Motherland

by Vineeta Vijayaraghavan

  “Okay, so that’s four dresses and two skirts for Madhu,” my aunt confirmed the tailor’s list. “Maya, do you know what you want?”

  I was kneeling on the mat, feeling the different textures of the fabric. “I like this one,” I said, holding up a dark green nubby silk, but I had no idea what to make with it.

  “We can talk later and I can show you more patterns. For now, let’s get what Madhu wants because she’s leaving soon and you have all summer. So four dresses and two skirts. That’s it for the Western clothes. And now what about salwar kameez or ghaghra cholis or lehengas? You can buy readymade sets in Bombay, Madhu, but those will only be the current trend, so I thought you might want a few traditional full sets sewn that won’t go out of style.”

  Madhu didn’t want full sets. She said she mixed and matched Indian clothes with her regular clothes, that it looked cool like that. She proposed a sari blouse out of black satin for wearing with a miniskirt or jeans. She wanted red crepe made into a blouse and a dupatta; she said her friend Sonali had made a similar blouse when she came to India which they took turns wearing to college parties. The green silk I was holding, Madhu wanted to turn into a kameez shirt, but she wanted the tailor to sew up the slits on the sides halfway, so she could wear it without the pants as a dress.

  Madhu said, “Maya, you should make the same thing. It would look good on her, don’t you think, Reema auntie?”

  My aunt looked doubtful. The things Madhu wore would never be in good taste here. “Let’s make Maya a regular salwar kameez out of the rest of the green silk. You’ll like that, won’t you?” she asked.

  I nodded, glancing apologetically at Madhu. I’d never tried wearing my Indian clothes to parties and out with my friends the way Madhu did. I wore salwar kameezes to temple or to Indian holiday events at the homes of family friends. I tried to imagine walking into temple with my parents wearing only a kameez top and no pants. I didn’t think it would go over well.

  The tailor was suggesting modifications to Madhu’s instructions. “Puff sleeves are the fashion this year, you must try puff sleeves on one of the blouses.”

  Madhu looked horrified. “I can’t think of anything more awful. Let’s do three-quarter sleeves on one and traditional sleeves on the others.”

  Now the tailor looked horrified. “But madam, I haven’t done a three-quarter sleeve for anyone in at least two years.”

  “That’s what I want,” Madhu said curtly. They went on to negotiate over each neckline, on the front and the back of each blouse, and then on the length of the blouse. The tailor couldn’t understand how she could wear a sari blouse so short. If she wasn’t going to wear a sari to veil her stomach, he wanted to make the blouse more like a fitted Punjabi jacket.

  Madhu held her ground. As the tailor and the seamstress were discussing the final pricing with my aunt, Madhu sat down next to me on the bed. I thought she would be annoyed after wrangling with the tailor, but she was smiling. She said to me, “Did you hear him when we were arguing? Did you hear him?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “While we were arguing, he picked up a British accent. I don’t think it was conscious, but he was trying to sound superior, and he heard my accent, he was trying to match it. Listen to him talking to Reema auntie, he’s still got it.”

  And he did, I could hear the false English pitch as he said, “Very good, madam, very fine, madam.”

  “I get a kick out of that when I come to India. People are still in love with the English. It’s the ultimate irony. I bet no one is trying to sound like you.”

  That was true. My aunt and uncle made fun of me for the way I said my t like a d, in words like party, or motorscooter. And their friends sometimes had a hard time understanding me, whereas they understood Madhu perfectly, even though we both sounded foreign. But her intonations were what Indian English attempted and fell short of, they were the intonations Indians hoped to achieve.

  “Face it, Maya. Indians respect Britain much more than they respect America. Every Indian still holds a candle for the Queen.”

  “I don’t wish I was British,” I said defensively.

  “No, but you don’t find it enough to be American, do you? All of you who went to the States, you come back here more than we do, like you’re looking to be something more than American. In Britain, we know who we are, and we’re not Indian. “

  “I had an Indian passport until a couple years ago, so did Mother and Dad. Why can’t we feel like we belong here?” Didn’t Madhu, too, sometimes wish she belonged here?

  “But it’s not your future, is it? Are you really going to give up everything you have there so you can eat mango all year round and have a washerwoman do your laundry? It’s quaint and beautiful here, but it’s not real.”

  I thought of what Madhu had said when I was looking through the bookshelf in the drawing room later that night. There were rows of leather-bound books, some fat, some thin, but all the same height, by people like Sir Oliver Goldsmith and Arnold Toynbee. Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens and Anthony Trollope. My uncle settled into an armchair nearby and put an oil lamp on the floor between us. “What are you looking for?” he said.

  “Something to read. How come all these books are British?”

  “That’s Macaulay’s shelf,” my uncle smiled. “We go in phases.” He said some years the education minister would proclaim global standards, and then the schools and colleges emphasized British textbooks and exams, so people could gain acceptance abroad. And then some years, a new party would Indianize everything, and then, Sanjay uncle said, the schools scrambled to replace their Hardy and Austen with Tagore and R. K. Narayan. And then it swung back the other way again.

