The Mango Season (3 page)

The battle between Lata and Ma was fought with jibes and remarks. My mother held her head high because my father was the managing director of an electronics company and we lived rather luxuriously compared to Lata. My uncle Jayant was an engineer at BHEL, Bharath Heavy Electronics Limited, a public company where everyone got paid like government officials. Lata and Jayant had a small one-bedroom apartment where they lived with their two young daughters. Ma never ceased to mention how crowded it must be.

My parents had built a large house. They hoped that once my brother and I got married and had children, there would be plenty of room when we came to visit them. But now that I was going to marry an American, I could imagine Ma and
Nanna
would not want us to visit because then they would be able to avoid the pointed question from neighbors and other family members, “How could you allow this to happen?”

Nate of course could not be counted on to spend much time in my parents’ house once he left for good. Even when I was living in my parents’ house, he was rarely found there. He was now in engineering school in Madras and lived in the university dorm. He came home for the summer but usually found something to do with friends that prevented him from staying at my parents’ house for more than three days in a row.

“The fourth day, there is always hell to pay,” he told me. “First three days she pampers, fourth day she wants to take me to
Ammamma’s
house and there is Lata there and Anand and his illicit wife. . . . And from then on things start going from bad to worse to really rotten real fast.”

Nate had spent three days with me and had escaped on a hiking trip in the Aruku caves with his friends the day before our pickle-making ritual.

“But I planned this six months ago,” he lied easily when Ma threw a tantrum. “I can’t back out now.”

Nate and I had a good relationship. We communicated regularly via email and he and I spoke on the phone if my mother was out of earshot on his end. There was no sibling rivalry between us. Nate was ten years younger than I, and we believed that he was too young and I was too old to feel any rivalry. Because of the age difference, there was no race for the attention of my parents. We were family and we fought over HAPPINESS and other assorted food items and philosophies, but we acknowledged the fact that we both had spent time in the same womb, and accepted each other, flaws and all.

My father had sneaked off to work this morning in the car despite Ma’s nagging and she lamented about that as well. “Couldn’t he have taken the day off?” she said when the auto rickshaw stopped in front of my parents’ house. “Now we will have to take an auto rickshaw to
Ammamma’s
house, too.”

“He’s taking tomorrow off,” I said as I helped her haul the large basket of mangoes inside the veranda, after she paid the auto rickshaw driver with the grace of a
kanjoos
,
makhi-choos
, scrooge, scrooge, who would suck the fly that fell in her tea.

“Now go change; wear something nice,” she ordered as she collapsed on a sofa.

The electricity was out. For six hours every day in the summer, the electricity was cut off to conserve it. The cut-off times changed randomly but were usually around the times when it was most hot. Today seemed to be an exception, because instead of cutting off the electricity from eleven to one in the afternoon, they had taken it out at eight-thirty in the morning.

I sat down on an ornate and uncomfortable wooden chair across from my mother who was resting her feet on the large, ostentatious coffee table centered in the drawing room.

“What should I wear?” I asked. I was here for two weeks and had promised myself I’d do exactly what my mother wanted me to do. Maybe that, I thought, would help ease the blow when I landed one right there where her heart was.

“The yellow
salwar kameez
.” Ma’s eyes gleamed. She probably thought I had changed. Never as a teenager had I asked her what I should wear when we went to visit relatives.

“Which yellow one?” I asked, slightly annoyed because it felt like surrender.

“The one with the gold embroidery.” She picked up a newspaper to fan herself.

I gaped at her. The yellow one with the gold embroidery was made of thick silk. Was the woman off her rocker?

“It’s too hot, Ma,” I argued lightly. “Why don’t I wear a cotton one?”

She agreed, but grudgingly. This was her chance to show her American-returned daughter off. But she couldn’t
really
show off. I was unmarried, I was twenty-seven, and sometime soon she was going to find out I was living in sin with the foreigner I intended to marry. Life would have been easier if I had fallen in love with a nice Indian Brahmin boy—even better if I hadn’t fallen in love at all and was ready to marry some nice Indian Brahmin boy my parents could pick out like they would shoes from a catalog.

I hadn’t planned on falling in love with Nick. We met at a friend’s house. Sean was a colleague and a friend and his sister was Nick’s ex-girlfriend and now “just a good friend.” As soon as Nick said, “Hello,” I knew he was trouble. I had never before found an American attractive—well, besides a young Paul Newman and Sean Connery, and Denzel Washington—but no one in real life. I think most Indian women are trained to find only Indian men attractive; maybe it has something to do with centuries of brainwashing.

