The Hindi-Bindi Club Read online

  Thakurda didn’t so much as glance up from the crossword puzzle in the Statesman, his daily newspaper, but over time, the notion of a curse seized Thakurma. One day, she whisked Ma away to consult a highly respected guru who confirmed her suspicions: Indeed, my mother had been cursed by the evil eye in a previous life. The blessing, “May you be the mother of a hundred sons” was inverted to: “May you be the mother of a hundred daughters.”

  To remove the curse, they had to perform various rituals. Among other things, my mother had to wear certain charms, fast, and make offerings at the Kalighat temple.

  She followed the instructions to the letter, and with her next pregnancy, she grew so huge, everyone felt certain at long last, she carried the family heir. Suddenly, she was treated like a queen, instead of head servant. Thakurma pampered her and jumped to do her bidding. Thakurma felt vindicated her diagnosis of the problem had proven correct. The ring of keys she wore on her palloo—the long end of her sari—jingled as she walked with an extra bounce in every step, and she hummed as she rubbed Ma’s swollen feet with mustard oil.

  As with all her previous deliveries, in Ma’s last trimester, she packed her suitcases and went to Dadu and Dida’s—my maternal grandparents’—house to have the baby.

  I remember all of us standing on the veranda and running across the lawn to see her off. I remember Ma waving good-bye from Baba’s Ambassador. The palloo of her taant—Bengali sari—modestly covering her head. The loha—iron bangle—on her slim wrist. The newfound happiness on her round face. The hope in her eyes. The relief as she settled back, and the Ambassador drove off.

  That was the last time I saw my mother.

  After giving birth to twin girls, she selected one of her favorite taants, tied it to the ceiling fan, and hanged herself.

  In grad school at Boston College, Colleen—then my best American friend, now my sister-in-law—asked if I blamed my parents, if I was angry with them. I told her no and no.

  I lied.

  I can’t remember a time when I didn’t struggle with anger. A constant battle. One I like to think I’m winning, but there’s always the next round. Ask me then and my answer may change.

  One’s demons don’t really go away. Have you noticed? They live, thrive in the shadows. Multiply if you let them, if you don’t learn to diffuse their power, control them so they don’t breed like the lower classes, don’t overcome you, control you. Turn your heart to ice, or to fire. Destroy you. And others.

  Patrick taught me this. He would know. He returned from Vietnam an expert on demons.

  I tell myself of course I wish it could have been different with my parents. How could I not? But my parents were products of their times, their culture, as each of us is. I cannot blame them for what happened. That’s what I tell myself. Most of the time, it works. Most of the time, but not always.

  When intellect fails, Patrick takes me downstairs to our basement where the cinder-block walls contain a person’s howls. He holds the punching bag, and I release my fury. Release the animal inside me, the animal a good Hindu wife—a proper woman—isn’t supposed to have, let alone acknowledge. The animal whose existence I denied, until my husband called me on it.

  “You aren’t sucking it up,” Patrick said. “You’re sucking it in.” He showed me the difference. Showed me what I could do, the ways of the warrior—the caste into which I was born—as he was shown by his fellow war veterans, his band of brothers and sisters.

  In the basement, I hit and kick, scream and cry. I curse. If you saw me, you would think I had lost my mind, and you would be right. But I will let you in on a little secret, a paradox I believe my mother knew: Sometimes one must go insane, dance cheek-to-cheek with one’s demons, in order to slay them, to regain one’s sanity. This is the wisdom my husband gave me. Now, I’m giving it to you.

  Uma’s Shorshe Salmon Maachh (Grilled Salmon with Spicy Mustard Glaze)

  SERVES 4

  3 tablespoons paanch phoron (Bengali five-spice—recipe follows)*

  ¼ cup water

  4 salmon fillets (6-ounce pieces)

  2 dried red chilies (adjust to taste)

  2 tablespoons mustard oil

  banana leaves (optional)

  ¾ teaspoon salt (adjust to taste)

  1. In a blender or food processor, purée to a smooth paste paanch phoron, red chilies, salt, and water.

  2. Brush both sides of fillets with oil, then rub both sides with the paste.

  3. Place fillets in a glass bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, but no more than 24 hours.

  4. Spray grill rack with nonstick cooking spray. Heat to high. Place fillets 5–6 inches from heat. Sear each side until lightly browned, about 1–2 minutes.

