Serving Crazy with Curry

by Amulya Malladi

  Dr. Berkley nodded sympathetically.

  “I feel like Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. You know? Of all the bars and et cetera, et cetera in the world, she walks into mine? I had so many choices, so many other assholes to sleep with, and …” Devi was once again at a loss of words.

  “Would you want to pursue a relationship with him?”

  Devi groaned. “I can't even think about that. I'm so nervous about telling my parents, my grandmother about this. Though I have to say, Shobha took it… well, she didn't react the way I'd thought she would.”

  “But you still told her,” Dr. Berkley pointed out.

  “I had to,” Devi said. “I had no choice.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn't want her not to know,” Devi said, trying to explain. “I couldn't let her get divorced without at least knowing who Girish cheated on her with. I thought she'd go berserk, instead she said she knew. She knew all along. I wish she'd gone berserk. She said she didn't know how she felt about this. I'm scared that when she does know how she feels, she's going to hate me.”

  Guilt was a constant companion. There was a lot of guilt, as if purchased in wholesale to save money. There was guilt for having not spoken for days, for having slept with Girish, for having gotten pregnant, for having lost the baby, for not having told anyone about the baby or losing it, for … it was like a huge mountain, resting on her head.

  “I thought that once I started talking everything would become easy and it would all be clear,” Devi told Dr. Berkley.

  “And it isn't like that?” Dr. Berkley asked.

  Devi shook her head. “No, it's all the same, now I can just tell everyone how much it is the same.”

  Vasu figured it out. It wasn't very hard if you'd been watching carefully. Saroj hadn't and Vasu decided to leave the woman in her delusional world as they both chopped tomatoes for the tomato pickle, one of Avi's favorites. Vasu was comforted that Saroj and Avi had talked about their problems and were trying to solve them.

  “I can't believe Girish had an affair,” Saroj announced, unable, obviously, to comprehend what had taken place right under her nose.

  “Some things just happen,” Vasu said carefully. Knowing the truth was a burden. She had to now be extra careful to ensure that Saroj didn't trip on it as she had.

  Saroj made a clicking sound with her tongue and sat down on one of the dining chairs. She was uneasy, her impatience obvious. It was difficult to see her daughters’ lives fall apart. Vasu knew because it was just as difficult to see her granddaughters’ lives fall apart. Technically both Shobha and Devi were in a better place, but at their age one expected them to be settled with lives of their own, not coming home to Mama and Daddy after they either try to kill themselves and/or lose their jobs and leave their adulterous husbands.

  Devi was with her doctor. Avi had taken her, as Vasu was feeling“uneasy.” Saroj immediately pounced on that word and demanded that Vasu see a doctor. But at her age, what choice did she have but to feel uneasy? She was over seventy. She had a fragile heart. She had lost the man she loved, and her favorite granddaughter had attempted suicide. Vasu would've wondered what was wrong with her if she weren't feeling uneasy. At this point, when life was behind her, she knew what lay ahead: more uneasiness.

  “And Shobha is going to be a divorcee. Your influence, Mummy,” Saroj declared as she ran her sharp knife through the ripe and lush tomato.

  Vasu smiled. “Your father was nothing like Girish. He was not very well balanced. Sweet one minute, a monster the next.”

  “I don't remember him being like that,” Saroj said, as always leaping to her forgotten father's defense.

  “You don't remember anything,” Vasu said teasingly. “That doesn't mean none of it is true.”

  “I was five years old, Mummy, not an infant,” Saroj told her.

  Vasu wiped her hand, which had become wet from the tomatoes, on her light gray cotton sari's pallu. “Do you remember the night we spent in Captain Faizal's house?”

  “They had a yellow cat,” Saroj said, remembering. “And a cuckoo clock.”

  She remembers the cuckoo clock but doesn't remember why we had to spend the night there, Vasu thought in amusement. The human brain was an amazing sieve. Certain memories stayed, others evaporated.

  “And they had no children,” Saroj said, piling all the tomatoes into the blender.

  “Yes,” Vasu said. “Do you remember why we stayed the night there?”

