“Is Neelima going to come?” I asked as flatly as I could, and Ammamma instantly recoiled at the question.
“Why, did you bring her something?” she questioned.
“Yes,” I said in a tone that did not broach further argument. But who was I kidding? No one in my family had ever paid attention to that tone.
“Why? She isn’t really family,” Ammamma said harshly. “She stole my little boy.”
Yeah, and the “little” boy was completely innocent. I couldn’t believe the hypocrisy. Anand was a grown man and I couldn’t imagine any woman conning him into matrimony.
“She didn’t force him to marry her,” Ma said. “He married her with his eyes open. What can we do when someone takes your trust and throws it away?”
Direct hit!
What can we do when someone takes your trust and throws it away?
Oh, this was going to get unpleasant and I wondered if maybe it would be better to not say anything. But I knew that if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to face Nick when I got back. He was not some dirty little secret that should be tucked away. I loved him and I was proud of him and I wanted my parents and my family to know about him. I wanted to tell them what a wonderful person he was, but I knew they wouldn’t be able to see beyond the color of his skin and the fact that he was a foreigner. It wouldn’t matter if he was the kindest, richest, and most good-looking man to ever walk the earth—his nationality and race had already disqualified him as a potential groom for me.
“Neelima will be here soon,” Sowmya said, and looked at the mangoes spread out in small piles on the cold stone floor of the hall. “We should wait for her before we start cutting the mangoes. Does anyone want coffee in the meantime?”
There was a round of nods and Sowmya slithered away from the living room into the kitchen once again. I followed her this time and sat down on a granite counter as she puttered around.
“Have you learned to cook yet?” she asked, and I grinned sheepishly.
“Some,” I said. “But not Indian food. It takes too long and it’s too spicy to eat every day. And if I really feel like it, I just go to a restaurant; they do a better job than I ever can.”
“You should learn to cook,” Sowmya admonished. “What are you going to do when you get married? Make your husband eat outside food?”
Outside food versus homemade food! In India there was no contest. The food cooked at home by the wife was the best food. No restaurant could compare to that and in any case why would you spend money going to a restaurant when you could get homemade food?
“I will teach you how to cook,” Sowmya suggested, and I shook my head, laughing.
The idea of learning how to cook to feed Nick was amusing. Once in the matrimonial section of a Silicon Valley Indian magazine there was a girl’s profile that had made quite an impact on Nick.
23-year-old, beautiful, BA-pass Telugu Reddy girl looking for handsome and financially settled Telugu Reddy boy in the U.S. Girl is 5’4", fair, and is domestically trained. If interested, please apply with photograph.
After that Nick started complaining that I was not “domestically trained.” It was a joke between us, but a woman not knowing how to cook was unacceptable to Sowmya.
“I’ll just find a husband who can cook,” I said to her, and changed the topic to matters that were raising my curiosity. “What’s going on with Lata?”
“Don’t mind Lata, she . . . is just . . .” Sowmya poured milk into a steel saucepan and added an equal amount of water and set the saucepan on the gas stove.
I got up to pull out the steel coffee glasses from the cabinet next to the sink; they were exactly where they had always been. Shining, washed, and thoroughly dried by Parvati.
“No, we use cups now; steel glasses are only for morning coffee,” Sowmya said, and I put the glasses away surprised.
Everyone at Ammamma’s house used to drink coffee only in the steel glasses. The hot coffee was poured into the glasses, which would be put in small steel bowls. Then the hot coffee was poured in small amounts into the bowl to cool, and was drunk from there. It was an interesting South Indian ritual that I had almost forgotten. It appeared some things had changed here as well. They used coffee cups now.
The coffee cups were actually teacups, white with a golden lining around the rim of the cup and saucer. I set the cups on the saucers and placed a teaspoon alongside each one of them.
Sowmya leaned against the wall next to the Venkateshwara Swami temple in the kitchen and looked at me with obvious relief. “I am so glad you are here,” she said. “At least now they can concentrate on you for being unmarried and leave me alone.”
“Thanks,” I retorted in good humor and then I quieted. “Has it been very bad?”
