NOVEMBER 20, 1991. They were coming at 7:00 P.M. All day long the house was in a state of excitement. Nalla-ma had arrived for the occasion, bringing along several of my aunts and uncles. My mother was roasting coffee beans because they liked traditional Indian coffee and “none of this fancy Western stuff.” The flower woman arrived with armloads of jasmine, Ayah was sweeping and mopping the floors, an uncle had gone to Grand Sweets and Snacks to pick up some specially ordered food. My parents had invited Ram and his parents to have tiffin and tea, and oh-by-the-way, to meet me.
Tiffin, in this case, consisted of sojji and bajji, which are to Indians what scones and tea sandwiches are to the English. Sojji is a warm, sweet pudding made of milk, semolina, ghee, cashews, and saffron. Bajjis are vegetable fritters—thinly sliced potatoes, onions, eggplant, or plantains, dipped into a savory batter and fried until golden brown. Sojji and bajji are the twin pillars of Indian tiffin and are usually reserved for formal occasions, especially when boy meets girl. In fact, eating sojji-bajji has become a euphemism among Tamilians for meeting prospective mates in an arranged setting, as in, “Now that you are thirty, you’ll probably be eating a lot of sojji-bajji.” My mother had been up at dawn, roasting cashews for the sojji, mixing batter for the bajjis.
AROUND 5:30 P.M. the women gathered to dress me up. We went into the master bedroom where a series of colorful saris were laid out on the bed, with matching blouses, glass bangles, barrettes, and sandals. Everyone else was already dressed, the older women in rustling silk saris, their hair put up in a knot at the nape of their necks and their tongues red from chewing betel. My younger aunts and cousins had let their hair down, either as braids or tied with a barrette. They wore the more stylish chiffon saris, glass bangles, and imported perfume. The perfume competed with the strings of jasmine that everyone wore in their hair. A fan whirred lazily, stirring up the still afternoon air. The women crowded around the bed, examining the saris, debating their various merits.
“Let’s dress her up in the green one with gold sequins,” Nalla-ma said. “That’s the most elaborate. Besides, green is an auspicious color.”
“I am not a mannequin, to be dressed and inspected,” I said loudly.
There was silence as everyone digested the tightness in my voice. My mother, who had been ruffling through her closet, stopped and turned around. She had been too busy to notice me all day, but now all of her attention was on me.
“I hate this!” I cried. “This whole day has been a circus. Everyone is rushing around to please them. You are making sojji and bajji to please them. The house has been whipped clean because it will impress them . . .”
My dad walked into the room, hearing all the commotion. “Who is them?” he asked.
“Those people,” I replied. “Why does Mom have to cook up all that sojji and bajji for them? Why can’t they make sojji-bajji for us? Why make sojji-bajji at all?”
My dad looked stunned by my tirade. “Why not?” he asked. “They are tasty.”
“Taste is not the point!” I cried. “I am not a commodity to be traded for sojji and bajji. I am a human being.”
My aunt stroked my hair gently. “All of this will only last till the wedding,” she said. “Once you two are married, who cares about sojji and bajji?”
Nalla-ma didn’t even understand my ranting. I could see that in her face. “In my days, when your grandfather came to see me, I had to touch the feet of all the elders,” she said helpfully. “At least we won’t make you do that.”
“I refuse to touch anybody’s feet,” I said coldly. “Why should I? I am just as educated as he is.”
“You don’t have to prostrate before him,” Nalla-ma replied. “But his parents are your elders. What is wrong with prostrating before elders and getting their blessing?”
“Enough about prostration,” my father said finally. “Why don’t you just let her be? She can freshen up in a little while.”
All the ladies looked at him with the affectionate scorn they reserved for men who read too much into an emotional situation.
“Why don’t you go freshen up?” my mother said sweetly. “We will manage.”
My aunts were patting me, stroking my hair, plumping the pillows so I would be more comfortable.
“So, what are you going to wear?” my mother asked in a stern voice that said, “Enough of this crying. Let’s get to business.”
