Thatha and His Merry Women

Thatha was not supposed to have married Ammamma in the first place. It had happened by accident. Thatha had gone to Ammamma’s village with his parents to see Ammamma’s cousin and arrange a marriage with her.

“But I saw her,” Thatha said, “and I wanted to marry her only. What did I know? I was just fifteen.”

“My father agreed to the proposal immediately,” Ammamma would say, giggling as if she were indeed thirteen years old and a blushing bride. “Ratna, (the poor cousin), didn’t speak to me for five years after that. But she got married, too, and her husband . . . He is a doctor, owns his own clinic in Vaisakh. What luck, enh?”

I was never sure if the story indicated that Thatha and Ammamma were pleased about being married to each other or if Thatha felt he had been too young to have made the right decision and Ammamma thought she could have married the doctor if Ratna had married Thatha .

In any case, happiness and love was not the point of their marriage. They had two sons and two daughters and now they were trying to have a son’s son; they were living the righteous life and no one could tell them otherwise.

“Eating pomegranates again?” Ma asked, as soon as Thatha and I entered the hall.

While I had been sneaking around fruit trees with Thatha, the others had done some major damage with the mangoes. Slices of mango were spread out evenly for different purposes. There were thick slices of peeled mangoes in a bucket alongside a big sheet of white muslin cloth. These I assumed were for making another type of mango pickle, maggai.

For maggai, slices of mango covered with turmeric, salt, and oil had to be dried for two days in the hot sun. After they were dry and almost brittle, they were marinated in a mixture of oil and spices. Another set of chopped mangoes languished in colored plastic buckets. The dark pink and yellow buckets were Lata’s, the neon green and light pink ones were Ma’s, the three red ones were Ammamma’s, and the blue one was Neelima’s.

The mangoes used for making avakai still had their skin and stone casing intact. My lips twitched into a smile as I remembered how the remnants of mango pickle lay on discarded plates of food after a meal—the core of the mango stones lay in bloody red oil like dead and mutilated soldiers in a battlefield of yogurt and rice. I used to think it was barbaric, eating the pickle with bare hands, tearing into the fleshy part of the mango that stuck to the core. Now I thought it was exotic, as if from a different culture and therefore tolerable.

“Oh come on, Radha, I am seeing my granddaughter after seven years.” Thatha put his arm around me. “And the pomegranates were ripe, she won’t fall sick.”

My mother smiled to my utter shock. There were perks to seeing my parents once in seven years—everything was easily forgiven, within limits, of course. Wanting to marry an American probably did not fall in the easy to forgive category. I smiled uneasily and Thatha tightened his arm around me.

“So, when are you going to get her married?” he asked as if he could read my mind and I shifted in his grip.

My mother’s smile turned into a pout. “As soon as we find a nice boy. . . . Someone she can’t find anything wrong with. Every boy we sent to her, she doesn’t like. Like they have horns growing out of their heads or something.” She sighed deeply. “Nanna, you have to talk to her now,” she said as if he was her last hope in convincing me to get married. I wasn’t listening to my own father, what made her think I would listen to hers?

Sowmya tucked the edge of her sari around her waist and picked up a bucket filled with thick slices of peeled mango, lying listlessly, squished against each other. Seeing it as a chance to avoid talking about my marriage I picked up the other bucket, which was filled with oil, turmeric, and salt.

“Neelima, can you bring the muslin cloth upstairs?” Sowmya called out when we reached the stairs to go up to the terrace. “So much to be done and Lata and your mother do absolutely nothing. They just sit around giving orders. Must’ve been queens, maharanis, in some past life.”

I grinned. “And they take all the credit for the pachadi.”

Sowmya snorted. “I make better avakai than both of them. You think they would come upstairs and strain their backs a little? Nothing. They will sit downstairs under the fan while we sweat up here.”

On the terrace there was a coconut-straw bed that was used for the purpose of drying mangoes or any other fruit or vegetable that needed to get some sun. And it was a good place to get some sun—heat scorched the cement floor, burning everything in its wake.

“Ouch, ouch, ouch.” Sowmya and I danced on the cement floor as the heat burned our bare feet. We reached the coconut-straw bed next to which tall coconut trees threw some shade on the floor, making it cooler, bearable to touch with the soles of our feet.

