The Abundance: A Novel Page 7

  I start the preparations for lunch. Mala looks up from her reading. “Mom? Can you wait maybe five minutes? Just while I finish this article?”

  “Take your time. I’ll set a few things on the stove.”

  “I want to help. Just wait five minutes before you start.”

  “It’s okay.” I keep moving. “There’s nothing to do. Finish what you’re doing.”

  She sighs, closes her magazine, and joins me in the kitchen.

  “You can read.”

  “It’s all right. What do you need me to do?”

  “Go. Go, finish.”

  “Should I set the table?”

  This is something clean and quick that she could do. “Sure,” I say, “if you want. Two bigger bowls, one smaller one for the raita.”

  Her face doesn’t change. She looks glum. She slides out two stacks of bowls and uses the stacks to knock the cupboard shut. I watch her, apprehensive, as she goes into the next room with them. Annoyance surges in me, and I think, If she wants to get angry over something as small as this, let her. I roll some potential words on my tongue, waiting, just waiting to say them to her if she acts sulky. She isn’t a teenager anymore, why is she acting like one? Did I tell her to stop reading her little article? My annoyance, oddly enough, makes me feel healthy and normal for a moment. The moment lasts just as long as it takes me to lift the heavy pot of dahi from the refrigerator and set it on the counter. I become an observer again, I grow detached from my own emotion and think, Coming up with biting things to say to your daughter, are you? And you have how many months? Sadness comes through, and shame. I cannot taste my dahi when I sample some. I focus, try another spoonful, and stay focused to check for any aftershock of sour.

  I make my own dahi because I love the continuity. Each pot curdles thanks to a spoonful of the one before it. With every batch, I set some aside. Every generation tastes different, of course, depending on how warm the milk is, and how long it sits on the counter before I take it to the refrigerator. But the cultures—the bacteria, Abhi likes to say, teasing me because he knows how seriously I take this dynastic succession—the cultures stay the same, like genetics. Probably Mala and Ronak don’t recognize it when they come home, not on their tongues, at least. But their bodies sense the past. Their bodies know.

  I was very careful about saving that crucial dollop. Originally I smuggled some from India in a sterile stoppered test tube. Customs never searched that zippered pocket in my purse. Abhi, on our first evening together in our first New York City apartment, picked up the emptied test tube and glanced at the standing pot of milk, incredulous. Finally he laughed. “Now this,” he murmured, “is preserving Indian culture!”

  Its lineage was magical. The consistency might vary, but the flavor never—pot after pot thickened identically in taste. Magic: I might have expected as much, as it came from my mother’s kitchen. Guests used to praise my dahi specifically. They were tasting Gujarat. Wherever we moved, I had at least one friend who asked for some in a stainless steel bowl. So the lineage branched.

  There were breaks, inevitably, as with trips to India. Sometimes I could get away with simple refrigeration. During my long visits to take care of my mother, I left some at my friend Sujata’s house, then came home and took a little back. Sujata understood the crucial nature of such living artifacts from home. During her and Arvind’s two-week Europe trip, I cared for a tulsi plant descended from the one in her father’s courtyard.

  Later, I made sure to colonize my grandchildren with the magical cultures. For those first bottle-and-burp-cloth months after each birth, I always brought some dahi in a red Igloo cooler when we visited, along with other still-warm Tupperware containers. I make sure there is dahi at every one of their stays, too, including this one, even though the grandchildren have grown used to the smooth, store-bought kind, scalloped neatly with a spoon, no murky whitish water at the bottom. Mala and Ronak are used to that kind of yogurt, too, but I offer my homemade anyway, lumps and all—to their tongues as to their bodies, familiar.

  Mala and Sachin don’t eat in shifts the way they did when the grandchildren were babies. So one heating suffices for all. I ladle straight from the CorningWare. No need to stagger the eaters and microwave the meal plateful by plateful. That always feels so makeshift, so paradoxically impersonal. Sachin carries Shivani’s high chair into the dining room. I notice, with a mixture of pride and embarrassment, how my lunch has crowded the table. It has grown by accretion and without my awareness. Karahi potatoes. A dahl in which I substituted New World zucchini for Old World bottle gourd. My dynastic dahi and its close cousin, the raita. More cooling: cucumbers and tomatoes, diced, salted, dusted with cumin. Heat, too: a small bowl of ginger shreds in salt and lemon juice. Kerala peppercorns pickled on the twig. Eggplant bhartha intricately beaded with seeds. Shredded carrots that have leached a crucible-sizzle of asafetida. I wonder if this proliferation looks desperate. In a way my secret lies in the open there, giving off steam and fragrance. But they are used to the table having little room left for plates. I fill the glass pitcher, and the ice cubes skate on the splash, knocking and bobbing in a circle. I call everyone to the meal.

