The Mango Season (19 page)

During the auto rickshaw ride back home, Sowmya was flushed with happiness. “He is nice, isn’t he?” she said.

“Very nice,” I agreed with her.

“I can work,” Sowmya said almost giddily. “A job, Priya. A place I can go to every day, out of the house. I am so glad I did this. I feel so relieved. And”—she laughed softly—“I am getting married!”

“Congratulations,” I said, and kissed her on her cheek.

“What will you tell them?” she asked me when we got off the auto rickshaw.

“The truth,” I said easily. If Sowmya could take such a big chance to make a better life, I should be able to do the same. “I love Nick. I’m going to marry him.”

Sowmya laced her fingers with mine after she paid off the auto rickshaw driver and squeezed gently. “I will be with you all the time. All right?”

“All right,” I said. “I . . . am going to go and make a phone call.”

“Isn’t it late there?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Around midnight, but he’s usually awake late.”

“Okay, I will make an excuse for you,” Sowmya said and winked at me.

I couldn’t get ahold of Nick. His cell phone said he was out of range. I got our answering machine the five times I tried our home number and his work number said he was either out of his cubicle or on another line.

Panic set in! Had he received the email about my meeting Adarsh despite the server error and had just gone postal? Or maybe he had moved out of our home, changed his cell phone number and . . . didn’t pick up his work phone either? All sorts of unhealthy scenarios emerged in my head. To quell the feeling of misery that was welling inside me, I dialed Frances’s phone number from memory. I knew it would be really late in Memphis but if Nick had dumped me his mother would definitely know.

She was sleeping, but the minute she heard my voice she sounded wide awake.

“They’re forcing you to marry some Indian man and you want me to say good-bye to Nick for you,” she said as soon as she heard my “Hello, Frances.”

I laughed. “No.”

“Thank god, because my policy is that everyone does their own dirty work,” Frances said and I could hear her smile. “How’s it going, Priya?”

“I can’t find Nick,” I said, now feeling foolish for having woken her up. “I . . . thought he might be angry with me.”

“Angry? No, I don’t think so. I just spoke with him yesterday and he was fine. Was waiting for you to come back and get married to him,” Frances said. “And speaking of marriage, I found the perfect place for you both. It’s in midtown and it’s beautiful. The gardens are lovely. And I was thinking, if we did it in the fall,
this
fall, we could have great pictures of the foliage and—”

“Frances, I’m worried your son has dumped me. I don’t think I can even think about marriage,” I said, half hysterical.

“What’s one thing got to do with the other?” Frances demanded. “Find the right place to get married and I’ll make sure he shows up. He’s silly in love with you. Don’t you have faith?”

“Plenty,” I said. “Plenty back home. Here everything is murky and they made me go through this bride-seeing ceremony.”

“Like they do in the books? Was he a suitable boy?” Frances asked sounding excited. “Are you sure they made you go through it? Or did you want to?”

“Of course I didn’t want to and he isn’t suitable,” I said.

“Are you saying that a grown woman like you couldn’t stop something as simple as a bride-seeing ceremony?”

“I didn’t have the courage to tell them about Nick. Now I have and they all hate me,” I confessed.

“If this is all it takes to get them to hate you, you’re better off without them,” Frances said. “But they don’t hate you. They’re just mad and once they’re over their mad, they’ll be fine.”

“Really?”

“Well, I would be, if you were my daughter,” Frances said. “So . . . do I book this place for this fall or what? I was thinking early October. Not too hot, not too cold.”

“And then I can be knocked up by December?“ I asked sardonically.

“Would you?” Frances said. “That would be excellent. You could have a baby in September and . . . oh, that would be excellent. A September baby would—”

“Frances!”

“I’ll tell Nick that you wanted to get in touch with him,” Frances said, sounding very satisfied. “But don’t worry about him. He isn’t going anywhere.”

We chatted for a while; Frances wanted to know how everything in Hyderabad was, including the weather. She had this romantic idea about India, the way it was shown in books as an exotic land. When I told her about the slums and the dust that settled on your entire body, even your eyelids as soon as you got here, she thought it was quaint. India was not just a country you visited, it was a country that sank into your blood and stole a part of you.

