As the Georgia chapter of the Annette Saldanha Foundation grew, so did the number of people who walked in and out of Tara and Cyrus’s home. They came every weekend for volunteer meetings: sipping tea, munching on cookies or masala peanuts, making themselves home with discussions, arguments, unrelated banter, and laughter. She couldn’t remember a single time in her life that she had enjoyed large groups. But this group of enthusiasts was different. She nurtured the family—there were eight college kids and two young couples. Only if she nourished the roots would the produce be bountiful. She felt like she was in the center of a mighty giving tree, a bit like the wish-fulfilling banyan tree of Morgan Hill. This tree was empowering. She stepped out of her comfort zone to solicit corporate sponsorships; but even when she prepared her sales pitch endlessly and worried incessantly until a meeting with an IT company boss or a small business owner was over, she discovered bits of herself that fascinated her.
The first fundraiser that the chapter organized, a 5K run, was a mega success, as the local Indian–American newspaper headlined. The team had raised $25,000 for the foundation’s causes through corporate sponsorships and registrations. She helped with the bookkeeping, with the registrations, taking calls, providing information. She got T-shirts screen printed with an image of a group of Cyrus’s children smiling their winsome smiles, below which was emblazoned, in red, the words, I RAN TO GIVE THEM HOPE, and below it, in blue, the name of their foundation. She handed out these T-shirts to the runners after the race, a smile of appreciation on her face.
The foundation’s team members were energized by the success of the summer fundraiser. They geared up for a winter fundraiser that would set them on par with the West Coast chapter. Of course, it would have to be an indoor event to be successful. A Bollywood musical evening or a play, they suggested. A play, they decided. A play, Tara and Cyrus agreed.
“We have an in-house writer,” said Cyrus, without any warning. They all turned to look at Tara.
“Okay, but, fair warning, I have never written a play before.”
The team members said they’d improvise on the dialogues during rehearsals. A story appeared on her laptop, a modern-day retelling of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. She called it Jahanara. It was set in urban India, the India she knew. She interjected the story with Bollywood song and dance, like the movies she had grown up with. She called her hero Jahan and his heartthrob Anara. She made Cyrus read each of the four drafts and write his suggestions in the margin.
When the final draft was ready, it threw open a host of questions. Cyrus, and now Tara, were quite the pros at organizing races, but an indoor event was new territory. Who would direct the play? Who would work on the props, the sound, the lighting? Most of them had been part of school or college plays, but none had been involved with the nitty gritty of putting it all together.
“Nobody is going to come if we don’t do a professional job,” said Shekar, a lanky, third-year student of mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech.
They needed to find an experienced director, they all agreed.
Devika and Samaresh, the IT couple from Marietta, said they knew the perfect person for the job. All they needed to do was convince her of their cause. Munmun Das taught Odissi to kids in Alpharetta. Tara had seen Munmun’s ad for her dance school in the local Indian–American newspaper, striking a pose in her dance regalia, dark kohl-lined eyes on an expressive face. But what got the team excited, when she readily agreed to be part of their project, was the fact that she had a lot of experience directing plays for the local Bengali association during their annual Durga Pujas.
Munmun walked into Tara and Cyrus’s lives, graceful in a handloom cotton sari, silver anklets around her pretty feet, thick long black hair cascading down her back like a waterfall. She alighted from her gleaming black Mercedes Benz for their first meeting, followed by her sullen older husband, Dr. Sujit Das, a lean, balding gastroenterologist.
Tara and Cyrus took turns thanking her for her help in feeding, clothing, and schooling orphaned children. Munmun bowed, touched her chest. Her silky voice was self-assured. “Oh, it is my pleasure. When I heard about your cause, I immediately wanted to help.”
Tara plated steaming hot upma and fixed masala chai for the team while Munmun read the script for Jahanara and cobbled together a cast for the play. Cyrus agreed to play Jahan to her Anara. Tara declined the role of Anara’s mother. “Somebody has to run the show,” she said.
Munmun’s silent husband did not accompany her after the first meeting. Every Saturday and Sunday, her bejeweled feet carried news of her arrival even before she appeared, sunglasses propped on her head like a band, her saris or salwar suits always starched and crisp, her tone always self-assured. She knew what she wanted, and she got what she wanted from a team that was eager to please. She divided the rehearsals into sixteen sessions spread over eight weeks. The group met in the finished basement of Tara and Cyrus’s home. The first weekend, they rehearsed Act One, Scene One.
Tara watched, seated on the plush carpet, face shining, thrilled to see her words being brought to life. She had written much of the dialogue; still the cast improvised as they went along, laughing as they came up with silly one-liners, then amending them to something that Tara and Munmun approved of.
By the third weekend, Jahan and Anara of Jahanara had grown up. Then they held hands to sing a love song. It was a scene Tara had written. Nevertheless, her smile waned as she watched from the sidelines as Jahan serenaded Anara with a rose from their backyard. She dropped her gaze to the carpet as the lead couple lip-synched to a romantic Hindi song that played on Munmun’s laptop. When she gazed up for a second, she saw her husband’s hand on Munmun’s back, on the smooth, dusky skin left exposed by her sexy, deep-cut sari blouse. She heard Cyrus call out her name after the song ended, asking her what she thought about his dancing skills. She gave him the thumbs up sign. Cyrus had grown up dancing at the famous Saldanha ball every year. She had never set foot on a dance floor. In her family, dancing with a man was considered crossing the line of propriety. Right now, she was being as silly as her parents were with their rules.
She pulled herself up from the carpet and ran up the stairs to the kitchen to fix hot khichdi for the group. It was not too late to learn. Once their program was over, she would look up dance classes in their neighborhood. She’d convince Cyrus to go with her. She’d learn to dance like the Munmuns and Saldanhas of the world.
The group met for rehearsals again the next day. This time, Jahan and Anara held hands on a make-believe park bench, which was actually two garden chairs set next to each other. He spouted poetic verses about her intoxicating eyes, her silken hair that left him breathless. They were good actors, the two of them. They looked the part of star-crossed lovers. What exactly had prompted her to write a love story? She couldn’t remember.
She hated her irrational thoughts, the way they hovered over her like the vestiges of a bad dream. She looked forward to Monday, when life would go back to routine, and there would be no intrusion of silly thoughts. Meditation, breakfast, a brief phone call from Cyrus during his lunch break, a leisurely dinner that she would have ready when he got home, and an evening that would end with them watching TV, their limbs entwined on the couch, his face drooping with sleep on her shoulder.