Serving Crazy With Curry (11 page)

“What the hell am I doing here?” Avi raged, moving his stump. “This is all I am left with. The army gave me this and what else? No medal, no nothing. Just some extra money in my paycheck, as if that will take care of… No, Saro, I want to do this. Vikram thinks I am the right person to help him run the company. I need this and I need your support because I can't do this without you.”

If he had said that he expected her support or had ordered her to do his bidding, Saroj would probably have protested, but he said that he needed her, that he couldn't make it without her, and Saroj's resolve weakened.

Shobha was barely a year old when Saroj packed her family bags and moved to the United States. Her resentment toward the country started during the long interminable flight. It seemed like it would never end. They flew from New Delhi to London and then from London to New York and then from New York to San Francisco.

Avi was staring at the tall buildings in San Francisco with stars in his eyes. Saroj was not impressed. She wanted to go home where she could chat with the milkman in the morning and buy vegetables in her front yard from the vendors. She didn't want to learn to drive a car on the other side of the road and didn't understand the concept of supermarkets. When she turned on the radio, Kishore Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar were not singing. It was all so damn hard.

As if that wasn't bad enough, Avi was gone most of the day and came home late in the night. Saroj was left alone with Shobha and no one to talk to. It was not like how it is now with a hundred Indian restaurants all over the Bay Area and an Indian grocery store within sneezing distance. There was nothing in those days.

The loneliness bit into her. She made a few friends, wives of other Indian men, but it wasn't the same, it wasn't enough. When she stepped out of her house there was nothing familiar, no vegetable vendor selling coriander and mint, no coconut vendor selling coconut water. It was a bland place they'd moved to, this country with no
masala.
And then there were the looks. Oh, how everyone stared at her, at her saris and her
salwar-kameez.
She heard snickers and comments, she was constantly afraid of foreigners, but they were there everywhere. And technically she was the foreigner; the white people belonged to this country. Saroj hated it.

“This isn't working,” she burst out in tears one day, yelling at Avi. “I'm here all day, stuck in the house, and you're gone, having fun.”

“Fun? Saroj, I'm working all the time. I'm trying to make something out of my company… our company. This is yours, too, Saroj,” Avi said, trying to placate.

Things were going from bad to worse and then they became terrible when Saroj got pregnant again.

“I want to go home,” she announced. “I want to have this baby in India.”

“Where in India?” Avi asked. “With Vasu?”

The idea of being with Vasu while she was pregnant didn't have much appeal but Saroj persisted that it was Avi who wasn't letting her go home. She maintained that fiction for a long time, even though she knew that there was nothing to go back to. But India was still home. The United States never became home. It was a foreign land, and even though Shobha and Devi said they were American, Saroj tried to instill Indian values in them. In Shobha she succeeded to a point, but with Devi… well the proof was in the
payasam.
Hadn't she just tried to kill herself? If only they had stayed in India, things would have been different, better, Saroj was sure of it.

•••

A whole week passed and the “incident” seemed unreal now, even though in the back of her mind there was a constant struggle. One Devi wanted to stay home and enjoy cooking and not talking, while the other Devi wanted action, wanted to get into that bathtub again and end it once more.

She had her first meeting with Dr. Mara Berkley, who seemed unhappy about Devi's silence, but took it in stride and asked Devi yes-or-no questions. She was pleased about the cooking.

“You know, those who think about death, don't cook,” Dr. Berkley told her sympathetically. “Inside you there's something that wants to live and taste and explore.”

Devi didn't know how to explain to the good doctor that it was to avoid looking inside her that she started cooking. It was her only escape from the silence outside, and the chaos within. It was the only way to not think about the answers to the questions everyone in her family was always asking, even if they didn't open their mouths.

“Have you started a journal?” the doctor asked and seemed very excited when Devi nodded.

Could she really call Saroj's old notebook a journal? Or was it a recipe book? Or was it Saroj's little secret unraveled? All those recipes she called her own were maybe not; at least one of them wasn't. One of the recipes actually belonged to a person called Girija.

While Dr. Berkley spoke with Avi, who had brought her to the doctor's office, Devi waited in Avi's Jeep, wondering if it would really be a crime if she started the car and drove away. She didn't have her credit cards or her driver's license, but so many people didn't and they got along just fine. Before she could tempt herself any further, Avi came back, a smile adorning his face.

“Do you want to drive,
beta}”
he asked, and when Devi raised an eyebrow suspiciously, he pulled out his wallet and handed Devi her driver's license.

It had taken Devi five tries at the DMV ten years ago to get her license, yet it was now that it made her most happy to hold it in her hands. This was freedom, she could go away if she wanted to, anywhere.

She felt like celebrating her newly found liberty.

Growing up, Devi's memories of hot-hot
biriyani
were associated with special occasions. On Saroj and Avi's wedding anniversaries, Saroj would make
biriyani;
on birthdays, she would make
biriyani.
It was her standard “happy news” dish. Shobha's marriage has been arranged, let's make
biriyani.

Entering the kitchen, her driver's license ensconced safely in the front pocket of her Levi's, Devi felt an itch for
biriyani.
She put her hand inside her pocket and ran her fingers over the plastic texture of the license and smiled. Did this mean she was all right and that she could move back into her own place? She knew her father had canceled her lease and wanted her to stay with them while she recuperated. He had told her not to worry about anything but getting better. But all Devi really wanted to do was get away from the stifling presence of her entire family.

And what the hell was wrong with Girish and Shobha? Earlier it would take mammoth planning sessions between Saroj and Shobha before they'd come over for dinner or lunch, together. Now, for the past week, they'd come every night, together or around the same time.

