The Hindi-Bindi Club (20 page)

I straighten my spine and speak with calm and conviction. “Don’t play with fire, Preity. Past is past. You both doused your old flames and moved on. For heaven’s sake,
let this go
.”

T
hat night in bed, I say to my husband, “Your daughteris the most stubborn, willful—”

“Yes, I know,” Sandeep says. “She takes after her mother.”

“You have no idea.” I turn out the bedside lamp, punch my pillows a few times, and flop onto my side. Behind me, Sandeep chuckles. He’s only amused because he doesn’t know what I know. If he did, he’d take out a contract.

He hooks an arm around my waist, hauls me against him, kisses my shoulder. “We can’t protect her from the world.”

“It’s our duty to try,” I say, though at the moment, the world at large doesn’t concern me, just one Arsallan Khan.

I
n my red silk nightgown, I stretch my arms to my sides, turning in a circle.

“Beautiful,” he says. “As always.”

Is there a woman in all the world who is immune to this compliment, especially from the lips of a man she loves? If there is, I haven’t met her.

An hour later, I slip out of bed, retrieve the nightgown from the floor, and tiptoe toward the bathroom to dress.

“Sonu…” An arm reaches out.

Sonu
is an endearment, like sweetie. It’s also a nickname for Sonia, my name before marriage. In traditional Hindu custom, the groom gives the bride an entirely new married name: first, middle, and last. His first name becomes her middle name, and the middle name of their future children, male and female. My father was Gurpreet Malhotra. At birth, I was: Sonia Gurpreet Malhotra. After marriage: Saroj Sandeep Chawla.

“Sonu,” he whines again. “Don’t leave. Come back.”

“Sorry, Deepu, I have to go.”

“Not yet,” he protests, throwing back the covers from my side of the bed and patting my vacated spot.

“I can’t. You know we have a houseful of guests….”

A groan. A whimper. A sigh.

Pitiful. I laugh as I dress. “Men are such big babies.”

“Only with the women they love. Can I help it if I love you? If I can’t get enough of you? If no amount of time is ever—”

“And I love you, darling, so I will make it up to you.”

“Soon?”

“Soon.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“Okay.” He climbs out of bed, gathers me close, and frames my face between his hands. His kisses are soft, sweet, coaxing, each brush of his lips punctuated with “I love you.”

I melt. I let him take off my clothes and lead me back to bed. Every time we’re together, every time we touch, I’m awed. Humbled. “All this time,” I whispered, spent, after our first time. “I didn’t know what I was missing.”

“I did,” Deepak said.

That’s right,
Deepak
. As in, Deepak Sharma, my first love. He is the one in my arms. Ten years ago, our lives intersected again. We meet at a condo at the Rotunda, an upscale complex near Tyson’s Galleria. The owner, a bachelor friend of Deepak’s, travels extensively. In Hindi, we have a saying:
Teri bhi chup; meri bhi chup.
You be quiet; I’ll be quiet.

Affairs destroy many marriages; others, they save. Deepak will never leave his wife, and I’ll never leave my husband; nor will we leave each other. Because of our affair, our marriages work. Endure. Flourish. I don’t fault my husband for what he can’t provide. I’m perfectly happy, content with what he can. No bitterness or resentment. Only appreciation and affection.

I love two men. Differently but equally. It’s a fate I wouldn’t choose for my daughter. A fate I pray doesn’t await her. I can’t help but worry. What if Arsallan is her Deepak?

The consequences for Preity would be disastrous. Rock the foundations of everything she believes in. Shatter her self-image. Her marriage wouldn’t survive. I don’t know that
she
would. Unlike me, the guilt would kill her.

Sometimes, in Preity, I see the girl I was, the woman I might have been, believing in a world without boundaries and barriers, believing in one planet, one people.

If only I could believe again….

Meenal & Uma,

I have a favor to ask. I would like to find my childhood friend. We were separated after Partition. Do you or your husbands know any Pakistanis in the area? As a starting point, I would like to talk to any local Lahoris(who would be willing to talk to me).

Saroj

Yash knows some Pakistani doctors. He will inquire. It’s not such a big world these days. You will find your friend.

Meenal

P.S. Kiran thanks you again for the samosas!

Dearest Saroj,

The “Pakistani Student Associations” will surely have Lahoris. If you’re able, do an Internet search to find out which of the local universities have PSA websites and email the presidents. If you’d like, I can do this for you tomorrow.

Warmest wishes,
Uma

Thank you both so much!!!

