When we emigrated for America, all of us within the space of three years, we had to leave the animals behind. Nalani and Ajay promised to look after them, but they wound up in the big house. Grandmother, though she would not admit it, had taken a shine to Scrap, who was given dal and watery cream on the veranda, though one of the servant maid’s children had to feed her nonveg food outside; mice supplemented Scrap’s diet, and probably made her coat silky. The dogs, though, were given meat only once a week, also outside; the rest of the time, they were pampered vegetarians.
We didn’t want to move to America; at least, I didn’t. While I missed my parents, and knew it would be very exciting there, I wanted to remain with Grandmother. Who would take care of her? I worried. I knew she would miss us terribly, although she just scolded us if we told her that—before hugging us. My parents were firm, and a little embarrassed by my protests, and off I went on a Pan Am jet, to be joined by Rasi and Sanjay and my aunt and two uncles two years later. I don’t remember the early years of getting adjusted to my new family life, but I remember school. I was leery of my new classes, finding American students loud, strange, and indecipherable at times. They kept thinking my accent was British, my clothes old-fashioned. The studies were dull as well, and it seemed there was more study hall than classes. Years later, people would still insist they heard a trace of England in my voice, or, sounding very surprised, tell me I had no discernible accent. When they said, But I never think of you as island, I knew they meant to flatter, bury my difference in a neutral pan-acceptance. My family was not without its own prejudices; “they” or “them” meant “American,” and “American” meant something we weren’t. “Not ‘they,’ ‘us,’ ” I’d chant, to my mother’s bewilderment. She kept Pi like a well-guarded shrine in our heart, built around us a seemingly impenetrable house of South Asian culture.
Rasi was the first to shake off island culture, listening to more rock and roll than Hindi film songs, getting a secret tattoo, and sneaking a boyfriend. Was this all there was, I wondered—music, tattoos, and boyfriends? I would be different, I told myself, immersing myself in Bharata Natyam. Unfortunately, I still wasn’t very good at dance, and eventually gave it up.
Rasi already knew in high school she wanted to be a lawyer, but all I liked was art class. Sanjay was destined for something sensible, because as he himself admitted, even if he’d wanted to be a writer or an artist, as a boy, he couldn’t; it would be beyond the scope of our family’s imagination. Back in high school, he’d looked to science and math. As for me, I declared art history as a major my sophomore year in college, knowing my parents indulged me only because in their eyes, I would eventually get married, and if I wasn’t going to become a professional in the sciences or the law, I could major in anything I wanted.
I thought I would be like my aunt Meterling. I would make radical choices, and live my life with honesty, not for the sake of society. By this time, I had thrown off my allegiance to Pi, and had given up my green card to become an American citizen. I did not necessarily want the citizenship, but it made sense. I lived in New Jersey, not in Madhupur. When the chance came, though, to visit Pi for the summer with Rasi and Sanjay, I leapt.
46
Freshly roasted, freshly ground, served in stainless-steel tumblers, coffee on Pi put all contenders to shame. Shanti-Mami was still cooking for Grandmother, and it was she who served us, with tears in her eyes. She also opened tins full of savories and sweets—Mysore pak and thatai. My grandmother’s face seemed softer and more lined, her hands betraying tremors. We sat in the front room, which now had a bigger television set, the seven of us, on the floor, in chairs and on the charpoy, all talking at once, gesturing and laughing. It was a wonder Oscar didn’t just clap his hands over his ears. Instead, he played with the hot rods Sanjay had brought him, while the dogs nosed him affectionately.
Meterling sat with Simon’s arm around her. She was trying not to cry, I could tell. When you see someone after a long time, you wonder where the time had gone. What had really prevented you from keeping in touch, visiting? It is a terrible feeling, because the reasons are so selfish and petty. We hadn’t tried hard enough, and at some point, we forgot. I had held on to her hand on seeing the old house, and exiting the car, barreled into Grandmother, who held us close. Grandmother did cry, and said it was a cold, but then said, well, why should she not cry; it was an occasion that called for emotion. She smelled as I remembered, only felt frailer.
