The Mango Season (17 page)

“Nate,” I said mortified, “You’ve brought me to some teenage hangout?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I thought you’d like to meet Tara.”

I sniffled. “Tara?”

“My girl . . .”

“I know who Tara is,” I said, not wanting him to think I had forgotten. “But I’m all blubbery and she’ll think I’m a weepy hag.”

“She already does,” Nate said with a wink, and waved at a pretty girl sitting at a table right ahead of us. “Isn’t she lovely?” he asked dramatically in a fake British accent.

“Yes, dear,” I said with a grin. This was a side of Nate I had never seen before and it was charming.

“Hi, I am Tara,” Tara said enthusiastically.

“Hello, Priya,” I said, unsure of what I was supposed to say to her. I held out my hand and she shook it.

“So, how are you doing?” Tara asked. “Are your parents mad as hell about your American fiancé?”

Well, she sure got to the point, I thought critically. Now, as an older sister, it was my job to dislike any woman/girl Nate liked, was involved with, and/or wanted to marry

“Screw them,” Tara said before I could respond. “You’ve got one life . . . no second chances, you know.
Kis-kis ka khyaal
rakhenge, haan?
Who, who will we keep happy? So we have to make choices. You have to keep you happy.”

“It isn’t that simple,” I repeated what I had been telling Ma all evening.

“Of course not, that would make it too easy,” she said with a grin. “So, Nate tells me that you love
pista kulfi
. They make a wicked
kulfi
here. Why don’t I get you one while you tell Nate what you think about me?”

Nate looked at me, his eyebrows raised. “She’s very nervous. She blabs when she’s nervous.”

“She seems super-duper confident to me,” I said. “And perky as hell,” I added.

Nate’s face fell. “You don’t like her.”

I smiled. “I don’t know her and I have yet to make up my mind. So far so good.”

Tara came back with
kulfi
for everyone and I got a chance to see how Nate was with a woman. It was a learning experience. He was so much my father in the way he talked and carried himself, always well behaved, always the gentleman.

“I don’t want to argue about this, Tara,” he said when Tara insisted that Nate wanted to go to the United States to do his masters.

“Well, why not,” I said, finishing the
kulfi
. “It’s a very beautiful place and you could do your masters in a really nice school there.”

“See,” Tara said, and put her hand on Nate’s. “
Arrey, yaar
, it will be
mast
, a lot of fun.”

“Why can’t I just stay in India?” Nate asked belligerently. “Not everyone wants to run and join the Americans,
yaar
. I definitely don’t.”

“Well, I do,” Tara said.

“Then you should find a nice boy. . . . Hey, why don’t we hook her up with Adarsh Sarma?” Nate suggested jokingly and Tara threw her paper napkin at him.

“You dog,” she complained. “But I can come and visit you, right, Priya?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

They were so young, I thought. So very young! Was I ever that young? When I was in college, I didn’t have any boyfriends. Well, I did have a crush on someone once in a while but no relationships. I had friends. Even now I had a good relationship with a couple of boys I went to engineering college with. With other classmates my relationship was limited to an occasional phone call.

I never had the easygoing teenage years that Nate was indulging in. There were no teenage hangouts, none that I visited, nor was Britney Spears part of my vocabulary. In fact, when I was in India I didn’t know much about the pop music of the United States. Nate and Tara were aware of it all, their feet tapped to the music and Tara hummed to the lyrics. This was already another generation and in this generation girls could meet boys at a place like this after nine in the night. My mother would’ve hung me out to dry if I had tried to leave the house this late and especially to meet a boy.

“My parents adore Nate,” Tara told me. “They think he is amazing. They want to meet your parents but Nate keeps avoiding it. But sooner or later, Nate, it will have to happen.”

Nate shifted in his red plastic chair uncomfortably.

“You wouldn’t like our mother,” I said, and thought that Ma would simply hate Tara. Tara was what Ma would call a girl without a mother.

When Nate flipped through television channels to land on MTV, Ma would look at the gyrating, bikini-clad women in the videos and shake her head. “If you had shown up on television like that,” she told me, “I would skin you alive. These girls . . .
cheechee
, they don’t have mothers; if they did, no mother, no mother and I don’t care which country she is from, would allow this.”

