The Mango Season (5 page)

“Sixty-four matches and not one worked out,” she told me during my current visit.

In the beginning,
Thatha
had refused to budge from his goal of getting a good-looking doctor or engineer for Sowmya. Even when it became evident that the matches he was finding were not going to pan out, he continued. It was when Sowmya turned twenty-five that
Thatha
started to realize he may have been aiming too high. He started looking at bank managers and the like, but again nothing worked out because he wanted a young man for Sowmya, but men who were twenty-seven years old were looking at girls who were twenty-one, not twenty-five. Now
Thatha
was looking at lecturers and older men. While
Thatha
looked for a suitable boy, Sowmya sat through bride-seeing ceremonies and rejections.

“God knows when she will get married,” Ma complained bitterly. “An unmarried daughter, Priya, is like a noose around the neck that is slowly tightening with every passing day.”

I sometimes imagined how it would be to live with my parents and be constantly reminded of how lacking I was. I would slit my wrists in no time and I was amazed that Sowmya hadn’t. She was still the same person I had grown up with; the bitterness that no one would blame her for having seemed to have never touched her.

“Maybe you shouldn’t say things like that,” I said to Lata, wanting to defend my nonconfrontational aunt against the harsh dowry remark. “It isn’t fair to turn this on Sowmya because she likes Anand’s wife.”

Lata quirked an eyebrow. “You are back, what, half an hour, and already you are taking sides?”

My mother held up her hand to silence me before I could respond, her posture clearly saying that she would take care of this one for me, with pleasure. “Lata, my daughter is not taking sides, just trying to be considerate of other people’s feelings.”

The only way to prevent World War III, now that I had spilled pearls of wisdom unwisely, was to change the topic. So I pulled my gift bag close to me—it was time to play Santa Claus.

“I have gifts for everyone,” I said cheerfully, before Lata could tell my mother what she thought about my being considerate of other people’s feelings.

Sowmya blushed when she saw the makeup kit I got for her. She touched the plastic-covered blush and eye shadow and picked up the lipstick and unrolled it to see what color it was. She closed it and put the cap on and shrugged. “What am I going to do with this, Priya?” she asked, I think just to sound reluctant.

“Wear it, ” Lata suggested lightly, but with just enough dabs of sarcasm, and I wondered again. Usually
Ammamma
protected Sowmya from barbs like that, but the dynamics seemed to have changed. Lata was ruling the roost. First it was the mangoes and now this.

“
Ammamma
.” I put a blue and white cashmere shawl on her lap and she touched it with curious fingers. She hugged me once again, this time a little lightly, and kissed me on the forehead. “You shouldn’t have. You are here and that is all we care about.”

I agreed with that notion, but I also knew the ritual. Oh yes, there was a ritual: the homecoming ritual. The cardinal law was that “you cannot come home without a substantial amount of gifts, irrespective of your financial predicament.”

The gifts also cannot be bought and dispensed of without drama. Every gift will be analyzed. For example, I cannot give
Ammamma
a less expensive gift than the one I would give to Neelima. That would offend
Ammamma
because she was senior to Neelima. Similarly, I cannot buy Lata something more expensive than what I would get for my mother. I also cannot buy something so cheap that Lata would be offended.

With all the opposing and contradicting rules, buying a gift for Lata had been a grueling task.

“Just pick out something womanly,” Nick suggested. “Works for my aunt who hates my mother’s guts. I just buy her perfume every year for Christmas and she’s happy.”

I explained to him that it was not quite that simple. I was buying my mother a bottle of perfume along with other assorted gifts. Ma had specifically asked me to get her some perfume and that was why I couldn’t buy Lata perfume, too. I had to buy her something that I hadn’t given my mother but it also should be something that my mother would not want.

“This doesn’t sound like buying gifts but more like a diplomatic mission to the Mideast. I’m very confused,” Nick confessed, and I agreed wholeheartedly with him.

I handed a gift-wrapped box to Lata. “For you.”

She looked at the box and took it with a negligent shrug. “You didn’t have to bring me anything,” she remarked. “My brother who lives in Los Angeles gets me whatever I want.”

