Authors: Amulya Malladi
Tags: #Fiction, #Contemporary Women, #Literary, #Cultural Heritage, #General
“
Nanna
, I’ll marry when I’m ready,” I said, fearful now of telling him anything about Nick. If a
sardar
was going to give him heart palpitations, an American would give him a seizure.
“But you have to be ready sometime, Priya,”
Nanna
said wearily. He gave the sugarcane juice vendor fifteen rupees and picked up his glass of frothy juice.
I tentatively sipped mine and sighed in pleasure. “This is what I really miss. This and
chaat
.”
Nanna
drank his juice in two gulps and set his glass down. “We are not going to eat any
chaat
. Sowmya is making a nice dinner. Your favorite, mango
pappu
.”
I finished my
ganna
juice slowly, savoring the taste through the last sip. As we started to walk back I quietly waited for
Nanna
to say whatever else he had to tell me before we reached
Thatha’s
house.
“We are staying here tomorrow. I am taking the day off,” he said over the sound of honking cars, sidestepping trash on the pavement.
“I know, I brought a change of clothes. I’m planning to sleep on the terrace tonight like Nate and I used to when we were kids,” I said.
Nanna
held my hand tightly in one hand and a plastic bag with the coriander and curry leaves hung from the other.
“Do you remember Mahadevan Uncle?”
Mahadevan Uncle is one of
Nanna’s
friends. In India, I have no idea why, but all of my parents’ friends are called uncle and auntie. For the longest time I had trouble calling Frances, Nick’s mother, by her name because she was so much older than I and I felt I was being disrespectful calling her by her first name.
“Sure, I remember Mahadevan Uncle. He has two sons, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, both married,”
Nanna
said, and then crushed my hand some more. “Mahadevan Uncle has a friend. His name is . . . well, everyone calls him Rice Sarma.”
“Rice? Why?”
“He works at ICRISAT and he has done some big-time research in rice. Has won some major awards; the President gave him one just last year,”
Nanna
continued. “Good people.”
“Hmm.” I refrained from saying more. I could see where this was going.
“Rice Sarma has a son,”
Nanna
said, and then waited for a while to see how I would respond. When I didn’t say anything, he continued. “His name his Adarsh. We saw his pictures. Good-looking boy. Lives in Dallas. Works for Nortel Networks. Is it a good company?”
“Yes,” I said tightly.
“He is a manager there,”
Nanna
said. “He did his engineering in BITS Pilani.”
BITS Pilani was a very good school for engineering in India and I could see my father was laying it on thick. Producing the perfect groom for me. My heart sank. How was I going to get out of this one without telling him about Nick? How could I now not tell him about Nick?
“Oh.”
“And he did his master’s at MIT and has an MBA from Stanford,”
Nanna
said, as he measured my facial expression for results.
“Impressive,” I said. Good God, what next? Would he tell me that the man was six feet two and looked like Adonis?
“He is six feet two inches tall,”
Nanna
continued as if on cue. “Your mother thinks he looks like that movie star Venkatesh.”
Venkatesh was a Telugu film actor I used to be fond of seven years ago. I hadn’t seen a movie of his since I left India, but I was impressed that Ma was using him as bait.
“So what?” I pretended ignorance.
“We showed him your photo—”
“You did what?” I extricated my hand from his and faced him. We had reached
Thatha’s
gate and we stood there, I angry, he contrite.
“Well, what did you want us to do? Wait until you are fifty to get you married?”
Nanna
went on the offensive even as his face remained defensive.
“He seems perfect. Maybe Ma should marry him,” I quipped.
Nanna
opened the gate. “He is here on vacation. Tomorrow afternoon, they will be coming here, at
Thatha’s
house for tea.”
I stared at my father. “You are not putting me through one of those cattle-seeing ceremonies.”
“You are
not
cattle and stop overreacting.”
