The Mango Season (6 page)

There was a ritual in most Brahmin families, even now in some, during which women who are having their period had to “sit out.” “Sitting out” literally means they are relegated to one room at the end of the house—the room next to the veranda in my grandparents’ house—and are not allowed to touch anyone or anything during their “contaminated” period. When I was young I would always want to touch the women who were sitting out. I didn’t know what “sitting out” meant and I would try to get away with touching the women. Once it was my grandmother and I ended up being doused with a bucketful of water from the well to cleanse me. Needless to say, after that I never had the desire to touch any woman who sat out.

When the women sit out, the men have to cook, and that was how my grandfather and most Brahmin men learned how to cook.

Now, when Sowmya has her period, my mother comes and cooks or Lata does it. After all, it was not right for the man of the house to spend any time in the kitchen when he had grown daughters.

I wondered if
Ammamma
knew how to cook—she must, I rationalized. Her parents would never have permitted her not to learn. I wondered why Ma never encouraged me to cook. She was always trying to get me out of the kitchen: “You will mess everything up and then I will have to clean it. Just stay out of here and let me deal with my headache. . . . I don’t need any help.”

I learned to cook a few dishes but all in all there was no way I could cook a meal for several people the way Sowmya or Ma could.

When I used to complain to
Nanna
that Ma would not let me cook, he would say that I was going to be a “career woman” and didn’t need to learn how to cook. “You will make lots of money and you can just hire a cook. No chopping and dicing for my little princess.”

To Ma cleanliness
was
next to godliness and there was no way in this big wide earth that she would let anyone besides herself cook in her kitchen. After a while my enthusiasm also waned and I just never got around to learning the most important art of all for a woman, cooking.

I heard the rumble of the metal gate being opened and I twisted my head to look out the kitchen window.

“That must be Neelima,” Sowmya said, as she loaded the cups on a tray. “You take this out and I will make sure they don’t kill her with the mango knives.”

Neelima looked exactly like the kind of person I thought Anand would marry. She was tiny, five feet no inches, and she was very pretty and perky with her shoulder-length hair swishing around her face whenever she talked. She smiled sweetly and looked like a doll in her beautiful red sari.

She was genuinely pleased with my gift. I had seen a picture of her in which her hair had been tied in a French knot, so I got her ivory combs.

Lata immediately leaned over to look carefully at the combs and I could hear the calculator hum inside her head. She was probably thinking how the shawl, even though expensive, was probably not as expensive as the combs . . . or was it? My mother was torn between anger and pride. She was upset that I had spent all this money and she was also pleased that I was giving away such expensive-looking gifts. My giving expensive gifts guaranteed that when the situation arose (like my wedding), I would get expensive gifts in return.

“You are late,” was all my grandmother said to Neelima once the introductions were made and the gift given.

“I had to stop by at the doctor’s clinic,” Neelima said shyly. “I am ten weeks pregnant,” she announced.

Sowmya and I hugged her and rambled on about little babies and how wonderful it was. The contrast was painful.
Ammamma
asked us to spread the mangoes, Ma just glowered, while Lata started talking about how the first trimester was the time when most miscarriages took place. I was appalled. Who were these people? And why were they behaving like women from a B-grade Telugu movie?

I dropped a basket of mangoes between Neelima and me and sat down cross-legged. “Here.” I handed her a large knife and put a cutting board in front of her as I did in front of me as well.

“Wait,” my grandmother said. “Don’t mix the mangoes.” She pointed to the ones between Neelima and me. “Those are ours. Sowmya, you take care of them. Let us chop our own mangoes. That way the good and bad mangoes won’t get mixed.”

There were different piles of mangoes in the hall. The mangoes Ma and I had purchased that morning, the mangoes Lata had been given from the ancestral orchard, the ones that belonged to
Ammamma
, and those that were Neelima’s, which had been bought under
Ammamma
’s supervision the day before. It was easy to know whose mangoes
Ammamma
didn’t want her mangoes mixed up with.

“Are you saying my mangoes are bad?” Ma asked instantly, her eyes blazing, a knife held firmly in her hand. Warrior Pickle Woman was ready to defend her mangoes.

Ammamma
leaned down and picked up a mango from “our” basket and sniffed. She dropped it instantly, her nose wrinkled. “Radha, you were never good at picking mangoes. You should have taken Lata with you.”

“I always pick good mangoes,” Ma said, and yanked a mango out of the basket. “Cut and give me a piece,” she ordered Neelima, who put the mango on the wooden cutting board and hammered the knife through it. The knife cut the mango, stone and all. She cut out a smaller piece with a paring knife and gave it to Ma.

“Taste,” she instructed my grandmother, who moved her head away.

