Amulya Malladi - The Mango Season

“Everyone is being perfectly mean to her,” I told him, and inhaled the smell of tobacco and cement that hung on him. Thatha chewed tobacco, a nasty habit in any man but him. He made it look dignified; or maybe I was just biased.

“She is imagining it,” Thatha said, putting his arm around me. We walked inside the veranda and he groaned comically at the voices coming from the hall. “They are all here?”

“Mango pachadi,” I supplied laughing. It was good to see the old man and it was good to be this comfortable with him even after seven years.

He looked around mischievously and then winked at me. “The pomegranate tree has some red, red fruit; let’s go,” he whispered, and we both sneaked out holding hands.

The pomegranate tree and a few mango trees were scattered in the area between my grandparents’ house and the house they gave up for rent. As a child I was not allowed to wander around the fruit trees because more than once I had fallen sick eating too many not so ripe pomegranate seeds.

It was a ritual. We would come for a visit and Thatha would sneak me away to eat the forbidden fruit. We would usually get caught because I would end up with some fruit stains on my clothes. My mother would never let it slide. She would kick up a fuss and Thatha would apologize and the next time we came for a visit, he would take me to the pomegranate tree again. We were partners in crime. We were pals.

“Here.” Thatha peeled a pomegranate fruit with his pocket-knife, broke it open, and handed me a piece of the fruit. We sat down on the stairs that led to the apartment upstairs and watched the traffic go past the metal gate of his house.

“So how is my American-returned granddaughter?” he asked amicably.

“Doing well. But things here don’t seem that… well,” I said, slurping over juicy pomegranate seeds.

He sighed. “Anand…” He paused thoughtfully, then continued, “made a mistake… But what do they say in English? To err is human?”

I shook my head. “He married the woman he loves; that’s a blessing, not a mistake.”

Thatha’s eyes twinkled. “Love isn’t all that it is cracked up to be, Priya. Marriage needs a lot more than love.”

“But love is essential,” I argued.

“You fall in love later,” he said with a patriarchal wave of his hand, “after you get married and have children ”

I wanted to argue the point with him, even though I knew it was futile. He was set in his ways and I in mine. We lived by a different set of philosophies. In his rulebook, duty was high on the list, and in mine, personal happiness was a priority.

“What if you never fall in love with your wife… or husband?” I questioned.

Thatha gave me another piece of fruit embedded with bright shiny pomegranate seeds. I took it from him and started peeling the seeds off from their rind before popping them into my mouth. It wasn’t the season for pomegranates but this one had ripened early and was sweet.

“You always love your wife… or husband, as the case might be,” he said in that authoritarian tone that broached no further dispute.

But he knew just as well as I did that unlike his children and other grandchildren, that tone would not deter me. It had been that way since the beginning. I had had the most arguments with Thatha, the most debates, and, ultimately, the most fights. We discussed various subjects and passionately argued our stance; even when I called him from the U.S., we’d get excited talking about something and our tempers would flare. I think he respected me because I was opinionated and not afraid to tell him how I felt and because I openly disagreed with him. Sometimes I felt that I argued a point just to earn his respect. He was important to me; his opinion mattered; he mattered.

The man was a bigot, a racist, a chauvinist, and generally too arrogant for anyone’s liking, yet I loved him. Family never came in neat little packages with warranty signs on them. Thatha was all that I disliked in people, but he was also a lot more-he had a backbone of steel and an iron will to make the best of a bad situation. When Thatha joined the State Bank of AP right after Independence, he was just a lowly bank teller. When he retired he had been a bank manager of the large Hyderabad branch. His never-say-die spirit was also mine. I was his blood; there was no denying it and when our tempers flared I knew that I was a lot more like him than I would like to admit.

“In several arranged marriages, couples don’t fall in love with each other, they merely tolerate each other,” I told him. “I know some women who are unhappy with the husband their parents chose… but they can’t do anything about it. Why condemn anyone to a lifetime of unhappiness?”

“Lifetime of unhappiness?” Thatha said loudly, mockingly. “Priya, you are talking like we marry our children off to rapists and murderers. Parents love their children and do what is best for them.”

I shook my head. “I think a lot of parents don’t know their children very well and if they don’t know their own child, how can they know what would be best for them?”

“You think you’re smarter than your parents?” Thatha asked pointedly.

“Sometimes.”

Thatha laughed, a big booming sound, reverberating from inside his chest. “This hair didn’t get white in the sun,” he said, patting his thick white hair, which refused to give way to baldness despite his age.

“You think you are very smart?” I asked.

Thatha just grinned.

“Well… what do you think about Lata being pregnant for all the wrong reasons?” I asked because it was nagging me.

“I said I was smart, not broad-minded.” Thatha arched his right eyebrow, in the way my mother could, I could. “But it also depends upon what your reasons are. I believe the family name has to be carried on.”

“At any cost?”

“Not at any cost ” Thatha said, and smiled.

“Neelima is pregnant, you know,” I informed him, and saw his eyes darken with anger. “What if she has a son?”

“Then she has a son,” he shrugged.

The calm way in which he declared a grandchild inconsequential to his plans angered me. “What if… Nanna was not a Brahmin? What if Ma and Nanna had fallen in love and had gotten married? Would you not be my Thatha?”

He stood up then and I knew I had crossed some imaginary line he had laid down. “We will never know,” he said coolly, and then he broke into a smile. “You are here for another few days,” he urged brightly. “I don’t want to argue over something that does not concern you.”

I was defeated but I knew I had to choose my battles. “Let’s go inside,” I suggested. “It’s time for lunch, maybe I can help cook.”

“Make some avial. You make the best avial, ” he ordered sweetly.

Avial was the only South Indian dish I cooked that tasted the way it should. Thatha loved my avial, even more than he liked Ma’s.

TO: PRIYA RAO ‹PRIYA_RAO@YYYY.COM›

FROM: NICHOLAS COLLINS ‹NICK_COLLINS@XXXX.COM›

SUBJECT: RE: RE: GOOD TRIP?

HAVEN’T HEARD FROM YOU. YOU MUST BE AT YOUR GRANDMA’S PLACE MAKING PICKLE. JUST WANTED TO TELL YOU THAT YOU ARE MISSED.

NICK

Avial (South Indian)

1 cup sour curds (for yogurt)

150 grams of yam or yellow pumpkin

2 raw bananas

2 drumsticks (an Indian vegetable available fresh or

canned)

1 potato

½ cup shelled peas

½ teaspoon turmeric powder

¼ cup coconut oil

a few curry leaves

salt to taste

For Paste