Amulya Malladi - The Mango Season

“The fourth day, there is always hell to pay,” he told me. “First three days she pampers, fourth day she wants to take me to Ammamma’s house and there is Lata there and Anand and his illicit wife… And from then on things start going from bad to worse to really rotten real fast.”

Nate had spent three days with me and had escaped on a hiking trip in the Aruku caves with his friends the day before our pickle-making ritual.

“But I planned this six months ago,” he lied easily when Ma threw a tantrum. “I can’t back out now.”

Nate and I had a good relationship. We communicated regularly via email and he and I spoke on the phone if my mother was out of earshot on his end. There was no sibling rivalry between us. Nate was ten years younger than I, and we believed that he was too young and I was too old to feel any rivalry. Because of the age difference, there was no race for the attention of my parents. We were family and we fought over HAPPINESS and other assorted food items and philosophies, but we acknowledged the fact that we both had spent time in the same womb, and accepted each other, flaws and all.

My father had sneaked off to work this morning in the car despite Ma’s nagging and she lamented about that as well. “Couldn’t he have taken the day off?” she said when the auto rickshaw stopped in front of my parents’ house. “Now we will have to take an auto rickshaw to Ammamma’s house, too.”

“He’s taking tomorrow off,” I said as I helped her haul the large basket of mangoes inside the veranda, after she paid the auto rickshaw driver with the grace of a kanjoos, makhi-choos, scrooge, scrooge, who would suck the fly that fell in her tea.

“Now go change; wear something nice,” she ordered as she collapsed on a sofa.

The electricity was out. For six hours every day in the summer, the electricity was cut off to conserve it. The cut-off times changed randomly but were usually around the times when it was most hot. Today seemed to be an exception, because instead of cutting off the electricity from eleven to one in the afternoon, they had taken it out at eight-thirty in the morning.

I sat down on an ornate and uncomfortable wooden chair across from my mother who was resting her feet on the large, ostentatious coffee table centered in the drawing room.

“What should I wear?” I asked. I was here for two weeks and had promised myself I’d do exactly what my mother wanted me to do. Maybe that, I thought, would help ease the blow when I landed one right there where her heart was.

“The yellow salwar kameez.” Ma’s eyes gleamed. She probably thought I had changed. Never as a teenager had I asked her what I should wear when we went to visit relatives.

“Which yellow one?” I asked, slightly annoyed because it felt like surrender.

“The one with the gold embroidery.” She picked up a newspaper to fan herself.

I gaped at her. The yellow one with the gold embroidery was made of thick silk. Was the woman off her rocker?

“It’s too hot, Ma,” I argued lightly. “Why don’t I wear a cotton one?”

She agreed, but grudgingly. This was her chance to show her American-returned daughter off. But she couldn’t really show off. I was unmarried, I was twenty-seven, and sometime soon she was going to find out I was living in sin with the foreigner I intended to marry. Life would have been easier if I had fallen in love with a nice Indian Brahmin boy-even better if I hadn’t fallen in love at all and was ready to marry some nice Indian Brahmin boy my parents could pick out like they would shoes from a catalog.

I hadn’t planned on falling in love with Nick. We met at a friend’s house. Sean was a colleague and a friend and his sister was Nick’s ex-girlfriend and now “just a good friend.” As soon as Nick said, “Hello,” I knew he was trouble. I had never before found an American attractive-well, besides a young Paul Newman and Sean Connery, and Denzel Washington-but no one in real life. I think most Indian women are trained to find only Indian men attractive; maybe it has something to do with centuries of brainwashing.

I was of course flattered that Nick was attracted to me as well, but I didn’t expect him to pursue a relationship. And I really didn’t expect that I, even in my wildest flights of fantasy, would be amenable to dating him. But he was, and I was.

Before I knew how it happened, and before I could think of all the reasons why it was a really bad idea we were dating, we were having dinner together. As if things were not bad enough, we started to have sex and soon we moved in together and after that everything really went to the dogs because we decided to get married. And now I was sweating in my parents’ home, dreading having to tell them about Nick.

To remove the sweat and the two layers of dust that had deposited on my skin after my trip to Monda Market, I took a quick bath, dipping a plastic mug in an aluminum bucket filled with lukewarm water, heated by the sun in the overhead tank. My mother still had not installed showers in the bathrooms. “Save water,” she said.