“I don’t have to taste; I know that they are not very good by the smell. Priya, you have to use your senses . . . your sense of smell to buy mangoes. I will teach you; if you learn from your mother, you will pick mangoes like these,”
Ammamma
said, looking at the mangoes Ma had just purchased with distaste.

“Maybe if you had given me some mangoes instead of giving them all to Lata, I wouldn’t have made this
big
mistake,” Ma said sarcastically.

“The harvest was not very good, there were only a few mangoes,”
Ammamma
protested. “We had to take some and the rest we gave to Lata.”

“Why give the rest to her? I am your flesh and blood, ” Ma said sourly. “Maybe I should just take Priya home and—”

“Ma,” I interrupted calmly before my mother could finish threatening my grandmother into submission. “
Ammamma
, why don’t you taste the mango and see? I helped Ma pick them out, you know,” I said, putting on my best granddaughter face.

My being the oldest and most doted on grandchild and the fact that I was there for only another week and a half propelled my grandmother to do as I asked.

Ammamma
swallowed the piece of mango and smacked her lips. “They will do,” she said and my mother raised an eyebrow. “They are not bad,” my grandmother added grudgingly. “Now let us cut these mangoes before lunch,” she ordered.

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

AT 11:05 PM, FRIDAY, PRIYA RAO WROTE:

>AT LEAST THEY HAVEN’T THROWN ANY “SUITABLE BOYS”
MY WAY . . . YET.

I HAVE NO IDEA WHY YOU CONTINUE TO CALL THEM “BOYS” WHEN THEY’RE ACTUALLY GROWN, ADULT, READY-TO-MARRY MEN. VERY PERPLEXING, I MUST SAY.

I’M GLAD YOUR PARENTS ARE NOT THROWING ELIGIBLE MEN YOUR WAY. I HAVE TO ADMIT A PART OF ME IS/WAS AFRAID THAT YOUR FAMILY WILL/WOULD CONVINCE YOU TO MARRY A NICE INDIAN BOY. RATIONALLY, I KNOW YOU’RE COMING HOME TO ME BUT THERE IS THIS IRRATIONAL PART OF MY BRAIN THAT’S CONVINCED YOUR FAMILY CAN MANIPULATE YOU.

I MISS YOU. THIS TRIP FEELS LONGER THAN YOUR NORMAL BUSINESS TRIPS. USUALLY, YOU’RE GONE TWO-THREE DAYS OR MAXIMUM A WEEK AND IT’S IN THE U.S. THIS FEELS DIFFERENT. I FEEL THAT I CAN’T REACH YOU.

NICK

Chopping Mangoes and Egos

Cutting mangoes for making pickle is a skill that is honed over years of practice, under the critical eye of one’s mother or mother-in-law, aunt, or some other anal older female relative. In the olden days when joint families were the norm and women didn’t work out of the home, wives and daughters were trained in cutting mangoes as they were in everything else that pertained to keeping order in the household.

There is a certain precision to cutting pickle mangoes, a certain methodology, and I was sorely lacking in both.

A sharp and rather heavy knife is used to cut mangoes so that the blade easily sinks into and then past the mango stone. Since the knife is sharp and heavy it’s not prudent to hold the mango in place with one hand—unless you are an expert—and slam the sharp object with the other; a small miscalculation and you may be missing a few fingers.

With this in mind, I stationed the mango on the wooden cutting board, a board on which generations of my mother’s family had chopped mangoes in the pickle season, and took aim. The mango flew and struck me on the forehead before falling into my lap.

My mother made a disgruntled sound and looked at the now half-squished mango lying unceremoniously on my yellow
salwar
kameez.

“You have to hold the mango, Priya, ” my mother said, and proceeded to demonstrate with expertise how a mango should be cut. I narrowed my eyes in frustration, but she didn’t seem to notice. She was busy cutting me into size along with the mango.

The first slash of the knife split the mango in two halves. Then Ma used a paring knife and removed the stone, but let its hard casing stay stuck to the flesh of the mango.

“Now you have to cut it again,” she told me and did so. Four pieces of the mango lay in front of her, their proportions hideously the same. They were mocking me, just as my mother had wanted them to. “If the mango is small”—she picked up an example—“then only one-half is enough.”

Lata snickered softly and muttered something about modern girls. My shoulders slumped. I didn’t want to get defensive, but I would like to see any of these women manipulate databases the way I could. So, they could cut some measly mangoes. So what?

Being competitive by nature and having the need to prove to the world around me that I was not only a good database programmer but also a good mango chopper, I wielded the knife one more time. This time I cut the mango, not in two clean halves but two squishy portions. After the fourth mango had gone to waste, my grandmother asked me to come and sit next to her and watch and learn. I didn’t want to watch and learn, but the writing was on
Ammamma’s
polished floor. It was pathetic to admit defeat to a lousy piece of fruit but I did it as gracefully as I could.

