Read Online Born Confused by Tanuja Desai Hidier - Free Book Online Page B

school and added: —Indian Indian. Bindian Indian.
    —Kama Sutra Indian.
    —What’s Kama Sutra Indian?
    Julian was giving me this knowing look. I tried to smile back knowingly, too, even though I was growing more and more convinced that what I really knew was very little if anything about what he was talking about.
    It did ring a tinkerbell; I mean, I had seen the pocket version the big chain bookstores sold, but they were always chockful of sweatless pretzeling blondes. What did that have to do with me?
    —Oh come on, don’t play all innocent with me, he said, his hand beginning to dangle off my shoulder and fiddle with the fabric where pit met chest.—Kama Sutra, you know—it’s all about the ancient art of love in India.
    He leaned in closer.
    —Art of sex, he gnatted in my ear.
    Sex! I wanted to laugh out loud. Indian people didn’t have sex. I was still convinced I was the second Immaculate Conception, not the Son-of-God part but in terms of my parents, who, of course,didn’t do It. They were like brother and sister, an affable duo; they even called each other Mummy and Daddy and they never even kissed or held hands, lived, in fact, PDA-free—which used to make me wonder if that meant they might divorce, but Indians don’t do that either. It was amazing how many stereotypes he had about the place!
    —Indians don’t have sex, I whispered back.
    —Oh, I know that, said Julian.—They don’t have mere sex: They have a kamasutronic experience—which is like God or…or ODing and surviving! And you want to know what I think?
    I shook my head side to side and then back and forth, unsure.
    —I think you’re just born with it in India.
    —I was born in the USA, I said.
    —It doesn’t matter. It’s genetic. It’s coded in your DNA: You know how to please a man.
    He gazed into my eyes.
    —Now you can show me some moves, my little Indian love goddess, he whispered.
    The lights went on.
    And I showed him some moves all right. No sooner had I stood than all that sin-in-cine-magic went to my head in a rush I can only compare to the wave at football games—when first one part of the crowd rises with their hands in the air, then the next, then the next, till the very bleachers seem to be undulating—except what was undulating was my inside. I tripped over my own pumps and landed in the aisle, my view shifting like the world through a camera falling off a tripod. The room tilted at a precarious angle, and I was on the floor in broken geometry, in the middle of an array of pretty puffy white and yellow clouds.
    I was on the verge of laughing but it wasn’t such a pleasant feeling, any facial motion riding an acidic deluge right up my throat and into my mouth nearly, like a film in rewind of a girl drinking far beyond her capacity. I will never drink again.
    —Oh Maude, Dimple, are you all right?
    A pair of strappy sandals was inches away and then two knees knocked down and the friendly moon of Gwyn’s face worried my own. Her eyes fell on the bottle tipped at my side.
    —Christ, how much did you drink?
    The moon tilted upwards, crescenting.
    —You guys gave her all that Bacardi? I mean, she’s a novice!
    Muffled noncommittal noise from the other two satellites orbiting farther away into the black hole.
    —Do you want to go to the bathroom? Dimple, come on—swashbuckle up and hold my arm.
    By this point only the popcorn guy was still around, sweeping up, and he was aisles away. My coat was gone somewhere and I watched my legs straighten out below me like a lifted rag doll and then I was upright, well, at a sort of oblique angle in Gwyn’s firm grip. The Dudes were keeping their distance, spinning around me in click-clack freeze-frame as if through a slow-moving shutter, nearly blending into a two-headed entity.
    —Come on, keep moving. Just act cool for the popcorn people. We’re almost there.
    —Hey, popcorn peeps! I hollered, waving excitedly, and I immediately dropped down again, my eyes so close