As an insider all those years ago I couldn’t see it, but now after several years of exile I could feel the texture of India. It was the people, the smell, the taste, the noise, the essence that dragged you in and kept you. I hated this country for a lot of reasons, the narrow-mindedness, the bigotry, the treatment of women, but that was all on a larger scale, on a day-to-day basis. India still was
my
country.

I felt light-hearted, confident, and on top of the world after speaking with Frances. That changed when I got to
Thatha’s
house.

I stepped into the hall and the earth shifted. This was classic Ma, classic Indian mother.

Ma and
Thatha
were sitting across from Adarsh on the sofa
Ammamma
frequented most.

“Priya,” Ma stood up nervously. “Adarsh is here to see you.”

“I can see that,” I said, my lips pursued. “Hi,” I said to Adarsh, and he nodded with a confused look on his face.

“Can you come with me?” Ma insisted, and then just in case I would say something contrary she grabbed my wrist and took me inside.

“We thought it best,” she said as soon as we were in the kitchen.

“Thought what best?” I was now very confused and very suspicious. It was always a bad thing when Ma started thinking about my best.

Ma took a deep breath, her potbelly jiggled and her hands landed on her waist in an offensive gesture. “We asked Adarsh to come here saying that you wanted to meet him one last time before you made a decision.”

I wanted to say something, anything, but the words were not forming. Each time I thought they couldn’t surpass their previous nonsense, they did.

“We think you should talk to him and see what a good boy he is before you decide anything,” Ma advised.

I shook my head as if to clear the cobwebs that had settled in as soon as I saw Adarsh. “Ma, I’ve already decided. Actually, there is nothing to decide.”

“Just talk to him,” Ma cried out. “What do you lose?”

“Does
Nanna
know about this?” I asked.

“No. Your
Thatha
and I thought it was a good idea.”

I sighed. “I’ll talk to him, but not here,” I said even before she could let the triumphant smile form on her face. “We’ll go out and I’ll talk to him. You handle
Thatha
about that.”

“And you’ll be good to him? Right? Speak properly? No nonsense?”

I grinned; she had to push for that extra mile. “Ma, don’t you think I’m doing enough?”

Ma frowned and muttered something that I thankfully couldn’t catch.
Thatha
was called into the kitchen by Ma while I asked Adarsh if he wouldn’t mind going out.

“Sure,” Adarsh nodded and then followed me onto the veranda. I slipped my feet into the Kohlapuri slippers that I had just taken off. I had bought them a few days ago when I got home and they were already showing serious signs of wear.

While Adarsh buckled his leather sandals, I asked him if he knew of a place where we could have a cup of coffee and talk.

“Sure, we can drive,” Adarsh said, pointing to a black Tata Sierra parked outside the gate that I hadn’t noticed when I’d come back.

We didn’t speak as Adarsh drove to a
chaat
place.

“I love
chaat
,” he told me. “As soon as I got here I ate
chaat
.”

“I lived on
chaat
and
ganna
juice while I was in college,” I said. “When I got to the U.S. I was skinny. I looked like I was a refugee from one of those sad African countries.”

“Can’t bulk up just on
chaat
and sugarcane juice,” Adarsh concurred. “But if you add beer to the mix . . .” We laughed, almost companionably.

The
chaat
place was a small restaurant. Not your regular roadside
chaat
, this one was a step up. There were probably fifteen tables covered with red-and-white checkered vinyl tablecloths. Each table had a small plastic vase where a dusty plastic red rose stood upright proclaiming its artificiality.

Adarsh asked for two bottles of water as soon as we got in. The place was practically empty except for a man sitting at a table in a corner reading a newspaper. We found a table by a window looking out at the busy road where Adarsh had parked the black Tata Sierra. A young boy of maybe ten or eleven years old, wearing a pair of oversized khaki shorts and a dirty white T-shirt, put two bottles of water on our table. A small white-and-red checkered towel rested on his shoulders and he took our order on a small notepad with a ballpoint pen that had been resting against his ear.

“Just
chai
? No
chaat
?” Adarsh asked when he heard what I wanted.