“Overreacting? His family will show up . . . that’s why Ma packed my silk blouses. Damn it,
Nanna
, you’ve known all along. This isn’t news. You’ve known since I got here.” I was appalled that my father had joined my mother in tricking me.
“Don’t use words like
damn
,”
Nanna
said, and shrugged. “Like I said, we can’t . . .
won’t
wait till you are fifty.”
“I
won’t
sit there and be watched by him and his family like I’m a cow for sale,” I said sharply.
“It won’t be like that, Priya Ma,” my father tried to console.
I brushed past him and marched into the house. I flung my straw slippers from my feet onto the veranda and went inside the hall.
I barely acknowledged Jayant who had arrived while my father was sticking the knife in my back.
“I’m not going to be here tomorrow afternoon,” I told my mother. She was sitting on the floor, leaning on a cushion, and I towered over her, my hands at my waist.
“You will be here,” Ma said without even flinching. “None of these shenanigans will work with me. Your father will put up with this—”
“Really? What will you do if I leave tomorrow afternoon when
Nanna’s
friend’s friend and his oh-so-perfect-son arrive?” I demanded.
“Priya,”
Thatha
said sternly. “Calm down and don’t yell in my house. Why don’t you go help Sowmya in the kitchen?”
I almost raged at him but bit my tongue back. This was not the time to get on the feminist soapbox.
I wanted, I so very much wanted, to stay and fight but I didn’t want to behave like a child and prove their point that they didn’t think I could take care of myself, find my own husband.
“You should’ve at least asked me before you invited them,” I told Ma in a soft voice. She shrugged again and looked away from me.
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell Ma that this was why it was so hard to respect her. Respect was a two-way street and if I didn’t get any, I couldn’t give her any either. Feeling utterly betrayed by both my parents and my grandparents—my entire family—I walked out of the hall.
In the kitchen, Sowmya was soaking lentils in water for the mango pappu.
“Can I help?” I asked sourly, and she smiled gamely.
“Peel the mangoes, will you? I have to cut potatoes for the curry,” she said, handing me a peeling knife and two green mangoes.
I stood on one side of the sink and she on the other as we worked on our respective vegetables.
“They’ve set up a
pelli-chupulu
for me,” I said bitterly.
Sowmya nodded. “Radha
Akka
told us when you went to the vegetable store.”
“How can they?”
“Come on, he sounds perfect. I have someone coming tomorrow evening and he is a lecturer in a private college and looks like Brahmanandam, not Venkatesh,” Sowmya said with a broad grin.
Brahmanandam was a comedian in the Telugu film industry. He made people laugh but didn’t have anything going for him in the physical attributes department.
“That’s not the point,” I said.
“You think that you are too good for a
pelli-chupulu
and only people who look like me have to go through it?” she asked quietly, and my eyes flew wide open, denial dancing on my tongue ready to pour out.
But she was right. That was exactly what I thought.
I wanted to make an excuse, a good one, and that was when it slipped out; I was busy trying to make Sowmya feel better about her several
pelli-chupulus
and my belief that I was much better than she was.
“I have a boyfriend . . . a fiancé,” I blurted out.
“What?” The potato Sowmya was holding rolled away from her into the sink. She grabbed it and stared at me through her nine-inch glasses.
“Yes,” I said. I had stepped in it with one foot so I might as well dip the other one in. “He’s American.”
“Your father will kill you and, if not, your
Thatha
will,” Sowmya said as she clutched the knife she was using to peel potatoes against her chest. “When . . . how . . . ? Priya? What were you thinking?”
“He’s a nice guy. I love him,” I said and it sounded like such a line, even to me. “I didn’t plan it.” Another line. “It just happened.” I felt like I was tripping over clichés, one after the other.
“No, Priya. You can’t do this to us. Anand . . . that was bad enough, but this, this will destroy your
Thatha
and your father,” Sowmya said.
“What do you want me to do? Dump Nick to marry some guy my parents think is good for me?” I demanded.
