We laughed together and then she held my hand and squeezed it. “I am so happy to see you, Priya. You are a welcome change and I have missed you so much.” Sowmya hugged me then. “It is so good to talk to someone like this again,” she said, and sighed. “But you’ll be gone soon.”
“I’ll come more often from now on,” I said impulsively. “Maybe you can come and visit me?”
Sowmya made a face. “Yes, your Thatha is waiting for me to go gallivanting around the world unmarried.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“Maybe,” she agreed, and pushed her glasses up her nose.
I was seeing this world, my ex-world from my Americanized vision. This ex-world of mine was different to me now from what it had been before. I saw some things better, while other things had blurred beyond recognition.
Thatha was not my hero anymore because I saw him in a harsher light, an American light that didn’t condone men like Thatha. I had changed, I agreed with Sowmya. I hoped it was for the better.
Ma wasn’t in a better mood when we got back. Despite bad tempers, upset moods, and the exhausting heat, the work in Ammamma’s pickle sweatshop continued.
Lata was barking orders, while Ma was telling Lata how she was doing everything wrong. Not out of love was this food made, but out of need to prove superiority.
Ammamma was also saying her piece but no one was listening to her. We all listened to Lata and Ma and I felt like a yo-yo doll giving in to whoever spoke the loudest.
For the first time I realized that this mango pickle–making ritual like everything else was a power game. Ammamma had lost the battle a long time ago; my mother had been winning, but now Lata had thrown in a googlie—a cricket ball with a spin—by getting pregnant to please the old ones.
Lata and Ma were the contenders while Neelima, Sowmya, and I were spectators. Ammamma sometimes played a biased referee while other times she tried to recapture her days of glory.
My relationship with everyone in this room was in some way or the other fractured, but it was my relationship with my grandmother that was the most superficial. Ammamma was a feeling, a smell, a memory, not a real person. I knew little about her. I knew who her favorite film star was and which movie she watched repeatedly ever since Thatha bought a VCR, but I didn’t know how she felt one way or the other about her life, about having given birth to her first child when she was just fifteen years old.
After Ma, it took Ammamma ten years to conceive again and I could only imagine how hard those years must have been. It would have been imperative to have a male child, especially for Thatha, and it must have been pure torture to wait every month to see if she had a period or not.
Jayant’s birth was a miracle, or so everyone claimed. After that Ammamma didn’t get pregnant for eight years but it hadn’t mattered since she’d already delivered the son.
Anand was born when Ammamma was thirty-two years old. “I didn’t even think I could get pregnant and boom . . . suddenly my belly was growing. Your Thatha, he was so happy,” she had told me, smiling fondly at Anand.
After Sowmya was born two years later, Ammamma started to have uterine problems. When Sowmya was a year old they found a tumor in Ammamma’s uterus and they had to perform a hysterectomy.
They had also found a tumor in Ma’s uterus when I was fifteen. Ma again put the blame squarely on that quack doctor and the birth control pills, but Ammamma told me that it was hereditary. Even Ma’s Ammamma had had a tumor.
“So you have children fast,” Ammamma always advised. “God may take your womanhood away and then where will that leave you?”
For Ammamma, having children was an achievement, something she was proud of. How did she feel today when all her children were grown and most of them ignored what she had to say?
I had asked her once how she felt about being married off so early. “It was the way it was those days,” she replied but never told me how she felt about following tradition, accepting her fate. I knew nothing about her true feelings, she was just Ammamma, the woman who sat on the sofa all day long watching television and eating paan.
I didn’t know the woman behind the relationship I had with her.
And neither did Ammamma know the woman behind her granddaughter.
I looked at all the women in the room and wondered if behind the facade all of us wore for family occasions we were strangers to each other.
I was trying to be the graceful granddaughter visiting from America but my true colors were slipping past the carefully built mockery of myself I was presenting. Maybe the masks worn by the others were slipping, too. Maybe by the end of the day I would know the women behind the masks and they would know me.
I tried once again to talk to Ma but she shunned me and I concluded that she didn’t want to look behind the label: DAUGHTER, and didn’t want me to look behind the label: MA. If she wouldn’t show me hers, how could I show her mine?
