Amulya Malladi - The Mango Season

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.

He stepped inside his plot of land and opened his arms wide. I raced into them and felt like a little girl again, little Priya with her big old grandfather.

“I was not here to welcome you,” he apologized. His eyes wandered to Neelima who had stood up and his sharp gaze I’m sure didn’t miss the tears on her cheeks. “What is with her?” he asked me, and nodded at Neelima who scurried inside the house.