Perfect moments come and go, and not long after Kamal returned to the north, Caroline’s homesickness returned with a vengeance. She missed everything. Her music, her books, her friends, her parents, the winter, the trees, the springtime, the food. A little nagging voice within her began to moan and groan. About everything.
She had been so willing to adapt to local mores at first; now, they began to vex and even outrage her. Why, when the sun was so hot, was she required to wear a long skirt and keep her shoulders covered, whereas men could walk about with naked upper bodies? Why did the women do all the housework, while the men went out to work and just relaxed on the veranda with the newspaper when they came home? Viram was truly lovely, but he left the running of the household entirely to Sundari. When questioned about this, Sundari only smiled and said, ‘He works hard outside the home, I work hard inside the home. It’s a division of labour. Out there, he is boss. In here, I am boss. It’s a very fair set-up.’ But Caroline did not, could not agree. She said no more, but it rankled within her.
She tried to suppress her unkind thoughts – after all, she was not only a guest here, but a liberal, and must be accepting and even approving of other cultures – but suppression could only go so far and she thought them nevertheless.
The things about India, about Gingee, that had charmed her at first began to irritate and annoy her. Sitting on the floor to eat, for instance; she longed for a chair and table. Eating with her hands; she longed for a knife and fork. How primitive it all was! And surely unhygienic! She longed for folded napkins and her mother’s apple pie. Anyone’s apple pie. She tried baking an apple pie herself but it was a flop.
And then the toilet business. Using your left hand and water to clean your butt after a crap. Disgusting! Squatting over the Indian toilet, really just a ceramic surround of a hole in the ground. How she had enthused about this method in the beginning! So much better, from a physiological point of view, than sitting on a toilet, she wrote to her best friend Deb, ‘because squatting provides a massaging effect for the abdominal organs and stimulates the nervous action of the bowels to give a good motion. It’s simply the most natural position,’ she lectured. ‘My landlord, Viram, showed me an article in the Hindu that said squatting is scientifically proven to be better. Sitting on a toilet chokes the rectum, and that’s why bowel-related diseases like haemorrhoids, appendicitis, constipation and irritable bowel syndrome are so prevalent with us in the West.’
That was then. Now, she would give her all for a Western toilet with a roll of puppy-dog soft paper on the wall next to it.
And there was no one she could talk to about these things. Kamal, certainly not. She couldn’t criticise his country and culture to him; of course not. But who then? She couldn’t write long letters of complaint to her liberal friends at home as they were so approving of her, applauding her for choosing to live in a Third World country (although one wasn’t supposed to use that label any more, and anyway, India was supposed to be in a different category, one of the economically emerging nations). Her friends would be shocked should she betray them by letting slip even a word of complaint.
So at most, she complained of the heat. You wouldn’t believe how hot it gets here in April! I swear you could fry an egg on the street! she wrote jovially to her best friend Deb. We all now sleep on the veranda – it’s just too hot to sleep indoors. And no air-conditioning at all! At least it’s good for the environment!
She couldn’t, of course, complain to her parents and siblings, who would only say I told you so.
She could only complain to herself. The nagging voice grew louder; horrible, mean, ugly. Try as she did, she could not shut it up. She was beginning to hate India.
Most of all, the food. The food seemed to stand for everything that was inherently wrong about her present life. Not that it was bad – Sundari was a superb cook, and the meals she prepared were invariably elaborately prepared, and delicious. But they weren’t American. Caroline simply missed good home cooking. It became almost an obsession for her. She had always been quite particular about what she ate, something of a health-food fanatic. She liked fresh vegetables, salads, seafood, home-made casseroles and never, ever ate out of a tin.
She’d been an on-and-off vegetarian back at home, and moving in with a vegetarian family had not been a problem. But during her pregnancy she had developed a craving for meat, which had not receded since the baby was born. Especially at Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Turkey! Roast chicken! Salami pizza! Even – disgraceful! – a hamburger. What she wouldn’t give for a hot dog, with all the trimmings! But you couldn’t get meat here – or not much of it. There were one or two butchers in Gingee, but just seeing the conditions in those shops – the meat lying in the open, the flies, the blood, the unwashed knives, the dirt – put her off.
Sometimes she had a chicken specially slaughtered, and she watched over it and made sure it was all done quickly, no flies, clean knives, everything. However, cooking a chicken was a bit difficult in the Iyengar household – Sundari wouldn’t touch it, and she didn’t really even like Caroline doing it herself, and sullying her cooking utensils with the carcass.
But she struggled on, and the months creaked past. Another Christmas, with Asha now a toddler, and Kamal home again for only his third visit (he had managed to come for a week in June, for Asha’s birthday). A resignation of sorts laid itself upon her soul. It was just a question of time, and time would pass. Slowly, for sure, but it would pass, and she would make it, and they would return to America. And Asha would learn to love her. Though that didn’t seem to be happening much. Asha was as ever attached mostly to Sundari, and to Janiki. Caroline felt like the visiting childless aunt, awkward and bumbling, and Asha treated her with something verging on boredom. She just didn’t have the knack, the warmth. Bad mother! said the little nagging voice within her.
Shortly after Asha’s second birthday – Kamal had managed to get leave, to come and visit for a week – Caroline discovered a supermarket in Gingee hidden away in a back street, where one could actually buy food from the city – butter, cheese, spaghetti, soy sauce and so on. She asked the shopkeeper if they could get tinned corned beef, sausages and spam. They could. She ate all the things she bought and enjoyed them. She went back and asked for more. The shopkeeper was delighted to oblige. The next time she went there he showed her a real treasure: tinned ravioli! The tin was old, dusty and slightly dented, but Caroline couldn’t care less. She couldn’t wait to get home, open it, warm it up and eat it. Delicious!
The next morning, though, she felt sick, and vomited up her breakfast. Other symptoms followed quickly – a dry mouth and throat, and then she had difficulty swallowing. Her eyelids drooped; she felt dizzy, light-headed. She went to see a doctor, and his verdict was: botulism,
food poisoning, caused by eating infected food from a damaged can.
That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Casting pride aside, Caroline rang her parents.
‘I want to come home!’ she wailed.
‘Come, darling, come!’ they said. ‘We will arrange your flight. Don’t worry about a thing. Just come home!’
It wasn’t possible to contact Kamal – he was out on location – before her flight so she sent a telegram.
SERIOUS FOOD POISONING FLYING AMERICA TOMORROW STOP LEAVING ASHA WITH SUNDARI STOP.