In other news, Preity wants to learn to read/write Punjabi so she can read Punjabi children’s books to Lina, Jack, & Eric (!). She says their Punjabi should be at least as good as Patrick Uncle’s Bengali!:) I’m so tickled…There’s SO MUCH wonderful Punju lit/poetry I would LOVE Preity to experience, but I will wait until the right time to bring that up. It’s always better if these things are HER idea.;)

Saroj

Saroj, good for Preity! How wonderful that SHE initiated this! It’s such a delicate balance between exposing the American-born generation(s) to Indian culture vs. forcing it on them. We want them to appreciate, not resent; to feel enriched, not alienated by their heritage.

Preity ’s thirst for knowledge is commendable and, I must admit, enviable. I’m lucky Vivek and Kiran still understand Marathi. When they speak it, it’s a rare treat. They still sound 4 yrs old, the age when they started school and their Marathi skills froze in time.:) It’s very cute to hear baby talk from the mouths of my physician daughter and management consultant son.:)

I make a conscious effort to speak to them in Marathi, so they won’t forget what little they know. If I don’t, who will?

I’m happy to bring back Punjabi books from India. Bulleh Shah’s poetry? Anyone else? I’d love to read some Sufi poetry myself. The world could use some Sufi saints’ wisdom these days. As Uma says: “Where have all the Sufis gone?”

Uma, are you still in San Francisco?

Meenal

Saroj’s Sarson da Saag (Spinach and Mustard Greens)

SERVES 4

1 bunch/bag spinach

2 green chili peppers, minced

1 bunch mustard greens

½ teaspoon amchur (mango powder) or lemon juice

1 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons canola oil, divided

1 pinch asafetida (hing)*

1 cup water

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 small yellow onion, diced

1-inch piece of fresh ginger root, peeled and minced

garam masala

1 tablespoon cornmeal

1. In a colander, wash spinach and mustard greens under cold water. Repeat with cold salt water. Drain and chop finely.

2. In a pressure cooker, heat 1 tablespoon oil. Add spinach and mustard greens. Stirring constantly, mix in garlic, ginger, chili peppers, amchur, and asafetida.

3. Pressure cook for 5–10 minutes. Mash with water.

4. In a wok or large skillet, heat remaining 1 tablespoon oil over medium-high heat. Add onion. Stir-fry until light brown.

5. Stir in spinach and mustard greens. Reduce heat to medium. Sauté 2 minutes.

6. Stir in garam masala. Sauté 1 minute.

7. Stir in cornmeal. Cover and simmer until done, about 2–5 minutes.

8. Eat with
makki di roti
or corn bread and fresh butter.

*
Mom’s Tips:

Asafetida will stink up your spice cabinet. Refrigerate in an airtight plastic bag.

Uma Basu McGuinness: Your Fate or Mine?

T
he day before we leave for San Francisco, my husband stacks hundreds of gift bags and boxes for our haul to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. “You and the elves have been busy, Mrs. Claus,” he says, kissing me under the mistletoe.

Our library resembles Santa’s workshop not only during the holidays but all year long. Just as my mother and her friends packed medicines every week for Mother Teresa’s lepers, so my friends and I work on our humanitarian projects. Every week, we put together care packages for the world’s children in need and our soldiers in harm’s way, two causes near and dear to my heart.

It was during the Vietnam War that Patrick and I fell in love, through letters. Before he left for his tour of duty, I was still getting used to the social mixing of men and women in America. I was shy and reserved around him, as I was with most men. I didn’t speak unless spoken to, I never said their names, and I averted my gaze, looking down when they were present.

Our letters changed everything.

In the Bengali community, we have something called
adda
—friendly, casual conversation about every topic under the sun. For my college girlfriends and me,
addas
went beyond social gossip and family politics to include world events, economics, philosophy, psychology, sociology, science, religion, sports, weather, history, the arts. You name it. We hung out at the Coffee House of Calcutta, pontificated about life, and solved the world’s problems over cups of Assam and Darjeeling tea and snacks like
chanachur, kachuri, muri, nimki,
and
shingara
. How I missed the camaraderie and intellectual stimulation, the mind-dump of
addas
. How grateful I was when Patrick’s and my pen-friendship filled that void.

Have you noticed how the written word can be deeper, more intimate, more honest than verbal, face-to-face conversation? Maybe it’s because you sit alone and have time to reflect and revise and get the words right. The written word can take you beyond the superficial, beyond the façades, and allow glimpses into people’s inner worlds.

With time, familiarity, and trust, social barriers fell away. Patrick and I found ourselves opening up, rambling on, giving and taking comfort. We didn’t wait to receive each other’s letters before responding. We just wrote and kept writing regularly, so a steady stream of mail came and went.

Those were dark days for both my homelands. When I wasn’t worrying about Vietnam, I worried about India, and vice versa. The Indian subcontinent experienced much tragedy in the 1960s. China invaded an unprepared India in 1962. India and Pakistan went to war for the second time in 1965 over Kashmir. The 1970 cyclone—imagine a nightlong tsunami—killed millions in East Bengal, which was then East Pakistan. The Pakistani civil war soon followed, claiming even more lives in already devastated East Bengal. With India’s assistance, East Pakistan seceded from West Pakistan and won independence as Bangladesh in 1971.

