The Hindi-Bindi Club (18 page)

She tilts her head, both curious and apprehensive. “What?”

“Did Dad ever…fool around on you?”

Right away, she drops her gaze somewhere around her ankles. Her lips tighten. But then, she takes a deep breath and looks up, meeting my gaze unflinching. “Honestly?” she asks. At my nod, she says, “I don’t know. There were a few times when I suspected there might have been someone. He’s had plenty of opportunities, but I’ve never found proof. If there
was
any hanky-panky, I’ve never caught him.”

“Did you ever ask?”

She laughs. “All the time.”

I blink. I’d expected her to say no. “What did he say?”

“What do you think?”

“
No.
Of course. Okay, dumb question.” I laugh at myself. “But what would you have done if you
had
found proof, if you’d caught him?” I lean one hip against the counter, stirring and scraping, the aroma of saffron and cardamom wafting in the air.

“We wouldn’t have divorced, if that’s what you’re asking.”

I nod. This doesn’t surprise me. Traditional Hindus—in addition to believing the man can do no wrong and should never be questioned—don’t believe in divorce. You can’t trade in your “partner for life” (marriage being a sacred, heavenly ordained,
permanent
union) for a new, better model. You must accept what you can’t change, and you can’t change what’s been predetermined. That’s fatalism.

“You know my
Ajoba
had a mistress,” my mother says.

No, I didn’t know this about my great-grandfather, a High Court judge! The name of the floozy, er, mistress was Gajra-
bai
.
Gajra
means “garland of flowers.” Everyone, even his wife, knew about her. There wasn’t a need for secrecy because society accepted it. It was common practice to have “a big house and a little house.” A wife and kids in a big house, a mistress in a little house. A respectable, presentable wife for public show, prestige, procreation, and child rearing. A mistress for private pleasure. Unwinding after a hard day.

“In India, we don’t expect any one person to fulfill all our needs the way you do here,” Mom says. “We aren’t as disappointed when they don’t because our expectations are different. I don’t know if you remember that perfume commercial—you might have been too little—about a woman who could bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never let her husband forget he’s a man?” She makes a sound of disgust. “That’s a lot of pressure, isn’t it? Earn a paycheck, cook, and perform in the bedroom. If you ask me, that’s why you have such high divorce rates. I don’t know that it’s realistic to expect so much from a spouse. You set each other up to fail.”

I never thought of it that way.
Did I set Anthony up to fail?

“You know, in some societies, it was, and still is, a sign of prestige for a man to have a mistress or a second wife. Not every man’s capable of keeping more than one woman happy. Most have their hands full with just one.”

Ah.
The Joy of Sex in Patriarchal Societies.
There’s a bestseller for you.

I whack the wooden spoon against the pot—
boom-boom-boom!
—arguing that it’s a double standard. Countering that wasn’t always the case, Mom cites the example of ancient India when women sometimes had more than one husband.

“In the
Mahabharata,
” she says, referring to the
Great Tale of India,
the longest poem in world literature and a cornerstone of Hindu culture, “Draupadi has five husbands. She’s the wife of the Pandava brothers, who are sons of the deceased King Pandu. She’s considered a role model for wives and cooks in parts of India, like Bengal. At the Rays’, you might hear Subhro Uncle call Chitra Auntie ‘Draupadi.’ That’s a high compliment to a woman who’s a good cook.”

Some compliment. I’d take it as an insult. And how much do you want to bet there was a shortage of women, thus polyandry? It was more about satisfying
his
needs
(quelle surprise)
than
her
needs, I’m sure.

A
man
wants a madonna and a whore, and society shrugs its shoulders.
What can you do? Men will be men. A man has his needs. It’s his nature.
So,
he
gets two houses.
He
gets a harem. But a woman who wants a faithful Ram and a passionate Krishna? Oh, no.
That’s
unrealistic. She has to adjust her expectations. Or wear a scarlet letter.

“Let me get this straight…” I deposit the spoon on a ceramic dish shaped like a celery stalk. “Our heroine got to cook and clean and service—er, perform conjugal duties—for multiple men. And here I thought Cinderella had it bad. But little girls in parts of India want to grow up to be
just like that
? Yeesh.” I wrinkle my nose. “I’d say they need better role models. Like Kali. Now
there’s
a role model, if you ask me.” The goddess Kali, destroyer of evil, reminds me of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. “She kicks ass and takes names.”

My mom laughs. “Obviously, there’s more than one way of looking at such things.”

“Spin, Mom. It’s all about the spin.”

