I blinked and shook my head. I was not going to dignify that lame threat with a response.
“Remember that,” Ma added ominously before she left.
“She thinks that I’m still ten and she can hit me,” I muttered. “Why do Indian parents think they can beat their children into submission?”
“That is how it is,” Sowmya said wisely. “Now tell me, will I look good in this yellow and red sari?” she asked, as she draped the sari in question over her shoulder.
The “boy” who came to see Sowmya was definitely not a prize stud. His name was Vinay and he was soft-spoken, true to his name, but the rest was a far cry from anyone’s Dream Man. He was extremely dark (even darker than I), a little on the short side (but still taller by at least a couple of inches than Sowmya); he wore glasses, which were as thick as Sowmya’s, and to add to the interesting mix of physical traits was the small patch of balding hair that he was trying to hide with the classic and unsuccessful comb-over.
Sowmya served him and his parents the bajjis and ladoos while I served them tea, happy to be of help, since Vinay was Sowmya’s suitor, not mine. Vinay’s parents seemed like very nice people, polite and nonconfrontational. Vinay was thirty-five years old and was looking for someone who was homely and religious. Not too religious, though, just enough—should know how to do puja and keep madhi. Sowmya was par excellence at both. While Sowmya’s grandmother, my great-grandmother, was alive, Sowmya was asked time and again to keep madhi; that is, to cook right after she took a bath before touching or doing anything else and preferably in wet clothes. Sowmya flat out refused to cook in wet clothes as great-grandma expected, but she knew the ins and outs of all the religious nooks and crannies.
They didn’t want a working daughter-in-law, Vinay’s parents said. They wanted grandchildren soon. Oh, Vinay is still single because he was so busy with his career. Couldn’t be that busy, I thought cynically, after all he was just a small-time lecturer at some out of the way engineering college.
While I served tea, Sowmya sat demurely looking at her painted nails as her fingers fondled the yellow tassels at the edge of the red border of her sari.
“Do you play any instrument?” Vinay asked Sowmya and she nodded.
“I play the veena,” she said.
Jayant had brought the veena out from storage just that morning and Sowmya and I had dusted it clean. Thatha had been informed from a good source that the “boy” liked music and since Sowmya could play the veena, everyone thought it would be a good idea to keep it handy.
I slipped out of the living room into the backyard when Sowmya started playing. As the notes filtered through the house, it was obvious that the veena idea was a bad one. It had been almost three years since Sowmya had touched the musical instrument; she needed practice and a lot of it.
I found Nate in the backyard tying his shoelaces by the tulasi plant.
“Where’re you going?” I asked.
“Home,” he said without looking at me.
“Oh.”
He stood up and then looked me in the eye. “You should tell him, Priya. You should tell him.”
“I have told him,” I said, and when he looked at me suspiciously, I spilled the truth out. “The email bounced back, but I will send him another one. I will call him and tell him. Ottu, promise. I will.”
Nate shook his head.
“And even if I didn’t tell him, I don’t see what the problem is. It’s not like I’m going to marry Adarsh or anything,” I said belligerently.
“No, but you definitely gave everyone the idea you would marry him,” Nate pointed out. “Look, none of my business, but I just think that . . . I don’t know what you’re waiting for. They’re going to make a proposal, what do you plan to do then? Not say anything?”
Sowmya stopped playing the veena, just as I got ready to lay it on Nate. Who did he think he was? Some laat-sahib, some big shot who could tell me what to do and when?
“I just feel bad about all of this,” he said before I could yell at him. “I wish I could help, Priya, but I’m just going to go home and enjoy the house without Ma.”
“I’ll call you, as soon as . . . ,” I said. I knew he was being honest with me because he cared about me.
“You’re going to break Nanna’s heart,” Nate said. “That’s going to be hard.”
“Yes, and Thatha’s,” I said. “But what has to be done—”
“Priya?” Lata came out and I bit my lip. How much had she heard? Did we say anything incriminating?
“They’re leaving and your mother wants you there,” she said, and then smiled at Nate. “Going, Nate?”