As desperate as I was to talk about these events—of major consequence in India, but minor in America—Patrick needed to talk about Vietnam to someone who wasn’t directly involved. He was more open with me than his family because he didn’t want to worry them more than they already were. Since the day he left, his mother went to church twice a day and kept a candle burning for him. Any mention of him brought tears to her eyes.

There are three wars,
Patrick wrote in one letter.
The political war, the war on the ground, and the war inside every human being.
When he confided in me, sharing his fears and the abject horrors of witnessing the cruelties man can inflict on man, I wrote to him about Lord Krishna’s counsel to Arjuna on the battlefield in the
Gita
. The
Bhagavad Gita
—Song of the Lord—is the gem of Hindu spiritual wisdom, an ancient Sanskrit epic poem comparable to Homer’s
Iliad,
with the interaction of gods and mortals in which Arjuna, an esteemed warrior like Achilles, questions the virtue of war.

In our letters, we ruminated over the existence of God, the failures of man, the meaning of life and death, the codes by which we lived, and the unique role each of us is destined to fulfill. I confided to him my family’s deep, dark secrets, my unfavorable birth chart, my father’s dwindling wealth with so many daughters and nieces to marry off, all of whom, for one reason or another, necessitated a sizeable dowry in order to secure a good match.

In my case, even a hefty dowry wouldn’t have guaranteed any takers. In Vedic astrological terms, I am what we call a “strong
manglik
.” Sparing you the scientific techno-babble, suffice it to say: It’s very bad for one’s marriage prospects. One look at my birth chart—and they usually consult birth charts—and it was difficult to find an Indian family who would consider me as a prospective bride for their son, as
mangliks
are believed to jeopardize the health of their spouses. Even bring an early death.

My great-aunt, widowed at fourteen, was a
manglik
. Three months after marriage, her husband was hit by a double-decker bus. He died instantly at the age of twenty-one. As custom dictated, she never again wore jewelry, or a tip
(bindi)
on her forehead, or
sindoor
in the part of her hair—all symbols of a married woman. Nor did she remarry, as widow remarriage was—still is, but to a much lesser extent—considered shameful in traditional Hindu culture.

One may argue correlation doesn’t mean causality in such cases of
manglik
widows. But not many parents are willing to stake their son’s life on it.

This was the underlying reason why
Thakurda
—my paternal grandfather—encouraged my education, first at the elite Loreto House, where the nuns stoked the embers of my English proficiency, then at Presidency College, where I earned a bachelor’s degree in English literature, and most controversially, abroad for further studies.

“No,”
Baba
said, and ripped my admission letter from Boston College in half, twice. As far as he was concerned, that was the end of it. The full scholarship and generous-by-Indian-standards teaching stipend didn’t sway his opinion. At the time, most upper-middle-class girls attended college only for time-pass before marriage and/or to enhance their appeal on the bridal market. Increasingly, good families were seeking college-educated brides for their sons, though as wives, most were prohibited from earning wages.

But the combination of unlucky factors led everyone in my family, including me, to suspect that my fate was sealed as a spinster, a social pariah. Knowing this likelihood,
Thakurda
couldn’t deny my fervent wish for higher studies abroad and a career as a professor upon my return when chances were I might not have a husband and children. “One who doesn’t go forth and explore all the earth is a well frog,”
Thakurda
said, a Sanskrit proverb. “My granddaughter may end up a spinster, but she will
not
be a well frog.” With that,
Baba
’s lower court ruling was overturned by the supreme court of
Thakurda
.

When I told all this to Patrick, he said no, my destiny was
not
that of a well frog. Nor a spinster. Because if he made it out of that hellhole alive, he wanted to marry me, and together, we would explore all of the earth.

Gulp.

With each letter I received, I sobbed with relief that he was alive, and I felt my heart being torn because I didn’t know what I would do if he didn’t make it. Or what I’d do if he did.

“Cross that bridge when you come to it,” advised Colleen, his sister and my American best friend.

When the time finally came, when at long last Patrick came home, I flew right over that bridge and into his awaiting arms.

“You’re the reason I’m alive,” he said, on one knee on his parents’ porch, with his family peeking out the windows. “You kept me going. You gave me hope. You saved my life. I came back for you, Uma. If that isn’t fate, I don’t know what is. Marry me. Please. Be my wife.”

I couldn’t say no. After all we’d been through together…I didn’t
want
to say no.

There’s a Bengali expression:
Tumi bina ke achhe amar?
Who is there for me without you?

“I have to see your horoscope,” I said.

