“What’s your grandma saying, child?” Eileen asked.
“Um,” I said, feeling my cheeks burn. “She’s talking about the tea.”
Nanima grinned at Eileen and nodded vigorously. “My mama used to pour her love into a delicious cup of tea. When I first came to Canada I had Black Forest cake, which reminded me of Mama’s chai, which she made with Ugandan cherries and cocoa. It took me a few years, but finally I figured out how to make my chai taste almost as good as hers. These women’s socks will spin off if they ever try it. Much better than this terrible sewage water they call tea.” She pushed the teacup away after taking the smallest of sips.
Nanima elbowed me to translate. I bit my lip, wondering how to convey this chunk of Gujarati. “So, my grandmother has offered to make all of you a special Indian tea next time she comes. She worked very hard to perfect the recipe. It’s an old recipe she makes with cherries and chocolate, and yes, you all just have to try it.”
Lily looked impressed. Eileen clapped with excitement. “We could include it in the recipe exchange!”
***
IN TOKYO I ATE bento boxes alone or occasionally headed to Kichijoji to eat at a restaurant with my favourite book. I’d forgotten what a grand affair dinner at home was, with my mom preparing for it by cooking half the day. Today she had made plantain curry from peanut butter, dhana jeeru and other spices, and black-eyed peas curry. She had fried paratha with cauliflower, which I had helped make by seasoning the stuffing with turmeric and cumin. A cardamom cake was cooling by the oven.
“How’s she doing?” I whispered to mom, bringing over a jug of water to the table.
“She seems better … ”
“I can hear you both. I have the flu. I’m not deaf, you know.”
I smiled. “I’m going to cancel my coffee plans. We can play cards. And we’ll work on your English. Probably more useful to you right now than Gujarati is to me. It will help you speak to the ladies at the centre.”
Nanima shook her head at me irritably. “Don’t stay at home from your life just for me, girl. Matt has been waiting to see you.”
“You’re having coffee with Matt? Matt from high school?” My mom sat at the table next to my dad. “Your grandmother knows more about your life than I do.”
My dad was focused on filling his plate with the different curries. “This black-eyed peas curry reminds me of the one we had at that restaurant in Goa. Do you remember, Maya?”
“Yep.” I could almost see the oceanside restaurant in front of me, my hair still wet from the dive. The water had been so thick with pollution I had barely been able to see the fish, which were grey and brown, having taken on the colour of their surroundings.
“That wasn’t my favourite dish,” my mom said. “I loved what we ate after we went on the tiger safari.”
“That plain dhal and rice?” my dad said. “It was positively tasteless!”
“You know what I remember?” I interjected. “The two of you fighting at the Taj Mahal like you were teenagers.”
“Your mother was being high maintenance.”
“I was not.”
“You were too!” my dad exclaimed. “You refused to use the public restrooms out front and insisted we head back to the hotel so you could go there.”
“That sounds exactly like Nina. Remember how she was when we were living in that apartment downtown?” Aunt Anisa said, ripping the paratha with her fingers. “She had to straighten her hair with an iron and apply fifty hair pieces to it before we could leave the house.”
“Who could forget?” Uncle Mook-Mook cut in. “Nina sitting in the front seat in some getup that made her look like a Chinese dragon — it was a blue and yellow Indian dance costume. She was busy putting white gook on her eyes, which she thought looked good, but I thought made her look like that girl in The Exorcist.”
“It was ‘pure magic super eye gloss’ and I bought it because Cheryl Ladd was in the commercial … ”
“Oh yeah,” said Aunt Anisa. “It was in that rust bucket Mook-Mook called a car. He was smoking one cigarette after another listening to some ‘disco lady, shake it this, shake it that’ song. And when we got to her stage show, there was Rakeem. Backstage, hiding behind a flock of girls wearing pink saris … ”
My dad chewed his food, smiling.
“He was holding sunflowers because he said they matched Nina’s eyes and he wanted to take Nina out for a date.”
