Amulya Malladi - The Mango Season

“Priya.” My mother silenced me with that one sharp word. “You don’t know what you are talking about.”

Silence fell again. Except for the chewing of food and the movements of steel utensils, no one said anything.

Now I had done it and I wanted to kick myself. This was not how I was going to soften the blow-this was how I was going to make it more severe. Of all the stupid things to do I had to go and try to change my family’s mind about the evil and corrupt Western world. I might as well have tried to climb Mt. Everest in my shorts.

TO: NICHOLAS COLLINS ‹NICK_COLLINS@XXXX.COM›

FROM: PRIYA RAO ‹PRIYA_RAO@YYYY.COM›

SUBJECT: RE: RE: RE: GOOD TRIP?

I FOUND AN INTERNET CAFE, JUST DOWN THE STREET FROM AMMAMMA’S HOUSE. SMALL PLACE, CHARGES RS. 30 FOR 15 MINUTES AND THE CONNECTION IS SOOOOO SLOW, IT CRAWLS. NEVERTHELESS, IT EXISTS AND SEVEN YEARS AGO IT DIDN’T. I’M CONSTANTLY SURPRISED AT HOW SOME THINGS HAVE CHANGED AND HOW SOME THINGS ARE EXACTLY THE SAME.

JUST MET WITH THATHA AND, NICK, THE MAN IS A CHAUVINIST. I MEAN, THE MAN IS A FREAK, OUT OF A MUSEUM. AND THE REST OF THEM ARE EQUALLY BAD. I TOLD YOU ABOUT ANAND AND HOW HE MARRIED NEELIMA. WELL, YOU SHOULD SEE HOW EVERYONE TREATS THE POOR GIRL-SLAPPING HER ACROSS THE FACE REPEATEDLY WOULD BE KIND.

AND YOU WON’T BELIEVE THIS, BUT LATA IS PREGNANT AGAIN. THATHA WANTS A PUREBLOODED BRAHMIN GRANDSON AND ANAND’S SON, IF HE HAS ONE, WON’T CUT IT. NEELIMA ISN’T A TELUGU BRAHMIN, YOU SEE, JUST A MAHARASHTRIAN ONE. THIS FEELS LIKE A BAD TELUGU MOVIE; ALL THE CHARACTERS ARE THERE IN DIFFERENT SHADES OF GRAY: THE INTRACTABLE MOTHER-IN-LAW, THE VILE SISTER-IN-LAWS, THE SPINELESS HUSBAND, THE PATRIARCHAL FATHER-IN-LAW, AND, OF COURSE, THE POOR DAUGHTER-IN-LAW FROM THE OTHER CASTE.

I’M NOT GETTING ALONG WITH MA EITHER. I’M TRYING HARD AND FAILING. FOR ONCE I WANTED US TO BE FRIENDS AND I THOUGHT THAT NOW THAT I’M OLDER, WE WOULD BE FRIENDS. NOT HAPPENING FOR US. AND IT HURTS. I HAD THIS FANTASY OF US GETTING ALONG ONCE I GOT BACK. BUT TIME HAS HAD ABSOLUTELY NO EFFECT ON OUR RELATIONSHIP.

NATE HAS GONE HIKING WITH FRIENDS AND I’M STUCK HERE WITH THE RELATIVES FROM HELL. I WANT SO MUCH FOR THEM TO BE DIFFERENT, MORE ACCEPTING, LESS JUDGMENTAL, LESS RACIST, MORE TOLERANT. I WANT THEM TO ACCEPT YOU. BUT THE MORE I SEE, THE MORE I REALIZE THAT IT ISN’T GOING TO HAPPEN.

HOW AM I GOING TO TELL THEM, NICK? HOW ON EARTH AM I SUPPOSED TO TELL THEM ABOUT YOU? IT’S GOING TO BREAK MY HEART TO BREAK THEIRS. BUT I LOVE YOU AND I CAN’T DREDGE UP AN OUNCE OF GUILT… AND THAT MAKES ME FEEL GUILTY. I’M SUPPOSED TO FEEL GUILT, RIGHT?

ANYWAY, GOT TO GO. THE MAN AT THE FRONT DESK IS LOOKING AT HIS WATCH AND THEN AT ME… SUBTLE AS A CHAINSAW. I’LL COME BY AGAIN AND CHECK EMAIL.

