The Hindi-Bindi Club Read online

  She opens her mouth, but no sound emerges. She covers her mouth with her hand. She’s in shock, as I was. Stunned. Numb. Frightened. Her gaze seeks, searches mine. A child afraid to look under the bed, fearing monsters. A doctor driven to look, preferring monsters she knows over those she doesn’t.

  Again, she opens her mouth, tries to speak. A single word. Barely audible. Except to a mother’s ear, endowed by nature to hear the sound of her child, as dogs hear pitches humans cannot. In a noisy crowd. From a distance. Awake or asleep. Anytime, anywhere. Her voice is my beeper. My ears perk up, alert to my page: “Mom.”

  “I was first diagnosed in February. Just one breast.” My mouth feels like cotton. I want water, but I don’t dare to stop now. “I…never expected it, didn’t see it coming. You know we don’t have a family history of cancer. I’d done my regular self-checks, and I didn’t feel anything unusual. It was the mammogram that picked it up.” I clasp my hands in namaskar. “Thank God I scheduled my annual on time this year.

  “The doctors recommended a lumpectomy, chemo-therapy, and radiation. After all that, the cancer showed up on my other breast. At that point, we went for bilateral mastectomies.” I glance at my fake breasts. “I decided against reconstruction, for many reasons. Mostly, I didn’t want to chance the cancer hiding behind an implant.”

  In Kiran’s shallow breathing, I hear the ghostlike howl of the wind. “Are you…?” Her voice wavers the way the ocean ripples. Tossed between the tides of daughter and doctor, she anchors one hand over her heart and draws a steadying breath. “What’s the prognosis?”

  “Excellent. Clear margins. Clear lymph nodes.” This means no more chemo or radiation. The cancer didn’t invade my blood or my bones.

  She releases her breath with a whoosh and covers her eyes. “Oh, thank God. Thank God. Thank God.”

  “Yes. I’m very lucky. I’ve regained mobility, slowly but surely through yoga. My stamina still isn’t what it used to be, but I’ll get there.”

  When she lowers her hand, her lashes are wet, spiked. As she holds my gaze, lightning crackles between us. “When…was your surgery?”

  My mouth goes dry. I swallow around my guilt. “October.”

  Ka-boom! Thunder rocks our world.

  Fat teardrops spill from Kiran’s eyes. She doesn’t bother to wipe them. Twin streams flow down her cheeks and plunk into her lap. “Why, Mom? Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t anyone tell me?” The hurt in her voice and on her face is a dampness that creeps into my bones and makes me ache from the inside out. I didn’t think I could bear her suffering on top of everything else I had to face. Now I know I can, and I must.

  “Kiran…” I take her hands.

  She sobs openly. “Does Vivek know yet?”

  “Yes.”

  “When…?”

  I hesitate a second too long.

  Her eyebrows dart up. She snatches back her hands, swipes her runny nose. “He’s known! All this time! You told him and not me!”

  “He came home for Thanksgiving—”

  “Oh, he came home, and I didn’t, so this is my punishment—”

  “Arré baba, no. Nothing like that.” I know her anger is inevitable, but let it stem from the truth, not misperceptions. I reach for her hands again, but she scrambles up, wobbling as she stands.

  “I need a minute. I’ll be back. I just…need…one minute.” She runs from the room. Her footsteps sound up the stairs and overhead. I hear her on the phone, yelling at her brother, as she cannot yell at me.

  So much fury. So much pain. So much love.

  I close my eyes and drop back my head, face to the heavens. Pausachi zad aali.

  The deluge has arrived.

  The rainy season in Mumbai lasts from June to September. Everyone anticipates and prepares for the monsoon. Everywhere, vendors advertise umbrellas for sale. After months of muggy, suffocating heat, people look to the skies for relief.

  But the skies often tease before they give up their goods. Dark clouds roll in, then keep right on rolling, not sparing a precious drop. Then come the sprinkles—gentle showers that sneak in and out on tiptoes. Pausachi sar aali, we say.

