I followed Ananya as she loaded her plate with rice, sambhar, funny-looking
vegetables and two kinds of brown powders.
‘What’s this?’ I asked.
‘Gunpowder, try it,’ she said.
I tasted it. It felt like sawdust mixed with chillies.
‘Yummy, no?’
I nodded at Ananya. Everyone first kept neat little lumps of dishes on their
banana leaf. Soon they mixed it into a slurry heap.
‘Mix more,’ Ananya said as I tried to copy my in-laws-to-be.
‘You are Ananya’s classmate?’ Shobha aunty spoke for the first time.
‘Yes, at IIM,’ I said.
‘IIT student?’
I nodded. Ananya had told me that my IIT tag was the only silver lining in my
otherwise outcast status in their family.
‘Sushila’s cousin is also from IIT. Radha, I told you, no? Harish lives in San
Francisco.’
‘Which batch?’ I asked.
‘IIT Madras, not your college,’ Shobha aunty said, pissed off at being
interrupted.
I kept quiet and looked at the various vegetables, trying to recognize them. I
said hello to beans and cabbage.
‘Harish’s parents want to get him married. You have Ananya’s nakshtram?’
Shobha aunty said.
‘No, not yet,’ Ananya’s mother said.
‘What, swami? Your wife is not interested in finding a good son-in-law?’
I couldn’t believe they were discussing all this in my presence. ‘Can you pass
the rice?’ I said, hoping to steer the conversation elsewhere.
nora
(Nora)
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