- 1 of 3 -
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Once upon a time a young man named Ajay and a young woman with the wonderful name Kavita followed the same hopeful paths from India to St. Louis, Missouri. They were not pioneers, but travelers along roads built from parents to older brothers. Their fathers were close friends and engineers. They expected their eldest children, both sons, to achieve in professions similar to their own. The sons did so with a strong sense of duty and pride. They won honors at school. Each stirred admiration in his father's eyes. Both were recruited into the golden world of American high technology where they built admirable reputations with large telecommunication companies. In their parallel lives, they each brought the next member of their families to America. One found a job for his younger brother, Ajay, and the other for his younger sister, Kavita. In this way, a boy who had grown up with a girl, playing, teasing, studying, and flirting, dreamed of the day when they would marry. She became more and more beautiful as she grew into a young woman. And he became a handsome man of lean, athletic proportions.

They had constantly exchanged letters at school about their triumphs in exams. In America, they lived with their older brothers. Under the eyes of the inheritors of fatherly authority, the young man and woman shared stories about their new world and cautiously exchanged kisses.

Ajay bought himself a suit with the first paycheck from his new job as a computer administrator and called Kavita to tell her.

"You will be admiring me when you see me," he bragged on the phone. "Other women will whisper. They will say only a pretty woman like you could win the hand of such a handsome man." he said in English, because in American they spoke more and more often in English to show off to their brothers.

"Yes, Ajay," she smiled indulgently, "And would every handsome man be lucky enough to hold the hand of such an important woman?"

"I am saying that you are the most wonderful woman," said Ajay.

"And you are the most terrible man I know," laughed Kavita.

When she traveled for her company to supervise a software project in Chicago, she bought Ajay a new silk tie to match his suit. She mailed it to him with a picture of herself carrying a laptop computer under one arm and a Gucci purse slung on the shoulder of her own new suit. "You will be the most handsome man I know," she wrote on a note she enclosed with the tie. Ajay pulled the new tie from its envelope and read her note. He marveled at her picture. "She is so pretty," he repeated many times to himself.

"What do you think is the right age to marry?" Ajay asked a friend at work.

"Why do you want to know?" asked the friend. "Do you want to marry someone?"

"My girl friend. She is so pretty," answered Ajay. "We have known each other since we were three. In America, we could live well. Or perhaps in Canada or England."

"The world at your table," mused the friend, an American who knew the pleasures of travel and the delights of Europe. "Maybe you will both want separate things. Maybe you have different tastes. How do you know she wants to marry you?"

"I am knowing her for our lifetime. We are very close. But now we work. First we succeed and then we can decide. Here I live on a visa. I could not stay yet. My brother has a green card, but anytime I could be sent away."

"That may not the best time to marry," suggested the friend. He was an older man long since married and divorced.

"But we could choose many places," thought Ajay out loud. "She travels. Many times we stay in touch by email. She sent me a note this week from her portable computer while the company drove her to a hotel in a limo. My girl friend in limo." He shook his head and grinned. "She is becoming a manager and I am still a computer guy." He turned back to friend. "What is a good age to marry?" he asked again.

"Seventy," answered the friend with a straight face.

"Seventy!" said Ajay, alarmed.

"Perhaps marriage is not the best idea anymore in America," the friend expanded his thought. "Why not live with her. Here you don't need to marry."

"I could not do that. My brother is here. And hers also. We must do the right thing. I would not rebel against the family."

"Then you must wait. Young women in America have something to prove before they think about marriage and children."

Work divided Ajay from Kavita. She traveled, more and more. Sometimes she went to San Francisco or New York. Sometimes she went North, then South. He worked longer and longer hours to make sure that computers he installed for his company functioned flawlessly. Often only a single line passed between them. They became a virtual couple in cyber love. Weeks would pass before they could see each other.

"Ajay never writes," Kavita moaned to a woman she worked with. "I never hear from him."

"Does he call you?" asked the friend.

"When I'm on the road, it is hard to call me. We exchange email."