Tara definitely fell in the no-mother category in her tight yellow blouse and small black skirt. She wasn’t different from a typical girl her age in the U.S. but for me it was a shock to see how much things had changed here in India. When I was this young, there was no way I could’ve walked out of my mother’s house
alive
wearing what she was wearing. Ma would never have permitted me to bring a boyfriend home or even to have one to start with.

Nate and Tara were holding hands, touching each other with a familiarity I had not experienced until I met Nick. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that these two teenagers had had sex, even though it would make me queasy.

Yes, this was a different generation and they made me uneasy with their progressive ways. But who was I to speak? I was planning to marry an American who I’d been living in sin with for the past two years. I most probably made my parents’ generation queasy with what they thought were my progressive ways.

“I’m going to put some money in the jukebox,” Tara said, and walked toward the glittering music box.

“She is nice,” I said because I knew Nate wanted me to like her.

“Yes, she is,” Nate said. “Ma will absolutely hate her.”

“Yes,” I nodded, and we both laughed.

“You feeling better?” Nate asked.

I grinned and patted his hand. “This was a good idea, Nate. Thanks. I feel better.
Thatha
was . . . brutal. He said that we can’t make mango pickle with tomatoes, that if I married Nick, our marriage would end in divorce.”

“It could,” Nate said. “There are no guarantees.”

“I know. So, are you planning to marry this girl without a mother?” I asked, not wanting to dwell on my impending marriage and divorce as
Thatha
would like to have it.

Nate laughed. “Before I take her to meet Ma, I really need to get her into a decent
salwar kameez
.”

Tara was definitely an independent woman of the twenty-first century. She zipped home on a white Kinetic Honda, waving, even as I gasped at her speed and lack of a helmet.

“She will be fine,” Nate said when I voiced my concern, feeling like my mother. “She is always careful and . . . won’t wear a helmet, messes up her hair, she says.”

Nate and I drove to Tankbund instead of
Thatha’s
house and sat down on one of the benches, right next to the statue of Krishnadeva Raya, the great king of the Deccan.

Krishnadeva Raya was part of my childhood; part of my knowledge of Indian history and mythology, of
Thatha
telling me rich, vivid stories of the king and his wise court jester, Tenali Raman. They were fables, part of folklore that had traveled generations to be revealed to me and hopefully to my children through me.

Thatha
would sit me on his lap out on the veranda swing. He would fold one leg, which I would sit on, and keep the other leg on the floor to keep the swing in motion. He would then tell me a story.

My favorite was the story where corrupt Brahmins try to swindle the king and both the king and the Brahmins are taught a lesson by Tenali Raman.

I would make
Thatha
tell me the story again and again of how, when the king’s mother dies without her last wish of eating a ripe mango fulfilled, Krishnadeva Raya is filled with guilt and fear that his mother’s
atma
is wandering around the earth because of an unfulfilled desire. The court priest, a horrible Brahmin, decides to take advantage of the grief-stricken king and tells him, “Since the Queen Mother died without eating a mango, her soul is lost, crying for closure.”
Thatha
would say this in a sad quiet voice, imitating the Brahmin.

The king would then ask in
Thatha’s
humble voice, “Mangoes were out of season, there was nothing I could do. What should I do, O great Pandit, to make this right?”

“You have to do a
puja
, a big
puja
,” the Brahmin says. “And to ensure that your mother’s soul rests in peace, you must give a golden mango to fifty noble Brahmins.”

The king thinks it is a wonderful idea and decides to do accordingly, only he thinks fifty to be a small number and invites every Brahmin in his kingdom.

“Every Brahmin got a golden mango?” I would ask
Thatha
the same question each time. “How many gold mangoes would that be,
Thatha
?”

“Hundreds,”
Thatha
would say and then would come to the part I loved the most.

Tenali Rama, seeing his Lord and Master being swindled, decides to teach the
Brahmins
a lesson. After the king’s
puja
, Raman shows up at the temple and asks the Brahmins to come home with him as his mother had also recently died of an unfulfilled wish. Expecting more goodies the Brahmins follow Raman to his house.