“Exactly my point. Society’s interpretations, our
taboos
change, but actual human behavior has been the same since the dawn of time. Consider this…. President Clinton was tarred and feathered, and people marveled his wife didn’t divorce him. But Kennedy and Nehru? They got off scot-free. Whether it’s front-page news or strictly hush-hush, humans have always behaved this way. Monogamy’s held up and publicly touted as a moral value, but that doesn’t change the fact humans as a species…Well, some of us can accept one mate for life, some can’t. Men and women. Even in societies where they stone adulterers. Preach all you want. Punish all you want. It’s still going to happen.”

I cross my arms, lean against the counter. “Reality or not, I can’t accept adultery. I
won’t
. Please don’t tell me you’re advocating—”

“No, no. I’m not—”

“Just because something’s
always been
a certain way doesn’t make it right.”

“True. I guess what I’m
trying
to say is…I want you to be able to look at certain situations…without ego. Anthony’s womanizing—it wasn’t about you, Kiran. It doesn’t matter how wonderful the pistachio ice cream is if you want all thirty-one flavors. If that’s right or wrong depends. On many factors. It’s taken me a while, but I’ve finally realized there are no hard and fast rules, no absolutes in life. Think about it. We say
thou shalt not kill,
that we have a culture of life. In the next breath, we send our young men and women off to wars that claim innocent lives, and we support the death penalty. Is this consistent moral reasoning? Is
consistency
necessarily
right
?”

I frown. “I’m not sure.”

“Me neither,” she says, “which is a different answer than I would have given you a year ago. A brush with death changes the way you look at things. It’s made me more philosophical. Less judgmental.” She makes an analogy about sunlight hitting a cut crystal, the multitude of prisms. “That’s how I see things now.”

“I noticed that this year. When we talked. On the phone.”

“Now you know why.” She rises from the barstool, inspects my pot, and reaches for the wooden spoon. I take it from her and try to nudge her away, but she remains at my elbow, looking over my shoulder. “I’m learning,
understanding
that what’s right for one person, in one situation, may or may not be right for another person, or another situation. There are things that seemed so important to me in my twenties, thirties, forties, fifties. Now I look back and see so many of those things don’t matter at all in the long run. It was my ego that got in my way. Egos cloud our vision. We need to pierce the veil in order to see clearly. Cancer did that for me.

“When I’m vomiting on the side of the road, when my hair’s falling out in clumps, when I fear losing my life, and I
do
lose my breasts, it doesn’t matter if my husband had other women. What matters is that he stands by me through thick and thin, that he supports me in every way, that we take care of each other and grow old together. To me, that’s the ultimate test of fidelity, the ultimate expression of love. Everything else…” She lifts one shoulder. “It pales in comparison.”

I swallow and meet her eyes.

“But that’s me,” she says. “You are you. And each of us has our own
dharma
.” She takes one of my hands, turns it over, and traces the lines on my palm with the soft pad of her index finger.

I stare at her aged hand, at the life flowing in her blue veins. Life that created mine.

…it was because my
parents
dared to stick their necks out that I could.

“You
will
have problems in your next marriage, Kiran.
Every
marriage has its problems. But good marriages are the ones where both parties are committed to
working through
problems, riding it out even when the road gets bumpy. Remember, life is a journey. We’re here on earth to learn and grow, to fulfill a purpose, a mission. And marriage…Marriage is a vehicle of evolution.” With those words, she pats my palm and closes my hand.

T
he warm, comforting scent of
kheer
wafts around us. I stir pistachios and raisins into the pot, and Mom gets spoons from the drawer, so we can taste test. I blow on my spoonful, cooling it, then sample a bite—ambrosia on my tongue.

“Ummmm. Good.”

“Does it need anything?”

“Not to me. You try.”

She takes a bite and appears to mull it over. “Another cup of sugar—?”

“No!”

She laughs. “I’m kidding. It’s perfect.”

Most Indian
mithai
—sweets—are so sweet they induce a sugar headache in all but the native Indian-born. Even with my wicked sweet tooth, I need the usual dose of sugar scaled way, way back.

“Congratulations, Kiran. You just made
kheer
. Now, tell me. Was it really so difficult?” There’s something about her tone. It is…? Could it be…?
Smugness?

Suspicious, I slant my gaze at her. “Were you really so tired?”

She smiles—more like
preens
—and rubs her hand over my back. “Better late than never,
nuh
?”

“You’re bad, Mom.”

“I am, aren’t I?” She beams, not the least repentant.

K,

Speaking to me yet?