“Terrible,” Sowmya sighed. “It was getting better, but then . . . Now Nanna doesn’t even bother to ask me if I like the boy; he just says if the boy likes me, that is it.”
My grandfather was getting up there in the age department and I knew he was worried that Sowmya would be unmarried for the rest of her life. Who would take care of her after he died?
“You know that’s not how he means it. He’d never ask you to marry someone you didn’t want,” I tried to reason.
“I know,” Sowmya said, and shrugged.
“How did they react to Anand’s marriage?” I asked, changing the direction of the conversation.
Sowmya rolled her eyes. “It was a nightmare. They went on and on, and when he brought Neelima home the first time, Amma actually asked her to leave. Then Amma and Nanna went to Anand’s flat three days later and asked them to come back. They even paid for their wedding reception, but I don’t think she has forgiven them for throwing her out of the house the first time Anand brought her here.”
“Can’t blame her for that.”
Sowmya straightened, pulled out a bottle of instant coffee from the open cabinet next to the gas stove. She opened the bottle and poured one teaspoon of coffee into each of the cups I had lined up by the stove. “But she comes back; Neelima keeps coming back. I think Anand makes her because he wants her to get along with Amma and Nanna. I don’t think anything is going to get better until . . . maybe they have a child.”
“Are they planning to have children?” I asked the natural question.
Anand and Neelima had been married for over a year now and by all Indian standards they should at least be pregnant. It always boggled me, the lack of contraception and planned parenthood. Most of the married couples I knew from India had a child within a year of their wedding, which meant that they never thought about contraception. Most Indian couples wouldn’t dream of having sex without the benefit of a nice, five-day marriage celebration. Some of my Indian friends were adamantly staying childless, but the pressure from their families was pushing them into having unprotected sex with their spouse.
Sowmya held the steel saucepan in which the milk had been boiling with a pair of steel tongs. The milk looked frothy and I wrinkled my nose at the familiar smell of slightly burned milk. As the milk sizzled into the cups, Sowmya clicked her tongue sadly. “Neelima says that they have been trying, but no baby yet.”
“It’s just been a year,” I said. “You like her.”
“She is nice to me,” Sowmya replied casually. “She is a good girl. She helps me whenever she comes home. Amma never cooks and Nanna . . . well, he doesn’t like to cook . . . and why should he when I am here?”
My grandmother was a strange creature. She came from a generation where women were treated like doormats, yet she had managed to stay out of the kitchen for most of her life. Earlier in her marriage her mother-in-law did all the cooking, and by the time she passed away my mother had been old enough to do the cooking. During the times my mother couldn’t cook, my grandfather wielded the spatula.
There was a ritual in most Brahmin families, even now in some, during which women who are having their period had to “sit out.” “Sitting out” literally means they are relegated to one room at the end
of the house—the room next to the veranda in my grandparents’ house—and are not allowed to touch anyone or anything during their “contaminated” period. When I was young I would always want to touch the women who were sitting out. I didn’t know what “sitting out” meant and I would try to get away with touching the women. Once it was my grandmother and I ended up being doused with a bucketful of water from the well to cleanse me. Needless to say, after that I never had the desire to touch any woman who sat out.
When the women sit out, the men have to cook, and that was how my grandfather and most Brahmin men learned how to cook.
Now, when Sowmya has her period, my mother comes and cooks or Lata does it. After all, it was not right for the man of the house to spend any time in the kitchen when he had grown daughters.
I wondered if Ammamma knew how to cook—she must, I rationalized. Her parents would never have permitted her not to learn. I wondered why Ma never encouraged me to cook. She was always trying to get me out of the kitchen: “You will mess everything up and then I will have to clean it. Just stay out of here and let me deal with my headache. . . . I don’t need any help.”
I learned to cook a few dishes but all in all there was no way I could cook a meal for several people the way Sowmya or Ma could.
When I used to complain to Nanna that Ma would not let me cook, he would say that I was going to be a “career woman” and didn’t need to learn how to cook. “You will make lots of money and you can just hire a cook. No chopping and dicing for my little princess.”