“Yes,” Sowmya said firmly. “That is our way.”
“Oh, screw our way,” I said, and threw a raw mango on the counter.
“What will you do?” Sowmya asked, picking up the mango I had thrown and checking to see if it was bruised.
“I don’t know,” I confessed and had an overwhelming desire to cry.
TO: NICHOLAS COLLINS
YOU WON’T BELIEVE THIS BUT SOME NICE INDIAN BOY IS COMING OVER TOMORROW AFTERNOON TO “SEE ME.” BLOODY HELL! HOW DARE MY PARENTS DO THIS TO ME, NICK? THIS IS HUMILIATING. THEY EXPECT ME TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS BARBARIC RITUAL OF ALLOWING SOME MAN TO COME AND ASSESS MY WORTHINESS AS A WIFE.
WHAT HURTS IS THAT MY FATHER IS IN ON IT, TOO. I EXPECTED THIS FROM MY MOTHER, BUT NANNA . . . HE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ON MY SIDE.
I AM GOING TO TRY AND CALL YOU AS SOON AS I CAN. BUT DON’T WORRY ABOUT ANYTHING. IT IS JUST . . . DAMN THEM. I HAVE NEVER BEEN THIS ANGRY BEFORE. I HAVE TO TELL THEM ABOUT YOU NOW, BEFORE THEY PUT ME IN A SPOT WITH THIS IDIOT INDIAN BOY THEY HAVE DECIDED IS JUST PERFECT FOR ME.
I WISH I WASN’T HERE. I WISH I WERE BACK HOME. I WISH MY PARENTS CARED MORE ABOUT ME THAN WHAT THE NEIGHBORS WILL THINK.
PRIYA
TO: PRIYA RAO
SWEETHEART, I AM SO SORRY. BUT YOU WERE EXPECTING THIS, WEREN’T YOU?
I DON’T MEAN TO PATRONIZE (AND YOU SOUND SLIGHTLY MELODRAMATIC!), BUT I’M SURE YOUR PARENTS CARE MORE ABOUT YOU THAN WHAT THE NEIGHBORS THINK. REGARDING YOUR FATHER, GIVE HIM A BREAK. HE WANTS TO SEE HIS DAUGHTER MARRIED AND HE WANTS HER TO GIVE HIM SOME GRANDKIDS. HE DOESN’T KNOW YOU’RE ENGAGED TO A HANDSOME AMERICAN, SO HE’S TRYING TO DO HIS BEST.
I KNOW IT’S HARD TO TELL YOUR FAMILY SOMETHING YOU KNOW FOR SURE THEY DON’T WANT TO HEAR AND IF IT’S TOO MUCH PRESSURE, DON’T. JUST DON’T MARRY SOME INDIAN GUY WHILE I WAIT HERE TWIDDLING MY THUMBS. PLEASE? WE HAVE A JOINT MORTGAGE! IN SILICON VALLEY THAT’S AS SOLID AS A MARRIAGE!!!
IT’S OKAY IF YOU DON’T WANT TO TELL THEM ABOUT US. JUST RELAX. I DON’T WANT YOU TO HAVE AN EMBOLISM BECAUSE OF ALL THIS STRESS. DO WHAT YOU’RE COMFORTABLE WITH.
TAKE CARE, SWEETHEART, AND CALL ME.
NICK
Confessions and Lies
Anand was one my favorite relatives. He was five years older than I and we’d spent many summers together in Thatha’s brother’s house in our village near Kavali.
The last summer we spent there had been quite an adventure.
Thatha’s
brother, who we called
Kathalu-Thatha
, had been trying to track down the thief who was stealing from his mango orchard and we were convinced that we could be just as good as writer Enid Blyton’s Famous Five heroes. Anand was thirteen, Sowmya eleven, and I was all of eight years old; we thought we made a dashing Thrilling Three.