V

This message may contain confidential and/ or privileged information. If you are not the addressee or authorized to receive this for the addressee, you must not use, copy, disclose or take any action based on this message or any information herein. If you have received this message in error, please ad vise the sender immediately by reply e-mail and delete this message. Thank you for your cooperation.

V,

Yeah, I’m speaking to you. But only in short sentences. ::wry grin:: I don’t like it, but I get it. I understand why you didn’t tell me. I just hope you don’t have to do it again.

As you can guess, this was some wake-up call. Things are better between Mom and me. (Same old, same old with Dad…Some things never change.) I went through her medical records, talked to her doctors, confirmed prognosis is excellent. All the same, do keep her in your prayers.

In other news, I may have a shocker -- of the GOOD sort -- to report soon. Stay tuned…

K

Kiran’s Kheer (Dessert Porridge)

SERVES 8

8 green cardamom pods

1 cup sweetened condensed milk

8 cups whole milk

¼ cup unsalted butter, divided

½ teaspoon saffron threads

1 cup uncooked vermicelli, broken into 1-inch pieces (substitute: angel hair pasta)

¼ cup unsalted pistachios, coarsely chopped

¼ cup golden raisins

1. Remove cardamom seeds from pods. Using a mortar and pestle, crush seeds and set aside for later. Discard pods.

2. In a large Dutch oven over medium heat, bring milk to a boil, stirring constantly to prevent burning.

3. Reduce heat to medium. Stirring occasionally and scraping bottom and sides of pot, cook until reduced in half, about 40–45 minutes.

4. In a wok or deep 12-inch skillet, melt 2 tablespoons of butter over medium heat. Add vermicelli and stir-fry until golden brown, about 1–3 minutes. Transfer to Dutch oven with slotted spoon to drain butter. Stir.

5. Stir in condensed milk, cardamom, and saffron. Cook until thickened, stirring occasionally, about 8–10 minutes.

6. Melt remaining butter in wok or skillet over medium heat. Add pistachios and raisins. Stir-fry until raisins plump, about 2–3 minutes. Stir into Dutch oven.

7. Serve warm or chilled.

Saroj Chawla: Pyar Hota Hai (Love Happens)

E
very New Year’s Eve, Sandeep and I try to outdo the last, to best ourselves. I can’t begin to tell you how proud we feel when our friends circle jokes that rather than “keeping up with the Joneses,” it should be “keeping up with the Chawlas.”

The days before our New Year’s Eve bash, our house resembles a bride’s house before her big wedding day, bursting at the seams with overnight guests, excitement, and nervous energy. Everyone pitches in, performs whatever assigned tasks. The women prepare mass quantities of food in assembly lines, gabbing and gossiping and having a grand time. Since we remodeled the kitchen and doubled the former space with a spectacular, state-of-the-art addition, catering runs smoother than ever.

“Close your eyes,” Sandeep says. “I have a surprise for you.”

“What is it? Tell me.”

“Hold out your hand.”

Jewelry. It must be jewelry. He knows I’ve had my eye on this exquisite pair of diamond earrings at Tiffany’s, but I’m not about to pay such outrageous prices when I can have any design created—or replicated—in India, much cheaper. Ooooh. If he’s bought me those earrings, I don’t know whether I’ll jump up and down with excitement or launch into a tirade. Probably both.

“Are your eyes closed?”

“Yes!”

“Good. Keep them closed.” He takes my hand and leads me through the house.

“Where are we going?”

“No peeking. Are you peeking?”

“No!”

When I hear the door to the basement open, I drag my feet. “Deepu,” I say. “Are you going to bury me in the basement?”

“Of course not,” he says. “After all we shelled out to have it finished? I can’t ruin the dance floor.”

“Ha, ha.”

Deepu
is my nickname for Sandeep, but not for the obvious reason. As newlyweds, we lived as a joint family. My orthodox mother-in-law, who ran a tight ship, didn’t approve of me being so bold and disrespectful as to address my husband by his first name. Traditionally, a wife referred to her husband as the-name-of-their-eldest-child’s father (“Preity’s father”),
my husband,
or
he
. Caught between tradition and modern times, neither his first name nor his lack-of-name felt right, so Sandeep said to come up with a nickname of my choosing. One night in bed, I was fantasizing about my last, burning crush before marriage. His name was Deepak Sharma, and he wanted to marry me, but it wasn’t possible—his family wouldn’t allow marriage out of caste. By accident, I blurted
his
nickname.

“Deepu.” Sandeep laughed. “Is that my new nickname?”

Oops! And that is how the two great loves of my life came to share the same nickname. How convenient!

Sandeep guides me down the stairs, one at a time. “Okay, open your eyes. Ta-da!”