“Should’ve worn slippers,” I said. “I’d forgotten how hot it gets.”

“Ah, slippers are for babies,” Sowmya said, laughing. “I don’t know how you can stand the cold in the States. It gets very cold, doesn’t it?”

I shrugged. “In San Francisco I think it’s always cold. But it gets quite hot in the summers in the Bay Area and yes, a little cold, nothing drastic. It doesn’t snow or anything.”

“Why is it always cold in San Francisco?”

“It’s by the bay. Lots of people joke that the coldest winter they endured was a summer in San Francisco.”

“Then why do you live there?” Sowmya asked.

“Because I like the city,” I said. I didn’t tell her that it was Nick who liked the city a lot more than I did. I wouldn’t mind living in the South Bay with the Indian restaurants and Indian movie theaters in arm’s reach. But Nick liked the way he could just walk from our apartment and find a café to get a cup of coffee and a croissant.

“Can’t have tandoori chicken early in the morning,” Nick would say when I would complain about San Francisco, and how I hated to find parking when I got home every day from working in the South Bay, and how wonderful it would be to live close to all those Indian restaurants.

But my bitching and moaning aside, I liked living in San Francisco as well; not as much as Nick, but I certainly liked being able to live amidst the bustle of the city. I liked having an apartment from where I could look at San Francisco and know that I was here, in the U.S., in the land of opportunities. I had worked so hard to get here and nothing said America as clearly to me as standing in the balcony with a cup of coffee looking at the city of San Francisco.

Neelima came upstairs and spread the muslin cloth on the coconut straw bed. We dunked the mangoes in the bucket filled with oil, salt, and turmeric.

It was great fun, just like the olden times when I was a child visiting my grandparents. My hands would smell of turmeric and stay yellow for days. I hadn’t done this for so long and I was stung by the loss. I had lost so much since I had left India and I hadn’t even thought about it. I had become so much a part of America that the small joys of dunking pieces of mango inside gooey paste were forgotten and not even missed.

It was as if there were two people inside me: Indian Priya and American Priya, Ma’s Priya and Nick’s Priya. I wondered who the real Priya was.

I had always thought that self-evaluation was nonsense. It didn’t really mean anything. How could you not know yourself? I believe we know who we are, we know the exact truth about ourselves, and it is when this truth is not palatable that we want to dig deeper within our conscience to find something better, something we can live with. Did I need to dig deeper now, to explore who I was beyond Nick’s Priya and Ma’s Priya?

We laid the oil- and spice-coated pieces of mango on the cloth, our yellow fingerprints marking the pristine white muslin.

“Did you tell your Thatha?” Neelima asked without looking at me, and suddenly I was face to face with familial politics again.

Everything was so complicated and it struck me like a sack of mangoes—I couldn’t live here. Nostalgia for a mango and HAPPINESS was one thing, living here on a day-to-day basis was impossible. I didn’t want to live close to my family anymore. I had been in Thatha’s house just a few hours and I was already seething with feminine rage over half a dozen things.

I wanted to distance myself from India and my family; I wanted to feel nothing, pretend this was happening to someone else, not me; but I couldn’t. I knew these people and they knew me; however dark and ugly it might get, I would still know them and they me. There was no delusional escape, this was the here and now, and whether I liked it or not, I was here now.

“I told him,” I murmured softly.

Neelima wanted Ammamma and Thatha’s approval but she was never going to get it, not complete and total approval. For that she would have to die and come back as a Telugu Brahmin. I felt sorry for her even as I felt annoyance. Why was she here? If Nick’s family treated me the way Ammamma and Thatha treated Neelima, I would give Nick hell and make sure I didn’t deal with his family.

As it was, Nick’s family was wonderful. Whenever we went to visit them in Memphis, they were all hugs and acceptance. When I went with Nick the first time, it was for Thanksgiving and I was very nervous. What if they didn’t like me? I was an Indian and I wondered if they would hate me for that as my parents would hate Nick for being American.

Nick’s mother didn’t care about my ethnicity but she was undoubtedly fascinated by my Indianness. When we met for the first time she told me, “I’ve never spoken to an Indian before, but I love curry.”