Thatha’s brother told the best stories and that was why we called him Stories-Grandpa,
Kathalu-Thatha
. We would all gather around a fire and
Kathalu-Thatha
would tell us about the ghost who lived in the old well in the middle of his sugarcane field, the old-old man who still lived in the shack by the stream at the end of the village and the tigers that would come out only in the night to take away little naughty children. Some stories scared us, others made us laugh, but all of them brought us closer to
Kathalu-Thatha
. My memories of sitting by the fire, sipping hot sweet milk from silver tumblers while
Kathalu-Thatha
wove tall tales that were rich, still had the ability to brighten my day.
Anand gave me a hug as soon as he saw me. “You took too long, Priya,” he said. “And now you are all grown up.”
“All grown up and single,” Ma muttered from behind us. “And making
nakhras
, throwing tantrums like a spoiled brat.”
I sighed.
“Let it be,
Akka
,” Sowmya said, wrapping the edge of her sari around her waist. “Why don’t both of you go and bring the mangoes downstairs while I get Anand’s tea ready?”
It was a good escape route—neither Anand nor I needed to be told twice.
“I hear a boy is coming to see you tomorrow,” Anand said, as we went up the stairs. “Two boys in one day. . . . My mother must be in heaven.”
“Yup,” I said sarcastically, “one for me and one for Sowmya. Just a regular meat market.”
“Oh, it won’t be so bad,” Anand said, and patted my shoulder.
“And so says the man who fell in love,
eloped,
and married,” I pointed out. “And there is
big
news as well.”
Anand smiled from ear to ear. “I can’t believe it. Can you believe it? I am going to be a father?”
I shook my head and laughed. No, I couldn’t believe the Anand who had spent an entire night atop a mango tree waiting for
Kathalu-Thatha’s
mango orchard thief to make an appearance was now old enough to be a father.
“I was thinking about our last summer at
Kathalu-Thatha’s
house,” I said, as we started folding the muslin cloth on which the now dried and wrinkled mangoes lay.
“Oh yes,” Anand said, rubbing a scar over his left eye. “
Amma
refused to ever let me go there again.”
It had been late in the night. Sowmya and I kept guard at the end of the orchard, looking for the thief. We’d sneaked out of the house, adamant at finding the thief to impress
Kathalu-Thatha
. Sowmya had been reluctant, but Anand and I had been persistent. Unable to bow out in the face of our enthusiasm, Sowmya came along, her forehead wrinkled in a worried frown.
Anand was on sentry duty atop a mango tree along with a steel flashlight. “I will have a better view,” he said.
It surprised all of us when the thief turned out to be a monkey who freaked out when Anand flashed a light on its face and attacked him. Anand fell from the tree and hit his head on a stone, its sharp edge just missing his left eye.
Sowmya and I, sick with worry, ended up screaming for help like the girls we were.
We were all reprimanded the next morning and unfortunately that had been the last time we had gone to the orchard on vacation.
Kathalu-Thatha
, did not make it through the coming winter and
Thatha,
his only next of kin, sold the family house and leased the orchard to some jam and juice company.
After we folded the two muslin clothes with the mangoes, Anand looked around stealthily and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “Don’t tell anyone,” he said. “If
Nanna
found out . . . he will kill me.”
Here was a grown man, about to become a father, who was still afraid of his father.
I shook my head. “Just don’t smoke around Neelima.”
“Of course,” Anand said, and sat down on the cement floor. He leaned against the cement balustrade and sighed. “I have been waiting all day for this.”
“Neelima is not the happiest person in the world,” I told him bluntly. “You keep bringing her here and they’re all so mean to her.”
“They are just getting to know her. . . . You know how they are when someone new comes in. Remember how both my
Amma
and your
Amma
made Lata’s life miserable when she and Jayant
Anna
got married?” Anand said.
“Lata is very different from Neelima,” I reminded him. “Neelima feels really bad, Anand.”
