Was she being perceptive or merely voicing a popular familial opinion that my mother had failed to tell me about?
“I’m just twenty-seven, plenty of time to get married,” I evaded. “And please don’t tell me how when you were twenty-seven you were married with kids.”
Lata dropped another sliced-up potato into the big steel bowl of water to keep it from changing color. “I won’t tell you that because you already know it. But twenty-seven is late. When will you have children? The sooner the better, otherwise . . . you may not be able to have children.”
“Maybe I don’t want any children,” I said annoyed. Was there no originality among the women of my family? One aunt said I should learn to cook so that my husband won’t starve, while the other wanted me to get pregnant in case my reproductive organs gave up on me. And adding insult to injury was my mother who wanted me to marry any man who made what she considered “good money.”
“All women want children,” Lata said negligently. “So, my brother who lives in Los Angeles told me that nowadays Indians— not those foreigners, but Indian girls and boys—live together . . . do everything when they are not married. Why can’t they simply get married?”
“Because they want to live together for a while, not spend the rest of their lives together. Maybe they just want to test the waters. Marriage is serious business. You don’t marry the first guy you sleep with or live with for that matter,” I said for the sole purpose of scandalizing the living daylights out of her.
From her shocked facial expression, I knew I had succeeded. But I knew she would mention this to my mother, or worse, to Thatha, and then there would be questions galore.
She looked at me sharply. “Would you live with a man without marrying him?”
Talking to Lata felt akin to walking into enemy territory where booby traps lay everywhere. “Does everything have to be about me?” I commended myself on the poker face I wore.
Lata continued to chop potatoes. “You know, Anand and Neelima . . . they did it before marriage. I think that is why they got married.”
“Because they had sex?” I stopped scraping the coconut and then started again.
Lata picked up a bottle gourd, as green in color as the cotton sari she was wearing, and started to cut it into big chunks to make it easy to peel and then chop for the pappu.
“We are not like all those white women who have sex with hundreds of men. We marry the man we have sex with. Neelima trapped him,” she said.
“Why would he marry her because he had sex with her? How should that matter?” I knew it was pointless to discuss Neelima or the institution of marriage with Lata, but my mouth ran away before I could put a leash on it.
“Anand is a nice boy,” Lata explained her twisted logic. “Neelima seduced him and he had to marry her.”
“So they’re not a happily married couple?” I asked over the sound of the scraper rolling inside the now bare shell of coconut. I discarded the shell and ran my fingers through the white slivers of coconut lying in the steel bowl.
Lata placed a yellow pumpkin lying next to her in front of me. I put it on top of the elevated wooden chopping board my mother had been using. I then rose to pick out a large, smooth-edged knife from the knife holder standing by the sink.
“Anand seems happy,” she remarked. “But you can never know for real. You can’t, you know, judge a book by its cover.”
I agreed with her. But if I were to go by covers, Lata and Jayant appeared to have a lousy marriage. They were perpetually at each other’s throats. There was no blatant fighting; it was more the bickering, the constant animosity. One look at Jayant and Lata was enough to put anyone off of arranged marriage. Their marriage was obviously not working but they were still together in what appeared to be a stifling relationship, while baby number three was on the way. I wondered whose decision it had been to have another baby, Jayant’s or Lata’s. Who had given in to the pressure I am sure Thatha had firmly put on the couple?
“How are Apoorva and Shalini doing?” I changed the topic to her children as I cut through the large yellow pumpkin.
“Very well,” she said with pride. “Shalini started Bharatnatyam classes and she dances with so much grace, and Apoorva is learning how to play the veena. I always say it is important for girls to know some classical dance or music.”
“How do they feel about getting a little brother or a sister?”
She raised her eyebrows holding a piece of bottle gourd in midair. She slid it on the blade and put two pieces of the gourd in the steel bowl by her side. “Who told you? Neelima?”
“Not Neelima,” I lied, as I started parting the peel of the pumpkin from its flesh.
Lata picked up the pieces of peeled pumpkin and sliced them on the blade jutting out of the wooden board and dropped them in another steel bowl.
“They made me,” she said. “First, it was just Mava and then it was Atha and then Jayant started. What could I say? I have some duty toward my husband’s family.”
“What if you have another daughter?” I asked what was probably the most taboo question.