"How much can you do in email?" the friend laughed.

Kavita sank into the cushion of the chair in her hotel room and turned on her laptop computer. As the screen came to life, she softened her loneliness by admiring the picture that displayed: a young suitor and his radiant partner in a glittering gown.

She enjoyed memories the picture aroused. A friend had snapped the photo at a university dance. In the portrait, she held a corsage Ajay had purchased for her by going without meals for two weeks. She hadn't said anything, but held him as close as chaperones would allow while they danced. She understood that he trembled as much from hunger as excitement. The sacrifice had elated her and drawn her to him.

"Ajay, would you do anything for me when we are in America?" she had asked while they drank punch from paper cups outside the hall.

"Of course. You know I would do anything," he'd promised.

"Then we must both have patience," she said. "Now I have a chance that many women never have. Can we take that chance?"

He put down his cup and held her hand with both of his. He looked directly into her eyes and said, "You know I want the best for you. I will give the best in my power."

She smiled and pulled him a little closer. "First I will have to discover what is in my power. That is the chance I have. Do you agree?"

"Certainly," Ajay said, halted in his advance. It was not exactly the melting response he had anticipated.

"Let's dance," she smiled. "I want to celebrate our future. Don't you feel the same way?" She was exuberant so Ajay couldn't disagree, but the future was not exactly what he'd anticipated. She led him back onto the dance floor as the band played a rock and roll number.

Kavita smiled at the photo on her computer screen while she began to type numbers into a spreadsheet program. In the morning, she would have to lecture colleagues about her company's financial prospects with a new client. At midnight, she remembered she hadn't sent any note to Ajay. She quickly wrote in an email window, "Don't work too hard. I will talk to you when I'm back." That was all. She couldn't think of what else to say for the moment. Fatigue encircled around her and she fell into bed. She would have to rise at 4:30 AM to catch a plane. She dreamed about Ajay as a handsome man with a sword in his hand. He sliced through the door of an executive office in a tall building where she stood watching the city below. He put his arm around her. They burst out of the window and flew across the city. The land below them sweltered in heat. She could feel the streets radiating. Ajay turned them into a cool wind and they sailed through clouds. Light surrounded her in the enveloping mist. She curled inside the bed covers, her arms embracing her pillow, and slept like a baby.

Ajay read her email note. He bit his lip and sighed. "She is angry with me, man," he said to his friend at work. "That's all she wrote, "`I will talk to you when I'm back.' Oh, man, I have done something wrong. What can I say? What can I do?"

"Where is she? Is she here?" asked the friend.

"No. She is a long ways away. Traveling," sighed Ajay. "She is on a business trip."

"Then buy a plane ticket. Go there," suggested the friend. "Are you dying to see her?"

"No, it is not that," Ajay reflected. "I'm not dying to see her." Then he laughed. "But I don't want to die before I see her. She is so pretty."

"Is she more than that?" asked the friend.

Ajay thought. With his chin on his hand, he said seriously, "She is everything."

"I would tell her that," the friend tried to comfort Ajay.

"You won't," smiled Ajay, "but when she is back, I will."

- 2 of 3 -
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Kavita sat at the small oval table in the kitchen of her brother's apartment near downtown St. Louis. He drank tea strong enough to melt a spoon. She preferred coffee. He made it for her and poured some into her cup. Then he sat down to eat his own breakfast and read the Wall Street Journal. She decanted hot milk and three spoons of sugar into her cup. Her brother rattled his paper, straightening the page. She stirred automatically, leaning her chin on her hand.

"Did he actually ask?" his words sailed over the top. She couldn't see his face but knew the newspaper was a ritual wall of judgment she would have to lower before he would take her problem seriously.

"No, Ajay didn't ask. I told you. He only started to discuss the matter. `What do you think is the proper age to marry?' he asked. That was how it started when we went to dinner. As if we were sociologists or those who write advice in the paper. What is the age? How would I know?" Her spoon clink-clinked inside her hot cup.

