Serving Crazy With Curry (19 page)

DEVI'S RECIPE
LAMB CLITORIS
The day everyone found out

Jay once told me that the pomegranate seed is sometimes compared to the clitoris for being pink, succulent, and an aphrodisiac. So I decided to name the recipe Lamb Clitoris in honor of Jay, the clitoris, and of course the day when my wall of secrets fell apart around me.

I put some flour, salt, and spices in a freezer bag and then put the pieces of lamb in and then went shake-shake-shake. The lamb was nicely covered with the flour. I browned the lamb and then put it aside.

Then I fried some onion with cinnamon, cloves, and cardamom, added some tomatoes and then the lamb, and cooked until the lamb was all flaky. I mixed chopped lettuce, pieces of avocado, and pomegranate seeds, along with a little bit of lemon juice.

I cut the pita bread open, put the lamb curry in, and then the lettuce-avocado mixture. All done!

These days whenever I cook, I stop to think that if my baby were alive, what would I be cooking? Where would I be? I think about it a lot. I think about it a lot while I cook and then I imagine that the child was to be and the child was as old as me and I was as old as my mother and everything was different.

Deader Than a Dead Relationship

Saroj made her own spices. It was something she believed in and couldn't imagine why people would buy those ridiculous packets of ready-made spices available in Indian grocery stores.

“It is simple to make,” Saroj said when she saw Devi write
rasam
powder on her shopping list. “I just ran out a few weeks ago. But we will make it together. Okay?”

For a moment Saroj thought Devi would refuse. She probably thought that she didn't need her mother's help and Saroj wanted so much to help.

Devi nodded and struck
rasam
powder from the list.

“Should we make it now?” Saroj asked, pleased, and Devi nodded again.

“Good,” Saroj said as she rolled up the sleeves of her
kameez.
“Very, very simple.”

Saroj brought out her cast-iron pan, the one she'd brought all the way from India when she once went on vacation. “This is the best pan to use because it gets very hot,” Saroj said and started going through her spice cabinet.

She heated the pan and started filling it with coriander seeds, black peppercorns, cumin seeds, fenugreek seeds, mustard seeds, a few sticks of cinnamon, fresh curry leaves, and a little asafoetida.

“You have to be careful not to burn the seeds,” she told Devi. “The spices come alive when they are roasted like this. Can you smell it?”

The kitchen air thickened with the smell of the spices, their essence spilling out of the hot cast-iron pan. The mustard seeds started to splutter a little and Saroj shook the pan, moving the whole spices around. Right before they turned dark brown (she always knew when that time was) she picked up the pan and, using a wooden spatula, poured the mixture inside the coffee grinder she used especially for spices.

“Don't use Daddy's,” Saroj told Devi. “Coffee ruins the taste of the powder.”

She then added oil to the hot cast-iron pan, which immediately caused sizzling, broke open three dried red chilies, and dropped them in.

“This makes the flavor of the chili come out,” she told Devi as she put the lightly fried chilies into the grinder as well.

She started the grinder, stopping to smell the spices and feel their textures with her fingers at regular intervals. When everything was ground to a fine powder she brought out the medium-sized airtight glass container labeled
RASAM POWDER
and poured the powder inside it.

“There, wasn't it simple?” Saroj said, flushed with delight. She could teach Devi how to cook as well. No one was born knowing the basics and even though Devi was doing a fabulous job, when it came to Indian food and spices, how could the girl know anything? She needed Saroj's advice.

Devi smiled and then started scribbling on the shopping list again.

Saroj wondered if it had made any difference at all or would Devi have been just as happy if she'd bought the
rasam
powder from the store.

That evening Devi made
rasam,
but she served it with a flaky pastry on top.

“This is really good,” Shobha said as she bit into the pastry soaked in
rasam.