  When I was a girl, my brothers Dilip and Girish—Dilu-dada and Giru-dada—often took me to the beach a few blocks from our home. We sipped coconut water from fresh-picked baby coconuts and munched bhel puri or chev puri, our favorite beach snacks. Ai strictly forbade us from eating street food from vendors of questionable hygiene during the rainy season when water gets dirty and must be strained and boiled, so on sticky June evenings, we gorged while we could. We’d sit on the sand, watch tides grow higher and dark clouds descend lower, listen to the sea and wind’s roaring competition, and wager if the rains would come.

  Finally, the inevitable happens, every year without fail: Heavy, swollen clouds burst open like water balloons smacking pavement. The rains pour. And pour. And pour. As the water bathes the hot ground, the air fills with the fragrant aroma of the earth. Baked-on, caked-on dirt and grime washes off trees and buildings, leaving them slick and clean. Exhilarated, people dance in the streets and on rooftop terraces. Children jump in puddles and come home wet and muddy. During high tide, the beach disappears, and waves slam into the ten-foot-high retaining wall, spilling over. Pigeons and sparrows take shelter in trees, under awnings, indoors if they can find a way inside.

  Summer vacation from schools ends in May (mango season!), so when the monsoon arrives, the kids are back in school. I used to walk home from school with my girlfriends who lived on my street. During the rains, when water gushes like rivers over the grates of the gutters that line the streets, we loved to toss newspaper boats into the water, gleefully clapping and cheering and running after them as they floated downriver. Sometimes in the height of our excitement, we tossed in our little umbrellas, upside-down. Ai always scolded me when I returned home drenched, especially when I arrived without my umbrella. (Those currents moved fast!)

  “The wind turned my umbrella inside out,” I said. Or, “The wind snatched my umbrella.”

  My mother never bought it. “Meenal, kaan pakad,” Ai said. Grab your ear. I grew up to use this same Marathi expression with my kids when they got into trouble. Instead of the parent taking the kid by the ear, the kid’s told to grab her own ear. “Do you want to fall sick?”

  Every monsoon I caught a cold, but luckily, nothing worse. Illness is a downside of the rainy season, and the poor are the most susceptible.

  To this day, whenever I get a cold, I recall the scents of lemongrass tea and Vicks Vapor Rub, Ai’s remedies. And whether it’s my body, mind, or spirit that feels down, it’s lemongrass tea I crave. Lemongrass tea to soothe the soul.

  When my daughter comes downstairs, I’m in the kitchen—you guessed it—boiling water for tea. Not lemongrass, but masala chai, which Kiran prefers. In Mumbai, our family didn’t take our tea with added spices, but I developed a liking for masala chai because of Saroj’s North Indian influence.

  “I want to see your medical records, please,” Kiran says, and I know, as a mother who’s observed her child since birth, that she’s hiding behind an armor of professional detachment. The same way she hid behind the chip on her shoulder as a teen. The same way she hid behind the folds of my sari as a toddler.

  “Yes, of course. We have copies of everything upstairs. Can we have some tea first?”

  She sits—more like collapses—on a barstool, her elbows propped on the granite island. If you didn’t know Kiran very well, you might think she was aloof, like her father, out of touch with his feelings. She isn’t.

  It’s not that Kiran doesn’t feel; rather, she feels too much.

  I pour her a mug. The steam of cardamom, cloves, ginger, cinnamon, and black pepper perfumes the air. “Cookies?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Pepperidge Farm. Mint Chocolate Milano and Gingerbread.” Gingerbread is her favorite. I count to myself. One. Two—

  “Okay, I’ll get them.”

  As she goes t
o the snack cupboard, I remember when she and Vivek were little, I twisted rubber bands around the knobs to keep them out of the forbidden cupboards. Vivek understood no meant no much earlier than Kiran (I’m not convinced she accepts this, even now). Kiran endlessly questioned why. “Because I said so” was reason enough for Vivek. For me, it went without saying—I never dreamed of questioning Ai or Baba. Not Kiran. She viewed rules as theories she had to test out for herself.

  “Little Monkey,” I would say. “You’re worse than Curious George.” On occasion, I threatened to ship her off to the Man With the Yellow Hat if she didn’t behave.

  Was that really half my lifetime ago?

  I stare at her back. I want to go to her, wrap my arms around her. I want to turn back the clock. I want my little girl again.