“And Nina was so dramatic,” continued Uncle Mook-Mook. “She started praying to the picture of the Lord Ganesh in the Hindu hall dressing room that he send her a better prospect for a husband.”
Pleading desperately to any god that would pay her mind sounded just like my mom, the religious opportunist.
“And she told me to send him away, claiming Rakeem only bought her an ice cream cone for dinner and got her lost in some park.” Aunt Anisa blew on the curry she had scooped up with the paratha. “But I told her she had to break up with her own dates.”
“What happened next?” I asked.
“Rakeem had movie tickets to see Hema Malini in Pratiggya,” said Aunt Anisa, as if this explained everything.
“And Rakeem shoved some guy over who was also trying to see Nina. That guy fell into a rack of costumes. Wasn’t he your friend, Rakeem?” Uncle Mook-Mook asked.
My dad looked up. “Imran? He was a bloody good-for-nothing. He was a married man bothering your mother.”
“Anyways, Maya,” Aunt Anisa said. “Your father here used the last of his money to buy movie tickets and that bouquet. He barely had enough change in his pocket left to buy a coffee. When he proposed to Nina he had to borrow money from his friends to buy a ring … ”
After dinner, the doorbell rang just as I was smudging the last of the black liner around my eyes. I’d used gold eye-shadow on top. Too dramatic for a coffee date?
I could hear Matt chatting with my parents at the door. I brushed passed them, hurrying to get outside.
“Bye you guys!” I said, closing the door before they could drag Matt in.
Matt had the same tall, athletic frame I remembered, but he looked more mature. Was that a bit of grey in his dark hair?
“You look great!” he said, smiling.
In my short skirt and false lashes, I felt ridiculous and overdressed. The boning in my corset poked into my skin and I wondered how weird it would be if I were to run upstairs and change.
I smiled back. No electric, Harlequin-romance-type shocks. With Matt I supposed I would forever be twelve years old with giant glasses and a neon scrunchie. There was a certain friendliness you would always share with someone who knew you in the days your hair accessories matched your socks.
Matt brushed water beads from his faux-leather jacket. “Did you miss the rain?”
“Tokyo has rain. Maybe not so much or of such movie quality, but it does a good downpour. What it doesn’t have is guys who wear Megadeth t-shirts.”
Matt grinned as we walked toward his car.
Downtown Vancouver’s streets were lined with holly wreaths and white lights. I found myself humming along to “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” as we took seats behind the steamed and snowflaked windows of a Davie Street coffee shop. Clubbers ran by, drunk, eating ninety-nine-cent pizza on their way to the next bar. For once in my life, I didn’t feel like I was missing out.
“We meet again,” Matt said, rubbing his trim, five o’clock shadow.
I examined my mocha.
“You look disappointed.”
I sighed. “It’s not you. I just have to figure out how to make Vancouver work for me.”
“You’re not the only one going through some life-changing, finding-yourself moment,” he chuckled. “I don’t know how feasible it is to do a PhD and raise a family.”
“Family?” I choked on my sip. “I see you as the protest guy and t
he heavy metal guy, but not the family guy.”
“Don’t you want a family too?”
“Family depends on meeting the right person … ”
“And how is that going?”
“Well,” I said, wondering how much I should reveal. When I looked at Matt I saw the friendly face I used to tell everything to on the basketball court back in seventh grade. I smiled, settling into my seat. “I have met someone. His name is Dylan Taylor.” I flushed, burying my embarrassment in another sip of coffee.
Matt raised one of his thick eyebrows.
I continued. “I only just met him but he feels so right to me … ”
“He feels right because … ?”
“Because he’s a lawyer with grass roots passions … don’t laugh! He has this project on the East Side, a needle exchange program. I know … you think this is just a topical kind of solution, but he is making Vancouver more meaningful for me … ”
“Hey, I’m not judging,” Matt said, throwing up his hands. “I mean, sure, I’m all about overthrowing a government to make real change, but Tabatha believes in the same kind of work this Dylan guy does.”