  Mala takes quarter ladles and half scoops of everything. I know not to pressure her, though even after all these years it is a reflex.

  “I’ll take seconds if I need them, Mom, don’t worry,” she says, preempting me.

  “I won’t be taking seconds, Mom,” declares Sachin. “I’m taking firsts and seconds, at the same time!”

  He is looking at Abhi, his eyebrows high and his mouth open. Abhi and I laugh. Ronak and Mala only smile.

  “Okay, we’ve got the cheesy mac, but you need to work with me on one thing. What do you want, V?” asks Mala, holding his plate.

  Vivek scans the table. “Um…”

  “Do you want to try a little of everything, Vivek?” I ask. “Take little bites, and try?”

  “Um … I want…”

  “Come on, V. You want some bhindi? You like bhindi.”

  She raises a few okra in the scoop and tilts the scoop by the plate, waiting for the go-ahead.

  “No. Wait. Let me see.”

  “You can try a little of everything, Vivek.”

  “There’s too many choices for him, Mom.”

  “Just give him a little of everything.”

  “I’m going to give him what he wants to eat—V, I’m waiting.”

  “Hold on. I want … um…”

  “Listen, V,” interjects Ronak, “you’ve got to get your bhindi, or you’re never going to get strong like your daddy.”

  Sachin flexes his free arm, his left hand offering a spoonful of dahl to Shivani while his own food grows cold. “Try the bhindi, V,” he says.

  “Okay.”

  Mala spoons a small pile onto his plate and sets it before him.

  “No dahl?” I ask. “Not even the cucumbers?”

  “You want the cucumbers, V?”

  “No.”

  “No thank you. Remember?”

  “No thank you.”

  Vivek picks up a single okra nib and puts it in his mouth. I check Abhi’s plate and give him a second rotli from midstack, where they would be moist and lukewarm from their neighbors. Ronak has overlooked the raita and the shredded carrots, so I supply both. He uses the back of his spoon to shove aside the fenugreek-flecked potato slips and make room for the touch of orange on his plate. “Thanks,” he says quietly. I am surprised at how amenable he is; he must really be hungry.

  My eyes go back to the near blank of Vivek’s plate, and I cannot help myself. I scoop some more shredded carrots—such a simple dish, not too spicy, not too strange a taste—and stretch to bring them near his plate.

  “Your plate is empty, Vivek beta,” I say. “Do you want to try some of this?”

  “Here we go,” murmurs Abhi at my elbow, then pushes a bite into his mouth.

  Mala speaks before Vivek can say yes. “Look at your plate, Mom. You’re hardly eating anythi
ng.”

  Ronak looks at my plate. He never noticed my plate before. “Jeez, Mala, you’re right. Are you on some crash diet, Mom?”

  I set the carrots back in the dish, let go of the spoon, and glance at Abhi.

  “Your mom and I are watching what we eat. We’re not as young as we used to be.”

  “You’ve been losing weight,” says Mala. “That’s not a bad thing, if you do it healthily.” Ronak eyes Mala: the cups of shadow behind her collarbones, the eyes dark even without kohl. Mala is oblivious to his scrutiny. “Mom?”

  “It’s not a crash diet,” I say.

  We are lying now; Abhi hadn’t wanted to lie. This is exactly the kind of exchange he had wanted to avoid.

  “What diet is it?” she presses.

  “What diet?”

  “Like, Atkins, South Beach, Weight Watchers, what?”

  “I’m just eating smaller portions.”

  “Are you getting enough protein?”

  “Of course she is getting enough protein,” Abhi says irritably. “We are all doctors here, Mala.”

  “How is she getting her protein?”

  “Not me,” says Ronak. “I’m not a doctor.”