“I won’t,” she told me with fervor, as if even thinking about it would make it happen. “I know I could, but I hope I won’t. All this for nothing, then.”
“What will you do if it’s a girl?” I persisted.
Lata smiled softly and met my eyes without flinching. “I love my children. I don’t care if they are girls or boys. And I will love this baby, too. I only want it to be a boy so that your Thatha will be happy.”
I didn’t believe her.
“We will find out next week whether the baby is a boy or girl,” she added. “They can tell in the sixteenth week itself these days with that amnio test.”
“And then?”
“Then we will know.”
I didn’t care to ask her if she would have an abortion at that point; somehow, I didn’t want to know the answer.
All this for nothing, then, she had said, and her words echoed in my brain for a long time.
Lunch was served at the large dining table that filled the entire dining area next to the kitchen. Steel plates clinked on the Formica table and steel glasses tried to find a foothold. The table was in disharmony with its surroundings. The Formica clashed with the red and yellow window frame against which the table leaned; it took up too much space and didn’t really match with the cane dining chairs that Thatha had bought years before he had the table.
The Formica itself was lumpy, marred by errors of placing a hot pot directly on it or spilling water that seeped in between the thin vinyl layer and cheap wood.
The new dining table had replaced a sturdy old wooden table, which was just a few feet high and required us to sit cross-legged on straw mats to eat. But that table had to be put away in storage when Ammamma’s arthritis demanded something that would be easy on her knees. Thatha bought the table at a small furniture store in Abids that specialized in gaudy TV stands and sold other assorted items of the same low quality as the dining table.
Thatha had liked the size of the table and the shining top had appealed to him as well. It had taken only six months for the shining top to become dull and lumpy, but by then the small furniture store had closed down and Thatha got stuck with the table, lumps and all.
A mound of hot rice settled in the center of the table and around it dark bobbing heads joined steel utensils filled with avial, bottle gourd pappu, potato curry, and cold yogurt.
Two jugs of ice-cold water were emptied in little time and the ceiling fan rattled endlessly, providing little surcease from the interminable heat. But I was getting used to it.
“Have you been to Noo Yark?” my grandmother asked as she attacked her food, her mouth open as she chewed.
“Yes,” I said, and dropped my eyes to my plate where my fingers danced with the rice and the creamy bottle gourd pappu. How easy it was to eat with my fingers again. I had forgotten the joys of mixing rice and pappu with my fingers. Food just tasted better when eat
en with such intimacy.
“Very good avial, Priya-Amma,” Thatha remarked, and I nodded, pleased with the compliment.
“Noo Yark is a dangerous place, it is,” Ammamma said, smacking her lips together and mixing the rice with avial on her plate with her fingers.
“The white people are just . . . crooks,” she continued, and my head shot up. “And the black people . . . those kallu people are all criminals.”
My eyes widened with shock.
“And how do you know this?” I asked, unable to completely submerge my instinct to get on my antiracism soapbox. Nick would love to be in on this conversation, I thought.
“I see Star TV,” Ammamma said proudly. “All black people are doing drugs and they kill on the street. Vishnu . . . you remember him?”
I didn’t, but I nodded.
“His son was mugged by a kallu person in Noo Yark . A black man”—she dropped some food into her mouth—“put a gun to his head.” She spoke with her mouth full and I grimaced at her words and the half-chewed visible food. “All black people . . . dirty they are.”
And what had my grandmother done—smelled their clothes? Frustration warred with the reality of the situation in front of me, and reality won.
“That is right,” Thatha spoke up, and exhibited his ignorance. “All white people do is exploit the others. And the black people kill. That country is just . . . no family values, nothing. All the time they get divorced.”
“They have a moral structure, Thatha.” I could hardly sit silent in front of such blatant disregard for the facts.
“What moral structure?” Ma glowered. “Your friends . . . what, Manju and Nilesh, they were fine when they were here and they would have been fine if they had not gone to America.”
Manju and Nilesh were classmates from engineering college in India. They started their romance in the first year of college and survived as a couple through four years of engineering college, two years of graduate school in the United States, and a year or so of working in Silicon Valley before getting married. But happily ever after had evaded them. They had recently divorced and I made the big mistake of telling Ma about it. She immediately decided that it was because of the evil American influence.