  Sanjay uncle explained, “When I was in college, they were in a British phase, that’s why we have those books. We have lots of Indian authors, too, but the books made locally are on poor-quality paper, they don’t hold up to the heat and humidity well, so we keep the Indian books in the armoires in our bedroom. You can ask Reema if you want, she’ll take them out for you.”

  “What about American books?” I said. My aunt came into the room just then, and curled up on a sofa across from us with a sketchpad in her lap. She was working on something new she wanted to send home with me for my mother.

  “Like what?” my uncle said.

  I thought of my reading assignments for the summer. “Like the books I have to read for school, The Old Man and the Sea and Huckleberry Finn. Why has no one I talk to here read them?”

  “Some people have, I’m sure,” my uncle said. “I can read them while you’re here to help you on your homework.”

  “But why not your friends, why not kids my age?”

  My aunt spoke over my uncle’s voice, “Kids your age in America aren’t reading Indian novels either. When America looks outside of itself, it doesn’t look to India, it looks to France and Germany and other places. When India looks outside of itself, why should we look to America either?”

  “Why look to England when you fought for independence against them?” It seemed so contradictory to me.

  “England and India still have strong ties, and much to learn from each other,” my uncle said. “America is too young to learn from. Those books you’re reading, Americans read them because they are still figuring out how to tame nature, how to form a society. Those are not new things for us.”

  “And America’s problems with race, it consumes them, and it doesn’t speak to us,” my aunt said. “Class, we think about class, and England thinks about class, too. “

  My uncle said, “India does want to learn a couple things from America—how to make money the way Americans do, how to build a nuclear bomb. But those aren’t things Americans are willing to teach anyone.”

  “I thought India already knows how to make a nuclear bomb,” I said. “Isn’t that what Devi auntie’s husband works on?”

  “Yes, that’s the Atomic Commission, we can build some things, but nothing like what America can build righ
t now. Indians will never forget how America used the atom bomb to end World War Two. We never want to be in the position Japan was in, of total devastation. America was ruthless.”

  “But, Japan was with the Nazis,” I said, remembering my history class last year. “India was on the same side as America and England. Isn’t it good we won?”

  “But what about when India’s not on the same side as America?” my aunt said. “How would we stop America from destroying us if they wanted?”

  “You know,” Sanjay uncle said, “some people are saying Subha and Sivarasan are not the real assassins, that it doesn’t make sense for the Tigers to do this and lose their sympathizers here. Some people are saying it was America and the CIA that killed Rajiv Gandhi.”

  “Why would America want to do that?” I said. I was careful to not say “we” for America.

  “Why wouldn’t they? The CIA has plotted to kill other strong leaders before, even your president Jimmy Carter admitted as much when he passed a law to stop funding political assassinations.”

  “So then it’s outlawed already, they couldn’t have done this,” I said, relieved.

  Sanjay uncle scoffed, “Do you think the Reagan-Bush empire obeys the law, especially a law passed by a Democratic president? The CIA might not want a strong leader here in India. They might want to keep us impoverished and weak.”

  I didn’t have an answer, I felt like I didn’t know enough to keep up with them.

  “Sanjay and I don’t really think it’s the CIA, Maya, but it’s certainly a possibility. You shouldn’t be naive about such things,” my aunt said.

  “We don’t want you to be brainwashed living over there. Your parents wouldn’t want that either,” my uncle said.

  “You’ve been Indian longer than you’ve been anything else,” my aunt said. “Don’t forget that.”

  My aunt waved me over to sit next to her on the sofa. “Do you think your mother will like this? I might add another figure behind the well, what do you think?” My aunt had sketched a stout woman carrying an urn of water away from a well. She sketched a lot, and occasionally she would expand a sketch into a full work, an oil on canvas. There were two matching oils of Krishna’s milkmaids in her living room, and we had others at home in New York. Houseguests had asked my mother if she would sell one, so my mother was encouraging Reema auntie to send some new pieces to us to see if anything might come of it. My aunt hadn’t tried selling her work in years. When she had, the only thing people had bought were her art school training canvases, copies of old masters, Renoirs, Titians, Botticellis. Some rich people in India wanted Renaissance infants in their living rooms. But my aunt didn’t want to paint any more of those, and so she’d gone back to just painting for herself. The figures she had sketched recently looked like they came from one family, they had beautiful faces, but their bodies were claylike, they had heavy feet and legs that weighted them down. And they were always in the act of doing something, moving, carrying, or pulling something, and it always looked exhausting. You were supposed to see the strain of the labor in their bodies, my aunt said, but their faces were to remain serene, inward seeing.

  “My mother will like this,” I said. “But don’t add another figure, it’s better this way, not cluttered.”

  “You think?” my aunt said, erasing and drawing a new figure farther back on the horizon line, then another even farther back, barely visible.

  “So,” I said after a few moments of quiet, my aunt making marks on her sketchpad, my uncle’s head hidden behind the newspaper, the lights and the oil lamp flickering. “I was thinking I would go with Madhu to Goa when she goes.”

  My aunt and uncle looked up at me, at each other.

  “Do you know anything about Goa? Why do you want to go?” my aunt said.

