Sowmya was serving leftovers from lunch but no one, not even Anand who always had a problem with leftover food, complained.
“Lata’s ultrasound and amnio test is tomorrow,” Jayant said, I think to stop everyone from thinking about my American fiancé.
Thatha looked up at Lata and smiled. “It will be a boy,” he said confidently.
Lata, the first to finish dinner, washed her hand in the plate with the remaining water in her glass and rose, plate in hand. “No,” she said looking at me, her eyes triumphant. “There will be no ultrasound and no amnio test.”
Jayant stood up, pushing his chair away sharply, its four legs squeaking against the floor’s polished stone, a look of total panic on his face. “What do you mean you won’t do it? Sixteen weeks, they can tell the sex in sixteen weeks these days.”
Lata moved and the curd rice mixed with water sloshed on her plate. “I don’t want to know the sex of this baby.”
“But you said that if it is a girl you would . . .” Jayant stopped himself from revealing too much but it was already too late, everyone was privy to what they had decided would be the fate of a baby girl.
“I want to have this child and I want it to be a surprise like it was when Shalini and Apoorva were born,” Lata said and left for the back yard to put the plate in the tub for the maid to clean the next day.
While she was gone, Thatha demanded an explanation from Jayant. “What is going on, Jayant? If it is a girl . . . You know we want a boy.”
Jayant threw his hands up in exasperation. “I don’t know what to do. I . . . will try and talk to her.”
“Why?” Sowmya asked and surprised everyone with her voice. “If she doesn’t want to know, we should not force her. We are not that kind of a family.”
Everyone in the room became very still. Ammamma, who had been fanning herself with the day’s Deccan Chronicle with one hand while eating with the other, stopped in midair and looked at her husband, seeking out a reaction.
Sowmya had put it out there, told everyone, especially Thatha , that if he complained or insisted too much about knowing the gender of the baby he would be slotted away with all those other despicable middle-class men who participated in female infanticide. She had managed to corner the great old man himself with a few words.
“Okay,” Thatha said, looking at Sowmya as if he had never seen her before. “Whatever Lata wants.”
Lata, who was waiting by the back yard to hear the outcome of her announcement, smiled. “We will leave for the night,” she said, coming into the kitchen. “We want to go to my parents’ house so that we can drop Apoorva and Shalini off at school tomorrow morning.”
Jayant washed his hands in the plate but unlike his wife did not bother to put his plate away.
“Thatha,” I started, and fell silent when he raised his hand.
“I will not accept it, Priya. If you marry this man, then you are not my family,” Thatha said.
I had expected it all along but I had not been prepared for the pain that followed his announcement. My heart felt heavy and I clenched my teeth in an effort not to cry. I didn’t want to give the old man the satisfaction. He had hurt me just as deeply as I imagine I had hurt him. Were we even now?
“Then that is your choice, I have no problems with who Priya marries,” Nanna said clearly and rose from the table with his plate. Jayant and Lata who were about to leave stood still by the doorway between the dining area and the hall to see the drama through to its end.
Sowmya took Nanna’s plate and he walked up to the sink by the doorway to the back yard. No one said anything while the water from the tap splashed on his hand and cleaned it.
“And you think that marrying this American is going to make her happy?” Thatha demanded while Nanna dried his hands on the towel hanging on a rusty nail over the sink. In all the years we had all been together, I had never seen or even heard of Thatha and Nanna having a confrontation.
“I think that how she lives her life is her choice and yes, I believe that she will be and actually she is happy with Nicholas,” Nanna said, still standing, keeping his advantage by looking down at Thatha.
Thatha washed his hands in his plate and looked at Ma. “Radha? Is this okay with you?”
Ma sat still for a very long moment and then nodded.
“It is going to only end badly,” Thatha told Nanna. “And when it does,” he pointed a finger at him, “I want you to know that you will be the person with the most blame. You can stop her. Do it now.”
Nanna shook his head. “She is my daughter and this is my choice to make, just like you are making yours. I trust her. I believe her to be a smart and intelligent woman. I think that if she says she is happy with Nicholas, she is telling the truth. Priya is no fool.”
