---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: N Sekar <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, Sep 17, 2024, 9:57 PM
Subject: Fwd - Oh, children, Oh, children - poor parents
To: Kerala Iyer <[email protected]>, Chittanandam V. R. <
[email protected]>, Rangarajan T.N.C. <[email protected]>,
Narayanaswamy Sekar <[email protected]>, Mathangi K. Kumar <
[email protected]>, Suryanarayana Ambadipudi <[email protected]>,
Srinivasan Sridharan <[email protected]>
_*Strategy specialist ....*_
Grandmother was pretending to be lost in prayer, but her prayer-beads were
spinning at top speed. That meant she was either excited or upset.
Mother had just put the receiver down. "Some American girl in his office,
she's coming to stay with us for a week." She sounded as if she had a deep
foreboding.
Father had no such doubt. He knew the worst was to come. He had been
matching horoscopes for a year, but my brother Vivek had found a million
excuses for not being able to visit India, call any of the chosen Iyer
girls, or in any other way advance father's cause.
Father always wore four parallel lines of sacred ash on his forehead.
Now there were eight, so deep were the furrows of worry on his
forehead. I sat in a corner, supposedly lost in a book, but furiously
text-messaging my brother with a vivid description of the scene
before me.
A few days later I stood outside the airport with father. He tried not to
look directly at any American woman going past, and held up the card
reading "Barbara". Finally a large woman stepped out, waved wildly and
shouted "Hiiii! Mr. Aayyyezh, how ARE you?" Everyone
turned and looked at us. Father shrank visibly before my eyes. Barbara took
three long steps and covered father in a tight embrace. Father's
jiggling out of it was too funny to watch. I could hear him whispering
"Shiva shiva!". She shouted "you must be Vijaantee?" "Yes, Vyjayanthi" I
said with a smile. I imagined little half-Indian children calling me
"Vijaantee aunty!".
Suddenly, my colorless existence in Madurai had perked up. For at least
the next one week, life promised to be quite exciting! Soon we were eating
lunch at home. Barbara had changed into an even shorter skirt. The low
neckline of her blouse was just in line with father's eyes. He was glaring
at mother as if she had conjured up Barbara just to torture him. Barbara
was asking "You only have vegetarian food? Always??" as if the idea was
shocking to her. "You know what really goes well with Indian food,
especially chicken? Indian beer!" she said with a pleasant smile, seemingly
oblivious to the apoplexy of the
gentleman in front of her, or the choking sounds coming from mother.
I had to quickly duck under the table to hide my giggles. Everyone tried to
get the facts without asking the one question on all our
minds: What was the exact nature of the relationship between Vivek and
Barbara? She brought out a laptop computer. "I have some pictures of Vivek"
she said. All of us crowded around her. The first picture was quite
innocuous. Vivek was wearing shorts, and standing alone on the beach. In
the next photo, he had Barbara draped all over him. She was wearing a
skimpy bikini and leaning across, with her hand lovingly circling his neck.
Father got up, and flicked the towel off his
shoulder. It was a gesture we in the family had learned to fear. He
literally ran to the door and went out. Barbara said "It must be hard for
Mr. Aayyezh. He must be missing his son." We didn't have the heart to tell
her that if said son had been within reach, father would have lovingly
wrung his neck.
My parents and grandmother apparently had reached an unspoken agreement.
They would deal with Vivek later. Right now Barbara was a foreigner, a lone
woman, and needed to be treated as an honored guest. It must be said that
Barbara didn't make that one bit easy. Soon mother wore a perpetual frown.
Father looked as though he could use some of that famous Indian beer.
Vivek had said he would be in a conference in Guatemala all week, and
would be off both phone and email. But Barbara had long lovey-dovey
conversations with two other men, one man named Steve and another named
Keith. The rest of us strained to hear every interesting word.
"I miss you!" she said to both. She also kept talking with us about Vivek,
and about the places they'd visited together. She had pictures to prove it,
too. It was all very confusing.