“These friends of hers got married,” Ma explained to the others. “Same caste, same . . . real good match. They went to America and now they are getting a divorce after four years of marriage. What happened? If they were in India, it would have never happened.”
She was absolutely right. They definitely would not have gotten a divorce in India. After all, divorce was still not commonplace. The pressure from their families would have kept them together even as Nilesh screwed everything in a skirt including Manju’s older married cousin.
“Why did they get a divorce?” Neelima asked softly.
“Does it matter?” my mother launched into a tirade. “They got a divorce and they would have been married if they were here in India. There . . . no one cares. Women have three, four marriages and all the men cheat on their wives. They all sleep around.”
This was why I knew it was going to be a tough, tough thing to tell the family about Nick. They had condemned the entire Western world to being immoral criminals and crooks. What chance did poor Nick stand in getting a fair trial?
“They don’t all sleep around,” I defended. “In the South, couples don’t have sex until they get married. They’re very religious there.”
I don’t know how and why this discussion was taking place. I couldn’t remember discussing sex in any fashion with my family ever before. Sowmya and I would talk about it once in a while, but that was girl talk. This was simply too weird.
“And then there are those religious fanatics,” Thatha added, and I lost it.
“And here there are none?” I demanded. “How can you say that about the West when you know nothing about it?
“Damn it, this country has its own screw-ups. Men beat up their wives and the wives stick to their marriages. At least in America they have a way out. They can walk out of their sick marriages. Here people don’t decide who they should marry, spend the rest of their lives with—their parents do. That seems okay to you?”
Silence fell like rain in monsoon. Thatha looked at me with the look reserved for the belligerent or the retarded—I wasn’t sure which.
“You only live in the States. It is not your country. They will never accept you. You will always be an outsider there, a dark person. Here they will accept you and don’t use foul language in this house,” Thatha said.
“Accept me?” I was on a roll so I stepped into cow dung, big time. “I apologize for the foul language, but, Thatha, you don’t accept Neelima because she comes from another state. You don’t accept Indians and you expect me to believe I’m accepted in this society. How long will this society accept me if I want to live by my own rules?”
“All societies have rules,” Lata launched into the discussion. “You have to follow American society rules, don’t you?”
I smiled that sick sarcastic smile I was warned against by Ma all my life. “Yes, but in that society no one can pressure me into having a child so that a family can have a male heir and—”
“Priya.” My mother silenced me with that one sharp word. “You don’t know what you are talking about.”
Silence fell again. Except for the chewing of food and the movements of steel utensils, no one said anything.
Now I had done it and I wanted to kick myself. This was not how I was going to soften the blow—this was how I was going to make it more severe. Of all the stupid things to do I had to go and try to change my family’s mind about the evil and corrupt Western world. I might as well have tried to climb Mt. Everest in my shorts.
TO: NICHOLAS COLLINS
FROM: PRIYA RAO
SUBJECT: RE: RE: RE: GOOD TRIP?
I FOUND AN INTERNET CAFE, JUST DOWN THE STREET FROM AMMAMMA’S HOUSE. SMALL PLACE, CHARGES RS. 30 FOR 15 MINUTES AND THE CONNECTION IS SOOOOO SLOW, IT CRAWLS. NEVERTHELESS, IT EXISTS AND SEVEN YEARS AGO IT DIDN’T. I’M CONSTANTLY SURPRISED AT HOW SOME THINGS HAVE CHANGED AND HOW SOME THINGS ARE EXACTLY THE SAME.
JUST MET WITH THATHA AND, NICK, THE MAN IS A CHAUVINIST. I MEAN, THE MAN IS A FREAK, OUT OF A MUSEUM. AND THE REST OF THEM ARE EQUALLY BAD. I TOLD YOU ABOUT ANAND AND HOW HE MARRIED NEELIMA. WELL, YOU SHOULD SEE HOW EVERYONE TREATS THE POOR GIRL—SLAPPING HER ACROSS THE FACE REPEATEDLY WOULD BE KIND.
