Venom

There used to be little but animosity between us. Venom. A kind of poison.

We grew up on polar opposites of the world, yet we lived in the same neighborhood.

Meneetha was tall, tanned, gorgeous. I was stumpy, pale, neither beautiful nor truly pretty. Meneetha's parents were wealthy even by American standards, her father rich in old family business in the Punjab. My parents were working class. She was stealthly superficial; using her intelligence usually to get what she wanted but rarely more than that. I was ripely intelligent with a biting tongue and an impatient repertoire.

I don't spend much time analyzing our difficult relationship. After I learned about Raj's love for her, something changed in me. After I learned of their affair, something changed in me. People can love people who do not deserve their love.People can use affection to harm others. After learning about her mistreatment of him after, something changed in him, as did me. People can remain attached to someone they love, even after falling out of love with them.

But not so long ago, I learned something new.

Even someone as shallow as Meneetha could teach me about life.

"They never tell you what that means, to learn to love someone. To grow to love someone," she says. Her voice is faltering. It's wavering in a way I didn't know was possible for someone so brash and demanding of life.

I attended her arranged marriage. I wore bright blue and $2500 in gold jewelry and was seduced into wild Punjabi dancing by her cousins. It wasn't arranged by traditional standards. After all, Meneetha was far too choosy about things to be forced into something. She chose him willingly, but of the men her parents presented to her, as if she were buying shoes. He was handsome, something I noticed immediately. Just like shoes.

She's been married just a year longer than me. It seems so much longer than a year.

I agreed with her in part because I knew it was true and also because I felt Meneetha for the first time appreciated my openness, my willingness to listen, my genuine nature, all things for which she had previously resented me.

She's right. No one tells you what it means to love, whether that means to grow to love a practical stranger or a man you think you're in love with. And the older I get, the more convinced I am of at least the possibility that there are relationships we make and ones that are chosen for us.

All things exist in nature in harmony. All things. So why not people and their hearts? Their minds? I finger the huge jhumki earrings I wear, knowing she would disapprove of their highly traditional nature. I smile. I could always count on her disapproval with me in some way.

The conversation doesn't last long at all. Maybe ten minutes. I don't even know how she got my number, until I remember Raja telling me he had ignored her calls. It was as if he could sense her desperation in her marriage, feeling lost in America while tied to man who despite his appearance turned out to be far less attractive than it seemed. But Raj, like most men, could tell when a woman wanted him only out of desperation to be loved.

Meneetha tells me she's heard about my affair with the professor from Case. I don't comment. It's old news to me and surely to her, and even more surely she's heard more than that, more than that fact that I was soon after hastily married to a man I also barely knew. Tongues wag in our communities, diverse as they are. She bates me and I avoid it, just like in old times. She sounds like her mother, who, having heard the exact same piece of news from Raj's mother all those years ago, said something very similar to me. Love is for children and adults who don't realize they've grown up. I wondered then if her mother had been trapped in a marriage like this and only knew how to claw at people to get out.

And when we hang up, I realize that some of the relationships which are made for us turn out to be enemies just as often as they do friends, and I feel comfort in this, comfort that I may keep her in my heart and mind even though we are at odds with each other.