Amulya Malladi - The Mango Season

“Chee, Priya,” Sowmya called out from behind me and I almost jumped at her voice. “Can’t you drink a nice cool drink or something? Why does it have to be this… chee dirty stuff you drink?”

I drank the entire soda before speaking. “It’s good stuff,” I told her and she sighed.

“Two meetha paan,” Sowmya said to the shopkeeper and I pulled out money from my purse.

“Can we go sit somewhere?” I asked as I waited to put the paan in my mouth and relish the sweetness and taste of it.

Sowmya looked around and pointed to a dilapidated road that had been trampled on by numerous feet and automobiles over the years. We took that road and came close to the Shiva temple our family frequented often because of its proximity. We sat down on a cement bench that had a worn campaign poster on it.

We both chewed noisily on our paans. Juices threatened to drip from the corner of my mouth to embarrass me.

“They make the best sweet paan at this place near the university,” I said, remembering my old engineering college days. “And there is another place in Koti,” I added, “where they sell used textbooks.”

Sowmya smiled. “Remember when we went there in your final year and drank so much coconut water?”

“Hmm,” I said as the forgotten taste of coconut water streamed through my lips. “Why do Ma and I never get along? I always think I try but… in retrospect I can feel that I don’t. She makes me feel like a little child and I start to behave like one.”

“Maybe you want too much,” Sowmya said, plucking a leaf from a bougainvillea bush growing by the bench.

“You don’t see too many of those in the U.S.,” I said, pointing to the paperlike purple flowers. “Whenever I see a bougainvillea I’m reminded of the house we lived in in Himayatnagar where there were so many of those bushes.”

“And your mother had half of them cut down when she found that snake in the bathroom,” Sowmya remembered, laughing. “Remember how big the snake was?”

It was a black, thick, coiled cobra that had managed to get inside the bathroom. And Ma had walked in on it when we were all watching TV. The scream she rendered when she saw the snake gave all of us goose bumps and for a second we were a little afraid to go into the bathroom and see the hair-raising monster Ma was crying out about.

“It raised its fangs and hissed,” Ma had said hysterically, even after the snake had been killed and burned. “Those bushes, that’s where they hide,” she told Nanna. “You have to cut them all off.”

So the bougainvillea bushes went, but Nanna left just a few by the gate of the house and Ma always insisted that they should be cut down as well. What if another cobra was lurking there? “They live in pairs.” She was fearful until the day we moved out of the rented house into the house Ma and Nanna constructed in Chikadpally.

“There are some good memories,” I said to Sowmya. “I’m sure there are… I just can’t remember them. When it comes to Ma, I can’t remember any of the good times.”

“I sometimes feel the same way,” Sowmya said and patted my shoulder sympathetically. “Want to go inside the temple? It’s closed but they got a new Shivaling. It is very beautiful, made of black marble, with gold work done on it.”

This temple had seen several pujas conducted on behalf of and by several of my maternal family members. In the seven years since I had seen it last it hadn’t changed much. Thatha had brought me here in the morning, the day before I left for Bombay where I caught the 2 A.M. flight to Frankfurt and then onward to the United States.

Thatha had some puja performed then. All I could make out from the Sanskrit words mumbled by the pandit were my first and last names, and Thatha’s family name. The old pandit with a large potbelly hanging behind his thin ceremonial thread that languished across his chest had seemed grouchy. He had a hoarse voice and he had coughed half a dozen times through the puja that Thatha had paid for in my name.

“To bless you,” Thatha said, patting my head fondly. “To wish you the best in your long journey to a whole new world.”

There had been quite a crowd that morning. It was just 8 A.M. but several people had already lined up to have pujas performed for their loved ones, their cars, computers, children, et cetera.

Thatha and I had taken some consecrated white sugar, prasadam, and found a quiet corner in the garden in front of the temple to sit and watch the people, dressed in bright colors, moving with the purpose of God. As we ate the prasadam from our hands, the sugar melted in the May heat and made our hands sticky.

“Now don’t forget to call… often… as long as you have the money,” Thatha told me. “And if you need money, you are really short, then call… I will send you some.”

I nodded. I had promised myself that once I left home I would not take any money from my parents or my family. Independence was not just a word to me, I wanted to stand on my own two feet, not run back to Thatha and Nanna at the first sign of trouble, financial or otherwise.

“I have a tuition waiver,” I said to Thatha. “I will get some kind of assistantship. I will find a job… anything… I will be okay.”

“Pay attention to your studies,” Thatha said sternly. “And don’t take up some stupid job in some restaurant bussing tables. Okay?”

I had known even then that it wouldn’t make any difference whatsoever to Thatha’s mindset regarding what he thought were lowly jobs for those of a higher caste and I hadn’t bothered to convince him otherwise. But now I felt compelled to talk him out of his beliefs about black and white people, Americans, love marriages, and compulsory heirs. Why was it important to me now what had been understandable then?

I didn’t know why I had changed from accepting Thatha the way he was to a Thatha who I wanted to change.

“Look.” Sowmya pointed to a thick gold chain studded with diamonds that circled the top of the Shivaling inside a cage within the temple. “They say it costs one lakh rupees.”

“Is that why they have it so nicely locked up?” I asked, barely able to see anything through the thick, closely aligned metal bars between us and the Gods.

“Ah, you know people, they will steal anything, even God’s jewelry,” Sowmya said. “So silent it is, but in another few hours, there will be so many people here. Are there temples in the U.S.? I know there is one in Pittsburgh; everyone says it is a big temple. All Indians get married there.”

I laughed. “I don’t think all Indians get married there. But yes, I’ve heard it’s a big temple. There are a couple in the Bay Area. There is a huge one in a place called Livermore and there is another one in Sunnyvale, close to where I work.”

“Do you go there often?”

I shrugged. “I’ve been there a couple times… I don’t have the time, Sowmya.”

I didn’t add that I was not particularly religious. I didn’t go to any temple because I didn’t feel compelled to go.

“Do you go to church, then?” Sowmya asked, and I was taken aback.

“Why would you think that?”

Sowmya shrugged. “Got to follow something, right?”

“No,” I shook my head. “I don’t go to church.”

“I just… thought maybe you’ve changed that way as well,” Sowmya said.

“I have changed?” I didn’t think I had changed at all.

“Yes,” Sowmya said. “You are more… stronger. You stand by your opinions a lot more than you used to and you don’t let your Thatha get away with everything.”

I laughed softly. “But my relationship with Ma is still in the same pit.”

“Nobody can fix that one, ” Sowmya declared, and brought her hands together in prayer with a clap. “Maybe he can”-she pointed to the Shivaling with folded hands-“but I don’t think so.”