Amulya Malladi - The Mango Season

Anand was on sentry duty atop a mango tree along with a steel flashlight. “I will have a better view,” he said.

It surprised all of us when the thief turned out to be a monkey who freaked out when Anand flashed a light on its face and attacked him. Anand fell from the tree and hit his head on a stone, its sharp edge just missing his left eye.

Sowmya and I, sick with worry, ended up screaming for help like the girls we were.

We were all reprimanded the next morning and unfortunately that had been the last time we had gone to the orchard on vacation. Kathalu-Thatha, did not make it through the coming winter and Thatha, his only next of kin, sold the family house and leased the orchard to some jam and juice company.

After we folded the two muslin clothes with the mangoes, Anand looked around stealthily and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “Don’t tell anyone,” he said. “If Nanna found out… he will kill me.”

Here was a grown man, about to become a father, who was still afraid of his father.

I shook my head. “Just don’t smoke around Neelima.”

“Of course,” Anand said, and sat down on the cement floor. He leaned against the cement balustrade and sighed. “I have been waiting all day for this.”

“Neelima is not the happiest person in the world,” I told him bluntly. “You keep bringing her here and they’re all so mean to her.”

“They are just getting to know her… You know how they are when someone new comes in. Remember how both my Amma and your Amma made Lata’s life miserable when she and Jayant Anna got married?” Anand said.

“Lata is very different from Neelima,” I reminded him. “Neelima feels really bad, Anand.”

“She would tell me if she felt bad,” Anand said, looking up at the sky. “See the Saptarishi?” he asked, pointing at the constellation of seven stars shaped like a question mark. “For the longest time I couldn’t see Arundhati,” he said.

The Saptarishi were the seven Maharishis, great holy men, who were created by the vision of Lord Brahma. They were learned beings to whom the Vedas had been revealed and they represented the seven powers of life and consciousness in all of God’s creation. The seven rishis were married to very nice-looking women and once when they were performing a yajna, Agni, the God of Fire, saw the women and immediately fell in lust with them. Agni’s then-girlfriend, Svaha, wanted to please her lover and took the form of all the rishis’ wives in bed. She could, however, take the form of only six of the wives. Arundhati was such a true wife that Svaha, no matter how hard she tried, couldn’t change her body to look like Arundhati. Thanks to all this shape-shifting and sex, Svaha got pregnant, and the rumor that traveled around the Godly circles was that one of the six Maharishis’ wives had a baby with Agni. All the rishis, except for Vashishtha, who was married to his true wife, Arundhati, kicked their wives out for being not-so-true wives.

In the Saptarishi constellation of stars, the last but one star at the bottom, which is Vashishtha, has a small star revolving around it, and that is Arundhati. The myth is that if you cannot see Arundhati, you will have bad luck… lots of it.

“And now you can see her?” I asked, avoiding looking up to find out if I could see Arundhati. It was a silly superstition, but I didn’t want to put it to test.

“Not really,” Anand said, “but I am getting there. Neelima will adjust, Priya.” He took a deep puff and blew out small rings.

I put a finger through one dissolving ring of smoke. “You should tell Ammamma and Lata and the rest of them to stop blaming her for marrying you.”

“It is not something you should have to tell your own family,” Anand said bitterly. “And I can’t just walk up and tell them… can I?”

“Of course you can,” I said. “Be a man, Anand, stand up for your wife. Or is Thatha still controlling you like a puppeteer?”

I was being a little harsh… Well, I was being very harsh, but Anand’s nonchalance at what his wife was going through at the hands of his family had increased the temperature of my blood. And Anand and I were close enough that I knew I had a right to be direct with him. As I guessed, Anand didn’t take offense but he was a little miffed.

He crushed his cigarette on the cement floor and glared at me. “You want me to take on my big bad father?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Really?”

“Yes, ”I repeated.

“So when are you going to tell him about your boyfriend?” Anand asked.

“What?” I asked aghast. Sowmya would never tell anyone about Nick. Would she? How could Anand know?

“Oh, you’re telling me you are against arranged marriage as an institution because you like being single and alone?” Anand demanded. “It is easy enough to guess. So who is the boyfriend?”

I felt the bile rise up to coat my throat with fear. Was I wearing a neon sign that said I HAVE A BOYFRIEND IN AMERICA?

“Come on, Priya,” Anand said. “I know these things. I am not stupid.”

“This isn’t about me,” I muttered. “This is about Neelima.”

“You don’t have the guts, do you?” Anand smirked. “So you shouldn’t-”

“If they were ill-treating my boyfriend, you bet I’d take issue,” I charged at him.

“So there is a boyfriend,” he grinned, and lit another cigarette. “Tell, tell.”

I sighed. “You’re not going to like this.”

“Hey, I married Neelima.”

“At least she is Indian.”

The cigarette in Anand’s hand dropped. “No… you don’t have an American boyfriend.”

I nodded.

“Oh Rama, Rama…”

“I know.”

“What will you do?”

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I have to back out of this stupid pelli-chupulu first.”

“You can’t, not now,” Anand said, sounding worried. “Not without telling them about Mr. America.”

“Forget about me; are you going to do something about how everyone is treating Neelima before she divorces you?”

Anand picked up the cigarette he had dropped and put it in his mouth. “I will see what I can do.”

“As soon as Neelima said she was pregnant Lata talked about miscarriages in the first trimester and-”

“That bitch, how dare she?” Anand burst out and the cigarette he was holding fell on the cement floor yet again. “I don’t know how Jayant can stand her. And now they are pregnant again. Wants to give Nanna a pure-blooded Brahmin heir.”

“What will you do?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Anand said.

When we came back downstairs, my father was in a heated discussion with Jayant about nonresident Indians, NRIs. Jayant sincerely believed that those who left India were betraying their motherland and my father was convinced that those who stayed were missing out on opportunities to grow and develop.

“The world is everyone’s oyster,” Nanna was saying. “We should think of ourselves as citizens of the world not just as Indian or Korean or Malaysian.”

They were sitting at the dining table sipping tea as Sowmya bustled around them setting the table for dinner.

“Ah, Priya,” Jayant said and extended both his hands to hold both of mine in a warm clasp. “You have grown up. And getting all set to be married I hear. This Sarma boy seems to be very ideal. What do you say?”

Anand cleared his throat while Sowmya glared at me. I smiled uneasily. Jayant patted my hands as if he could feel my tension.

“She is angry with us for setting this up,” Nanna said, obviously enjoying the position I was in.

“Angry, nothing,” Ma said, as she came into the dining area from the kitchen carrying a big steel pot with hot rasam in it. “They will be here tomorrow and once she sees the boy… ah, she will thank us. He is earning hundred thousand dollars a year, fifty lakh rupees.”