And over curry powder and turkey, Nick’s mother— Frances—and I became friends. She was an adorable woman who always remembered my birthday and sent me a gift, something she knew I wanted. She would investigate, harass Nick for information and try to find out from conversations with me what I wanted and then she would ensure that the birthday gift reached me wrapped and packed and on the mark. She always talked about our “impending” wedding and changed the reception dinner menu regularly—her way of asking us to hurry up and tie the knot and of course give her grandchildren.

Nick’s father had died five years ago and from what Nick told me about him, I was sorry to have not met him. He used to be a high school football coach and apparently never held a grudge when Nick became an accountant and his brother, Doug, a sous-chef in New Orleans.

“He used to joke that we were sissies,” Nick said when I asked him about his father. “I miss him. He never told us what to do. I think if I wanted to be a ballet dancer, Dad would have called me a sissy and then would have driven me to ballet lessons.”

Frances had called me before I came to India. “Tell them you’re pregnant. They’ll want you to marry my Nick right away, ” she joked when I told her that I was more than a little nervous about telling my family about Nick.

“So what did your Thatha say about the baby?” Neelima asked demurely.

“Nothing,” I replied, and sat down cross-legged, my right hand still inside the pink bucket. “Why do you keep coming here, Neelima?” I asked bluntly, and her eyes met mine with shock.

“Priya!” Sowmya gasped.

I shook my head and put my hand on the cloth and made a yellow handprint. “I didn’t mean it that way, ” I said finally. “I mean, they treat you . . . well, they treat you like they don’t like you.”

“How will they like her if they don’t know her?” Sowmya jumped to Neelima’s defense.

“Do you really believe that knowing her will make them like her?” I asked slightly irritated. “Anand keeps sending her here and they . . . they don’t want to like her, Sowmya.”

Neelima sniffled and we both turned our attention to her. Lord! Did the woman have to cry? I disliked women who cried incessantly over one thing or the other. Neelima had been bawling or on the verge of doing so ever since I met her.

“Come, come,” Sowmya nudged her sister-in-law with her elbow because both her hands were drenched in turmeric.

“Crying is not going to solve your problem,” I admonished, and they both looked like two little puppies I had kicked with high-heeled boots.

“Don’t be mean,” Sowmya said sternly. “You don’t know what she has been through.”

I shrugged. “Does it matter? So she has been through hell, I understand, but I don’t see why she should keep coming back here for more of it.”

“Because Anand wants me to,” Neelima said, and wiped her tears with the sleeve of her red blouse. “He keeps making me come here so that his parents will . . . accept us. But they don’t, do they? Priya is right, Sowmya. They just don’t want to.”

“It takes time,” Sowmya said solemnly.

“How much time?” Neelima demanded sarcastically. “We have been married for over a year now; I am going to have a baby soon. How will they treat my child?”

“You may have a son and Lata may have a daughter,” I said, trying to lighten the atmosphere just a little.

Sowmya and Neelima smiled.

“How about your parents?” I asked. “Are they okay with Anand?”

Neelima nodded. “They like him very much. They even tried to get friendly, but they don’t want to have anything to do with my parents. We tried, you know; we called them all to our house so that the parents could meet and everything. But they didn’t even come, called at the last minute making up an excuse about some water problem in the house. My mother was so upset and my father . . . bless that man, he told me to be careful and that he would support me through anything.”

Sowmya glared at her. “Meaning?”

Neelima stuck her hand inside the pink bucket and laid out the remaining fistful of mangoes on the muslin and started to spread them.

“Neelima?” Sowmya persisted, and Neelima threw the last piece of mango down forcefully.

“Just that,” she retorted angrily. “Your parents treat me like garbage and mine treat him so well. If things don’t work out and if Anand persists on making his parents happy, what choice do I have?”

I was shocked. Divorce! Was she talking about divorce and being a single mother?

“But I am pregnant now,” she added, and then shook her head. “Anand and I are very happy together.”

Sowmya was pleased with that answer. “My parents will come around.”

It was a hollow promise. They would finally, someday, accept her, but she would always be the woman who stole their sweet, little, innocent boy.

“Let us get out of here before one of us gets a sunstroke,” I advised the duo, and we went downstairs to cook lunch.

Lata and Ma were already in the kitchen chopping vegetables, talking about a wedding they had attended a couple of weeks ago.

“She was fat . . . so fat,” Lata was saying. “And he . . . What a catch!”

“I heard that they gave thirty lakhs in dowry, and that was just hard cash, plus a new Honda,” Ma said conspiratorially.

