The Hindi-Bindi Club by Monica Pradhan

parted ways?”
    “Oh. Well. That would be because I’m in love with you. Madly. Deeply. Passionately. Irrevocably. Pathetically, I suppose, if you tell me I don’t stand a chance…”
    When I picked my jaw up off the floor, doves flew, conch shells blew, and the Gates of Paradise swung wide open.
    I adore my husband. With every breath I take. Every fiber of my being. Ever more, every day. For ten years, we’ve grown together. I hope we never grow apart, but lately I worry about it. We’re both in a holding pattern, wondering where our lives are going. What’s next for us as individuals, and as a couple? I look at my childhood friends Kiran and Preity. One I haven’t seen in years, now divorced. One happily married with children.
    What direction will Bryan and I take?
    At our front door, I lay my hand on his freshly shaven jaw, nuzzle my face to his neck, and breathe in his clean scent. “I love you, Bry,” I say. Such inadequate words for what I feel.
    “Love you, too.” He pecks my lips, but I rise onto my toes, wind my arms around his neck, and deepen the kiss. He pulls away and lifts his head with a groan. “Save that thought. Gotta run, catch the yuppie bus.”
    “Have a good day,” I say.
    “You, too. Good luck.”
    After he leaves, emptiness swells inside me. A big black hole that threatens to swallow me whole. I want to crawl back into bed and pull the covers over my head.
    No no no.
I shake my head.
Snap out of it.
    Every artist wishes for a life like mine. An opportunity like mine. No financial pressures. Ample time and resources. I’m damn lucky. I need to make the most of my gifts, put my blessings to good use. March into my studio and kick ass.
    Determined, I shower and change, whip up a chocolate-banana soy milk smoothie and go to my studio in the spare bedroom. The morning light is perfect. I burn a stick of sandalwood incense and put on some mood music. Enigma’s “L.S.D.” plays first.
Love Sensuality Devotion.
The room reverberates with an intoxicating blend of New Age music, a club beat, and Gregorian and Native American chants. I absorb the atmosphere, hips swaying to the rhythm, and try to work.
    Try and try. And keep making a mess. And more mess.
    It’s okay, I tell myself, trying to shake it off. You’re warming up. It’ll come.
    But it doesn’t. It hasn’t. Not for days. Weeks. Months.
    I was so jazzed when I started my Goddess series, modern renditions of mythic females. But my first taste of commercial success has turned me into a constipated artist. For the first time in my life, I can’t gag the gremlins, haranguing voices in my head that constantly critique my work.
    “You think that’s art?”
    “Will anyone like this?”
    “Too much like the last one.”
    “Too different.”
    “Sloppy, Rani. Sloppy.”
    It’s so draining. Not that my art has always provided a bliss hit—it is
hard,
after all—but lately, it never does. Lately, I dread it. I’m secretly afraid that somewhere on the Road to Success, I lost my own passion. Bryan lost his on his fall down. Did I lose mine on my rise up?
    Jack fell down and broke his crown, and Jill came tumbling after.
    No no no. My passion can’t be lost; it’s simply misplaced. I’ll find it again. I have to.
    I take a break and go to the kitchen. I’m tempted to open the refrigerator and pull up a chair (it beats turning on the oven and sticking my head inside), but I resist. I gather the ingredients for the chocolate
sandesh
truffles I’m bringing to accompany the chocolate-dipped strawberries and champagne the gallery has arranged. You gotta have protein, right? You’d never guess it, but these little babies are made with fresh, homemade cheese called
chhana
that looks, but doesn’t taste, similar to cottage cheese or ricotta.
    A celebratory sweet,
sandesh
means “good news” in Bengali. The “s” in Bengali is pronounced “sh,” and an “a” is often “o.” There’s other tricky stuff that will make your