For as long as you need, Bindu had answered.
Bindu checked on the fish curry one last time. Realization wafted through her like the nuanced but unmistakable aroma that signaled that the coconut in the curry was perfectly cooked. For someone who worked so hard not to appear disruptive, Alisha never backed away from the things that were important to her. Her ability to identify what she wanted to dig in her heels about was uncompromising.
Why had it taken Bindu so long to see this?
Bindu, on the other hand, for all her gregariousness, had spent her life focused on the small, unimportant things to compensate for never being able to ask for anything truly important.
The lid dropped from her hand and clanged on the pot. She leaned on the countertop, strength draining from her in a rush.
Ashish finally looked up.
“You’ve been kneading that dough like it’s responsible for everything wrong in the world,” Ashish said, his boyish smile displaying the one crooked tooth that Bindu had loved so much when he was a boy. “Do you need help with it?”
Bindu had the urge to laugh. It might have been the first time in her life that her son had asked if she needed help.
She was about to kick herself for being so happy with the fact that he had offered when he put down his phone and washed his hands. Then he pulled the plate of half-kneaded dough away from Bindu.
A rush of love washed over her, and she didn’t even know why.
“What time is your appointment? Don’t you need to get dressed for it?” he asked as Bindu gawked at the deftness with which he started kneading the dough.
“I’ve lived by myself for two years, Ma. I had to learn how to make my own rotis.”
Actually that was not true. In India you could easily hire someone to make rotis for you.
“People change,” he added without a hint of smugness.
Do they? she wanted to ask, but then she saw herself in the mirrored surface of her refrigerator, and the question fizzled on her tongue.
“What else did you learn?” she asked instead, tidying up the mess from cooking.
He met her eyes with something suspiciously like regret. It was eerie how much like her he looked. “That Aly was right. Following your dreams isn’t easy, but it is the one thing you owe yourself.” Was that look he was giving her accusatory? She’d never stopped him from following his dreams. Had she?
“Working on the concert circuit was amazing.” His golden-hazel eyes lit up, and somehow they were so much more beautiful on him, so beloved. But the passion in them was new.
Why are you back? She couldn’t ask that without having to get into the Richard situation.
For all her joy in seeing him, alarm bells sounded in Bindu’s head.
He was tanned and longhaired again, with the unkempt stubble from his college days that had bothered her so much then. Something about seeing him like this made the years in between feel like they simply hadn’t happened. The clean-cut years when he’d worked behind a desk for two decades, hair neatly trimmed, jaw neatly shaved, tie neatly knotted.
The years when he’d turned into Rajendra.
It had been a relief.
It had been a horror.
She’d buried the memories so deep that the fact that they were stirring made her want to throw up. What if Ashish found out?
Why had she taken Oscar’s money? Why hadn’t she just given it away or hidden it like everything else to do with Oscar?
Excusing herself, she went off to change. Her marriage had taught her not to keep people waiting. As a military doctor, Rajendra had had no patience with unpunctual people.
“Looking pretty, Ma,” Ashish said when she came out dressed in her purple Lucknow tunic over white linen capris.
Not only was the dough kneaded, but he picked a perfectly round roti off the tawa pan and placed it on the flame. It swelled to a sphere, and the smell of flame-charred wheat filled the kitchen.
The memory of the sweet boy he’d been rose so pure and huge in her heart, she pressed a hand to her chest. The way his eyes had shone when he told her he loved her clothes and how pretty she looked. He used to pick flowers for her from the bougainvillea that spilled over their fence.
But Rajendra hadn’t liked the idea of a boy who picked flowers and noticed the colors of his mother’s saris. By the time Ashish was ten, he’d turned his focus to running around the lane, playing cricket and football with the neighborhood boys and making just enough trouble that his father could tell his friends stories of Ashish’s shenanigans. But never so much trouble that Rajendra couldn’t brag about his son’s grades and his ranking at school.
Ashish had seemed to enjoy his sports and his studies well enough. When he’d shown no interest in medicine, unlike his father, and chose engineering instead, Rajendra had seemed perfectly fine with it. The one thing Ashish had made sure he never let slip around his father was his love of music.
Bindu had asked him once if he was interested in taking singing lessons. It had resulted in one of those teen meltdowns about how she didn’t understand him at all and how she wanted to ruin something he loved as a hobby by turning it into yet another thing they could brag to their friends about.
Now all these years later, he’d decided to run off and become a sound engineer on a concert tour, becoming the exact kind of person Rajendra would have been ashamed of. Then again, Rajendra might have been even more ashamed of the fact that his son had not been able to bend his wife to his will.
What good did second-guessing the dead do? It wasn’t like it could give you any meaningful answers.
What is the point of examining your past?
“Does this appointment have anything to do with Cullie’s new app idea?” Ashish asked, carefully smearing a generous spoonful of ghee over the roti he’d just taken off the flame.
Bindu weighed her answer even as the smell of ghee melting on a hot roti distracted her. She could use Cullie’s app as an excuse for her social life. But she couldn’t get herself to be that disingenuous. So she simply said, “Yes.”
“You never could say no. Not to Cullie or to Aly.” He gave her a look that wasn’t accusatory, but kind. “Or to me.” He sprinkled a thick layer of sugar on the ghee-soaked roti, rolled it up, and handed it to her.
A sugar-and-ghee roti roll was one of Bindu’s favorite treats. A simple indulgence she’d often rewarded herself with when she made rotis for Rajendra and Ashish every day. He remembered.
She let the flavors cartwheel across her taste buds, and tried not to ruin the moment by crying. “Why would I not help Cullie when I can? Why would I not help any of you?” It had been her job. Taking care of her family. It was the career she had chosen.
You wanted to work, and now you have a job. That’s what her aie had said to her on her wedding day. Taking care of your family is your job. Why should it be any different from working in a film or in an office? It’s what your mother and your grandmother and her mother before her did.
She’d done that job well. Better than her mother ever had. She’d put every bit of her heart into it. And nothing would ever dilute her pride in that.
Ashish grinned at the shameless joy with which she chewed. He seemed to be seeing her for the first time. “Was the man who died part of gathering data for Cullie’s app?”