My mother’s jaw tightened and she glared at Lata. “If you don’t like it, Priya can take it back,” she retorted smoothly.

I gave Ma a warning look and put on my most winsome smile for Lata. “I couldn’t not buy you something. I spent a lot of time looking for the right thing. . . . Now if you don’t open it, I will feel bad.”

Lata opened the box and I could see surprise and pleasure glimmer in her eyes. She pulled out shimmering silk—a delicately embroidered shawl of Navajo design. “It is beautiful,” she murmured.

Ma seemed to agree but wasn’t too happy about it. “It is just like the one she sent me last year,” she said peevishly.

I didn’t argue and moved on to the next batch of goodies.

“I also got something for Apoorva and Shalini,” I told Lata, and gave her two gift-wrapped boxes for her daughters. “I got them identical things—don’t want them to fight over whose is better.”

“What did you bring for them?” Ma asked nosily.

“Just some stuff, ” I said, not wanting to give the surprise away. “I think they’ll like it.”

“Thanks, ” Lata said, beaming now. “This is so nice of you, Priya.”

I was relieved. The gifts had been given without a hitch. I had some more gifts for my grandfather and uncles and one for my new aunt. I suspected the family was treating Neelima like used bath water and
I
wanted to welcome her—Anand would definitely want that.

“Is Neelima going to come?” I asked as flatly as I could, and
Ammamma
instantly recoiled at the question.

“Why, did you bring
her
something?” she questioned.

“Yes,” I said in a tone that did not broach further argument. But who was I kidding? No one in my family had ever paid attention to that tone.

“Why? She isn’t
really
family,”
Ammamma
said harshly. “She stole my little boy.”

Yeah, and the “little” boy was completely innocent. I couldn’t believe the hypocrisy. Anand was a grown man and I couldn’t imagine any woman conning him into matrimony.

“She didn’t force him to marry her,” Ma said. “He married her with his eyes open. What can we do when someone takes your trust and throws it away?”

Direct hit!

What can we do when someone takes your trust and throws it
away?

Oh, this was going to get unpleasant and I wondered if maybe it would be better to not say anything. But I knew that if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to face Nick when I got back. He was not some dirty little secret that should be tucked away. I loved him and I was proud of him and I wanted my parents and my family to know about him. I wanted to tell them what a wonderful person he was, but I knew they wouldn’t be able to see beyond the color of his skin and the fact that he was a foreigner. It wouldn’t matter if he was the kindest, richest, and most good-looking man to ever walk the earth—his nationality and race had already disqualified him as a potential groom for me.

“Neelima will be here soon,” Sowmya said, and looked at the mangoes spread out in small piles on the cold stone floor of the hall. “We should wait for her before we start cutting the mangoes. Does anyone want coffee in the meantime?”

There was a round of nods and Sowmya slithered away from the living room into the kitchen once again. I followed her this time and sat down on a granite counter as she puttered around.

“Have you learned to cook yet?” she asked, and I grinned sheepishly.

“Some,” I said. “But not Indian food. It takes too long and it’s too spicy to eat every day. And if I really feel like it, I just go to a restaurant; they do a better job than I ever can.”

“You should learn to cook,” Sowmya admonished. “What are you going to do when you get married? Make your husband eat outside food?”

Outside food versus homemade food! In India there was no contest. The food cooked at home by the wife was the best food. No restaurant could compare to that and in any case why would you spend money going to a restaurant when you could get homemade food?

“I will teach you how to cook,” Sowmya suggested, and I shook my head, laughing.

The idea of learning how to cook to feed Nick was amusing. Once in the matrimonial section of a Silicon Valley Indian magazine there was a girl’s profile that had made quite an impact on Nick.

23-year-old, beautiful, BA-pass Telugu Reddy girl looking for handsome and financially settled Telugu Reddy boy in the U.S. Girl is 5’4", fair, and is domestically trained. If interested, please apply with photograph.

After that Nick started complaining that I was not “domestically trained.” It was a joke between us, but a woman not knowing how to cook was unacceptable to Sowmya.