Her brother rattled his paper again by turning several pages to find the continuation of an interesting feature. He parked the sheet expertly against the edge of the dining table and reached for a piece of nan with his free hand. She heard him sip his own coffee. She had taken nothing to eat herself. She would have to leave soon. Her office was expecting her to report on her business trip to Chicago. A leather-cased portable computer leaned against her leg. She put down the spoon and tried a taste of hot coffee. The sting on her lip surprised her. Ajay had bitten her playfully when he kissed her in the car before she came in at three in the morning.

"You were up very late," her brother's voice said. "A woman who can be out at all hours must know the answers to important questions." She nodded slowly, but before she could answer, he added, "Or nature will answer for her."

That made her flush. The cup felt suddenly heavy in her hand. She set it down before she accidentally spilled. She didn't want to stain the brightly patterned sheen of the polyester dress she'd spied in the window of the Palmer House boutique. She had wanted it immediately. Its blue field underlying a red, yellow, and purple abstraction of petals smartly complemented her blue power jacket. She bought it to wear to work at her home office. She could enjoy a feminine gaiety there she never dared sport openly when confronting clients on her long trips out of state. For those, she had to be all business, to be taken seriously. A young woman should no longer be considered less than a man of equal importance. Perhaps she should be seen as much more. That was what she thought. She made her will evident when money was at stake. Her company trusted her. Why couldn't she feel as declarative with Ajay?

"Nature? What do you mean?" she asked the table, knowing full well what her brother meant. He preferred either that she marry, properly, in India, before returning in tow behind an ambitious man, or that she abandon Ajay as an adolescent infatuation before he passed from experiment to serious consequence.

Her brother crumpled the paper so that he could speak to her face-to-face. "If you have plans, you know I'm not opposed. But they must be deliberate. Your position in this country is not yet permanent. Neither is his. You are both on H1 visas and can be sent away. What would happen to him? What would be his alternative? He would be hoeing weeds. And for you. Here you have a chance to save money. To accumulate what you could never save in India. Have I not seen to that? I have now some status, a green card, a career. Ajay's older brother has worked as hard. And to the same purpose. Yet the two of you continue to play. You cannot have both your younger selves and a career. You are a grown woman now. Choose family or business. Do you think American women have made such a balance that both husbands and wives do well? We must be smarter about such things. The path we tread is more narrow. And the fall is a fall of ten thousand miles."

The chastening remark wasn't new. Kavita had suffered through it, or some version, many times. Work. Work hard. That was the immigrant's motto. Work is the way to all things. But work seemed without end, without pleasure, without purpose other than the attainment of power. Power to what end?

Her brother continued his lecture given in words similar to the lecture Ajay's brother undoubtedly was giving as well. "Without excellence, you cannot get your green card. Six years you have to work. You have only worked three of them. Six years and you may find your company a willing sponsor if they see your value. But if you turn your head now, you may both lose. And what then if you have children to support?"

"We will have no children yet," Kavita insisted, taking a deeper drink of coffee to bolster herself.

"No? Then what will you do? What did you answer him when he asked what age was right?"

"I said it didn't depend on age, but on circumstance. And commitment. With commitment, he had no problem. I believe him when he tells me that. He wrote down a pledge and gave it to me in a little scroll tied with a ribbon. It was not merely a romantic gesture." She held her cup between her hands to warm them and smiled to herself.

"This is pure romance," her brother chuffed. "Do you see me doing such things?"

"But you are five years older than me and still not married," Kavita protested. Are you married to your job?

"I will bring someone from home when I can provide a house for her. That is why our parents keep an eye open. I can pay for a proper Brahmin wife and soon a house and children. That is right. Do you want me to divorce a woman in this country or put my children in public school with those?" He motioned toward the city beyond the walls. "Meanwhile are you thinking of ski trips to Vale or skin diving at the Great Barrier Reef like the rich do? You know we have to raise ourselves up. Our family lost everything four generations ago. It is our duty to bring back only what we deserve. That is why we are always careful and we work well. If you are the man you say you are, do it right." He smiled at his jab.

