Amulya Malladi - The Mango Season

“I heard that they gave thirty lakhs in dowry, and that was just hard cash, plus a new Honda,” Ma said conspiratorially.

“Thirty lakhs… So much money they have and they bought her a nice husband with it,” Lata shrugged, and they both looked up at us when we entered the kitchen.

“Can I help?” Neelima asked politely, and was immediately shooed away. She didn’t cry this time; just twirled around and asked Sowmya to show her the new saris she had bought at a sari sale last week. I sat down on the floor next to my mother and looked at the vegetables in steel containers that were strewn around.

“There is half a coconut in the fridge,” Lata informed me. “You will need it for the avial.”

I got the coconut out and attached it to the coconut scraper and churned the metal handle. Thin coconut slivers started to fall into a steel container.

My mother got up to leave. I knew she was not happy that my grandfather wanted me to cook. I didn’t know when I joined a race with my mother, but I felt like she charted everything that Thatha said on a scoreboard and the score today was: Priya-one, Ma-zero.

“My back hurts,” Ma complained unconvincingly, even as she rubbed her hand on the small of her back. “I will go rest with your Ammamma. You can take care, can’t you?”

I made an assenting sound but didn’t look up from my coconut.

“She is unhappy with you,” Lata said, as she brushed an errant hair from her perfect, heart-shaped face.

“She’s always unhappy,” I said sulkily, and she laughed.

“You have to eventually get married,” Lata said. She pulled a flat block of wood toward her and tugged out the folded blade that sat on it. She leaned her perfectly pedicured right foot on the block and started slicing potatoes on the sharp knife. Her gold toe ring and the bright red nail polish glimmered against the worn wood.

“Eventually, I will get married,” I said. “I never figured out how to use that knife. I was always scared that I’d walk into it.”

“It is easy,” Lata said, and sliced another potato with a flourish. “So, do you have a boyfriend? Is that why you keep saying no to marriage?”

Was she being perceptive or merely voicing a popular familial opinion that my mother had failed to tell me about?

“I’m just twenty-seven, plenty of time to get married,” I evaded. “And please don’t tell me how when you were twenty-seven you were married with kids.”

Lata dropped another sliced-up potato into the big steel bowl of water to keep it from changing color. “I won’t tell you that because you already know it. But twenty-seven is late. When will you have children? The sooner the better, otherwise… you may not be able to have children.”

“Maybe I don’t want any children,” I said annoyed. Was there no originality among the women of my family? One aunt said I should learn to cook so that my husband won’t starve, while the other wanted me to get pregnant in case my reproductive organs gave up on me. And adding insult to injury was my mother who wanted me to marry any man who made what she considered “good money.”

“All women want children,” Lata said negligently. “So, my brother who lives in Los Angeles told me that nowadays Indians- not those foreigners, but Indian girls and boys-live together… do everything when they are not married. Why can’t they simply get married?”

“Because they want to live together for a while, not spend the rest of their lives together. Maybe they just want to test the waters. Marriage is serious business. You don’t marry the first guy you sleep with or live with for that matter,” I said for the sole purpose of scandalizing the living daylights out of her.

From her shocked facial expression, I knew I had succeeded. But I knew she would mention this to my mother, or worse, to Thatha, and then there would be questions galore.

She looked at me sharply. “Would you live with a man without marrying him?”

Talking to Lata felt akin to walking into enemy territory where booby traps lay everywhere. “Does everything have to be about me?” I commended myself on the poker face I wore.

Lata continued to chop potatoes. “You know, Anand and Neelima… they did it before marriage. I think that is why they got married.”

“Because they had sex?” I stopped scraping the coconut and then started again.

Lata picked up a bottle gourd, as green in color as the cotton sari she was wearing, and started to cut it into big chunks to make it easy to peel and then chop for the pappu.

“We are not like all those white women who have sex with hundreds of men. We marry the man we have sex with. Neelima trapped him,” she said.

“Why would he marry her because he had sex with her? How should that matter?” I knew it was pointless to discuss Neelima or the institution of marriage with Lata, but my mouth ran away before I could put a leash on it.

“Anand is a nice boy,” Lata explained her twisted logic. “Neelima seduced him and he had to marry her.”

“So they’re not a happily married couple?” I asked over the sound of the scraper rolling inside the now bare shell of coconut. I discarded the shell and ran my fingers through the white slivers of coconut lying in the steel bowl.

Lata placed a yellow pumpkin lying next to her in front of me. I put it on top of the elevated wooden chopping board my mother had been using. I then rose to pick out a large, smooth-edged knife from the knife holder standing by the sink.

“Anand seems happy,” she remarked. “But you can never know for real. You can’t, you know, judge a book by its cover.”

I agreed with her. But if I were to go by covers, Lata and Jayant appeared to have a lousy marriage. They were perpetually at each other’s throats. There was no blatant fighting; it was more the bickering, the constant animosity. One look at Jayant and Lata was enough to put anyone off of arranged marriage. Their marriage was obviously not working but they were still together in what appeared to be a stifling relationship, while baby number three was on the way. I wondered whose decision it had been to have another baby, Jayant’s or Lata’s. Who had given in to the pressure I am sure Thatha had firmly put on the couple?

“How are Apoorva and Shalini doing?” I changed the topic to her children as I cut through the large yellow pumpkin.

“Very well,” she said with pride. “Shalini started Bharatnatyam classes and she dances with so much grace, and Apoorva is learning how to play the veena. I always say it is important for girls to know some classical dance or music.”

“How do they feel about getting a little brother or a sister?”

She raised her eyebrows holding a piece of bottle gourd in midair. She slid it on the blade and put two pieces of the gourd in the steel bowl by her side. “Who told you? Neelima?”

“Not Neelima,” I lied, as I started parting the peel of the pumpkin from its flesh.

Lata picked up the pieces of peeled pumpkin and sliced them on the blade jutting out of the wooden board and dropped them in another steel bowl.

“They made me,” she said. “First, it was just Mava and then it was Atha and then Jayant started. What could I say? I have some duty toward my husband’s family.”

“What if you have another daughter?” I asked what was probably the most taboo question.

“I won’t,” she told me with fervor, as if even thinking about it would make it happen. “I know I could, but I hope I won’t. All this for nothing, then.”

“What will you do if it’s a girl?” I persisted.

Lata smiled softly and met my eyes without flinching. “I love my children. I don’t care if they are girls or boys. And I will love this baby, too. I only want it to be a boy so that your Thatha will be happy.”