At the new state-of-the-art entertainment center, I squeal and cover my mouth. “Deepu! A wide-screen
plasma
television?”

“With surround sound.” He grins.

“I love it, but can we afford so much right now?” With our latest round of remodeling and Tarun at Georgetown Law School—

“No payments for a year,” Sandeep says. “And…check this out.” He opens a cabinet stocked with DVDs. “Hollywood meets Bollywood.”

I squeal again and give him a giant hug. “We’ll host the best parties!”

“Don’t we always?”

“Yes, and we must uphold our reputation, after all.” I plant a noisy kiss on his cheek. “Thank you, Deepu. I love you.”

There’s a Hindi expression pertaining to arranged marriages:
Pyar hota hai
. Love happens. That’s how it was with Sandeep and me. We barely knew each other when we married. We met one time only—at the bride-viewing, as we called the question-and-answer session over tea and snacks I served—before his father offered a proposal to mine. My father accepted
with my consent,
which was progressive for the times. “I won’t have you blame me if you’re unhappy,”
Bauji
said. “The final decision is yours.”

After marriage, Sandeep and I actively worked on bonding. We courted. We weren’t yet in love with each other, but we were in love with the
idea
of being in love, and we worked toward it. As we spent time together and learned more about each other, we grew on each other, grew to care. The best thing we did for our relationship was to leave India. In those early days abroad, we may as well have been shipwrecked on a deserted island. It was during this time, when we only had each other, that my husband of six months and I fell in love.

A
t Chawla Catering, I employ mostly recent Indian immigrant women. They work for different reasons: finances, boredom, love of cooking, or the kinship of women like themselves. Where else can they make Indian cultural references and jokes? Or say, “So many flavors of yogurt!” or “SNOW!” or
“Huggies
diapers?
Chi, chi, chi!”
and expect everyone to understand? Same when they lament over their children “losing their Indian-ness.”

I remember well my own experiences, Sandeep’s and my fears of cultural dilution, our struggles to preserve our identities, values, heritage, and traditions in the American melting pot. I sympathize and share what wisdom I have accumulated in my years.

In case you haven’t already figured it out, I’m not your “typical Indian woman.” Preity laughs whenever she hears this because most of her aunties here, the ones of my generation who emigrated around my time, will tell you this exact same thing. We may not mean it in the same way, but to Preity, a claim of being atypical
is
typical. I believe only a native can fully grasp what
is
and
is not
typical, in any culture.

One of the biggest factors that sets me apart from other immigrants is the fact I didn’t have the same qualms (at least not to the same degree) about “uprooting” from India that most immigrants do. My family had already been separated from our homeland, yanked from our native soil, weeds in a Mughal garden.

Though I grew up to love India, I was always aware my roots lay across a border I couldn’t cross, in a country no longer mine. I wore my displacement like my starched school uniform, perfectly comfortable in the cardboard-stiff fabric because I knew nothing else. My parents had a harder time.

Like many immigrants, they never felt they belonged, in any country. They suffered chronic homesickness, longing for a home that didn’t exist anymore. It was wrenching to be so close, yet so far from their ancestral land, the place where they had left shattered pieces of their hearts, never to be retrieved. When the first of our relatives settled abroad, my father said with a touch of envy, “It’s better to be separated by God’s oceans than man’s borders.”

The second time I left the world I knew behind, I took two big suitcases. It wasn’t enough, but it was two suitcases more than I was able to take when we left Lahore, and I felt lucky.

When Sandeep and I arrived in the States in the mid-1960s, there weren’t so many people from India living here. We couldn’t have created a Little India like those you see now, say, in New Jersey, if we’d wanted to: There simply weren’t enough of us. If we said we were Indian, people asked, “Which tribe?” Honorary Indian, Patrick McGuiness often clarified, “Dots, not feathers.”

Though it was harder for us in many ways back then, in some ways, I think it was actually easier.

For example, today, it’s easy for Indian subcultures to stick together, birds of a feather: Bengalis with Bengalis, Maharashtrians with Maharashtrians, Punjabis with Punjabis, etc. Major cities have organizations, community centers, activities dedicated to specific subcultures. Not so then. In those days, we had “slim pickin’s,” as the kids say. The dearth of Punjabis
forced
us to mix, not be so cliquey. We didn’t have any choice! Starved for company, we found ourselves socializing with Punjus, other Indians, Americans, and immigrants from other countries whom we otherwise would not have. And lo and behold, a most peculiar thing happened….
Everyone—we and they—benefited.

