The Taste of Ginger(54)

Mom waited until Gautam went back into the kitchen before saying, “You must be careful about how you interact with Tushar.”

Virag Mama leaned forward and said, “It is not proper for an unmarried girl to be seen with a boy. Especially not with someone from a lower caste.”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes and glanced at Neel for help, but even though his body was at the table, it was clear his mind was elsewhere, and he wasn’t listening to the exchange.

Indira Mami said, “You know how people talk here, beta. So be careful.”

This was absurd. I had spent a few hours with the guy in his shop, but they were acting as if he and I had been caught making out in a temple. I searched Bharat’s face to see if he was as offended by this assumption as I was, but he sipped from his water as if this conversation was no different from one about how his day at work had been.

Mom, with what appeared to be some degree of reluctance, said, “They are right. You are already NRI, so people here are watching you more closely. No reason to give them anything to gossip about.”

It was clear the resignation in her voice had something to do with her past experiences in India and not just the discussion at hand. I thought back to the picture I had found of her and that other man, desperate to know the story behind it, but I still had not found the courage to ask.

Gautam came back into the room, so we began talking about the upcoming kite holiday—Uttarayan—that would be just after the Western Christmas and New Year’s holidays. I was excited because I had fond memories of the holiday from when I was a kid, and part of me hoped I’d still be in India then and could photograph the sea of kites swaying in the sky. Virag Mama and Bharat began regaling us with tales of some of their greatest kite victories. I was only half listening because I had noticed something about Gautam.

He had darker skin than all of us who sat around the table. It was also darker than Tushar’s. That suggested that Gautam was a step below Tushar on the caste ladder. I now realized that even in India, it was possible to tell a person’s caste by that single factor. Shades of brown had not mattered among the Indians in America because mostly it was the wealthy upper-caste families who could afford to be there in the first place. In America, I had constantly thought about how I stood out because I looked different and did everything I could to compensate for that. But I had never thought about the color of my skin in India. Realizing that, I wondered if it was because there was no question that I belonged to the dominant caste. Was that what it felt like to be white in America? Was that how Carrie and Jared and the countless others at my firm walked through their lives? I was a hemisphere away from all that and realized I had just traded one caste system for another but had landed at the top. It would be impossible for Tushar and me to spend any time together without local people noticing that something was amiss.



On Christmas Day, I woke up to the dogs in the empty lot, but even they could not spoil my mood. I was getting ready for another day at Happy Snaps and would be meeting Biren afterward to celebrate the holiday. While I was in the pantry searching for the container of khari biscuits, the doorbell rang, reverberating throughout the bungalow like a gong. I could hear Gautam mopping the floors in the bathroom, so I went to answer it. Standing outside was a scrawny young man who could not have been more than eighteen years old. He wore threadbare brown linen pants and a peach button-down shirt with the sleeves cuffed to his elbows.

“Good morning, madam. I am Sangiv, the driver for today,” he said through red-stained teeth as he bent at the waist.

The drivers all had similar-colored teeth, tinged by the saffron found in paan. I’d tried one at the wedding, and it was a taste I found as acrid as the cigarette I’d tried in high school.

“Okay, I’ll get Neel,” I said.

I contemplated inviting him in for tea but stopped myself. On a few occasions, I’d done that with other drivers, and they felt obliged to accept and would sit silently on the edge of the sofa with the ceramic tea mug clinking against the saucer because their hands shook from nerves. It felt rude to let them wait outside, but seeing them joking around and laughing with the other drivers made clear that was the environment they preferred to the stuffy upper-caste home. Rather than forcing them to spend time with me, I’d started bringing them chai and nasta while they waited outside. That seemed far more socially acceptable, and while I was here, I’d better learn which behaviors were appropriate.

I asked Gautam to deliver the chai before bounding up the stairs to find Neel.

Neel stood next to the bed, rummaging through his suitcase. Ever since Dipti had gone to stay with her relatives, Neel had been distraught. He was going to see her again and hopefully get her to talk to him.

“Your driver’s here,” I said, plopping onto the bed.

Startled, he looked up at me. His eyes were blank. “Sorry, didn’t hear the door.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

He shook his head. “She’s so delicate these days. I don’t want her to feel ganged up on. I’m hoping to use Christmas as an excuse. Would be pretty Grinchy to kick me out on Christmas Day,” he said with a rueful smile.

I nodded. “She’s going to come around. She just needs some time. I can’t imagine how hard this is for her.”

“That’s the thing,” he said. “I can. We should be going through it together.”