“We just add these in?” I asked, looking skeptically at the chickpeas soaking in water. Lata pulled a yellow bucket filled with spices close to her and dumped all the chickpeas in. Then, when her arm was up to her elbow she asked me to pour oil and the pieces of mango in for her to mix.
Lata always made the chickpea avakai, Thatha’s favorite. When I was little I used to pick the chickpeas out of Thatha’s plate as my palate was not ready to endure the chili and spice of the avakai . Thatha would wipe away traces of spices and chili from a chickpea and line it up with others for me to nibble on. Ma would tell Thatha he was spoiling me, that I should learn to eat spicy food and not eat out of other people’s plates, but Thatha continued and I continued.
Even as an adult I could never eat food that was too spicy. When Nick and I went out to Indian restaurants he usually handled the hot food better than I did.
“Who’s the Indian here?” Nick would ask, as he wiped moisture from his forehead. He would continue to eat, despite getting soaking wet with sweat, while I would give up on the really hot food.
“My mother would like you . . . well, your eating habits at least,” I told Nick. “She believes that food isn’t real food if your nose and eyes don’t water a little while you eat.”
Ma and Lata ordered us around like slaves to bring the big pickle jars from the kitchen. Sowmya and I demurely went and got six huge glass jars. Neelima started to cut muslin cloth into large squares. The pickle went inside the jars and then the muslin was tied to the mouth of the jar after which the lid was tightly closed.
We all worked as if we were on automatic pilot, abiding orders and following the leaders blindly. The last of the pickle was being put into the jars when Ammamma decided to stir up some conversation. “So tell us, Priya, do you have a lot of Telugu friends in the States?”
“A few.”
“They say the Bay Area has a very big Indian population, especially Telugu,” Lata said, as she used a wooden ladle to fill her jar with her pickle.
“Some,” I said tersely.
“You don’t like Telugu people?” Lata asked, when I seemed reluctant to expound.
“I didn’t say that,” I protested.
Lata shrugged. “My brother who lives in Los Angeles told me that there are some Indians who don’t like other Indians who live in the States. They always stay away from them and only make friends with white people. I think that is a shame.”
“I agree,” I replied with affected sincerity. “The race of a person should be of no importance when you make friends. I have several American and several Indian friends. I also know some people from Turkey.”
Ammamma’s eyes popped out. “What? You have friends who are white? Who are black?”
She could as well have been saying that my friends were little green men from Mars.
“What can you talk to them about?” Ammamma asked. “They are not really friends, are they?”
I gaped at her. Was the woman really stupid, or was she merely pretending?
“What do you mean?” I asked, unsure of her question.
> “She means what do you have in common with these white people,” Ma piped in. “You should stay with your own kind. These white people will always swindle you.”
“And how do you know that?” I sighed, first my grandfather and now my mother. It was a family thing, probably embedded in the genes.
“You think I am fifty years old and I know nothing?” Ma demanded harshly. “I know enough and I am telling you that you should only make friends with Indians, preferably our kind. Nice Brahmins . . . they will always be there to help you. You have to work with these other people, why should you spend your spare time with them?”
How was I supposed to argue with that?
“I have friends from different races and different countries. I don’t care where they’re from. If they’re good people . . .” I began, once again a futile gesture.
“White people are never good,” Ammamma announced emphatically. “Look what the British did to us.”
I rolled my eyes. It was ridiculous the way my family thought and felt about the West. Ma would always show off about her daughter in the United States, but she didn’t quite like the idea of her daughter even having friends who weren’t Indian. This did not bode well for my revelation regarding Nick this evening.
I was relieved of pursuing the discussion when a car honked and Ma asked me to go open the gate.
My father was finally here—it was the best diversion I had had all day.
TO: PRIYA RAO
FROM: NICHOLAS COLLINS
SUBJECT: RE: RE: RE: RE: GOOD TRIP?