Patrick agreed, not so much because
he
believed, but out of respect for
my
beliefs—one of the many, many reasons I love and admire this man—and we covertly arranged for his chart, which is prepared by taking the date, time, and place of birth and mapping the planets’ positions.

When we met with the astrologer in New York City, my heart hitched into my throat.

You remember what I told you about me being a
manglik
? Well, there is a catch. If one spouse is a
manglik,
it’s bad news. However, it’s neutralized if
both
spouses are
mangliks
. According to every astrologer my family consulted, their best chance at marrying me off was to hope for another
manglik
.

Patrick, as it turns out, is a
manglik,
too.

“If that isn’t fate,” I said, “I don’t know what is.”

I
n San Francisco, my husband and I sit across from our daughter and son-in-law in the living room of their posh two-bedroom condo. A wilting sunflower, Rani sags against Bryan, drooping her head on his shoulder. “Do we have to go to the Chawlas’ New Year’s Eve party?” she asks, causing Patrick and myself to exchange glances.

“Well, that answers that question,” Patrick says. “Yes, you
can
still land a plane on Boo’s lower lip.” Boo, short for Boo-Boo, is our nickname for Rani. From the time she was an infant, her pout wrapped us around her little finger. Patrick called it her “boo-boo face.”

Bryan glances down at her. “What’s wrong, hon? You love New Year’s at the Chawlas’.”

Rani shrugs. “I just thought maybe we could do something different this year.”

“Like what?” I ask.

“Stay home. Order takeout. Rent movies. You know, Q.T. with the fami-ly.”

“Umm-hmm…” I stare at her, waiting.

“I’m socialized out,” she says, “after the exhibit and all.”

“Umm-hmm…”

She plucks imaginary lint from Bryan’s sweater. “The last thing I need is two dozen aunties pestering me about children.”

Aha. The truth comes out. I can’t suppress a tiny chuckle.

Rani frowns. “You could
pretend
to be sympathetic, Mom.”

“Sorry,
shonu,
but you think your aunties’ pestering is bad here. You have no idea how bad it would be in India, where it’s inconceivable a couple would
choose
not to have children.”

“I know. I know,” she says. “But I’m tired of having to explain and defend my reproductive choices. It’s not just the aunties. Everyone asks these days. You start pushing thirty, and perfect strangers feel it’s their right to inquire. And to offer unsolicited advice.”

“It’s your call,” I say. “If you don’t want to go to the party, you don’t have to.”

“Thank—”

“But Dad and I are going.”

“Oh. Well. Of course…”

“The food alone,” I say. “No way can we miss out on that.”

Over her head, Bryan winks. “You realize denying me Saroj Auntie’s buffet is cruel and unusual punishment, don’t you?”

I love my son-in-law. Patrick and I couldn’t have chosen a better husband for Rani if we handpicked him and arranged their marriage ourselves.

“Hey, Bryan can go with Mom, and I’ll stay home with Boo,” Patrick says.

I shake my head. “I don’t think so.”

“Yeah, nice try, Dad, but
you’re
going,” Rani says. “
And
you’re going to dance with Mom.”

He makes a face. “You want to talk cruel and unusual…” Patrick doesn’t have many shortcomings; this is one of them. He hates to dance—a staple of Chawla parties, along with excellent cuisine. He and Meenal typically sit on the sidelines and watch. “I’m not going if you’re not going.” Patrick laces his fingers behind his neck, his elbows wide, and stares up at the ceiling.

Rani laughs and rolls her eyes. “What is this, a pouting contest?”

Patrick sticks out his lower lip in imitation; Bryan and I follow suit.

Rani gasps in mock outrage. “Gang up on me, why don’t you? Okay, fine. I move, we
all
go to the party. Happy now?” At our resounding noises and gestures of affirmation, she pretends to scribble on her palm, then holds it out. “The secretary notes three
yes
votes from the colluding trio. One abstention. The motion passes. Chawlas’, here we come.”

T
he following afternoon, we go to the art gallery where Rani’s work hangs on exhibit. Patrick and I wanted so badly to attend the opening, but now we get our own V.I.P. private tour. And what a tour it is.

“Boo, this is incredible.” Patrick’s deep voice vibrates with a father’s pride.

I, too, feel my heart swell. “You have a gift, sweetie. Saraswati definitely blessed you.” I refer to the goddess of knowledge and the fine arts, gesturing around us in awe. “
This
from the girl who was scolded for drawing on the walls at home and constantly doodling during class.” Rani’s teachers thought she wasn’t paying attention, but every time they called on her, she shocked them by answering the question correctly. I smile, half musing to myself, “Isn’t it funny to look back and see how the signs of our personalities are there, right from the start? With Rani, the writing was literally
all over
the walls.”

“You really like it?” Rani asks, and it pleases me that our opinion still means something to her, that she still asks for it. Even if she ignores our advice as often as she follows it.