The Hindi-Bindi Club (9 page)

Try and try. And keep making a mess. And more mess.

It’s okay, I tell myself, trying to shake it off. You’re warming up. It’ll come.

But it doesn’t. It hasn’t. Not for days. Weeks. Months.

I was so jazzed when I started my Goddess series, modern renditions of mythic females. But my first taste of commercial success has turned me into a constipated artist. For the first time in my life, I can’t gag the gremlins, haranguing voices in my head that constantly critique my work.

“You think that’s art?”

“Will anyone like this?”

“Too much like the last one.”

“Too different.”

“Sloppy, Rani. Sloppy.”

It’s so draining. Not that my art has always provided a bliss hit—it is
hard,
after all—but lately, it never does. Lately, I dread it. I’m secretly afraid that somewhere on the Road to Success, I lost my own passion. Bryan lost his on his fall down. Did I lose mine on my rise up?

Jack fell down and broke his crown, and Jill came tumbling after.

No no no. My passion can’t be lost; it’s simply misplaced. I’ll find it again. I have to.

I take a break and go to the kitchen. I’m tempted to open the refrigerator and pull up a chair (it beats turning on the oven and sticking my head inside), but I resist. I gather the ingredients for the chocolate
sandesh
truffles I’m bringing to accompany the chocolate-dipped strawberries and champagne the gallery has arranged. You gotta have protein, right? You’d never guess it, but these little babies are made with fresh, homemade cheese called
chhana
that looks, but doesn’t taste, similar to cottage cheese or ricotta.

A celebratory sweet,
sandesh
means “good news” in Bengali. The “s” in Bengali is pronounced “sh,” and an “a” is often “o.” There’s other tricky stuff that will make your eyes cross, so let’s stick with this abridged
Hooked On Phonics
lesson and take my word that Bengalis have their reasons for pronouncing
sandesh
as
shawn-dhaysh
.

I tweaked Mom’s family recipe for my own taste. The
sandesh
I had when we visited Kolkata commemorated my cousins passing their exams. Sweetened with newly harvested paundra sugarcane, shaped like conch shells, and packed in rice for freshness. I subtracted those steps and added chocolate—I find anything and everything tastes better dipped in, or slathered with, chocolate.

Making
chhana,
I try to think happy, pleasant thoughts, but a gnawing desperation claws at me. What if I can’t do it? What if I can’t produce what’s expected of me?

Art is my life’s purpose. Without it…I shake my head. I don’t want to go there.

I concentrate on the
sandesh
. I roll the truffles in cocoa powder and crushed pistachios. Drizzle on melted chocolate. Make another smoothie. Add a splash of rum. Then a more generous splash. Go to my studio. Try to work again. Create stuff only my mother could love. Return to the kitchen. Do a shot. Get toasted. Still, nothing worth keeping. Flop onto the love seat. Fling an arm over my eyes.

I want my mommy.

W
hen I was little, I was my mother’s shadow. An only child, I was the center of her world, and she was mine. I followed her everywhere. If she shut me out of the bathroom, I sat outside the door and cried, whined, or wiggled my fingers under the crack until she came out. Every week she took me on field trips to the park, the library, the grocery store, and the fresh fish market.

I loved to watch her prepare Bengali food. When she cooked, she removed her rings and set them on the window-sill in a bowl of salt water. On her left hand, she wore her wedding band—gold with seven channel-set diamonds. On her right, she wore a white sapphire on her middle finger and a red coral called a
paula
on her ring finger. When preparing a large quantity, she sat on the kitchen floor and impaled such legumes as cauliflower, potatoes, and eggplant over a
bonti
—a contraption with a curved upright blade that served as an old-fashioned, manual food processor. Different dishes required different shapes.

“When I’m a grown-up, I’ll chop all the vegetables, Mommy,” I said, puffing out my chest.

“Okay, but until then, you glue your bottom on that stool.” She positioned my stool at a safe distance, and I wasn’t allowed to get up until she put the serrated knife away, out of my reach.

