DO NOT FIND YOURSELF SOME FOREIGN MAN/ WOMAN TO MARRY.
Even though the “do not marry a foreigner” order would usually be last on the list, it was the most important one on the list. Any of the other sins the parents could live with; a foreign daughter- or son-in-law was blasphemous.
“If they try to get you married to some nice Indian boy, remember that there’s no such thing and you’re engaged to a nice American man who dotes on you,” Nick joked.
“According to them you’re just another corrupt Westerner and I’d be better off with a nice Indian boy,” I countered.
“I’m sure you’ll convince them otherwise,” Nick said, and then hugged me. “You’ll be fine. They’ll yell and scream for a while and then . . . What can they do? You’re a grown woman.”
“Maybe my plane will crash and I won’t have to tell them at all,” I said forlornly, and he kissed me, laughing.
Nick waved when I looked back at him after I crossed security and entered the international terminal.
I waved back, the brave soldier that I was, and walked toward the plane that was going to take me home to India, mangoes, and hopefully HAPPINESS.
Part One
Raw Mangoes
Avakai (South Indian Mango Pickle)
5 cups sour mango pieces (medium sized)
1 cup mustard seed powder
1 cup red chili powder
1 cup salt
a pinch of turmeric powder
1 teaspoon fenugreek seed powder
3 cups peanut oil
Mix the mango and dry ingredients and add three cups of peanut oil to the mixture. Let the pickle marinate for four weeks before serving with hot white rice and melted ghee (clarified butter).
Use Your Senses
It was overpowering, the smell of mangoes—some fresh, some old, some rotten. With a large empty coconut straw basket, I followed my mother as she stopped at every stall in the massive mango bazaar. They had to taste a certain way; they had to be sour and they had to be mangoes that would not turn sweet when ripened. The mangoes that went into making mango pickle were special mangoes. It was important to use your senses to pick the right batch. You tasted one mango and you relied upon that one mango to tell you what the other mangoes from the same tree tasted like.
“No, no.” My mother shook her head at the man sitting in a dirty white dhoti and kurta. His skin was leathery around his mouth and there were deep crevices around his eyes. His face spoke volumes about his life, the hardships, the endless days under the relentless sun selling his wares, sometimes mangoes, sometimes something else, whatever was in season. He was chewing betel leaves, which he spat out at regular intervals in the area between his stall and the one next to him.
“Amma,” the man said with finality, as he licked his cracked lips with a tongue reddened by betel leaves. “Ten rupees a k-g, enh, take it or leave it.”
My mother shrugged. “I can get them for seven a kilo in Abids.”
The man smiled crookedly. “This is Monda Market, Amma. The price here is the lowest. And all these, enh”—he spread his hand over the coconut straw baskets that held hundreds of mangoes—“taste the same.”
That had to be a stretch, but I didn’t say anything, didn’t want to get embroiled in this particular discussion. I stood mute next to my mother, patiently waiting for the ordeal to be over. My light pink salwar kameez was dirty and I was sweating as if I had never been through an Indian summer before. But I had been through twenty Indian summers, and now seven years later, I was having trouble acclimating to my homeland.
I pushed damp sweaty hair off my forehead and tried to tuck it inside my short ponytail. I had cut my hair a few years ago and stuck to the shoulder length hairdo. My mother had been appalled when I sent her pictures and had bemoaned the loss of my waist-length black hair.
“You go to America and you want to look like those Christian girls. Why, what is wrong with our way? Doesn’t a girl look nice with long, oiled hair with flowers in it? Even when you were here, you didn’t want the nice mallipulu, fresh jasmine, I would string. Always wanted to look like those . . . Short hair and nonsense,” she complained on the phone before thrusting it in my father’s hands.
I would have preferred to wear a pair of shorts to ward off