Kavita jerked her head up in anger. The jab was unnecessary. She had abandoned no one, betrayed no one. She hadn't become careless in the way her brother feared, though she admired the boldness of other American women in the office. But Ajay's gesture with the scroll and the sincerity in his eyes had touched her. What is the proper age? she wondered. "You are an evil man," she shot back at her brother. "Like all men."

"Oh, am I now," he chuckled.

"Yes. But men no longer make the road we walk on. I will show you."

She stood up and rinsed her cup in the sink. Her brother swallowed his next sharp remark. He had no intention of forcing her into rebellion. That was not what he wanted.

"What will you tell him?" he asked more affectionately.

She stood with her back to him while water ran from the faucet. "I don't know. When someone feels like that, it seems everything is possible. Haven't you ever felt that?"

"I could understand," her brother consoled her. "But I'm wondering myself how much of a role faith in feelings which have little power can play. You know the world believes that Might makes Right, not Love."

"What kept the family together?" she turned off the water and turned. "All through everything? Through partition and times after? Why didn't everything fall apart? Was it luck?"

"Perhaps," he leaned back. He folded the paper and laid it down on the table. The question was one he had often asked. He wanted the answer to be force of will, determination, skill, intelligence, education, things he could command. But often he felt as if his family had passed through the eye of a needle. His own fortune was greater than he'd ever hoped for. He wanted more than anything to pass on to his sister advances he'd contributed to his own status. But he could see more things happened than he could control. So far, the accidents in his life all contributed to his success, his job, his permanent visa, his friends and the lack of enemies, though he'd carefully shunned intimacy with women. "Maybe we only bring bad luck. Good luck comes from outside, I think. Try not to cause bad luck."

"Ajay is not bad luck," she said with a superior voice. She picked up her computer case and slung the strap on her shoulder. "In this world, he's been the one bright light. He asks nothing of me. He's afraid of me."

"You can control him, perhaps," her brother said. "But can you control yourself?"

"Sometimes," she sighed. "But sometimes I don't want to. It is with him that I don't want to." She realized her lack of caution in admitting her frailty, but she felt by example she would demonstrate a will counter to her need for Ajay. "Have I not always worked hard and tried to be a good sister?" she laid one hand on her brother's shoulder. "Now I must go. Even Love must pay rent."

"What will you tell him?" her brother insisted, not wanting to lose a chance to answer the question for himself.

"I will tell him that our future is brighter than our present. We have time if we want it."

"Yes, you have time," her brother whispered. She brushed his hair back with her hand. He looked up at her and smiled. "It's not easy though, is it?"

"It would be much harder," she smiled, "without the people I love. Now I must go to work. I'll be late. At least I have a good reason to try hard." She gave him a mock slap with the back of her fingers and flashed her eyes.

A beautiful woman, he thought. Ajay is a lucky man, perhaps. Who knows what men and women really are in a world that makes room only for those who work day and night and try to forget everything else. "See you tonight," he said good-bye as she walked to the front and picked up keys from a stand near the door.

"After dinner," she smiled again, "Ajay and I are going out. After a man pledges himself, at least he should pay for a dance or two."

"A dance," her brother mused. "It must be nice to be young. What is it like?"

"Terrible," his sister laughed as she opened the door and disappeared.

- 3 of 3 -
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"Dinner and dancing," Ajay corrected her. Ajay had telephoned Kavita at work. She was so infrequently at her home office downtown that she hadn't expected to hear from him on the phone. Usually they exchanged email messages when she traveled. They would meet somewhere when she returned, prearranged in electronic messages. But a call at work for her -- that must be a client with a problem, she imagined as she reached to take the receiver from the secretary's hand. The sound of Ajay's voice overcame her official, "Hello. This is Ms. Narayan." He giggled. "Ajay!," her next word, was too excited. She restrained herself and asked, "Ajay, why did you call here? I thought we were going dancing tonight."

