The Hindi-Bindi Club Page 28

  A noncommittal grunt.

  I’ll take it. At least he’s listening. I continue, “Well, in today’s world, we are seeing, discovering how a child born to Indian parents can become American, and a child born to American parents can become Indian.”

  Silence. A sigh. “Meenu, you do craft beautiful prose—of that, there’s no doubt—but it doesn’t matter how mumbo-jumbo or one-two-three you say it, I see it how I see it, I’m sorry. East is East, and West is West… Please don’t be angry. I just…”

  “I know.” I take his hand in mine. He isn’t ready. Not yet, and perhaps not ever, in this life. We all have our own spiritual path. Though our eventual destination—the ultimate reality—is the same, everyone’s at a different place, proceeding at a different pace. Before cancer, had Uma spoken these same words, they would have gone in one ear and out the other for me, and I would have judged her pretentious. It took cancer to heighten my awareness, my consciousness of all possibilities.

  The infinite. Eternal. Dimensionless. God.

  Cancer created a new material reality for me and brought me closer to the ultimate truth, to God. I saw the light—as a ray hitting cut crystal. The prisms are many; the light is one. I laughed in amazement, laughed at myself. There it was, right in front of me all along, plain as daylight, but I couldn’t see it. And just as suddenly, yet again, I’m struck by a blinding flash of the obvious.

  When you can’t see the question, how can you see the answer?

  Tenderly, I lay my hand on Yash’s cheek. “It comes down to this,” I say. “Can you forgive Kiran for not being the daughter you want, and accept the daughter you have?”

  Yash rolls onto his back and flings an arm over his eyes. “I don’t know, Meenu,” he whispers, anguish clogging his voice. “I just don’t know….”

  Green Beans Bhaji

  SERVES 4

  3 tablespoons canola oil

  2 pinches asafetida (hing)

  1 medium onion, finely chopped

  4 cups string beans, chopped into ¼-inch pieces

  1/8 teaspoon turmeric powder

  1 teaspoon coriander powder

  1 teaspoon cumin powder

  ½ teaspoon cayenne powder

  ½ cup water, divided

  1 teaspoon salt

  ½ teaspoon brown sugar

  1. In a wok or deep 12-inch skillet, heat oil over medium heat.

  2. Stir in asafetida. After the asafetida changes color, about 30 seconds, add onion. Sauté until golden brown.

  3. Stir in beans. Sauté 2–3 minutes.

  4. Stir in turmeric, coriander, cumin, and cayenne. Reduce heat to medium-low. Cover and simmer for 3–4 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  5. Stir in ¼ cup water. Cover and simmer until water is absorbed.

  6. Stir in remaining ¼ cup water. Cover and simmer until beans change color.

  7. Stir in salt and brown sugar. Reduce heat to low. Cover and simmer until water is absorbed.

  8. Remove from heat. Serve warm.

  Chappati

  MAKES 6

  2 cups whole wheat flour, plus 2–3 tablespoons (for dusting)

  ½ teaspoon salt

  2 tablespoons canola oil

  1 cup water

  ghee or butter to taste

  1. In a large mixing bowl, sift together 2 cups flour and salt.

  2. Using your hand to knead, stir in oil and water, ¼ cup at a time, until dough forms into a ball.

  3. Transfer dough to a clean, unfloured work surface. Knead until smooth, about 5–10 minutes. Dough should be soft and pliable, neither too wet nor too dry. Add a little water or a little flour if necessary.

  4. Cover with clean kitchen towel. Allow to sit for 30 minutes.

  5. Dust a clean work surface with flour.

  6. Tear off wedges of dough, making 6 equal portions between the size of a plum and an apricot.

  7. Roll portion between your palms into a ball, then press your palms together to flatten somewhat. Set on work surface.

  8. With a rolling pin, flatten portion into a 6-inch circle of uniform thickness. Dust work surface as necessary to keep dough from sticking.

  9. Repeat for all 6 portions.

  10. Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Test heat with a few drops of water. Water should sizzle.

  11. Carefully place one chappati onto the skillet. Cook until chappati lightens somewhat and bubbles puff beneath the surface, about 30–60 seconds.