To Ma cleanliness was next to godliness and there was no way in this big wide earth that she would let anyone besides herself cook in her kitchen. After a while my enthusiasm also waned and I just never got around to learning the most important art of all for a woman, cooking.
I heard the rumble of the metal gate being opened and I twisted my head to look out the kitchen window.
“That must be Neelima,” Sowmya said, as she loaded the cups on a tray. “You take this out and I will make sure they don’t kill her with the mango knives.”
Neelima looked exactly like the kind of person I thought Anand would marry. She was tiny, five feet no inches, and she was very pretty and perky with her shoulder-length hair swishing around her face whenever she talked. She smiled sweetly and looked like a doll in her beautiful red sari.
She was genuinely pleased with my gift. I had seen a picture of her in which her hair had been tied in a French knot, so I got her ivory combs.
Lata immediately leaned over to look carefully at the combs and I could hear the calculator hum inside her head. She was probably thinking how the shawl, even though expensive, was probably not as expensive as the combs . . . or was it? My mother was torn between anger and pride. She was upset that I had spent all this money and she was also pleased that I was giving away such expensive-looking gifts. My giving expensive gifts guaranteed that when the situation arose (like my wedding), I would get expensive gifts in return.
“You are late,” was all my grandmother said to Neelima once the introductions were made and the gift given.
“I had to stop by at the doctor’s clinic,” Neelima said shyly. “I am ten weeks pregnant,” she announced.
Sowmya and I hugged her and rambled on about little babies and how wonderful it was. The contrast was painful. Ammamma asked us to spread the mangoes, Ma just glowered, while Lata started talking about how the first trimester was the time when most miscarriages took place. I was appalled. Who were these people? And why were they behaving like women from a B-grade Telugu movie?
I dropped a basket of mangoes between Neelima and me and sat down cross-legged. “Here.” I handed her a large knife and put a cutting board in front of her as I did in front of me as well.
“Wait,” my grandmother said. “Don’t mix the mangoes.” She pointed to the ones between Neelima and me. “Those are ours. Sowmya, you take care of them. Let us chop our own mangoes. That way the good and bad mangoes won’t get mixed.”
There were different piles of mangoes in the hall. The mangoes Ma and I had purchased that morning, the mangoes Lata had been given from the ancestral orchard, the ones that belonged to Ammamma , and those that were Neelima’s, which had been bought under Ammamma ’s supervision the day before. It was easy to know whose mangoes Ammamma didn’t want her mangoes mixed up with.
“Are you saying my mangoes are bad?” Ma asked instantly, her eyes blazing, a knife held firmly in her hand. Warrior Pickle Woman was ready to defend her mangoes.
Ammamma leaned down and picked up a mango from “our” basket and sniffed. She dropped it instantly, her nose wrinkled. “Radha, you were never good at picking mangoes. You should have taken Lata with you.”
“I always pick good mangoes,” Ma said, and yanked a mango out of the basket. “Cut and give me a piece,” she ordered Neelima, who put the mango on the wooden cutting board and hammered the knife through it. The knife cut the mango, stone and all. She cut out a smaller piece with a paring knife and gave it to Ma.
“Taste,” she instructed my grandmother, who moved her head away.
“I don’t have to taste; I know that they are not very good by the smell. Priya, you have to use your senses . . . your sense of smell to buy mangoes. I will teach you; if you learn from your mother, you will pick mangoes like these,” Ammamma said, looking at the mangoes Ma had just purchased with distaste.
“Maybe if you had given me some mangoes instead of giving them all to Lata, I wouldn’t have made this big mistake,” Ma said sarcastically.
“The harvest was not very good, there were only a few mangoes,” Ammamma protested. “We had to take some and the rest we gave to Lata.”
“Why give the rest to her? I am your flesh and blood, ” Ma said sourly. “Maybe I should just take Priya home and—”
“Ma,” I interrupted calmly before my mother could finish threatening my grandmother into submission. “Ammamma, why don’t you taste the mango and see? I helped Ma pick them out, you know,” I said, putting on my best granddaughter face.
My being the oldest and most doted on grandchild and the fact that I was there for only another week and a half propelled my grandmother to do as I asked.