“Yes,” Nate said casually. He winked at me before leaving.
“He is so aloof,” Lata complained. “As if we are not good enough.”
“He just likes his own company,” I defended Nate immediately. “And he is not aloof.”
“Oh, come on, he has always been in his own world, not interested in the family or anything,” Lata said, and then sighed. “Of course, you don’t see anything wrong because you are his doting sister.”
“There is nothing wrong with him,” I said annoyed.
The family was not fond of Nate. It was as if he was more Nanna’s son than Ma’s. Even Thatha was more close to me than to Nate. It probably was because Nate spent more time with his friends and on his own than with the family. Nanna always said that he didn’t blame Nate. “He isn’t married to your mother, he doesn’t have to be in her parents’ house all the time,” he would say.
And to be honest, Nate didn’t even try to get along with Thatha or Ammamma or anyone else. He spoke to Anand once in a while and got along reasonably well with him, but the rest of the family could go hang itself and Nate wouldn’t give a damn, as he always said.
After the guests left, everyone congregated in the living room. Thatha opened his pouch of tobacco and started rubbing some in the palm of his hand. “Nice family . . . enh, Sowmya?”
Sowmya nodded.
Ammamma banged her hand against the arm of the sofa she was sitting on. “Very nice. If this works out . . . a big burden will be off our heads. I can’t wait for this marriage to take place. Ten years . . . ten long years . . . Now I want to see my Sowmya married.”
“They will definitely ask for dowry,” Jayant said. “Do you know what they want?”
Thatha put the tobacco inside his lower lip and sucked the tobacco into his mouth. “From what I hear they are not greedy people. And whatever they want, we will give . . . within reason, of course.”
Sowmya fidgeted with the gold bangle she was wearing. “He lives with his parents,” she said quietly.
“And . . . ?” Thatha demanded immediately.
Sowmya just shrugged.
“Why? You don’t want to take care of his parents?” Thatha asked, chewing the tobacco noisily. “Sowmya?” he asked again when she didn’t respond.
“No, nothing like that,” she all but whimpered.
“So, do we have a problem, Sowmya?” Thatha asked.
“No,” she said after a minute’s hesitation.
We all knew she was lying.
“Grooms are not lining up outside the gate, you know,” Lata said as nicely as she could to Sowmya when the three of us were in the kitchen. “And his parents seem like nice people.”
Sowmya shrugged as she squeezed the pulp out of the tamarind, which was soaking in water. “Priya, large pieces, Ma. We need large pieces of tomato for the sambhar,” she told me, and threw the pieces of tomato I had diced into the sink. “You don’t even know the basics, Priya,” she complained. “You have to learn to cook . . . And if you don’t . . . just leave my kitchen.”
I wanted to leave her kitchen as she suggested. It was there just for an instant, the prick of pride, piercing and slamming against ego. I let it pass.
“I’ll do it properly,” I said, and showed her as I cut the tomatoes into large pieces. “This will do?”
Sowmya nodded without looking at me
.
“He is a nice boy,” Lata said, looking up from the pearl onions she was peeling.
“He is thirty-five, dark, balding, and he wants dowry,” Sowmya said, tears glistening at the edge of her eyes, threatening to fall. “And he wants his wife to take care of his old parents. Haven’t I done enough? How many people do I need to take care of? What about me? Who will take care of me?” The tears fell.
I wanted to console her, but I didn’t have the words. What would I say to her? Wait for number sixty-six; maybe that will bring better luck?
Sowmya sat down on the floor and buried her face in her hands. “He asks if there is problem.” she sobbed, “There is always a problem. . . . I am the problem. Can’t wait to get rid of me, she keeps saying.”
“They don’t mean it that way,” I said lamely.
“What would you know?” Sowmya flashed at me. “You have Mr. Mercedes wanting to marry you and you have an American boyfriend who wants to marry you. You have all the choices and . . .” She stopped speaking as she saw the shock on my face and then on Lata’s.
