Chicken Curry

Sometimes I wish I were an orphan. It's a terrible thing to say, I know. It's not that I'm ungrateful, maybe that just came out wrong. I love my parents a ton, I swear. It's just that I'd like it if they were...different. Normal. Like all the other kids' parents in my class at Petrarch High. I'm sixteen and I live in Milan, dammit. I can't not go to the club, I can't not get a piercing, I can't not have a boyfriend -- these are things that all my friends do and have. I'm tired of coming up with excuses to hide the truth. My parents are Indian Flintstones who think they still live in a mud hut in the obscure village of Mirapur, in central India, with their two cows and three goats. But for over twenty years now they've lived here in downtown Milan. Still, for them nothing has changed. In their minds, they still live surrounded by the stench of cow dung, the nasty humidity of the monsoon rains and, I've got to admit it, the perfume of mango trees in bloom as well. For them, a house with running water, an indoor toilet, and a refrigerator doesn't make a difference at all, just the opposite. They almost bemoan the fact of not having to go to a well to get water, getting up at dawn to feed the chickens, and toiling under the baking sun in the fields. Despite all of her time spent in Italy, Mom still dresses Indian-style -- parading around in one showy sari after the other, she always does her hair in the Indian way, she always cooks Indian, she always speaks Indian. I bet that if there were some Indian way to snore she'd do it.

My dad, on the other hand, in the summer and in the winter, wears the same blue-violet V-neck sweater, too loose around his arms and too tight around his prominent belly. For a while now, he hasn't had hair to comb and oil. Even though he speaks comprehensible Italian, he still thinks like an Indian peasant.

Sometimes their stubborn nostalgia drives me crazy.

"So why did you leave your Indian village if it was so cool?" I ask exasperatedly when my father sprawls out in front of the TV in his green velvet armchair that's a bit creased and lost, with the indelible imprint of the back of his neck on the headrest. My father and his green armchair live together in a symbiotic relationship and have ended up resembling each other. Dad is big and floppy like the armchair, and day after day life rubs away a part of him like he does with the worn-out armrests of his beloved receptacle. Lucky for me, apart from the nose shaped like a potato, I don't look like him at all. I look more like Mom: slim, tall, and the honeyed color of chestnuts (my boyfriend says so). With the sweat of an honest worker, and the courage of a man who came to Italy with a tourist's visa and fifty-thousand liras, now the owner of the Shakti cleaning company ("15 employees and 100 million liras in sales, net, all done by me!") Dad thinks he is leaving an indelible mark on the West. But he doeesn't realize it's a mark that will be washed away as soon as he returns to his beloved Mirapur to admire his two cows and his three goats and to build a new mud hut after every monsoon.

***

"C'mon, I can't go around with oiled braids, Mom!"

"Sure you can," my mother responds. Her voice is still, while with her juggler's hand she stirs the Indian bread in the boiling oil. "Now that you've ruined your beautiful hair with that stupid color you need to make up for it in some way. Some coconut oil will give it back some shine."

"But all Indian women put henna in their hair!"

"What do you know? You've never been to India."

"You're the one who told me!"

"Exactly. Henna. Which is an Indian plant and it's good for you. Not this thing that you did to yourself. It looks like an angry peacock pecked at your head."

"They're called highlights, Mom. And they're in style. All my friends have them. Samantha has some that are exactly the same."

"Ah, this evening when I see Samantha, I'll give her a piece of my mind, you'll see."

"Why, do peacocks attack humans? I thought they were tame animals. They're so pretty."

"What do you know? You've never seen a peacock in real life!"

It's true. We only have a fake antique Chinese vase, full of peacock feathers, a bit dusty, in the hallway. I can't recall seeing a peacock even at the Milan Zoo. For my mother this is the cause of the great sadness of the Western world: young people don't grow up shoulder to shoulder with the Lord's other creatures. Maybe her unbounded passion for animals comes from the fact that my mother herself looks like a mongoose. Now don't ask me what a mongoose looks like because I've never seen a mongoose either, but I know that it's true because my father has told me thousands of times about the mongooses in his village in India. I'm just like my mother: both of us clever and quick.

"Sam is my best friend. Don't you dare tell her anything!"

"Friend?! What friend convinces you to ruin your long, beautiful black hair! And you have the nerve to wear it all loose. It seems like you have a rusty broom on your shoulders." Mom and the teapot fume in unison. "Now if you don't oil your hair, I will make chicken curry for Samantha and this Makku friend of hers tonight," she threatens.

