What if it was Sanjay? She picked up the third time the phone rang, around mid-morning. It wasn’t Vijay or Sanjay. She didn’t understand much of what the guy at the other end said. Only that he asked for Sanjay Kumar, although it sounded more like Saanjay Koomar.
“He is not at home,” she said. “I beg your pardon?” Did the American voice just ask her when he could call back? She wasn’t sure. She never had trouble following the American accent in the movies, but it sounded so foreign over the phone.
“After six o’clock,” she said anyway, and disconnected.
She made herself a frugal bowl of microwaved instant noodles for lunch and felt her eyes getting heavy thereafter. She shuffled into the bedroom and crawled under the sheets. She was out in seconds. The phone rang a couple of times, but she was lost in a deep stupor.
Somewhere, a phone rang. She was back in Mangalore, and back in her bed, asleep but awake. She was trying desperately to open her eyes. “Tara, phone!” she heard Amma call out. She tried to wriggle out of bed. But her body was immobile, it weighed a ton.
“Tara, that was Sanjay,” Amma’s voice sailed through her head. “You lost your chance.”
She tried to move her head side to side, but every bit of her was paralyzed.
“Still sleeping?” That wasn’t Amma’s voice.
She snapped her eyes open. He was in the room, at the foot of the bed, looming large before her. She got up with a start, but her head collapsed in her hands. She felt woozy.
“Sorry. I think I am jet-lagged,” she slurred, rubbing her face.
“Why didn’t you take my calls? Did you sleep all day?” He made no effort to hide his annoyance. “I tried a couple of times in the morning, too.”
“I didn’t know.” Even her embarrassment wasn’t waking her up fully.
“Didn’t know what?”
“I—I didn’t think you’d call.”
“Seriously?” He shook his head, and disappeared into the bathroom, leaving her to stare stupidly at the footboard. When he came out, the scowl on his face was even deeper.
“So, who did you think it was?”
“What?”
“Who did you think called you?”
“I took a call in the morning. It wasn’t you.” Her embarrassment was growing. She looked down at her hands.
“Who was it?”
“I don’t know. I could not follow the accent. Somebody asked for you, I think.”
“You think? Are you from the bush country? From some tiny, godforsaken hamlet? Aren’t you supposed to have a master’s in English literature?”
She fled to the bathroom, knocking about on unbalanced feet, locked the door, and sat on the rich blue cover of the toilet seat, blinking. She couldn’t let him see the tears. She felt so stupid. She had already rubbed him the wrong way. The tears flowed, hot and earnest.
“All right,” he knocked on the bathroom door. “Get dressed. Don’t you want to go to the market?” His voice had mellowed.
She splashed water on her face, trying to fix the ugly puffiness of her eyes. She felt a little more composed after she had scrubbed her face clean of emotional residue with bar soap. He was out of the bedroom by the time she came out. She could hear the TV blaring in the living room. She had changed into khaki cargo pants and a midnight blue T-shirt, brushing her short, curly hair until it was reasonably tame. She always sought the help of strong hair spray to keep her hair in place. She sprayed some now, all over her curls, and applied a light coat of plum lipstick to her dry lips.
The farmers’ market in Decatur was a surprise. She had never seen so many varieties of fresh fish or colorful vegetables and fruit in her life. Row after row of produce, some with names and forms and colors she had never even heard of. She looked for the familiar ones, running her fingers over shiny red apples, picking a large head of crinkly cabbage, and scanning the orderly line of jumbo-sized kingfish in their bed of ice, before pointing to the one she thought was the freshest one of the lot. Sanjay was happy to let her pick and choose, silently pushing the cart behind her.
They stopped at an Indian store on their way back, where she bought a sack of rice, a five-pound bag of split lentils, small packs of turmeric and chili powder, and whatever else she could think of that was essential to Mangalorean cooking.
Back in the apartment, she got busy in the kitchen. She put a cupful each of lentils and rice to cook in two identical containers, which she inserted into the small stainless Hawkins pressure cooker that Amma had insisted she carry. She marinated kingfish fillets for a while in Amma’s spice blend, and then fried them with a little vegetable oil on a hot griddle. She shredded one half of a cabbage head, and made upkari, a dry side dish, which she garnished lightly with grated coconut.
“The fish is stinking up the place,” he complained from the living room. She had the fan on; what else was she to do? She covered the griddle with a large lid and was relieved when the fish looked brown enough to cut the flame.
She thought the plates looked pretty. It was not as if she had much experience with cooking. If she weren’t so anxious about his approval, she would probably have been proud of her culinary creations. The red-brown, spiced kingfish was a stark, inviting contrast to the white rice, yellow lentils, and the mild green of the cabbage. But he ate silently, scantly, setting his fork down again and again. Sweat beads formed on his dark brows. The fish lay largely untouched.
“You don’t like fish?” she asked, surprised. She couldn’t imagine somebody from the coast not liking fried fish.
He shrugged like an American. “Not much of a seafood lover. Besides, I can’t handle too much spice anymore.”
“Oh! Is it too spicy?” What was she going to cook tomorrow? It was a worrisome thought that she crumpled and stuffed into the back of her head for now.
They ate silently. After dinner, he accepted one laddoo that Amma had specifically sent for her son-in-law, and she ate three before stashing the box back in the fridge. She cleared the plates and loaded the dishwasher. He showed her how to run it. She set about cleaning the kitchen. When she was done, she took a shower and changed into her pajamas.
When she joined him in the living room, he was on the recliner, his back propped far back, in a gray T-shirt and khaki shorts, which were probably what he slept in. He had his laptop, but his attention was on the sitcom that was playing on TV. He was grinning from ear to ear. She had never seen him smile this wide before. His face was less granite-like and more handsome. But the smile waned a bit and turned plastic when he saw her. She sat on the sofa and tried to follow the antics of the TV family. It was much easier to follow the American accent on TV than it was over the phone.
“What show is this?” she asked.
“Everybody Loves Raymond. It’s quite funny,” he said.
She attempted to watch what he watched for the next hour, but she didn’t see much because her thoughts kept scattering here and there. She missed watching Kyun Ki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi (Because mother-in-law was once a daughter-in-law, too). She missed arguing with Amma that the soap saga was such a lowbrow, pedestrian insult to Indian sensibilities. She wondered whether they’d have had some conversation, if not for the TV. There hadn’t been much talking on their way to the farmers’ market or back. The guy on the TV show had an amiable nature, and his wife was pretty and dominating. But they talked and talked, like normal families—except when they paused for canned laughter.