Adarsh asked for two bottles of water as soon as we got in. The place was practically empty except for a man sitting at a table in a corner reading a newspaper. We found a table by a window looking out at the busy road where Adarsh had parked the black Tata Sierra. A young boy of maybe ten or eleven years old, wearing a pair of oversized khaki shorts and a dirty white T-shirt, put two bottles of water on our table. A small white-and-red checkered towel rested on his shoulders and he took our order on a small notepad with a ballpoint pen that had been resting against his ear.
“Just chai? No chaat?” Adarsh asked when he heard what I wanted.
“I just had a masala dosa at Minerva. Went there with my aunt,” I said, but my mouth watered when Adarsh ordered pau bhaji.
“The best pau bhaji is still in Bombay,” Adarsh said when the busboy was gone. He then took a swig from the bottled water. “So, why did you want to see me?”
I rested my chin on the palm of my left hand, moving my head slowly as my hand pivoted around my elbow and smiled at Adarsh.
“You didn’t want to see me,” he deduced, and sighed. “Your mother and your grandfather—”
“Plotted behind my back,” I finished. “Yup. I’m horribly sorry and to make up for it, chaat is on me and we can stop by this place I went to the other day and even have ganna juice.”
Adarsh’s eyes glinted with good humor. “You don’t want to marry me. Is that it?”
“Well . . . ” I started and paused when a big smile broke on his face. “I don’t.”
“Okay,” he said, and took another swig of water.
“You don’t seem too broken up about it,” I said, slightly miffed that he was taking my rejection so well.
“I’ve seen five girls and I liked you the best, but I’m not in love with you,” Adarsh said.
That was the good thing, I thought, about men like Adarsh. They treated arranged marriage exactly the way it should be treated, without too many emotions messing with their decision-making process.
“Any of the other four girls to your liking?” I had to ask.
“Yes,” Adarsh said with a smile. “Her name is Priya, too, but she’s shorter than you are and definitely has less . . . of that spark.”
“Is that a polite way of saying I have a short temper?”
“Well . . . I just saw a spark of it here and there,” Adarsh said with a grin. “So, your family forced you into that pelli-chupulu?”
“Yes and no,” I confessed. “I could’ve—no, should’ve—fought against it but I wanted some peace and I didn’t have the courage to tell them about my boyfriend.”
Adarsh put the bottle down and made an annoyed sound. “You have a boyfriend? And why the hell didn’t you tell me when I told you about my ex-girlfriend?”
He had every right to be mad so I continued humbly. “I was scared,” I admitted the truth. “I was scared of hurting my family and I ended up hurting you.”
“Humiliating me,” Adarsh amended. “Goddamn it, what’s wrong with you women? I mean, I agree that arranged marriage is archaic but, Priya, you work in the United States. You are a grown woman. Why the hell are you playing these stupid games?”
“Not games, Adarsh,” I said, keeping my voice calm even though I wanted to rage at him. How would he understand how much I was afraid of losing my family? How could he understand that?
“Then what?”
“He is American,” I revealed. “And I told them yesterday but they don’t want to come to terms with it. They dragged you here hoping I would give in. Be charmed by your ultra-good looks and the rest of the package.”
We fell silent when the busboy brought Adarsh’s pau bhaji and my chai. He ignored his food while I blew at the hot tea to cool it.
“I’m so sorry,” I apologized.
“I’m so fucking tired of women like you,” Adarsh muttered.
“Women like me? Excuse me, but you don’t even know me,” I said, putting my cup down with force that caused some of the tea spill on the saucer.
“Why are you so scared? My ex-girlfriend wouldn’t tell her parents about me. She was scared because they expected her to marry a Chinese guy. . . . And that’s why we broke up, because I got sick of her not accepting me,” Adarsh said.
“And you told your parents about her?”
“Yes,” Adarsh said. “I told them when things got serious and we moved in together, but Linda just wouldn’t do it.”