When they get there they find several branding irons resting in hot fire. “What is that for, Raman?” the court priest asks and Raman folds his hands and raises them over his head (
Thatha
would do the same with one hand while the other would hold me), “My mother died of rheumatism and her last wish had been to be branded at her knees to ease the pain. But I am no king, I can’t afford gold rods, so these will have to do.”

I would cover my mouth with shock. “Did Raman brand the Brahmins,
Thatha
?”

“No.”
Thatha
would laugh. “They all ran away, leaving their golden mangoes behind. Seeing them run, the king realizes that he was being conned and thanks Raman for showing him the truth.”

“Are all Brahmins cheats?” I asked once, and
Thatha
had shaken his head violently. “No, Priya
Amma
, this is just a story. Brahmins are honest and good people. Tenali Raman was also a Brahmin . . . and he is good, isn’t he?”

There were more stories, some about Raman, Jataka tales about Bodhisattva, stories about Jain and Buddha, about Lord Indra,
The Mahabharata, The Ramayana
. . . everything.
Thatha
had been my source of Indian history and mythology. He had been a great storyteller, just like his brother
Kathalu-Thatha
had been. But after I grew too old to sit on his lap, storytelling was replaced with discussions and now, finally, we had reached an impasse.

“I know I eventually have to go to
Thatha’s
house and face the music, I just don’t want to,” I said to Nate.

“Then come home with me,” he suggested. “Call and let them know you are at home. A good night’s sleep will put everything in perspective for everyone.”

“I don’t know where
Nanna
went and . . .” I shrugged.

Nate nodded and put his arm around me. He pulled my head against his shoulder and kissed me on my forehead.

“Why is it that you are so close to
Thatha
and I am not?” Nate asked.

“I don’t know,” I said honestly, and turned to look at him. Objectively speaking he was quite a handsome young man and a wonderfully sensitive one as well. He got that from
Nanna
.

“Lata thinks you’re aloof.”

“Lata is a ditz,” Nate said.

“She’s not that much of a ditz,” I said, remembering the conversation I’d had with Lata and Sowmya just that evening. “She’s actually quite a woman.”

“She is pregnant again,” Nate said in disgust. “Ma told us and . . . it’s just such a farce. The old man wants clean blood, and what the fuck does that mean, anyway?”

Unlike several boys his age, Nate’s vocabulary was not littered with obscenities, so the fact that he was using one clearly told me about his strong feelings regarding the matter.

“They’ll never give you their permission, if that’s what you are looking for,” he said, moving on to the topic I didn’t want to discuss. “And why does it matter, Priya?”

“I don’t know,” I told him honestly. “I need them in my life. I need
you
in my life. You’re family.”

“Need is a very strong word,” Nate reminded me.

“I know,” I said. “Oh, how I know.”

We sat in silence then and watched the cars pass by and for the first time since I had been back, I truly savored India. I had sat right here, on one of these benches seven years ago, watching cars pass by and the lights in Begumpet across Tankbund wink at me. I had sat here and wondered about my new life that awaited me in the United States, the land of opportunities. I couldn’t wait to leave, to get on that plane and fly away from my parents’ home and all the problems that came with it.

“Why don’t you want to leave India, Nate?” I asked since I had been so eager to find the new world.

“I like it here,” Nate said. “Why would I leave? Why did you leave?”

I wiped my sweaty hands on my
salwar
as I contemplated his question. “I left because everyone was leaving. All my classmates had written their GRE, some had married men in the U.S. and others were looking for a groom there. But I think the strongest reason was escape. I wanted to get away from here, from Ma and
Nanna
and
Thatha
and the whole family.”

“But you still want their approval?”

“Yes,” I said. “Ironic, isn’t it? I spent so much time trying to get away and now I’m scared that I won’t be allowed back in. They’ve always been my safety net. I have always been daughter, granddaughter, sister, niece just as I have been woman and fiancée. It is who I am. I can’t divorce the family any more than I can myself. Do you understand what I’m saying?”