Tabatha. I had never met her, but Matt had described her in an email once — a girl who knitted her own sweaters and made Matt coffee mugs in pottery class. “I never pictured you as the kind of guy to settle down.” I remembered then what my mom had said about seeing Matt ring shopping. Tabatha and Matt, raising kids, eating wholesome vegan foods and marching in rallies on the weekends, fighting for Canada to open its borders to refugees.
“Shows how well you know me, Miss Tokyo fancy shoes. I always wanted a family. Three, maybe four kids … ”
“Since when do you notice shoes? I thought you only knew revolutionary commanders by name,” I teased. “Speaking of revolution, it was hard not to think of you when I went to India.”
“When I think of revolution, I think more Spain, 1936 to 1939, the Ukraine, 1917 to 1921, or, I don’t know, Chiapas, 1994 to now.”
“How very Wikipedia of you. It’s shocking that despite its vast social inequality, nobody in India is working to overthrow those in power. Sure, there were times when it buzzed with revolutionary action … I see you making a face. You think I’m going to go on about Gandhi. No, I was going to say Bhagat Singh and his fight for anti-colonialism.”
“Ah, yes, Bhagat Singh: declaring that armed resistance is the only means to political freedom. Thank you, Maya, for not wasting my time discussing the Salt March.”
“I am glad to have redeemed myself in your eyes.” I winked. “It just seems everyone in India is pacified by the middle-class dream, while the slum city is crammed with a million people whose shanty shacks are built on their neighbours’ walls. People don’t notice the ghettos anymore. They’ve become normal functioning parts of Indian society. People in India have turned into capitalist robots, drinking Pepsi and going off to their telemarketer jobs where they rehearse American accents and help Sarah in Idaho do her phone banking.”
Matt settled into the coffee-brown chair, enjoying the political turn our conversation was taking. “Instilling the masses with the belief anyone can work hard and catch a break is one of the most powerful propaganda agendas capitalism has managed. Was it wandering through a museum you had this realization?”
“The museums in India were nothing more than glass boxes filled with clay Gandhi figurines. You would have hated them. A million reenactments of the Salt March. No joke. No … I was lost in a crowd of lepers when I had this ‘revelation.’ It donned on me that I could no longer wade through the superficial lifestyle I had going on in Tokyo, especially after I saw the dire poverty in India. Getting on the guest list at the best clubs just wasn’t cutting it anymore.”
“Hold on. Did you say you were roaming amongst lepers? Sounds like the start to one of those foreign, indie movies we used to watch. Did you know Che Guevera worked in a leper colony in Peru?”
I nodded. “It was heartbreaking. But it was also fascinating to see a band of sick people come together and form a community. I had no community in Tokyo, no family. I had two great friends. That was it.”
“Interesting where life has taken us in the last five years. Meanwhile, I was indulging in parties, sociology, and beer. But here we are, both in Vancouver, still inventing ourselves.” He gave me a half smile and I saw a flashback of our younger selves, overlooking the citrus hills, years ago.
“Inventing is for fantasy fiction. Your Dungeons and Dragons stuff. In real life you have to pick realistic options. I’m beginning to see, you can’t just dream everything into place. I need to start being more practical if I am going to sort out my life.”
“Look, I’m in no position to deny how much I know about the variation of elf in the Forgotten Realms — fantasy fiction is a great escape — but that doesn’t mean you can’t invent your life from anywhere and start building a foundation. Isn’t that why you decided to move to Asia and have adventures? To start from the ground up and see where it led you?”
I exhaled. “It was. But it’s tiring and lonely. I was thinking of going to Spain or North Africa, but I’m growing weary of reinventing.”
“Wouldn’t that be easier here, rather than somewhere else? You have family here — one less thing to dream into place.”
“Family is important to me,” I conceded as I swished the liquid in my cup, revealing chocolate syrup buildup, “especially now that I have been spending more time with my grandmother. She’s been a little sick.”