Everyone joined Shobha in complimenting the food, but they were all subdued. Girish was so withdrawn that even Saroj felt sorry for him. She wondered how bad things had gotten between him and Shobha. Just because she didn't acknowledge something was wrong didn't mean she was blind or stupid. She saw what was going on, could feel the tension between them, and was unhappy because of it. But if Shobha didn't talk to her about her problems what could she do? She couldn't help those who didn't ask for help. And even if Shobha came and asked for help to make her marriage better, Saroj wasn't sure what assistance she could offer.

How could she offer any marital advice when her own marriage was in ruins? Just because she didn't acknowledge that, either, didn't mean she didn't know it.

Vasu was sipping the
rasam
from her spoon slowly, her head lolling a little, almost falling into the bowl. The news of the miscarriage really shook her up. Saroj understood. Devi had been closest to her and Vasu was probably wondering why she knew nothing about Devi's life as it had been a few months ago.

If only Devi would start speaking, Saroj thought unhappily. This cooking business was great, but the girl had to talk, tell them what happened, so that the wounds could heal. Losing a baby was never easy and in Devi's case it obviously was a huge tragedy, something so massive that it drove her to the edge of her world.

This was supposed to be her perfect family? Saroj looked from one forlorn face to the other and wondered. This was her family and yet, as she sat, all she really wanted was her husband back. If that part of her life would somehow repair itself, everything else, she believed, would follow suit.

After the rummy party, Saroj seriously started contemplating happiness and why it was elusive to her. She saw Amrita again, at Kohinoor, the Indian video and DVD store.

“Picking up one of my movies?” Amrita asked, seeing the DVD Saroj held. It was one of Amrita's old movies, one that her ex-husband Pradeep Shankar directed.

“Yes, I saw it earlier, but just wanted to refresh my memory,” Saroj said. She thought Amrita would make some reference to their
conversation in Meera's guest bathroom, but the actress gushed about how wonderful it was to see her movies again and now available on DVD.

“It is so clear … unbelievable and now preserved,” Amrita said, excited. “You tell me what you think about the movie, okay?
Ciao.”

Ciao?
Indians didn't say
ciao,
Saroj thought, throwing a disgusted look at Amrita Saxena's slender back as she left the store.

She didn't want to end up like that stupid actress, divorcing and marrying and divorcing and marrying to find happiness. Happiness was here, she had seen it, felt it, lived it. She just had to get it back, had to reach out and shake Avi out of his stupor. Their marriage had lost all semblance of a relationship. They were like roommates now, barely able to communicate about anything but time schedules. This was the dull, ugly side of marriage that Saroj was always confident she would never see. Just as the silverware she received from Avi's mother after their marriage caught tarnish, their marriage had lost luster as well. She'd been less careful with her marriage than she'd been with the silver plates and cutlery, which still shone.

But what if beneath the tarnish and the stains of apathy, there was nothing? Saroj felt that it was that subconscious fear that kept both of them from trying to repair their relationship. It had all started to fall apart at some time, and even if she could pinpoint that exact moment, how would it help solve the predicament she was in now?

After dinner, the kids, as Saroj still thought of them, and Vasu sat down to watch a Hindi movie. Girish made noise about missing some Spanish movie on the Independent Film Channel. The intellectual
laatsahab]

“You can go home and see what you want to see,” Shobha said as she sat cross-legged on the carpet by Vasu's legs. “We're going to watch Sunil Shetty light up the screen.”

“With wet and half-naked young girls,” Vasu reminded her and then glanced at Girish. “Are you sure you don't want to watch the movie?”

“You mean there will be nubile girls drenched from head to toe?” Girish asked sarcastically. “I think I'll pass.”

“And they'll be wearing thin white saris so that you can see their titties,” Shobha said with a broad grin and was immediately admonished by Saroj.

“What's wrong with the word
titties?”
Shobha instantly demanded. “It's not a bad word like … say …”

Devi started giggling softly.

“Don't even think it,” Saroj cried out, but she was smiling. This was good, she thought happily. This family scene was right. Everything was in place. Wasn't it?

“Are you sure you don't want to watch nubile half-naked wet girls?” Saroj asked Avi, playfully falling in step with the mood in the house.