  I said, “I like beaches, I want to go swimming.”

  “You can’t go swimming there this time of year,” my uncle said. “The water’s too turbulent.”

  “Then I’ll hang out on the beach. And meet Madhu’s friends from England. I’m sure we’ll find things to do.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” my uncle said. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.” My uncle looked back at his newspaper.

  “Why not?” I said. My aunt looked at my uncle, and he looked up from his newspaper again to find her looking at him, waiting for him to rejoin us. He folded up the newspaper noisily.

  “Why don’t you tell her why not, Sanjay?” my aunt said.

  “Well, it’s not somewhere for you to be, that’s all. There aren’t any families there, it’s not for family holidays anymore. It’s these. Europeans, young people—not even young, just foolish—they come to Goa and stay for weeks and weeks, doing nothing meaningful.”

  “No one does anything meaningful on vacation, right?” I focused on being agreeable, though it was starting to seem like I wasn’t going to get what I wanted. “I’ll be with Madhu the whole time. And I’m not even asking to go on the trek or anything.”

  My aunt said, “Don’t you have summer assignments from your school? Those book reports and everything, you have a lot of work.”

  “But I have the whole summer. I can get it done, I’m not worried about it.” I kept the edginess out of my voice and stayed polite; they weren’t my parents, after all.

  “Maya, this is also a good chance to spend some time with your grandmother. You were fully occupied by Brindha when she was here, and then you’ve been meeting our friends, we had those two dinner parties, and took you to teas and things, and now Madhu’s visit,” she said.

  Sanjay uncle nodded in agreement. “Your grandmother’s hardly seen you because of all that. Your mother was hoping you’d keep your Ammamma company and talk with her and maybe even improve your Malayalam with her this summer. I know she wants to teach you.”

  I was getting impatient. They were trying to get me to lose sight of what I wanted. “I can do those things later, all summer. I’m talking about one week with Madhu. Isn’t it good to be close with my cousin, too? She’ll go back to England and it could be years and years before I see her.” I tried to sound forlorn at losing Madhu for years and years.

  “It’s nice that you and Madhu are close. But your uncle and I would like you to stay here, especially because we are leaving to go to a wedding in Bombay the same day Madhu leaves. And we’d like to stay in Bombay for some weeks and visit with my relatives. Ammamma isn’t up to a trip like that right now, so we were hoping you’d help her look after the house and manage the servants and everything.”

  Not only would 1 miss out on Goa, I would miss out on Bombay, too, because of my grandmother. 1 wanted to appeal to a higher court, but I wasn’t sure who that would be—my mother had made it clear before I left that while I stayed with my aunt and uncle, they were in charge.

  I decided not to pursue it now, maybe I’d come up with a new line of reasoning in the morning. I reshelved the jumble of books I’d pulled down from the bookcase. I said good-night and walked down the hall to my bedroom, and then realized I’d left my glasses on the coffee table. As I walked back toward the drawing room, I could hear my aunt and uncle talking. I stayed just outside the room and listened.

  “My brother told me about Madhu’s schoolmates, they’re a wild crowd,” my aunt said. “Madhu’s boyfriend might be there, and they’re probably drinking all weekend. And smoking bhang. What else do Europeans come to Goa for?”

  I stayed to listen for my uncle’s response.

  “Madhu’s too old to control—I don’t pretend I understand how your brother and his wife have raised her,” my uncle said. “I’m just glad Brindha wasn’t here when she came, because I wouldn’t want her being influenced.”

  “I don’t know what to say to Maya,” my aunt said. “She really seems to look up to Madhu.”

  “Well, we have the rest of the summer with Maya—she’ll figure out what’s right, she has time to learn.”

  I turned away quietly and walked back down the hall. They’d been trying to
make me feel guilty about leaving my grandmother, when it had nothing to do with her. I felt hurt for Madhu, and for me. Did they think I hadn’t been around people drinking and smoking pot before? Did they know what an American high school was like? Madhu or I could be so much worse if we wanted, everything was there for the asking.

  I felt outraged. I went to Madhu’s room, wanting to talk. She was sleeping, and I shook her shoulder. She turned over, away from me, and fell still again. She looked younger sleeping, her fingers curled up, no makeup on, her hair liberated from clips and styling spray, pillowing her face. “Madhu. MA-dhu. “ No response. She breathed softly, evenly. I gave up and went to bed.

  Madhu was unsurprised by everything I told her in the morning. I wanted more of a reaction, but she was calm, not particularly mobilized by my indignation. We were walking in the bright morning sun in the garden, trying to stay out of the way of the gardeners, who, in turn, were trying to stay out of our way. They were pouring big buckets of water at the base of the parched plants, the puddles vanishing, as if sucked into quicksand, within seconds.

  “This is what I meant, this isn’t the real world for us,” Madhu said. “They don’t respect us.”

  “But there’s nothing wrong with us,” I said. It was unpleasant to be under suspicion. At home, 1 was a model to my friends’ parents. They would say to their own kids while I was in their kitchens, staring at my shoes, “Why can’t you be like Maya, and do well in school and swim at the state finals, and dress nicely and have only one earring in each ear?”