Ammamma swallowed the piece of mango and smacked her lips. “They will do,” she said and my mother raised an eyebrow. “They are not bad,” my grandmother added grudgingly. “Now let us cut these mangoes before lunch,” she ordered.
TO: PRIYA RAO
FROM: NICHOLAS COLLINS
SUBJECT: RE: RE: GOOD TRIP?
AT 11:05 PM, FRIDAY, PRIYA RAO WROTE:
>AT LEAST THEY HAVEN’T THROWN ANY “SUITABLE BOYS”
MY WAY . . . YET.
I HAVE NO IDEA WHY YOU CONTINUE TO CALL THEM “BOYS” WHEN THEY’RE ACTUALLY GROWN, ADULT, READY-TO-MARRY MEN. VERY PERPLEXING, I MUST SAY.
I’M GLAD YOUR PARENTS ARE NOT THROWING ELIGIBLE MEN YOUR WAY. I HAVE TO ADMIT A PART OF ME IS/WAS AFRAID THAT YOUR FAMILY WILL/WOULD CONVINCE YOU TO MARRY A NICE INDIAN BOY. RATIONALLY, I KNOW YOU’RE COMING HOME TO ME BUT THERE IS THIS IRRATIONAL PART OF MY BRAIN THAT’S CONVINCED YOUR FAMILY CAN MANIPULATE YOU.
I MISS YOU. THIS TRIP FEELS LONGER THAN YOUR NORMAL BUSINESS TRIPS. USUALLY, YOU’RE GONE TWO-THREE DAYS OR MAXIMUM A WEEK AND IT’S IN THE U.S. THIS FEELS DIFFERENT. I FEEL THAT I CAN’T REACH YOU.
NICK
Chopping Mangoes and Egos
Cutting mangoes for making pickle is a skill that is honed over years of practice, under the critical eye of one’s mother or mother-in-law, aunt, or some other anal older female relative. In the olden days when joint families were the norm and women didn’t work out of the home, wives and daughters were trained in cutting mangoes as they were in everything else that pertained to keeping order in the household.
There is a certain precision to cutting pickle mangoes, a certain methodology, and I was sorely lacking in both.
A sharp and rather heavy knife is used to cut mangoes so th
at the blade easily sinks into and then past the mango stone. Since the knife is sharp and heavy it’s not prudent to hold the mango in place with one hand—unless you are an expert—and slam the sharp object with the other; a small miscalculation and you may be missing a few fingers.
With this in mind, I stationed the mango on the wooden cutting board, a board on which generations of my mother’s family had chopped mangoes in the pickle season, and took aim. The mango flew and struck me on the forehead before falling into my lap.
My mother made a disgruntled sound and looked at the now half-squished mango lying unceremoniously on my yellow salwar kameez.
“You have to hold the mango, Priya, ” my mother said, and proceeded to demonstrate with expertise how a mango should be cut. I narrowed my eyes in frustration, but she didn’t seem to notice. She was busy cutting me into size along with the mango.
The first slash of the knife split the mango in two halves. Then Ma used a paring knife and removed the stone, but let its hard casing stay stuck to the flesh of the mango.
“Now you have to cut it again,” she told me and did so. Four pieces of the mango lay in front of her, their proportions hideously the same. They were mocking me, just as my mother had wanted them to. “If the mango is small”—she picked up an example—“then only one-half is enough.”
Lata snickered softly and muttered something about modern girls. My shoulders slumped. I didn’t want to get defensive, but I would like to see any of these women manipulate databases the way I could. So, they could cut some measly mangoes. So what?
Being competitive by nature and having the need to prove to the world around me that I was not only a good database programmer but also a good mango chopper, I wielded the knife one more time. This time I cut the mango, not in two clean halves but two squishy portions. After the fourth mango had gone to waste, my grandmother asked me to come and sit next to her and watch and learn. I didn’t want to watch and learn, but the writing was on Ammamma’s polished floor. It was pathetic to admit defeat to a lousy piece of fruit but I did it as gracefully as I could.
The Mango Season Page 5