“A skirt,” I said flatly, knowing full well that nobody would go for that idea.
“Not a skirt,” my eldest aunt said. “It’s too casual. Why don’t you wear a nice sari.”
“A silk sari,” my grandmother said. “That’s the tradition.”
“Well, I am sorry, but I refuse to wear a silk sari. I am not a mannequin,” I began again.
“Why don’t you wear that light blue cotton sari?” my cousin Sheela said diplomatically. At twenty-nine, she was just five years older than I, and we had a wonderful rapport. “It looks gorgeous on you, and you’ll be comfortable too. How’s that for a compromise? Yes?”
I shook my head and then nodded, sighing. What was the use? This was presumably the most important meeting in my life, and we were arguing about saris. It was almost farcical.
As if reading my thoughts, my mother said, “You don’t have to like him, you know. The last thing we want is for you to be miserable after marriage. So just tell me if you don’t like him or whatever. You don’t even have to say anything. Just shake your head, or wink, or scratch your ears.”
“What is this? They haven’t even met and you’re already telling her to make faces,” Nalla-ma chided. “Of course they’ll like each other.”
“They’re here!” someone shouted.
There was a mass exodus, and I was, for a moment, all alone in the room. Then Sheela hurried back.
“He looks good,” she said with a mischievous smile. “Now, let’s get you ready.”
She helped me drape my sari around my waist and over my shoulder, then began to open the makeup kit.
“No makeup,” I said. “If he doesn’t like me as I am—”
“Come on, Shoba,” Sheela said. “You wear makeup all the time. This is bending over backward. You’ll see. It seems like a huge tragedy now, but it’s really very simple. You see him, you sit down, you talk, and you get a feel for each other. If you like each other, fine. If you don’t, fine. And you’ll laugh about this later, I promise. When Arun came to see me, I was just recovering from chicken pox and had huge zits all over my face.”
Her soft voice washed over me as she applied light foundation to my face, patted it dry with powder, and stuck a vermilion dot on my forehead. She squeezed the jingling glass bangles over my hand and onto my wrist and slipped some gold chains around my neck.
Suddenly, I heard someone call my name. “Shoba! Why don’t you join us?”
“It’s time,” Sheela whispered. “Okay, now smile. Come on. You can do it.”
She gently nudged me out into our spacious living room. It felt like emerging from a cave into blinding sunlight. The smell of sandalwood incense filled the room, and there were baskets of flowers everywhere. Extra chairs had been brought from the dining room and the study, and everyone was sitting in a large circle and staring at me. In the middle was a large coffee table with trays of nuts, chips, and chocolates. It was a long way from the art studio at Mount Holyoke.
More out of habit than anything else, I kept my eyes on the floor, as Indian girls are taught to do in front of elders, and walked gingerly into the crowd.
“Why don’t you sit down?” Ram’s mother said. Her voice was solicitous, her eyes eager to put me at ease. She introduced me to Ram and we exchanged a quick hello.
As I sat down and adjusted my sari, Ram and my father made polite conversation about how humid Madras was, and how the monsoon was predicted to be late that year. Everyone drilled Ram with questions—about his job, about America, about how long he was planning to stay in town and where he was going next. While I squirmed in my seat a
t my family’s interrogation, he answered everything patiently.
“How have you been spending your time at home?” Ram’s mother asked me with a kind smile. In her beige cotton sari and red bindi, she looked like a traditional Indian homemaker rather than a high-powered government official who had pretty much run a state for a couple of years. I liked her immediately.
“Oh, I’ve been taking music lessons and Sanskrit classes,” I replied.
“What type of music?” She appeared genuinely interested.
“Shoba sings beautifully,” my grandmother said with sickening pride.
My mother and aunts brought in plates of snacks and coffee. Ram refused the snacks but accepted a cup of coffee. All the fussing with the food gave me a chance to observe him covertly. He had a square face, an animated smile, and curly hair. At least he wasn’t bad-looking.