“American boyfriend?” Lata said, catching the most important part.
“I was just making a point,” Sowmya tried to backtrack but it was already too late.
“Yes,” I said boldly. No point in lying anymore, I realized. It was time. I should have done this as soon as I got to India. I shouldn’t have waited. “But please don’t tell anyone anything,” I pleaded. “I want to be the one to tell them.”
Lata nodded and then threw her hands up in the air. “You girls complicate your lives,” she said in exasperation. “When I was getting married it was simple. The first groom who said yes, it was yes. With you—”
“It is not like I have been saying no, Lata,” Sowmya pointed out.
“I know,” Lata said, and sighed. “Our choices are so pathetic. Look at me, pregnant for the third time so that your father can have a grandson, so that Jayant can feel that he is for once closer to his father than Anand, so that when the old man dies he will leave something more to us than he plans to. Disgusting lives we women have to live.”
“We make our own choices,” I said.
“No,” Sowmya said as she stood up. “No, we don’t. If I had a choice, I would have gotten a job, gotten outside the house. Who knows, met someone. But Nanna wouldn’t have it.”
“You have choices,” Lata said, looking at me. “And you are going to blow it. An American boyfriend?”
“I didn’t plan it,” I told her what I had told Sowmya. “It just happened.”
“Have you slept with him?” Lata asked.
“None of your business,” I said without thinking. “That’s very personal.”
“There is no personal for women,” Sowmya piped in. “My father knows when I menstruate because I have to sit out, they know who talks to me and who doesn’t, they know what movie I see and with whom, they know exactly, down to the paisa what I spend on anything. Personal! My foot!”
I had never seen Sowmya so riled up, but then I had never seen her as a real woman with feelings and emotions, always as Sowmya, everyone’s punching bag. The one you could dump on, the one who put up with everything. I think all of us had forgotten that beneath the thick glasses lay the perceptive eyes of a woman. Not some bride-to-be but a grown woman who was as angry at the world as I was but had more of a right to be so.
I found Indian rituals appalling but I didn’t have to live them; Sowmya and Lata did. My life was better and my choices infinitely more appealing than theirs. My parents had given me this and I owed them the truth about my personal life. They needed to know and soon that Nick existed and because he did exist, I could not marry Adarsh or any other good-looking Indian “boy.”
“Where did Natarajan go?” Ammamma asked. Both Thatha and Ammamma refused to call Nate anything but Natarajan. Nate they said was too anglicized and in any case why would you shorten a nice God’s name like Natarajan?
“He had some studying to do, so he went home,” Nanna made the excuse. “He wants to catch up with next semester’s syllabus.”
“What a hardworking boy,” Ammamma said, buying into the cock-and-bull story. “See, Priya, that is the kind of boy girls want to marry. And Adarsh is like that. His mother told me that he used to study until four in the morning every day to pass the BITS Pilani entrance exam. Hardworking boys make good husbands.”
First, BITS Pilani, unlike all other engineering colleges in India, did not have an entrance exam; admission was granted based on 12th class exam results. Second, I couldn’t figure out the connection between hard work and good husband; I knew several hardworking guys at work who I was positive would make awful husbands.
“Pass the sambhar, Priya Ma,” Nanna said, looking at me curiously. “So, what did you think of Adarsh?”
“What do you mean, what did she think?” Ma demanded. “She—”
“Radha, I want to know what she thought,” Nanna interrupted Ma. It was a ploy; he knew I couldn’t speak my mind here, in front of all these people.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I spent all of ten minutes with him. It’s hard for me to say what he’s like.”
Ma’s face twisted and she glared at me.
“No, seriously,” I said, “you expect me to marry this man and I don’t even get a chance to talk to him before Nanna shows up asking if he wants chai.”
“How much time would you need?” Thatha asked. “A whole day? A year? Priya, marriage is what all that time is for.”
“Not in my world,” I said easily. “I don’t want to risk marrying the wrong man because tradition expected me to not know him before marriage. I can’t take that chance.”
