The Hindi-Bindi Club Read online

  My mom inclines her head. Go ahead if you want.

  I want. I extend a wineglass by the stem. “White, please.”

  We form an assembly line and load our plates to take into the dining room. I serve myself as my mother taught, using my left hand and spooning each dish into its proper place. Meat at ten o’clock. Lentils at eleven. Condiments like chutney, lemon, mango pickle, and a pinch of salt disperse across the outermost twelve region, cold veggies and yogurt due south. Warm veggies nestle between one and three. Rice or chappati at six.

  Fried fish, which we don’t have, would take the nine o’clock spot but can shift inside (next door to meat and lentils) when dessert snags nine, a rarity at our house where “desserts are rewards, not side dishes,” my mother insists. That is, unless her mother visits from Mumbai. According to my traditional aji—maternal grandmother—a properly served, well-balanced meal includes all six rasas (tastes): sweet, sour, salty, spicy, bitter, and astringent.

  Dinner conversation starts with compliments to the chef, then segues to family gossip, books and movies, and current events. No one uses a fork, knife, or spoon. We eat with the fingertips of our right hand, keeping the left hand clean for serving, passing, and holding drinks. I tear off a piece of chappati—the only food-touching act that permits left-handed assistance—and envelop a piece of chicken, creating a bite-sized morsel. I’m competent at the fine art of Eating With One’s Hand but lack the elegance, the finesse of the aunties in the same way I can stitch up a patient, but I’m no plastic surgeon.

  The lemony chicken melts in my mouth. The gravy has just enough kick to give me sniffles. Ordinarily, I’m not a big fan of green beans or eggplant or cabbage, but Indian bhajis—cooked veggie dishes—are so well seasoned, even ho-hum veggies become quite yummy. I like to occasionally dip my bites in sour cream or alternate with koshimbir—raw veggies like tomato or cucumber in a refreshing yogurt or sour cream. This cools down the spicy-hot factor and cleanses the palate.

  When I get close to finishing an Indian meal, I’m anal-retentive about my chappati and my complementary dishes ending together. I don’t like to eat one without the other; it’s just not the same. Ditto hamburgers and French fries. The optimal apportionment occupies my subconscious, and the aunties take this opportunity to inquire about my well-being (read: examine me, a mutant specimen under the microscope).

  Auntie 1: Isn’t it scary going to new towns all alone, not knowing anyone?

  Me: No, it’s fun meeting new people, and re-creating myself.

  Auntie 2: But isn’t it dangerous, a young woman by herself?

  Me: I’m very careful, and I’ve taken self-defense classes.

  Auntie 3: You must be getting lonely, nuh?

  Me: Sometimes, but my work keeps me busy.

  Auntie 4: What do you do outside of work?

  Me: Sleep.

  Auntie 5: I have a niece in Georgia, the daughter of a good friend of my brother’s wife in Bangalore. They were classmates in college. You should call her. Get together sometimes. I’ll give you her number.

  Me: (Polite smile)

  I explain that I’m nearing the end of my contracted stint, and when I’m done, the government will repay my student loans. I leave out the part about having these loans because my father cut me off—financially and emotionally—after I married against his wishes. (He didn’t bless my marriage or my divorce. “What did you expect?” he asked, bewildered. “Hya American rock staranchi lafdi nehamich astat, hen saglyanach mahtyeh.” These American rock stars always have affairs, everyone knows that.)

  I know the aunties are dying to know about my (nonexistent) love life, but dating, like every other taboo subject, requires discussion in furtive whispers behind my back.

  “So I hear you’ve started movie nights and a reading group,” I say and manage to wiggle out of the hot seat, at least for the time being.

  Their movie nights feature Hindi films/Bollywood musicals, and the book group focuses on novelists of the Indian diaspora. Someone is invariably insulted by the depiction of Indians, or Americans, or Indian-Americans, or Non-Resident Indians in any given film, making for lively debate.

  “What nonsense,” says one auntie about the character in a popular crossover film. “N.R.I.s are nothing like that.”

  “Don’t take everything so seriously,” says another. “It’s all in good fun.”

  “Bashing one’s heritage is not my definition of good fun.”