“Look at all this food!” Ram’s father exclaimed. “We came for tea, not dinner.”
He didn’t mean for it to be a joke, but everyone guffawed loudly.
“Did Shoba make all this?” Ram’s mother asked with gay facetiousness.
I could hear my grandmother’s comment before she said it. “Shoba is an excellent cook. She cooks both Western and Indian meals. She can make idlis, dosas, vadas, coconut chutney, mango chutney, almond cake, sweet and sour—”
I held up a hand. Nalla-ma was beginning to sound like a waitress.
In between the clinking of the coffee cups and tumblers and the snatches of self-conscious conversation, Ram suddenly asked, “I wonder if Shoba and I can take a walk together?”
There was total silence.
My father stood up. “Of course, you might want to talk to each other in private. Perhaps if we move into the other room.”
“Of course, of course,” everyone murmured and got up. My parents gently led his parents away.
We were alone. I kept my head down demurely. Men liked demure women, didn’t they? Suddenly, it became very important that he like me, more for my pride than anything else. If anyone was doing the rejecting, I wanted it to be me.
To my surprise, the conversation flowed easily. We had a great deal in common. We compared universities, summer jobs, spring break, and cheap airline tickets. But his profession was very different from mine. He told me about his days as a student in Ann Arbor, his job as a financial analyst on Wall Street right after he graduated from business school, and his current job with a consulting firm.
An hour later we heard the scraping of chairs from the adjoining room and knew that the elders were getting impatient.
“I’d like to get to know you better,” Ram said. “Unfortunately, I have to be back at my job, but I could call you every other day? No strings attached, and both of us can decide where this goes, if anywhere. Does that sound okay?”
I was a little nonplussed by his directness. I had expected that our conversation would end with vague, trailing remarks about keeping in touch. I had half hoped that he would be so swayed by my charms that he would propose to me on the spot—even though I had no intention of accepting. I certainly hadn’t expected him to take charge with a rationality that I was not used to.
“That sounds fine,” I mumbled. “I could call you too.” I didn’t want him to think that just because he was the man, he had to foot the expensive, overseas calls.
The author’s maternal grandparents and family. The author’s mother is sitting on the bottom right.
“Oh, it’s a lot cheaper to call from the States,” he said. “If our locations were reversed, believe me, I would have made you call.” His smile was disarming.
I pursed my lips at my own discomfiture.
EVERYONE THOUGHT that he was “perfect.” We had all gathered in the kitchen, where my mother was heating dinner. Plates and cups were stacked in the sink. A tray of sticky sweets rested on the table, and my father was picking off the crumbs absently and popping them into his mouth. Nalla-ma sat at the dining table and began to help him polish off the remainder of the sweets.
“Ma, you have diabetes,” my mother said from near the stove. “Don’t touch that.”
“I like him,” Nalla-ma announced. “His laugh is like my father’s. No venom or malice in that laugh.” The fact that she was comparing Ram to her father meant that she liked him enormously.
“He didn’t fuss about accepting coffee,” someone said. “Even drank it the second time. Not like these America-returned types who won’t touch food or drink in the subcontinent. As if the food here is tainted.”
“You like him, don’t you, Shoba?” my mother asked, turning to me. I looked at her smiling, glowing face. What was I going to say? That I hated him? But I didn’t. That was the trouble.
“I don’t dislike him,” I replied in a measured tone.
“Look at her blushing!” Sheela crowed.
“I am not blushing,” I replied.
Everyone laughed. I could sense their happiness, their feeling that the whole thing had gone off well. What if he doesn’t like me? I thought suddenly. What if he never calls? That would be such an anticlimax.
“Don’t worry,” Nalla-ma said. “We won’t pressure you into deciding right away. Take your time. You have forty-eight hours to say yes or no.”
