The Mango Season - By Amulya Malladi Page 0,47
me. “You want me to take on my big bad father?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Really?”
“Yes, ”I repeated.
“So when are you going to tell him about your boyfriend?” Anand asked.
“What?” I asked aghast. Sowmya would never tell anyone about Nick. Would she? How could Anand know?
“Oh, you’re telling me you are against arranged marriage as an institution because you like being single and alone?” Anand demanded. “It is easy enough to guess. So who is the boyfriend?”
I felt the bile rise up to coat my throat with fear. Was I wearing a neon sign that said I HAVE A BOYFRIEND IN AMERICA?
“Come on, Priya,” Anand said. “I know these things. I am not stupid.”
“This isn’t about me,” I muttered. “This is about Neelima.”
“You don’t have the guts, do you?” Anand smirked. “So you shouldn’t—”
“If they were ill-treating my boyfriend, you bet I’d take issue,” I charged at him.
“So there is a boyfriend,” he grinned, and lit another cigarette. “Tell, tell.”
I sighed. “You’re not going to like this.”
“Hey, I married Neelima.”
“At least she is Indian.”
The cigarette in Anand’s hand dropped. “No . . . you don’t have an American boyfriend.”
I nodded.
“Oh Rama, Rama . . .”
“I know.”
“What will you do?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I have to back out of this stupid pelli-chupulu first.”
“You can’t, not now,” Anand said, sounding worried. “Not without telling them about Mr. America.”
“Forget about me; are you going to do something about how everyone is treating Neelima before she divorces you?”
Anand picked up the cigarette he had dropped and put it in his mouth. “I will see what I can do.”
“As soon as Neelima said she was pregnant Lata talked about miscarriages in the first trimester and—”
“That bitch, how dare she?” Anand burst out and the cigarette he was holding fell on the cement floor yet again. “I don’t know how Jayant can stand her. And now they are pregnant again. Wants to give Nanna a pure-blooded Brahmin heir.”
“What will you do?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Anand said.
When we came back downstairs, my father was in a heated discussion with Jayant about nonresident Indians, NRIs. Jayant sincerely believed that those who left India were betraying their motherland and my father was convinced that those who stayed were missing out on opportunities to grow and develop.
“The world is everyone’s oyster,” Nanna was saying. “We should think of ourselves as citizens of the world not just as Indian or Korean or Malaysian.”
They were sitting at the dining table sipping tea as Sowmya bustled around them setting the table for dinner.
“Ah, Priya,” Jayant said and extended both his hands to hold both of mine in a warm clasp. “You have grown up. And getting all set to be married I hear. This Sarma boy seems to be very ideal. What do you say?”
Anand cleared his throat while Sowmya glared at me. I smiled uneasily. Jayant patted my hands as if he could feel my tension.
“She is angry with us for setting this up,” Nanna said, obviously enjoying the position I was in.
“Angry, nothing,” Ma said, as she came into the dining area from the kitchen carrying a big steel pot with hot rasam in it. “They will be here tomorrow and once she sees the boy . . . ah, she will thank us. He is earning hundred thousand dollars a year, fifty lakh rupees.”
“Money isn’t everything, you know, Ma,” I said sitting down beside Jayant. “And I haven’t said yes to being here tomorrow for this . . . humiliating experience you want me to go through.”
“Humiliating?” Nanna asked, his voice thick with emotion. “What, Priya Ma, you are talking like we are demons torturing you. We love you; we are doing this because we love you.”
“Don’t break our hearts now, Priya,” Ma said suddenly serious. “We have waited this long. You said you were not ready and we waited for all these years. What more do you want from us?”
If they had yelled at me, scolded and admonished, coerced and coaxed, I would’ve known how to deal with it. This quiet remonstration was alien, their behavior strange, and because of it all the fight left my voice.
“It isn’t like that, Ma, Nanna,” I said softly. “I just don’t think that getting married like this is . . . It isn’t dignified . . . no, no . . . it just isn’t for me.”
“Everyone else is doing it,” Ma said in a low voice. “You think Sowmya and Jayant are not dignified?”
That was hardly fair. How could I answer