The Mango Season (11 page)

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 was 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.

Ma looked at me sternly and then looked at Sowmya. “Let them go. You go with your father, Priya.”

I raised my eyebrow and then looked at my father curiously. “What’s going on?”

“We need
kadipatha
.
Rasam
without
kadipatha
. . . is like . . . the States without the Statue of Liberty,”
Nanna
said. “Come on, Priya,” he urged as he slid his feet into Anand’s leather slippers, which were lying in the veranda shoe rack.

Before anyone could mount any more protest,
Nanna
and I were out of the house.

“Is it me or is that house very stuffy?”
Nanna
said, taking a deep breath.

“It’s probably you,” I said, and slipped my hand in his. “You think we can get
ganna
juice?”

“You will fall sick,”
Nanna
warned, “but if you don’t mind vomiting and having a stomach infection for the rest of your trip, definitely.”

“I won’t fall sick and I had
goli
soda today afternoon. Today morning I couldn’t eat the mangoes Ma wanted me to taste but I’ve gotten over that now. . . . hygiene is not an issue anymore,” I said.

“Let us hope that you don’t fall sick,”
Nanna
said, squeezing my hand.

“Why did Ma want us to go out?” I asked.

“I have no idea why your mother wants us to do what she wants us to do. Has been a mystery for twenty-nine years,”
Nanna
said. “Now, you can have your
ganna
juice but no ice.”

One of the less illicit things that I used to love doing and Ma warned me against was eating
chaat
, spicy food, from roadside vendors and drinking sugarcane juice. Sugarcane juice stands were scattered throughout the city of Hyderabad and came to life during the summer. Long stalks of sugarcane lay on a wooden stand on wheels next to a metal juicer. The juicer was two large wheels with spikes rolling against each other. The stalk of sugarcane along with a small piece of lemon and ginger would be squeezed through the twin wheels. The sugarcane vendor would run one stalk through and then roll the squished stalk and run it through the wheels again.

The juice would be poured into glasses that were probably not washed in clean water, ever, along with a lot of ice. It was my favorite thing to drink after a long day at college. Usually the sugarcane stands and
chaat
stands were lined up next to bus stops. So while I waited for my bus, I would shell out the two rupees it used to take to get
ganna
juice. I always asked the vendor to not put ice in my juice. I figured that way I would get more juice and I would not have to speculate where the ice came from. The rumor was that the vendor probably got the ice from a morgue.

“Okay, no ice,” I conceded. “Any news from Nate?”

“No, Nate never has any news,”
Nanna
said. “He may be back tomorrow but I doubt he will come here. You know he can’t stand Lata or Jayant.”

I shrugged.

“I think Nate has a girlfriend,”
Nanna
continued and I stopped walking. “What?”
Nanna
asked looking at me. “Let us walk, we have to get
kadipatha.
”

I sighed.

“So you think Nate has a girlfriend,” I said, playing along with him.

“Has he said anything about her to you?”
Nanna
asked, as we reached the small vegetable store at the end of the street from
Thatha’s
house.

I looked at the various vegetables sagging in their small straw baskets at the end of the day and got a bunch of
kadipatha
. A few people milled around the baskets, picking up vegetables for the last meal of the day.

“They look half dead,” I said about the coriander my father had in his hand.

“They will do,”
Nanna
said, and put the
kadipatha
and coriander in front of the vendor and paid the ten rupees they cost from his old brown leather purse.

“You still have that purse?” I asked. “You’re not using the one I sent for your birthday last year?”

“Nate took that,”
Nanna
said. “And I am fine with this. So . . . did Nate say anything . . . about his girlfriend?”

“No,” I lied smoothly. “Why?”

“Well, we would like Nate and . . . you . . . all our children, to understand that we are open to hearing the truth,”
Nanna
said, subtle as the chili powder in Ma’s pickles.

“Really?” I said, as we walked toward a sugarcane juice stand close to the vegetable store.

“So . . . do you have a boyfriend?”
Nanna
asked.

I ignored his question.

The light from the setting sun was still illuminating the skies; it wouldn’t get dark for a while and in the summers it never really got pitch dark. The sky always looked a little blue, even in the dead of the night.

“
Amma
, want one?” the sugarcane juice vendor asked, holding a glass filled with frothy greenish brown juice.

“No, no,”
Nanna
said. “No ice. Two glasses and wash them properly.”

As if washing the glasses would make any difference whatsoever to whatever germs and bacteria we would ingest with the juice. I knew I shouldn’t, but it was too tempting, just like the
goli
soda had been. I could taste the sweetness of the juice; the long-forgotten memories came rushing back to my taste buds and the desire to take just one sip became irresistible.

“More ginger,” I told the vendor, as he went about his business.

“So, do you?”
Nanna
asked again.

“Do I what?” I evaded on purpose.

Nanna
made an irritated sound.

“Is that why Ma asked me to go with you?” I questioned bluntly.

“Don’t change the subject,”
Nanna
said. “Tell us if you have a boyfriend. If you do, we will accept whatever . . . I mean as long as . . . you know . . . he has to be suitable.”

“And what if he is, say . . . a
sardar
?”

“A
sardar
?”
Nanna
asked, the terror in his voice palpable. “Come on, Priya, have a heart.”

I sighed. A Sikh would at least be Indian.

“So you wouldn’t accept
any
boyfriend.”

“We would, we would,”
Nanna
said hurriedly. “I mean . . . you should at least tell us why you are stalling. You are twenty-seven and we would like to see you married. Play with some grandchildren.”

Nanna
was a sucker for children. When he built the house they were living in, he insisted that in all the bathrooms the latch on the outside should be slightly lower so that his grandchildren would be able to open the bathroom door to go inside and the latch on the inside should be slightly higher, so that the children would not be able to lock themselves in.

He had also purchased a beautiful wooden rocking chair. “Babies cry and if you rock them they stop crying and go to sleep,” he would say.

He had been waiting for grandchildren for as long as I could remember and I felt sorry for him and guilty because children had not figured in my plans yet. I knew I would have children someday and I wanted to have children someday, but it was one of those “yeah, I also want to go to space” kind of thing you reserved for the indeterminate future.