Chapter Two
KIRAN
One of Kiran’s favorite things about the United States, to this day, was grocery shopping.
She knew it was weird, but it was so easy here.
When she was growing up in her residential colony in India, it took four trips: to a milk vendor, a vegetable market, a grains shop, and stores that had odds and ends to gather all one’s food together, but here it was all in one place. She could take her time. There were no aunties pushing behind her or stressing her vocal cords to be heard by the subziwala as he measured out orders of vegetables with rusted weights older than her.
Kiran hauled a basket on wheels behind her, like a child with a wagon, strutting her way through the aisles.
She squeezed a Roma tomato, turning it in her hand, uncaring about any looks she might get for playing with a vegetable. This was how Ma had taught her to gauge a vegetable’s freshness and flavor. Just as her fingers left slight imprints on the tomato, deeming it worthy of the tanginess she so loved when she cooked, her phone rang.
It was as if Ma had heard her thoughts from across the world.
“Hullo, Ma.”
“Kiran, beta, kaise ho?”
“I’m fine, Ma,” Kiran responded back in Hindi.
“What are you doing? I hear people in the background.”
“I’m grocery shopping. How are you? Why are you up at”—Kiran checked her phone and calculated ten hours ahead—“4:00 a.m.? Is everything okay?”
“Yes, yes, everything is fine. I couldn’t sleep.”
“Why not?”
“I’m a mother, Kiran. We worry all day and all night. It’s what we do.”
“What are you worried about?” Kiran pulled her basket to the checkout. “Is Baba okay? Is it his heart again?”
“He’s snoring like a lion right now.”
Kiran exhaled a sigh of relief and placed her vegetables and a half gallon of milk on the belt. “Aren’t you going to wake him up, Ma? You’re shouting at me like I’m supposed to hear you from India.”
“Arrey, your father could sleep through an earthquake. Don’t you worry about him. It’s you we worry about more.”
“Why me?” Here goes.
“You’re nearly thirty, Kiran. At some point, we have to do our duty and get you married. We supported you through your school and college and while you needed to get settled with your career. Now you need to get married.”
“I’m not against getting married. It hasn’t clicked yet.”
“What clicking? You speak to a boy—look at his education, how much money he makes, if he comes from a good family—and bas, you’re married.”
Kiran swiped her credit card, gave the tired cashier a smile in gratitude, collected her bags, and took a deep breath before walking toward the exit. “It’s not that easy.”
“You keep saying it’s not easy, but you’re making it complicated.”
Kiran breathed into the phone but said nothing.
“Beta, you are already older than most of the girls back home and unmarried. Many of them are on their third child already. We want to be grandparents too. It’s our last duty before we die.”
“You’re not going to die.”
“Baba almost did, remember?”
Kiran felt a guilty jab. “I don’t ever forget. I worry about it every day.”
“We would like to give our daughter away proudly. We haven’t had that chance before.”
There it was. The elephant in the room raised its colossal pink trunk and sounded a trumpet that would rattle the very sidewalks Kiran walked on…and she was supposed to ignore it. The references to her sister were a combination of family baggage and guilt trips, packaged as a reasonable argument.
“I’ll keep talking to people, Ma,” Kiran said, resigned.
“Good. That’s all I ask. What parent doesn’t want to be proud of their daughter as they marry her off?” Ma’s very tone shifted to a bubblier one, and Kiran could tell her mother was imagining her dressed like a dulhan on her wedding day. Only that level of positive visualization could make her mother so happy so quickly.
“No one I know.”
“Ah, your baba has woken up. Here he is.”
There was a shuffle on the other end and an irritated grumble from her dad at Ma’s very noisy sleep interruption. But his voice was upbeat and full of love when he spoke to Kiran.
“Hello, Kiran, beta. How are you?”
“Baba, hi. Did we wake you?”
“Ahh, your ma never lets anyone rest peacefully. If she’s up, the whole neighborhood must wake up too. I can practically hear Chadda Bhai down the road, shining his auto already.”
“I wonder if he already has paan in his mouth.”
“It’s four thirty in the morning. He’s probably on his third one.” Baba chuckled.
Kiran smiled softly, remembering the uncle down the street who always slipped her a hard candy from his pocket and whose affectionate smile was tinged with red from his habit of chewing betel nuts. It was he who had suggested Baba and Ma move to Delhi permanently and had even referred them to the apartment her parents now occupied.
“How is the shop?”
“You know how it is. Your chacha says it’s good. But even small towns like Ramnagar are growing fancy.”
Kiran thought back to the village. She’d moved her parents to Delhi, two hours away from Ramnagar and closer to medical attention and better doctors, after Baba’s heart attack two years ago. He’d given his small shop to his younger brother to take care of, and her parents received a monthly deposit from the profits.
“Baba, are you taking your medication?”
“I try, beta. These medications are hard to remember.”
“Baba! You can’t forget.” Kiran stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “These pills save your life.”
“Kiran, your mother already chews my brain about these things. Must you do it too?”
“Who else will? You only have us.”
“At least a man feels loved.”
“I’m not there to look out for you. Only Ma can. And she’s busy enough with taking care of the house. Make sure you take those pills.”
“When did my daughter become such an adult, huh? Telling her father what to do,” he teased.
“That’s life, no? Parents become children and children become parents.”
“Ever the philosopher, my Kiran. Go cook some dinner. Eat well. Take care of your health.”
“I will. You too. Don’t forget—”
“To take my medicine. I know.”
“Well, if you know, then you should do it, no?”
“You were always too smart for your own good,” Baba grumbled. “Come home soon, beta. The house comes alive when you’re here.”
Kiran’s memory jogged back to her younger years, as a child with little silver anklets tinkling when she walked and her father coming home to her and her sister.
My glory and my light, he called them, referring to the meaning of their names.
“I wish I could bring the light, Baba,” Kiran said softly.
“You do well in America, and do your duty, beta. Your light will shine all the way to Delhi.”
Kiran hung up, missing both her parents and their quirks so much that it ached inside her.