In the late spring of 2019, I was back in the city I had left at 18, Bombay. Or Mumbai, as it became known while I was gone. Much had changed while much had remained the same. The morning sun streaming into the living room balcony was familiar but, instead of the tarpaulin shacks across the street, there were high-rises. Traffic teemed along outside as always, though denser and louder.
I was in the early stages of a teenlike crush again but, having lived my way across countries and careers, clearer-eyed and cautious.
Praveen Ahuja and I had met over an Indian matchmaking app. I was looking for a like-minded friend I could date when I returned to the U.S. in the coming year. He was looking for a life partner, ideally in the Dallas area. While we checked off several boxes for each other, neither of us was in a hurry. Praveen was in his early 50s, and I was in my late 40s. We had lived the single life long enough to be comfortable in our own company.
Despite the ubiquity of video, we’d stayed with mostly audio calls in the initial months, developing a deeper rapport by focusing only on our sounds and words. Our daily phone conversation topics ranged from my writing projects and his work in the tech industry, to songs and books. Whenever we got into those sensitive territories of past relationship wounds or future partner hopes, music and literature helped to shift the mood and energy. Praveen wasn’t a big reader like me, but he had been in a book club for years. I wasn’t a trained singer like him, but I loved classic movie songs. Together, we fell into a regular practice where he sang ghazals (a style of poetry performed across South Asia) and Bollywood classics, and I read out poetry and book excerpts. Sometimes, we switched.
My memories of that muggy Mumbai summer are filled with the resonances and rhythms of our voices — his, low and slow during early mornings or late nights in Dallas; mine rising and falling to accommodate the din of nonstop traffic.
Our music and book club of two allowed us to weave together delicate, intricate patterns of thoughts on essential themes, including trust, money, family and spirituality. For a new long-distance relationship, this was both a matter of necessity and play. Whether we were fencing back and forth about the nuanced meanings of an Urdu word in a song or a self-help guru’s prescriptive advice for couples, we were learning when, where, how and how much we could push and pull at each other’s emotional boundaries. Most importantly, we were building a sense of connection in how we perceived the world around us.
After four months of such conversations, when we met in person, we had the intimacy of couples who’d been together for years. At the same time, engaging all the other senses besides sound added fresh sparks to the next phase of our courtship.
About a year after we met online, reader, I married him. On a dewy Saturday morning in early March, when virus-related headlines were sprouting all over news and social media, almost rivaling the bluebonnets, blackfoot daisies, blue-eyed grass and red, yellow and pink tulips blooming across parks and along highways in North Texas, we drove to a courthouse in Plano. There, a justice of the peace, a lone photographer and our dog, Remy Martin, beamed at our red and gold Indian finery as we repeated the vows. We’d debated reading some favorite literary lines but decided to save them for a private moment later.
Music and literature continue to help our bond grow and evolve. Whether a Hindustani raag rendition, a Toni Morrison novel, one of my own stories or an essay by a writer friend, something in each work opens up new connections. With a quiet curiosity, we explore each like an unexpected joy, much like our later-in-life marriage during these unforgettable times.
Jenny Bhatt will discuss her debut story collection, Each of Us Killers, in a live virtual event hosted by the Allen Public Library on Thursday, Oct. 22 at 7:30 p.m. To watch the online event, visit https://allentx.swagit.com/live/. Questions can be submitted to Bhatt until 8:30 p.m. on Oct. 22 via liveonstage@cityofallen.org.