  12. Using a spatula, flip chappati and cook other side about 30–40 seconds.

  13. Make one last flip, if necessary, to cook any remaining raw dough, then remove to a plate.*

  14. Spread a little ghee or butter over the surface. Should melt upon contact.

  15. Repeat for remaining chappatis.

  16. Stack on top of each other, so top of one chappati butters bottom of next.

  Tips:

  Be careful not to overcook. Some brown spots are okay, but chappatis should remain soft, not cardboard stiff or crisp.

  If chappatis are cooking too quickly, or scorching too much, decrease heat.

  Chappatis are best served hot, right off the skillet, but can also be enjoyed warm or at room temperature.

  Rani McGuiness Tomashot: Reincarnation

  A diamond was lying in the street covered with dirt. Many fools passed by. Someone who knew diamonds picked it up.

  KABIR

  Have you ever had one of those How-the-Hell-Did-I End-Up-Here moments? And when you look back, you see that it started innocuously enough, as most life-altering courses tend to, one baby step after another? That’s what happened to Bryan and me this year.

  It all began when I agreed to accompany my mother on her research trip to Kolkata….

  There I was, playing tourist, and doing a bang-up job, if I do say so myself. No jet lag. No diarrhea. No communication problems. What more could a Third-World tourist want? Then, a weird thing happened. My asthma—wait, more precisely, all the symptoms of my childhood asthma—came back.

  That’s not the weird part. I’m getting there. Hold your horses. First, the symptoms. Basic stuff. Should be all-too-familiar to my fellow asthma sufferers: I woke up gasping in the dead of night. Couldn’t breathe. Felt like someone was sitting on my chest and strangling me.

  I woke my mom, who woke Anandita-mashi, who woke her doctor, who came right over. The doctor happens to live in the building, but house calls aren’t uncommon, I’m told. Afterward, I was loaded up with the usual paraphernalia, including my old best friend I’d hoped never to lay eyes on again: the dreaded inhaler. So there I was, rapidly sucking my inhaler bone-dry, like in the not-so-good old days, when my mother decided she wanted a second opinion and carted my wheezing butt to another doctor.

  This doctor, a stooped old woman with a reedy silver braid hanging down to her butt who appeared to be about a hundred, give or take ten years, didn’t instruct me to say “ah,” didn’t look in my mouth or my ears, didn’t instruct me to take a deep breath or listen to my lungs with a stethoscope. She didn’t even feel the glands at the sides of my throat. She just sat me down in front of her on a low string-bed and put her wrinkly hand on my head—her fleshy heel against my forehead, bony fingers on my crown.

  “This is not asthma,” she said.

  “Allergies?” Mom asked.

  “No.”

  “I had a feeling…” Mom said.

  “What?” I asked.

  Neither of them replied. The doc instructed me to lie down, close my eyes, relax. She whispered something to Mom in Bengali, something I couldn’t hear and had the distinct impression, from her tone, she didn’t want me to hear.

  I cracked open my eyelids just enough to peep through my lashes and saw the Ancient One gesture for Mom to follow her. Slipping from the room through a curtained doorway, my mother looked back over her shoulder at me. Quickly, I shut my eyes. Minutes later, she retrieved me, and we left. Outside on the footpath, she asked if I wanted to go to a nearby café. I wa
s pooped, but it sounded like she wanted to go, so I said sure.

  Navigating through the traffic—animal, vegetable, and mineral—I surmised she wasn’t planning to clue me in on the Ancient One’s diagnosis until we sat down, but I was curious.

  “If it isn’t asthma or allergies, what is it?” I asked.

  “You’re adjusting,” she replied. “To being here. Some people are more susceptible than others to…the elements.”

  B.F.D., I thought. “So, where’s the big deal in that? Why’d you have to leave the room?”

  Her gaze shot to mine, then darted away. She stopped, squinted into the distance, appeared to look down the road. “We…uh…were settling the bill.”

  Oh. That made sense. “So, did you haggle with her?”

  “No—”

  “What? Mom! The one time you should have, you didn’t—!”

  “No need, I was going to say, silly goose. She works pro bono.”

