Amulya Malladi - The Mango Season

She could as well have been saying that my friends were little green men from Mars.

“What can you talk to them about?” Ammamma asked. “They are not really friends, are they?”

I gaped at her. Was the woman really stupid, or was she merely pretending?

“What do you mean?” I asked, unsure of her question.

“She means what do you have in common with these white people,” Ma piped in. “You should stay with your own kind. These white people will always swindle you.”

“And how do you know that?” I sighed, first my grandfather and now my mother. It was a family thing, probably embedded in the genes.

“You think I am fifty years old and I know nothing?” Ma demanded harshly. “I know enough and I am telling you that you should only make friends with Indians, preferably our kind. Nice Brahmins… they will always be there to help you. You have to work with these other people, why should you spend your spare time with them?”

How was I supposed to argue with that?

“I have friends from different races and different countries. I don’t care where they’re from. If they’re good people…” I began, once again a futile gesture.

“White people are never good,” Ammamma announced emphatically. “Look what the British did to us.”

I rolled my eyes. It was ridiculous the way my family thought and felt about the West. Ma would always show off about her daughter in the United States, but she didn’t quite like the idea of her daughter even having friends who weren’t Indian. This did not bode well for my revelation regarding Nick this evening.

I was relieved of pursuing the discussion when a car honked and Ma asked me to go open the gate.

My father was finally here-it was the best diversion I had had all day.

TO: PRIYA RAO ‹PRIYA_RAO@YYYY.COM›

FROM: NICHOLAS COLLINS ‹NICK_COLLINS@XXXX.COM›

SUBJECT: RE: RE: RE: RE: GOOD TRIP?

SOUNDS LIKE YOU’RE HAVING A REGULAR GREAT TIME! I’M GLAD YOU DON’T FEEL GUILTY ABOUT ME-I’D HATE IT IF YOU DID. SO TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTION, NO, YOU SHOULDN’T FEEL GUILTY FOR BEING IN A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP. YOU CAN’T PLAN RELATIONSHIPS, IF YOU PLAN THEM THEY ARE CALLED ARRANGED MARRIAGES AND HONESTLY, I THINK THAT’S A TAD COLD-BLOODED.

YOU’VE MADE YOUR OWN LIFE HERE IN SAN FRANCISCO, WITH ME, AND YOU DON’T OWE ANYONE ANYTHING. KEEP THAT IN MIND. NO MATTER HOW YOUR CULTURE TELLS YOU THAT YOU OWE YOUR PARENTS, YOU HAVE TO REMEMBER THAT CHILDREN NEVER OWE THEIR PARENTS. YOU DON’T OWE YOUR PARENTS ANYTHING BUT YOU’LL OWE YOUR (OUR!) CHILDREN COMPLETE LOVE AND LOYALTY BUT THEY WON’T OWE YOU ANYTHING-AND SO THE CYCLE SHALL CONTINUE.

I’M TEMPTED TO FLY DOWN AND CARRY YOU AWAY-WARRIOR STYLE. I KNOW YOU CAN TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF, BUT I KNOW YOU’RE GOING TO GET HURT AND I FEEL IMPOTENT SITTING HERE IN OUR HOME WAITING FOR YOU TO BE STUNG BY YOUR FAMILY. JUST TRY AND STAY CALM.

CALL ME IF YOU CAN, IT’LL MAKE US BOTH FEEL BETTER. NICK.

Mango Pappu (lentils)

4 cups yellow gram pappu

8 cups water

2 raw sour mangoes

5-6 curry leaves

2 teaspoons chili powder

salt to taste

2 tablespoons peanut oil

1 teaspoon black mustard seeds

3 dried red chiles

1 teaspoon red gram pappu

5 curry leaves

¼ cup chopped coriander

Soak four cups of yellow gram pappu in eight cups of water for half an hour. Chop the raw mango in small pieces. Add mango, yellow gram pappu with the water, curry leaves, chili powder, and salt in the pressure cooker and cook until two whistles. In a small frying pan, heat oil until sizzling. Add mustard seeds, red chile, red gram pappu, and curry leaves into the oil and fry for thirty to forty seconds (be careful to not burn the seeds or the leaves). Add the oil and its contents into the mango lentil mixture in the pressure cooker immediately and mix. Garnish with chopped coriander. Serve hot with rice.

Nanna enveloped me in a bear hug as soon as he stepped out of the car. I knew he didn’t like to visit Ammamma and Thatha but came along because the alternative was listening to my mother complain about it for days, maybe weeks.

“That bad?” He grinned when he saw my drawn face and I shook my head.

“Worse.”

“What is going on?” he asked when he sat down on the large swing on the veranda to remove his black leather shoes.

Sowmya stepped outside and smiled at him. “Coffee?”

My father nodded thankfully and she went back inside.

Nanna was a tall, lean man and his skin was dark. That was where I inherited the “wheatish complexion” that Ma complained about. He wore a small gray moustache. As his hair was growing white, he looked dignified and handsome. Ma tried to coax him into dyeing his hair as she did, but he refused, saying he had no issues with his age. I think he liked being in his fifties and looked forward to being sixty.

“No one has killed anyone yet?” he asked, rocking the wooden swing slowly with his bare feet.

I was sitting on a chair across from him and raised my eyebrows mischievously. “The night is still young. Thatha is very angry with me.”

“Thatha is always angry with someone,” he said negligently. “What happened?”

My father and grandfather did not get along. Even though Ma and Nanna had had an arranged marriage, Thatha never did quite like the idea of his favorite daughter being married to a man, any man. There was the age-old “he stole my daughter” thorn in the side of their relationship, which could never be removed.

“We had a fight,” I had to tell him in case he misunderstood me. “They were lambasting the United States and I lost it… a little.”

My father gave a long sigh as if he understood it was going to be a long night.

“I got angry,” I continued. “And I said something about the States being different from India… in the sense… that there, no one is forced to have a baby to provide a male heir.” My mouth twisted sheepishly and I waited for my father to admonish me.

He shrugged. “You are right.”

“Really?” My eyes brightened.

“But you had no business telling that to him,” he said, thwarting my hopes of finding an ally in the family over this particular issue. “He is old and set in his ways. Leave him alone.”

“Leave whom alone?” A voice thundered from inside the house and both my father and I were startled like criminals caught in the act.

Thatha stepped outside in his white lungi and the thin ceremonial thread that ran across his chest as it did across every Brahmin man’s chest. Nanna, who was hardly religious, kept losing his thread. It always amused Nate and I how Nanna scrambled to find the thread whenever he had to visit Ammamma and Thatha.

“As long as I don’t take my shirt off, the nosey old bastard won’t make an issue out of it,” Nanna would say if he couldn’t find the thread.

Even though my father disliked Thatha, he was always polite, always respectful. I think that annoyed Thatha more because he could not really point to any of my father’s obvious flaws.

“Namaskaram,” Nanna said, and folded his hands in acknowledgment. “How are you doing?”

Thatha sat down beside me, his mouth twisted in a pout. “Sowmya has coffee for you inside, Ashwin.”

My father looked at me with his kind soft eyes that twinkled from beneath his steel-framed glasses. “Want to come and have coffee with your old man, Priya?” he asked in an effort to save me.

“Thanks,” I said gratefully, and smiled. “If you don’t mind, I’ll talk to this old man for a while,” I said, inclining my head toward Thatha.