Sanjay stretched out on a mat on the floor, Scrap happily curled next to him, telling Aunt Meterling of his plans to study yoga. This was news to all of us.
He told us he wanted to put school off for a year, and studying yoga the way he wanted required a full immersion in the subject. He would go to a shala in India, wake at four every morning, practice until nightfall, with breaks for meals and rest, and classes for chant, Sanskrit, and philosophy. It sounded like the ideal life for a South Asian, a prospect that should have made everyone proud—a real brahmachari role. Instead, everyone had objections.
“But why can’t you just do yoga on your own?” asked our aunt.
“That sounds extreme, Sanju. Are you sure these yogis are reputable?”
“Are these places clean?”
“Mostly there are Westerners in these places, I hear.”
I hadn’t heard Sanjay called “Sanju” in ages. Grandmother reminded him of the guru with seven Rolls-Royces.
Patiently, Sanjay explained that yoga was not cultish, that it didn’t involve Rolls-Royces and rampant sex. He was only going to India, he said, to study with someone in Mysore, which is hardly a foreign country, but that prompted another discussion entirely. I marveled at his patience. It was as if he had grown up in the space of the year. A well-aimed paper ball tossed at my head interrupted my musings. Well, nearly grown up.
After the second cup, before jet lag hit me like a strong wave, I toured the house. It was a ritual I did in New Jersey, and I did it here. My mother used to joke that it was my way of making sure everything was in its place. I went room by room, laying my hand on the mahogany bureaus and almirahs, tracing the dust on the wooden-framed mirrors. I looked out the windows, to see the views of coconut and mango trees, and beyond, the neighbor’s walls and windows. I went up to the roof to stand by the clothes dried to stiffness on the line, noticing that the badminton racket that had been unstrung still lay the same way in the corner, near a broken umbrella. Plastic chairs were casually arranged to view the stars, breathe the night air. How could my grandmother climb the stairs to get up here? But it was her eyes that were going, not her legs. That is, she could still climb, resting heavily on each step, a smile like a sunrise on her face if anyone was there to greet her.
Nalani and Ajay joined us the third day. In the intervening years, Nalani had become a doctor, and she and Ajay had decided to remain in the city. After dinner, standing shyly before us, Nalani told us she was expecting. Ajay and she had tried for a baby many times before, miscarriage following miscarriage, and conception occurred when they were long past hoping.
“You know, we put in an application to adopt and it was accepted. We’re getting a child from Trippi! Ajay says we might get them both at the same time. Imagine, two children at once!”
She was rosy with the news. We exclaimed our happiness. I hadn’t realized how much I missed her, my older sister-auntie. She was due in five months.
I looked up at the sky. The stars always seemed bigger in the tropical sky, and it seemed there were more of them.
“But that’s only part of the good news,” said Nalani.
We waited.
“Rasi, we have someone we want you to meet.”
“Sure. A lawyer?”
“No,” said Nalani. “In fact, it’s a young man.”
Our merriment vanished.
Sanjay spoke first.
“Nalani, Rasi hasn’t even graduated yet,” he said.
He turned to Rasi, waiting and cringing a bit for her reaction. It wo
uld be sharp and quick, and idiotically, I thought, Don’t let Rasi be brutal, because after all, Nalani is pregnant.
Rasi shrugged her shoulders, and then nodded. “What’s he like?” she asked.
I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until I let it out. Sanjay and I glanced at one another. Maybe Rasi was humoring Nalani, but Rasi humored only Meterling, no one else. Only Meterling was spared her tongue, so I knew something was up. But Rasi didn’t look upset or crafty, just calm. Nalani embraced her, and hugged us all.