“She would tell me if she felt bad,” Anand said, looking up at the sky. “See the
Saptarishi
?” he asked, pointing at the constellation of seven stars shaped like a question mark. “For the longest time I couldn’t see Arundhati,” he said.
The
Saptarishi
were the seven
Maharishis
, great holy men, who were created by the vision of Lord Brahma. They were learned beings to whom the
Vedas
had been revealed and they represented the seven powers of life and consciousness in all of God’s creation. The seven
rishis
were married to very nice-looking women and once when they were performing a
yajna
, Agni, the God of Fire, saw the women and immediately fell in lust with them. Agni’s then-girlfriend, Svaha, wanted to please her lover and took the form of all the
rishis
’ wives in bed. She could, however, take the form of only six of the wives. Arundhati was such a true wife that Svaha, no matter how hard she tried, couldn’t change her body to look like Arundhati. Thanks to all this shape-shifting and sex, Svaha got pregnant, and the rumor that traveled around the Godly circles was that one of the six
Maharishis
’ wives had a baby with Agni. All the
rishis
, except for Vashishtha, who was married to his true wife, Arundhati, kicked their wives out for being not-so-true wives.
In the
Saptarishi
constellation of stars, the last but one star at the bottom, which is Vashishtha, has a small star revolving around it, and that is Arundhati. The myth is that if you cannot see Arundhati, you will have bad luck . . . lots of it.
“And now you can see her?” I asked, avoiding looking up to find out if I could see Arundhati. It was a silly superstition, but I didn’t want to put it to test.
“Not really,” Anand said, “but I am getting there. Neelima will adjust, Priya.” He took a deep puff and blew out small rings.
I put a finger through one dissolving ring of smoke. “You should tell
Ammamma
and Lata and the rest of them to stop blaming her for marrying you.”
“It is not something you should
have
to tell your own family,” Anand said bitterly. “And I can’t just walk up and tell them . . . can I?”
“Of course you can,” I said. “Be a man, Anand, stand up for your wife. Or is
Thatha
still controlling you like a puppeteer?”
I was being a little harsh. . . . Well, I was being very harsh, but Anand’s nonchalance at what his wife was going through at the hands of his family had increased the temperature of my blood. And Anand and I were close enough that I knew I had a right to be direct with him. As I guessed, Anand didn’t take offense but he was a little miffed.
He crushed his cigarette on the cement floor and glared at me. “You want me to take on my big bad father?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Really?”
“Yes, ”I repeated.
“So when are you going to tell him about your boyfriend?” Anand asked.
“What?” I asked aghast. Sowmya would never tell anyone about Nick. Would she? How could Anand know?
“Oh, you’re telling me you are against arranged marriage as an institution because you like being single and alone?” Anand demanded. “It is easy enough to guess. So who is the boyfriend?”
I felt the bile rise up to coat my throat with fear. Was I wearing a neon sign that said I HAVE A BOYFRIEND IN AMERICA?
“Come on, Priya,” Anand said. “I know these things. I am not stupid.”
“This isn’t about me,” I muttered. “This is about Neelima.”
“You don’t have the guts, do you?” Anand smirked. “So you shouldn’t—”
“If they were ill-treating my boyfriend, you bet I’d take issue,” I charged at him.
“So there is a boyfriend,” he grinned, and lit another cigarette. “Tell, tell.”
I sighed. “You’re not going to like this.”
“Hey, I married Neelima.”
“At least she is Indian.”
The cigarette in Anand’s hand dropped. “No . . . you don’t have an American boyfriend.”
I nodded.
“Oh
Rama, Rama
. . .”
“I know.”
“What will you do?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I have to back out of this stupid
pelli-chupulu
first.”
“You can’t, not now,” Anand said, sounding worried. “Not without telling them about Mr. America.”
“Forget about me; are
you
going to do something about how everyone is treating Neelima before she divorces you?”