“I’m sorry,” I repeated sincerely. “I told my family yesterday night. I’m going to tell them again today. . . . I don’t know what else to do. I’m scared that I’ll lose them if I tell them and I’m scared I’ll lose Nick if I don’t.”
“Oh, you’ll lose him if you don’t,” Adarsh assured me and dug into his bhaji. “Want a bite?”
I shook my head. “So am I forgiven?”
“Hey, who am I to judge. I’m the one finding a wife like I would a job,” Adarsh said, and then chewed on his food with relish.
“You think the other Priya will work out for you?”
Adarsh nodded, his expression amused as well as confident. “She’s twenty years old, lives with her parents. Just finished her degree, so yeah, I think she’ll work out. She likes to run and hike, I kinda like the same things, so . . . we’ll go camping a lot.”
“I’m glad and again, I’m really sorry for having put you through this,” I said.
Adarsh shrugged nonchalantly. “As long as you pay for the chaat and provide me with the promised ganna juice . . . I have no complaints.”
I tried to call Nick once more and still got the answering machine and voice mail. It was hard not to panic. I checked my email in the hope that he had sent something but I couldn’t access the account as the ISP of the Internet café I was going to was down.
Not wanting to go back to Thatha’s where I would have to deal with some unsavory questions, I decided to go to my parents’ house instead. Nate was there and if he wasn’t, I knew the neighbor always had a key to the house. I could sneak in and get some quiet time. And I could check email from Nate’s computer.
Talking to Adarsh had raised some difficult issues; mostly I was feeling the garden variety, old-fashioned guilt. I started to wonder how Nick had felt about me keeping him a secret for the past three years we had been dating. I knew he thought it was silly not to tell my family about him, but now I started to realize that maybe he saw it as an insult as well, just like Adarsh had with his Chinese girlfriend.
But it was still a man’s world and we women had to balance the fine line between familial responsibilities and our own needs.
I waved for an auto rickshaw to take me to my parents’ house from the Internet café. I didn’t barter with the rickshawwallah, just agreed to the forty-five rupees he asked for.
Maybe Nick was busy. My mind made up excuses for his not being available on any data line. What if he had had an accident? No, no, I told myself firmly, Frances would know if that happened and Frances had said everything was fine, that she’d just talked to Nick the night before.
What if he was with another woman? As soon as I thought it, I knew it was preposterous. Nick could never be with another woman. Whenever I joked that he should leave me and go away he would say, “Where would I go? No one will have me but you.”
We both really had nowhere to be but with each other. Relationships bound people together to the point that home was a feeling and not a brick structure. I knew where home was and it definitely was not here in Hyderabad. These people were not family. How easily they had decided to give me up. Anger ripped through me. I don’t conform to their rules, I don’t exist, not important to anyone anymore. My own father walks out and doesn’t bother to tell me whether he is dead or alive as if my marrying Nick is the end of the world.
I paid the auto rickshaw driver and opened the rickety metal gate that led to the grilled veranda of my parents’ house.
“Priya?” Mrs. Murthy who lived across the street called out from her veranda.
I nodded and then
waved to her. She stood up from the cane chair she was sitting on, fanning herself rapidly with a coconut straw fan. “Is your mother back, too?”
“No,” I said. “She’s still at Thatha and Ammamma’s house.”
“They took the light off again,” she complained, vigorously fanning herself. “Why don’t you come here and sit with me for a while until the light comes back, hanh? It is cooler here than your place. . . . I always told Radha, west-facing house, big mistake.”
It would be rude to say no. On the other hand I could have a nervous breakdown in front of good old Mallika Murthy, mother of a brilliant son who had gone to the best engineering and business school in India and now worked for a big multinational consultancy. She also had a gorgeous daughter who was married to a handsome doctor in Dubai and made an insane amount of money.
Ma hated Murthy Auntie even as she spent all her afternoons gossiping with her. They both talked about their children and tried to one up each other. Nate was in an IIT and he had gotten a better rank than Ravi Murthy in the IIT entrance exam so Ma showed off about that every time Murthy Auntie brought up the topic of her daughter, Sanjana, and her amazing husband. They were expecting a child in six months and Ma was burning with jealousy. Maybe that was why she had tried to hook me up with Adarsh who had gone the BITS Pilani-Stanford-big-company-manager job route, which made him just as desirable as the doctor in Dubai.
