The ways in which the pageant was traditional were more American than Indian. The owner of the MTI Georgia was a Gujarati businessman with beady, roving, salacious eyes, proprietor of a chain of liquor stores across Alpharetta and Gwinnett, who introduced the twenty-some pageant competitors as they filed from the crimson-carpeted hallway into the yellow-wallpapered room: “Give it up for our contestants, beautiful inside and out, isn’t it,” he said, his vowels those mutt noises, folding in on themselves in an effort to keep the speaker from rolling the ensuing r’s or clacking the t’s too hard.
There were perhaps fifty chairs laid out for the audience, surrounding a long judges’ table. About half were filled. A toddler in a gold-and-maroon lehenga waddled laps around the seats. Some auntie leaned over me, her sequined dupatta falling on my face, to say hello to my father. My mother stood in the hallway with the other mothers, armed with bobby pins and safety pins and concealer. I hadn’t spotted Anita or Anjali Auntie when we came in.
The pageant opened with a column of brown girls balancing on spiky heels as they runway-walked a makeshift stage about two feet off the floor. Last in line: Anita, wearing a lemon-lime, yellow-and-green number splattered with mirrors and tie-dye. Her whole belly was visible—it was a little soft, like an inviting pillow. I caught her eye for an instant and noted nerves there, in the wideness of her gaze, the way all her concentration seemed to be devoted to stilling her facial muscles. I mouthed hi, and then regretted it. Applause sounded and the contestants retreated. The MTI owner was muttering to someone next to him, but the mic had not been removed from his lapel, so we all heard him hissing, Tell that very fat one to cover up little more. It echoed, and a shushing auntie came to unclip him while we awaited the next episode.
A scrawny man manifested beside my father and pressed a pile of glossy magazines into his hand. My father, ignoring, passed them to me. They were those diaspora rags, the kind piled up in the front of Indian restaurants and salons, which stay afloat through advertisements that purvey immigrant necessities and nostalgia: an article featuring a profile on the Scripps National Spelling Bee champion （can you spell juggernaut? indian americans dominate bee!） running next to an advertisement for kajol best ladies’ fineries and mega desi wedding expo, all shaadi needs: orlando, dallas, san jose.
I flipped through and saw one of Anita’s mother’s catering ads—anjali dayal: all types desi khana! and a black-and-white picture of her that stretched her out dishonestly, making her look pleasantly plump, turning her into another safe auntie. An insert labeled ace college application season fell out, featuring an interview with the Chinese mother who had authored the bestseller Harvard Girl. In the back, a column ran from a “Hindu activist” under the headline we must be more like the jews.
My father prodded the college insert. “Keep that aside.” I did. Later I would find it contained a workbook to help you build your college essay “Mad Libs–style.” My name is . . . My dream is . . . When not studying I . . . My most important experience between ages 10 and 18 was . . .
There were the question-and-answer sessions, during which the ladies skirmished to offer the inanest possible response to that platitudinous question and its many manifestations: What does it mean to be both Indian and American? To wit: How should this generation ad-just to the New Country? Prachi faltered trying to explain why we didn’t speak an Indian language at our house; we had Kannada and Tamil and Malayalee roots, and a mother who’d grown up among Hindi speakers, so settling on any regional identity had never been an option—“My mother, see? Speaks about six languages? And my father two? But when they moved here, they wanted us to only learn English?”
Better was Uma Parthasarthy’s response to a question posed by judge Manisha Fruitwalla: “Miss Uma, which place would you most like to visit, and why?”
“Um, for me, to Tirupati, because God has, um, been very calling on me, recently . . .”
There were the talents: too often Bollywood-infused hip-hop or Kathak-infused tap. Prerna Mallick, fifteen, of Clay County was the highlight of that year’s program, as she twirled a folded umbrella about like a cane to some old filmy monsoon song, which subsided into “Singin’ in the Rain.” As the English interrupted the Hindi, Prerna snapped open the umbrella to face us: Ah! The instrument! It was patterned in the colors of the Indian flag. She rotated it in front of her, legs lifting into many chubby Rockette kicks. Then she began to do Kathak chakkars, twirling and twirling to a beat not audible within “Singin’ in the Rain.” Finally, Prerna set down her umbrella, stumbled, covered her mouth, and ran out of the room, having dizzied herself into nausea.