AND, I AM NOT GOING TO MARRY SOME INDIAN BOY!! HOW CAN YOU THINK THAT, EVEN IRRATIONALLY?

AND I’M COMING HOME AS SOON AS I CAN.

PRIYA

Ma all but dragged me out to the back yard after lunch. “You might be here just for a few days but you will behave yourself,” she said, gripping my arm tightly.

I jerked her hand off and rubbed the small bruises her fingers left behind. “I will say what I feel like saying. If you don’t like it, I can pack up and leave.” That was not what I really wanted to say, but I was angry and furious at being treated like a five-year-old. I was a twenty-seven-year-old woman; I was not a child. When would they learn that? And then again, when would I learn to act my age? Why did I have to go off the deep end over matters that did not concern me? I knew that; I knew that it didn’t really matter what Thatha or Ammamma thought about black people or white. Yet I couldn’t help myself and couldn’t regret what I said. Somehow I felt justified in taking umbrage at what they had said because I was right. But that didn’t change the fact that I had behaved badly and hurt my grandfather, my aunt, my grandmother, and my mother. Now if only I could find some beggars on the street to kick, I could call it a day.

“Are you threatening me?” Ma demanded, and I just gave her a “yeah sure” look but didn’t say anything.

“Are you?” she asked again, her eyes boring into mine.

I didn’t look away. Sometimes it was better to face the demons than ignore them. All that was left now was to purse my lips in a pout to look like a recalcitrant adolescent. Just the image I was trying not to portray. How could I convince them to trust my judgment in men if I was pouting like a child?

“All the sacrifices we made for you,” Ma said in disgust. “And this is how you repay us?”

I raised one eyebrow negligently and the little guilt I was feeling took a nosedive. “Ma, put a sock on the sacrifice routine,” I said with belligerence, all my vows of being the perfect daughter for the two week trip vanishing completely. This “you owe us” line was not one I liked, not one I believed in. I hadn’t put a petition to my parents asking them to give birth to me. It was their choice and since they made that choice I couldn’t owe them.

My mother’s eyes raged at me and she was about to say something when Sowmya came into the back yard with the dirty dishes in a blue plastic tub for the maid to clean. She set the tub down next to a plastic bucket that lay directly beneath a leaky water tap. For a while there was just the sound of the drops of water, drip-drip-drip, landing on a steel plate recently rinsed by Sowmya.

She looked at both of us and put a hand on my mother’s shoulder. “We are getting the oil and spices together,” she said calmly.

Ma nodded vaguely, obviously shook up by my statement. I refused to feel guilty. All my life my mother had been drilling in me the “we sacrificed for you, so you have to be our slave” line and I had had it up to here. If I would think about it calmly I would see that I was exaggerating. My parents had given me a lot of leeway compared to so many other parents. They had afforded me a good education. They had spent a decent amount of money to send me to the United States and make a better life. Sure they always tried to get me married but they never forced a decision on me as I had seen other parents do.

A classmate of mine in engineering college had ended up marrying a man she didn’t even like the look of because her parents insisted that it was the best match she could get. He was not asking for any dowry-it was her lucky day!

“All this is the influence of America,” Ma concluded. “You were never such a bad or rude girl before.”

She went inside and I curbed the impulse to run behind her with apologies. The love-hate relationship I shared with Ma was peppered with guilt and seasoned with the need for acceptance, I think from both sides. I wanted-no, sometimes needed-acceptance from Ma, but I wanted her to accept me the way I was, not the way she envisioned me to be. I wanted her to love Priya the person, not Priya the daughter who didn’t live outside of her imagination.

“Priya.” Sowmya tried to soothe me and I raised both my hands to silence her.

“She doesn’t want to believe that I am who I am, so she blames America for it,” I said caustically. “She doesn’t want to believe that I don’t really like her or care that she and Nanna made a thousand sacrifices for me.”

Lies, all lies. I did care, how could I not? But like gifts that become uncouth burdens when pointed at with ownership by the giver, Ma and Nanna’s sacrifices seemed to be uncomfortable loads that I didn’t want to acknowledge because I was being asked to.

“But they did,” Sowmya argued.

I twisted around and faced Sowmya. “And that makes me what? Their property?”

“Just their daughter.”