“If it wasn’t this hot, I’d suggest coffee,” I said, furiously fanning around my neck. I sat down on the rocking chair by the telephone and rocked gently as I fanned.
“Your Ma is looking for you,” Nanna said after a little while. “She called. Very angry, she is. Mahadevan Uncle just called. Adarsh is very impressed with your honesty.”
“Nanna—” I began.
“No, no, Priya Ma, you did what your generation always does, stab us in our hearts,” Nanna said, clapping the left side of his chest with his right hand before letting it drop. “Adarsh said he holds no hard feelings, but you have left me with no leg to stand on with Mahadevan Uncle or Mr. Sarma.”
“I was trying not to hurt Adarsh’s feelings,” I said. “And he was quite forthcoming about his ex-relationship with a Chinese woman.”
Nanna shook his head. “Kids these days. I never thought I would say it, but I am: kids these days have no idea what is good for them. It will not work out, Priya.” He used the exact same words as Thatha had. “Marrying someone who does not understand your culture, your roots, your traditions, it will not work out.”
Before I could answer the ceiling fan began to whirr again and we both sighed in relief. “Someone needs to be shot for cutting power off like this,” Nanna said, and got up to stand right under the fan.
As he pulled the cotton kurta that was plastered to his skin away from it, I contemplated how much I should tell him. Even as the thought came to me I decided that I had done enough filtering and that now was not the time to shield him or anyone else anymore.
“It has been working out for three years, Nanna,” I said. “We’ve been living together for a while. . . . Two years, we’re . . . together and we’re happy.”
Nanna stood still and then looked at me with his lips pursed. “You share a home with this man?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, and curbed the impulse to fall on my knees and apologize.
Nanna shook his head again. “And you’ve been living with him for two whole years?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t feel the need up until now to tell us about this important person in your life? Even when I asked you to your face you didn’t tell me. Why? What’s to hide?” Nanna asked angrily.
They were all valid questions and I realized then how much I had botched this entire announcement business. I should’ve told them before I came and I should’ve brought Nick along. I should’ve introduced him to the family instead of dropping a bomb on them.
“I was afraid,” I told him frankly. “I’m still afraid that you all don’t love me anymore, that you hate me. But there’s nothing to hide. . . . I mean, he’s a good man. He loves me, he takes very good care of me. And he wanted to be here, he didn’t want to do it this way. I want you to know that this is on me. I made the mistake.”
Nanna sighed, and sat down on an armchair on the other side of the telephone and turned to face me. “What’s his name?”
“Nicholas, Nick. He’s an accountant with Deloit & Touche. He . . . What else do you want to know?” I asked.
“His family? What’s his family like?”
“They’re good people. His father passed away five years ago. He used to coach football at a high school in Memphis, that’s where Nick was born and raised. His mother, Frances, is a pediatric nurse; she works with children who have cancer at St. Jude’s. It’s a big children’s hospital in Memphis. He has a brother, Douglas, Doug, who is a sous-chef at a very trendy restaurant in New Orleans.” I gave him the list.
“How did you meet him . . . this Nicholas?” Nanna asked, his voice, cool, nonjudgmental, almost interrogatory.
“We met at a party,” I told him. “A friend of mine knows a friend of his kind of thing. We met and we started seeing each other and . . . Nanna, I really didn’t want to date or love or marry an American. I truly never believed I could have anything in common with someone like Nick.”
Growing up, the West and Westerners were almost surreal beings. It was a given that “they” had different morals and values than “we” did and “we” were morally superior. Most first-generation Indians in the United States only had friends who were Indian. I had never thought I would be any different. I had started out with only Indian friends but my circle grew as I grew. Now I was in a place where I didn’t think in terms of Indian friends and American friends, just friends. I had somewhere down the line stopped looking at skin color.
“He is a very, very nice person,” I said. “He . . . makes me happy.”
“I can’t accept it, Priya,” Nanna told me seriously. “Probably in a few years, maybe, but right now, I am very angry with you and I am very hurt, but I don’t hate you. I am your father, I will always love you.”