As Americans, or more rightly, islanders living in the States, which is the way our family would see it, I wondered if Nalani expected resistance. But she was so open-hearted, it probably never occurred to her that Rasi might not agree, might argue against arranged and sanctioned meetings. For the boy in question would have been sanctioned, vetted thoroughly by our family.
Later Rasi said she was expecting it.
“I’m twenty. One can choose the battles.”
“But this is a big battle.”
“All I’m going to do is meet him. It’s not as if I’m going to marry him and get pregnant tomorrow. Or vice versa.”
“Rasi!”
“Oh, grow up, Mina. Life is also practical. I’ll go to law school, and I’ve been in a lot of relationships.”
“You’ve been in two.”
“You forget how important some things are, like knowing the same food, the same customs. I want to be able to eat with my hands in front of the guy!”
“Are you kidding me? Food? Eating with your hands? Rasi, this is your life!”
“Like I said, I’m just going to marry—I mean, I’m just going to meet him.”
I could only look at her.
“Maybe he can cook. You know, I get home from school, exhausted, and he’s got nice hot bajis waiting for me—c’mon, I’m kidding!”
“So, you’re not going to meet him?”
“Of course I’m going to meet him. Look, it will be just this once. If I go ahead now and meet this guy and say no, then the next time I’m asked to meet someone, I can say, ‘Look, I tried once, and it didn’t work out.’ ”
“That’s terrible logic. People—the family—are a lot more persistent.”
“C’mon, do you really think I’m going to marry some idiot just because Nalani thinks it’s a good idea?”
I didn’t answer.
“Forget it—and just deal with it, Mina.”
Deal with it? It made no sense. How in the world did Rasi think her plan was going to work? Why did she even want to pretend she wanted to get married all of a sudden? Then I thought—oh, it couldn’t be—but could she be pregnant?
“What are you talking about?” said Sanjay. In the background, we could hear the dogs barking. “First of all, if she were, she’d have told us. And second, to get married doesn’t make sense—unless they got married within the month. And third—there is no third. That’s it. She is just—ornery.”
Ornery. I hoped Rasi would be able to tell us about pregnancy or an abortion, anything. But who was this new Rasi, this one who was fine with arranged marriages, of all things? It was as if the person I knew had transformed. I think I felt left out. She was being pushed out of the nest, which is one way to view marriage arrangements, but I always thought she would soar on her own, in a dramatic sudden sweep of wing. What I resented was the boy, whose name was Laksman, just as I had once resented Ajay. Who was he? Of course, I had time to adjust to Ajay as he courted us, because it was a package he got, not just Nalani, but all of us. At first, we had all resented Simon, too, but then I was ten, and now here we were, and—ha! This was Rasi’s plunge, her sweep, her dramatic gesture: thinking of marrying Laksman! She really was agreeing to disagree, just like she was saying, and I knew that she would squash the idea of marriage like a bug. The nerve of Rasi, playing us like this!
47
It wasn’t long after that I found Oscar sitting in the garden, in the bower toward the back. This had been Nalani’s favorite hideout, and I needed to think. The monkeys only ventured in if there was food around, and since it was placed among the lemon trees, they pretty much left the area alone. Oscar was quietly reading, but looked up when he saw me.
“You look like you’re in Pooh’s forest,” I said.
“I used to want to be Christopher Robin, when I was little,” he told me.
“How come?”
“He had all his friends around him in the Wood, and he could go home and have his tea, too.”
“I wanted to be Piglet.”
“That’s silly. Nobody wants to be Piglet.”
“I did. First, he was a very pretty pink, and then he sometimes helped Pooh out when Pooh forgot all about him.”
“He was so small.”
I was still getting used to Oscar’s British accent. At five, it had not been as pronounced, being mixed in with a child’s high-pitched half-sentences.
“When I grow up, I want to be even taller than my mum, although it may not happen.”
“I think it helps to stretch.”
