Bajirao could tell Gayatri was giving him a quiet, wordless nod of approval. All she needed to do was brush her fingertips against her nose ring and clear her throat. How many years had she contemplated this kind of nudge to steer him toward the right path? And now she used it, nearly imperceptibly, to convey her eagerness about the possibility of finding a husband for their daughter within the pages of a book at the Dhanpur Tehsil Post Office.
This approach felt strange to them, they knew. Securing matches for their two older daughters had always been more demanding—more favors to ask, more travel, more money than he could ever earn again in his lifetime. More money than he could ever repay to the moneylenders.
The post office did not resemble the place he remembered. It remained claustrophobic and dusty, with walls marked by spittle from betel leaves. Yet someone had placed a marigold garland on the postmaster’s substantial desk, and thus, between 2 and 4 p.m. once a week, the room had been transformed into an informal marriage bureau. A handful of government logbooks had been repurposed into registers, swollen with profiles of potential brides and grooms from the taluka who would participate in the collective wedding. The postal worker who offered this service after hours sat at his desk, flipping through profiles at the pace of about two minutes per page. Those in line had exactly two minutes to decide on a groom or bride and then meet the parents.
Bajirao had to fight to adjust his wiry frame enough to give Gayatri a few extra inches of space as they stood in this long queue. He strained every muscle to hold his ground among the cluster of other parents. The room grew more crowded, and the lines crawled forward. The electricity had been out for hours, and the heat of the day wrung sweat from everyone. If breathing hadn’t felt so laborious, someone might have passed out from the stench of farmers’ exertions.
“Aadnav?” the clerk barked at Bajirao once they reached the front. What is your surname?
“Andhale,” Bajirao replied, pronouncing it through his laboring breath.
The man sorting the register glanced up slowly, and his lips twisted into a sly grin as if to signal Bajirao’s misstep. Bajirao understood it at once.
“You stupid oaf!” the man snapped, in English. Then in Marathi, he added, “What are you doing in this line? This is for Brahmins only. You want a Brahmin groom for your daughter? Then tell her to settle for a love marriage!”
The men standing behind them snickered.
Bajirao pressed Gayatri by the shoulders and began steering her away. Someone shoved him. Another man joined and pushed harder. He was used to it. But Gayatri should not have to endure this. He was relieved to see her head turn away. He eased his step so he wouldn’t stumble against her.
How could he have been so careless? He avoided Gayatri’s gaze. His momentary carelessness had sullied the memory of this auspicious day for her. He released her hand from his arm and guided her to a different line. It was longer. They would have to begin their wait anew, and this time it would stretch for several hours. But, at the end of it, they would locate a young man who could pull their beloved daughter away from the hellish life they lived.
They spent the hours standing in a hushed crowd among those labeled as Other Backward Classes, Scheduled Castes, and Scheduled Tribes. There were no visible signs marking the divisions, only the weight of experience and common sense that seemed to be slipping away from him as surely as the day faded. The line lengthened, the sweat’s stench grew stronger, yet the space in the room felt somehow more breathable.
And then it was their turn. A different man with another register beckoned. The clerk flipped through the profiles of potential grooms. Bajirao exhaled, finding relief in Gayatri’s fingers resting on her nose ring, even in this crowded queue with impatient people behind them. She had spotted the photograph and profile of a young man who looked like a good match for their daughter. He heard a faint, decisive twitch in the cough Gayatri offered through the throat, a signal he could not miss, not even with the loud thump of a dance track crackling from the postal official’s transistor radio: zaraa zaraa touch me, touch me, touch me . . . zaraa zaraa kiss me, kiss me, . . . zaraa zaraa hold me, hold me . . . bin tere sanam iss jahaan mein. . .
“Father or guardian of Dinesh Deshmukh!” the postal worker announced in a steady voice, after Bajirao’s finger had tapped the black-and-white photo Gayatri had chosen. A stocky man with a neatly groomed mustache, dressed in a clean kurta, dhoti, and cap, stepped forward from the crowd.
“Please meet the father or guardian of Meera Andhale!” the clerk shouted, pointing at Bajirao. Gayatri rummaged in her cloth bag and hurriedly placed Bajirao’s white topi, his cap, into his hands. The postal official pointed to two stools behind him, signaling to the men that they should sit there and speak.
THE RIVER DRAWS CLOSER TO THE MAN AND WOMAN SITTING ON her northern bank, the place where she exhales her cool breath. The man speaks softly, mindful that today’s wind could carry voices across the water. Voices, or scents, for his breath is heavy with alcohol.
The river knows this man and woman. The man grew up on this shore, and the woman first visited as a girl. Her thin, dark legs had once dipped into the water up to the knee, and she stood still until someone called out to her—Gayatri, it’s time to go.
Years later, she had returned as a bride to live here, married to a man from this very shore. They had come here on their wedding day, strangers to each other, a boy and a girl scattering flowers and colors into the current on the orders of a pundit reciting prayers. Since then, the river became a place for the woman to come every few days, either to pray with other women or to wash clothes.
