several times, but his landlady reported, “Sorry, dear. He’s still at work.”  After five or six increasingly stress-filled efforts, I finally reached him and blurted out, “Gurmit, my period is very late.” Without missing a beat, Gurmit said, “Chris, that is terrific news. I want to marry you. I hope you know that.” 

I was taken aback.

I was not ready to be a mom or a wife.  Up to that point, our relationship was physical rather than emotional. Being alone and pregnant in India was not something that I could countenance. I had no idea how to even begin finding an abortion facility.  After three panic-filled weeks, my period finally came. Perhaps my period was just irregular, as it sometimes was in those young years of womanhood, or perhaps I miscarried. When I began to bleed, I again called Gurmit. After several attempts, once more, I reached him. “Gurmit, we’re in luck! My period came!” I was ecstatic. I was practically crying from relief.  But Gurmit was devastated. “Oh Chris. I was really looking forward to being the father of your baby.” I felt discomfited by this claim, given the nature of our relationship.

During most Monsoon days in Mussoorie, it rained nonstop. I had to have my clothes dry-cleaned because it was impossible to dry them outside. Leeches were a common nuisance on the hour-long trek up the hill to class and down again. After class, I would return to the room I had rented in a guesthouse. The rain falling on my tin roof created a romantic atmosphere that made me miss Gurmit poignantly.

I wrote to him daily after lunch and made my way through the rain and leaches to the post-office in the next bazaar. He was an equally vigorous letter writer. We exchanged details of our days and our expectations for our next meeting on my return trip in early October. I told him about the monkeys who slipped through the bars of my room to eat my peanut butter, and he told me about interesting patients he had treated and their infertility challenges. He updated me on Saabjit’s various hijinks. Through those letters, I began to get to get a sense of who Gurmit was as a person, how he spent his days, what he dreamed about and what he wanted from this life.

October finally came. I made my way from the cool climbs of Mussoorie to the inferno that was Delhi for my flight home to Chicago via London. This time, when I landed in London, I did not expect Gurmit to be on time. I saddled up to a coffee shop with a book and waited for him. An hour or so later, Gurmit arrived with his perfunctory apologies. I didn’t even bother asking him why he was late. Our time in London was brief. Before returning to London, I informed Gurmit that I wanted to celebrate my birthday in Edinburgh. Dutifully, Gurmit booked our tickets on a comfortable bus, and we passed the eight-hour journey canoodling and generally discomfiting the other passengers with our altogether too public displays of affection.

At the hotel in Edinburgh, we settled in quickly, and our hands immediately began exploring and undressing each other’s bodies. I wish I could remember the details of the hotel room. But all I remember is how ravenous we were for each other. “Chris, luv, do you mind fetching the condoms from my coat pocket?”  However, when I went to his coat pocket, I found just two condoms. “Gurmit, condoms come in clusters of three. Where the hell is the third condom?” I demanded accusatorily.  Gurmit’s face was ashen.

“Chris, what are you talking about? What are you suggesting?”

“Gurmit, I think you know exactly what I’m suggesting. Who was—or maybe is—she? One of your goddamned nurses?”

Gurmit insisted that there was nothing awry.  But I didn’t believe him. I didn’t sleep with him that night. A seed of doubt had been planted, and I was beginning to feel like a fool for thinking this amazing man was all that he seemed.

A few days later, I was on a plane back to Chicago.

Back in Chicago, those seeds of doubt sprouted and took root. We were still together, but other problems quickly emerged. Gurmit, as he explained on the first day, was from a traditional Sikh family. Although his father, who lived with his older widowed sister, had been living in Gravesend for more than three decades, he still followed the lifestyle of India in the 1960s. His father expected Gurmit and his two sisters to have arranged marriages. Gurmit was the oldest. Any socially unacceptable behavior on his part would compromise the arranged marriage prospects for his two younger sisters.

However, neither wanted the arranged marriages being foisted upon them.  I had spent enough time with the youngest sister, Saabjit, in London to know that she would do most things to avoid an arranged marriage, and if those things comprised a ‘to do’ list, she was making her way through that list efficiently. Paramjit, the older of the two sisters, had escaped to Australia to avoid being gheraoed by her father’s plans for an arranged marriage in 1991. And to triumphantly hammer the final nail in that coffin, she hooked up with a white guy and had two children out of wedlock with him. Their father disowned her and her children.

Given Saabjit’s myriad misadventures, Gurmit asked that I let Saabjit live with me in Chicago. He thought my nerdy ways would have a salubrious effect upon her. I welcomed Saabjit to our couch, where she joined me and the Chinese husband-wife duo, who were my roommates. But Saabjit was incorrigible. She was shoplifting, picking up drug dealers at the laundromat, and disporting with miscreants that she found loafing about near McDonald’s on 53^rd Street.

“Saabjit, aim higher than drug dealers, for fuck’s sake! You’re just putting yourself and me at great risk.”

 “Chris, just because you’re fucking my brother, doesn’t mean you get to tell me what to do.”