“But you are for letting her do this,” Thatha said agitated, his chest heaving with the rage he was trying to control. This was his family, he was supreme here. How dare anyone go against him.
“In that case, my family and I will take leave of you,” Nanna said politely, so politely that it was insulting in its weight.
Ammamma cried out then. “No, no. Why do you talk like this?” She looked at her husband of fifty-one years with admonishment. “He didn’t mean it, Ashwin.” She tried to assuage my father.
“Then he shouldn’t have said it,” Ma said angrily. In all the years that we had all been together, Thatha had never called Nanna names. This was quite an event and I was solely to blame, or so I felt. Guilt that I had banished just a little while ago came back in big waves rolling me into them and throwing me on the shore of repercussions.
“I shouldn’t have said it,” Thatha said slowly, realizing that he was breaking up his family.
“It is not right but . . . she is a daughter’s daughter,” Ammamma said, patting Thatha’s shoulder. “And if Radha and Ashwin feel it is okay, who are we to say anything?”
Thatha nodded grudgingly but didn’t look at Nanna or Ma or me. This was the end, I realized. There would be no sneaking away to the pomegranate tree or taking walks with him. There wouldn’t be phone calls on the weekend where he would complain about the Indian politicians and how the corporation he had leased the mango orchards to was treating him.
“I hope that you will one day feel better about this,” I told Thatha. “I’m happy with this man. I thought that would be important to you.”
Thatha shook his head, defeated. He didn’t say anything. He was coming to terms with the fact that he was not master of my father’s house, that when push came to shove, Ma would always stand by her husband and they both would stand by me, regardless of my decision and their consequences.
“And at least,” Ammamma said with a broad shrug, “he is white, not some kallu.”
I froze.
Damn it!
Had I forgotten to mention Nick was black?
TO: PRIYA RAO
FROM: NICHOLAS COLLINS
SUBJECT: SORRY!
I AM SO SORRY FOR BEING OUT OF TOUCH ALL DAY YESTERDAY BUT THINGS HAVE BEEN A TOTAL MESS. I WENT TO LUNCH WITH STEVEN AND SUSAN TO THIS PUB IN THE CITY AND SOMEONE GOT AWAY WITH MY LEATHER BAG AND MY LEATHER JACKET. MY CELL PHONE WAS IN THE JACKET AND MY PALM ALONG WITH MY COMPUTER WAS IN MY BAG . . . I AM COMPLETELY FUCKED!
I THINK I HAVE SOME OLD STUFF ON YOUR LAPTOP SO ONCE YOU’RE BACK YOU CAN HAVE A LOOK AND LET ME KNOW. FOR NOW, I HAVE LOST ALL MY CONTACTS BUT AT LEAST I HAVE SOME CDS THAT I USED TO BACKUP MY HARD DRIVE TWO MONTHS AGO.
I SPOKE WITH FRANCES AND SHE TOLD ME YOU WERE WORRIED. I’M RIGHT HERE . . . A LITTLE LIGHT ON HI-TECH TOYS BUT RIGHT HERE.
HOW WAS EVERYTHING? ARE YOUR GRANDFATHER AND FATHER FEELING ANY BETTER?
I CAN’T WAIT FOR YOU TO COME BACK HOME. AND FRANCES TOLD ME THAT YOU AGREED TO GET MARRIED THIS FALL IN MEMPHIS? ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THAT? I THOUGHT YOUR HEART WAS SET ON MONTEREY OR CARMEL, SOMEWHERE BY THE OCEAN. AND SHE SAID THAT YOU WANT TO GET PREGNANT BY THE END OF THE YEAR? I’M ASSUMI
NG THAT A LOT OF THIS IS WISHFUL THINKING ON HER PART, IN ANY CASE, WE’LL TALK ABOUT IT WHEN YOU GET HOME.
OH AND I HOPE YOU HATED THAT GUY THEY TRIED TO HOOK YOU UP WITH.
I LOVE YOU AND I MISS YOU, SO COME HOME SOON
NICK
Epilogue Ready to Eat
The avakai arrived with an Indian who was coming to the Bay Area and whose parents Ma and Nanna knew. Raghunath Reddy didn’t seem to mind carrying the midsized glass jar. “One amongst the many,” he told me when he dropped the mango pickle off at my office, which was right next to his. “I have two more jars and one sari to deliver,” he added.
