received the email about my meeting Adarsh despite the server error and had just gone postal? Or maybe he had moved out of our home, changed his cell phone number and . . . didn’t pick up his work phone either? All sorts of unhealthy scenarios emerged in my head. To quell the feeling of misery that was welling inside me, I dialed Frances’s phone number from memory. I knew it would be really late in Memphis but if Nick had dumped me his mother would definitely know.
She was sleeping, but the minute she heard my voice she sounded wide awake.
“They’re forcing you to marry some Indian man and you want me to say good-bye to Nick for you,” she said as soon as she heard my “Hello, Frances.”
I laughed. “No.”
“Thank god, because my policy is that everyone does their own dirty work,” Frances said and I could hear her smile. “How’s it going, Priya?”
“I can’t find Nick,” I said, now feeling foolish for having woken her up. “I . . . thought he might be angry with me.”
“Angry? No, I don’t think so. I just spoke with him yesterday and he was fine. Was waiting for you to come back and get married to him,” Frances said. “And speaking of marriage, I found the perfect place for you both. It’s in midtown and it’s beautiful. The gardens are lovely. And I was thinking, if we did it in the fall, this fall, we could have great pictures of the foliage and—”
“Frances, I’m worried your son has dumped me. I don’t think I can even think about marriage,” I said, half hysterical.
“What’s one thing got to do with the other?” Frances demanded. “Find the right place to get married and I’ll make sure he shows up. He’s silly in love with you. Don’t you have faith?”
“Plenty,” I said. “Plenty back home. Here everything is murky and they made me go through this bride-seeing ceremony.”
“Like they do in the books? Was he a suitable boy?” Frances asked sounding excited. “Are you sure they made you go through it? Or did you want to?”
“Of course I didn’t want to and he isn’t suitable,” I said.
“Are you saying that a grown woman like you couldn’t stop something as simple as a bride-seeing ceremony?”
“I didn’t have the courage to tell them about Nick. Now I have and they all hate me,” I confessed.
“If this is all it takes to get them to hate you, you’re better off without them,” Frances said. “But they don’t hate you. They’re just mad and once they’re over their mad, they’ll be fine.”
“Really?”
“Well, I would be, if you were my daughter,” Frances said. “So . . . do I book this place for this fall or what? I was thinking early October. Not too hot, not too cold.”
“And then I can be knocked up by December?“ I asked sardonically.
“Would you?” Frances said. “That would be excellent. You could have a baby in September and . . . oh, that would be excellent. A September baby would—”
“Frances!”
“I’ll tell Nick that you wanted to get in touch with him,” Frances said, sounding very satisfied. “But don’t worry about him. He isn’t going anywhere.”
We chatted for a while; Frances wanted to know how everything in Hyderabad was, including the weather. She had this romantic idea about India, the way it was shown in books as an exotic land. When I told her about the slums and the dust that settled on your entire body, even your eyelids as soon as you got here, she thought it was quaint. India was not just a country you visited, it was a country that sank into your blood and stole a part of you.
As an insider all those years ago I couldn’t see it, but now after several years of exile I could feel the texture of India. It was the people, the smell, the taste, the noise, the essence that dragged you in and kept you. I hated this country for a lot of reasons, the narrow-mindedness, the bigotry, the treatment of women, but that was all on a larger scale, on a day-to-day basis. India still was my country.
I felt light-hearted, confident, and on top of the world after speaking with Frances. That changed when I got to Thatha’s house.
I stepped into the hall and the earth shifted. This was classic Ma, classic Indian mother.
Ma and Thatha were sitting across from Adarsh on the sofa Ammamma frequented most.
“Priya,” Ma stood up nervously. “Adarsh