Each year, the river would help her rinse four white cotton kurtas, four white dhotis, and three cotton saris—green, yellow, and pink. Later, there would be a white polyester shirt, brown trousers, and a red silk sari, and she did not beat these with a stick as she did with the cotton garments. In the year after her marriage, the woman began bringing the clothes of a baby, and then the clothes of three more. For several years, she brought four school uniforms, one boy’s shirt and three girls’ blouses—white shirts and blue shorts, white blouses and blue tunics with white ribbons. Then the boy’s clothes stopped appearing, and instead his ashes were scattered into the river—ashes that did not carry the same smells as the boy’s collars once did. The woman returned a few days later and kept washing for years, until theirs became four daughters whose clothes slowly transformed into saris, and the woman joined the others at the wash, her three grown daughters ever-present. The woman’s hair gray quickly, especially around her face, weathered by three droughts that left her complexion browner in the sun.
The river has helped wash away the family’s hard work, making the clothes ready for more labor. She used very little soap. Sometimes, she came here, as she had done in childhood, to stand in the river, never deeper than her knees, and infinitely still.
So today, the river draws nearer again, listening. The man is drawing lines in the damp earth, tracing finger-strokes along the river’s bank. The woman smiles, looking only at him, not at the figures or the numbers he inscribes. The man sometimes joins her in her smile and slows his explanations. But his smile never lingers, for he is telling her about a loan, a mortgage, and the costs of their daughter’s wedding, the low price offered for their cotton crop, and the market value assigned by the bank’s loan officer and by a distant moneylender with his own rules.
His voice softens when he speaks of these matters, but rises again when he mentions a man he trusts, someone working to make sure farmers’ voices are heard across the country. The woman, too, speaks of this wise, educated man who will unite the farmers and compel the world to listen to the tragedies unfolding here.
The woman laughs from time to time, and the man begins to sing in the rhythm between puffs of his beedi. He talks about a world that would raise its voice, about a government that would listen, about subsidies for farmers, about forgiving crushing debts. They would then reclaim their lost land and cultivate crops from their own seeds instead of relying on foreign varieties that demand too much water, too much fertilizer, and far too costly upkeep. He would dig the well she has always wanted for their crop. He would have his wife grow old like a queen, he says.
At this, the woman laughs a little louder, and her laughter becomes a cough through which she murmurs that these days of ritual greetings and feasting are a good omen for fortune arriving as a benevolent stranger.
Neither the river nor the beloved woman hears the storm of thoughts in the man’s head. The father of Dinesh Deshmukh had approved of Meera’s photograph and nodded with keen interest at Bajirao’s rapid recitation of Meera’s nine years of schooling and her years of housekeeping thereafter. Your daughter would fit perfectly as a wife for my son and a cherished daughter-in-law in our clan, he had said. He had joined Bajirao’s excitement about the government’s generosity in organizing the mass wedding.
And then the father of Dinesh Deshmukh had asked for a dowry. A very modest dowry, he claimed. He suggested it should be no burden to you, after all the money you must have saved for years to pave your daughter’s path toward marital happiness. The mass wedding was a wonderful idea, but ancient customs should not be discarded. Tradition is tradition, especially in these troubled times.
So the river hears no such thing. And neither does Meera Andhale’s mother, the most shining presence in this man’s life. This woman should remain ignorant of these matters as long as he breathes. He prays with all his heart that she never has to discover any of it if he were to die.
The father of Meera Andhale reaches into the damp cloth bag he always carries. Among the ordinary items—a bundle of beedis, a cloth to wipe away sweat, and a small transistor radio for listening to the cotton market prices or old Marathi film songs—there is also a sachet of pesticide. It is not merely a means to keep his crop alive; it is also a reminder of the promise of death. It is intended for use if he must swallow it, shut his eyes, and lie down on land he still owns, awaiting the tranquil sensation of life seeping away to ease the indignity of debt.
His wife asks him something, gently. He forces his attention back to her. What did you say?
She repeats her question, “Will we have shrikhand and poori at Meera’s wedding?”
He smiles softly. “Yes,” he replies. “I know it has been a long time since you savored your favorite sweets. Just wait and see how rich that shrikhand will be—with the thickest curd, saffron, cardamom, and perhaps pistachio. You can have my share, and I will watch you enjoy it. You can fatten up. I’ve always hoped for a plump wife.”
She nudges him, and he pretends to topple, his hands bracing against the river’s shoulder as they laugh together. Something shifts at the far edge of the river’s bank, an acre away from the woman’s cough. A peculiar, unfamiliar step falls on the river’s head. He rises, stepping forward with uncertain strides. The woman quickens her pace, urging him onward. And so they come upon a boy who stands before them and speaks with a strange, lilting voice that somehow carries over the river: “Ammar Chaudhry?”
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From Foreign: A Novel of Land and Longing by Sonora Jha. Reprinted with the permission of the publisher HarperVia, an imprint of HarperCollins. Copyright © 2026 by Sonora Jha.