He giggled again. "Dinner and dancing. Can you leave work in time?" He asked, sobering up from laughing.

"What time?"

"This is America, not Delhi. We will have to eat by eight o'clock. Could I pick you up at seven?"

"That means I would have to leave work by five o'clock," she calculated, irritation in her voice.

"That is the time when people go home. Even young lady vice presidents sometimes go home at a regular hour."

"I'm not a vice president. Don't say that. It is bad luck," she whispered, guarding the receiver with her hand.

"Not yet, of course. But even a poor computer system administrator, hard working and awaiting his first award of excellence, can see what an important person you are. If you wear the dress that flairs, and low heels, you will see what use they are on a dance floor in front of a swing band."

"Swing?"

"It's coming back. Cool, huh? Boo boppa do wop."

She could hear his fingers snapping. That broke the back of her official demeanor. She hid her grin from the secretary and leaned against the front counter.

"Ajay," she repressed a laugh. "You're awful."

"If you think I'm bad now, wait till I've had something to eat and take you out on the floor. I've been studying. Got my moves. Yeah. Get down. Get down." More clicking.

She laughed into her hand and whispered through her teeth. "What time?"

"I pick you up at 7:30, OK?"

"OK. OK. At my brother's apartment, right?"

"Cool," he yelped. "Oh, baby, let your hair hand down."

"Hang down," she hissed. "Hang down."

"Oh, yeah. That's right, hang down. Cool. See you."

"Bye."

She couldn't wipe the grin off her face as she handed the phone back. "Good news?" the woman asked lightly, infected with her smile.

"I never know," Kavita sighed, and tried to restore order to her face. "I wish he wasn't so irresistible."

Ajay paid for their meal, more than sixty dollars, and asked if she wanted to walk to the dance. The May evening was warm enough. And downtown streets, especially those with a view of the Arch, were brightly lit and active. Families, couples, groups of students, and young workers flowed along sidewalks and crossed streets in the yellow glare of boulevard lights. Cafes, restaurants, bars, book shops, newsstands, cigarette shops, even a pet store, activated the evening with vague music, chatter, and the rainbow light of neon signs.

He held Kavita's hand while they cruised along, admiring themselves as young people do, knowing they are good looking and enviable. Ajay smiled at her. She returned the compliment and leaned against him as they strolled.

Ajay took a deep breath. He filled himself with purpose, preparing to debate the compelling question he wanted to ask. He couldn't bear the idea she might say no. She would have to answer positively. He anticipated all resistance. What could keep her from saying yes to the question he wanted to ask directly? He would put his question of marriage to her directly, in a manly way, along with a softened wisdom that made the joining of their destinies self-evident. They would simply be continuing the legacy of their youth and adult romance. They weren't risking some jeopardy to their careers but capitalizing on the achievements they already enjoyed in America. They would ensure each other's progress. They would economize. They could begin the process of accommodating each other in close quarters, anticipating family duties. They would figure themselves in the equation of the Indian couple abroad, Indian at heart. They would prepare groundwork for their Indian children so they could survive intact as Indian. He and Kavita would extend the reach of their families, not sever it at the elbow, by preserving the best traditions in a proper home, one with room for visitors from Delhi. Their children and their grandchildren would proudly refer to them as preservers of good things. Ajay and Kavita would be remembered in their turn as progenitors of the right way. They would achieve and visit their parents every year, unlike their older brothers who buried themselves in work. Ajay and Kavita. Kavita and Ajay. They were already a couple in everyone's mind. Now they would be husband and wife.

But, stuffed to bursting with these arguments, all Ajay said was, "We should get married." He hadn't asked it as a romantic question. He said it straight ahead, as if insisting on it, like an order. The phrase escaped his mouth, a low-volume outburst. It leaked. He flushed from head to shoulders and felt his hands go cold.

Kavita lost her smile immediately and pushed herself upright by grabbing his hand with both of hers. She didn't let go, but gripped his fingers. He was so embarrassed that he didn't realize for several minutes how much his hand hurt.

