The Hindi-Bindi Club (4 page)

“
You
need to eat more,” I say, my voice thick. “I didn’t see any chicken curry on
your
plate.”

“I’m a vegetarian.”

“Since when?”

“Since…” She purses her lips, as if trying to recall. “Sometime last spring.”

I frown. “You never mentioned it.”

“Didn’t I?” She lifts a shoulder in a delicate shrug. “I meant to.” She tears a paper towel off the roll and dries her hands. “It’s hard to say everything over the phone, isn’t it?” At her weary smile, my heart constricts. I note her increased wrinkles, darker circles around her eyes, looser skin. She’s shorter now, the slightest hunch in her posture.

I’m not the only one who’s aging.

I swallow. Once. Twice. “Are you taking your vitamins? Getting enough protein? Calcium? Magnesium?”

“Yes, Kiran. I’m a professional doctor’s wife.”

Is that humor or irony? I can’t read her expression, and the inability makes me sad. I don’t like the distance between us. I don’t
want
it anymore. This “separate lives” thing has run its course.

“Mom?”

“Hmmm?” She heats a
tawa
—griddle pan—for the
chappatis
.

“I…Here, let me do that. A culinary task I actually know how to do.”

“That’s okay—”

“Really, I don’t mind.” I wash and dry my hands, nudge her away from the stove, and take her place. I expect her to say something to the effect of there’s hope for me in the kitchen yet, but she just squeezes my arm and thanks me.

Who is this pod person, and what have the aliens done with my real mom?

I laugh to myself, thinking she must be wondering the same thing about me.

One at a time, I flip the
chappatis
that she places on the
tawa,
counting each flip the way she taught. One, two, three, done. Watching her bustle around the kitchen, I want to say more, but I don’t know what. I want to reach out, but I don’t know how to break the ice that froze in layers over too many years. I’m afraid—of falling in, of needing help, of dying unassisted.

From behind me, my mother says softly, “I’ve missed you.”

Tears spring to my eyes. I blink and bob my head up and down. “I’ve missed you, too, Mom. I hope you know…”

“I know,” she says, and for the moment, it’s enough.

It’s a start.

W
hen we finish, I take the plate of hot-hot
chappatis
into the dining room, returning to our program, already in progress:

“We’re running out of authors,” an auntie says.

“It’s a short list,” laments another.

“Why is that, do you think?”

I pipe up, “Because Indian parents offer their children two career choices: doctor or engineer.” It’s a joke; no one laughs. I sip from my wineglass. “Never mind.”

I’m aware that I may drink wine and sit at the big table, but I’m not one of them. They will always be my mother’s peers, not mine. They are the seniors; I am the junior. I will never completely get them, nor will they entirely fathom me. So I sit back and attempt to do as instructed all my life (with limited success): keep my mouth shut, listen to my elders, and try to learn something.

The aunties are in their late fifties to late sixties, both pilgrims and Indians, born in that Far East land of spices for which Columbus set sail and erroneously thought he discovered. Instead, they wouldn’t arrive on American shores for hundreds more years, their sizable waves post-1965, a direct result of new, highly selective U.S. immigration laws.

“You mean
all
Indian men aren’t doctors or engineers?” I once said in passing to Sandeep Uncle.

He was the one who first explained this phenomenon to me. “That was all they
allowed
into the country from India at our time. My elder brother stood first in his college. Brilliant man. Lawyer. Thrice he applied to come here, but Immigration said no. Finally, he went to Canada.”

That’s also why Indian parents
highly encouraged
their sons to become doctors or engineers—the professions that offered the best shot at economic success. And the American children born to those Indian-immigrant doctors and engineers? Care to venture a guess what that next generation was
highly encouraged
to become?

You got it.

My parents thought they were progressive for giving Vivek and me the option of choosing
what type
of doctor or engineer. (For the record, I became a physician
despite
my parents, not
because
of them. But let’s just keep that between us, okay?)

Most of the Hindi-Bindi Club’s founding mothers emigrated during those first big waves that India called her brain drain. Now they reign as matriarchs of the Indian-immigrant community, keepers of tales of the pioneer days before cell phones, before the Internet, before you could buy basmati rice in the supermarket.

From their animated conversations, I note that some (my mom) still have thick Indian accents, some (Uma Auntie) hardly a trace of Indian, and some (Saroj Auntie) an Indian-American
khitchadi
—smorgasbord. The aunties speak in rapid-fire English peppered with a liberal dose of Hindi, which I don’t understand aside from a smattering of nouns here and there but sometimes decipher from context, tone, and body language.

My mom told me that when she first arrived in the States in her early twenties, her command of English, already strong from her convent school education, improved dramatically, but among the many things she missed about India was Hindi. “It’s such a sweet language,” she said, “with so many expressions that can’t adequately translate to English.”

In our Indian friends circle, most American-born types like myself are bilingual, but our second language differs according to Indian subculture—Indian states are like European countries, each with its own language and culture. (Imagine if New York, Mississippi, North Dakota, and California
really
had their own languages and didn’t just
sound
that way!) Educated city-folk speak, at minimum, three languages: the two official national languages of English and Hindi, plus the regional language of their ancestral state, their
mother tongue
.

The mother tongue is the most common second language in Indian-American homes. In our home, you’ll hear Marathi. In Saroj Auntie’s, Punjabi. In Uma Auntie’s, Bengali, which she and Rani speak, while Patrick Uncle’s repertoire is on par with a dog’s. “Let’s go.” “Sit.” “Enough.” “Stop.” “Very nice.”