"Marco, his name is Marco."

"Makko?"

"Ma-R-co. It's a very simple, very common Italian name, Mom. And I'm begging you, please don't say that you're making curry even as a joke. I promise that I'll put an entire bottle full of coconut oil on my head on the weekend. For today let me go to school like this!" My whining reaches the ears of my father who is straining ten liters of spiced tea and a ton of Indian bread with a load of vegetables asphyxiated by the oil, tumeric, and mustard seeds.

"Anandita!" My father alternates a roar with a series of spicy burps. "Come here! Let me see you!"

I drag myself from the kitchen to the living room and take my place at the table. I pour myself a little bran and milk in a bowl and add some sugar without looking at him.

"Well? What's going on? What's this story about not wanting to put oil in your hair? My mother wore oil in her hair all her life and when, may she rest in peace, she passed away at the venerable age of 70, it was still long, straight and jet-black."

"I know, I know," I sigh. I've heard the story of Grandma Rupa at least a million times. "So if you've heard everything why do you ask me? You know, right?"

Dad changes the subject and pours another half liter of tea with the grace of a wild boar. "Why do you eat this junk?" he asks me, pulling my bowl toward him and making a disgusted face as if he had seen it full of worms.

I take it back and respond annoyed. "Nobody's telling you to eat it, and if you really want to know why I eat it, I eat it because it's good for you."

"This rabbit crap is good for you? Now I believe that you go out with that head that's half red and half black like a zebra that's gotten sunstroke! You must have a head full of sawdust if you eat only that stuff! I don't know where you find the energy to study at school. Some good vegetables with a few pieces of fried Indian bread -- that's what you need to face the day. And look at how you prance around in those bell-bottoms. I wore them thirty years ago when I came to Italy and I was embarassed then. You seem happy to go out in them like your poor father who came to find fortune in the West with a cardboard suitcase in hand!"

I don't respond. It's not worth wasting my breath. I know how it'll end anyway: I will have to slog through the story of how he made money out of nothing, how I should be grateful to have a father who put together a cleaning business that even does work in the ministries -- it had never happened before, they never trusted a company run by an immigrant. My father had made it. From Mirapur to Milan, a long uphill road. And I should use that as a model, blah, blah, blah. All punctuated by long silences during which he scratches his ears, massages his belly and feet, and mimics an off-key piper to liberate himself from the vegetables that have gotten stuck between his teeth.

And in the end, the same threat: "Ah, it’s really time for me to get in touch with my brother to find a good Indian husband from our village for you. At your age all the women in Mirapur are already married. My mother, may she rest in peace, had already given birth to three children at your age."

Anyway, today instead of asking him why he left his village of enchantment where the fields of grain sing in the wind and the coconut trees dance in the rain for this gross city with paved streets and houses made of brick only to clean the toilets of the Public Administration, I will stay quiet, good as can be. I won’t stress the fact that I was born and raised in Italy, that in Italy no one dreams of marrying off a sixteen-year-old daughter, that I don’t want to get married to a cow milker or Mirapur’s champion coconut tree climber. I will marry only Marco, my beautiful boyfriend with sapphire eyes and Brad Pitt’s hair. I won’t whine about not wanting to wear Indian dress like Mom does. (Marco likes miniskirts.) That I don’t want to wear a dot on my forehead like Mom does. (Marco says that I have skin that is velvety like a chamois.) That I don’t want to wear flip-flop sandals. (Marco adores high heels.) Even though this year flip-flops are in, they don't look good on me like they do on my friends. This summer there was such a display of Indian pants and tunics, jute bags with Bollywood photos, embroidered chiffon scarves with beading -- it seemed like everyone wanted to be Indian. I, however, did not. Anyway, today I will not do anything that might bug my parents because today is too special. I have invited Marco to dinner (and Samantha to cover). Marco has been my boyfriend for the past 45 days, 3 hours and 12 minutes, but my parents don’t know. They don’t know that I have a belly button piercing either, that when I say that I am going to study at Samantha’s on Sunday afternoons that we really go to the club, that I throw out the bag of Indian bread filled with vegetables strangled in oil and spices that my mother makes me carry to school for a snack. What they don't know can't hurt them. What they do know can make my father fly into a fury and unfailingly bring in his mantra: "Ah, it's really time for me to get in touch with my brother to find a good Indian husband from our village for you. At your age all the women in Mirapur are already married. My mother, may she rest in peace, had already given birth to three children at your age."