Between the sound of knives coming down on wooden boards and paring knives scraping against the hard coating of the mango stone, the house seemed like a mango pickle sweatshop. They were good at what they did and they all did it with ease. Their eyes focused on green fleshy fruit and the knives in their hands gleamed with juice while their mouths gossiped.

“When is the boy coming to see Sowmya?” Lata asked conversationally.

This would be boy number 65 according to Ma’s scoreboard.

“Tomorrow evening,”
Ammamma
said, as she opened her brass betel-leaves box.

That box had fascinated me since I was a little girl. I liked
paan
, when it was sweet, but my grandmother liked it bitter. She was an expert at making it and I watched in childlike fascination all over again as she put together a
paan
. She opened a green betel leaf that was slightly darker on the edges because of sitting in an uncomfortable position in the box. Then she opened a small box of light pink paste and applied it on the betel leaf with her leathery fingers.

“So, he is some lecturer at some college?” Lata asked mockingly. I couldn’t understand why Lata was being so antagonistic toward Sowmya. Granted Lata and Sowmya were not good friends, but Lata usually didn’t go off quite like this. What was really shocking was how my grandmother was not supporting Sowmya anymore.

Had they given up? When Anand got married it had been a blow, not only because he had married a woman from another state, but because he had married before his younger sister had. The rules were clear about this, too. The brother closest in age to a sister has to wait to marry until his sister does. If that doesn’t happen, the chances of the sister getting married are pretty slim. In the olden days when girls were married before they hit puberty this rule was put into place so that the brothers would not spend all the dowry money set aside for their sisters.

“Not at some college, at CBIT,” Sowmya blurted out. “And he has already seen my picture,” she added.

“So did that homeopathy doctor,” Lata countered.

“Hush,” my mother said. “Just because you are pretty and married doesn’t mean you have to talk like this. She will get married when it is time. God has it all planned. ”

Yeah, right! Poor Sowmya, caught in a society where she couldn’t step out of the house and couldn’t stay in.

A crackling sound dragged my attention back to my grandmother who was crushing betel nuts with a small brass nutcracker. She spread the nuts on the betel leaf, wrapped it up, and popped it inside her mouth.

“Want one?” she asked me, her mouth dripping with red saliva.

I nodded gleefully and ignored the look Ma gave me. When I was a child there was no way she would have allowed me to eat
paan
, but now I was twenty-seven years old and I could have betel nuts and more.

“My older sister didn’t get married until she was thirty-one,” Neelima offered in support.

“In our family we don’t let our daughters chase and marry men from other castes,”
Ammamma
said as she chewed noisily on the
paan
. “Here. ” She gave me a
paan
that I stuck inside my mouth with the hope that I would not speak up against the injustice.

“She had an arranged marriage,” Neelima countered, and let her knife drop on the wooden cutting board. I saw the tears in her eyes and once again forced myself not to say anything. I was here for just a few days and I didn’t want to get into any unnecessary fights. In any case once they heard about Nick, Neelima would start looking really good to the family. At least she was Indian and I knew that counted for something.

A friend of mine, who had now been relegated to being only an acquaintance, had been appalled when I told him about Nick. His instant reaction was “How can you, Priya? He’s not even Indian” as if that made him a cat or a dog.

“If your sister had an arranged marriage, why didn’t you?” Lata asked Neelima. “You married Anand in a great hurry. Did you think what would happen to Sowmya here? Who will marry her now? The brother got married and the sister is still sitting at home.”

“She hasn’t gotten married for ten years,” Neelima cried out. “How long were we supposed to wait? We waited two years but she was not getting a match. That isn’t my fault.” She stood up and rushed outside to the veranda.

Sowmya used the edge of her sari to wipe her face of sweat and probably tears. The heat in the room was increasing by the minute and the fact that all the windows and doors were left open was not helping. Added to that, the slow creaky fan on the ceiling was barely moving the air around.

I stood up nervously and went to check on my new aunt. She was sitting on the steps that led to the well from the veranda, her face buried in her hands.

I sat down beside her and put a hand on her shoulder tentatively. “Are you okay?” I asked, as I swallowed the
paan
.

She reared her head up. “I hate them all,” she said passionately. “Anand married me.
He
asked me to marry him;
he
pursued me. And now they are blaming
me
for Sowmya?”

“There’s no one to blame,” I told her. “But I think what you said really hurt Sowmya.”