  Saroj added chili powder to the tomatoes in the blender, along with a big spoon of pureed tamarind. She whizzed the blender as she thought about it, her forehead creased. She stopped the blender and shook her head.

  “No. Why did we stay there that night?” Saroj asked.

  Vasu opened her mouth to tell her but decided against it. What would the point be? Saroj wouldn't believe and even if she did, what would it achieve? If she had good memories of her father, then so be it. All her life Vasu struggled with anger, even jealousy that Saroj should think nicely of Ramakant. Why? The man was a bad husband, a terrible father, didn't earn a proper living, slapped her around, yet her own daughter claimed she loved him, remembered him fondly.

  “Do you remember the doll with the blue eyes that he got for me when he went to Calcutta?” Saroj said, her eyes brightening. “I called her Lathika. I wonder what happened to the doll.”

  “Still in storage,” Vasu said. “When you come to India, you can look through the boxes in the spare bedroom. They are full of your … our old things.”

  “I should have brought them along,” Saroj said and sighed. She turned the gas stove on and put a wok on the fire. It was an old wok, one she had brought along with her all those years ago when she'd moved from India. Even though she'd managed to bring many things along, she'd left just as many behind. “I should have given that doll to Devi and Shobha to play with when they were kids.”

  “You can save it for your grandchildren,” Vasu said.

  Saroj smacked her lips disapprovingly and poured peanut oil into the wok. “What grandchildren, Mummy? Shobha can't have babies and Devi… well…”

  “Devi will have children and who knows, Shobha may adopt,” Vasu told her, raising her voice to be heard over the sizzle of the mustard and fenugreek seeds Saroj dropped into the hot oil.

  “How can an adopted child be our own?” Saroj asked as she stirred the seeds so that they didn't burn. “Not our blood, not ours at all.”

  Vasu didn't argue. Saroj was set in her ways and at fifty-three years of age, it was too late to change her.

  “But if she adopts, then, a baby is a baby, right, Mummy?” Saroj said and poured the oil and fried seeds into the tomato mixture. “And we'll love the baby. Hard not to love babies.”

  As Saroj prattled on about babies and booties, mixing together all the ingredients of the tomato pickle, Vasu tried to ignore the pressure building inside her. She had to talk to everyone tonight, she decided, she had to go back to India. If the time to go had come, she wanted to go in India, not here in “the white pit” as Saroj called it.

  “Was it good, Devi?” Avi asked as he drove them both back from Dr. Berkley's office. “Does it help at all?”

  Devi nodded and then realized that she could speak again, so she said, “Yes.”

  After having not spoken for almost four weeks, it was hard to speak, to use her voice again. It was almost tempting to go back to the days of no words.

  “So, what are we having for dinner?” Avi asked, unsure of what to say to his daughter.

  “Mama is on a cooking rampage. Dosas tonight with sambhar and fresh tomato pickle,” Devi told him.

  “She's cooking like there is no tomorrow,” Avi agreed.

  “Just like I was,” Devi said and grinned. “I miss the cooking, but Mama lets me help, so that helps.”

  Avi smiled and nodded.

  “I couldn't believe it. When Saroj called and told me, I couldn't believe it,” he said after a short silence.

  Devi didn't
feign ignorance; she knew what her father was talking about. He hadn't said anything, hadn't talked about the “incident,” until now.

  “I couldn't understand why you'd want to …” His words broke away as he tried to explain his confusion. “But I understand the feeling.”

  “You do?” Devi asked, surprised.

  “Of course I do,” Avi said and raised his prosthetic arm. “When I woke up without the arm, I was angry, shocked, disoriented. I yelled at the doctor. I'd rather have died. My entire battalion was dead, my commanding officer was dead, my friends were dead. I was alive … with no arm.”

  “You tried to kill yourself?” Devi asked, shocked.

  Avi sighed and then shook his head. “Didn't have the guts. But I did try to drink myself to death. I even thought about getting a gun from Quarter Guard and shooting myself dead. I thought about driving into a wall. I thought about jumping off a cliff. Plenty of those in the Himalayas.”