Nick thought the pickle was too spicy but continued to eat it without ghee or rice, which was as close to killing yourself as you could come with the hot-hot pickle.
My experience with India in the summer had left me with a better understanding of Nick and my relationship with him and my family. Nick was pleased that I didn’t end up marrying a nice Indian boy and assured me that he had never thought about leaving me because I couldn’t tell my family about him.
“We come from different cultures, I understand that,” he said. “I was frustrated at times but never enough to not want to be with you. This is who you are; you’d not be you if you didn’t care about your family.”
It was a relief to be back in the U.S. This was familiar territory and I didn’t feel like a cross between a delinquent teenager and a bad daughter anymore. That feeling had passed when Ma, at the Hyderabad International Airport, had waved good-bye with tears in her eyes.
I got an email from Nate with all the family gossip. Thatha was not speaking with Nanna anymore as the last time they talked, which was just a week ago, they ended up talking about me and almost came to blows. Ma was back to normal, bitching and moaning that I didn’t call enough and when I did, she bitched and moaned that I talked too long with Nanna and wasted my money.
“Write long letters, tell everything there, don’t waste money on phone calls,” she said. “Send email, send us a picture of Nick. We still haven’t seen him.”
Lata had ballooned up with her advancing pregnancy and couldn’t wait for the baby to get out. Despite Jayant’s insistence she refused to have an ultrasound done. When I called her, she told me that she thought it was another girl and that she was just fine with that. She even had a name picked out, Nithila, which meant “pearl” in Telugu. If it was a boy, she said, she would go with Abhay, “the one without fear.”
Sowmya was getting married on September 21 and was very sorry that Nick and I couldn’t make it to the wedding. She understood our predicament as our wedding date was set for October 3.
Nanna and Ma were coming and even Nate had decided to make an appearance.
“Your wedding and I won’t be there?” Nate had written in his email. “Are you trying to be funny or something? So, are you going to introduce me to some hot chicks?”
Apparently, Tara, the girl from Delhi Ma would have hated, proved to be unsuitable as she had kissed another boy at a cousin’s wedding in Madras.
“It was just a kiss, she said,” Nate wrote in yet another email where he told me the entire sob story and how much her betrayal had hurt him. “I go for lots of weddings, don’t catch me kissing anyone, just.” But at Nate’s age, relationships come and go with little pain and Tara had already faded into a forgotten yesterday.
Frances was planning our wedding with great pleasure. Nick and I’d caved in and had agreed to a Memphis wedding (a Hindu ceremony followed by a Baptist one) and a San Francisco reception.
It was going to be a small wedding, Frances told me, just three hundred of her closest family and friends and then we could add to that with our close friends and my family.
The invitations were to go out in a few days and I wanted to make sure I sent my parents a personal letter along with the invitation.
The envelope with the wedding invitation, a note from me, and a picture of Nick had been ready for days but I kept forgetting about it. It wasn’t deliberate. Finally, with just a month left to our wedding I dropped the letter off at my company mailroom. The mailroom guy assured me that the letter would reach its destination in five to seven days. . . .
THE MANGO SEASON
A Reader’s Guide
AMULYA MALLADI
A CONVERSATION WITH AMULYA MALLADI
Amulya Malladi and Priya Raghupathi, a business analyst from New Jersey,
have known each other for many, many years. They went to engineering school
together in India and have remained friends, through job changes, moves to
different countries, marriage, and children. Amulya borrowed Priya’s
name for the protagonist of The Mango Season, as well as some
of her emotions, though that is still murky.
Amulya Malladi: Well, this is vaguely uncomfortable, talking about something that must make sense after the conversation is over.
Priya Raghupathi: Oh, I don’t know, I’ll turn the floor over to you, as the phrase goes.
AM: Ah, but you have to talk about the book and ask me questions about it, because I already did my job. I wrote the book.
PR: Okay, let’s start with the names in The Mango Season. They were all very familiar.
AM: Names as in, the names of the people?