The corners of Matt’s eyes crinkled with concern.
“Don’t worry, she’s fine. It’s just a flu. I guess she is one of the things stopping me from going to Spain tomorrow. In India, I saw mothers struggling to provide basic needs for their children. But nowhere in the world did I witness a people with a keener sense of what it means to be a family. Meanwhile, in the West, we barely have time to blast an email back to our moms. It’s been nice to be around my family again. I feel as though if I don’t stop island hopping looking for the next best place, I won’t find real happiness.”
I was expecting Matt to laugh at me, in his old, teasing way. Instead we sat in a soothing silence.
I thought of the journey that led me to having coffee with him, five years after we sat on the mountain. I had been all around the world since then, but the distance of those years had been closed in just an hour together.
***
I HAD ALWAYS WANTED to go to India. But when my parents suggested we travel there together, them from Vancouver, me from Tokyo, it was as if I was twelve years old again, the only girl in class with samosas in her lunch box. I wanted to spend my vacation deep-sea diving. I wanted to sink my feet in sand as fine as talcum powder and wade in seas as clear as glass. A trip to India sounded serious, with visits to stuffy museums and sets of immunization boosters.
Whiny and impatient, I sounded like a kid as I talked to my parents about it on the phone, again. They chastised me for not taking the time to learn my own history and discovering where my family came from. For being too busy with my big, international life.
Finally, they used the cheapest tactic of all, “One day we will be too old to show you around.”
It worked, of course.
I arrived in Goa first, sitting like a yogi on my backpack in the airport. My parents arrived not long after — my dad, tall and lanky, waving at me like he was flagging down a rescue helicopter. With our fairer skin and Western ways, my mom and I would never quite blend into a crowd of other Indians. But my dad, with his love of fleece pullovers paired with immigrant jeans, always could. It was a role he cherished — purchaser of tickers and market stall negotiator.
Goa was exactly as I had imagined it: hippies with Santa Claus beards sitting on stoops eating curry from steel plates, searching for the meaning of life. We started with lunch at one of the ashrams, the gates of which spilled open onto a courtyar
d of well-maintained, chartreuse-coloured grass, covered with fuzzy white bunnies. We had exactly one hour to enjoy all that was heavenly before they closed their rainbow-painted doors to the public. This left me full but feeling like the answers to all my questions might lay behind those walls.
I proved far too spoiled to be a hippie; there was no way I was trading in my short shorts for scratchy shawls and oppressive Indian pantsuits that would leave stains under my arm pits. Instead, I donned the wooden jewellery and halter tops that only the foreigners wore, doing things that only foreigners were stupid enough to do, like diving. My parents, your classic tourist bombers, visited the Portuguese churches and marketplaces listed in their guidebooks.
Next we went to Mumbai, where I was ill prepared for the poverty. Girls wearing their dresses backwards because they didn’t know better, hair dreadlocked and dirty, dodging fast-moving cars that cared nothing if they smoked them. Families living under blue tarps planted beside exhaust fumes and heavy traffic. Children fighting over empty candy wrapper treasures. Starving cows wandering the streets, skin dripping from their bodies like well-worn leather pouches. The honking of cars plagued us day and night, and the popular tourist sites overflowed with dirty pigeons and gangs of street children, pecking away at the same ground for leftovers.
My mom was eager to practice her razor-sharp Hindi in Mumbai, refined from learning Urdu in Pakistan. She bought gorgeous designer shawls, insisting we hire a driver to take us through the neighbourhoods where the stars lived. Awed at the fenced mansions, she asked after the names of restaurants where the stars might dine. She stopped us at street vendors to try snacks, saying they reminded her of her childhood in Africa.
Finally, one morning I refused to open my eyes altogether. “I’ll join you after you get back.”
“What about your running, darling beta?” my mom said. I watched her slide stylish track pants onto her ninety-five-pound frame. Gold bracelets glittered against her nylon jacket. Our first week in India I had complained about missing my daily runs. But no one ran in India.
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