The Mango Season by Amulya Malladi

just a few feet high and required us to sit cross-legged on straw mats to eat. But that table had to be put away in storage when Ammamma’s arthritis demanded something that would be easy on her knees. Thatha bought the table at a small furniture store in Abids that specialized in gaudy TV stands and sold other assorted items of the same low quality as the dining table.
    Thatha had liked the size of the table and the shining top had appealed to him as well. It had taken only six months for the shining top to become dull and lumpy, but by then the small furniture store had closed down and Thatha got stuck with the table, lumps and all.
    A mound of hot rice settled in the center of the table and around it dark bobbing heads joined steel utensils filled with avial, bottle gourd pappu, potato curry, and cold yogurt.
    Two jugs of ice-cold water were emptied in little time and the ceiling fan rattled endlessly, providing little surcease from the interminable heat. But I was getting used to it.
    “Have you been to Noo Yark ?” my grandmother asked as she attacked her food, her mouth open as she chewed.
    “Yes,” I said, and dropped my eyes to my plate where my fingers danced with the rice and the creamy bottle gourd pappu . How easy it was to eat with my fingers again. I had forgotten the joys of mixing rice and pappu with my fingers. Food just tasted better when eaten with such intimacy.
    “Very good avial , Priya-Amma ,” Thatha remarked, and I nodded, pleased with the compliment.
    “ Noo Yark is a dangerous place, it is,” Ammamma said, smacking her lips together and mixing the rice with avial on her plate with her fingers.
    “The white people are just . . . crooks,” she continued, and my head shot up. “And the black people . . . those kallu people are all criminals.”
    My eyes widened with shock.
    “And how do you know this?” I asked, unable to completely submerge my instinct to get on my antiracism soapbox. Nick would love to be in on this conversation, I thought.
    “I see Star TV,” Ammamma said proudly. “All black people are doing drugs and they kill on the street. Vishnu . . . you remember him?”
    I didn’t, but I nodded.
    “His son was mugged by a kallu person in Noo Yark . A black man”—she dropped some food into her mouth—“put a gun to his head.” She spoke with her mouth full and I grimaced at her words and the half-chewed visible food. “All black people . . . dirty they are.”
    And what had my grandmother done—smelled their clothes? Frustration warred with the reality of the situation in front of me, and reality won.
    “That is right,” Thatha spoke up, and exhibited his ignorance. “All white people do is exploit the others. And the black people kill. That country is just . . . no family values, nothing. All the time they get divorced.”
    “They have a moral structure, Thatha .” I could hardly sit silent in front of such blatant disregard for the facts.
    “What moral structure?” Ma glowered. “Your friends . . . what, Manju and Nilesh, they were fine when they were here and they would have been fine if they had not gone to America.”
    Manju and Nilesh were classmates from engineering college in India. They started their romance in the first year of college and survived as a couple through four years of engineering college, two years of graduate school in the United States, and a year or so of working in Silicon Valley before getting married. But happily ever after had evaded them. They had recently divorced and I made the big mistake of telling Ma about it. She immediately decided that it was because of the evil American influence.
    “These friends of hers got married,” Ma explained to the others. “Same caste, same . . . real good match. They went to America and now they are getting a divorce after four years of marriage. What happened? If they were in India, it would have never happened.”
    She was absolutely right. They definitely would not have gotten a divorce