“Come, come, Priya,” Murthy Auntie insisted. “I have some thanda-thanda nimboo pani.”
Well, cold lemon juice did sound good and there was probably just Nate in the house sweating like a pig. So I made the big mistake of going onto Murthy Auntie’s veranda instead of my parents’. I should’ve known that she’d grill me about my personal life as she gave me the nimboo pani. It had never bothered me when I lived in India how everyone nosed around everyone else’s life; now it was inconceivable.
I remember Sowmya asking me, when I first got a job, how much I was getting paid. After two years of graduate school in the United States I flinched at the question and didn’t give her a number. I couldn’t be coy with Ma who would beat the number out of me, but if I had been working in India, I would’ve probably not even thought twice about telling anyone who asked.
The nimboo pani was a little too sweet, but it was cold enough that I didn’t complain. The heat was getting to me in more than one way. My salwar kameez had wet patches at my armpits, my back, and my stomach, and my thighs felt like they were plastered to any chair I sat on. My hair was matted against my skull and my head was starting to slowly ache because it had forgotten the taste and smell of a Hyderabad summer.
“Radha tells me that she has the perfect boy for you.” Murthy Auntie didn’t even bother to mask her curiosity. “So,” she demanded, her eyes wide, “how was this Sarma boy? Did you see him? What did he say?”
I licked my lips and stifled a scream that was lodged in my throat, waiting to get out. “He was okay,” I said, digging my nose into the lemon juice, trying not to look at her when I spoke.
“Really . . . just okay?” Murthy Auntie persisted. “Radha said that he was . . . as good-looking as Venkatesh. Personally, I don’t even think Venkatesh is that good-looking. Aamir Khan any day for me. What do you think, hanh?”
“About Aamir Khan?” I looked up at her with innocent, wide-eyed confusion.
Murthy Auntie sighed. “So, he wasn’t good-looking, hanh ?”
“He was fine looking,” I told her casually.
“So”—she cocked an eyebrow—“did they refuse the match? You can tell me, really. There is no shame. It happens all the time. Of course, with Sanjana, as soon as Mahesh saw her . . . clean bowled, he was. Married her within two weeks, would not let us delay an extra day.”
“I heard Sanjana is pregnant. Congratulations,” I said politely, hoping that this would veer her off my marriage path.
Murthy Auntie glowed. “It is a boy, they found out just two days ago. Mahesh is the only son so his parents are very happy that he is also having a son. Very rich family . . . The boy will be born with a silver spoon in his mouth.”
“That’s nice,” I said, now uncomfortable. Added to the heat was the fact I had nothing in common with this woman and I had, really, nothing to say to her.
“So they refused, hanh? Did they?” she asked, her eyes jumping out of her skull, wanting to peep inside my head to find out the truth.
“No,” I said in irritation.
“They said yes?”
“Yes.”
“And you said no?” Murthy Auntie asked in disbelief. “You can tell me the truth, Priya. If they said no, that is fine, it is okay to tell me. I am not a gossip like all the—”
“I can’t marry him, Auntie,” I interrupted her and gulped down the whole glass of lemon juice. I put the glass on the cool marble floor and stood up.
“Why not? Sit, Priya, what’s the hurry?” she said, tugging at my hand.
Just seven years and all this seemed alien. This browbeating and digging into personal lives seemed alien. But inside me I knew that this was the Indian way. I could turn my nose up at it and think it was uncouth but this was how I was raised, this was how things were. It was bloody high time I accepted it and did what needed to be done.
“No,” I said and smiled at her. I was just about to make her day. “I’m already engaged. My fiancé is an American. We’re getting married this fall, hopefully in October. I will definitely send you an invitation but the wedding will probably be in the U.S.”
