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that had springs coming out from the fabric and needed to be covered with thick towels to prevent bottoms from being pierced. Lata sat on a chair and immediately Ma demanded a chair for herself and Sowmya got one for her from the dining room.
    I had no idea how to break the ice with people I had known for a good part of my life. The saving grace was my grandmother. Ammamma could talk anyone under the table and she almost always did. She usually launched into vitriolic tirades about something or the other. This time the spotlight was on my younger uncle and his “elopement.” Anand, to everyone’s surprise, had a love marriage. He fell in love with a colleague, Neelima, at the company he worked for. Neelima was a Maharashtrian and they got married in secret without telling anyone about it until after the three knots of the mangala sutra had been tied.
    Their marriage had been the subject of numerous phone conversations between my parents, grandparents, and me for the past year. The conversations always ended with someone warning me against a love marriage. It was because of how Anand’s secret marriage had broken everyone’s heart that I decided to tell my family before doing the deed, though it was very tempting to take the easy way out and tell them after the fact.
    My grandparents and most of my family members did not have high hopes for Anand’s marriage and they all were convinced that Neelima was not the right woman for him. They also believed that Neelima was actually a witch who had brewed a nasty potion to ensnare their poor little innocent son into her web.
    “She is fair-skinned . . . but . . .”— Ammamma shrugged and tied the edge of her sari around her potbelly—“not like our Lata.” She smiled at her daughter-in-law, who returned the smile.
    Something was going on, I noted suspiciously. Lata and Ammamma had never really gotten along. Ammamma and Thatha had expected Jayant to follow the archaic joint family system and live with them after his marriage.
    It didn’t work out that way.
    Six months after the wedding, Lata didn’t say anything to anyone, just packed her bags and Jayant’s, found a flat, and left. The family went into total cerebral shock. Thatha argued, begged, and pleaded for her to come back, but Lata stood her ground. She told him she was tired of living with people to whom she was merely a cook and a maid. (Who could really blame her for that?) She also said that she wanted her own home, where she was the mistress. Jayant quietly followed his wife and broke my grandparents’ hearts. But now Ammamma was being nice to the traitorous daughter-in-law. It was more than enough to bring out the Sherlock Holmes in me.
    “Don’t listen to them, Priya, Neelima is a nice girl,” Sowmya interjected. “And she is a Brahmin, ” she added for good measure.
    “But not our type,” Ammamma argued. “She is a Maharashtrian Brahmin, not Telugu.”
    And being Telugu was very, very essential. Telugu was the official language of my state, Andhra Pradesh, and we were called Telugu or Telugu people. Being of the same caste was not enough to sanctify a marriage. To marry someone, that someone had to also be from the same state. It was very simple: “they” were somehow lower because “they” were not Telugu.
    At least “they” were Indian, I thought unhappily; my “they” was American and an un-devout Christian to boot.
    “Neelima is a very good person,” Sowmya pointed out. “And her family has lived in Hyderabad for generations. She speaks Telugu fluently and cooks our food.”
    Food was also very, very essential. But not as essential as the caste.
    “But she brought no dowry,” Lata said calmly as she looked over the pile of mangoes my mother and I had bought today at Monda market. “Where will the money for your dowry come from?” she taunted softly, her eyes downcast as she arranged the pleats in her sari, and I saw all fight abandon Sowmya.
    “I better get the knives and the