  “Kiran, I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. Please forgive me.” She glances over her shoulder, clearly surprised by my apology. “Come. Sit.” I pat the barstool beside me.

  She carries over a few pouches of cookies, scoots a plate between us, busies herself arranging white paper cookie cups.

  “I didn’t tell you for selfish reasons. I think I had the right to be self-absorbed this year—it’s one of the perks of fighting for your life.” I smile. “Getting out of chores is another.”

  She slants her gaze in the same way her father does and, without a word, decapitates a gingerbread man.

  “Okay.” I sigh. “No bad jokes. I do miss my breasts, I can’t lie about that. I’m still adjusting to not having them. Two weeks after my surgery, a Victoria’s Secret catalog came. For five minutes, I stood in the driveway in my bathrobe and cried like a baby. Then I came inside and cried some more.”

  Something flickers in Kiran’s bloodshot eyes. She blinks it away and says, “Your life’s more important than your breasts.” Yash’s exact words.

  “I know. Believe me, I know. It’s like this house.” I gesture around us. “It served its purpose. So did my breasts. I nursed two babies. Still, I feel the loss of something that was part of me, something I loved for so long.” I reach out, tuck Kiran’s hair behind her ear—hair I used to braid into pigtails. I bring my hand to my lips and kiss my fingertips.

  Kiran’s lower lip quivers. She bites it. “Why didn’t you tell me, Mom?”

  I give a weak smile. “Because I wanted one thing in my life to stay normal. From everyone else, a simple ‘How are you?’ was a loaded question. Friends were so nicey-nicey. I tried to pick fights, so they’d be real. But they wouldn’t. Whatever stupid thing I said, they let me. So many of my relationships changed in ways I never would have predicted. People close to me grew distant, people distant from me grew closer. Some relationships strengthened. Some weakened. Some just…I don’t know. There were so many surprises, revelations. Your father, for example.”

  “What?” she says, apprehensive.

  “Dad was incredible. I never thought…” I lift my hand, let it fall. “He held my hair out of my face as I vomited on the side of the highway. When my hair started falling out in clumps, he found me in tears in the bathroom. He handed me his electric razor and asked me to shave his head. You know what he said? ‘We’ll both be tucklus.’” Baldies. “After my surgery, he helped me dress. He was so gentle, with his touch, with his words. I didn’t want him to see my body, but he sat beside me and said, ‘We’re growing old together, Meenu. We may lose our hair, our teeth, our memories, a few body parts here and there, but we’ll never lose each other.’” I fold my hands over my heart. “After forty years together, you think you know everything about a person, and come to find out, there are still mysteries left.”

  Kiran hangs on my every word, without comment or question.

  “And then there are my friends…” I take a Milano cookie, break off a piece but don’t eat it. “Uma Auntie stayed with me at the hospital when Dad couldn’t, and Saroj Auntie stocked our freezer with dozens of single-serving dishes, so I never had to cook.”

  I don’t tell her that since my surgery, something’s changed with Saroj. It’s subtle, but there. She still brings food, but there’s a barrier between us, as if I’m contagious. I wonder if I’m imagining it. Maybe I’m overly sensitive. I don’t know. I can’t comprehend, let alone explain the change, why these days I feel like a leper around Saroj. (The problem with a threesome like Saroj, Uma, and me is that, as close as we are, like a game of musical chairs, someone inevitably feels squeezed out. Each of us takes a turn being the odd woman. Could be, it’s my turn. Or Saroj’s.)

  “You were the only person who was normal with me, Kiran. Our phone calls were bright spots during some very dark times. Talking to you was my best therapy. I couldn’t give that up. You took my mind off my illness. You kept me sane.” Gently, I lay a hand on her tear-damp cheek. “I can’t tell you how much you helped me, without knowing.”

  The barstool’s wooden legs scrape the ceramic tile as Kiran vaults to her feet. She winds her arms around me and tucks her head on my shoulder. “I should’ve come home sooner.” She sobs.

  “You’re here now.” And so am I. “That’s all that matters.”

  “I love you, Mom.”

  “I know.” I kiss her head and rub her back. “Maaji sonu ga ti.” My dearest one. “I love you, too.”