As if it wasn't bad enough having Vasu, Mama, and Daddy hovering, now she had to also deal with Shobha's not-so-sharp remarks and Girish's overwhelming concern. Yes, she was going to run away. Drive down Highway i, sit on a vista point, and see the ocean slam into the rocks below. Go to Sausalito and look back at San Francisco. Do anything to get away from this house and the people in it.

“Do you want me to cook tonight?” Saroj asked her standard question. She tried every day to take the kitchen away from Devi's grasp, and every day Devi shook her head and got to work.

Devi pulled out a sticky notepad that Saroj kept inside a drawer for making her shopping lists and started writing on it. When she was done, she handed it to Saroj, who quirked an eyebrow.

“I don't think your father is very fond of prawns, Devi,” she said, not quite sure what Devi was planning to concoct this night.

Devi just turned her back to Saroj and started attacking the herb pot's coriander section.

•••

If Devi didn't feel so suicidal already, now would be a good time to start feeling that way. Everyone, even Shobha, was being nice and kind. It was cloying, as if she'd eaten too many sticky-sweet jalebis.

Worst of course was Saroj. The woman couldn't leave her alone in the kitchen to do as she pleased. In the days after the “incident,” Devi completely took over cooking and had no clue why. Food was an essential; thinking about what to cook for lunch during breakfast, and what to cook for dinner during lunch, kept her mind busy. And during dinner, well, during dinner she thought about what to cook the next day.

If she couldn't use her tongue for talking, she felt she had to use it for something else and her taste buds, since the “incident,” had come alive. Food, which had been merely meals before, objects of sustenance, had become objects of art.

“If you keep cooking like this, I'm going to bloat up completely,” Avi said, grinning from ear to ear. He was very proud that Devi was working her way out of a postsuicidal slump through cooking. And then there was the food: it was as if almost dying had rearranged her genes and given her an instinctive insight into cuisine. She knew, she just seemed to know what to add to what to make the food taste just right.

“This is excellent
biriyani…
the spices, Devi… just wonderful,” Vasu said, smacking her lips in satisfaction during dinner.

Devi was pleased the Cajun prawn
biriyani
was receiving so much praise. She stroked the plastic flatness of her driver's license again and wondered if this would be the last meal she made at home.

She picked up a prawn and carefully removed the shell and then bit into the lush pink flesh. Would this be the last meal she ate? She wiped her hands on a napkin and decided to stop eating. As good as the
biriyani
tasted, it also made her nauseous.

Saroj seemed to be enjoying the food, and that surprised as well as pleased Devi. Mama never ate anything but Indian food. Once in a while she'd try Thai, but her heart was with good old-fashioned
south Indian food. Growing up, Saroj served only Indian food in the house. There were no two ways about it with her.

“You can eat all the nonsense you like outside this house. In here, I will only make
good
Indian food,” Saroj told her family.

At least she didn't insist they become vegetarian like a lot of Indians abroad did. Devi couldn't imagine how her life would be if she couldn't eat salmon mousse or
rogan josh.

“If we were in India, this would've never happened,” Saroj told Avi while they were clearing up the dishes after dinner. “Girls don't commit suicide like this in India, not those from good families at least.”

Avi always helped with cleaning up. Even though he was a hand short, he did what he could. Saroj couldn't fault him on that, but that didn't stop her from complaining about how slow he was, or how he put the dishes in the wrong place. There were serious problems in their marriage, but she didn't want to talk about those problems. Fussing about small household matters was easier than delving into the deeper, darker aspects of her relationship with Avi.

“No matter where we were, Devi would still be Devi,” Avi pointed out as he placed a casserole with Devi's shrimp
biriyani
on the kitchen counter. “Save some for lunch tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Saroj said, tasting some of the
biriyani
and sighing in pleasure. She hated to admit it, but Devi was cooking like a veteran chef. It had been a week since she'd been released from the hospital and now everyone was afraid that they were putting on weight. Girish and Shobha were coming for dinner every night, the family was sticking together, ensuring that the “mute in the kitchen”—as Shobha called Devi—would have all the support she needed.

“What did she do with this
biriyani?
It tastes so good. I never would've thought prawns in this would work, but
she
knows. I can't understand it,” Saroj said as she ate some more of the
biriyani
before putting it inside Tupperware and sealing it shut.

Avi shrugged.

“She never cooked before, but now she wants to cook all the
time, like my food is not good enough. What do you think?” Saroj was babbling and didn't really expect any answer.

“And she won't talk. It has been a week since she came back home and still, she says nothing. This is your doing. You spoiled her so,” Saroj continued as she stacked dirty dishes in the dishwasher.

“And maybe if you were a little more compassionate, Devi would have come to us, not found a knife to hack through her problems,” Avi retorted angrily and then calmed visibly. “Damn it, Saroj, this is no one's fault. It just happened. Deal with it.”

“Deal with it?” Tears sprang into her eyes. “My baby … just…” She was sobbing now, and Avi flung the hand towel he was holding on the counter.

“I can't stand with this constant
rona-dhona.
You need to get a grip and stop crying at the drop of a—” Avi stopped speaking, raised his hands in defeat, and walked out into the living room in frustration while Saroj stared out the kitchen window, bewildered and hurt by his tone of voice and his words.

A long time ago when she cried, Avi would put his arm around her and cajole her into a good mood. But sometime in the past three decades that changed. It used to be he couldn't stand it when she cried; now he couldn't stand her when she cried.

In the living room her family sat without speaking to each other. Her mother was sitting next to Devi who was watching the news on CNN, while Shobha stood on the stairs with her cell phone glued to her ear. Girish was reading the newspaper, and Avi was lighting his pipe. He had given up cigarettes but in the past three years, since he'd retired, he smoked the pipe occasionally. Saroj tried to stop him, but gave up after the first few arguments.