PR: Yes.
AM: Hmm, I did notice that . . . but later on. I know different writers write differently, but I need to have the title of the book in place. I can think about the book, even write a few pages but if I don’t have a title, I can’t move on. And the title just comes; I don’t work very hard at it. Same with names of characters, my fingers just type the names and I settle down with them. I don’t second-guess myself too much.
PR: We’ve heard all these names in our close circles.
AM: I think I borrowed a lot of names from people I knew. I didn’t realize that I was borrowing your name for Priya until later when I started to read the blurb of the book and saw that she went to Texas A&M and so did you. I did get some hints when Priya’s brother’s name started out to be your brother’s name but I changed it without thinking much. And maybe there were connections that came from our time together in Hyderabad, as Neelima was also the name of your roommate (and I didn’t realize that until right now). I did quote another classmate of ours, Sudhir, in the book and used his name. Ashwin, Priya’s father’s name, came from an ex-boyfriend’s brother’s name. Ah . . . the list is endless.
Even, Priya’s boyfriend’s name came from an unusual place. One of my husband’s friends had a baby boy and they didn’t give the kid a name until he was almost six months old. And I think I was working on the book when my husband told me they finally named their son Nicholas. And I used it.
I don’t “steal” names consciously. Later on I can draw lines and make sense of it, but right then and there . . . it’s just something that works out.
PR: You also have a lot of references to the Bay Area and Hyderabad, places you’ve been. Do you write only about places you’ve been to? Even in your first book, you wrote about Bhopal, a place you were familiar with.
AM: I think it’s easier to write about a place you’ve lived in. The research element definitely shrinks and you can write more confidently. I also feel I have an obligation to write about a place I’ve lived in. I have moved a lot in my life, as a child and even as an adult, and I just feel that it would be such a waste if I wouldn’t write about the places I have lived in.
My third book, Serving Crazy with Curry is set completely in the Bay Area, while the book after that is going to be set entirely in India in this small town by the Bay of Bengal that I was familiar with when I was a child. And now that I live in Denmark, I feel I must write a book set in Denmark with Danes. After all, I am so intimate with this society, not just because I live here, but also because I’m married to a Dane.
PR: And I also think because you’ve lived in these places you relate with them and don’t make up stuff.
AM: I don�
��t mind making up stuff, especially about a place. After all, I’m writing fiction, not a travel book. But I’d rather not make up stuff.
PR: I guess writers do write about places they know. Hemingway did go to Spain a lot when he wrote his books with that backdrop.
AM: Even Naipaul does that. He writes about Africa and Indian immigrants who live there. Amy Tan writes about American Chinese characters who live in China and the San Francisco Bay Area. Maybe writers like to revisit the places they have lived in, the experiences they have had there.
For me writing The Mango Season was like taking a trip to India. I’d forgotten how good chaat tastes, or how good ganna juice tastes and when I was writing about it I could all but smell that sugarcane juice. I miss sugarcane juice! I remember how you and I would get off the bus from college and eat roadside chaat and indulge in a tall glass of sugarcane juice. Our mothers were never too pleased about us eating and drinking that junk. Never stopped us, though, even when we fell sick because of it.
PR: Speaking of food, you know I found something similar between your book and Like Water for Chocolate, that you put recipes before every chapter, or almost every chapter.
AM: Well, food is an integral part of Indian society. When we go to visit my parents, my mother will ask us to sit and eat even before we have set our bags down. Whenever I’d go to visit relatives, I’d find myself spending a lot of time in the kitchen with someone or the other, watching them cook or helping them cook.
And I love to cook. So, even though Priya (not you, the book one) isn’t a great cook, I think she appreciates good food because she grew up with it. And I wanted to show the kitchen dynamics and politics as well. A lot of women in one kitchen, there has to be some masala there.
The Mango Season is nowhere as brilliant as Like Water for Chocolate, which is one of those books where the lines between reality and fantasy blur and the end result is a beautifully written story.
PR: Like Water for Chocolate is like a water painting with no defined lines. When you look at something, you think it’s sort of a tree but it could also be part of the mountain behind it.
The Mango Season Page 21