> Intercaste Marriage

bluediamond

This is a nice article with a pinch of humor in it.

It's bit long but as it is amazingly written so worth reading.

:-)

So it goes like this:

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

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 it 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, 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 Guatemala 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.