“I’ll just find a husband who can cook,” I said to her, and changed the topic to matters that were raising my curiosity. “What’s going on with Lata?”

“Don’t mind Lata, she . . . is just . . .” Sowmya poured milk into a steel saucepan and added an equal amount of water and set the saucepan on the gas stove.

I got up to pull out the steel coffee glasses from the cabinet next to the sink; they were exactly where they had always been. Shining, washed, and thoroughly dried by Parvati.

“No, we use cups now; steel glasses are only for morning coffee,” Sowmya said, and I put the glasses away surprised.

Everyone at
Ammamma
’s house used to drink coffee only in the steel glasses. The hot coffee was poured into the glasses, which would be put in small steel bowls. Then the hot coffee was poured in small amounts into the bowl to cool, and was drunk from there. It was an interesting South Indian ritual that I had almost forgotten. It appeared some things had changed here as well. They used coffee cups now.

The coffee cups were actually teacups, white with a golden lining around the rim of the cup and saucer. I set the cups on the saucers and placed a teaspoon alongside each one of them.

Sowmya leaned against the wall next to the Venkateshwara Swami temple in the kitchen and looked at me with obvious relief. “I am so glad you are here,” she said. “At least now they can concentrate on you for being unmarried and leave me alone.”

“Thanks,” I retorted in good humor and then I quieted. “Has it been very bad?”

“Terrible,” Sowmya sighed. “It was getting better, but then . . . Now
Nanna
doesn’t even bother to ask me if
I
like the boy; he just says if the boy likes me, that is it.”

My grandfather was getting up there in the age department and I knew he was worried that Sowmya would be unmarried for the rest of her life. Who would take care of her after he died?

“You know that’s not how he means it. He’d never ask you to marry someone you didn’t want,” I tried to reason.

“I know,” Sowmya said, and shrugged.

“How did they react to Anand’s marriage?” I asked, changing the direction of the conversation.

Sowmya rolled her eyes. “It was a nightmare. They went on and on, and when he brought Neelima home the first time,
Amma
actually asked her to leave. Then
Amma
and
Nanna
went to Anand’s flat three days later and asked them to come back. They even paid for their wedding reception, but I don’t think she has forgiven them for throwing her out of the house the first time Anand brought her here.”

“Can’t blame her for that.”

Sowmya straightened, pulled out a bottle of instant coffee from the open cabinet next to the gas stove. She opened the bottle and poured one teaspoon of coffee into each of the cups I had lined up by the stove. “But she comes back; Neelima keeps coming back. I think Anand makes her because he wants her to get along with
Amma
and
Nanna
. I don’t think anything is going to get better until . . . maybe they have a child.”

“Are they planning to have children?” I asked the natural question.

Anand and Neelima had been married for over a year now and by all Indian standards they should at least be pregnant. It always boggled me, the lack of contraception and planned parenthood. Most of the married couples I knew from India had a child within a year of their wedding, which meant that they never thought about contraception. Most Indian couples wouldn’t dream of having sex without the benefit of a nice, five-day marriage celebration. Some of my Indian friends were adamantly staying childless, but the pressure from their families was pushing them into having unprotected sex with their spouse.

Sowmya held the steel saucepan in which the milk had been boiling with a pair of steel tongs. The milk looked frothy and I wrinkled my nose at the familiar smell of slightly burned milk. As the milk sizzled into the cups, Sowmya clicked her tongue sadly. “Neelima says that they have been trying, but no baby yet.”

“It’s just been a year,” I said. “You like her.”

“She is nice to me,” Sowmya replied casually. “She is a good girl. She helps me whenever she comes home.
Amma
never cooks and
Nanna
. . . well, he doesn’t like to cook . . . and why should he when I am here?”

My grandmother was a strange creature. She came from a generation where women were treated like doormats, yet she had managed to stay out of the kitchen for most of her life. Earlier in her marriage her mother-in-law did all the cooking, and by the time she passed away my mother had been old enough to do the cooking. During the times my mother couldn’t cook, my grandfather wielded the spatula.