The Hindi-Bindi Club (14 page)

3 tablespoons paanch phoron (Bengali five-spice—recipe follows)*

¼ cup water

4 salmon fillets (6-ounce pieces)

2 dried red chilies (adjust to taste)

2 tablespoons mustard oil

banana leaves (optional)

¾ teaspoon salt (adjust to taste)

1. In a blender or food processor, purée to a smooth paste paanch phoron, red chilies, salt, and water.

2. Brush both sides of fillets with oil, then rub both sides with the paste.

3. Place fillets in a glass bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, but no more than 24 hours.

4. Spray grill rack with nonstick cooking spray. Heat to high. Place fillets 5–6 inches from heat. Sear each side until lightly browned, about 1–2 minutes.

5. Remove from grill and wrap each fillet in a banana leaf (or aluminum foil). Secure leaf with string or toothpicks and return to grill, seam side up.

6. Grill each side 5–7 minutes, until fish flakes easily with a fork. (Caution: Don’t overcook!)

7. Serve with rice.

Paanch Phoron (Bengali Five-Spice)

MAKES ¼ CUP

1 tablespoon cumin seeds

1 tablespoon fenugreek seeds

1 tablespoon brown mustard seeds*

1 tablespoon nigella seeds*

1 tablespoon fennel seeds

1. In a small, airtight plastic bag, combine all ingredients.

2. Seal and shake.

3. Use immediately or store in airtight container. Keeps up to 6 months at room temperature, 1 year refrigerated.

* Mom’s Tips:

Brown mustard seeds are sometimes called Chinese mustard.

Caution: Nigella is erroneously called/confused with black cumin, royal cumin, onion seeds, or caraway.

For store-bought paanch phoron, I like the “Maya” brand.

Meenal Deshpande: Monsoon Memories

B
efore Yash leaves to go back to the apartment, he says, “It’s like waiting for the monsoon. Will it come today? Or tomorrow? Or the next day?”

He’s right. The thought of breaking the news to Kiran
has
felt like waiting for the monsoon. Waiting and wondering. Will the rains cleanse and nourish life? Or will they overwhelm and destroy?

She’s home now; it must be done.

K
iran brushes her teeth in front of the bathroom mirror. “Everyone wonders why I don’t come home.
This
is why.” She spits into the sink, rinses her mouth, and grabs a hand towel. “I don’t need this grief.”

I stand in the doorway, a folded newspaper in my hands. “No, you don’t. I’m sorry.”

She drags her hairbrush through her hair. “Why are you apologizing? You didn’t do anything. You never do,” she says, then winces, whether at her words or her tangles, I’m not sure.

I wait until she finishes, then pick up her hairbrush and pluck a few long strands of her hair with nostalgia. “I don’t want to fight, Kiran.”

“Neither do I.”

“Life’s too short.”

“Yeah, it is.”

I meet her gaze in the mirror. “What made you think of an arranged marriage?”

“Desperation,” she says. “My biological clock’s ticking. I’m ready to have a family, and there’s no groom on the horizon. I don’t know when, or even if…”

I nod and put down the hairbrush. “I want to show you something.” I gesture for her to follow me and head for the door, but when I turn, she hasn’t moved.

“Mom?” she asks, a waver in her voice. “Do
you
think I’ve messed up my life?” With her sweatpants and Redskins sweatshirt, hair in a ponytail, and fresh-scrubbed face, she could pass for a teenager. But she isn’t, hasn’t been for years.

You build your life around your children, then one day, they grow up on you. They don’t need you anymore and make no bones about telling you so. That’s life in America.

Now here she is, my grown-up and independent daughter, for the first time in God-only-knows-how-long, needing her parents. Needing
me
.

Making me want to move mountains for her.

“Complicated,” I say. “Not messed up. Not at all. And your second-marriage prospects are challenging, not hopeless.
Definitely
not hopeless.”

Kiran’s smile is shaky—relief tinged with regret. “I never should have married Anthony. It was the biggest mistake of my life. I know it. You know it. Everyone knows it. You were right. I was wrong. Go ahead and say, ‘I told you so.’”

I snap my tongue and suck a sharp breath between my teeth. “We didn’t want to be right, Kiran. We just wanted the best for you. We still do. Forgive us if we…if we…” I struggle for the right words. “Forgive us for not being the parents you want us to be.”

Her eyes water, but she blinks back her tears. Even as a girl, she hated to let anyone see her cry.
Let anyone see her vulnerability.

“I know what Dad said was harsh, but please understand he didn’t mean to hurt you. You know the way we were brought up, elders spoke their minds—it was a right of old age. We were used to this, so it didn’t hurt us the way it hurts you.”