"Do you say so?" she blurted, wide-eyed. "Just like that? You must be a proper Indian husband already to give such an order."

They walked along more slowly, as if their legs rolled forward of their own momentum. Kavita continued to hold his hand with both of her arms locked straight at the elbow. Ajay looked down, then sideways at her, then away, then down again.

"I meant," he died, "I meant to ask you if you would marry me."

"Is that what you meant?" she recovered a bit from her own shock.

"I mean, will you marry me?" He looked up at her and stopped. "We have discussed it many times."

Neither let go. They stood facing each other. A couple walked around them and continued on, turning to look back and then nodded to each other. Kavita glanced after them and waited until they moved away.

"We have discussed many things, including the idea of marriage and family and children and jobs and school and everything. Should we then discuss trips to moon? Are we on our way there for talking about it?"

"I know," he hung his head. "And you never seemed definite. I could not understand your decision. Then I thought it seemed obvious. That what we wanted was obvious. But I didn't ask."

"This is where you ask? In a public street?" she said with some temper. He felt himself flush again. A husband and wife pushing a baby in a stroller orbited them. Kavita pulled Ajay nearer the window of a darkened doughnut shop as a group of six laughing students passed, probably on their way to the same dance hall Ajay had in mind.

She pulled Ajay closer and asked quietly, "Ajay, what do you want?"

"I want you to marry me." He leaned against the storefront, crossed one shoe over the other, and stared at his feet. Sounds of an electric guitar and drums reached them from a restaurant at the end of the block. He waited two hundred years for her to say something.

"Who else should I marry but you?" she sighed.

For an instant his heart skipped, but he held himself in check to make sure she wasn't dismissing him affectionately.

"Is that an answer?" he asked.

"No, but I don't want our future to be taken for granted by anyone, not even us. We have to pursue it harder than that. Why do you think I work so much?"

"And I am goofing around?" he asked with a sharp edge, not sure if she was chiding him for a youthfulness he felt more keenly than he ever had.

"No. Certainly not," she shook him a little. Then she leaned against his shoulder again and said in a breathy voice, "Ten years ago the Chinese made an official statement, "Women hold up half the sky. They are as equal as men." Gandhiji believed that also, you know. Practically in the same moment, Chinese officials, men, moved the International Women's Conference away from Bejing, far away so that the women couldn't disrupt anything. The Chinese police had blankets to wrap around women they believed might streak naked and braless through the streets. Can you imagine? And look what has happened in India to women. Equality is a fading picture. Who can believe what men say? What do you say? Should I enter a house with you and give up what I have now as an independent St. Louis woman."

Ajay smiled in spite of himself. He'd never thought of himself as a St. Louis man, not on a temporary H1 visa, but as an ex-patriot, someone far from home. Kavita was talking like someone who was at home. How could he glue both portraits together? More of her had moved to America while a large part of himself stood watching from India. They held hands across an abyss full of yearning.

"Would it be so terrible to be married?" he asked, without asking if it would be so terrible to be married to him.

"I don't know," she nearly whispered. She trembled a little. He could feel her grip weaken. "But I would be willing to find out." She looked up at him.

He almost leaned down to kiss her, but asked, "Is that a yes?"

"Yes, to a long engagement," she smiled slightly. "To a future we design. Can we do that, Ajay?"

He didn't answer but kissed her on the forehead. A couple, arm-in-arm, walked by and smiled. As they moved on, Ajay held Kavita by her shoulders. She put her hands on his waist. He leaned down and kissed her as if giving tribute. She had said what he would have said if a sense of weighty responsibility hadn't forced all sorts of confusing calculations into his head. He hadn't sold her on a proposition of marriage after all. They would have to create one together.

They stood facing each other for a moment with smiles of relief. They had weathered their first mutual surrender and created a reason to celebrate.

"Can you swing dance?" he smiled more broadly, remembering where they were going.

"Can I swing?" she bubbled, bouncing a little. "I can knock your socks off, Daddy."