The Taste of Ginger(46)
It had been decades since I had looked through those. I removed a couple and sat on the floor. The photos were yellowed with age, some in sepia tones rather than the vibrant colors of modern-day prints. There were photos of Hari and Bharat when they were young. Neel and I were in some of them: playing in the yard, climbing on the hichko, sitting at the dining table. In some, my family was dressed in traditional Indian attire for weddings or dinner parties. In others, Neel and I wore our Western shorts and shirts, grinning at the camera like happy fools.
When I met people in Ahmedabad, they always knew I was American. Without me saying a word. Something in my clothing, hairstyle, or general presence projected that I was not a local. Comparing the photos from when I was a little girl in Ahmedabad to the ones from our visits after moving to America, I realized it had become obvious I was now NRI. In the later pictures my smile was bolder and more direct compared to the demure, deferential looks on my relatives’ faces. I stood with my hands on my hips, rather than clasped neatly in front of me like the other girls in the photos. My subconscious self in India hadn’t been as focused on blending in or hiding, which seemed ironic because my conscious self in America had thought of nothing else since the day we moved there.
In the second box were photos of a little girl who had my familiar smile and large eyes. For my entire life, relatives had commented that I was a “copy” of my mother. I held the photo of her next to one of myself, finally seeing what everyone else had. How could two people who looked so similar on the outside be so different on the inside?
I continued sifting through the box. There were photos of my mother from her Kathak dance performances when she was a teenager. Her smile was soft and demure, but she beamed into the camera, her eyes shining brighter than the diamonds around her neck. I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen her with such a genuine smile on her face, but I also couldn’t recall the last time I had seen her dance. There were also photos of my parents as a young newly married couple. Their smiles were shy and awkward. I had seen those paired smiles countless times. I thought about what it must have been like for Mom to have met Dad only once before her wedding day. I had always been sure that if they had ever dated, they never would have married, because they didn’t seem to have any common interests from which to build a foundation. But that wasn’t the criteria for a marriage in India, and theirs, by Indian and maybe even Western standards, was considered a successful one. They had been married over thirty-five years and had two professionally prosperous kids to continue their legacy.
My thoughts were interrupted by a clinking sound coming toward me. Keys. I looked around at the mess I’d created, wishing I could have put everything back before Indira Mami had come home.
“Here you are,” Indira Mami said, stepping into her closet room. “How—” She stopped when she saw the photos spread around me. “What is all this?”
She hoisted up the pleats of her soft pink sari and sat with me on the cold tiles. “I haven’t seen these in many years.” She picked up a photo of Hari when he was ten years old. “Now he is married,” she said, a nostalgic look creeping onto her face. She had remained calm and collected during his entire wedding, but it was interesting to see how a picture from the past could now pierce her stoic facade.
My eyes fell on a stiff wedding photo of my parents. It reminded me of some of the pictures I had taken of Hari and Laila in the days leading up to their wedding, two virtual strangers thrown together and hoping for the best. My family thought that even a less-than-perfect marriage was better than the public shame of ending up alone. It explained why my parents were so desperate to see me settle down. It would have given them some relief that if something happened to them, then I’d be taken care of. I appreciated the sentiment but had a hard time getting them to understand that being single didn’t mean I could not take care of myself. And I’d rather take care of myself than be tied forever to someone I hardly knew, or worse, be stuck taking care of someone else for whom I had no feelings because his parents had not taught him the necessary life skills to take care of himself. I could not deny that despite the many problems my parents and I had when dealing with each other, they had taught me how to survive, no matter how difficult things became.
I picked up another photo of my mother, one in which she was dressed in a traditional sari like the elaborate one she wore in the wedding photos with my dad. But I didn’t know the man in the photo standing next to her. He was shorter than my father and had broader shoulders. My mother’s smile in that photo was more natural. It was a look of which I had only caught glimpses because Mom was typically so reserved. I couldn’t recall when I’d last seen it.
“Who is this?” I asked.
When Indira Mami took the photo, her expression darkened. “I don’t know him.”
It was clear she was lying. “You must. Who is it?” I persisted.
She shoved the photo back into the box and dumped a stack of photos on top of it before she rose awkwardly to her feet. “That’s enough for now. I should start the chai before everyone returns.”
I bit back my instinct to chase after her and make her answer my questions. That sort of behavior would never get me any results in this country. I gathered the remaining photos and placed them back in the cabinet. I heard the click as the bolt slid into place. I thought back to the conversation I’d overheard at the wedding and still wasn’t sure what nasib meant, but I was certain this man was part of it.