“Thirty lakhs . . . So much money they have and they bought her a nice husband with it,” Lata shrugged, and they both looked up at us when we entered the kitchen.

“Can I help?” Neelima asked politely, and was immediately shooed away. She didn’t cry this time; just twirled around and asked Sowmya to show her the new saris she had bought at a sari sale last week. I sat down on the floor next to my mother and looked at the vegetables in steel containers that were strewn around.

“There is half a coconut in the fridge,” Lata informed me. “You will need it for the avial.”

I got the coconut out and attached it to the coconut scraper and churned the metal handle. Thin coconut slivers started to fall into a steel container.

My mother got up to leave. I knew she was not happy that my grandfather wanted me to cook. I didn’t know when I joined a race with my mother, but I felt like she charted everything that Thatha said on a scoreboard and the score today was: Priya—one, Ma—zero.

“My back hurts,” Ma complained unconvincingly, even as she rubbed her hand on the small of her back. “I will go rest with your Ammamma. You can take care, can’t you?”

I made an assenting sound but didn’t look up from my coconut.

“She is unhappy with you,” Lata said, as she brushed an errant hair from her perfect, heart-shaped face.

“She’s always unhappy,” I said sulkily, and she laughed.

“You have to eventually get married,” Lata said. She pulled a flat block of wood toward her and tugged out the folded blade that sat on it. She leaned her perfectly pedicured right foot on the block and started slicing potatoes on the sharp knife. Her gold toe ring and the bright red nail polish glimmered against the worn wood.

“Eventually, I will get married,” I said. “I never figured out how to use that knife. I was always scared that I’d walk into it.”

“It is easy,” Lata said, and sliced another potato with a flourish. “So, do you have a boyfriend? Is that why you keep saying no to marriage?”

Was she being perceptive or merely voicing a popular familial opinion that my mother had failed to tell me about?

“I’m just twenty-seven, plenty of time to get married,” I evaded. “And please don’t tell me how when you were twenty-seven you were married with kids.”

Lata dropped another sliced-up potato into the big steel bowl of water to keep it from changing color. “I won’t tell you that because you already know it. But twenty-seven is late. When will you have children? The sooner the better, otherwise . . . you may not be able to have children.”

“Maybe I don’t want any children,” I said annoyed. Was there no originality among the women of my family? One aunt said I should learn to cook so that my husband won’t starve, while the other wanted me to get pregnant in case my reproductive organs gave up on me. And adding insult to injury was my mother who wanted me to marry any man who made what she considered “good money.”

“All women want children,” Lata said negligently. “So, my brother who lives in Los Angeles told me that nowadays Indians— not those foreigners, but Indian girls and boys—live together . . . do everything when they are not married. Why can’t they simply get married?”

“Because they want to live together for a while, not spend the rest of their lives together. Maybe they just want to test the waters. Marriage is serious business. You don’t marry the first guy you sleep with or live with for that matter,” I said for the sole purpose of scandalizing the living daylights out of her.

From her shocked facial expression, I knew I had succeeded. But I knew she would mention this to my mother, or worse, to Thatha, and then there would be questions galore.

She looked at me sharply. “Would you live with a man without marrying him?”

Talking to Lata felt akin to walking into enemy territory where booby traps lay everywhere. “Does everything have to be about me?” I commended myself on the poker face I wore.

Lata continued to chop potatoes. “You know, Anand and Neelima . . . they did it before marriage. I think that is why they got married.”

“Because they had sex?” I stopped scraping the coconut and then started again.

Lata picked up a bottle gourd, as green in color as the cotton sari she was wearing, and started to cut it into big chunks to make it easy to peel and then chop for the pappu.

“We are not like all those white women who have sex with hundreds of men. We marry the man we have sex with. Neelima trapped him,” she said.

“Why would he marry her because he had sex with her? How should that matter?” I knew it was pointless to discuss Neelima or the institution of marriage with Lata, but my mouth ran away before I could put a leash on it.

“Anand is a nice boy,” Lata explained her twisted logic. “Neelima seduced him and he had to marry her.”

“So they’re not a happily married couple?” I asked over the sound of the scraper rolling inside the now bare shell of coconut. I discarded the shell and ran my fingers through the white slivers of coconut lying in the steel bowl.