Anand picked up the cigarette he had dropped and put it in his mouth. “I will see what I can do.”
“As soon as Neelima said she was pregnant Lata talked about miscarriages in the first trimester and—”
“That bitch, how dare she?” Anand burst out and the cigarette he was holding fell on the cement floor yet again. “I don’t know how Jayant can stand her. And now they are pregnant again. Wants to give
Nanna
a pure-blooded
Brahmin
heir.”
“What will you do?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Anand said.
When we came back downstairs, my father was in a heated discussion with Jayant about nonresident Indians, NRIs. Jayant sincerely believed that those who left India were betraying their motherland and my father was convinced that those who stayed were missing out on opportunities to grow and develop.
“The world is everyone’s oyster,”
Nanna
was saying. “We should think of ourselves as citizens of the world not just as Indian or Korean or Malaysian.”
They were sitting at the dining table sipping tea as Sowmya bustled around them setting the table for dinner.
“Ah, Priya,” Jayant said and extended both his hands to hold both of mine in a warm clasp. “You have grown up. And getting all set to be married I hear. This Sarma boy seems to be very ideal. What do you say?”
Anand cleared his throat while Sowmya glared at me. I smiled uneasily. Jayant patted my hands as if he could feel my tension.
“She is angry with us for setting this up,”
Nanna
said, obviously enjoying the position I was in.
“Angry, nothing,” Ma said, as she came into the dining area from the kitchen carrying a big steel pot with hot
rasam
in it. “They will be here tomorrow and once she sees the boy . . . ah, she will thank us. He is earning hundred thousand dollars a year, fifty
lakh
rupees.”
“Money isn’t everything, you know, Ma,” I said sitting down beside Jayant. “And I haven’t said yes to being here tomorrow for this . . . humiliating experience you want me to go through.”
“Humiliating?”
Nanna
asked, his voice thick with emotion. “What, Priya Ma, you are talking like we are demons torturing you. We love you; we are doing this because we love you.”
“Don’t break our hearts now, Priya,” Ma said suddenly serious. “We have waited this long. You said you were not ready and we waited for all these years. What more do you want from us?”
If they had yelled at me, scolded and admonished, coerced and coaxed, I would’ve known how to deal with it. This quiet remonstration was alien, their behavior strange, and because of it all the fight left my voice.
“It isn’t like that, Ma,
Nanna
,” I said softly. “I just don’t think that getting married like this is . . . It isn’t dignified . . . no, no . . . it just isn’t for me.”
“Everyone else is doing it,” Ma said in a low voice. “You think Sowmya and Jayant are not dignified?”
That was hardly fair. How could I answer that when both Sowmya and Jayant were looking at me waiting for me to reply?
“No . . . that’s not what I meant,” I said lamely.
“So you’ll be here tomorrow?”
Nanna
asked.
It was a goddamn ambush!
“No one will force you into marriage,” Ma said eagerly. “Just look at the boy and if you don’t like him, you don’t have to marry him. But if you don’t see him you will never know.”
Oh, I’d know! But they were all looking at me with quiet desperation on their faces. They were so enthusiastic to see me married, settled, as they believed I should be. And what child could hold out against parental desperation?
“I’ll be there,” I said defeated, before leaving the kitchen.
I walked past the hall where
Thatha
,
Ammamma
, and Lata were watching the evening Telugu news and found Neelima and Anand talking to each other in the bedroom next to the veranda. She was crying, yet again, and he was holding her hand. They both looked incredibly cute and very much in love with each other. I felt a pang of envy. They were already married, while I didn’t have the guts to tell my parents about Nick. My cowardice knew no bounds because now I had even agreed to sit through a bride-seeing ceremony.
I felt my empty ring finger with my thumb and then clenched my fist. I had taken the ring off in the plane before it landed in Hyderabad. I had hidden Nick from the start. Maybe I had known even before I left that he would continue to be my dirty secret.