  “But you didn't,” Devi pointed out, feeling small and insignificant in front of her father. He'd lost so much, an arm, all his friends, and he'd still managed to live while she'd given up when she had so much to live for.

  “No, I didn't, because Saroj came inside my room and beat the bad thoughts away,” he said with a small smile. “I was lucky that she came when she did.”

  “And she was lucky that she could pull you out of that room,” Devi said.

  “Yeah, we both got damn lucky,” Avi said with a big grin.

  They drove silently for a while and then Avi stopped the car at a red light. He turned to look at Devi.

  “Do you have plans for the future?” he asked.

  Devi laughed. “Girish was asking me the same thing a few days ago.”

  “That son of a bitch,” Avi said and then slammed his hand on the steering wheel.

  “Daddy!”

  “He cheats on my little girl? And then … how dare he?” Avi said angrily and slammed his foot on the accelerator as the light changed.

  “You told Shobha that you supported her,” Devi reminded him.

  “Of course I support her,” Avi said. “They weren't happy, I know that, but still, he cheats on her? The bastard!”

  Devi turned her head to look out of the window. She leaned over and made a wet patch with her breath on it.

  “He had the decency to call me and apologize. Why apologize to me? It wasn't my marriage he fucked around with,” Avi said, his language veering from the straight and narrow.

  Devi made a mark on the wet patch with her forefinger.

  “Has Shobha talked to you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Devi said and looked up from the wet patch. “She seems relieved about the divorce. They were so unhappy together. It wasn't meant to be, Daddy.”

  “I know.” Avi sighed as he slid the Jeep into his driveway. “Still, divorce? That's a big deal for me. I wanted my children happy.”

  “I'm happy,” Devi offered brightly.

  Avi looked at her for a moment and then nodded. And it makes me very happy to hear that.”

  Devi smiled and then took a deep breath before she got ready to ask her father for help.

  “I need a favor, Daddy.”

  Just a few months ago she'd have bitten her tongue off rather than say those words. All her life she had wanted to be a great career woman without her father's help, without anyone's help. She wanted to be at level with her father without any assistance from him. Now she knew that this was not a competition. She didn't have to one-up her daddy. She had to realize what made her happy and pursue it.

  Anything,” Avi said without hesitation.

  “I need you to put me through school again,” Devi said.

  Avi raised both his eyebrows.

  “I'm looking into going to a culinary school,” she told him, and he nodded appreciatively. “I think I should give that a shot.”

  “I say go for it.”

  “Really?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Thanks, Daddy,” Devi said and then threw her arms around her father over the gear shift and the controls of the Jeep.

  mama's recipe

  dosa with sambhar

  The day I decided my future

  Mama refused to let me make the dosas. I suggested that it would be more fun to try making savory crepes to go with the sambhar and pickle but she vetoed the idea.

  She took the overnight-soaked rice and urad dal and ground them to a paste in the food processor. Then she added some baking soda and salt

  to the mixture and let it sit for a while. She took the mixture, which had now swelled a little, and stirred it thoroughly.

  Taking a ladleful of the dough, she spread it rather expertly on a hot cast-iron pan and let it cook. No one, and I mean no one, can made dosas as paper-thin as Mama can. It's the way she does it. A ladleful goes on the pan and then she uses the round base of the ladle to spread the mixture in a circle.

  For the sambhar, Mama cooked thoor dal with salt in the pressure cooker. In a separate saucepan, she fried mustard seeds along with asafetida and turmeric. She added green beans, pearl onions, tomatoes, and sweet potatoes to the oil and fried them for a while. She then poured in a mixture of tamarind water with sambhar powder (which Mama obviously made at home by frying a lot of whole spices together and then grinding them). Afler that she added the cooked dal plus some water and let it all simmer for a while.

  My memories of Sunday mornings of eating hot dosas with sambhar and pickle are vivid. I'm glad that I'm living here again so that I can learn to appreciate the one thing that I never did learn to do before: Mama's impeccable south Indian cooking.