“We all took that chance and we have done just fine,” Ammamma said.
I shook my head. “Please, I don’t want to discuss this.”
“Why?” Ma asked.
I was about to tell her exactly why when in pure movie fashion, the phone rang. Sowmya got up and went into the hall to answer it. It was for my father.
Nanna came back, a 1,000-watt smile on his face. “They said yes,” he said, beaming at me, and I felt as if a basketful of raw mangoes fell on top of my head.
You Can’t Make Mango Pickle with Tomatoes
Everyone was very excited for the remainder of the dinner, making wedding plans and discussing how everything would have to be done fast-fast. Sowmya, Lata, and I sat somberly looking at each other. I had never expected it, but Lata and I were suddenly on the same side, while Nanna had joined the evil one on the dark side.
“They want to take the tamboolalu in the next two days and we can set the marriage date for . . .” Nanna said, looking at me, gauging my reaction.
“Ah, Priya can get more holiday,” Ma said, overjoyed that finally all her efforts were coming to fruition. “What, Priya, your American boss won’t give extra holiday for your own wedding?”
“Now all we need is for Vinay to say yes to Sowmya,” Ammamma said, the loose skin around her jaw jumping around like Jell-O. “A double wedding . . . ah . . . a double wedding.”
Ma leaned over to me and whispered, “They want a double wedding so that they can reduce cost, but we won’t have any of it, okay. Big wedding for my daughter,” she said and then smiled. She kissed me on the forehead, pleased, I think, more with herself than with me. “Big wedding,” she said, flushed, the happiness vibrating through her nauseating me with its consequences.
The blood roared in my ears; I could hear what everyone was saying but I couldn’t quite comprehend anything. The boy said yes? Why on earth would he do that? Didn’t I try my best to put him off?
“At that new reception hall,” Jayant was saying, “where that actress . . . What’s her name, Lata?”
“We have to shop for saris,” Ammamma was saying. “Can’t go to Madras, not enough time . . . Chandana Brothers will have to do”
“I have all the jewelry ready,” Ma was saying. “Everything is ready . . . ”
“Priya Ma,” Nann
a’s voice reached my ear and something snapped inside me. This man loved me and he was entitled to the truth.
“I can’t marry Adarsh,” I said as the last hands were being washed in silver and steel plates. “Or anyone else you want me to marry,” I spoke over Ma’s tirade of objections and curses. “I came to India at this time to tell you all that I’m in love with an American and I plan to marry him. We’re engaged.” I showed them the winking diamond on my finger, which I put back on after the pelli-chupulu .
Silence fell in the room and then suddenly conversation rose like the small buzz of a mosquito raging into a zillion buzzing mosquitoes.
Nanna stood up unsteadily. “You hurt me, Priya Ma,” he said and walked out of the dining room, the hall, and, finally, Thatha’s house with the creak of Thatha’s noisy gate and the small roar of his Fiat.
And with those simple words, Nanna broke my heart as well. The tears I had been holding back raced down my cheeks. Nate had been right; telling Nanna was very hard. It was harder to see Thatha sit rigidly, his expression unfathomable. I had opened all the doors to hell for my father and grandfather. That was the way they probably looked at what I am sure they saw as the ultimate defection.
“American?” Ma was dumbfounded. “American?” she repeated. She had already said that a few times, as if questioning it several times would change it.
I started to help Sowmya clear up the dining table while Ammamma just kept making sounds and Jayant sat quietly sipping water from a steel glass.
I knew that this was the lull before the storm. This was the quiet after which nothing would be the same again. It had been done and now I was scared that they would stop loving me. They would tell me to go away, like family did in movies, and never set foot in their house again.
I stood at the doorway between the kitchen and the dining area, while Sowmya and Lata rinsed the dishes, whispering to each other.
“Just because you are wearing some ring, doesn’t mean you are engaged,” Ma said, her voice strained and thin. “This boy . . . Adarsh is perfect. You will marry him before you leave and that is that. You will forget this American and—”
The Mango Season Page 15