After the dustup I called Gurmit. “Gurmit, you need to come out here. She’s going to get herself into big trouble. Hell, she’s going to get me in trouble.”

By the end of the week, Gurmit was in Chicago.  “Saabjit. Chris is right. Find a professional man. Stop chasing the hooligans.”

Saabjit was clear in her response to him too, “Gurmit. Fuck off.”  As if by plan, she got pregnant. She returned to London to have the baby. She was twenty-one.

When her father learned that she had given birth to a half-Black daughter through the Punjabi rumour network, he was predictably enraged. He gave her an ultimatum: put the child up for adoption and accept an arranged marriage to whomever he found for her at once, or else. She went underground.

As Gurmit and I were becoming more serious and as I spent more time in London, the responsibility reposed in Gurmit began eroding our relationship because the prospects for our future were increasingly dim.   If we were walking down the street together in London and Gurmit saw another Punjabi in the distance, he would let go of my hand and speed up or even cross the street to get away from me. He was terrified of the Punjabi rumour mill and its devastating efficiency. 

“Gurmit, it really hurts my feelings when you do that.”

“Sorry, luv. If my dad finds out, I’m in big trouble.”

We increasingly fought about Gurmit’s endgame or lack thereof. He kept insisting that we could get married once his sisters were “settled” even though they were never going to be settled in the preferred sense intended by the Sikhs of Gravesend.

There had been a window of opportunity for our relationship to progress meaningfully in spite of these constraints. Before the third year of my doctoral program, I could have switched to a comparable program in London, provided I could get admitted. However, Gurmit was still scared to death of getting caught. And when I perceived the window to be closed because I was now committed to Chicago, I told Gurmit I couldn’t live like this anymore. He had to be willing to break from his father’s expectations if he wanted to be with me. I needed to know that there was a future rather than an endless string of presents. And Gurmit simply could not do that. I broke up with him.

I concentrated upon my doctoral work and tried to put him out of my mind. That worked for a few years. In 1998, I moved to Los Angeles to work for the RAND Corporation. Alone in a new, overwhelming, and sprawling city, I thought about him often. I read and re-read his letters, and I fell in love with him all over again. Unable to resist the urge,  I called him at his father’s home in Gravesend.

“Gurmit, it’s Chris. I’m calling from Los Angeles.”

Gurmit was excited to hear my voice. “Why are you calling?”

“Well, remember when you braided our hair together?  I’ve been thinking about that a lot.”

“Me too, Chris. Me too.”

“Is there any chance you can come to LA? I’d like to try again?”

Within ten days, Gurmit was in Los Angeles. Our physical attraction was as strong as ever. But our lovemaking was tainted with sadness. After all, what had changed? I was afraid to ask Gurmit if he could tell his dad about us because deep down, I knew the answer.

Once, when I curled up against his body in bed, I cautiously asked: “Gurmit, how can we be together if you won’t tell your dad or at least marry me anyway?” He continued to harp on the necessary but insufficient condition of his sisters’ arranged marriages. I was livid.

“Gurmit, your sisters are mothers now.”

Gurmit’s position hadn’t evolved at all. Left with no choice, I explained, “Gurmit, I want you. I want us. But if you still can’t take on your dad, nothing is possible. I need you to leave on the next flight.”

Begrudgingly but without complaint, Gurmit was gone the next day. Years passed. We made a few furtive efforts to get back together. Each time was bedeviled by the same problem.

In April of 2004, I moved to Washington, D.C. for a job with the United States Institute of Peace. A month later, I met Jeff, the man I would marry.  Later in December, we learned that I was pregnant, and so in March 2005, I married Jeff. We lost our baby the week before we married. Jeff was with me from the beginning to the bitter end of that tragic pregnancy. Then we lost again a few months later. For the second miscarriage, Jeff was distant and disengaged. This was a poisonous weed that took root early in our marriage.

While the losses created a distance in our new marriage, his parents pried those distances further.  My mother-in-law, Mary, would say “Chris. You’re white trash. You come from the wrong side of the tracks, and you will always be from the wrong side of the tracks.”

When his parents were cruel like this, my husband did nothing. He was unable to confront his parents.  I sunk into a deep depression. If I am unworthy of being protected by my own husband, what am I worthy of? We kept drifting apart, and Jeff refused to go to counseling.

“Jeff, I need you to go to counselling with me to save our marriage. It’s crumbling about us.”

“Chris, I can’t. What if the counsellor tells me I’m doing something wrong.”

“Jeff honey, we are both doing something wrong.”

But he was adamant in his refusal. The space between us became a chasm. And in that chasm, thoughts of Gurmit began to grow.

In 2014, nearly nine years into my challenging marriage, I went to London to give a book talk. After the talk, I was alone in my hotel. Memories of Gurmit and me were littered across London. I decided to call the home of Gurmit’s father and ask for Gurmit. Gurmit had always spent the weekends in Gravesend, and I assessed that he was likely there. I no longer had a functional number for him in London.  Gurmit’s father answered in a thick Punjabi accent. I told him in Punjabi, “My name is Christine. I’m the woman who wrote all of those letters to Gurmit from India many years ago. I’d like to speak with Gurmit.”