SOUNDS LIKE YOU’RE HAVING A REGULAR GREAT TIME! I’M GLAD YOU DON’T FEEL GUILTY ABOUT ME—I’D HATE IT IF YOU DID. SO TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTION, NO, YOU SHOULDN’T FEEL GUILTY FOR BEING IN A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP. YOU CAN’T PLAN RELATIONSHIPS, IF YOU PLAN THEM THEY ARE CALLED ARRANGED MARRIAGES AND HONESTLY, I THINK THAT’S A TAD COLD-BLOODED.
YOU’VE MADE YOUR OWN LIFE HERE IN SAN FRANCISCO, WITH ME, AND YOU DON’T OWE ANYONE ANYTHING. KEEP THAT IN MIND. NO MATTER HOW YOUR CULTURE TELLS YOU THAT YOU OWE YOUR PARENTS, YOU HAVE TO REMEMBER THAT CHILDREN NEVER OWE THEIR PARENTS. YOU DON’T OWE YOUR PARENTS ANYTHING BUT YOU’LL OWE YOUR (OUR!) CHILDREN COMPLETE LOVE AND LOYALTY BUT THEY WON’T OWE YOU ANYTHING—AND SO THE CYCLE SHALL CONTINUE.
I’M TEMPTED TO FLY DOWN AND CARRY YOU AWAY—WARRIOR STYLE. I KNOW YOU CAN TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF, BUT I KNOW YOU’RE GOING TO GET HURT AND I FEEL IMPOTENT SITTING HERE IN OUR HOME WAITING FOR YOU TO BE STUNG BY YOUR FAMILY. JUST TRY AND STAY CALM.
CALL ME IF YOU CAN, IT’LL MAKE US BOTH FEEL BETTER. NICK.
Part Three
In a Pickle
Mango Pappu (lentils)
4 cups yellow gram pappu
8 cups water
2 raw sour mangoes
5–6 curry leaves
2 teaspoons chili powder
salt to taste
2 tablespoons peanut oil
1 teaspoon black mustard seeds
3 dried red chiles
1 teaspoon red gram pappu
5 curry leaves
¼ cup chopped coriander
Soak four cups of yellow gram pappu in eight cups of water for half an hour. Chop the raw mango in small pieces. Add mango, yellow gram pappu with the water, curry leaves, chili powder, and salt in the pressure cooker and cook until two whistles. In a small frying pan, heat oil until sizzling. Add mustard seeds, red chile, red gram pappu, and curry leaves into the oil and fry for thirty to forty seconds (be careful to not burn the seeds or the leaves). Add the oil and its contents into the mango lentil mixture in the pressure cooker immediately and mix. Garnish with chopped coriander. Serve hot with rice.
Nanna’s Friend’s, Friend’s Son
Nanna enveloped me in a bear hug as soon as he stepped out of the car. I knew he didn’t like to visit Ammamma and Thatha but came along because the alternative was listening to my mother complain about it for days, maybe weeks.
“That bad?” He grinned when he saw my drawn face and I shook my head.
“Worse.”
“What is going on?” he asked when he sat down on the large swing on the veranda to remove his black leather shoes.
Sowmya stepped outside and smiled at him. “Coffee?”
My father nodded thankfully and she went back inside.
Nanna was a tall, lean man and his skin was dark. That was where I inherited the “wheatish complexion” that Ma complained about. He wore a small gray moustache. As his hair was growing white, he looked dignified and handsome. Ma tried to coax him into dyeing his hair as she did, but he refused, saying he had no issues with his age. I think he liked being in his fifties and looked forward to being sixty.
“No one has killed anyone yet?” he asked, rocking the wooden swing slowly with his bare feet.
I was sitting on a chair across from him and raised my eyebrows mischievously. “The night is still young. Thatha is very angry with me.”
“Thatha is always angry with someone,” he said negligently. “What happened?”
My father and grandfather did not get along. Even though Ma and Nanna had had an arranged marriage, Thatha never did quite like the idea of his favorite daughter being married to a man, any man. There was the age-old “he stole my daughter” thorn in the side of their relationship, which could never be removed.
“We had a fight,” I had to tell him in case he misunderstood me. “They were lambasting the United States and I lost it . . . a little.”