  “Satirical humor exaggerates a kernel of truth,” says Uma Auntie.

  Some aunties huff and shake their heads; others nod.

  The auntie who brought up this topic says, “I don’t find perpetuating stereotypes and gross inaccuracies amusing.”

  From across the table, I spot the devilish gleam in Saroj Auntie’s eye. “And you’ve never laughed at a Sardarji joke, or told one, have you?” she says, deadpan.

  Ooooh, good one, Saroj Auntie! (Before modern political correctness kicked in, bashing this minority subculture was a long-revered national Indian pastime.) After some sputtering and guilty silences, everyone laughs.

  My mother asks what book they’re reading next. From what I can tell, the book-selection process involves as much discussion as the actual book.

  “Please. Not her again,” one auntie says. “Too crazy.” She proposes an alternate, an international bestseller, but another auntie waves her hand in protest.

  “No, no. She isn’t an expatriate. And she’s more of a political activist than a novelist.”

  “She’s brilliant, that’s what she is,” says Uma Auntie, who teaches South Asian literature. “I don’t always agree with her, but what a mind. What a mind….”

  “My mind is tired,” says Saroj Auntie. “Why don’t we read something fun for a change?” She suggests another author. “Her prose is like music. Lyrical. Lush. Evocative.”

  My mother winces. “Too Mills and Boon. Not realistic.”

  “I find M and B realistic,” says Uma Auntie with a grin.

  My mother springs from her chair like a jack-in-the-box. “Can I get anyone anything? More chappati?”

  “Sit, sit. We can serve ourselves,” the aunties protest, but she ignores them and retreats to the kitchen.

  “I’ll help.” Since I’m out of chappati, I abandon my last few bites of green beans and go after my mother.

  She stands with her head bent, her left hand gripping the counter. Tucked into the corner alcove in front of her resides the foot-high wooden mandir—shrine. Or as Patrick Uncle calls it, “the Hindu hut.” Photos of my deceased paternal grandparents and white-bearded saint Sai Baba flank the mandir. Inside sit rose-petal-laden sterling idols: Ganpati, also known as Ganesh, god of beginnings and remover of obstacles; Krishna, god of love; Lakshmi, goddess of wealth and beauty; and Saraswati, goddess of wisdom. (Hindus believe in only one supreme God but acknowledge different names, forms, interpretations, paths to the divine.)

  “Mom? What’s wrong?”

  Startled, she straightens and whirls to face me. “Nothing. Nothing. Just a little tired.”

  “Hawa gayli?” I ask and earn a smile of pride and pleasure that I remember this expression that means running out of steam.

  She nods. “Ho.”

  “Understandably. You’ve outdone yourself. What can I do?”

  “Eat. Please eat more. You’re too skinny.”

  “I am not.” I lift the hem of my sweater and show her my stomach. “See? I’m fit.”

  “A fit little sparrow.” She pokes my belly with her index finger. “Take half a chappati, so you can finish your bhaji.”

  Our eyes meet, and emotion tightens my throat. How is it my mother can know me so well at times, yet other times not know me at all? She breaks away first, turning to the faucet to wash her hands. The din of aunties fades into the background like a hush falling over an audience. The world shrinks to encapsulate just the two of us. My mother and me, together on the same stage for the first time in five years. Together, yet each
of us alone in our separate spotlights. Even the air seems to hold its breath, quivering in anticipation.

  “You need to eat more,” I say, my voice thick. “I didn’t see any chicken curry on your plate.”

  “I’m a vegetarian.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since…” She purses her lips, as if trying to recall. “Sometime last spring.”

  I frown. “You never mentioned it.”

  “Didn’t I?” She lifts a shoulder in a delicate shrug. “I meant to.” She tears a paper towel off the roll and dries her hands. “It’s hard to say everything over the phone, isn’t it?” At her weary smile, my heart constricts. I note her increased wrinkles, darker circles around her eyes, looser skin. She’s shorter now, the slightest hunch in her posture.

  I’m not the only one who’s aging.

  I swallow. Once. Twice. “Are you taking your vitamins? Getting enough protein? Calcium? Magnesium?”

  “Yes, Kiran. I’m a professional doctor’s wife.”

