stove and fire it up. She poured oil into the wok and looked at me expectantly.
“I don’t remember,” was the best I could do on short notice. Sowmya gave me a “sell me another bridge” look and I grinned, embarrassed. “I . . . it was fine.”
“Was it with this American?” she asked.
“Yes.” Good Lord, this was not a conversation I was prepared to have.
Sowmya threw some mustard seeds in the wok, and they spluttered in the oil. Some sprang out and landed on the stove and counter. She stirred the mustard seeds for a few moments and then dropped some curry leaves with black and yellow gram dal into the wok and let them sizzle for a while. Then she broke two dry red peppers and plopped them into the oil with crackling fanfare.
“Oh, give me those pachi marapakayalu.” She pointed to the green chilies by the sink, which I was leaning against.
She put green chilies inside the wok as well and sighed, spatula in hand. “I always wondered about it. And now it will actually happen. I am scared and excited.”
I had never seen this side of Sowmya before. This was a dreamy Sowmya, not the practical mouse I had grown up with.
She piled a deep-bowled steel ladle with yogurt and thumped the handle of the ladle on the side of the wok to drop a dollop of yogurt in it. She dropped another dollop of yogurt alongside the first and stirred hard, forcing the thick yogurt to liquefy and mix with the spices already sizzling in the oil.
“I always liked curd rice,” I said, as the familiar smell of burning yogurt filled the kitchen.
“This is the best thing to cook for breakfast,” Sowmya responded. “Fast and easy and I can use all leftovers. Pass me that rice, will you?” She added the rice left over from dinner the previous night to the wok and started to stir hard again, mixing everything into a Telugu breakfast staple.
“Do you think he will say no because I am being so bold?” Sowmya asked, almost as if she were wondering aloud.
“If he does, to hell with him,” I said.
She nodded, smiled, and turned the gas off.
Breakfast was ready.
Everyone in Ma’s family drank filter coffee in the morning. Instant coffee was okay for any other time of day but for mornings it had to be filter coffee. The coffee was made in a steel filter where hot water was poured onto rich ground coffee and filtered to make a thick decoction. The decoction was then mixed with frothy, bubbling hot milk and sugar. I remembered waking up every morning to the smell of decoction. I never got hooked on coffee but I always drank it when I was at Thatha’s house. No matter what Ma said about all filter coffee being the same—“You mix coffee decoction with milk, what skill do you need for that?”—Sowmya’s coffee was way better and she didn’t complain when I added five spoons of sugar to my coffee tumbler either.
Sowmya poured coffee in steel tumblers and put the tumblers in small steel bowls.
“Priya, I have a personal question,” Sowmya asked. She topped the glasses off with the coffee left in the steel utensil after she had filled up all the glasses.
Asking me if I’d had sex was not personal enough anymore? “Sure,” I said.
“Does it hurt a lot the first time?”
I shrugged. “Depends upon the . . . Sowmya, I can’t talk to you about this.”
“Then who should I talk to about all this?” she demanded. “Maybe your Ammamma would like to fill me in regarding the ins and outs of marital life. What do you think?”
I sighed. “It hurts, but it gets better.”
“Really?” she brightened. “How much better?”
“A lot better,” I said unable to keep a straight face any longer.
“But it depends upon the husband, right?”
“Yes.”
Sowmya nodded. “But I can’t test that.”
“Not in India, you can’t.”
Sowmya sipped some coffee from a glass and nodded again. “That is okay. It is going to be okay. Right, Priya?”
“Right,” I said, though I wasn’t sure what she was talking about being okay.
Minerva hadn’t changed, even a bit. It even smelled the same way it had seven years ago. My mouth watered at the sight of long crisp dosas and sizzling vadas. It was hard to get good south Indian food in America. The chicken curries and tandoori places were in abundance but the all-out vegetarian, south Indian food was almost impossible to find.
“I’m going to get a masala dosa,”