  5. Remove from grill and wrap each fillet in a banana leaf (or aluminum foil). Secure leaf with string or toothpicks and return to grill, seam side up.

  6. Grill each side 5–7 minutes, until fish flakes easily with a fork. (Caution: Don’t overcook!)

  7. Serve with rice.

  Paanch Phoron (Bengali Five-Spice)

  MAKES ¼ CUP

  1 tablespoon cumin seeds

  1 tablespoon fenugreek seeds

  1 tablespoon brown mustard seeds*

  1 tablespoon nigella seeds*

  1 tablespoon fennel seeds

  1. In a small, airtight plastic bag, combine all ingredients.

  2. Seal and shake.

  3. Use immediately or store in airtight container. Keeps up to 6 months at room temperature, 1 year refrigerated.

  * Mom’s Tips:

  Brown mustard seeds are sometimes called Chinese mustard.

  Caution: Nigella is erroneously called/confused with black cumin, royal cumin, onion seeds, or caraway.

  For store-bought paanch phoron, I like the “Maya” brand.

  Meenal Deshpande: Monsoon Memories

  Our bad experiences provide the contrast that enables us to recognize goodness. If you wrote a message with white chalk on a white board, no one would see it. Without the blackboard of bad, the good things in the world could not be magnified at all.

  PARAMAHANSA YOGANANDA

  Before Yash leaves to go back to the apartment, he says, “It’s like waiting for the monsoon. Will it come today? Or tomorrow? Or the next day?”

  He’s right. The thought of breaking the news to Kiran has felt like waiting for the monsoon. Waiting and wondering. Will the rains cleanse and nourish life? Or will they overwhelm and destroy?

  She’s home now; it must be done.

  Kiran brushes her teeth in front of the bathroom mirror. “Everyone wonders why I don’t come home. This is why.” She spits into the sink, rinses her mouth, and grabs a hand towel. “I don’t need this grief.”

  I stand in the doorway, a folded newspaper in my hands. “No, you don’t. I’m sorry.”

  She drags her hairbrush through her hair. “Why are you apologizing? You didn’t do anything. You never do,” she says, then winces, whether at her words or her tangles, I’m not sure.

  I wait until she finishes, then pick up her hairbrush and pluck a few long strands of her hair with nostalgia. “I don’t want to fight, Kiran.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “Life’s too short.”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  I meet her gaze in the mirror. “What made you think of an arranged marriage?”

  “Desperation,” she says. “My biological clock’s ticking. I’m ready to have a family, and there’s no groom on the horizon. I don’t know when, or even if…”

  I nod and put down the hairbrush. “I want to show you something.” I gesture for her to follow me and head for the door, but when I turn, she hasn’t moved.

  “Mom?” she asks, a waver in her voice. “Do you think I’ve messed up my life?” With her sweatpants and Redskins sweatshirt, hair in a ponytail, and fresh-scrubbed face, she could pass for a teenager. But she isn’t, hasn’t been for years.

  You build your life around your chil
dren, then one day, they grow up on you. They don’t need you anymore and make no bones about telling you so. That’s life in America.

  Now here she is, my grown-up and independent daughter, for the first time in God-only-knows-how-long, needing her parents. Needing me.

  Making me want to move mountains for her.

  “Complicated,” I say. “Not messed up. Not at all. And your second-marriage prospects are challenging, not hopeless. Definitely not hopeless.”

  Kiran’s smile is shaky—relief tinged with regret. “I never should have married Anthony. It was the biggest mistake of my life. I know it. You know it. Everyone knows it. You were right. I was wrong. Go ahead and say, ‘I told you so.’”