When Indians of differing subcultures get together, they often flit in and out of English and Hindi with equal ease. To those of us who don’t understand Hindi, they shut us out of what sounds to our ears like a secret, special language. Thus our nickname for our mothers, the Hindi-Bindi Club: They spoke in Hindi and sometimes wore
bindis
.

In my ninth-grade world history class, we spent half an hour on India. I learned about poor people in villages, something new for me. I also learned the “dot on the forehead” was a “third eye.” This was also new to me—before the days of Third Eye Blind—and it conjured images of the cantina in
Star Wars
. (A little trivia:
Yoda
is the ancient Sanskrit word for warrior;
jedi
is the modern Hindi word. Yoda = ancient warrior; Jedi = modern warrior.)

I went home and consulted the expert in residence. “Mom? Tell me again, what’s the significance of the
bindi
? I thought traditionally it meant a Hindu woman was married, and nowadays it can be pure fashion, like putting on jewelry or makeup. Plus, in religious
pujas,
it’s like a blessing. Did I miss something? What’s the deal with this third eye?”

“Everything you said is correct,” my mother said. “The third eye is also correct. It symbolizes the capacity of human consciousness to see beyond the obvious, to perceive beyond what is visible and tangible, to tap the inner source within each of us that is the spring of divine energy and power. That is the metaphysical meaning.”

“Oh. But it can also be
just
a fashion statement, right? With no deep meaning? Cuz my teacher didn’t mention that part, or the married bit.”

“Yes, Kiran.”

My mother wears a
bindi
tonight, a peel-and-stick-on type in the shape of a dainty emerald teardrop that matches her cashmere sweater set.
Bindis,
along with
saris,
were also on her Miss List when she first came to America. That is, she missed wearing them without people whispering and rubber-necking. “In India,” she said, “when men stare at women, it’s rude and annoying, but a common, unfortunate part of the culture. Here, where staring is
not
part of the culture, and people are expected to show better manners, I feel singled out like some circus attraction.”

Times are different now. Forty years later, the sight of an Indian woman in a city is not so rare. Still, my mother cherishes these get-togethers with the aunties who understand her in a way her American-born friends—and children—never will, where she can use Hindi expressions without translating, wear a
sari
and a
bindi
should the mood strike, and not feel like a foreigner.

Even after spending her entire adult life in America and becoming a naturalized citizen, she still says, in her Indian lilt, “I can never forget where I come from, the culture of my heritage. It will
always
be part of me, those first colorful threads woven into the tapestry of my life.”

W
hen the aunties start packing up to leave, Uma Auntie pulls me aside. She links her arm with mine and says, “Can I steal you away for a few minutes?”

“Uh, sure. Where to?”

“Somewhere private. Upstairs?”

In my former bedroom, Uma Auntie closes the door behind us. I have to admit that after my initial resentment, I like what my mother’s done with the room. It’s very inviting. A queen-sized mahogany sleigh bed with a fluffy white down comforter and throw pillows galore. Side tables with sleek candlestick lamps. On a shelf, there’s a cute procession of five multitiered sandalwood elephants, arranged in descending height.

“Tonight couldn’t have been easy for you,” Uma Auntie says.

I give a nervous laugh, not sure where this is going. “No. No, it wasn’t.”

“Even Mother Teresa had her critics,” she says. “That’s what I’ve always told myself. No matter what you do, someone, somewhere is going to find fault. And each of us must decide whose opinion matters to us, and whose doesn’t. Because God knows, you can’t please everyone. It’s futile to try. Come. Sit.” Joining her, I perch on the edge of the bed, angling to face her. “I wanted to call you so many times, but I always stopped myself for one reason or another. It wasn’t my place. Your mom wouldn’t like my interference. I promised…” She shakes her head.

“It’s okay,” I say.

“No, but it will be. Now that you’re home.” She smiles. “Words cannot express how relieved I am that you’re back, that you chose to come home on your own. I’m proud of you, Kiran. I have a
very good
idea how difficult these years have been on you. I, of all people, can relate. If Patrick Uncle’s and my marriage hadn’t survived…” She expels a breath, puffing out her cheeks. “That’s why, of all your aunties, I’m the one who’s butting in. For perspective only I can give you.”

“Okay…”

From downstairs come the sounds of muffled ruckus. Loud farewells. The front door banging closed. Uma Auntie’s green-eyed gaze holds mine with single-minded focus. “As displeased as your parents may get with you,” she says, “as strained as your relationship may be with them, as tough as you think they are on you…even at worst, you still have it light-years better than I did with my father.”

I swallow hard. Never has Uma Auntie talked about her parents. Rani told me years ago the topic was strictly off-limits, which I understood to mean a skeleton in the family closet. Curious, I asked my mom, but even she didn’t know.

“Your parents did not, and would not, ever, under any circumstances disown you,” Uma Auntie says quietly. “They didn’t…banish you…from their lives.”

I stop breathing. “Yours…?”

She gives a tremulous smile. “After Patrick Uncle and I married,
Baba
said I was dead to him. I thought he would come around in time. Certainly when Rani was born…He didn’t.”

“Uma Auntie. I’m so sorry.”

“Me, too,” she says. “Because I never could fix things with my father while he was alive, and then it was too late. It isn’t too late for you, Kiran. Your parents have been waiting,
praying
for you to come home. We all have. Don’t leave without working things out. Or you’ll risk regretting it the rest of your life.”