AND YOU WON’T BELIEVE THIS, BUT LATA IS PREGNANT AGAIN. THATHA WANTS A PUREBLOODED BRAHMIN GRANDSON AND ANAND’S SON, IF HE HAS ONE, WON’T CUT IT. NEELIMA ISN’T A TELUGU BRAHMIN, YOU SEE, JUST A MAHARASHTRIAN ONE. THIS FEELS LIKE A BAD TELUGU MOVIE; ALL THE CHARACTERS ARE THERE IN DIFFERENT SHADES OF GRAY: THE INTRACTABLE MOTHER-IN-LAW, THE VILE SISTER-IN-LAWS, THE SPINELESS HUSBAND, THE PATRIARCHAL FATHER-IN-LAW, AND, OF COURSE, THE POOR DAUGHTER-IN-LAW FROM THE OTHER CASTE.
I’M NOT GETTING ALONG WITH MA EITHER. I’M TRYING HARD AND FAILING. FOR ONCE I WANTED US TO BE FRIENDS AND I THOUGHT THAT NOW THAT I’M OLDER, WE WOULD BE FRIENDS. NOT HAPPENING FOR US. AND IT HURTS. I HAD THIS FANTASY OF US GETTING ALONG ONCE I GOT BACK. BUT TIME HAS HAD ABSOLUTELY NO EFFECT ON OUR RELATIONSHIP.
NATE HAS GONE HIKING WITH FRIENDS AND I’M STUCK HERE WITH THE RELATIVES FROM HELL. I WANT SO MUCH FOR THEM TO BE DIFFERENT, MORE ACCEPTING, LESS JUDGMENTAL, LESS RACIST, MORE TOLERANT. I WANT THEM TO ACCEPT YOU. BUT THE MORE I SEE, THE MORE I REALIZE THAT IT ISN’T GOING TO HAPPEN.
HOW AM I GOING TO TELL THEM, NICK? HOW ON EARTH AM I SUPPOSED TO TELL THEM ABOUT YOU? IT’S GOING TO BREAK MY HEART TO BREAK THEIRS. BUT I LOVE YOU AND I CAN’T DREDGE UP AN OUNCE OF GUILT . . . AND THAT MAKES ME FEEL GUILTY. I’M SUPPOSED TO FEEL GUILT, RIGHT?
ANYWAY, GOT TO GO. THE MAN AT THE FRONT DESK IS LOOKING AT HIS WATCH AND THEN AT ME . . . SUBTLE AS A CHAINSAW. I’LL COME BY AGAIN AND CHECK EMAIL.
AND, I AM NOT GOING TO MARRY SOME INDIAN BOY!! HOW CAN YOU THINK THAT, EVEN IRRATIONALLY?
AND I’M COMING HOME AS SOON AS I CAN.
PRIYA
Swimming in Peanut Oil and Apologies
Ma all but dragged me out to the back yard after lunch. “You might be here just for a few days but you will behave yourself,” she said, gripping my arm tightly.
I jerked her hand off and rubbed the small bruises her fingers left behind. “I will say what I feel like saying. If you don’t like it, I can pack up and leave.” That was not what I really wanted to say, but I was angry and furious at being treated like a five-year-old. I was a twenty-seven-year-old woman; I was not a child. When would they learn that? And then again, when would I learn to act my age? Why did I have to go off the deep end over matters that did not concern me? I knew that; I knew that it didn’t really matter what Thatha or Ammamma thought about black people or white. Yet I couldn’t help myself and couldn’t regret what I said. Somehow I felt justified in taking umbrage at what they had said because I was right. But that didn’t change the fact that I had behaved badly and hurt my grandfather, my aunt, my grandmother, and my mother. Now if only I could find some beggars on the street to kick, I could call it a day.
“Are you threatening me?” Ma demanded, and I just gave her a “yeah sure” look but didn’t say anything.
“Are you?” she asked again, her eyes boring into mine.
I didn’t look away. Sometimes it was better to face the demons than ignore them. All that was left now was to purse my lips in a pout to look like a recalcitrant adolescent. Just the image I was trying not to portray. How could I convince them to trust my judgment in men if I was pouting like a child?
“All the sacrifices we made for you,” Ma said in disgust. “And this is how you repay us?”
I raised one eyebrow negligently and the little guilt I was feeling took a nosedive. “Ma, put a sock on the sacrifice routine,” I said with belligerence, all my vows of being the perfect daughter for the two week trip vanishing completely. This “you owe us” line was not one I liked, not one I believed in. I hadn’t put a petition to my parents asking them to give birth to me. It was their choice and since they made that choice I couldn’t owe them.
The Mango Season Page 8