  Is that humor or irony? I can’t read her expression, and the inability makes me sad. I don’t like the distance between us. I don’t want it anymore. This “separate lives” thing has run its course.

  “Mom?”

  “Hmmm?” She heats a tawa—griddle pan—for the chappatis.

  “I…Here, let me do that. A culinary task I actually know how to do.”

  “That’s okay—”

  “Really, I don’t mind.” I wash and dry my hands, nudge her away from the stove, and take her place. I expect her to say something to the effect of there’s hope for me in the kitchen yet, but she just squeezes my arm and thanks me.

  Who is this pod person, and what have the aliens done with my real mom?

  I laugh to myself, thinking she must be wondering the same thing about me.

  One at a time, I flip the chappatis that she places on the tawa, counting each flip the way she taught. One, two, three, done. Watching her bustle around the kitchen, I want to say more, but I don’t know what. I want to reach out, but I don’t know how to break the ice that froze in layers over too many years. I’m afraid—of falling in, of needing help, of dying unassisted.

  From behind me, my mother says softly, “I’ve missed you.”

  Tears spring to my eyes. I blink and bob my head up and down. “I’ve missed you, too, Mom. I hope you know…”

  “I know,” she says, and for the moment, it’s enough.

  It’s a start.

  When we finish, I take the plate of hot-hot chappatis into the dining room, returning to our program, already in progress:

  “We’re running out of authors,” an auntie says.

  “It’s a short list,” laments another.

  “Why is that, do you think?”

  I pipe up, “Because Indian parents offer their children two career choices: doctor or engineer.” It’s a joke; no one laughs. I sip from my wineglass. “Never mind.”

  I’m aware that I may drink wine and sit at the big table, but I’m not one of them. They will always be my mother’s peers, not mine. They are the seniors; I am the junior. I will never completely get them, nor will they entirely fathom me. So I sit back and attempt to do as instructed all my life (with limited success): keep my mouth shut, listen to my elders, and try to learn something.

  The aunties are in their late fifties to late sixties, both pilgrims and Indians, born in that Far East land of spices for which Columbus set sail and erroneously thought he discovered. Instead, they wouldn’t arrive on American shores for hundreds more years, their sizable waves post-1965, a direct result of new, highly selective U.S. immigration laws.

  “You mean all Indian men aren’t doctors or engineers?” I once said in passing to Sandeep Uncle.

  He was the one who first explained this phenomenon to me. “That was all they allowed into the country from India at our time. My elder brother stood first in his college. Brilliant man. Lawyer. Thrice he applied to come here, but Immigration said no. Finally, he went to Canada.”

  That’s also why Indian parents highly encouraged their sons to become doctors or engineers—the professions that offered the best shot at economic success. And the American children born to those Indian-immigrant doctors and engineers? Care to venture a guess what that next generation was highly encouraged to become?

  You got it.

  My parents thought they were progressive for giving Vivek and me the option of choosing what type of doctor or engineer. (For the record, I became a physician despite my parents, not because of them. But let’s just keep that between us, okay?)

  Most of the Hindi-Bindi Club’s founding mothers emigrated during those first big waves that India called her brain drain. Now they reign as matriarchs of the Indian-immigrant community, keepers of tales of the pioneer days before cell phones, before the Internet, before you could buy basmati rice in the supermarket.

  From their animated conversations, I note that some (my mom) still have thick Indian accents, some (Uma Auntie) hardly a trace of Indian, and some (Saroj Auntie) an Indian-American khitchadi—smorgasbord. The aunties speak in rapid-fire English peppered with a liberal dose of Hindi, which I don’t understand aside from a smattering of nouns here and there but sometimes decipher from context, tone, and body language.

  My mom told me that when she first arrived in the States in her early twenties, her command of English, already strong from her convent school education, improved dramatically, but among the many things she missed about India was Hindi. “It’s such a sweet language,” she said, “with so many expressions that can’t adequately translate to English.”

  In our Indian friends circle, most American-born types like myself are bilingual, but our second language differs according to Indian subculture—Indian states are like European countries, each with its own language and culture. (Imagine if New York, Mississippi, North Dakota, and California really had their own languages and didn’t just sound that way!) Educated city-folk speak, at minimum, three languages: the two official national languages of English and Hindi, plus the regional language of their ancestral state, their mother tongue.