“You’d think after forty-some years in this country, he’d—”

“That doesn’t matter. If you move to another country where women don’t have the rights you enjoy today, will you forget the freedoms of your upbringing? Elders command respect in India—unconditional respect. Outside his home, a man must play by the rules set by others, bend to their ways, but inside his home,
he
makes the rules, and others are expected to bend to
his
ways. In Dad’s bones, he feels it’s his right to speak his mind, however candid. The same way you will always feel entitled to certain ‘inalienable rights’ you’ve learned in this culture. Does that make sense?”

She nods. Grudgingly.

“I talked to Dad, and he promises to try harder to be more diplomatic.”

“Right. I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“Fair enough,” I say. “Come. Let’s move our conversation out of the bathroom, huh?”

“I’m not up for another round with Dad—”

“Dad’s gone back to the apartment. It’s just you and me.”

Her rigid posture softens, relaxes. “Good,” she says and brushes past me, out the door.

“W
e’ll need your laptop,” I say, sitting on Kiran’s bed. While she turns on her computer, I open the newspaper,
India Abroad,
to an ad I marked folding down the corner of the page. “Go here.”

“What is this?”

“A new twist on the old ways. An Indian matrimonial website. You know, like computer dating.”

“No way.” She laughs in disbelief. “Arranged marriages have gone high-tech.”

“Why not? The Internet has made the world a small village, and with all the computer engineers India produces, it was just a matter of time.” I smile. “According to this ad, you can input specific requirements and search their database. Such as, U.S. citizens only.”

“Interesting,” Kiran says. “Very interesting.”

“I think it’s a good place to start. Get an idea of the fish in the sea. And you’re good at corresponding in email. You may like this.”

We do a trial search. She selects “looking for groom” and her acceptable age range. This yields fifty pages of profiles. Twenty profiles per page. Never married, divorced, and widowed.
One thousand available men.

Kiran’s head snaps back. “Whoa. That’s a lot of fish.” She leans in for a closer inspection. “Well, well, well…Looks like a decent ‘recycled’ market.”

“Go ahead,” I say. “Cast your line.”

She selects a thirty-five-year-old divorced doctor in New York. “Education, occupation, income, religion, caste, birth place, values, languages, current residence, residency status, complexion, height, body type…” She reads his profile aloud, including the various attributes he seeks in his ideal partner.

“Thorough,” she says.

“That’s the idea. In arranged marriages, we lay all our cards on the table, so we can best gauge a potential couple’s compatibility. We don’t want to be surprised by some vital information
after
marriage.”

“Vital info like, oh,
monogamy-challenged,
for example.”

“You should discuss everything that’s important to you openly and honestly.”

She nods and turns back to the screen, reading a few more profiles, the difference of ten years’ wisdom reflected in her thoughtful gaze. She’s finished weeping over her
chaalu,
skirt-chasing Krishna; now she’s ready for a stable, dependable Shiva.

I wish she didn’t have to learn the hard, painful way that sunshine burns if you get too much. I wish she’d heeded Yash’s and my repeated warnings, our pleas, but some mistakes you must make for yourself if that’s your karma.

“This isn’t a bad idea, Kiran. Trying another route—a proven route for many. It may very well work for you, too….”

T
he next afternoon, encouraged by our preliminary groom search, Kiran and I take a break. We play the soundtrack from
A Charlie Brown Christmas
and put up our tree. It’s the eight-foot artificial one from the basement. I’ve never had the energy for a live tree, plus I feel sad when all those discarded trees line the curbs after the New Year.

“I can’t believe you still have these,” Kiran says as she opens a box of the kids’ handmade ornaments.

“Oh, yes. I’ll donate the other boxes to Goodwill when we sell the house, but not these.” I hook the golden string of a ceramic candy cane engraved:
TO MOM & DAD
—
LOVE, KIRAN
—1979
.
“These are my favorites.”

“Sell the house?” Kiran echoes.

My hand stills in midair. I could slap my forehead. “I didn’t mean to blurt that out so insensitively.”

“You’re planning to sell the house
in the near future
?”

“Well, we’ve been thinking about it for a while….”

“But why?” she demands. “I thought you loved this house. You and Dad designed it. It’s your dream house.”

“It is, but it’s served its purpose. You kids are gone—”

“But I thought you’d retire here.”

“It’s too much space, Kiran. Too much work.”
Too empty without you and Vivek.

“Wow.” She looks around, dazed. “I can’t imagine other people living in our house.”

“I know. Neither can I. But it’s time to move on, to life’s next phase.”

