beanie hat

asking him baby hats to pose for photographs, to wrap his arms around families and smile. He is numbly drunk through it all, thanks to the open bar her parents have sprung for. Moushumi is horrified, in the banquet room, to see the tables wreathed with tulle, the ivy and baby's breath twisted around the columns. They bump into each other on her way out of the ladies' room and exchange a quick kiss, the smoke on her breath faintly masked by the mint she is chewing. He imagines her smoking in the stall, the lid of the toilet seat down.

There are awkward champagne toasts and speeches by their families, their parents' friends. Her father stands up, smiling nervously, forgets to raise his glass, and says, "Thank you very much for coming," then turns to Gogol and Moushumi: "Okay, be happy." Forks are baby sun hat tapped against glasses by giggling, sari-clad mashis, instructing them when to kiss. Each time he obliges them and kisses his bride tamely on the cheek. A cake is wheeled out, "Nikhil Weds Moushumi" piped across its surface. Moushumi smiles as she always smiles for a camera.

her baker boy hat mouth closed, her head tilted slightly downward and to the left. He is aware that together he and Moushumi are fulfilling a collective, deep-seated desire because they're both Bengali, everyone can let his hair down a bit. At times, looking out at the guests, he can't help but think that two years ago he might have been sitting in the sea of round tables that now surround him, watching her marry another man. The thought crashes over him like an unexpected wave, but quickly he reminds himself that he is the one sitting beside barts hats her.

trying it on, she'd put the box away under her chair, not noticing the smaller box lost among the tissue. "There's something else in there," he'd been forced to say. In retrospect he decided that she had been more shocked by the hat than by his proposal. For while the former was a true surprise, the latter was something expected from the very beginning it was safely assumed by their families, and soon enough by themselves, that as long as they liked each other their courtship would not lag and they would surely wed.

Yes," she'd told him, grinning, looking up from the hatbox before he'd even had to ask. She emerges now in the snow-white terry-cloth hotel robe. She has taken off her make- up and her jewels; the vermilion with which he'd stained her part at the end of the ceremony has been rinsed from her hair. Her feet are free of the three-inch heels she'd worn as soon as the religious part of the wedding was over, causing her to tower over almost everyone. This is the way beanie hat he still finds her most ravishing, unadorned.

She told Gogol it was because she didn't have the time, but he sensed that it was something she couldn't bring herself to face the second time around. It's fine with him, not to have their apartment crammed with a dozen crystal vases and platters and matching pots and pans. There is no calculator, and so they add up the figures on numerous sheets of the hotel stationery. Most of the checks have been written out to Mr. and Mrs. Nikhil and Moushumi

Ganguli. Several are written to Gogol and Moushumi Ganguli.