Did we lose some of our Indian-ness? Yes. But we learned the difference between cultural pride and elitism. We lost our superiority complexes
and
our inferiority complexes. We gained awareness and appreciation of other cultures, and others—non-Punjabis and non-Indians—gained awareness and appreciation of
ours
. (Meenal, Uma, and I couldn’t be more different. In India, we
never
would have been friends, our husbands
never
would have mixed, yet for almost half a century, ours are the friendships that have thrived the longest, ripened the sweetest, and borne the most fruit.)

It feels good to share my stories with these women, to let them know others have walked in these same steps—and succeeded. I hope to console, and to inspire.

Some women have the support of their husbands; others don’t. This, too, is a marked improvement since my time when, by and large, women from good families didn’t work. For wages, that was. Volunteering was acceptable, provided family obligations were met. Oh, the fights Sandeep and I had!

“It looks bad,” he would say. “As if I can’t support my family on my own.”

“You have a Ph.D. from M.I.T. You’re an engineer at a top company,” I’d reply. “Everyone knows you can support us. But think, what if something happened to you? An illness, or an accident? We have children now in addition to our family in India who depend on us. It isn’t a bad thing to have backup. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.”

Then I would bring up my own education—education
Biji
and
Bauji
didn’t want me to pursue too rigorously for fear it would scare off potential grooms. “Men don’t like women who are too clever,”
Biji
advised, “or too aggressive.” But I refused to hide my intellect from my husband, especially in this New Land that redefined self-respect, where fewer men ruled over their families as dictators in a totalitarian regime and more women had voices and choices. Where a woman who suffers in silence, sacrifices, and devotes herself to a man who lacks consideration for her needs
isn’t
a heroine. And the threat of a woman, when wronged, isn’t suicide but homicide.

“I have a brain and a B.Com.,” I would say. A bachelor’s degree in commerce. “I want to use them.”

“And
I
want a traditional wife,” Sandeep would bemoan. “A woman who puts her duties as a wife and mother first.”

Of course, family has always come
first
. He meant a woman who lived
only
to serve, expecting no reciprocation. A woman with no identity beyond dutiful wife and mother. Ideally, the Indian version of a Stepford Wife: fair but not white, lovely, homey, chaste, modest, fertile, nurturing, soft-spoken, loyal, obedient…and a good cook!

A woman like Meenal.

Back in the Boston Days, Sandeep would have traded me for Meenal in a heartbeat. He flirted openly, shamelessly with her, as he does with most pretty women—he
is
a charmer by nature. But when it came to graceful, first-class Meenal, I suspected underneath his lighthearted banter, he really did “covet thy neighbor’s wife.” Lucky for me, I knew my pious best friend didn’t return his interest—and lucky for Sandeep, so did her husband.

What I also knew, though I’d never tell a soul, is that Sandeep’s all show. He is, in fact, a lackluster lover. A few thrusts, and the party’s over. He doesn’t see any problem—
he’s
satisfied, so mission accomplished, right?—and I can’t bear to crush his ego. He fancies himself Don Juan de Punjab; I find our sex as exciting as inserting and removing a tampon. Nor can I tutor him in the countless
other
ways a man pleases a woman, for how would a proper, respectable woman possess knowledge about such things?

Every now and then, Sandeep raised the subject, “Maybe we should go back to India.”

India, where his mother, sisters, and aunts pampered him, and he was never expected to wash his own dishes, take out the trash, clean toilets, change diapers, or baby-sit his children. India, where his independent-minded wife could spend her life serving endless cups of tea under the critical eye of her mother-in-law and rehash ad nauseam such scintillating topics as:

1. Good help being hard to find;

2. Society’s moral decay—due to corrupting Western influences;

3. Duties of a good Hindu wife—being barefoot and pregnant-with-sons in the kitchen, obeying her husband and in-laws, fasting and praying for the health and long life of her husband.

“Okay, I’ll pack our bags,” I said, knowing we’d never go. We both knew Sandeep couldn’t earn in India the income America provided. Our families on both sides of the globe were better off if we remained here.

I don’t know if he came around or simply resigned himself to my working. Likely, it was the prestige I accelerated for us. In a good year, I earn almost twice his engineering salary, and in a calculated ego-stroke early on, I hand the bulk of it over to him to manage however he wants. Because of my contributions to the family income, of all our Indian friends, we always have the biggest house, best toys, fanciest clothes, and splashiest parties.

“What man doesn’t welcome the coming of Lakshmi incarnate into his home?” Sandeep boasts, likening me to the goddess of wealth. Wise man. He’s learned the secret of a happy life—a happy wife. When a husband treats his wife as the goddess she is, riches naturally follow.