Free Of Marriageable Age by Sharon Maas Page A

heights, which foods were rajasic, exciting the mind and heating it to seething point, and which were tamasic, dragging it into heavy, murky depths. Cooking was a matter of control: when to add what and exactly how much, not even a grain more. Control of heat and moisture, keeping temperatures right, regulating the flame, for fire could create as well as destroy. Regulating water, which could give life as well as it could drown, and could enter the dish uninvited as drops on a callalloo leaf. But that was mere technique. Ma added mystery — touching each ingredient as if it were to be cooked for God himself. The first spoonful of each dish was an offering, not to touch human lips. Ma spoke to food and sang to it. Ganesh knew the techniques but not the mysteries of cooking.
    Saroj refused to be drawn into a discussion on Ma's samosas.
    'I mean, what a drip!' she exclaimed. 'The very fact of him letting himself be chosen just proves he's a drip. Any self-respecting boy would refuse.'
    'Well, how d'you know he hasn't, or he won't? For all you know he's right this minute raising hell and threatening to slit your throat if they force you on him. Of course, he hasn't seen you yet. That'll change matters.'
    'But what'll I do, Gan? I can't marry him. Apart from him being a drip, I won't ever marry anyone Baba chooses. I wouldn't even marry Paul McCartney if Baba chose him. I won't marry, ever!' It was an agonized wail, a cry of desperation.
    Ganesh chuckled, his good humour rising up through the film of gloom she'd spread across its surface, like a bubble of air reaching for the sky. 'You're too much of a prize not to marry ever, Saroj, it'd be a waste. If Baba had any sense he'd let you look for a husband yourself. You'd have the choice of the pack! If Baba wasn't keeping you like a precious jewel locked away in a safe you'd have half the boys in Georgetown on their knees, licking their lips.'
    'Don't be disgusting. Just tell me what to do.'
    'Well, actually, maybe you should talk to Ma.'
    'Talk to Ma? Are you crazy? Ma approves of arranged marriages, you know that. She helped choose Indrani's. And anyway, Ma doesn't talk. I mean, not really.'
    'She does, you know. She talks to me.'
    'Well, to you, maybe. But you and Ma are different, I mean, you're the same. The two of you live as though in a private world and you speak a private language.'
    'You've never even tried to get to know her.'
    'Ma's a book with seven seals. And if you looked behind them all you'd find is superstition. She's too . . . she's too Indian. It's as if she never left India, she just brought India here into Baba's house and continued to live there. She has no idea what the world's really about, with her Purushottama Temple and sruti box and stuff. She doesn't know a thing about modern life or about me and what I want to be. I don't think she's even heard of Pat Boone, not to mention the Beatles. How can I talk to someone like that?'
    The Purushottama Temple was the centre of Ma's life outside the house — that, and the Stabroek Market. Mr Purushottama, the owner of the temple, was a genuine expatriate Indian who had come with a fortune to Georgetown from Kanpur to 'set the ball rolling', as he called it. He was a big, jovial man, who never wore anything but kurta pyjamas, and he opened the New Baratha Bank on High Street and encouraged, no, ordered, all Indians to deposit their savings there, which they did. As a thank-you he bought a Dutch colonial-style, wooden green-and-white mansion in Brickdam, all louvred windows and stained glass and an open balustraded gallery with ornate columns, gingerbread fretwork and arches all around the first storey. The bottom-house, the area between the pillars on which the house rested, was shielded from public view by a ground-to-ceiling lattice work, open towards the garden and yard at the back, and this is where all the ceremonies and functions took place — Diwali, and Phagwah, Krishna's birthday and whatever else the