Moment:
June 20th at 1:37 pm IST Broski: "Would you rather burn your retinas off?"
Me: "A thousand times, yes."
Today we FINALLY found some rasal mangoes. We were told that by the time we would be in India, they would be out of season, so our cousins all had been on the lookout for about two weeks before we got here, to no avail. So when we saw a single cart with rasal mangoes about 45 minutes from where we were staying, I was really excited, because I had just about given up on finding them on this trip.
Rasal means "fruit that produces juice" in Telugu, so these mangoes are aptly named because you literally get mango juice straight out of the mango. The fruit is so soft that you can just press down on the skin of the mango to break up the fruit inside, then drink it out of a hole cut in the top. My grandparents had a rasal mango tree in their courtyard, and when we were kids, we would come home from school, pick them straight off the tree, and eat them on the roof in the cool of night. At the peak of the season, we had to hire people to pick the surplus of mangoes, and my grandma used them to make pickles or curries, or simply gave them away because we just couldn’t eat them fast enough.
That rasal mango tree was HUGE. Like my- cousins-and-I-could-grab-the-branches-and-use-them-to-swing-from-our-roof-to-our-neighbor’s-roof huge (yep, we did that). But the roots eventually got so big that they were starting to crack the courtyard walls, so my grandparents had to cut it down.
Every time I eat one of those rasal mangoes, it brings back some pretty SWEET memories, especially since I haven’t been to that house in seven years, since it was sold when my Thatha (grandfather) passed away.
The same year that house was sold, my family broke ground to construct an apartment building on a plot of land that my grandparents purchased in the 80’s. At the time, it was worth next to nothing because it was in the middle of nowhere, but now it is in the heart of the metropolitan area and in high demand.
Today, we got to see the finished building, which is named “Praveen Residency” in honor of my Thatha. Some people have beach houses or lake houses, but now that we can’t go to my mom’s childhood home anymore, we have a Hyderabad flat that we can call home away from home.
My family went to the bank afterwards to finalize the paperwork and payments for the builder and construction crew, and to keep my brother and I from causing trouble in such an official place, my parents thought it would be a good idea to get us to go buy some cold water and a “cool drink.” Being Indian-Americans, we decided the best way to blend in was to not say a word to anyone, because unless we actually spoke with our American accents, we wouldn’t really get recognized as foreigners and subsequently get charged a higher price.
We probably could have spoken in Telugu, which is what most people in Hyderabad speak, and been just fine. I speak Telugu fluently, and converse in it regularly with my family, but most of the time when I speak it, all I hear is a flurry of “Wow, the American girl speaks Telugu!” or “Oh how cute, she’s speaking her parent’s language,” so I tend to not speak it much in public if I don’t have to. My brother, on the other hand, only really knows food/drink words because that’s pretty much all you need to survive, and when asked if he speaks Telugu, he responds with “My sister does,” and shifts all responsibilities of communication to me.
So when we spotted a small shop with water after spending 20 minutes scouring the area with our squinting eyes because we would rather burn our retinas off than wear sunglasses when no one else was, but realized that all of the drinks were behind the counter so you had to ask for them, my brother assumed that I would do the talking. However, water definitely comes under the food/drink category, so I was hoping broski would handle this one.
Neither of us would budge, so we just awkwardly stood on the front stop of the store for a couple minutes just waiting for the man restocking the chips on the ceiling hooks to look at us so we could gesture our way through this purchase. But then he looked at us and just continued to stare without really saying anything, which isn’t really considered rude in India but also isn’t the most socially comfortable interaction in the world, so instead of just approaching and asking for the water like any normal people would, we just left in search of a store with self-serve drinks instead.
We found one a little further down the road, grabbed the water bottle and a bottle of Thums Up (the iconic Indian cola), and simply held them up at the counter so the cashier could see. He looked at them, said “75 rupees,” we paid him, and done deal, no words needed. As soon as we got out of the store, we fist bumped each other, and my brother was feeling so confident that he even put his sunglasses back on.
I realize I just spent five paragraphs talking about a 20 minute mission (mission impossible to us honestly) to go get water and a soda, but this was the first time that my parents have EVER trusted us to go out by ourselves in India. In times past, we were both not old enough and didn’t have the Indian street smarts to even cross the street, let alone make a purchase, and this time we didn’t come back empty-handed, so that was a pretty significant accomplishment. I had my doubts about living here in India for the next few months, but I think I’ll actually be able to make it.
