The Taste of Ginger(62)

“There was someone long ago. She was beautiful, smart, and an excellent cook. But on the day we were to be wed, she disappeared,” he began, his eyes boring straight into mine.

Captivated, I leaned forward. “What happened?”

“No one knows. She was in her dressing room putting on her sari one minute, and the next, she was gone. The only thing that remained was her sari strewn about the floor as if there had been a struggle. No one ever saw her again.” His tone was somber, and he cast his gaze downward.

“Wow, really?” I was skeptical but tried to keep my voice even.

Tushar laughed. “No, of course not! You Americans will believe any far-fetched Hollywood tale about India!”

“I knew it!” I said, feigning annoyance but unable to mask the smile that overtook my stern expression. I flung lychee ice cream at him with the tiny spoon.

In that moment, I realized how much I needed someone I could laugh with. It was what I missed most about spending time with Carrie, Alex, or Neel before all this. With them, I could spend hours talking about stupid things, and we’d laugh until our bellies were sore. Alex and I had resolved most minor disputes with tickle fights because, with him, it had been easy to feel that carefree. I was still searching for that person in India.

“I’ve never seen you joke around like that.”

I was seeing the lighter and freer side of Tushar, and I liked what I saw.

India had such a serious and formal aura about it, and I craved sarcastic banter.

As he collected himself, his face sobered. “The truth is that I probably would have been married when I was twenty-five, but around that time my father became very ill with cancer. He struggled with the disease for the next four years. I had to focus my energies on the store, and the years escaped from me. Today, I’m an old man.” He winked at the last sentence to lighten the mood again.

I had noticed his father was rather frail. Now, I understood why. I was sure it had been difficult for him to tell me what he had about his father, so I knew not to delve further. I suspected he had shared more with me than he had with anyone else outside of his immediate family.

“Only in India would a thirty-two-year-old man call himself old. In LA, we can’t seem to get the men to settle down until after they’ve passed forty, and even then, it’s a struggle to find someone who isn’t a MAPP,” I said.

He looked at me quizzically.

“Middle-aged Peter Pan,” I said with a chuckle.

He laughed. “California Girl, maybe that means you do not belong in California anymore.”





26


When I returned to the bungalow that evening, Mom, Indira Mami, and Virag Mama were sitting in the living room with serious looks on their faces. Mom’s expression was the same as when I was little and had brought home a grade that wasn’t the highest-possible mark. I dutifully sat across from them and waited for them to speak.

“Preeti, we need to talk to you,” Virag Mama said.

I stared ahead with an open expression and closed mouth. Even though I was family, I was still technically a guest in their home.

Virag Mama and Indira Mami exchanged a look; both seemed unsure how to proceed. Mom remained quiet, deferring to her brother because she was a guest in his home as well. Per Indian tradition, even though she had been raised there, she had lost her rights to the home when she married into Dad’s family.

Indira Mami took the lead. “We are very happy you are here,” she said. “But we know you are spending a lot of time with Tushar. People talk. It is not decent for an unmarried girl to be out with a boy like that.”

Wow, I thought, stunned by how quickly word traveled in this city. “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t realize that we couldn’t be friends.”

My apology was sincere, but only to the extent that I did not want my relatives to be the subject of gossip. I firmly believed I should be able to spend a day with Tushar—or anyone else for that matter—and not have the entire city comment on it. I missed the anonymity of LA, where I could stroll through my neighborhood without anyone speaking to me, even if they had passed me on the street a hundred times before. I also noticed the double standard that was clearly caste based, because I had been out alone with Biren on Christmas just three days earlier, but they had no cause to be alarmed about that.

“Here people gossip,” Indira Mami continued. “They are looking for someone to make a mistake. We must be careful that we do not give them that chance. Our family can never be seen throwing ice cream at someone in public.”

How does she know every little detail? I was shocked and annoyed that someone had bothered to report the minutiae of an innocent outing. It was such a nonissue as far as I was concerned. I would now have to assume my every action would be reported back to Mami and Mama each time I set foot outside the house. It was frustrating to think that the life I was starting to enjoy in Ahmedabad had suddenly become a fishbowl with nowhere to hide.

“We were just playing around,” I said, knowing my tone sounded like that of a petulant child.

I turned to Mom, but her gaze remained fixed on her hands, primly folded in her lap. I then glanced at the closed door to Neel’s bedroom and wondered if he even knew about the conversation we were having in the living room. If he did, surely he would come to my aid.

Virag Mama cleared his throat before he spoke. “Yes, but here it looks bad if people see those things. How do you think it looks for a person from our family to throw food at someone from a working-class family? Hah? On top of everything else, there are so many poor people, and it is not right to waste food, even if it is a single bite.”