She chews on her lower lip. I want to tell her to stop.
Ai
could always get me to stop whatever undesirable behavior by saying no one would want to marry a girl who did such things. That didn’t work with Kiran. She’d tell me she didn’t
want
to marry someone who wouldn’t marry a girl for such petty reasons.

“So what exactly is the plan?” she asks.

“Exactly, we haven’t decided. Probably, we’ll list the house in summer.”

“
This
summer?” At my nod, she frowns.

“After it sells, we’ll buy a condo or a townhouse around here. And something else, somewhere warm. Florida. Arizona. Maybe India.”

“Wow,” she says again. “You’re really considering being snowbirds in India?”

“I’m leaning in that direction.” I’ve told her of my plans to winter in India this year. I leave soon after the New Year, and I’ll be gone for three months. My parents, while in superb health for their ages, are both in their eighties, and they slow down more each year. This year,
Baba
rarely left the apartment building. “
Aji
and
Ajoba
are on bonus years,” I say. “I want to spend as much time as I can with them. We’ll see. Dad gets a vote, too.”

When Yash’s and my marriage was arranged, our agreement was: Stay in America for ten years, collect our money, and return to India. Then we had children. American kids in American schools with American friends. Excellent education. So many cherished friends. How could we take them away from everything they knew and loved? We couldn’t. So we stayed. For them. And as soon as they could, they left us. Still, here we remain….

Kiran and I lean back and admire our trimmed tree. We sit on the exquisite hand-loomed Kashmiri rug we carted from India (and unrolled for customs inspectors) the sole time Yash and I felt it was safe to take the kids to the stunning Kashmir Valley nestled in the Himalayas. (So devastating, that quagmire. So tragic the blood man spills in God’s country.)

We are gazing up at our angel-topped tree without speaking when the soundtrack ends. I look at Kiran; she looks at me. I can’t avoid the unavoidable any longer.

“Kiran, I have to tell you something.” I turn toward her, tucking a leg underneath me. “I know this is a lot for you to swallow all at once—”

“There’s more?”

“Yes—”

“Shit, now you’re scaring me.”

“No, don’t be scared.” I’m beyond telling her to clean up her language. “Everything’s fine—”

“Have you and Dad split?”

“No! God, no.”

“Just tell me, Mom.”

“Stop interrupting, and I will.”

She crosses her arms and presses her lips together. I comb my fingers through my hair, for a split second forgetting and expecting inches that aren’t there anymore, haven’t been for months. Both of our chests heave. I wish Yash was here.

I’ve rehearsed this a million times, what to say, how to say it. Show-and-tell seems best. I tug the neckline of my sweater, reach down into my pima cotton bra. First one pocket, then the other. I remove both my prostheses, show them to my physician daughter.

Kiran stills. The deceptive, eerie calm before the storm. Her wide eyes, unblinking, fix on the objects in my hand. She knows what they are. Knows what they mean. Wishes she didn’t. On her face, heavy storm clouds gather. The sky darkens, turns ominous.

She opens her mouth, but no sound emerges. She covers her mouth with her hand. She’s in shock, as I was. Stunned. Numb. Frightened. Her gaze seeks, searches mine. A child afraid to look under the bed, fearing monsters. A doctor driven to look, preferring monsters she knows over those she doesn’t.

Again, she opens her mouth, tries to speak. A single word. Barely audible. Except to a mother’s ear, endowed by nature to hear the sound of her child, as dogs hear pitches humans cannot. In a noisy crowd. From a distance. Awake or asleep. Anytime, anywhere. Her voice is my beeper. My ears perk up, alert to my page:
“Mom.”

“I was first diagnosed in February. Just one breast.” My mouth feels like cotton. I want water, but I don’t dare to stop now. “I…never expected it, didn’t see it coming. You know we don’t have a family history of cancer. I’d done my regular self-checks, and I didn’t
feel
anything unusual. It was the mammogram that picked it up.” I clasp my hands in
namaskar
. “Thank God I scheduled my annual on time this year.

“The doctors recommended a lumpectomy, chemo-therapy, and radiation. After all that, the cancer showed up on my other breast. At that point, we went for bilateral mastectomies.” I glance at my fake breasts. “I decided against reconstruction, for many reasons. Mostly, I didn’t want to chance the cancer hiding behind an implant.”

In Kiran’s shallow breathing, I hear the ghostlike howl of the wind. “Are you…?” Her voice wavers the way the ocean ripples. Tossed between the tides of daughter and doctor, she anchors one hand over her heart and draws a steadying breath. “What’s the prognosis?”

“Excellent. Clear margins. Clear lymph nodes.” This means no more chemo or radiation. The cancer didn’t invade my blood or my bones.

She releases her breath with a
whoosh
and covers her eyes. “Oh, thank God. Thank God. Thank God.”