This was the best play I'd watched in a long time. It was even better than
the day my cousin ran away with a Telugu Christian girl. My aunt had come
howling through the door, though I noticed that she made it to the plushest
sofa before falling in a faint. Father said that if it had been his child,
the door would have been forever shut in his face.
Aunt promptly revived and said "You'll know when it is your child!"
How my aunt would rejoice if she knew of Barbara!
On day five of her visit, the family awoke to the awful sound of
Barbara's retching. The bathroom door was shut, the water was
running, but far louder was the sound of Barbara crying and throwing up at
the same time. Mother and grandmother exchanged ominous glances. Barbara
came out, and her face was red. "I don't know why", she said, "I feel
queasy in the mornings now."
If she had seen as many Indian movies as I'd seen, she'd know why.
Mother was standing as if turned to stone. Was she supposed to react
with the compassion reserved for pregnant women? With the criticism
reserved for pregnant unmarried women? With the fear reserved for pregnant
unmarried foreign women who could embroil one's son in a paternity suit?
Mother, who navigated familiar flows of married life with the skill of a
champion oarsman, now seemed completely taken off her moorings. She seemed
to hope that if she didn't react it might all disappear like a bad dream.
I made a mental note to not leave home at all for the next week.
Whatever my parents would say to Vivek when they finally got a-hold of him
would be too interesting to miss. But they never got a chance.
The day Barbara was to leave, we got a terse email from Vivek. "Sorry,
still stuck in Guatemala. Just wanted to mention, another friend of mine,
Sameera Sheikh, needs a place to stay. She'll fly in from Hyderabad
tomorrow at 10am. Sorry for the trouble."
So there we were, father and I, with a board saying "Sameera". At last a
pretty young woman in salwar-khameez saw the board, gave the smallest of
smiles, and walked quietly towards us. When she did 'Namaste' to father, I
thought I saw his eyes mist up. She took my
hand in the friendliest way and said "Hello, Vyjayanthi, I've heard so much
about you." I fell in love with her.
In the car father was unusually friendly. She and Vivek had been in the
same group of friends in Ohio University. She now worked as a Child
Psychologist. She didn't seem to be too bad at family psychology either.
She took out a shawl for grandmother, a saree for mother and
Hyderabadi bangles for me. "Just some small things. I have to meet a
professor at Madurai university, and it's so nice of you to let me stay"
she said. Everyone cheered up. Even grandmother smiled.
At lunch she said "This is so nice. When I make sambar, it comes out like
chole, and my chole tastes just like sambar". Mother was smiling.
"Oh just watch for 2 days, you'll pick up." Grandmother had never
allowed a muslim to enter the kitchen. But mother seemed to have
taken charge, and decided she would bring in who ever she felt was worthy.
Sameera circumspectly stayed out of the puja room, but on the third day, I
was stunned to see father inviting her in and telling her which idols had
come to him from his father. "God is one" he said. Sameera nodded sagely.
By the fifth day, I could see the thought forming in
the family's collective brains. If this fellow had to choose his own bride,
why couldn't it be someone like Sameera?
On the sixth day, when Vivek called from the airport saying he had cut
short his Gautemala trip and was on his way home, all had a million things
to discuss with him. He arrived by taxi at a time when Sameera had gone to
the University. "So, how was Barbara's visit?" he asked blithely. "How do
you know her?" mother asked sternly. "She's my
secretary" he said. "She works very hard, and she'll do anything to
help." He turned and winked at me.
Oh, I got the plot now! By the time Sameera returned home that evening, it
was almost as if her joining the family was the elders' idea. "Don't worry
about anything", they said, "we'll talk with your
parents."
On the wedding day a huge bouquet arrived from Barbara. "Flight to
India - $1500. Indian kurta - $5. Emetic to throw up - $1. The look on your
parents' faces - priceless" it said.
****
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