Gurmit’s father responded briskly in Punjabi, “I know who you are. Gurmit’s not home.”

“Can you give him my number?” His dad agreed to do so. Then I went home to Virginia to wait.

Within two days, I saw the +44 number come up on my phone. It was Gurmit. I was on a train to New York for another book talk. We spoke for the duration of the train ride. I asked him if he was married. “Chris, I’m divorced, and I have a daughter. You?”

“Yes. But I’m miserable in my marriage.”

We began messaging and connecting on Skype. It was as if time had collapsed on itself. We were as we always were. But this time, Gurmit resolved that he would tell his father and marry me, irrespective of his father’s opinions on the matter. I told my husband that I was leaving him and that I was getting back together with Gurmit. Jeff was devastated, but he still refused to go to marriage counselling.  Gurmit and I met thereafter in New York in December.  Once we were together, our bodies found each other as they always had but Gurmit was lost. His marriage had changed his life. In New York he told me the whole story, or so he said.

“Chris, I have to tell you a lot of things. I am not the man you fell in love with. My marriage destroyed me.”

Gurmit began to explain the sordid truth of his recent past and present. He agreed to have an arranged marriage. His father found him a barely literate woman from his family’s village outside of Jullundur. I was appalled by Gurmit’s willingness to marry a woman who was so beneath him intellectually, and felt a strange pity for this woman. He had not even met her. Their engagement took place between the woman and his photo. His father picked a much younger woman he believed would be an amiable housewife, willing to take care of Gurmit, him and his sister while giving birth to children she would raise.  It turns out that she wasn’t the simpleton they presumed her to be. While awaiting to come to England, she was studying U.K. immigration law, and she imagined a very different life for herself in the U.K. that didn’t necessarily include being married. At least this was Gurmit’s account.

Once in Gravesend, she began calling the police to report abuse at the hands of the residents of the home. She began staging suicide events, evidently telling the medical personnel that her family was abusing her. She filed a criminal complaint. Gurmit’s elderly aunt was taken into custody. Gurmit and his father also spent time in jail. Ultimately, those charges were dismissed. Along the way, she became pregnant but aborted the fetus without telling Gurmit until after the fact. But despite all of this drama and legal jeopardy, he took her back when she came crawling back to the marriage.

But she was undeterred: she wanted to remain in the U.K., but she didn’t want to be married if she didn’t have to.  She continued the old patterns of trying to establish a collage of evidence of abuse. Even while trying to ruin her married life, she clung to it as a contingency plan. She became pregnant in hopes of keeping Gurmit until she no longer needed him. She filed a police complaint again. The household members were taken into custody again. This time, the judge found him guilty. He went to jail. He had to perform community service. He could no longer practice medicine.

“Gurmit, so how do you earn a living?”

“I work in a shop close to our home in Gravesend.”

I was floored. But this explains why I was unable to find anything on my extensive Google searches for him over the years. He was no longer an active, publishing scientist.

I asked him about his daughter. The story grew darker. “I don’t have a relationship with my daughter. I refused to visit her under visitation.” I was sickened.

“Gurmit, that’s what my father did to me. How the hell could you abandon your daughter?” I was simmering in rage. Gurmit offered the palliative that at least paid child support. It wasn’t enough. He had no defense for his actions.

Rightly or wrongly, at no point did I doubt his innocence. But his failures as a father were all too similar to my own father. I felt for his daughter. I imagined the crises of identity she will have to maneuver over the course of her life as a fatherless daughter. But I could feel in my bones that this great reveal wasn’t the entire truth. He was holding something back.

Back in Virginia, we continued to talk nearly every day. But I told him, “You’re still hiding something from me. I need to know what you’re hiding.”  After a lot of persuasion, Gurmit conceded. “Chris, you’re right. I’m still married.” I felt a wave of nausea wash over me.

“What the fuck do you mean, you’re still married? You told me you were divorced.” 

“I am divorced. But I had second arranged marriage.”

I could not believe the idiocy of this man. After the fiasco of his first arranged marriage, he had another marriage.  As before, his father scouted his village for a simpleton. Once again, the engagement happened between the woman and a photo of Gurmit. Again, Gurmit had never met her prior to the wedding night, which he consummated.  Something snapped inside of me. I was repulsed by him. I couldn’t stand the thought or sight of him. I told him that I couldn’t see him anymore.

And with that final grotesque revelation, a thirty-year saga ended abruptly as I confronted the damage I did to my marriage and what it would take to fix it.

.

C Christine Fair is a Professor of Security Studies at Georgetown University. She completed her PhD in South Asian Languages and Civilisation at the University of Chicago. Her creative pieces have appeared in Fictive Dream, Hypertext, Lunch Ticket, Bangalore Review, Glassworks, and Existere Journal of Arts, among others, in addition to her scholarly work and literary translations from Urdu, Punjabi and Hindi.

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