But tonight Marco's coming. Oh God, I'm so nervous about this dinner! I've never been to his house and he's never been to my house. We've always met at school (he's a year older) or at Samantha's house. I've caught his mother on the phone a couple of times and she's always been polite. "Yes, dear, I'll get you Marco right away." She has the voice of a person who wears Trussardi scarves around her neck. When I told him, Marco confessed that if his parents knew he had an immigrant girlfriend they would be black with anger. They vote for the Lega Nord party and think that Bossi is too "tolerant." I seized the opportunity and said that my parents wouldn't jump for joy either if they knew that their daughter had a relationship with one from here, and that they don't vote at all, even if my father carries at CGIL card.

Mom joins us at the table with two packets (one for me and one for Dad) of Indian bread stuffed with deceased vegetables wrapped in tin foil that manages to stop the oil from leaking out for about ten minutes. "I'll make spinach pakoras and a nice chicken curry tonight for Samantha and Makku, then," she says, undoing and redoing her long black braid.

I look at her annoyed.

"Ah, no, not Makku, Makko," she corrects herself.

Seeing my eyes turn into petroleum wells, Mom starts to laugh. "I'm joking! I'm joking! I'll make penne in tomato sauce, like we agreed." My mother laughs like a stream jumping from rock to rock.

I breathe a sigh of relief.

"But Samantha likes my spinach pakoras so much," she adds.

I don't know if she's joking but it's too late and I have to go to school. I kiss first her then my father. "Please, Mom, you promised me that you wouldn't make curry or other Indian things. And I'm begging you to speak correct Italian. What was the point of the Continuing Ed course you took at the university? You know, Marco has never been to an Indian house before." My fathers eyes bulge as if it were the most unnatural and blasphemous thing in this world. "Poor boy. That's exactly why you should have your mother make her extraordinary chicken curry. This Marco would go crazy for it. Your mother follows the recipe that my mother used, may she rest in peace. And I know that my mother made the best chicken curry in the entire Mirapur district."

I cross my fingers and hope that he isn't able to make my mother change the menu in my absence. I'm already nervous thinking about the reaction Marco will have when he sees my mother dressed like an Indian and hears her speak choppy Italian. I shiver at the idea that my father might begin one of his long monologues on the beauty of Indian villages without sewers and potable water and on the decadence of Western life despite his bidets and vast collection of perfumed toilet paper. It's been three days since I've slept, wondering if I did the right thing by inviting him to dinner. Actually it was he who insisted on it. "Now that we have been together for 45 days maybe it's best that I come to your house. If your parents know me maybe they won't make such a big deal about you going out at night."

I don't have the courage to tell him that it might be exactly the opposite, but I made him swear not to let anything about our relationship slip. I would introduce him to them as a friend from class and Samantha's boyfriend.

***

Eight o'clock. The stove is on and it's hot but my hands are frozen. Mom is also nervous. We almost never have guests and she has never cooked pasta for Italians before today. She's an excellent cook and knows how to make pasta well, but from how she's adjusting and readjusting the salt in the sauce and the cloth of her orange sari I can tell that she is agitated at least as much as I am. Dad is also agitated but doeesn't show it. He leafs through the newspaper making lots of noise, betraying the fact that he's not reading at all. Not that he reads it from beginning to end other days. He only buys it to see if there are any announcements of competitions for cleaning companies. Now I'm sure that he hasn't even caught Megan Gale's breasts that cover an entire page. He smoothes his bald crown continually and is probably going through the discussions that he intends to impart on the spoiled Western youth. He's wondering
whether to begin by recounting his story of being an immigrant with cardboard suitcase in hand and the subsequent rise from handyman to businessman or to begin his monologue with a harangue on beautiful, healthy Indian peasant life without vice or idleness.

Eight-oh-five. Here I am! I run to open the door and trip.

"See what happens when you put those stilts on your feet," murmurs Dad from behind the Corriere della Sera. "In Mirapur all the women go around in bare feet, with jangling anklets in pure silver. When they walk with slow and sensual steps it's like hearing a celestial meloday. Here on the other hand you stick tanks under your feet."

"Please don't start," I say to myself.

Sam notes my tense expression and tells me to relax. Marco squeezes my hand to tell me that everything is OK. He presses his pinky finger hard against mine -- it's our secret kiss.

For a quarter of an hour everyhing goes smoothly. The front page of the Corriere, my father and meteorology occupy center stage. Fortunately it's much colder than usual and we manage to talk about arctic currents and winds from the east for a while -- subjects that don't know color or race or social extraction.