HOT BAJJIS
This is how you eat a bajji in India. You go with your sweetie to the beach at twilight, sit in the gathering darkness, whispering illicit secrets. A cool breeze stirs up the waves. Stars twinkle as the moon rises. Suddenly the clouds open up. The monsoon explodes without warning. Clutching each other, you run through the rain. Someone is frying bajjis at home. You shower and walk into the warm kitchen, tossing your wet hair. A crisp, hot, golden bajji beckons. You take a bite and recoil from the heat. It reminds you of forbidden lips, of your lover’s kiss.
Bajjis are a great winter recipe, warm fritters to liven up a cold night or cloudy afternoon. They are finger foods and work beautifully as appetizers for a party or a light snack, and they are what we served when I met my husband for the first time.
SERVES 2
2 cups gram flour or besan (available in Indian grocery stores)
2 to 4 green chiles, Thai or serrano, seeded and finely chopped
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1 teaspoon salt
2 or 3 cups vegetable oil for deep-frying
12 round 1/8- inch slices vegetables (4 slices each potato, onion, plantain)
Stir together the flour and 1 cup water, adding enough additional
water to reach the consistency of thick pancake batter. Stir in the
chiles, cilantro, and salt until combined well.
Heat the oil in a deep wok or Indian kadai until it reaches 375˚ F on a deep-fat thermometer. Working in batches, dip the vegetables into the batter, letting the excess drip off, and fry until golden brown, about 1 minute. Transfer to paper towels to drain.
Serve hot with a piquant sauce, ketchup, or coconut chutney.
SIXTEEN
Monsoon Wedding
RAM CALLED ten days later. At first we spoke on the telephone every other day, and then it became every day. Gradually I relaxed and began enjoying our conversations, which usually lasted for over an hour. We talked about our goals, dreams, and anxieties; we argued over which was the best pizza place in New York; we teased and joked.
“What do you want out of life?” he asked me one day.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “I’m not really sure.”
“Why don’t you think about it? Come up with five words maybe, of what you want to do with your life.”
His question intrigued me. Two days later I told him what I had come up with.
“I really like the Alcoholics Anonymous slogan,” I said. “ ‘God grant me the courage to change the things I can change, the fortitude to tolerate the things I cannot, and the wisdom to know the difference.’ ”
“I actually came up with five words,” Ram said. “Curiosity, contribution, balance, family, and fun. That’s what I want out of my
life.”
Another time, he was telling me about his sister. “She’s really idealistic, an Aries, like you. She’s the type who will do anything for friends. She’s feisty—”
“Excuse me?” I couldn’t hear him clearly.
“Feisty. You know, spirited. F-i-e-s-t-y,” he spelled.
“Feisty is spelled f-e-i-s-t-y,” I said.
“You sure? I’m almost positive it’s with an i-e,” he said.
“Wanna bet?” I asked.
“Okay,” he replied. “Whoever loses has to surprise the other.”
We left it at that and talked about other things.
As soon as we hung up, I flipped through the dictionary and jubilantly noted that feisty was spelled my way.
That evening the doorbell rang. When I opened the door, I saw a huge bouquet. Red roses, yellow daffodils, orange irises, all throwing out a riot of color. In it was a card: “Here’s a feisty bunch.”
I couldn’t help laughing out loud.
A MONTH LATER I decided to bail out temporarily. It wasn’t that I didn’t like him. I did like him. Very much. I wasn’t in love with him, but I didn’t expect to be in love with a man I met through an arranged match anyway. To me that would have been odd. In most arranged marriages, love came later, as it had for my parents, aunts, and uncles. The problem was that I didn’t know how to decide if he was the man for me. If love wasn’t the parameter, then what was? All these conversations weren’t bringing me closer to any sort of decision. I had half expected a blinding flash of realization to strike me at some point and say, “He’s the one.” That hadn’t happened, and I didn’t know what to do.
To clear my head, I went to visit Nalla-ma in Coimbatore. I wanted some direction, and I knew that she would provide it—whether I liked it or not.
Ram called me there as well. Nalla-ma was curious about what we discussed, and after every conversation I gave her an account. She would suggest questions, come up with strategies, and try to improve my answers.
Monsoon Diary Page 18