I was of course flattered that Nick was attracted to me as well, but I didn’t expect him to pursue a relationship. And I really didn’t expect that I, even in my wildest flights of fantasy, would be amenable to dating him. But he was, and I was.

Before I knew how it happened, and before I could think of all the reasons why it was a really bad idea we were dating, we were having dinner together. As if things were not bad enough, we started to have sex and soon we moved in together and after that everything really went to the dogs because we decided to get married. And now I was sweating in my parents’ home, dreading having to tell them about Nick.

To remove the sweat and the two layers of dust that had deposited on my skin after my trip to Monda Market, I took a quick bath, dipping a plastic mug in an aluminum bucket filled with lukewarm water, heated by the sun in the overhead tank. My mother still had not installed showers in the bathrooms. “Save water,” she said.

I put on a yellow cotton
salwar kameez
to appease Ma and looked at myself in the mirror. My skin had turned dark almost as soon as the Indian sun had kissed me and I knew no amount of sunscreen was going to stop my melanin from coming together to give me the ultra-ultra-tanned look. My hair had also become stringy. It was all the extra chlorine in the water. And my . . .

I winced; I was doing that complaining-about-India thing that all of us America-returned Indians did. I had lived here for twenty years, yet seven years later, the place was a hellhole. Guilt had an ugly taste in my mouth. This is my country, I told myself firmly, and I love my country.

TO: PRIYA RAO
FROM: NICHOLAS COLLINS
SUBJECT: GOOD TRIP?

HOPE YOU HAD A GOOD FLIGHT. SO SORRY I MISSED YOUR CALL. I WAS IN A MEETING AND I TURNED OFF THE CELL PHONE. AND SO SORRY THAT YOUR MOTHER IS GIVING YOU A HARD TIME ABOUT BEING SINGLE. I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO SAY EXCEPT THAT YOU ARE NOT SINGLE.

I MISS YOU. THE HOUSE FEELS EMPTY WITHOUT YOU. I SLEPT ON YOUR SIDE OF THE BED LAST NIGHT. I THINK I’M GETTING SAPPY IN MY OLD AGE.

CALL ME AGAIN, THIS TIME I’LL KEEP THE CELL PHONE TURNED ON, HAIL OR SNOW. JIM AND CINDY INVITED US TO GO CAMPING AT MT. SHASTA. WHAT DO YOU THINK? AND THERE WAS A MESSAGE FROM SUDHIR FOR YOU ON THE ANSWERING MACHINE. HE WANTED TO WISH YOU BON VOYAGE.

TAKE CARE, SWEETHEART.
NICK

TO: NICHOLAS COLLINS
FROM: PRIYA RAO
SUBJECT: RE: GOOD TRIP?

I JUST WISH THEY KNEW I WASN’T SINGLE—WITHOUT MY TELLING THEM. ANYWAY, WE’RE GOING TO GO MANGO PICKLE MAKING AT AMMAMMA’S HOUSE AND I THINK I COULD TELL THEM THEN. I WISH YOU WERE HERE. NO, THAT ISN’T TRUE, I WISH I WASN’T HERE.

IT’S STRANGE TO BE IN HYDERABAD AGAIN. I LOOK AT MY MOTHER AND I THINK ABOUT ALL MY AUNTS AND MY GRANDMA AND I HAVE TO WONDER HOW THEY STAY AT HOME ALL DAY, EVERY DAY, WITH NO LIFE BESIDES FAMILY. SUDHIR ALWAYS SAID THAT INDIAN WOMEN (HIS MOM ESPECIALLY, I THINK) ARE DEMENTED BECAUSE THEY STAY HOME DOING NOTHING BUT RAISING THEIR KIDS. I DON’T AGREE WITH THE DEMENTIA PART BUT I MUST SAY THAT LIFE SOUNDS EXTREMELY CLAUSTROPHOBIC.

REGARDLESS, I’M HERE. LOOKING FOR APPROVAL. SOME KIND OF OKAY SIGN FOR MY MARRIAGE PLANS. I NEED THEM TO SAY, “YES, IT’S ALL RIGHT FOR YOU TO MARRY THE MAN YOU’RE IN LOVE WITH.” WHICH IS RIDICULOUS! WHO ELSE SHOULD I MARRY BUT THE MAN I LOVE?

AT LEAST THEY HAVEN’T THROWN ANY “SUITABLE BOYS” MY WAY . . . YET. THEY HAVEN’T EVEN HINTED, WHICH MAKES ME VERY SUSPICIOUS. COMING HERE MADE ME REALIZE THAT I MISSED INDIA, MY FAMILY, EVEN MA. AND I MISSED NATE. HE HAS GROWN UP. HE’S A MAN NOW AND IT SEEMS SO STRANGE TO SEE HIM ACT LIKE ONE.