“And that’s enough for now,” I said. “I want more, but I understand, perfectly. In trying to protect you from Nick and Nick from you, I think I’ve ruined this big time.”
We were quiet for a while and then Nanna shrugged. “I think you did what anyone in your place would do.”
“It’s hard,” I said softly. “I wanted to be the perfect daughter, but I realized that in trying to be the perfect daughter, I wasn’t trying to be happy.”
“I never asked for perfection, Priya Ma,” Nanna said.
I nodded. “Yes, you never did but I wanted to give it to you anyway. I wanted to have your love and have Nick’s love and Thatha’s love. I’m selfish, maybe a little greedy; I didn’t want to lose anything or anybody. But I find that it’s not as easy as I thought it would be and maybe not as difficult as I told Nick it would be either.
“You are my favorite man, Nanna. I just didn’t want to lose you because I was in love with another man, the man with the wrong nationality and race. I know Thatha is going to disown me and—”
“He is?” Nanna interrupted me.
“It’s a gut feeling, not anything he said, but I know him and I know that this is not what he wants for me. That’s a battle I have lost. I’m worried that Ma will turn her back on me as well,” I confessed. “And even though she and I have never been best of friends, I came here to tell you all. I wanted so much for you to accept Nick, to accept Nick and me as a couple.”
“Don’t worry about Ma. She’s going to do what I’m going to do,” Nanna said with a small smile. “She’s your mother and she will always love you, no matter what you do. That’s a mother’s job.”
We looked at each other for a while, accepting each other, flaws and all, yet again. Some relationships you can’t sever.
“I am glad though that you didn’t marry him in the dark, like Anand married Neelima,” Nanna said quietly. “I am glad you had the courage to tell us. I would have preferred to hear about it earlier but at least you told us, so many others just wouldn’t have. This colleague of mine, his son lives in Europe, married a British girl and called them after the wedding . . . broke his heart.”
“I thought I broke yours.”
Nanna laughed. “Cracked it a little, but it is not broken. I am proud that you are who you are. I am happy that I raised you . . . because I raised you well.”
“I thought you were angry, felt that I stabbed you in the back, cheated you,” I told him.
“Well, last night I felt that way,” Nanna admitted. “But now . . . after drinking all night, I can see the light.”
“The clarity of the drunk?” I joked, and he laughed again. Yesterday night I had thought that he would never laugh again, at least never with me.
“We’re thinking of getting married this fall. Will you come?” I asked impulsively.
“Are you inviting me to your wedding?” Nanna asked, incredulous.
“Times have changed,” I said, realizing how ridiculous the situation was. My father had forever planned to marry me off and now when the time was here I was marrying myself off, while he was being invited as a guest.
“We will see,” he said, and I understood that he couldn’t commit himself.
“I should go to Thatha’s
and tell them that I’m not going to be the next Mrs. Sarma,” I said, standing up.
“I’ll drive you,” Nanna said. “The liquor has worn off. . . . Your daughter marrying a firangi is bad for the buzz.”
“What about him?” I asked, pointing to the sleeping Nate whose mouth was just a little open and drool was pooling, slowly trickling down his chin.
“He’ll be fine,” Nanna said. “Probably not the first time he is drunk and hung over. Now, on our way to Thatha’s , I want you to tell me all about Nate’s girlfriend. Is she at least Telugu?”
I hugged Nanna tightly then, let the floodgates open and sobbed in relief. He rubbed his cheek against my hair and I wasn’t sure if the wetness I felt was sweat or Nanna’s tears.
Sowmya was making buttermilk instead of coffee for the early-evening tiffin along with some almond biscuits. “Too hot for coffee,” she told me, as she poured water into the earthen pot in which she made yogurt every day.
“Where did Thatha go?” I asked, annoyed that he wasn’t there when I was ready to explain to him why I couldn’t marry Adarsh and why I had to tell him the truth.