  “I’m not a doctor either,” says Vivek, looking at Ronak in sympathy. Sachin is tearing a rotli into pieces for Shivani. Vivek pops some cheesy mac in his mouth. “I’m a boy.”

  Ronak grins.

  Mala insists, “Really. Look at her plate. Other than that spoonful of dahi, what source is there?”

  “Dairy. Lentils. Spinach. All sorts of things.”

  Ronak shakes his head. “Mala, lay off about the food, all right? Not everyone’s obsessed about this stuff.”

  “Indian food is full of protein,” I assert.

  “Naani, if you don’t eat protein, you can’t get muscles,” explains Vivek.

  “Vivek,” says Sachin. “Eat.”

  Mala is glaring at Ronak. “I am not obsessed.”

  “All right. You’re not.”

  “I’m not.”

  “There was a Christmas carol I heard last week,” I say abruptly. “I need to know what it’s called. I really liked it.”

  “Don’t try and change the subject, Mom.”

  “No, Mala. Listen. I asked Abhi, he didn’t know.”

  “I can’t tell these carols apart,” says Abhi, working with me. “I know ‘Silent Night,’ that’s it.”

  “There were children singing.”

  Silence. Mala, in a sulk, rolls her okra with her fork. “You’re changing the subject. It’s transparent.”

  Ronak says, “That carol could be anything, Mom. A lot of them have children singing. How does it go?”

  “I can’t sing it. There was a piano in it, too.”

  Ronak takes out his phone and begins touching the screen with his free hand’s ring finger. “I have this app. Just sing a few bars of it.”

  I don’t like him taking his phone out at the table, but it helps divert everyone’s attention from my plate, and mine from my own nausea. (Which is still mild, no worse than going down in an elevator forever.) Sachin looks interested, too. Ronak holds the screen so it faces me.

  “Go ahead.”

  “I can’t sing.”

  “Hum it then.”

  “Are you recording me?”

  “No. This app ID’s the song from a few bars.”

  “Bars?”

  “Leetis,” explains Abhi. “Lines of the song. Try it.”

  I shake my head, flushed. Of all the things I could have interrupted their escalation with, why did I choose this? Feeling ridiculous, I lean close to the intelligent little device, and I hum the five notes I remember. The whole table is listening. It doesn’t sound right to my ears. The machine doesn’t like it, either. Ronak checks the screen, frowns, and taps something. “Let’s try it again.”

  “She’s talking,” says Mala, “about the Charlie Brown song.”

  Ronak raises his eyebrows. “Let me look it up.” He taps and brushes the screen again.

  Mala glances at me. “He’ll play it in a second.”

  “I knew you would know.”

  Under Ronak’s fingers, the screen grows suddenly bright, and the carol begins to play. He lifts the phone to take the speaker off the table, and the sound comes out very crisply. I smile. With family around and food on the table, the song doesn’t sadden me as much as it had when I heard it in the supermarket the week before. I liked its festive sadness. Now the song floats in our dining room, too mysterious and lovely to play during a chatty lunch, deserving noiseless snowfall and deep night. “That’s the one,” I say. “You can turn it off.”

  Ronak taps something, and the carol stops. “Here you go, Mom.” He taps again and smiles. “I just bought the song. I’ll have Dad put it on your iPod. Merry Christmas.”

  “Thank you, Mala.” I thanked the wrong person. I see, from the corner of my eye, Ronak glance up. I turn immediately to him. “And Ronak. Both of you.”

  Ronak asks Mala, “How’d you figure it out so quick?”

  “Piano, children.” She shrugs. “It’s my favorite carol, too. Ever since I was a kid.”

  Ronak nods and looks down at his screen. “Check that out. Mom likes the Charlie Brown Christmas song,” he says softly, shaking his head. I do not know why this strikes him as hard to believe. I am in the world, I have ears. I can be charmed by music other than the old Lata songs I listen to while I cook.

  As I watch, he grows increasingly distracted by his e-mail. Soon we are talking of other things. A short struggle with Vivek keeps Mala from bringing up again how little I am eating. The struggle ends with me microwaving him a soy dog until it blisters, and Mala stabbing the straw in a Capri Sun.

