Amulya Malladi - The Mango Season

“Oh, the Cheee-cah-go baye, you mean?” Nate imitated Ma. “He was a prize, Priya.”

“He was also screwing another woman.”

“Details, details.”

I put the now warmed rice and pappu on a plate and placed it in front of Nate along with a glass of water. I sat in front of him on the floor and drank some water from his glass.

“There is also some HAPPINESS in the fridge,” I told him. “I asked Sowmya to save it from the mango she cut for dinner.”

“And you don’t want to fight over it?” Nate asked suspiciously.

I shook my head. I didn’t even want to fight over HAPPINESS. This was an all-time low.

“What, not feeling well?” Nate put a hand against my forehead as if checking my temperature.

“I lied to Nick,” I confessed. “I told Nick that I wasn’t going to go through with the chupulu and that I was going to tell everyone about him.”

“Nick is the man’s name. Do we have a photo?”

“Photo? I have bigger problems, Nate.”

“So tell him the truth and don’t go through the chupulu,” Nate said as he chewed on his food. “Then tell them all about Nick. And I’d still like to see my future brother-in-law, if not in the flesh, at least in Kodak color.”

“I’ll send you a picture later.” I said. “And what does it matter how he looks? Lord, Nate, this stress is going to give me a coronary.”

“You’re not going to have a-”

“Nate?” Nanna’s voice filtered into the kitchen.

“Hey, Nanna,” Nate called out and winked at me. “At least she didn’t wake up,” he added on a whisper.

“Nate is here?” Ma’s voice chimed in on cue.

“Well… can’t have it all, can we?” Nate sighed as my mother’s shrill voice came in through the hall, she was saying, just as Nate had predicted, “Oh, my son is home.”

Rava Ladoo

1 cup semolina (rava/sooji)

1 cup sugar

3 tablespoons ghee

1 cup milk

1 tablespoon cashew nuts

1 tablespoon raisins

Fry the semolina in a saucepan on low heat till it turns slightly brown in color. Then add sugar, ghee, milk, and fry till the mixture becomes sticky. Chop the nuts and add them, along with the raisins, to the mixture. Remove the pan from the heat and form the dough into small balls. Serve when dry.

Aloo Bajji

1 cup chickpea flour (besan)

water

salt to taste

1 teaspoon chili powder

1 cup peanut oil

4-5 large potatoes, sliced

Mix the besan, water, salt, and chili powder until the consistency is runny. Heat the oil in a deep frying pan. Dip thinly sliced potatoes in the chickpea flour mixture and fry in peanut oil until golden brown.

Sowmya added the rava for the ladoos to the hot frying pan in which the ghee was sizzling. She used a steel spatula to coat the semolina with the ghee and lowered the flame on the stove.

“I can’t believe Anand said that to Nanna,” she said. The family was still buzzing with the way Anand had stood up for Neelima and how Thatha had accepted Neelima as his daughter-in-law, finally.

I was standing by the sink peeling potatoes to make potato bajji, dazed that I was allowing this atrocity of bride-seeing ceremonies to not only be perpetrated, but to be perpetrated upon me.

“I can’t believe I’m getting snacks ready for that stupid chupulu,” I said angrily, ripping away some skin from the potato.

“Maybe you should forget about this American and marry this nice boy-” Sowmya started to suggest.

“What do you mean ‘forget’, Sowmya? I’m in a relationship, not some dream I can wake up from,” I said in exasperation. “I live with Nick. I share a home, a bed, a life with him. What am I supposed to do, just walk away?”

Sowmya’s lips shaped into a pout and she sighed before slowly adding milk into the fried rava from a steel tumbler.

“And I love him,” I said softly. “I love him very much.”

Sowmya shrugged and put the tumbler down on the counter with a sharp sound.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded.

“Nothing, Priya,” Sowmya said, and then sighed again.

“Why don’t you just say what you have to say and stop with the shrugging and sighing?”

Sowmya measured sugar with her fingers and dropped a few handfuls into the frying pan. She rubbed her hand against her sari to shrug off the remaining particles of sugar and picked up a spatula.

“I don’t know how you can love an American. I mean… what do you two even talk about?” she asked as she slowly stirred the rava and sugar in the pan.

“What do you mean, talk about? We talk like everyone talks,” I said, as I bit back the few topics that had collected on my tongue as an automatic response to her question.

“But… he is not even Indian,” Sowmya said, as if that explained it all.

I dropped the potato I was peeling and put my hands on my face. If Sowmya, who was more my generation, had trouble comprehending my relationship with Nick, I could only imagine how the others would react.

“Priya, they’ll be here in an hour,” Ma said, bursting into the kitchen. “Have you at least taken a bath?”

“Yes,” I said. “First thing in the morning, Ma. After all that’s what a Gangiraddhi does, isn’t it?”

Drawing an analogy between a “dressed-up” cow for a puja and me was probably not a wise thing to do, but I was prepped up for a fight like a homicidal bull being made to do something against its will.

“A Gangiraddhi doesn’t have the choices you do,” Ma said angrily.

“What’s the boy’s name, Akka?” Sowmya asked before I could tell Ma what she could do with what she thought were my choices.

“Adarsh, a nice name. But probably not good enough for Priya maharani, our very own high-and-mighty queen,” Ma said sarcastically.

“The name is fine,” I muttered.

“I have put out some saris with blouses for you on Ammamma’s bed along with some jewelry; go and pick what you like. I don’t want to battle over this with you, Priya… Just choose anything you want. I don’t want to interfere,” Ma said, picking up the potato I had let go.

“I’m not going to wear any heavy jewelry,” I warned.

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” Ma snapped. “Don’t do us any favors. We find an excellent boy for you to see and…” She threw the potato in the sink and said, “I can’t deal with this anymore,” before she stormed out of the kitchen.

Lata came into the kitchen in Ma’s wake and asked us what was going on. I followed my mother’s example and stormed out myself.

When Nick first suggested we move in together, my answer had been an unequivocal “no.” Unmarried couples living together was exactly the kind of thing I had been raised not to do.

“But you’re here all the time anyway,” Nick said about his apartment. “How would it matter if we were officially living together?”

“It’d matter… to my family,” I’d told him honestly. A week later I agreed to move in with him because I realized that I had to stop worrying about what my family would think and start living my own life on my own terms. After that I had been determined not to let Ma or Nanna or Thatha decide my fate for me. But now when they were so close, the ties that bound me to them grew tighter, biting through my skin and conscience.

The saris strewn on Ammamma’s white bedspread were so laden in embroidered gold that they made my eyelids heavy to just look at them.