His deep voice boomed to me and even though I couldn’t hear the words, I could feel them, words that were forbidden to women. Sanskrit, sacred words from the Vedas, passed from generation to generation, secretly, to men, by men.
Om
Bhur bhuva swah
Tat savitur varnyam
Bhargo devasya dhimahi
Dhiyo yo nah prachodayat
Om
The words were Sanskrit, unadulterated by bad pronunciation or lack of knowledge. He knew what he was talking about, but I don’t think he really understood what the mantram stood for.
I knew; I had asked Nanna and he had explained to both Nate and me. The mantram stood for enlightenment. It was the way a Brahmin man could become a better person. It was to invoke the sun god and ask the light of the generous sun to enlighten the reader of the mantram, so that he could love all, wipe away hate, and start taking the journey that would bring him closer to the supreme god.
“Why can’t girls say it? Why only boys?” I’d asked Nanna.
“I don’t care if you want to say it,” he said. “Do you want to wake up at six in the morning every day and say the mantram?”
Considering that waking up at seven-thirty in the morning to catch the school bus at eight-thirty was a trial, I shook my head and decided that maybe it was okay that Nate would have to be the one to wake up early, not me. As things turned out, Nate refused to have his thread ceremony done and was planning to never have it done.
“If I don’t feel like a Brahmin, then why should I follow this farce?” he asked my mother, who had then blistered his ear about tradition and culture. He responded to that by saying that just yesterday he’d had beef biriyani at an Irani Café in Mehndipatnam and didn’t care all that much about tradition and culture. Ma was so shocked she never brought the topic up again, mostly, we believed, out of fear that Nate would disclose the meat… no, no, that could even be overlooked, but the beef-eating incident to Thatha and the others. That couldn’t and wouldn’t be overlooked.
“Didn’t the boy know that the cow was sacred?” Ma had demanded of Nanna, whose job it had suddenly become to instruct Nate on how to be a good Brahmin.
“Maybe if you read the Gayatri mantram like my father does, your son will learn something,” Ma had told Nanna, who had turned a deaf ear to her demands and pleas in that regard.
But reading the mantram was just a formality. Thatha didn’t really believe in what it was telling him, to hate none and love all. He did what he did because it was expected of him, because his father before him had said the same mantram in the same way with the same passion and lack of understanding. If Thatha understood and abided by the mantram he would not have a problem accepting Nick or anyone else that I might want to marry.
This was a man whose life was steeped in ritual. Life and tradition lay alongside each other and bled into each other. Thatha didn’t question tradition but accepted it just the way he accepted waking up every morning at six to perform the Gayatri mantram.
He would never come around, I realized sadly. I would have to sacrifice the granddaughter to keep the lover.
Needless to say, Vinay was shocked when I called him. It was just not done, but to his credit he stammered only a few times before saying, yes, he would be at Minerva at 11 A.M. sharp.
“He said okay? Really?” Sowmya asked, her fingers trembling on the piece of ginger she was holding.
“Yes, he did,” I said, and stripped some curry leaves from their stem. “What will you say to him?”
Sowmya resumed grating the ginger. “I don’t know, but I am sure I will be inspired once I sit in front of him. You will be there, won’t you? All the time?”
“Yes,” I said, and popped a peanut into my mouth.
“I can’t believe it is going to happen. Marriage!” Sowmya sounded excited. “But I want to talk to him before I say anything to Nanna. Otherwise… life will be a waste, you know.”
“You’ll leave this house, your parents. Do you think you’ll miss it?”
“I think so,” Sowmya said, looking around the kitchen. “I like this house. It is nice and cozy. The tenants upstairs don’t make too much noise; Parvati comes regularly, more or less, and yes, I am very comfortable here.
“But I am ready for the change,” she said, and paused. She looked around to make sure no one was listening and then whispered, “You have had sex, right?” just as I put another peanut into my mouth. I all but choked on the nut.
“What?”
Sowmya gave me a look laden with curiosity. “You have, right? You live with this American and… you have, right?”
“I…” This was an intensely personal question, but she seemed so eager to know that I nodded.
“How was it the first time?” she asked.
I shrugged. I was mortified.
“Tell me,” she demanded.
I watched her put a wok on the gas stove and fire it up. She poured oil into the wok and looked at me expectantly.
“I don’t remember,” was the best I could do on short notice. Sowmya gave me a “sell me another bridge” look and I grinned, embarrassed. “I… it was fine.”
“Was it with this American?” she asked.
“Yes.” Good Lord, this was not a conversation I was prepared to have.
Sowmya threw some mustard seeds in the wok, and they spluttered in the oil. Some sprang out and landed on the stove and counter. She stirred the mustard seeds for a few moments and then dropped some curry leaves with black and yellow gram dal into the wok and let them sizzle for a while. Then she broke two dry red peppers and plopped them into the oil with crackling fanfare.
“Oh, give me those pachi marapakayalu.” She pointed to the green chilies by the sink, which I was leaning against.
She put green chilies inside the wok as well and sighed, spatula in hand. “I always wondered about it. And now it will actually happen. I am scared and excited.”
I had never seen this side of Sowmya before. This was a dreamy Sowmya, not the practical mouse I had grown up with.
She piled a deep-bowled steel ladle with yogurt and thumped the handle of the ladle on the side of the wok to drop a dollop of yogurt in it. She dropped another dollop of yogurt alongside the first and stirred hard, forcing the thick yogurt to liquefy and mix with the spices already sizzling in the oil.
“I always liked curd rice,” I said, as the familiar smell of burning yogurt filled the kitchen.
“This is the best thing to cook for breakfast,” Sowmya responded. “Fast and easy and I can use all leftovers. Pass me that rice, will you?” She added the rice left over from dinner the previous night to the wok and started to stir hard again, mixing everything into a Telugu breakfast staple.
“Do you think he will say no because I am being so bold?” Sowmya asked, almost as if she were wondering aloud.
“If he does, to hell with him,” I said.
She nodded, smiled, and turned the gas off.
Breakfast was ready.
Everyone in Ma’s family drank filter coffee in the morning. Instant coffee was okay for any other time of day but for mornings it had to be filter coffee. The coffee was made in a steel filter where hot water was poured onto rich ground coffee and filtered to make a thick decoction. The decoction was then mixed with frothy, bubbling hot milk and sugar. I remembered waking up every morning to the smell of decoction. I never got hooked on coffee but I always drank it when I was at Thatha’s house. No matter what Ma said about all filter coffee being the same-“You mix coffee decoction with milk, what skill do you need for that?”-Sowmya’s coffee was way better and she didn’t complain when I added five spoons of sugar to my coffee tumbler either.