“Something happened at the house construction. . . . Some wall was put up that shouldn’t have been put up or something like that,” Sowmya said as she added powdered cumin and coriander along with a teaspoon of chili powder and salt to the earthen pot.
She churned the yogurt with a wooden mixer, tasting as she churned. “Will you drink this,” she asked, “or should I make some separate with sugar?”
“This is fine,” I said, smiling at the fact that she remembered I always drank buttermilk with sugar in it.
Lata strolled into the kitchen then, a slight waddle creeping into her walk as she massaged her back. “None of my previous pregnancies gave me this much trouble,” she muttered and then sighed when she saw me. “Why did you have to tell Adarsh everything? Your mother is waiting to kill you.”
It annoyed me that Adarsh had gone home and been a good boy, telling his parents the truth about my personal life, something I thought I had revealed to him to ease his hurt. I had believed there was a tacit understanding between us not to reveal our conversation to any of the elders. I felt cheated out of the money I paid for his chaat and ganna juice.
“Well, he told me that he had a Chinese girlfriend,” I countered, deliberately keeping the ex-girlfriend part out.
“Chinese?” Lata’s eyes widened, and she came and leaned against the wall beside me. “What, are there no Indians in the States for you all to meet?”
Neelima came into the kitchen right then, her eyes slightly puffed up and lethargy swirling around her like an irritating mosquito. “Can you make me some coffee, Sowmya?” she asked as soon as she was in. She sat down on the floor next to the large stone grinder. “I am so sleepy,” she complained.
“Happens in the first trimester,” Lata told her caustically. “And why are you and Anand so late? I thought you would be here in the morning. Sowmya and I had to mix the dried mango for the maggai all by ourselves.”
The scolding didn’t faze Neelima who wanted nothing more out of life at that instant than coffee. “My parents wanted us to have lunch with them,” she said.
“Here no one has eaten lunch,” Sowmya muttered. “ Nanna came and just took some of the morning’s curd rice and Amma is still having a headache. Radha Akka and I unnecessarily cooked so much rice and pappu.”
“We’ll have it tonight,” Lata said, and then focused on me. “How is your father doing?”
I smiled. “He’s going to be just fine.”
Lata put her hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “I think you are very brave,” she said. “It would have been easy for you to not have said anything . . . like Anand. But you did and that was very brave.”
I was surprised by her assessment. I didn’t feel very brave, just helpless in a situation that I couldn’t alter.
“I wish more women would stand up for what they want,” Lata finished with a smile.
“Maybe it’s time you did,” I suggested to her.
Sowmya finished churning the buttermilk and started pouring it in tall steel glasses that stood shakily on the not-so-smooth stone kitchen counter.
“Can you take this to your father and mother?” Sowmya pointed to two glasses.
“They are in the veranda-bedroom,” Lata told me. “Your mother is very angry. Good luck.”
I took the two glasses and went to find my parents. I knew my father was probably telling Ma that he was not going to raise any objections to who I wanted to marry. That was not going to be a pretty sight but I wasn’t going to back out after I had come this far. Even though Adarsh had annoyed the hell out of me he had shown me that hiding Nick from my family was detrimental to my relationship with Nick.
“Nothing doing,” Ma was yelling at Nanna. “She told Mallika . . . she told Mallika about this Nicku person. Mallika phoned everyone and told them. Sarita just called me here to tell me. What is she doing to us? Dragging our name in the dirt?”
I almost didn’t enter the bedroom, but took that heavy step across the threshold, pushing the slightly closed door. “Lassi,” I said, holding the glasses high.
Ma glared at me. “What, Priya, what are you doing to us?”
There were tears in her eyes and I wondered if they were there because she was sad or because she was angry. I never really got close to Ma the way daughters were supposed to get close to their mothers. I had managed to develop a very close relationship with my father but with Ma, things were better left unsaid. I think I never respected her or credited her with too much intelligence— that was for Nanna. Ma was the nuisance parent in my life, and even though Nate bitched about Ma, I knew that he always bought her a gift for her birthday, remembered my parents’ wedding anniversary, and sometimes just for the hell of it would bring home jalebis, Ma’s favorite sweet.
