“Let’s play Dark Room, “ the cousin I’ve never met until today suggests with a wink. He’s fifteen, going on fifty—his greasy hair falling in untidy spirals over his glistening forehead, the sweat stains under his armpits visible under his cream polyester shirt, his fingernails colored yellow from the chicken curry he consumed at lunch.
I shudder delicately, turning away so that no one notices how I clench my palms together. How long are these relatives from Kanpur going to stay?
It was supposed to be a few hours’ stop on their way to view the Taj Mahal in Agra. Mummy ji graciously asked them to stay for lunch and they accepted with gusto, enjoying the meal of dal makhni, chicken curry flavored with ginger, a side of homemade yogurt raita with pineapple and hot rotis that she served up three hours ago.
And then the lights went out.
“Oh, no, a power cut,” said Pinky Aunty mournfully. I guess we’re stuck here until the lights come back on.”
So saying, Pinky Aunty waddled to the oversized puffy pink sofa in the middle of the drawing-room, tucked her ample bosom into the lime-green plaid pillow that Mummy ji had ordered from Sita Fabrics just last month, and in two minutes she was snoring. Snuggled up like a fat walrus on San Francisco’s Pier 39.
Mummy ji bustles into the kitchen where Chotu has lit the kerosene lamp kept ready and waiting for the power outages that sweep across New Delhi every summer. Meena the maid-servant clears the dining table while Mummy barks orders, “Be careful with the cut-crystal glasses, Meena! They’re a part of my wedding set from Bunty Uncle in Denmark.”
My long-lost cousin Inder pokes my arm. “Come on na, let’s play hide and seek,”
I grit my teeth. Mummy ji has told me repeatedly, “ A guest is a God in our home. This is what our culture teaches us.” Taking a deep sigh, I relinquish my feverish hold on my cream chiffon chunni and follow him listlessly onto the veranda.
“I’ll count to ten and you go hide. Then I’ll come looking for you,” he says enthusiastically, his teeth a flash of white in his sun-browned face.
Later, much later when Mummy ji closes the door to her departing guests, I wonder if I should tell her how ungodly he felt to me when he squeezed my breasts under the yellow canvas awnings fluttering in the night wind, the smell of cumin and cow dung in my nostrils.
Twenty-one years later, I heartily adopt the adage of my new country, “Guest and fish smell after three days.”
Amen to that I say as PG&E cuts off power and darkness falls around us like a blanket. Time seems to stand still as I draw my daughter’s head protectively to my breast.