I MISS YOU. I MISS YOU VERY MUCH.

AND YES, TELL JIM AND CINDY THAT WE’D LOVE TO GO CAMPING. I GUESS ONCE I’M BACK I’LL BE READY FOR A VACATION.

I’LL TRY AND CALL AGAIN, BUT IT COULD BE TRICKY. I CAN CERTAINLY SEND EMAIL. MA DOESN’T UNDERSTAND COMPUTERS SO SHE’LL NOT SNOOP AROUND NATE’S COMPUTER AND HE’LL DEFINITELY CHEW HER OUT IF SHE TRIES.

I LOVE YOU,
PRIYA

I went downstairs and found my mother lying haphazardly on the couch, snoring harshly. Her thin hair, which had been through repeated bad dye jobs, lay lifelessly against the maroon fabric of the sofa. Her lumpy stomach went up and down and I could see the flesh at her midriff spill each time she breathed out. I never understood why Indian women wore saris in this day and age when alternatives like
salwar kameez
would not be frowned upon. A sari was uncomfortable, and the midriff—the area where most of the battles of the bulge were fought and lost—stood exposed like an unraveled guilty secret.

I looked at my wristwatch and frowned. She had made me hurry up but had fallen asleep herself.

“Ma,” I called out. She stirred a little, so I called out again and this time her eyes opened. They were bloodshot and she looked at me, slightly disoriented. Her gaze then fell on the clock. She sat up groggily.

“Go and get an auto,” she told me, then stood up yawning and stretching. “And not one
paisa
more than fifteen rupees. Tell the auto
rickshawwallah
that and if he does any
kitch-kitch
, I will deal with him.”

I slipped on my sunglasses, took my purse, and went through rows of houses to reach the main road. A buffalo strolled on the newly laid asphalt street and I tiptoed around it in fear. I was always afraid of stray animals on the road. The fear of buffaloes was deep-rooted, probably embossed onto my consciousness because of a “bad childhood experience” as the shrinks in all the movies say about serial killers. According to my father (my mother tells a slightly different version of the same story), when I was just seven months old we went to visit some relatives in Kavali, a small town in the same state as Hyderabad. My mother left me in the open veranda on a straw mat, while she went inside the house for something or the other. All of a sudden a buffalo came charging through the street, inside the gate, and onto the veranda. By the time my mother called out and my father came rushing outside, the buffalo was towering over me, sharp horns pointed toward me, a leaky snout dropping mucus close to where I lay unaware of the perilous situation I was in.

“God knows why, but the bull went away, though for a while we thought it would hurt you,” my father said.

My mother’s version of the story was mostly the same as my father’s, only in her story it was
my father
who had left me on the veranda, not she. “I never left any of my children anywhere without supervision. It is your father . . . always wants this and that and leaves children where they are without any thought,” she explained.

I reached the main road and found an auto rickshaw. The driver was smoking a
bidi
, lounging on the vinyl-covered seat of his three-wheeler, while a small radio at his feet was playing the latest hit song from a Telugu film. “Come and take me in your arms, come and take me and make me yours. You are gone I know but I wait you know, for you to come and make me yours,” a female voice sang to an oft-used melody.

“Himayatnagar,”
I said loudly to be heard over the song, and the auto rickshaw guy nodded and turned the radio off just as a woman’s heartbroken voice begged her lover yet again not to leave.

“Chalis rupya,”
he said, and I shook my head. I hated to barter, but even I knew forty rupees was too much.

“Thees,”
I countered, holding up three fingers, and he agreed without any resistance, which underscored the point that forty rupees was too much and probably even thirty was excessive, but I didn’t have the stomach to go on.

I pulled out fifteen rupees from my purse and gave it to him. “I will give this to you now and my mother will give you another fifteen,” I told him and he looked at me quizzically. I got into the rickshaw and asked him to drive to my parents’ house. “And don’t tell my mother that the price is thirty, just fifteen.
Accha?”

The auto rickshaw driver winked at me. “Take it easy,
Amma,
apun
can keep secret,” he said as he hitched his pants up to his knees and started the scooter of the auto.
“Vroom-vroom
. . . to your castle,
hain
?”

I gave the man directions and he drove, chuckling to himself. When we reached the gate of my parents’ house, I asked him to wait while I went to get my mother. The
rickshawwallah
didn’t listen to me and even before I had set foot on the road, he honked three times, loudly enough to wake up the dead.