  Behind us, the curtain of rain clouds parts, and the sun peeks through the crack. In front of us, I see a magnificent rainbow. My daughter is home at last….

  * * *

  FROM:

  “Meenal Deshpande”

  TO:

  Saroj Chawla; Uma Basu

  SENT:

  December 14, 20XX 10:38 PM

  SUBJECT:

  Update

  Saroj & Uma,

  Two important pieces of news to share…

  First, I told Kiran. As expected, she was very upset, but things are better now. She’s memorized my medical records, grilled my doctors (and Yash), and studied every book on breast cancer in print, it seems. Then, there is the Internet, too. How did we ever manage without the Internet??

  This brings me to my second news. Kiran is ready for marriage again. This time, she’s asked our help, so if you know of any suitable boys, please do let me know.

  That’s it for now. Look forward to seeing you on the 31st.

  Meenal

  * * *

  * * *

  FROM:

  “Uma Basu”

  TO:

  Meenal Deshpande; Saroj Chawla

  SENT:

  December 15, 20XX 04:15 AM

  SUBJECT:

  RE: Update

  Dearest Meenal,

  Terrific news! Heartfelt congratulations! I want to write more, but I’m on my way to the airport -- red-eye to San Francisco this AM. Please know you and Kiran are in my thoughts.

  Affly,

  Uma

  * * *

  * * *

  FROM:

  “Saroj Chawla”

 

  TO:

  Meenal Deshpande; Uma Basu

  SENT:

  December 15, 20XX 09:01 AM

  SUBJECT:

  RE: Update

  WOW!!! I did NOT expect the second news!!! WOW!!!

  On the other, I’m glad it’s done, and you can both move forward now. Secrets are never easy, but sometimes, they ’re necessary. Our girls may not understand this now, but one day, they will. When they ’ve lived as long as we have!:-)

  How I wish I could offer Tarun as a possible match for Kiran! Too bad: #1 -- he’s too young for her, #2 -- he insists he’s never getting married, a confirmed bachelor. Ha! In India I would have said, “Enough naatak. Time to settle down.” & fixed his marriage. Here, my son threatens to sue me!

  Chalo. My phone’s already ringing this morning. Talk soon.

  Saroj

  * * *

  Meenal’s Masala Chai

  SERVES 2–3

  8 green cardamom pods

  1 3-inch cinnamon s
tick

  2 cups water

  5 whole cloves

  2 tablespoons loose black Assam or Darjeeling tea leaves

  5 black peppercorns

  1 cup milk

  1 teaspoon fresh ginger root, peeled and grated

  ¼ cup sugar

  1. Using a mortar and pestle, bruise cardamom pods.

  2. In a saucepan over medium heat, combine all but milk and sugar. Bring to a boil.

  3. Reduce heat to low and simmer 10 minutes.

  4. Stir in milk and sugar. Simmer 5 minutes.

  5. Strain chai and serve immediately.

  Kiran Deshpande: Who’s Your Goddess?

  The possibility of stepping onto a higher plane is quite real for everyone…. It involves little more than changing our ideas about what is normal.

  DEEPAK CHOPRA

  The Big C has a way of altering the way you look at the world. Small stuff becomes big stuff, and big stuff becomes small. When I learned about my mother’s breast cancer, I was angry, confused, and scared. Mostly, I was scared. A little girl terrified of losing her mommy.

  Though Mom’s prognosis is excellent and she tested negative for the breast cancer gene, a relief for both of us, my rotations in the E.R. taught me that you never know when the sands in the hourglass will run out. She may have another twenty-four years, or twenty-four months. Weeks or days. Hours or minutes. She may not die of cancer at all but something else, potentially unexpected.

  All I know for sure is, I’m not ready. I’m nowhere near ready to lose her. I might never be. Whenever the end comes, it’ll be too soon.

  I see the sands falling in the hourglass, future slipping into past like a thief in the night stealing the irreplaceable. I hear a watch ticking as if underneath my pillow, my sense of urgency, anxiety cranking up notch after notch. I’ve wasted enough time—a losing gamble on marriage, estrangement from my family. I can’t afford to waste any more.