Read Online Tantrika by Asra Nomani - Free Book Online

two cats, Billlie and Billluh. He knew khatoon meant “lady” when I told him my sister-in-law’s name was Azeem Khatoon. He knew the name of the silver paper laid atop the burfi, a dessert made on the subcontinent. His parents lived in the F/8 neighborhood of Islamabad. My phuppi and phuppa, my paternal aunt and uncle, lived in F/9 next door. When he was eight, his mother taught him how to cross-stitch cushion covers and handkerchiefs for his home economics assignment. He pronounced my name right. I cross-stitched roses onto a table cover in my mother’s childhood home in Panchgani.
    His mother, too, sang when she was sad.
    It was 3:36 A.M . when we finally got off the phone. I whispered to myself, “I think I’m falling in love again.”
    Daydreams captured my mind. I saw him clearly by my side in a delivery room, leaning over me as we both held our newborn baby. I couldn’t see my boyfriend and me like this. It was as if he was the answer to my questions. An angel of God. Torn between the loss of my boyfriend and the possibility of Omar, I pulled out my first self-help book, The How to Survive the Loss of a Love Workbook.
    â€œDescribe your pain,” this book demanded.
    â€œIt is numbness now.”
    Words sat upon the page like blood spilled from the heart. “Circle or highlight the ones you’re feeling now.” I pressed hard around Pain with my blue felt pen. Muddled? Yes. Overwhelmed? Yes. Beaten? Yes. Self-hatred? Yes. Fear? Yes. Inferior? Yes.
    Lost? I circled it so many times I must have thought I would find myself in one of my circumambulations of the pen.
    Angry? I didn’t circle it.
    â€œIs there some magic to carry all of us home?” I wrote. “To bring us to a point where we can live with ourselves and our lives? Where is themagic? I want some. I need some. Or shall I spend my life as lost a soul as I am? Please let me journey toward that magic.”
    I admitted my struggles to my mother. She stayed awake until dawn with the weight of this sadness upon her. She confided my struggles to my father.
    They called me together, and we talked into the night. I told them the truth of my struggle between East and West. My relief was unimaginable. My father didn’t disown me. He didn’t even have a heart attack. Instead, he told me, “I love you.”
    I invited Omar to be my date at a friend’s engagement dinner celebration in Washington two weeks later on Valentine’s Day.
    First, I went home to West Virginia. Bhabi, my brother’s wife, pulled out the shalwar kameez suits she had gotten as her wedding outfits. The shalwar resembled baggy pants like the kind worn by women of harems. The kameez was a long tunic. A dupatta, or long scarf, topped the kameez —or the head, for a more modest look. We settled on a suit with a hot pink silk kurta with gold embroidery and shiny smooth stones decorating the front. She was giddy with excitement. I descended into the Bombay Palace on K Street, blocks from the White House. My date waited at the bottom of the steps. He turned his brown eyes shaped like almonds up the stairs toward me. His wide face with angular cheekbones filled with a smile. I fell for him instantly.
    We went to the movies that weekend. Indian director Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala, of all things. It was the story of a beautiful Indian girl who emigrated from Uganda. To her family’s chagrin, she fell in love with a boy who wasn’t from India but was rather an African American carpet cleaner, played by Denzel Washington.
    During a sultry phone scene, the girl lay back on her bed, a bumper sticker behind her, “My dharma ran over your karma.”
    Omar jetted to Chicago two weeks later.
    â€œYou are like a miracle,” I told him after a dinner of tandoori chicken and Coca-Cola. “My bridge between the East and the West.”
    By Sunday morning, we were high on the euphoria of falling in love. He