  “Well, seeing as she doesn’t actually do anything. Nothing for nothing. Hey, what a bargain!”

  Mom gave a short laugh. “I’d gladly pay any amount for her services.”

  “What services—?” A rickshaw whipped around the corner where we were standing, waiting to cross. In the nick of time, Mom yanked me out of the way before the wheel ran over my foot, then made me hold her hand like a five-year-old.

  She tugged me out to the middle of the road, stopped in the midst of traffic, put her hand out in front of a slow-moving taxi and halted the driver, so we could cross in front of him—in the fine art of Kolkata Jaywalking, my mother is a master.

  “What services?” I asked again.

  “Spiritual healing. Watch out!”

  I sidestepped a big ol’ cow patty. “Eeewwwww.”

  “Someone will be along to collect that shortly.”

  A word to the wise: If you can’t walk, chew gum, and carry on multiple threads of conversation at the same time, you won’t last long in Kolkata.

  Focusing on my feet, I said, “I guess anyone can put up a sign and call themselves a healer these days.”

  She laughed. “You think your mother can’t sniff a phony? You can take the girl out of Bengal, but you can’t take Bengal out of the girl. That healer was one of the best. You were asleep for half an hour.”

  That brought my chin up. “I was not!” When she made a snoring sound, I bumped my shoulder against hers. “Moth-er! Come on! I don’t snore. And I closed my eyes for a minute. Two, tops.”

  “Thirty-two, Boo, I kid you not. I clocked you. I sat there and watched the entire time.”

  My gaze searched hers. She was serious. “No shit…”

  The chic café looked just like a bookstore-café back home: hardwood floors, comfy furniture, air-conditioning. Sparkling clean and inviting, it was understandably packed. Mom went and struck up a conversation with a group of college students—just small talk, she said!—and another friendly group, behind them, overheard and invited us to join them as they were leaving soon.

  I had to use the facilities, but I wasn’t dying, so I held it. On that count, our last trip to Kolkata scarred me for life. My cousins, expecting me to be a stereotypical stuck-up American, thought it would be funny to play a practical joke on me—via my stuck-up, foreigner bowels. That was before they got to know me, and boy, did they feel rotten. (Hey, I may be stuck-up, but I’m also smart, cute, and funny!) Not as rotten as I felt, however, having already consumed the street food that worked faster than Ex-Lax. And did I mention they’d deliberately “accidentally” clogged the only Western toilet in the house beforehand? That would be the flip side of “brilliant.” Diabolical.

  T.P. wasn’t in abundance, even in the big cities, back then. Paper, a costly commodity in India, is associated with books and newspapers, highly respected mediums of knowledge and wisdom—not something on which you wipe excrement. Though readily available today, T.P. still doesn’t substitute for the traditional hygiene practice of washing thoroughly with water, but adds an optional, luxury “dry cycle” after the “rinse cycle.”

  Mom said unless we were in a five-star hotel, we couldn’t assume the public restrooms had T.P. Western toilets might be plentiful, but T.P. isn’t. Ditto paper towels.

  “You packing?” Dad had asked before we left the house for the airport. “Make sure.” Not guns, but packs of tissues and antibacterial wipes, he meant. And yes, I was—at all times.

  At the café, Mom joined the intellectuals intellectualizing, but my brain was too tired to keep up with that many people, all talking at the same time, over each other. I was glad when they left, and Mom and I could do our own thing.

  Over tea and snacks, she explained that the body’s seven major energy centers—chakras, Sanskrit for wheel—aligned along the spinal chord can get blocked. Blockage causes imbalance, as each chakra correlates with specific physical, mental, emotional attributes. Apparently, my throat chakra, which is associated with creativity and expression, was clogged.

  A healer’s hands are highly attuned to energy fields, like how blind people can sense walls, doors, and other objects in close proximity without actually coming into contact with them. Aura is the term coined by the ancients, still widely used today in reference to these electromagnetic/quantum fields. “Think of the negative and positive poles of a magnet, of the earth,” Mom said. By moving her ultrasensitive hands over my energy pathways, the Ancient One removed the negative energy, the cause of blockages, and infused positive energy that heals, rinsing my chakras and aura squeaky clean. After this energy “tune-up and oil change,” I passed my emissions test.