She let me stand on a chair at the counter when she rolled wheat dough into perfect rounds for
luchis—
puffy fried bread. She would give me a little ball to knead and flatten with my mini rolling pin, which was better than Play-Doh because I could eat it, though I never got the hang of shaping my dough into a neat circle. The odd shapes I created made my mother laugh and say, “If you hope to marry a Bengali, we’ll have to work on this.”

Fish was the singlemost recurring item on my mother’s menu. Fish in a sweet mustard sauce was her specialty. She never ate or prepared beef. She said that for her, eating a cow was like eating a dog or a horse. “If one day you move to another country where people, given plenty of options, choose to eat dog burgers and horse steaks, could you learn to do it?”

No, I couldn’t. And neither could she.

If not for my father and me needing a bit more variety, she would have served fish every day, every meal, even for breakfast, she loved it that much. Sometimes when Dad or I complimented her on a particular fish dish, she would say, “One day we will visit Calcutta, and you will taste
hilsa,
the best fish in the world.”

My father would pat her hand, hug her, or kiss her cheek. “We will, honey. We will.”

We didn’t go to Calcutta until I was ten because, after my mother eloped with my father, her father said she was dead to him, and as long as he was alive, she should never come back. She returned—just once—at the request of my aunt, Anandita-
mashi,
when my grandfather was on his deathbed.

Over the years, my mother had regularly written letters home, which my grandfather refused to read or hear, but Anandita-
mashi
saved them and read each blue aerogramme to him as he lay dying. When he heard my mother’s words, he cried. And when he learned from Anandita-
mashi
it was my mother and her American husband who’d secretly subsidized their upper-middle-class lifestyle all along—not his deadbeat nephew as everyone had led him to believe—my grandfather finally asked to see her.

When she arrived at his bedside, he told her he had endured social disapproval to allow her—young, unmarried, and alone—to pursue her dream of higher studies in America.
His
father had overruled him and granted my mother permission. In return, she proved all of his fears correct. She shamed him by marrying my father, and no amount of black money—dirty money—could ever erase my grandfather’s suffering. In Indian culture, a child’s duty to a parent superceded all else, and she dishonored him and tarnished the family name. For that, he would never forgive her. The last words he spoke to her quoted an Indian proverb: “I gave her a staff for her support, and she used it to break my head.” He died the next day.

My father said it was lucky timing, because he might have killed the old man.

I didn’t learn any of this until much later in life. It still haunts my mother and enrages my father.

We never went back again, though my mother still writes—and sends money—to her family. (My parents provide complete financial support for Anandita-
mashi,
whom no one would marry because of her “defect” of epilepsy.)

Both of my parents came from large families, and sometimes, when I was lonely, when no kids could play with me, I would ask for a brother or sister. My Indian friends Kiran and Preity both had brothers, and I wanted one, too. My father would grab me and tickle me and say, “Why, when God gave us a perfect little girl?” Whenever he said this, my mother’s eyes would soften, and I could see her love for him written all over her face.

The truth is I was a difficult pregnancy and delivery. My mother suffered two miscarriages before me, and after me, she couldn’t have more children. In India, this would have been the Kiss of Death. Social ostracizing. As my mother explained it, the only fate worse than not producing sons was being barren. But none of that mattered to my dad. To him, our family was perfect.
Rani
means “queen.”

Most of the time, I was plenty happy not to have to share. My parents or my stuff.

My mother stayed home with me until I went to kindergarten, then she worked part-time, so she was always home when I got out of school. This was great until I was a teenager and started to develop my own strong identity. No longer docile, I often disagreed with my overprotective mother. To her, disagreement and debate were often interpreted as disrespect and back talk “answering back,” which frustrated both of us to no end and sometimes escalated into shouting matches.

One awful day in my hormonal, angst-ridden trauma-drama, I screamed, “In
this
country, we have freedom of speech! I have the right to express my opinion even if it’s contrary to yours! Why can’t you be like other mothers? I hate you! I hate my life! I wish I’d never been born!” I stormed to my room and slammed the door. Then I locked it, because I knew, right away, I was in Big Shit Trouble. With my mother
and
with my father, once she told him. Even in ambiguous disputes—which clearly this wasn’t—they always sided together against me.

