“Are you inviting me to your wedding?” Nanna asked, incredulous.
“Times have changed,” I said, realizing how ridiculous the situation was. My father had forever planned to marry me off and now when the time was here I was marrying myself off, while he was being invited as a guest.
“We will see,” he said, and I understood that he couldn’t commit himself.
“I should go to Thatha’s and tell them that I’m not going to be the next Mrs. Sarma,” I said, standing up.
“I’ll drive you,” Nanna said. “The liquor has worn off… Your daughter marrying a firangi is bad for the buzz.”
“What about him?” I asked, pointing to the sleeping Nate whose mouth was just a little open and drool was pooling, slowly trickling down his chin.
“He’ll be fine,” Nanna said. “Probably not the first time he is drunk and hung over. Now, on our way to Thatha’s, I want you to tell me all about Nate’s girlfriend. Is she at least Telugu?”
I hugged Nanna tightly then, let the floodgates open and sobbed in relief. He rubbed his cheek against my hair and I wasn’t sure if the wetness I felt was sweat or Nanna’s tears.
Sowmya was making buttermilk instead of coffee for the early-evening tiffin along with some almond biscuits. “Too hot for coffee,” she told me, as she poured water into the earthen pot in which she made yogurt every day.
“Where did Thatha go?” I asked, annoyed that he wasn’t there when I was ready to explain to him why I couldn’t marry Adarsh and why I had to tell him the truth.
“Something happened at the house construction… Some wall was put up that shouldn’t have been put up or something like that,” Sowmya said as she added powdered cumin and coriander along with a teaspoon of chili powder and salt to the earthen pot.
She churned the yogurt with a wooden mixer, tasting as she churned. “Will you drink this,” she asked, “or should I make some separate with sugar?”
“This is fine,” I said, smiling at the fact that she remembered I always drank buttermilk with sugar in it.
Lata strolled into the kitchen then, a slight waddle creeping into her walk as she massaged her back. “None of my previous pregnancies gave me this much trouble,” she muttered and then sighed when she saw me. “Why did you have to tell Adarsh everything? Your mother is waiting to kill you.”
It annoyed me that Adarsh had gone home and been a good boy, telling his parents the truth about my personal life, something I thought I had revealed to him to ease his hurt. I had believed there was a tacit understanding between us not to reveal our conversation to any of the elders. I felt cheated out of the money I paid for his chaat and ganna juice.
“Well, he told me that he had a Chinese girlfriend,” I countered, deliberately keeping the ex-girlfriend part out.
“Chinese?” Lata’s eyes widened, and she came and leaned against the wall beside me. “What, are there no Indians in the States for you all to meet?”
Neelima came into the kitchen right then, her eyes slightly puffed up and lethargy swirling around her like an irritating mosquito. “Can you make me some coffee, Sowmya?” she asked as soon as she was in. She sat down on the floor next to the large stone grinder. “I am so sleepy,” she complained.
“Happens in the first trimester,” Lata told her caustically. “And why are you and Anand so late? I thought you would be here in the morning. Sowmya and I had to mix the dried mango for the maggai all by ourselves.”
The scolding didn’t faze Neelima who wanted nothing more out of life at that instant than coffee. “My parents wanted us to have lunch with them,” she said.
“Here no one has eaten lunch,” Sowmya muttered. “ Nanna came and just took some of the morning’s curd rice and Amma is still having a headache. Radha Akka and I unnecessarily cooked so much rice and pappu.”
“We’ll have it tonight,” Lata said, and then focused on me. “How is your father doing?”
I smiled. “He’s going to be just fine.”
Lata put her hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “I think you are very brave,” she said. “It would have been easy for you to not have said anything… like Anand. But you did and that was very brave.”
I was surprised by her assessment. I didn’t feel very brave, just helpless in a situation that I couldn’t alter.
“I wish more women would stand up for what they want,” Lata finished with a smile.
“Maybe it’s time you did,” I suggested to her.
Sowmya finished churning the buttermilk and started pouring it in tall steel glasses that stood shakily on the not-so-smooth stone kitchen counter.
“Can you take this to your father and mother?” Sowmya pointed to two glasses.
“They are in the veranda-bedroom,” Lata told me. “Your mother is very angry. Good luck.”
I took the two glasses and went to find my parents. I knew my father was probably telling Ma that he was not going to raise any objections to who I wanted to marry. That was not going to be a pretty sight but I wasn’t going to back out after I had come this far. Even though Adarsh had annoyed the hell out of me he had shown me that hiding Nick from my family was detrimental to my relationship with Nick.
“Nothing doing,” Ma was yelling at Nanna. “She told Mallika… she told Mallika about this Nicku person. Mallika phoned everyone and told them. Sarita just called me here to tell me. What is she doing to us? Dragging our name in the dirt?”
I almost didn’t enter the bedroom, but took that heavy step across the threshold, pushing the slightly closed door. “Lassi,” I said, holding the glasses high.
Ma glared at me. “What, Priya, what are you doing to us?”
There were tears in her eyes and I wondered if they were there because she was sad or because she was angry. I never really got close to Ma the way daughters were supposed to get close to their mothers. I had managed to develop a very close relationship with my father but with Ma, things were better left unsaid. I think I never respected her or credited her with too much intelligence- that was for Nanna. Ma was the nuisance parent in my life, and even though Nate bitched about Ma, I knew that he always bought her a gift for her birthday, remembered my parents’ wedding anniversary, and sometimes just for the hell of it would bring home jalebis, Ma’s favorite sweet.
Why was it that we had divided our affections like this? It was a subconscious thing because when I looked inside myself I could feel that Nanna loved me more than Ma did. Sometimes I actually felt that Ma disliked me because I was so different from her and because I was so close to Nanna.
When I was a little girl, and Nate had yet to be born, I used to imagine that Ma was actually my stepmother. Nanna was my real father but my real mother had died and no one was telling me the truth. Ma’s curtness and her lack of overt affection or physical affection of any sort always bothered me, left me empty. Whenever I told her that I loved her she would shoo it away, saying that love had to be shown in actions and not in words. Maybe she was right. I couldn’t show what I didn’t truly feel. I was ambivalent about my feelings for my mother; there was love, I was sure, it was just sometimes submerged under dislike.
“I’m really sorry,” I said sincerely. “I thought Adarsh would be discreet since he told me about his Chinese girlfriend. I really didn’t think he’d put out an ad in the newspaper.”
Ma seemed to be surprised by my apology but she recovered from that fast. “So if he tells something you have to counter it? Don’t you have any shame?”
“What has shame got to do with this?” Politeness be damned. The woman was as usual getting on my nerves.
“And why would you tell Murthy Auntie about this? Don’t you have anything better to do?”
“She asked about Adarsh and I told her the truth,” I said, now regretting my rash decision of telling Murthy Auntie about Nick. I had done it because I was angry with the family, irritated with Murthy Auntie’s interrogation. It was juvenile and I was now embarrassed.