He looked at me with doubt, at someone who, after all, had openly declared her preference for Piglet.
“This is a nice place to read,” I said, wondering why he wasn’t on the veranda.
“I like to find places where I’m not bothered.”
“Do people bother you?”
“Not so much here, but sometimes at school.”
Instantly a funny look came over him, and he wouldn’t say any more. I imagined he hadn’t meant to tell.
“Do boys pick on you?”
Silence.
“I used to get picked on when I first moved to New Jersey.”
He glanced sideways at me.
“Girls would call me names, and one boy would regularly steal my lunch.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing. I thought that’s the way things were.”
“Weren’t you hungry?”
“I was really hungry, especially in the afternoon. One day, I fainted in class, and that’s how it all came out.”
“You told your teacher?”
“And my parents that evening.”
“What happened then? Did the bullies stop?”
“They stopped taking my lunch, but they still teased me. Mum and Dad wanted to move me to a different school.”
I hadn’t thought about this in years. They did want me to change schools, but in a year, I’d be at the new high school, anyway, and things would be different. So, I stayed on.
Oscar seemed to be considering what I said.
“Really, you wanted to be Piglet?”
I sighed. “Really.”
He looked at a lemon tree in front him.
“You won’t tell, will you?”
When I said nothing, he went on. “It’s just that I really like school, and I don’t think the bullies will bother me too much anymore. And I’m going to learn karate to get confidence and an aura of protection.”
“Is that like an invisible cloak?”
“Maybe,” he said uncertainly. “Anyway, if you want to sit and read here, you can. I’ve got another book.”
This is how I came to spend the afternoon reading about Matilda and the library.
48
I thought how easy it had been for Rasi, Sanjay, and me, on the island. In hindsight, we were rarely bored, and if we were, we had each other to complain to. I wondered if Meterling was right, what I had overheard the other night. She wanted to return to Pi, for Oscar’s education. Nalani and Ajay were adamant: no one returns to the island for schooling; one only returns armed with degrees.
“All he will get here is learning by rote, and get involved in college-age politics. All these boys rioting and overturning buses, it’s too much.”
“There are all sorts of race riots in the UK, and anyway, you did well.”
“Yes, but surely readying for Cambridge and Oxford—the seats of learning in England—”
“Seats of learning, Nalani? Y
ou once thought the English bastards and bullies.”
“Oxford and Cambridge open doors. Oscar deserves better than schools here.”
“I wonder how is it in America?” asked Ajay.
“Oh, Pa always says American education is a joke. Our children are by their nature brighter,” said Meterling.
I had always thought my family’s social views slightly outlandish but not dangerous, yet listening to them, I wondered if I had been too tolerant. They were middle-class, used to a very good life on Pi, and had gone without land or family to the States and become a different kind of middle-class. I still remembered one of my father’s friends telling us the story of how people in a town north of ours had stared when his wife appeared at the A&P in a sari. Little children had made faces and pointed; but out in the Midwest, in St. Louis, because it was a university town, people were so enchanted with his older sister’s sari, they invited her to model it at the local TV station. In the U.S., South Asian housewives carefully created their own upholstered American living rooms with fabric from Jo-Ann’s and patterns from Butterick. My mother didn’t, but that was because she was one of the rare women who worked. Aunt Pa had got to hand-stitched matching tea cozies and toaster covers before she said, Enough, and looked for a computer course to take.
As usual, my thoughts had wandered away from me. Hemamalani’s chin rested lovingly on my knee. Absently, I petted her. I didn’t want to evaluate my family, judge them without knowing everything, although of course I did. Who knew what was hidden in their past that they wouldn’t talk about, ancient hurts and injustices that had shaped them? “Ancient” was the right word, because hadn’t we been shaped from millennia of custom and decorum? All those laws to prevent the boat from being rocked. A woman’s talents lay in how well she could roll a betel leaf, how many sons she produced.
As Sweet as Honey Page 20