Half an hour later, when The Knock sounded, I was shaking. Whatever punishment was headed my way, it was sure to be bad.

“Rani, open the door,” my mother said.

I didn’t answer.

After a minute, the door opened, and my mother stood there, a bobby pin in her hand. She’d been crying, which made me cry worse than if she’d beaten me with her
chappal
—leather sandal—which she never did but occasionally threatened. “I-I’m sorry. I-I shouldn’t have said those things.”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” she said in a small voice. “My parents would have thrown me onto the streets to beg if I ever spoke to them that way.”

“I’m sorry. I was disrespectful.”

“Yes, and you were very hurtful.”

I cried harder. “
I
was hurt, too!”

She crossed her arms and sat on the edge of my bed. “I know you’re hurting, Rani. I know this is a hard time. For you. For all of us. But I want to get some things straight.”

I dropped my gaze and braced myself.

She leaned over and took my chin in her hand, so I would look at her. Meeting my eyes directly, she said, “Whether you like it or not,
I
am the mother this time.
You
are the daughter. One day, you’ll have the freedom you crave. You won’t have to ask my permission or explain yourself to me, and I can only hope you’ll make the right decisions. If you’re rash and follow your impulses without any thought to the consequences, you can hurt others and yourself badly. With freedom comes responsibility. Remember that.”

I nodded.

“Remember this, too…No matter what happens, now or then, no matter how bad it gets, I will always be your mother, you will always be my daughter, and I will always love you. You are
the
most precious thing in my life, and I thank God you were born in this life, to me.”

I stared at her in disbelief. How could she say such nice things to me when I’d just been so ugly? I didn’t deserve her kindness. But when she opened her arms, I didn’t question or hesitate. I launched myself against her, hugging her hard.

She hugged me back and said, “Even if we disagree, even if we fight, even if we hurt each other, we have to promise to make up, no matter how hard it is. I will never turn my back on you. I don’t ever,
ever
want to lose you. I know I’m not like other mothers. American moms
or
Indian moms—”

“No, you’re
better
! You’re the greatest mom in the world! I love you, Mom!” We stayed like that for a long time, crying and rocking. I kept saying, “I’m sorry. I’m
so
sorry.”

And she said to me the words her father withheld from her, “You’re forgiven.”

Dearest Boo-Boo,

Hi, sweetie! How are you? I’m thinking of you on your special day! Dad and I wish we could be there for opening night, but we’re with you in spirit -- and eagerly anticipating our VIP passes next week!

Exams have started, and campus is a stress factory. Dad landed safely in Germany. I will try to call you later this PM, but I know you have lots to do, and in case we don’t connect: Have a wonderful time. Break a leg!

Love,
Mom & Dad

At the gallery—a chic converted warehouse with soaring ceilings, exposed rafters, and gleaming pine floors—I walk around in a daze. It’s so unreal. Wall-to-wall bodies. All these strangers have come to see
my
work, meet
me
. Before I’m introduced, Bryan and I mill through the crowd eavesdropping on conversations, watching people tilt their heads this way and that as they scrutinize my paintings, murmur appreciation.

“They’re eating my
sandesh,
” I say to Bryan.

“They’re hungry,” he teases, and I elbow him.

Bryan wears a gray silk suit and a seafoam green shirt that brings out the flecks of green in his hazel eyes. I wear a light bronze, embroidered
ghagara-choli
—a flowing full-length skirt; a fitted, belly-revealing, short-sleeved blouse; and a long, gauzy scarf I drape behind my back and over my arms. I kept my jewelry simple. No necklace, as I’ve never liked having anything around my neck—scarves, turtlenecks, or jewelry. Still, I feel like a glamorous movie star with my few pieces. Teardrop emeralds dot my earlobes. A solitary iron bangle called a
loha
that belonged to my maternal grandmother hangs around my wrist. In my nose, I wear a small diamond stud.