  For Once, Then, Something

  Shobha woke up early. A little too early. But once she was awake she couldn't go back to sleep. She watched the alarm clock in her old childhood room change from two AM to three AM and then to four AM. Tired of watching the flicker of the red LCDs, she decided to give up on trying to sleep and got out of bed. Her room, she thought as she turned the bedside lamp on.

  This was where she'd grown up. They had moved to the house when Shobha was eight years old. Saroj didn't want to give the girls separate rooms; she worried that they'd get scared at night. Devi said she wouldn't mind sharing a room but Shobha was eight, belligerent, and wanted her own room. And she got it two years later, after long fights, arguments, and tantrums. Even after Shobha left for college, Saroj didn't change the room, not really. She'd added a few things here and there but the room was the same, the single bed was still uncomfortable and her black-and-white posters of Humphrey Bogart (a crush in her teens) and Lauren Bacall were still where she'd left them.

  She'd dreamed of MIT and Harvard and big business schools in this room. But she'd ended up at Cal getting an engineering degree and when it came time to go to business school, she went back to Cal. It was in the Bay Area and convenient. Even now she regretted not getting into MIT for her undergrad. It had been a slam to the ego, such a failure, but she'd covered it up by convincing herself that she'd always wanted to go to Cal anyway. It was closer to home, it was in a familiar area, and it was a very good school.

  It was a warm night, even though it was almost August. Fall had threatened to come but now didn't seem imminent; still, in California one didn't have to worry or wait for the seasons. Maybe she needed to move, she wondered seriously. She lived too close to her parents, her childhood. Maybe she needed to move to someplace where the seasons changed, the weather altered. Spring and summer were looked forward to after the chill of winter and the quiet cool of the fall was welcomed after the heat of the summer. Even as she thought it, she knew she couldn't leave. She was a Californian, she couldn't live anywhere else. She could probably go on vacation, on a project, but she would always live here. And there were advantages to living near her parents’ home. Whenever she got fired and divorced again she knew she'd have a place to crash.

  When Shobha came to the living room, her hair mussed, her eyes a little sleepy, she found Avi sitting on the sofa watching t
elevision. The sound was muted and a black-and-white movie was unfolding.

  “So you figured out how to whistle yet?” Shobha asked as she slid onto the sofa next to her father.

  “Yep, you put your lips together and blow,” Avi said, trying to imitate Lauren Bacall.

  “You can't watch Humphrey Bogart with the sound turned off,” Shobha admonished him. “Can you imagine just reading here's looking at you, kid from the closed captioning and not hearing Bogie actually say it?”

  Avi shrugged. “I didn't want to wake up Vasu just because I couldn't sleep,” he said, inclining his head toward the adjoining guest room.

  “G'ma sleeps like a log,” Shobha said. “Once I tried to wake her up because I had a bad dream and wanted to sleep with her. I shook her and called out to her, nothing, she was dead to the world.”

  “When was this?”

  “Ah … we were visiting her in Hyderabad. You and Mummy had gone for some wedding. The muhurat was at some ungodly hour, two in the morning I think,” Shobha said, remembering. “I think it was Prabhat Uncle's wedding.”

  “Vasu's grown old now, she doesn't sleep that well anymore,” Avi said. And Prabhat didn't get married in India. He got married in New York. Remember that horrible trip? We missed the connecting flight in Chicago—”

  “—and had to spend the night at the airport.” Shobha nodded. “Mama was not a happy camper.”

  “And then the bastard got divorced seven years later,” Avi said and then made a sound. “I'm sorry.”

  “What? Now you can't say the words suicide and divorce in front of your daughters?” Shobha demanded sarcastically.

  Avi laughed self-consciously. “I hurt for you.”

  “Don't,” Shobha told him. “I'm happy that we're apart. It's better this way. I can start living my own life, alone, and he can start living his. We were never meant to be married. We never got along, always argued. We got married but never became a couple.”

  “Still, I feel responsible,” Avi said. “I should've fought harder with your mother and you. After living all your life here in America you're simply not suited for arranged marriage and neither was he.”