Why was it that we had divided our affections like this? It was a subconscious thing because when I looked inside myself I could feel that Nanna loved me more than Ma did. Sometimes I actually felt that Ma disliked me because I was so different from her and because I was so close to Nanna.
When I was a little girl, and Nate had yet to be born, I used to imagine that Ma was actually my stepmother. Nanna was my real father but my real mother had died and no one was telling me the truth. Ma’s curtness and her lack of overt affection or physical affection of any sort always bothered me, left me empty. Whenever I told her that I loved her she would shoo it away, saying that love had to be shown in actions and not in words. Maybe she was right. I couldn’t show what I didn’t truly feel. I was ambivalent about my feelings for my mother; there was love, I was sure, it was just sometimes submerged under dislike.
“I’m really sorry,” I said sincerely. “I thought Adarsh would be discreet since he told me about his Chinese girlfriend. I really didn’t think he’d put out an ad in the newspaper.”
Ma seemed to be surprised by my apology but she recovered from that fast. “So if he tells something you have to counter it? Don’t you have any shame?”
“What has shame got to do with this?” Politeness be damned. The woman was as usual getting on my nerves.
“And why would you tell Murthy Auntie about this? Don’t you have anything better to do?”
“She asked about Adarsh and I told her the truth,” I said, now regretting my rash decision of telling Murthy Auntie about Nick. I had done it because I was angry with the family, irritated with Murthy Auntie’s interrogation. It was juvenile and I was now embarrassed.
“But I’m sorry I told her,” I said, my eyes downcast. “It was a stupid thing to do.”
“She told everyone,” Ma said, and then added sarcastically, “No need for Adarsh to put it in the papers, you did a fine job yourself. Why don’t you yell it off the rooftops?”
“Radha,” Nanna intervened. “She made a mistake and she is sorry.”
“Sorry?” Ma looked at my father in bewilderment. “Sorry does not make this
right, Ashwin. She is insulting us and”—she turned to look at me—“get out of here and I don’t ever want to see your face again. If you marry this American, that is it, you are never welcome in my house anymore.”
My mouth dried up because she was imparting the small knives with great precision and they were striking me the way she wanted them to. I may not love her as much as I loved my father but she was my mother. How can a mother turn away from her daughter?
“Radha.” Nanna put his hand on Ma’s shoulder just as her chest heaved. She jerked the pallu of her sari that was falling off of her shoulder and tucked the edge at her waist.
“What, Ashwin, I had such great dreams . . . such hopes, all shattered.” Ma started to weep, the words pouring out of her through hiccups and tears. Nanna put his arms around her and rocked her gently.
“Everything will be okay,” he murmured into her hair, and smiled sadly at me.
The lump in my throat burst and I set the glasses of lassi down on the bedside table. Nanna held out an arm for me and I ran into it. We all held each other through the torment of acceptance.
Ma was the first to push us both away. She wiped her face with her pallu and looked at me with eyes that glistened with the aftermath of tears and rage. “Are you really marrying this American boy?”
I held on to my father as I turned to face her. “Yes.”
Ma nodded. “When?”
“This fall. Maybe October.”
Ma nodded again and walked out of the bedroom.
I leaned into Nanna some more and whispered an apology. I didn’t know what I was sorry about anymore, just that I wanted it to end, I wanted things to go back to normal.
By the time a tired Thatha came home, dinner was ready. We all sat down quietly to eat. Anand and Jayant, who were in a heated discussion about the riots that were raging in Gujarat, also fell silent when they reached the dinner table. There was an ominous flavor to the air around us.
Everyone was waiting for me to reveal my defection yet again and to tell Thatha about my meeting with Adarsh, my improper conversation, and my impending marriage to a man they would all refer to as the firangi .
The Mango Season Page 20