  Now, while much of this makes sense to my scientific brain, not all of it does. But I listened over two cups of Darjeeling tea—after which I did use the facilities, without incident, I’m happy to report—and I gave my mother an indulgent smile because I love the woman to pieces, and whether or not she’s a fruitcake is irrelevant, though I seriously doubted I’d find any asthmatic relief while we remained in that polluted city.

  Oddly enough, Mom smiled back at me in the exact same way.

  When we got back to the flat, I was one tuckered puppy. I went to take a nap and ended up sleeping through the night, not uncommon with jet lag. The next morning, I was lying in bed, still groggy, watching dust motes dance in the sunlight when something felt “off.”

  I thought to myself: Self, what’s wrong with this picture? Suddenly, I realized: I’m not choked up. I’m not hacking. I’m breathing just fine.

  All my asthma symptoms vanished overnight, never to return. Cue the Twilight Zone music. Was it all in my head, psychosomatic? Is there a scientific basis to spiritual energy yet to be fully understood, explained? Beats me. But from then on, I started seeing things in a new light. Possibilities where none before existed….

  Hip deep in boxes, I’m in the throes of packing up Bryan’s and my recently sold Pacific Heights condo when the phone rings. I hop toward a clearing, aim for the cradle where the portable rests. Make that, used to rest.

  Uh-oh…

  Another ring. I scan the room. Clutter and more clutter. In what heap did I bury the flippin’ phone? Color me clueless.

  Oh, man, tell me I didn’t pack it…

  I eye the caller I.D. display. LINDSTROM, ERIC. Preity! And I know exactly why she’s calling. “Hang on! I’m coming!” Following the rings, I unearth the phone and answer a second before voicemail kicks in. “Preity!” I say without preamble. “Can you believe it?”

  “No! Can you?”

  “No!”

  “You sound out of breath. Am I catching you at a bad time?”

  “No, I could use a break.” I plop down onto the floor, back against the wall, feet on a box, ankles crossed, and wipe my brow with the sleeve of my T-shirt.

  “I got your number from my mom, who of course got it from your mom. I had to call you. Who else would understand this? Really understand? I mean, it’s Kiran. Our Kiran!”

  “I know! I’ve been dying to call you!” Though I can count
on one hand the number of times Preity and I have talked on the phone—all of them when we were kids—I, too, have had a burning urge to pick up the phone. “I’ve been going on and on to Bryan, the neighbors, the cats—”

  “They don’t get it,” Preity says.

  “They can’t get it,” I say.

  “And we can’t explain it to them!”

  “Exactly!”

  Neither of us has talked to Kiran yet. I left voicemail. Preity emailed. No replies yet. Preity doubts she’s getting one, but I predict she will.

  “So what have you heard?” she asks.

  “You first. Saroj Auntie always has her ear to the ground.”

  “Yeah, but Uma Auntie’s been instrumental. She totally has Meenal Auntie’s ear.”

  “Meenal Auntie isn’t the problem,” I say.

  “It’s Yash Uncle.”

  “Yep.”

  “Is Patrick Uncle going to talk to him?” Preity asks.

  “Nope, won’t get involved. How about Sandeep Uncle?”

  “Same.”

  “Humph. Typical,” I say. “When you actually want a guy to interfere, he won’t.”

  Preity laughs. “Isn’t that the truth?”

  We compare notes….

  “Well, according to The Basu Gazette,” I report, “Kiran says she won’t get married without Yash Uncle’s blessing. Sounds like she’s come around.”

  “Depends. Is she making a promise or a threat? The Chawla Times wasn’t clear on that. I mean, what’s the alternative, if Yash Uncle doesn’t give his blessing? Will she end the romance and walk away? Or will she play house without getting married?”

  “That’s the million-dollar question,” I say.

  “Okay, let’s cut to the chase,” Preity says. “I’m totally floored Kiran wants to marry a guy she’s never met. Or touched. Or you know…” She drops her voice. “No sample of the goods?”

  “I’m sure they’ve had phone sex. Or cybersex. Probably both.”

  “You think? Kiran doesn’t strike me as the kinky type.”