2: not belonging to or a part of a regular organization
3: lacking perfect symmetry or evenness
4: lacking continuity or regularity especially of occurrence or activity
She leaned her head back against the couch. Meaningless or meaningful? She wouldn’t know. She glanced at the shelves, looked around the room. So many hiding places. Meena thought about the boxes she’d taken down to the basement. The ones picked up by the charity. Meena had gone through every item and found nothing. How many more notes were here? Meena added it to the envelope with the others.
Someone knocked on the door. “Come in.” She’d left it unlocked, as a test for herself.
The aunties walked in. Meena stood, left the books on the sofa, and met them at the table.
She’d barely seen Sabina or Uma since she’d gotten back. Tanvi had a casserole dish in her hand.
Meena greeted them. “Hi.”
“Your door was unlocked.” Uma came in. “Are you feeling OK?”
“I’m trying.” She’d been practicing a few times a week to get comfortable with the idea.
“We’re proud of you. And we always knock first. So don’t worry about us interrupting anything.” Tanvi put the dish on the dining table. “I made my specialty, aandvo. Come sit.”
“I can make coffee,” Meena offered.
“I don’t drink that bitter, burned stuff,” Tanvi said. “Uma will make chai.”
“Do you have milk?” Uma asked.
Meena nodded.
Uma rolled up the sleeves of her bulky sweater and washed her hands. “Get a notebook, or take a video with your phone. You’re going to learn, and then you’re going to practice. Next time we come by, you’ll be able to make it for us.”
Meena was a little taken aback. Then she realized this was an opportunity not only to learn something that seemed to be part of their culture, and possibly her own, but also to find a way to bring the conversation around to Neha’s relatives, or the one that could be Meena’s.
“Do you have fresh ginger?” Sabina asked.
“I don’t.”
“I’ll run up and get it,” Tanvi said.
Meena leaned against the kitchen counter.
“What are you doing?” Uma asked. “Go get something to take down the recipe.”
Meena grabbed her phone from the living room. “OK, I’m ready.”
“The ingredients first.” Uma pointed to the various tins she’d lain out. “Loose black tea. Wagh Bakri is the only brand that’s worth a damn. You get it at Patel Brothers in Waltham. Don’t go to any fancy tea shops. You want proper black tea for chai.”
Meena aimed the camera and recorded.
“Next, this small tin has premade masala. Sabina makes hers from scratch, I buy mine. This is Sabina’s she’d given to Neha. It’s old, but chai and masala don’t spoil.” Uma sniffed. “It’ll do for now. I will add more than typical because it might not be as strong as fresh masala.”
“How do you make it?”
“You combine ginger powder, nutmeg, cinnamon, cardamom, and black pepper. Grind it all together.”
“But Tanvi went to get fresh ginger.”
“Because you can never have too much ginger in tea,” Sabina said. “That’s the way I prefer it.”
“I add fresh tulsi, an Indian mint.” Uma pulled a pot from the cabinet. “We grow it in the backyard in the summer, then dry it out for the winter.”