hugged him tightly then. He was taller than me now, I realized as he stroked my hair.
“Hey,” he said, and pushed me away after a moment, “I’m a man, this hugging thing is for sissies.”
“Ah,” I said and tweaked his nose with my fingers.
Nate left his sneakers outside the back door before coming inside the house. We turned the light on in the kitchen and Nate flopped down onto the floor.
“What’re you doing back?” I asked, as I picked out a plate from the cabinet for him.
“Got bored,” he said, and then shrugged. “I wanted to be here for the bloodshed. Or has the fat lady already sung?”
“What fat lady?” I demanded, and filled a glass with water from the earthen pot next to the stove. “ Pappu with rice work for you?”
“What kind of pappu?”
“Mango?”
“Sure. Sowmya makes this spinach pappu that’s painful to swallow,” Nate said. “You think you can heat the rice a little? Fridge-cold rice makes my hair in all the strange places stand up.”
I pulled out some rice and pappu for Nate from the fridge. I mixed them both with my fingers and put the mixture in a frying pan to heat.
“This house so needs a microwave,” I said.
“The American-returned daughter brings in some fancy ideas,” Nate said with affected mockery. “So . . . when’re you going to tell them?”
“I’m not,” I said, not looking at him. “They set up a pelli-chupulu for me.”
“Rice Sarma’s Venkatesh type.”
“You know?”
“Not really. It isn’t like Ma discloses all to me. But in all fairness, the boy—ah, man—is very handsome, has a good, stable job. Don’t know about the smoking and drinking part, though his mother claims he is a gudu-baye,” Nate said.
“A good boy, my ass,” I muttered. “Remember the gudu boy from Chicago?”
“Oh, the Cheee-cah-go baye, you mean?” Nate imitated Ma. “He was a prize, Priya.”
“He was also screwing another woman.”
“Details, details.”
I put the now warmed rice and pappu on a plate and placed it in front of Nate along with a glass of water. I sat in front of him on the floor and drank some water from his glass.
“There is also some HAPPINESS in the fridge,” I told him. “I asked Sowmya to save it from the mango she cut for dinner.”
“And you don’t want to fight over it?” Nate asked suspiciously.
I shook my head. I didn’t even want to fight over HAPPINESS. This was an all-time low.
“What, not feeling well?” Nate put a hand against my forehead as if checking my temperature.
“I lied to Nick,” I confessed. “I told Nick that I wasn’t going to go through with the chupulu and that I was going to tell everyone about him.”
“Nick is the man’s name. Do we have a photo?”
“Photo? I have bigger problems, Nate.”
“So tell him the truth and don’t go through the chupulu ,” Nate said as he chewed on his food. “Then tell them all about Nick. And I’d still like to see my future brother-in-law, if not in the flesh, at least in Kodak color.”
“I’ll send you a picture later.” I said. “And what does it matter how he looks? Lord, Nate, this stress is going to give me a coronary.”
“You’re not going to have a—”
“Nate?” Nanna’s voice filtered into the kitchen.
“Hey, Nanna,” Nate called out and winked at me. “At least she didn’t wake up,” he added on a whisper.
“Nate is here?” Ma’s voice chimed in on cue.
“Well . . . can’t have it all, can we?” Nate sighed as my mother’s shrill voice came in through the hall, she was saying, just as Nate had predicted, “Oh, my son is home.”
Part Four
Old Pickle, New Pickle
Rava Ladoo
1 cup semolina (rava/sooji)
1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons ghee
1 cup milk
1 tablespoon cashew nuts
1 tablespoon raisins
Fry the semolina in a saucepan on low heat till it turns slightly brown in color. Then add sugar, ghee, milk, and fry till the mixture becomes sticky. Chop the nuts and add them, along with the raisins, to the mixture. Remove the pan from the heat and form the dough into small balls. Serve when dry.
Aloo Bajji
1 cup chickpea flour (besan)
water
salt to taste
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 cup peanut oil
4-5 large potatoes, sliced
Mix the besan, water, salt, and chili powder until the consistency is runny. Heat the oil in a deep frying pan. Dip thinly sliced potatoes in the chickpea flour mixture and fry in peanut oil until golden brown.
The Similarity Between Cattle and Women
Sowmya added the rava for the ladoos to the hot frying pan in which the ghee