I put on a yellow cotton salwar kameez to appease Ma and looked at myself in the mirror. My skin had turned dark almost as soon as the Indian sun had kissed me and I knew no amount of sunscreen was going to stop my melanin from coming together to give me the ultra-ultra-tanned look. My hair had also become stringy. It was all the extra chlorine in the water. And my…

I winced; I was doing that complaining-about-India thing that all of us America-returned Indians did. I had lived here for twenty years, yet seven years later, the place was a hellhole. Guilt had an ugly taste in my mouth. This is my country, I told myself firmly, and I love my country.

TO: PRIYA RAO ‹PRIYA_RAO@YYYY.COM›

FROM: NICHOLAS COLLINS ‹NICK_COLLINS@XXXX.COM›

SUBJECT: GOOD TRIP?

HOPE YOU HAD A GOOD FLIGHT. SO SORRY I MISSED YOUR CALL. I WAS IN A MEETING AND I TURNED OFF THE CELL PHONE. AND SO SORRY THAT YOUR MOTHER IS GIVING YOU A HARD TIME ABOUT BEING SINGLE. I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO SAY EXCEPT THAT YOU ARE NOT SINGLE.

I MISS YOU. THE HOUSE FEELS EMPTY WITHOUT YOU. I SLEPT ON YOUR SIDE OF THE BED LAST NIGHT. I THINK I’M GETTING SAPPY IN MY OLD AGE.

CALL ME AGAIN, THIS TIME I’LL KEEP THE CELL PHONE TURNED ON, HAIL OR SNOW. JIM AND CINDY INVITED US TO GO CAMPING AT MT. SHASTA. WHAT DO YOU THINK? AND THERE WAS A MESSAGE FROM SUDHIR FOR YOU ON THE ANSWERING MACHINE. HE WANTED TO WISH YOU BON VOYAGE.

TAKE CARE, SWEETHEART.

NICK

TO: NICHOLAS COLLINS ‹NICK_COLLINS@XXXX.COM›

FROM: PRIYA RAO ‹PRIYA_RAO@YYYY.COM›

SUBJECT: RE: GOOD TRIP?

I JUST WISH THEY KNEW I WASN’T SINGLE-WITHOUT MY TELLING THEM. ANYWAY, WE’RE GOING TO GO MANGO PICKLE MAKING AT AMMAMMA’S HOUSE AND I THINK I COULD TELL THEM THEN. I WISH YOU WERE HERE. NO, THAT ISN’T TRUE, I WISH I WASN’T HERE.

IT’S STRANGE TO BE IN HYDERABAD AGAIN. I LOOK AT MY MOTHER AND I THINK ABOUT ALL MY AUNTS AND MY GRANDMA AND I HAVE TO WONDER HOW THEY STAY AT HOME ALL DAY, EVERY DAY, WITH NO LIFE BESIDES FAMILY. SUDHIR ALWAYS SAID THAT INDIAN WOMEN (HIS MOM ESPECIALLY, I THINK) ARE DEMENTED BECAUSE THEY STAY HOME DOING NOTHING BUT RAISING THEIR KIDS. I DON’T AGREE WITH THE DEMENTIA PART BUT I MUST SAY THAT LIFE SOUNDS EXTREMELY CLAUSTROPHOBIC.

REGARDLESS, I’M HERE. LOOKING FOR APPROVAL. SOME KIND OF OKAY SIGN FOR MY MARRIAGE PLANS. I NEED THEM TO SAY, “YES, IT’S ALL RIGHT FOR YOU TO MARRY THE MAN YOU’RE IN LOVE WITH.” WHICH IS RIDICULOUS! WHO ELSE SHOULD I MARRY BUT THE MAN I LOVE?

AT LEAST THEY HAVEN’T THROWN ANY “SUITABLE BOYS” MY WAY… YET. THEY HAVEN’T EVEN HINTED, WHICH MAKES ME VERY SUSPICIOUS. COMING HERE MADE ME REALIZE THAT I MISSED INDIA, MY FAMILY, EVEN MA. AND I MISSED NATE. HE HAS GROWN UP. HE’S A MAN NOW AND IT SEEMS SO STRANGE TO SEE HIM ACT LIKE ONE.