Lata placed a yellow pumpkin lying next to her in front of me. I put it on top of the elevated wooden chopping board my mother had been using. I then rose to pick out a large, smooth-edged knife from the knife holder standing by the sink.

“Anand seems happy,” she remarked. “But you can never know for real. You can’t, you know, judge a book by its cover.”

I agreed with her. But if I were to go by covers, Lata and Jayant appeared to have a lousy marriage. They were perpetually at each other’s throats. There was no blatant fighting; it was more the bickering, the constant animosity. One look at Jayant and Lata was enough to put anyone off of arranged marriage. Their marriage was obviously not working but they were still together in what appeared to be a stifling relationship, while baby number three was on the way. I wondered whose decision it had been to have another baby, Jayant’s or Lata’s. Who had given in to the pressure I am sure Thatha had firmly put on the couple?

“How are Apoorva and Shalini doing?” I changed the topic to her children as I cut through the large yellow pumpkin.

“Very well,” she said with pride. “Shalini started Bharatnatyam classes and she dances with so much grace, and Apoorva is learning how to play the veena. I always say it is important for girls to know some classical dance or music.”

“How do they feel about getting a little brother or a sister?”

She raised her eyebrows holding a piece of bottle gourd in midair. She slid it on the blade and put two pieces of the gourd in the steel bowl by her side. “Who told you? Neelima?”

“Not Neelima,” I lied, as I started parting the peel of the pumpkin from its flesh.

Lata picked up the pieces of peeled pumpkin and sliced them on the blade jutting out of the wooden board and dropped them in another steel bowl.

“They made me,” she said. “First, it was just Mava and then it was Atha and then Jayant started. What could I say? I have some duty toward my husband’s family.”

“What if you have another daughter?” I asked what was probably the most taboo question.

“I won’t,” she told me with fervor, as if even thinking about it would make it happen. “I know I could, but I hope I won’t. All this for nothing, then.”

“What will you do if it’s a girl?” I persisted.

Lata smiled softly and met my eyes without flinching. “I love my children. I don’t care if they are girls or boys. And I will love this baby, too. I only want it to be a boy so that your Thatha will be happy.”

I didn’t believe her.

“We will find out next week whether the baby is a boy or girl,” she added. “They can tell in the sixteenth week itself these days with that amnio test.”

“And then?”

“Then we will know.”

I didn’t care to ask her if she would have an abortion at that point; somehow, I didn’t want to know the answer.

All this for nothing, then, she had said, and her words echoed in my brain for a long time.

Lunch was served at the large dining table that filled the entire dining area next to the kitchen. Steel plates clinked on the Formica table and steel glasses tried to find a foothold. The table was in disharmony with its surroundings. The Formica clashed with the red and yellow window frame against which the table leaned; it took up too much space and didn’t really match with the cane dining chairs that Thatha had bought years before he had the table.

The Formica itself was lumpy, marred by errors of placing a hot pot directly on it or spilling water that seeped in between the thin vinyl layer and cheap wood.

The new dining table had replaced a sturdy old wooden table, which was just a few feet high and required us to sit cross-legged on straw mats to eat. But that table had to be put away in storage when Ammamma’s arthritis demanded something that would be easy on her knees. Thatha bought the table at a small furniture store in Abids that specialized in gaudy TV stands and sold other assorted items of the same low quality as the dining table.

Thatha had liked the size of the table and the shining top had appealed to him as well. It had taken only six months for the shining top to become dull and lumpy, but by then the small furniture store had closed down and Thatha got stuck with the table, lumps and all.

A mound of hot rice settled in the center of the table and around it dark bobbing heads joined steel utensils filled with avial, bottle gourd pappu, potato curry, and cold yogurt.

Two jugs of ice-cold water were emptied in little time and the ceiling fan rattled endlessly, providing little surcease from the interminable heat. But I was getting used to it.

“Have you been to Noo Yark?” my grandmother asked as she attacked her food, her mouth open as she chewed.

“Yes,” I said, and dropped my eyes to my plate where my fingers danced with the rice and the creamy bottle gourd pappu. How easy it was to eat with my fingers again. I had forgotten the joys of mixing rice and pappu with my fingers. Food just tasted better when eaten with such intimacy.

“Very good avial, Priya-Amma,” Thatha remarked, and I nodded, pleased with the compliment.

