The Taste of Ginger(60)

Tushar had clasped his hands behind his back and was swaying back and forth as if he didn’t know what else to do with himself. Eager to keep things from getting more awkward, I motioned for my mother to join me on the other side of the counter.

From underneath it, I pulled out the box in which I had been storing my prints. It was cardboard covered in thin red cloth and had once held kaaju katli. It still released the smell of sweetened cashews when I lifted the lid, but now it housed the photos I was considering for the final album. I’d consulted with Tushar on each of them before they earned a place of honor in the box.

“I’ve got some prints from the baithak I’d like to show you. There are some others I developed this morning, but those are still drying in the back room,” I said.

“This is nice.” Mom nodded, looking at a photo of the maharaj applying vermilion to Hari’s forehead. Hari’s eyes were closed, while the priest’s were focused on the tip of his right ring finger, covered in bright-red powder.

My lips curled into a huge smile. It didn’t sound like much, but “this is nice” was one of the highest compliments that Varsha Desai ever gave. It was the same thing she had said when I told her I had gotten a job at the highest-ranked law firm in the country, and when she found out that I was nominated to deliver the speech at my high school graduation. “This is nice” was as good as it got, and I was thrilled to hear those words, especially in connection with something she had never supported like photography.

She flipped through more pictures, mostly of friends and relatives.

“When will you finish the album?” she asked.

“I’m not sure. Tushar and I are going to pool our work and create one big album rather than each doing a separate one for our events, so it’s going to take longer than I had originally planned.”

Tushar stood near the front of the shop, trying to give us privacy.

Mom called over to him, “Some chai would be good after all.”

He nodded and scurried out the front door to the tea cart across the street. After the door closed, Mom turned to me.

“I’m glad Tushar is helping you and you are getting along, but make sure it’s nothing more than that.” She continued to flip through the photos.

My cheeks felt warm. “We’re just friends.”

Mom had paused on a picture toward the bottom of the stack. I’d forgotten it was in there. It was one I had taken of her a couple days ago when she was sitting on the hichko in the garden at dusk. Her legs were curled under her, and she had a mug in her hand. What struck me about the picture was the expression on her face—it was soft and wistful. A side of her I rarely saw. Now, as she looked at herself, that same expression crept back onto her face.

She said, “You know the rules here. It’s important to follow them.”

I could see that this meant a lot to her. “We’re really just friends,” I said.

Her jaw set when she flipped to the next photo. It was one I had taken of Tushar in the shop. His nose buried in a book. His ink-stained fingers poised to turn the page. Her skepticism was evident.

The bells over the door chimed, and Tushar hurried in with two steaming cups of chai, saving me from having to offer some lame excuse. I reached for one and began sipping the hot liquid. It burned my tongue, but I didn’t care. Anything to avoid my mother’s disapproving gaze and keep from having to explain myself.

Mom finished her tea and called the driver to pull the car around. Before stepping out, she called over her shoulder in a loud voice. “I forgot to tell you that Biren stopped by the bungalow today to see you. Tushar, you remember Biren from the wedding? I think you took a good photo of him and Preeti at the reception.”

Tushar nodded humbly.



The next day, Tushar’s father came into the shop to do the accounting, so Tushar and I went on a photo excursion to practice some new skills he’d taught me. It was still unseasonably hot, so I decided to cast aside my need to fit in and wore a Western-style dress. I could not handle another day of sweating through a panjabi that covered me from my neck to my ankles.

We came upon a small group of young boys in dirty slacks who were kneeling on the road watching a spinning top whirl in a frenetic circle. I knelt to photograph them, Tushar teaching me the right settings to capture the movement of the top while keeping everything else static.

“You know, since I’ve been here, I’ve wondered how different my life would have been if I’d never left India,” I said when I stood.

“I’m sure it would be very different.”

We continued down the road in silence.

“Do you ever wish your life was different?” I asked him.

“Why should I think that?” he asked.

I knew he had accepted his life as it was and didn’t suffer the same restlessness that often consumed me as I longed for what was or what could have been.

He looked at me. “You wish your life to be different?”

In a rare moment of truth, I nodded. “All the time. I wish I could just be happy with things as they are, but I always think about what didn’t go as planned, or how to change the future so it does go as planned.”

“That must be very tiring, no?”

I kicked some stray rocks in my path. It was. The restlessness was exhausting. He had no idea how much so. I hadn’t even realized how much so until these recent weeks in India, when I wasn’t thinking about the future. It was hard not to think about the past with the pain of Alex having moved on still fresh and at the forefront of my mind when I found myself alone in bed at night, trying to fall asleep. But as devastating as that had felt in the moment, the rough edge was starting to dull, much faster than it had when we had originally separated. There was something about being in India that forced me to be more present.