Then, the first shoe drops.

"Tell me, Marco, what does your father do? Yours works at the bank, right Samantha?"

"My dad works as a bricklayer, Mister Kumar," responds Marco.

"Bricklayer????"

Mom, providential, enters with a steaming pot of penne with tomato sauce.

"Food ready. Coming. Came Makko, you sat here. Samantha close her Pappa." I forgive her everything.

We serve ourselves and Marco, thinking it's a good idea, brings up the subject of the goodness of pasta and its international appeal. Sirens go off in my head, but strangely Dad doesn't answer in kind. He's not used to pasta and chewing this unfamiliar food seems to require all of his energy, physical and mental. Then, he swallows the first mouthful of hard grain like a pelican would a jumping frog, he clears his throat and asks: "And how much does he make?"

I take a deep breath so that my head won't explode before purposely dropping my fork onto the floor.

"Anandita is also unaccustomed to eating these things with these forks," my father says nodding to convince himself. "We don't like this stuff, we like curry. And eating with our hands. But Anandita said you don't like curry, Marco."

I want to die.

Marco camouflages himself with the pasta. "No, no, I like curry, Mister Kumar."

"See!" my father huffs. "Anandita, what did I tell you?"

"I didn't know," I said under my breath.

"Where have you eaten curry, Marco? I beet that in your entire life you haven't eaten a curry as good as the one my wife makes."

"I'm sure Mister Kumar. I've eaten it only once on pizza: pizza with mushrooms, cream and curry."

My father makes a sound somewhere between an effort to vomit and a hiccup. We turn toward him worried.

My poor boyfriend, unaware of the rigor mortis that he has provoked in my father, continues, undaunted: "And once we got a packet of risotto with shrimp and curry. Mom made it one night. It was really good. You just need to add a spoonful of parmesan and a pat of butter."

Now that he knows Marco's dad is a bricklayer and that he easts curry on pizza there is no way in the world that Marco can redeem himself in my father's eyes. He's expired big-time, just like his packet of shrimp risotto.

"It would have been better to make the curry, right?" My father turns to Samantha to find a little bit of real solidarity. Sam really likes my mother's curry. To tell the truth Sam likes anything, as long as it's prepared. There is never any food at her house, and eight times out of ten there aren't any parents either -- they spend more time out at cafes than at home.

My father claps his hands as if he were a trained seal. "Wife! Wife!" he yells enthusiastically. "See if there's some chicken curry left from yesterday. Better leftover curry than these rubber tubes here."

God help me. I don't know if I will survive this dinner.

My mother shrugs; she seems disconsolate. "Nothing. Finished curry. Only pasta tomato."

My mother is an angel. I will make a monument to her. I will bring her flowers every day for the rest of her life. I will put coconut oil in my hair every single day (or at night at least).

You know the face of someone who is listening to the lottery number draw on Epiphany? With that multi-billion lira jackpot? The face of someone who hits all the numbers, up until that damned last crazy red ball. Well, that was my father's face.

"It's not possible, it's not possible." The disillusionment takes possession of his vocal cords.

"You'll invite us for curry another day, Mister Kumar," says Samantha, smiling.

"Of course, of course," Dad responds. "I have to get this young man to try to sublimate his senses. I have to make him forget the horrors of curry pizza or curry risotto in a packet. You know, my wife follows the same recipe that my mother, may she rest in peace, used. She made the best chicken curry in the entire district of Mirapur. First she ground three types of peppers with other spices -- mustard, coriander, cardamom, poppy, cinnamon, cloves, then she fried them with onion and garlic and finally she added a tomato, coconut milk and chicken. Now would you like me to tell you a bit about the good life of the Indian countryside? No smog, no poverty or those stupid things that they show you on TV with sick and dying people. We in Mirapur have only fat cows and happy goats and fields of grain that smile in the sun..."

"Anandita pass Pappa pot with pepper and spice for putting on pasta. So he burn mouth and stay quiet a little," Mom says. We all start laughing.

"See, see, Marco," Dad says with a good-natured air, "Lucky for you that you choose an Italian girlfriend and not an Indian pepper like the ones in this house. See what I have to deal with every day for a plate of chicken curry."

Marco smiles embarassed and Sam winks at me. Marco motions to me to pass the pepper and spices. As he puts his hand out to take the pot, he presses his pinky hard against mine. Fortunately Dad has begun to tell another story about his life and Mom is adjusting the cloth of her sari. My parents don't notice a thing.