“Noo Yark is a dangerous place, it is,” Ammamma said, smacking her lips together and mixing the rice with avial on her plate with her fingers.

“The white people are just . . . crooks,” she continued, and my head shot up. “And the black people . . . those kallu people are all criminals.”

My eyes widened with shock.

“And how do you know this?” I asked, unable to completely submerge my instinct to get on my antiracism soapbox. Nick would love to be in on this conversation, I thought.

“I see Star TV,” Ammamma said proudly. “All black people are doing drugs and they kill on the street. Vishnu . . . you remember him?”

I didn’t, but I nodded.

“His son was mugged by a kallu person in Noo Yark . A black man”—she dropped some food into her mouth—“put a gun to his head.” She spoke with her mouth full and I grimaced at her words and the half-chewed visible food. “All black people . . . dirty they are.”

And what had my grandmother done—smelled their clothes? Frustration warred with the reality of the situation in front of me, and reality won.

“That is right,” Thatha spoke up, and exhibited his ignorance. “All white people do is exploit the others. And the black people kill. That country is just . . . no family values, nothing. All the time they get divorced.”

“They have a moral structure, Thatha.” I could hardly sit silent in front of such blatant disregard for the facts.

“What moral structure?” Ma glowered. “Your friends . . . what, Manju and Nilesh, they were fine when they were here and they would have been fine if they had not gone to America.”

Manju and Nilesh were classmates from engineering college in India. They started their romance in the first year of college and survived as a couple through four years of engineering college, two years of graduate school in the United States, and a year or so of working in Silicon Valley before getting married. But happily ever after had evaded them. They had recently divorced and I made the big mistake of telling Ma about it. She immediately decided that it was because of the evil American influence.

“These friends of hers got married,” Ma explained to the others. “Same caste, same . . . real good match. They went to America and now they are getting a divorce after four years of marriage. What happened? If they were in India, it would have never happened.”

She was absolutely right. They definitely would not have gotten a divorce in India. After all, divorce was still not commonplace. The pressure from their families would have kept them together even as Nilesh screwed everything in a skirt including Manju’s older married cousin.

“Why did they get a divorce?” Neelima asked softly.

“Does it matter?” my mother launched into a tirade. “They got a divorce and they would have been married if they were here in India. There . . . no one cares. Women have three, four marriages and all the men cheat on their wives. They all sleep around.”

This was why I knew it was going to be a tough, tough thing to tell the family about Nick. They had condemned the entire Western world to being immoral criminals and crooks. What chance did poor Nick stand in getting a fair trial?

“They don’t all sleep around,” I defended. “In the South, couples don’t have sex until they get married. They’re very religious there.”

I don’t know how and why this discussion was taking place. I couldn’t remember discussing sex in any fashion with my family ever before. Sowmya and I would talk about it once in a while, but that was girl talk. This was simply too weird.

“And then there are those religious fanatics,” Thatha added, and I lost it.

“And here there are none?” I demanded. “How can you say that about the West when you know nothing about it?

“Damn it, this country has its own screw-ups. Men beat up their wives and the wives stick to their marriages. At least in America they have a way out. They can walk out of their sick marriages. Here people don’t decide who they should marry, spend the rest of their lives with—their parents do. That seems okay to you?”

Silence fell like rain in monsoon. Thatha looked at me with the look reserved for the belligerent or the retarded—I wasn’t sure which.

“You only live in the States. It is not your country. They will never accept you. You will always be an outsider there, a dark person. Here they will accept you and don’t use foul language in this house,” Thatha said.

“Accept me?” I was on a roll so I stepped into cow dung, big time. “I apologize for the foul language, but, Thatha, you don’t accept Neelima because she comes from another state. You don’t accept Indians and you expect me to believe I’m accepted in this society. How long will this society accept me if I want to live by my own rules?”

“All societies have rules,” Lata launched into the discussion. “You have to follow American society rules, don’t you?”

I smiled that sick sarcastic smile I was warned against by Ma all my life. “Yes, but in that society no one can pressure me into having a child so that a family can have a male heir and—”

“Priya.” My mother silenced me with that one sharp word. “You don’t know what you are talking about.”

Silence fell again. Except for the chewing of food and the movements of steel utensils, no one said anything.