If anyone could understand what Sowmya was going through it would be Neelima. After all, Sowmya was alienated by her own family for being unmarried and she had nowhere to go. All through my life I had heard people say things to put her down. First, it had been because she was overweight and then because her hair was falling out, which made my grandparents nervous that she would soon go bald. She took care of
Ammamma
and
Thatha
, ran their house for them, and they treated her as if she were a burden. Forget gratitude,
Ammamma
and
Thatha
made her feel like she was a load they couldn’t wait to dump on some unsuspecting “boy.” I wondered how they would survive once Sowmya did get married. Who would cook and clean? Who would make sure the maid came and did her work properly?

“I didn’t mean to hurt Sowmya,” Neelima apologized. “But I am going to have a baby and no happiness from their side. Why?”

“If you have a son, you will have them kissing the floor you walk on—they will have their heir then,” I joked but I also knew it was true. My grandfather was obsessed with perpetuating the line of Somayajulas. He wanted a son’s son and that was why Nate, the only grandson, was not qualified to be heir.

Neelima wept some more at my joke. “They told Anand that our son would
never
be the rightful heir because of me. I am not the right woman to bear their heir,” she sighed sadly. “That is why Lata is pregnant again.”

“What?” It was preposterous. How could Lata be pregnant again?

“They are hoping she will have a son and he will be the grandchild to carry on the family name.”

For an instant I wanted to tell her that she was mistaken, that
Thatha
was not such a chauvinist, or so old-fashioned, and then I remembered that he was all those things, that he was capable of asking his “pure-blooded” daughter-in-law to bear another child, to bear a son. Burgeoning hope crushed, I realized that he would never accept Nick; he would never accept even the idea of Nick and me. What was I going to do?

“So she’s pregnant . . . like, now?” I asked, wanting to be absolutely certain.

Neelima’s head bobbed. “Almost four months gone and they want to do a test soon to find out the sex of the baby. Have you seen the way she treats your grandparents? She doesn’t even let her children come here to see them. But now”—she took a deep breath—“now they are all best friends. And my baby has no right to be born. She says that I might have a miscarriage.”

I patted her shoulder in a weak attempt to assuage her. It was an impossible situation, a pointless one. What difference would it make to my seventy-plus-year-old grandfather if he had a grandson or not?

But the Indian in me understood him. You were measured in heaven by the blood of your heirs and
Thatha
didn’t want to fall short. At his age, where life was not ahead of him but behind him, it was more important than ever that the Somayajula family name be carried on.

I loved my grandfather dearly despite his anachronistic ways.
Thatha
was a man from an era long gone. A white burly moustache on his creased face made him look distinguished and his eyes were bright as if he couldn’t wait for the next day. Unlike
Ammamma
,
Thatha
was always ready with a quick joke, some smart repartee, and mischief. He was also one manipulating son of a bitch and I was now old enough to see it, but it didn’t change how I felt about him. I had seen
Thatha
twist and turn people around to suit his needs; I still adored him.

My father disliked my grandfather and disliked him immensely.
Nanna
always had a tough time fitting into my mother’s family, but he tried and I commended him for that. My father didn’t have a large family and his parents were always traveling— my paternal grandfather worked in the Indian Foreign Services— and
Nanna’s
only sister, a doctor, was single and lived in Australia; we hardly ever saw her.

Thatha
didn’t like my father either. He would always say, but never to
Nanna’s
face, “Radha liked him and we said yes, but children make mistakes sometimes.”

And maybe it was a mistake. My mother and father were unsuited in so many ways, yet they had managed to stay married for over twenty-eight years. In some sense of the word, they were probably even “happy.” But happiness is such a relative term that it sometimes loses definition.

When my father turned twenty-five his family pressured him to get married and four years later he relented. His first arranged proposal was with my mother and he agreed to the match immediately. I think it was because he didn’t want to go through any more bride-seeing ceremonies. My father had probably not anticipated the problems that came of living close to his wife’s family. Many a fight ended with Ma bringing Nate and me to my grandparents’ house. Then
Nanna
would come to get us and there would be a drama of theatrical proportions. All through that drama,
Thatha
would play the villain, at least in
Nanna’s
eyes.

During the elaborate fights, Nate and I would pretend that we were on just another trip to
Ammamma’s
house. We wouldn’t talk about how we felt, but it was there, a lurking fear that Ma would not take us back home and we would never see
Nanna
again.

My parents fought; they always had. But there would be special fights when the argument would escalate to the point where Ma would yell and scream and drag us out of the house. She would be either carrying Nate or dragging him along on one side and on the other she would have my hand in hers in a firm grasp. There would be no running back to Evil
Nanna
.

The gate crackled open and I lifted my eyes.
Thatha
was home from the construction site where he was building a new house that he could rent out. When he had told me that they were building yet another house, I had joked he was becoming a regular slum-lord. But for
Thatha
, building houses on the land he had purchased years ago was an investment, a future for his heirs, the ones yet to be born.