“I just had a
masala dosa
at Minerva. Went there with my aunt,” I said, but my mouth watered when Adarsh ordered
pau
bhaji
.

“The best
pau bhaji
is still in Bombay,” Adarsh said when the busboy was gone. He then took a swig from the bottled water. “So, why did you want to see me?”

I rested my chin on the palm of my left hand, moving my head slowly as my hand pivoted around my elbow and smiled at Adarsh.

“You didn’t want to see me,” he deduced, and sighed. “Your mother and your grandfather—”

“Plotted behind my back,” I finished. “Yup. I’m horribly sorry and to make up for it,
chaat
is on me and we can stop by this place I went to the other day and even have
ganna
juice.”

Adarsh’s eyes glinted with good humor. “You don’t want to marry me. Is that it?”

“Well . . . ” I started and paused when a big smile broke on his face. “I don’t.”

“Okay,” he said, and took another swig of water.

“You don’t seem too broken up about it,” I said, slightly miffed that he was taking my rejection so well.

“I’ve seen five girls and I liked you the best, but I’m not in love with you,” Adarsh said.

That was the good thing, I thought, about men like Adarsh. They treated arranged marriage exactly the way it should be treated, without too many emotions messing with their decision-making process.

“Any of the other four girls to your liking?” I had to ask.

“Yes,” Adarsh said with a smile. “Her name is Priya, too, but she’s shorter than you are and definitely has less . . . of that spark.”

“Is that a polite way of saying I have a short temper?”

“Well . . . I just saw a spark of it here and there,” Adarsh said with a grin. “So, your family forced you into that
pelli-chupulu
?”

“Yes and no,” I confessed. “I could’ve—no, should’ve—fought against it but I wanted some peace and I didn’t have the courage to tell them about my boyfriend.”

Adarsh put the bottle down and made an annoyed sound. “You have a boyfriend? And why the hell didn’t you tell me when I told you about my ex-girlfriend?”

He had every right to be mad so I continued humbly. “I was scared,” I admitted the truth. “I was scared of hurting my family and I ended up hurting you.”

“Humiliating me,” Adarsh amended. “Goddamn it, what’s wrong with you women? I mean, I agree that arranged marriage is archaic but, Priya, you work in the United States. You are a grown woman. Why the hell are you playing these stupid games?”

“Not games, Adarsh,” I said, keeping my voice calm even though I wanted to rage at him. How would he understand how much I was afraid of losing my family? How could he understand that?

“Then what?”

“He is American,” I revealed. “And I told them yesterday but they don’t want to come to terms with it. They dragged you here hoping I would give in. Be charmed by your ultra-good looks and the rest of the package.”

We fell silent when the busboy brought Adarsh’s
pau bhaji
and my
chai
. He ignored his food while I blew at the hot tea to cool it.

“I’m so sorry,” I apologized.

“I’m so fucking tired of women like you,” Adarsh muttered.

“Women like me? Excuse me, but you don’t even know me,” I said, putting my cup down with force that caused some of the tea spill on the saucer.

“Why are you so scared? My ex-girlfriend wouldn’t tell her parents about me. She was scared because they expected her to marry a Chinese guy. . . . And that’s why we broke up, because I got sick of her not accepting me,” Adarsh said.

“And you told your parents about her?”

“Yes,” Adarsh said. “I told them when things got serious and we moved in together, but Linda just wouldn’t do it.”

“I’m sorry,” I repeated sincerely. “I told my family yesterday night. I’m going to tell them again today. . . . I don’t know what else to do. I’m scared that I’ll lose them if I tell them and I’m scared I’ll lose Nick if I don’t.”

“Oh, you’ll lose him if you don’t,” Adarsh assured me and dug into his
bhaji
. “Want a bite?”

I shook my head. “So am I forgiven?”

“Hey, who am I to judge. I’m the one finding a wife like I would a job,” Adarsh said, and then chewed on his food with relish.

“You think the other Priya will work out for you?”

Adarsh nodded, his expression amused as well as confident. “She’s twenty years old, lives with her parents. Just finished her degree, so yeah, I think she’ll work out. She likes to run and hike, I kinda like the same things, so . . . we’ll go camping a lot.”