Now I had done it and I wanted to kick myself. This was not how I was going to soften the blow—this was how I was going to make it more severe. Of all the stupid things to do I had to go and try to change my family’s mind about the evil and corrupt Western world. I might as well have tried to climb Mt. Everest in my shorts.

TO: NICHOLAS COLLINS <NICK_COLLINS@XXXX.COM>
FROM: PRIYA RAO <PRIYA_RAO@YYYY.COM>
SUBJECT: RE: RE: RE: GOOD TRIP?

I FOUND AN INTERNET CAFE, JUST DOWN THE STREET FROM AMMAMMA’S HOUSE. SMALL PLACE, CHARGES RS. 30 FOR 15 MINUTES AND THE CONNECTION IS SOOOOO SLOW, IT CRAWLS. NEVERTHELESS, IT EXISTS AND SEVEN YEARS AGO IT DIDN’T. I’M CONSTANTLY SURPRISED AT HOW SOME THINGS HAVE CHANGED AND HOW SOME THINGS ARE EXACTLY THE SAME.

JUST MET WITH THATHA AND, NICK, THE MAN IS A CHAUVINIST. I MEAN, THE MAN IS A FREAK, OUT OF A MUSEUM. AND THE REST OF THEM ARE EQUALLY BAD. I TOLD YOU ABOUT ANAND AND HOW HE MARRIED NEELIMA. WELL, YOU SHOULD SEE HOW EVERYONE TREATS THE POOR GIRL—SLAPPING HER ACROSS THE FACE REPEATEDLY WOULD BE KIND.

AND YOU WON’T BELIEVE THIS, BUT LATA IS PREGNANT AGAIN. THATHA WANTS A PUREBLOODED BRAHMIN GRANDSON AND ANAND’S SON, IF HE HAS ONE, WON’T CUT IT. NEELIMA ISN’T A TELUGU BRAHMIN, YOU SEE, JUST A MAHARASHTRIAN ONE. THIS FEELS LIKE A BAD TELUGU MOVIE; ALL THE CHARACTERS ARE THERE IN DIFFERENT SHADES OF GRAY: THE INTRACTABLE MOTHER-IN-LAW, THE VILE SISTER-IN-LAWS, THE SPINELESS HUSBAND, THE PATRIARCHAL FATHER-IN-LAW, AND, OF COURSE, THE POOR DAUGHTER-IN-LAW FROM THE OTHER CASTE.

I’M NOT GETTING ALONG WITH MA EITHER. I’M TRYING HARD AND FAILING. FOR ONCE I WANTED US TO BE FRIENDS AND I THOUGHT THAT NOW THAT I’M OLDER, WE WOULD BE FRIENDS. NOT HAPPENING FOR US. AND IT HURTS. I HAD THIS FANTASY OF US GETTING ALONG ONCE I GOT BACK. BUT TIME HAS HAD ABSOLUTELY NO EFFECT ON OUR RELATIONSHIP.

NATE HAS GONE HIKING WITH FRIENDS AND I’M STUCK HERE WITH THE RELATIVES FROM HELL. I WANT SO MUCH FOR THEM TO BE DIFFERENT, MORE ACCEPTING, LESS JUDGMENTAL, LESS RACIST, MORE TOLERANT. I WANT THEM TO ACCEPT YOU. BUT THE MORE I SEE, THE MORE I REALIZE THAT IT ISN’T GOING TO HAPPEN.

HOW AM I GOING TO TELL THEM, NICK? HOW ON EARTH AM I SUPPOSED TO TELL THEM ABOUT YOU? IT’S GOING TO BREAK MY HEART TO BREAK THEIRS. BUT I LOVE YOU AND I CAN’T DREDGE UP AN OUNCE OF GUILT . . . AND THAT MAKES ME FEEL GUILTY. I’M SUPPOSED TO FEEL GUILT, RIGHT?

ANYWAY, GOT TO GO. THE MAN AT THE FRONT DESK IS LOOKING AT HIS WATCH AND THEN AT ME . . . SUBTLE AS A CHAINSAW. I’LL COME BY AGAIN AND CHECK EMAIL.

AND, I AM NOT GOING TO MARRY SOME INDIAN BOY!! HOW CAN YOU THINK THAT, EVEN IRRATIONALLY?

AND I’M COMING HOME AS SOON AS I CAN.
PRIYA