“When I have you,
janam,
why would I look at anyone else?” he said as he used to a long time ago when she would tease him about him leaving her for another woman.

Saroj's heart took a small leap, and recognition flared in Avi's eyes as well. Then Avi's expression shuttered again as he carted plates from the dining area to the kitchen sink.

As the opening credits started to roll with cheesy Hindi movie music in the background, Saroj decided to throw the first dart in the dark.

“Would you like to go for a walk after we do the dishes?” Saroj asked Avi and felt the same nervousness she had when she talked to him about marrying her all those years ago. But this was harder than that had been. She didn't have anything to lose then. Now everything was at stake.

“Walk?” Avi asked as if Saroj had spoken in an alien tongue.

“Yes, like we used to … remember, in Udhampur?” Saroj said as she gnawed on her lower lip, feeling as gauche as a teenager propositioning a boy she had a crush on. “It is nice and warm outside … and I thought… we don't have to …”

“No, no,” Avi said, sounding just as uncomfortable. “Sure. A walk should be good. We could just walk by the park or something.”

“Yes,” Saroj said, her heart light.

•••

Shobha watched him surreptitiously. He was sitting next to Vasu as if someone had put a gun to his head. He didn't like Hindi movies, the intellectual snob.

“This is not as bad as I thought it would be,” Girish said, making an exasperated sound as a young Indian woman came onscreen wearing a thin red chiffon sari. And then predictably the skies above her rumbled with false thunder and rain started to fall, soaking her to the skin, displaying all her bodily assets.

“Oh my, they do leave nothing to imagination these days, don't they?” Vasu said when the actress leaned over in her dance routine. Her breasts were an eyeful.

“I thought they wore white when they did this rain song-and-dance business,” Shobha complained. “I want white.”

“I like red,” Girish said. “And I must say that color and sari bring out the best in her.”

The Hindi actress was singing in the rain now and Shobha was sure that if one looked carefully, one could count her pubic hairs, clearly visible through the thin, wet, red sari.

“Maybe if I wore that sari and stood under the shower it could do miracles for us,” Shobha snapped at him for no reason except habit.

“Maybe … maybe not,” Girish said and then turned his attention to Vasu. “In your days women had more class, didn't they, G'ma?”

Vasu looked from Shobha to Girish and then raised her eyebrows. “Are you asking about women in general or women in the movies?”

“In the movies,” Girish said after waiting a long moment.

“It was not the same tits-and-ass show it is now, but I don't compare. There were good movies then and there were bad movies then, same as now,” Vasu said. “Devi loves old black-and-white Hindi movies.”

“Don't I know it,” Girish said. “We went to San Francisco once when they were having a Guru Dutt film festival and saw
Pyaasa
and
Kagaz Ke Phool.
She sobbed all the way back from the city.”

Devi made a face and shook her head.

“Yes you did,” Girish said smugly. “Big tears and lots of sobbing and hiccupping.”

“When was this?” Shobha asked as small hairs stood at attention on the back of her neck.

“Ah, some time ago,” Girish said negligently.

“When?”

“How does it matter?” Girish said and then went back to discussing women in Indian cinema.

Shobha could feel the blood surge through her. He was so friendly, so much fun, so charming with Vasu and Devi, but as soon as they were alone he turned into a sarcastic devil.

Maybe she should have slept with Vladimir, maybe she should have slept with a billion other men while she was married to Mr. Sarcasm. Tears of frustration threatened to spill out of her eyes. Her marriage was over, she knew, but each time she re-realized it, it was a blow. And she still didn't know what to do about it. Should she just tell Girish to his face that it was over and turn her back on him?

She watched her parents go out for a walk and wondered if she and Girish would look like her parents if they stayed married. Would she have the same fucked-up marriage her parents did? Oh Lord, she didn't want to be her mother. She didn't even want to be her father. She just wanted to be happy. It sounded like such a simple thing to want but it was so elusive. Just happiness! They should make a fucking pill or something.