  * * *

  We have put up a Christmas tree. Mala instituted the tradition the year Vivek turned two. She had watched clips of her nephews on Christmas morning. Ronak’s Sony handheld captured it from the top of the stairs: Dev sprinting downstairs, shrieking with joy; Nikhil, not yet three then, wary of stairs, scooting, taking them one by one, shouting, Wait up! (Raj, Ronak’s third, had not been born yet.) Amber held up a hand—that was all it took—and the older brother stopped with a Simon-says-stop abruptness to wait for the younger. Then, antsy at the new starting line, the boys ran to their presents, stacked two deep under a ceiling-high Christmas tree.

  I could imagine Ronak standing apart, recording it all. The open viewfinder served as a convenient wall. Being the cameraman allowed him the remove that some part of him wished to preserve. It was a curious reluctance that had shown up even in his church ceremony. He had no particular affection for Hindu ways or Hindu rituals. In fact, he liked to mock such things. But try to impose anything else, and he grew possessive, proud. There was a wafer he was supposed to eat at the end of his church ceremony, some Christian prasaad that he scandalously refused to accept in his mouth. After the wedding rehearsal, he had called me and Abhi to forbid us from doing so, too, though we were perfectly willing. (“What do you mean, why not? ’Cause it’s not our religion, Mom.”) Even at the reception, Amber had to wear Indian clothes, our clothes, though she would never have imagined her wedding this way. The Sinatra song was the one she picked out for her father-daughter dance, but she danced to it wearing a sarara.

  Watching Ronak’s Christmas morning videos, Abhi and I, too, had grown jealous. Mere love could not compete with such dramatic gift-giving. Birthday counterstrikes did not suffice. The buildup wasn’t the same. Only one child got presents on a birthday, and he never tore the wrapping paper with quite as much frenzy. The birthday grandson embraced us gratefully afterward, upon instruction, while the other two looked on. Not the same! We had seen their Christmas morning gratitude. We had seen them throw their arms around Dottie and Don. Sometimes our birthday presents were opened along with others from the party—midsequence, indistinguishable, often outclassed. (Ronak, because of his work, had very rich friends.) Does a child even remember the giver when he plays with a gift? The warmth and
gratitude spike for an instant, but you must have him in your lap as he opens it. Lately I have been buying gifts for all the boys, and the day before the birthday party, I make a game of it and have them hunt for clues.

  The boys should be spoiled, but Amber is raising them, as she says, “with values.” Ronak has never, in my memory, actually reprimanded the boys. Sometimes he claps his hands twice, which the boys obey because their mother has trained them to do so. Ronak is relaxed to the point of indifference. And why should he worry? Amber isn’t working (she had done some secretarial work before the children, to pass time), Amber handles all that, Amber takes care of discipline … and meals, and potty training, and the sippy cups and Fruit Roll-Ups during road trips, and the shoes with little lights in the soles. Each day each boy gets to request one toy from the basement. One toy comes out for the morning. This toy is returned after lunch. A second toy is then brought upstairs, to be played with until bedtime, which is always at the same time.

  We have never felt wholly at home in that gated, hilly scatter of four-car-garage houses. Ronak commutes over an hour each day, each way. You couldn’t peek through the door-length strip of window beside the door and glimpse a Ganesha or a Krishna-Lila painting that says yes, you are at the right house. The house never has the smell of an Indian house, either. I mean the turmeric and canola oil that leaches into the carpet, the couches, the guests’ winter coats piled on the guest room bed; the smell that breathes out from the coat when you sit in your car, overpowering the outdoor cold. I need that smell, I guess, to feel completely at home. What Ronak’s house has is shrink-wrapped ground chuck in the refrigerator. Crimson beads, strangely jellied. And cold cuts folded limp inside a plastic deli Ziploc, stickered with weight and price. A pale fluid, wept by the ham itself, pools along the crease and leaves the plastic murky. I always see a dark dispenser-box of beer cans—on the bottom shelf, no less, in Dev’s reach. Only a few years from now, he will have his first taste, given a sip by Ronak himself, or maybe Amber’s father, Don—during one of their backyard cookouts, hot dogs and patties striped black and flipped, Ruffles on a Styrofoam plate, ball game on the plasma screen indoors, here, Dev, here, Dave, here you go. The sound of beer pouring and foaming in a red plastic cup. An American rite of passage. Manhood is the first beer can, not a thread across the chest for this grandson of Gujarati Brahmins.