Her mouth stayed wide open for almost fifteen seconds. But for the fact that I had just ruined my mother’s reputation and my apparent good name, I would’ve found it comical. It felt good, though, to have told her. I had stepped into the light, the light of truth, and it was a nice place to be.
I knew that even before I got inside my parents’ house, Mallika Murthy would be dialing the phone number of ten of her and Ma’s closest friends to inform them about my fall from grace.
I was smiling when I knocked on my parents’ front door. The power was still off and the doorbell was useless. I was fully expecting Nate to open the door and was surprised to see my father, red-eyed, looking slightly sloshed at his doorstep.
“Nanna?” I asked, and he sighed deeply.
“I was hiding, but everyone seems to find me,” he said, and stepped away from the door.
“Hiding in your own house, Nanna?”
Nanna shrugged. “Best place I could think of.”
“Have you been drinking?” I asked, as I smelled whiskey in the air.
“Not really,” he said, and pointed to Nate who was lying on a sofa sleeping, despite the heat. “We just drank a few pegs of whiskey last night.”
“A few pegs?” I picked up an empty bottle of Johnny Walker lying on the coffee table, surrounded with a few empty soda bottles.
“Well, after the first three pegs we lost count,” Nanna said and sat down by Nate’s feet on the sofa.
Nanna usually didn’t drink like this, maybe a peg socially and never with his own son. Looked like they were connecting on the alcohol level—a whole new kind of closeness?
“How’re you feeling?” I asked lamely.
“Hung over,” Nanna said, leaning against the backrest and closing his eyes.
Father of the Bride
When Nate was little he had lots of ear infections. They plagued him until he was almost four years old and caused him such pain that to this day he remembers the earaches with fear.
I used to sit with him when he was a baby and sometimes even cry with him. Once, when I was nine years old, I couldn’t watch Nate suffer and wished I could take some of his pain on me. I asked Nanna why we couldn’t share pain. He told me, “If we could share other people’s pain, mummies and daddies all over the world would die of pain because they would take all their children’s pain.”
Nanna always wanted to be a good father. I think it was one of the goals of his life. He probably had it written down somewhere:
&
nbsp; Save enough for retirement at sixty years of age (two more years to go; clock is ticking, tick-tock, tick-tock).
Be a good father.
Avoid fighting with Radha.
Get Priya married before she becomes an old maid.
Die in a painless way.
Nanna was a meticulous man. When he packed something, it was done neatly and tightly. If he planned a vacation, he would plan everything, leave nothing to chance. He made notes constantly, and when I gifted him a PalmPilot for his fiftieth birthday, he had been deliriously happy. He never left home without the Palm and he always told anyone who’d listen that his daughter who was in America had given the wonderful electronic gadget to him.
He was very proud of me. Even when I was in high school and I would win silly awards for elocution or debate, he’d be on cloud nine, calling his parents in whichever country they were to tell them what a wonderful daughter he had. He would even call Thatha, who he rarely phoned, to gloat.
If I asked him for anything, his answer would always be “yes,” regardless of whether he could comply with my wishes or not. “If your Nanna doesn’t say yes, who’ll say yes?” he would say. A father’s job according to my father was to keep his children happy.
“When you were a baby,” Nanna once told me, “all I wanted to do was make you laugh. You liked pulling my moustache a lot and whenever you did I would yelp and that would make you laugh out loud.” Apparently, I pulled out several of Nanna’s moustache hairs when he and I were young.
Nanna ran a finger over his moustache, smoothing it, and looked at Nate’s lifeless body. He picked up Nate’s left hand and let it drop. It fell limply on the side of the sofa.
“The boy can’t handle his liquor,” he announced, and stumbled as he tried to stand up.
“So you both got nice and drunk. . . . Do you do this often?” I asked, and picked up the day’s newspaper to fan myself. “How can he sleep in this heat?”
“Your Ma keeps asking me to get a generator and an AC. I think it’s too decadent for us simple folk,” Nanna said with a lazy smile, as he leaned back into the sofa, giving up his feeble attempts to stand.
The Mango Season Page 19