  I snap my tongue and suck a sharp breath between my teeth. “We didn’t want to be right, Kiran. We just wanted the best for you. We still do. Forgive us if we…if we…” I struggle for the right words. “Forgive us for not being the parents you want us to be.”

  Her eyes water, but she blinks back her tears. Even as a girl, she hated to let anyone see her cry. Let anyone see her vulnerability.

  “I know what Dad said was harsh, but please understand he didn’t mean to hurt you. You know the way we were brought up, elders spoke their minds—it was a right of old age. We were used to this, so it didn’t hurt us the way it hurts you.”

  “You’d think after forty-some years in this country, he’d—”

  “That doesn’t matter. If you move to another country where women don’t have the rights you enjoy today, will you forget the freedoms of your upbringing? Elders command respect in India—unconditional respect. Outside his home, a man must play by the rules set by others, bend to their ways, but inside his home, he makes the rules, and others are expected to bend to his ways. In Dad’s bones, he feels it’s his right to speak his mind, however candid. The same way you will always feel entitled to certain ‘inalienable rights’ you’ve learned in this culture. Does that make sense?”

  She nods. Grudgingly.

  “I talked to Dad, and he promises to try harder to be more diplomatic.”

  “Right. I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  “Fair enough,” I say. “Come. Let’s move our conversation out of the bathroom, huh?”

  “I’m not up for another round with Dad—”

  “Dad’s gone back to the apartment. It’s just you and me.”

  Her rigid posture softens, relaxes. “Good,” she says and brushes past me, out the door.

  “W e’ll need your laptop,” I say, sitting on Kiran’s bed. While she turns on her computer, I open the newspaper, India Abroad, to an ad I marked folding down the corner of the page. “Go here.”

  “What is this?”

  “A new twist on the old ways. An Indian matrimonial website. You know, like computer dating.”

  “No way.” She laughs in disbelief. “Arranged marriages have gone high-tech.”

  “Why not? The Internet has made the world a small village, and with all the computer engineers India produces, it was just a matter of time.” I smile. “According to this ad, you can input specific requirements and search their database. Such as, U.S. citizens only.”

  “Interesting,” Kiran says. “Very interesting.”

  “I think it’s a good place to start. Get an idea of the fish in the sea. And you’re good at corresponding in email. You may like this.”

  We do a trial search. She selects “looking for groom” and her acceptable age range. This yields fifty pages of profiles. Twenty profiles per page. Never married, divorced, and widowed. One thousand available men.

  Kiran’s head snaps back. “Whoa. That’s a lot of fish.” She leans in for a closer inspection. “Well, well, well…Looks like a decent ‘recycled’ market.”

  “Go ahead,” I say. “Cast your line.”

  She selects a thirty-five-year-old divorced doctor in New York. “Education, occupation, income, religion, caste, birth place, values, languages, current residence, residency status, complexion, height, body type…” She reads his profile aloud, including the various attributes he seeks in his ideal partner.

  “Thorough,” she says.

  “That’s the idea. In arranged marriages, we lay all our cards on the table, so we can best gauge a potential couple’s compatibility. We don’t want to be surprised by some vital information after marriage.”

  “Vital info like, oh, monogamy-challenged, for example.”

  “You should discuss everything that’s important to you openly and honestly.”

  She nods and turns back to the screen, reading a few more profiles, the difference of ten years’ wisdom reflected in her thoughtful gaze. She’s finished weeping over her chaalu, skirt-chasing Krishna; now she’s ready for a stable, dependable Shiva.

  I wish she didn’t have to learn the hard, painful way that sunshine burns if you get too much. I wish she’d heeded Yash’s and my repeated warnings, our pleas, but some mistakes you must make for yourself if that’s your karma.

  “This isn’t a bad idea, Kiran. Trying another route—a proven route for many. It may very well work for you, too….”

  The next afternoon, encouraged by our preliminary groom search, Kiran and I take a break. We play the soundtrack from A Charlie Brown Christmas and put up our tree. It’s the eight-foot artificial one from the basement. I’ve never had the energy for a live tree, plus I feel sad when all those discarded trees line the curbs after the New Year.