My father gave a long sigh as if he understood it was going to be a long night.
“I got angry,” I continued. “And I said something about the States being different from India . . . in the sense . . . that there, no one is forced to have a baby to provide a male heir.” My mouth twisted sheepishly and I waited for my father to admonish me.
He shrugged. “You are right.”
“Really?” My eyes brightened.
“But you had no business telling that to him,” he said, thwarting my hopes of finding an ally in the family over this particular issue. “He is old and set in his ways. Leave him alone.”
“Leave whom alone?” A voice thundered from inside the house and both my father and I were startled like criminals caught in the act.
Thatha stepped outside in his white lungi and the thin ceremonial thread that ran across his chest as it did across every Brahmin man’s chest. Nanna, who was hardly religious, kept losing his thread. It always amused Nate and I how Nanna scrambled to find the thread whenever he had to visit Ammamma and Thatha .
“As long as I don’t take my shirt off, the nosey old bastard won’t make an issue out of it,” Nanna would say if he couldn’t find the thread.
Even though my father disliked Thatha, he was always polite, always respectful. I think that annoyed Thatha more because he could not really point to any of my father’s obvious flaws.
“Namaskaram,” Nanna said, and folded his hands in acknowledgment. “How are you doing?”
Thatha sat down beside me, his mouth twisted in a pout. “Sowmya has coffee for you inside, Ashwin.”
My father looked at me with his kind soft eyes that twinkled from beneath his steel-framed glasses. “Want to come and have coffee with your old man, Priya?” he asked in an effort to save me.
“Thanks,” I said gratefully, and smiled. “If you don’t mind, I’ll talk to this old man for a while,” I said, inclining my head toward Thatha.
“I don’t like being yelled at in my own house by my own granddaughter,” Thatha started without preamble as soon as my father went into the hall. “I feel the way I feel and I will continue to feel that way.”
I stared at the white cloth that was draped around his hips and wondered why south Indian men persisted to wear this garb in the twenty-first century. It was great during the summers, but still, a thin sheet of cloth wrapped around your legs was hardly protection. Added to that was how men did not wear any underwear beneath the lungi. One false, thoughtless move and all w
as open for public viewing. I had seen my share of penises because of the fascination south Indian men had for lungis.
“Are you listening to me?” Thatha demanded.
“I’m listening,” I said a little cockily. “But I was not raised to keep silent when people unjustly—”
“You were not raised to raise your voice in the presence of elders,” Thatha interrupted me.
“Well, everything that Ma and Nanna taught didn’t stick,” I said, and shrugged. “Come on, Thatha, what were you thinking? That I’m a little shy girl? I’m not. . . . You’ve always known that.”
Thatha took my hand in his and nodded. “No, you were always the one with the sharp temper. Not a good thing in a girl . . . even an American-returned one.”
“I’m sorry I raised my voice, but I’m not sorry about the male heir remark,” I said in compromise. If the old man was going to meet me halfway, I could manage the other half.
“I need a male heir and I thought this discussion was over,” he said.
“You brought it up again,” I sighed, and decided to make some amends for my bad behavior. “Thatha, sometimes I don’t like the way you think and sometimes I don’t like the way my entire family thinks. You know what, it doesn’t make a difference. I still love you all very much and I’ll always love you. But that doesn’t mean I have to nod my head when you say something wrong.”
That seemed to get to him. I think the “I love you” part did it. He patted my hand and rose from his chair. “It is okay. Come inside and have coffee.”
Just like that, Thatha forgave me.
Forgave me? What had I done that needed forgiving?
The sun started to set, sliding slowly and lazily into the horizon as we put away the pickle jars in the storeroom next to the kitchen.
“Priya, I have to buy some coriander and some kadipatha for dinner. Are you up for a walk?” Nanna asked me. It was almost automatic for him to find some reason or the other to leave Thatha’s house.
“Ashwin-garu, we don’t really need the curry leaves and I can manage without the coriander,” Sowmya said, worried that she was inconveniencing my father.
The Mango Season Page 10