  The mother tongue is the most common second language in Indian-American homes. In our home, you’ll hear Marathi. In Saroj Auntie’s, Punjabi. In Uma Auntie’s, Bengali, which she and Rani speak, while Patrick Uncle’s repertoire is on par with a dog’s. “Let’s go.” “Sit.” “Enough.” “Stop.” “Very nice.”

  When Indians of differing subcultures get together, they often flit in and out of English and Hindi with equal ease. To those of us who don’t understand Hindi, they shut us out of what sounds to our ears like a secret, special language. Thus our nickname for our mothers, the Hindi-Bindi Club: They spoke in Hindi and sometimes wore bindis.

  In my ninth-grade world history class, we spent half an hour on India. I learned about poor people in villages, something new for me. I also learned the “dot on the forehead” was a “third eye.” This was also new to me—before the days of Third Eye Blind—and it conjured images of the cantina in Star Wars. (A little trivia: Yoda is the ancient Sanskrit word for warrior; jedi is the modern Hindi word. Yoda = ancient warrior; Jedi = modern warrior.)

  I went home and consulted the expert in residence. “Mom? Tell me again, what’s the significance of the bindi? I thought traditionally it meant a Hindu woman was married, and nowadays it can be pure fashion, like putting on jewelry or makeup. Plus, in religious pujas, it’s like a blessing. Did I miss something? What’s the deal with this third eye?”

  “Everything you said is correct,” my mother said. “The third eye is also correct. It symbolizes the capacity of human consciousness to see beyond the obvious, to perceive beyond what is visible and tangible, to tap the inner source within each of us that is the spring of divine energy and power. That is the metaphysical meaning.”

  “Oh. But it can also be just a fashion statement, right? With no deep meaning? Cuz my teacher didn’t mention that part, or the married bit.”

  “Yes,
Kiran.”

  My mother wears a bindi tonight, a peel-and-stick-on type in the shape of a dainty emerald teardrop that matches her cashmere sweater set. Bindis, along with saris, were also on her Miss List when she first came to America. That is, she missed wearing them without people whispering and rubber-necking. “In India,” she said, “when men stare at women, it’s rude and annoying, but a common, unfortunate part of the culture. Here, where staring is not part of the culture, and people are expected to show better manners, I feel singled out like some circus attraction.”

  Times are different now. Forty years later, the sight of an Indian woman in a city is not so rare. Still, my mother cherishes these get-togethers with the aunties who understand her in a way her American-born friends—and children—never will, where she can use Hindi expressions without translating, wear a sari and a bindi should the mood strike, and not feel like a foreigner.

  Even after spending her entire adult life in America and becoming a naturalized citizen, she still says, in her Indian lilt, “I can never forget where I come from, the culture of my heritage. It will always be part of me, those first colorful threads woven into the tapestry of my life.”

  When the aunties start packing up to leave, Uma Auntie pulls me aside. She links her arm with mine and says, “Can I steal you away for a few minutes?”

  “Uh, sure. Where to?”

  “Somewhere private. Upstairs?”

  In my former bedroom, Uma Auntie closes the door behind us. I have to admit that after my initial resentment, I like what my mother’s done with the room. It’s very inviting. A queen-sized mahogany sleigh bed with a fluffy white down comforter and throw pillows galore. Side tables with sleek candlestick lamps. On a shelf, there’s a cute procession of five multitiered sandalwood elephants, arranged in descending height.

  “Tonight couldn’t have been easy for you,” Uma Auntie says.

  I give a nervous laugh, not sure where this is going. “No. No, it wasn’t.”

  “Even Mother Teresa had her critics,” she says. “That’s what I’ve always told myself. No matter what you do, someone, somewhere is going to find fault. And each of us must decide whose opinion matters to us, and whose doesn’t. Because God knows, you can’t please everyone. It’s futile to try. Come. Sit.” Joining her, I perch on the edge of the bed, angling to face her. “I wanted to call you so many times, but I always stopped myself for one reason or another. It wasn’t my place. Your mom wouldn’t like my interference. I promised…” She shakes her head.