  “I can’t believe you still have these,” Kiran says as she opens a box of the kids’ handmade ornaments.

  “Oh, yes. I’ll donate the other boxes to Goodwill when we sell the house, but not these.” I hook the golden string of a ceramic candy cane engraved: TO MOM & DAD—LOVE, KIRAN—1979. “These are my favorites.”

  “Sell the house?” Kiran echoes.

  My hand stills in midair. I could slap my forehead. “I didn’t mean to blurt that out so insensitively.”

  “You’re planning to sell the house in the near future?”

  “Well, we’ve been thinking about it for a while….”

  “But why?” she demands. “I thought you loved this house. You and Dad designed it. It’s your dream house.”

  “It is, but it’s served its purpose. You kids are gone—”

  “But I thought you’d retire here.”

  “It’s too much space, Kiran. Too much work.” Too empty without you and Vivek.

  “Wow.” She looks around, dazed. “I can’t imagine other people living in our house.”

  “I know. Neither can I. But it’s time to move on, to life’s next phase.”

  She chews on her lower lip. I want to tell her to stop. Ai could always get me to stop whatever undesirable behavior by saying no one would want to marry a girl who did such things. That didn’t work with Kiran. She’d tell me she didn’t want to marry someone who wouldn’t marry a girl for such petty reasons.

  “So what exactly is the plan?” she asks.

  “Exactly, we haven’t decided. Probably, we’ll list the house in summer.”

  “This summer?” At my nod, she frowns.

  “After it sells, we’ll buy a condo or a townhouse around here. And something else, somewhere warm. Florida. Arizona. Maybe India.”

  “Wow,” she says again. “You’re really considering being snowbirds in India?”

  “I’m leaning in that direction.” I’ve told her of my plans to winter in India this year. I leave soon after the New Year, and I’ll be gone for three months. My parents, while in superb health for their ages, are both in their eighties, and they slow down more each year. This year, Baba rarely left the apartment building. “Aji and Ajoba are on bonus years,” I say. “I want to spend as much time as I can with them. We’ll see. Dad gets a vote, too.”

  When Yash’s and my marriage was arranged, our agreement was: Stay in America for ten years, collect our money, and return to India. Then we had children. American kids in American schools with American friends. Excellent education. So many che
rished friends. How could we take them away from everything they knew and loved? We couldn’t. So we stayed. For them. And as soon as they could, they left us. Still, here we remain….

  Kiran and I lean back and admire our trimmed tree. We sit on the exquisite hand-loomed Kashmiri rug we carted from India (and unrolled for customs inspectors) the sole time Yash and I felt it was safe to take the kids to the stunning Kashmir Valley nestled in the Himalayas. (So devastating, that quagmire. So tragic the blood man spills in God’s country.)

  We are gazing up at our angel-topped tree without speaking when the soundtrack ends. I look at Kiran; she looks at me. I can’t avoid the unavoidable any longer.

  “Kiran, I have to tell you something.” I turn toward her, tucking a leg underneath me. “I know this is a lot for you to swallow all at once—”

  “There’s more?”

  “Yes—”

  “Shit, now you’re scaring me.”

  “No, don’t be scared.” I’m beyond telling her to clean up her language. “Everything’s fine—”

  “Have you and Dad split?”

  “No! God, no.”

  “Just tell me, Mom.”

  “Stop interrupting, and I will.”

  She crosses her arms and presses her lips together. I comb my fingers through my hair, for a split second forgetting and expecting inches that aren’t there anymore, haven’t been for months. Both of our chests heave. I wish Yash was here.

  I’ve rehearsed this a million times, what to say, how to say it. Show-and-tell seems best. I tug the neckline of my sweater, reach down into my pima cotton bra. First one pocket, then the other. I remove both my prostheses, show them to my physician daughter.

  Kiran stills. The deceptive, eerie calm before the storm. Her wide eyes, unblinking, fix on the objects in my hand. She knows what they are. Knows what they mean. Wishes she didn’t. On her face, heavy storm clouds gather. The sky darkens, turns ominous.