Ma and I had purchased that morning, the mangoes Lata had been given from the ancestral orchard, the ones that belonged to Ammamma , and those that were Neelima’s, which had been bought under Ammamma ’s supervision the day before. It was easy to know whose mangoes Ammamma didn’t want her mangoes mixed up with.
“Are you saying my mangoes are bad?” Ma asked instantly, her eyes blazing, a knife held firmly in her hand. Warrior Pickle Woman was ready to defend her mangoes.
Ammamma leaned down and picked up a mango from “our” basket and sniffed. She dropped it instantly, her nose wrinkled. “Radha, you were never good at picking mangoes. You should have taken Lata with you.”
“I always pick good mangoes,” Ma said, and yanked a mango out of the basket. “Cut and give me a piece,” she ordered Neelima, who put the mango on the wooden cutting board and hammered the knife through it. The knife cut the mango, stone and all. She cut out a smaller piece with a paring knife and gave it to Ma.
“Taste,” she instructed my grandmother, who moved her head away.
“I don’t have to taste; I know that they are not very good by the smell. Priya, you have to use your senses . . . your sense of smell to buy mangoes. I will teach you; if you learn from your mother, you will pick mangoes like these,” Ammamma said, looking at the mangoes Ma had just purchased with distaste.
“Maybe if you had given me some mangoes instead of giving them all to Lata, I wouldn’t have made this big mistake,” Ma said sarcastically.
“The harvest was not very good, there were only a few mangoes,” Ammamma protested. “We had to take some and the rest we gave to Lata.”
“Why give the rest to her? I am your flesh and blood, ” Ma said sourly. “Maybe I should just take Priya home and—”
“Ma,” I interrupted calmly before my mother could finish threatening my grandmother into submission. “Ammamma, why don’t you taste the mango and see? I helped Ma pick them out, you know,” I said, putting on my best granddaughter face.
My being the oldest and most doted on grandchild and the fact that I was there for only another week and a half propelled my grandmother to do as I asked.
Ammamma swallowed the piece of mango and smacked her lips. “They will do,” she said and my mother raised an eyebrow. “They are not bad,” my grandmother added grudgingly. “Now let us cut these mangoes before lunch,” she ordered.
TO: PRIYA RAO
FROM: NICHOLAS COLLINS
SUBJECT: RE: RE: GOOD TRIP?
AT 11:05 PM, FRIDAY, PRIYA RAO WROTE:
>AT LEAST THEY HAVEN’T THROWN ANY “SUITABLE BOYS”
MY WAY . . . YET.
I HAVE NO IDEA WHY YOU CONTINUE TO CALL THEM “BOYS” WHEN THEY’RE ACTUALLY GROWN, ADULT, READY-TO-MARRY MEN. VERY PERPLEXING, I MUST SAY.
I’M GLAD YOUR PARENTS ARE NOT THROWING ELIGIBLE MEN YOUR WAY. I HAVE TO ADMIT A PART OF ME IS/WAS AFRAID THAT YOUR FAMILY WILL/WOULD CONVINCE YOU TO MARRY A NICE INDIAN BOY. RATIONALLY, I KNOW YOU’RE COMING HOME TO ME BUT THERE IS THIS IRRATIONAL PART OF MY BRAIN THAT’S CONVINCED YOUR FAMILY CAN MANIPULATE YOU.
I MISS YOU. THIS TRIP FEELS LONGER THAN YOUR NORMAL BUSINESS TRIPS. USUALLY, YOU’RE GONE TWO-THREE DAYS OR MAXIMUM A WEEK AND IT’S IN THE U.S. THIS FEELS DIFFERENT. I FEEL THAT I CAN’T REACH YOU.
NICK
Chopping Mangoes and Egos
Cutting mangoes for making pickle is a skill that is honed over years of practice, under the critical eye of one’s mother or mother-in-law, aunt, or some other anal older female relative. In the olden days when joint families were the norm and women didn’t work out of the home, wives and daughters were trained in cutting mangoes as they were in everything else that pertained to keeping order in the household.
There is a certain precision to cutting pickle mangoes, a certain methodology, and I was sorely lacking in both.
A sharp and rather heavy knife is used to cut mangoes so that the blade easily sinks into and then past the mango stone. Since the knife is sharp and heavy it’s not prudent to hold the mango in place with one hand—unless you are an expert—and slam the sharp object with the other; a small miscalculation and you may be missing a few fingers.
With this in mind, I stationed the mango on the wooden cutting board, a board on which generations of my mother’s family had chopped mangoes in the pickle season,