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possible in the United States. And yet, he no longer fit in. He loved living in America, but knew that there, too, he didn’t quite fit in. It was the classic immigrant dilemma.
    Tattappa came up behind him. “Suneel, brings back some virry good times.” Tattappa smiled at the memories.
    Fourteen-year-old Neel used to meet the team here every morning for practice. He was the captain (“That is only because you are so tall,” Aunty Vimla said to put down Neel’s talent), and Tattappa, an old-time basketball player himself, never missed a practice. Neel had played so many championship games on this dirt rectangle that served as a court. He couldn’t picture himself in the baggy navy blue uniform, could not recall how many games his team had won, but remembered the ritual he always performed before free throws. Bounce the ball three times slowly before taking aim at the basket. Had he always made the baskets? Probably not. Such a silly little ritual, he thought now.
    In the last year of high school, all the seniors met here at night. Tattappa had no idea that Neel used to sneak out of the house to smoke forbidden cigarettes with his friends. The strong, cheap Charminar tips glowed contraband red in the dark as the sixteen-year-olds dreamed their futures aloud. College, girls, jobs, marriage. Neel yearned to travel: Paris, London, New York. Drive a fast car. Fly a plane. Have the best stereo equipment. Gamble in casinos reckless about winning or losing. When the others spoke of marrying India’s current Bollywood heartthrob, he pictured himself with a blond-haired wife with Elizabeth Taylor’s violet eyes. Mark’s mother had eyes that color and she was the prettiest woman he had ever seen. Blond, blue-eyed Mark Krueger had become his best friend and introduced him to the wonders of the Western world during the one magical year the family lived in their town. Neel never forgot their best-friend days, though Mark and his parents had returned to the United States many years earlier.
    During the three years it took to get their undergraduate degree, the group fell apart as marriage claimed its members. Neel remembered the first to succumb: handlebar-mustached Mohan, his voice permanently hoarse from smoking, with an affinity for numbers first manifested when he counted to a thousand before his third birthday. How they tormented him. Mohan had just announced his engagement, a little shamefaced because he had sworn not to give in to his parents’ pushing until he finished his master’s degree. Everyone ragged him, and Neel coined a ditty on the spot that the others picked up and began chanting:
    What is wrahng? She is strahng
She is nice, her hair has no lice
She is fine, quite divine;
Her skin is very light,
So Mohan said, “Ahl right.”
     
    Parents always win in the end, Neel could hear Mohan’s voice genuflect to filial obligation.
    “Suneel, Suneel,” Tattappa said placatingly.
    “Tattappa, they didn’t even have the decency to wait a few days before starting in on me.” Indians were like that, but he wasn’t an India resident anymore.
    “You know how our women can be. But they are not bad. Only a little pushy.”
    “The pushy part I can handle, I think. But Mummy lied to me. She told me you were ill. That’s the main reason I came home. It wasn’t easy for me to get leave at such short notice.”
    Tattappa didn’t say anything for a few minutes. “She is only virry worried for your future. You know in India it is our thinking that everyone should get married. It is not like Ahmerica, where many people don’t care about families.”
    “But she lied to me about you.”
    “No, no, Suneel, my sickness is not a lie. I asked your mummy to say I was only a little weak because I wanted to tell you myself. The doctor has found some cancer.” Tattappa shrugged his shoulders, the gesture indicating he had placed himself in God’s hands. “A little here, a little there. Six months they have given me.”
    Neel