came to be shown around the factory, making sure not to introduce me to any of them.
In a way it was a grim irony. Miss Wilson pointedly made comments about how ungrateful, unloving progeny deserved the suffering that came to them; I just thought it coincidence that while my father owned several pickle factories I worked in one for a small salary. My father’s factories had never been planned. My father’s father, whom the entire neighborhood called Thataiyya, or Grandpa, was a landowner who made a fortune out of growing rice and sugarcane along the Krishna River, renting out tenements, and selling arrack (though by my father’s time we were too genteel to admit to any of this). He built a big stone-flagged house, surrounded it with mango orchards, and trees of amla, tamarind, chikoo, and guava. By the time my father was a young man, the mango trees fruited, laborers were summoned to pick the fruit, and vast vats of pickle were made out of the green mangoes, which were a prized variety. The pickle and other fruit were distributed among the larger family—until my father sniffed a business opportunity, and began supplying a few shops. By the time I was twenty, and already cast out for marrying Michael, my father owned three factories across Andhra Pradesh, which pickled every conceivable thing from ginger to gongura, from lime to bitter gourd. The labels on the bottles said that they contained an ancient and secret mix of spices handed down the generations. I knew it had been concocted by Beni Amma, our plump, flirtatious, bright-saried cook, who had had a child by my middle uncle.
As a young girl I used to play at being shopkeeper. I weighed fallen fruit on a toy balance made of two tin plates and string, making my father’s workers buy hard green mangoes from me for ten paise each. It was much the same now, baskets and gunny bags of fruit all around me. Diwan Sahib said he could tell the month from the way I smelled when I came back from work every afternoon with his newspapers. “If you smell of oranges, it must be January,” he would say. “If it’s apricots, this must be June.”
* * *
Charu was one of our best workers. Like many of the other girls, she worked part-time, but unlike the others she was methodical and hardworking. She was so good at solving problems and so decisive that when I saw her at work, I often wondered why she had been such a disappointment at school.
That year, however, she was different. It was February, marmalade season, and where Charu’s slicing of the orange rinds was usually even and thin whether she had two kilos to do or ten, for no reason that we could determine she began slicing the rind too thick, or did not shave off enough of the pith. When adding the pulp, she let through so many seeds that the work had sometimes to be done all over again. She spoke less than usual, smiled to herself more, and when her friends asked why, she said it was a funny story she had just remembered.
“Come then, tell us the story.”
“No, this is time for work.” Her silver nose stud sparkled as she shook her head.
She started again on the orange rinds. She would not look up for a while. Then the secret smile returned to its lodging at the corner of her lips.
The room was scented with oranges and smoke from a brazier filled with pinecones and wood. Our windows overlooked the valley. Just outside was a small stone courtyard where village women sat sorting through great orange slopes of fruit. On these February days it rained often, sometimes with sleet and hail. A bitter wind blew over us from the north, rattling windows, blowing early blossoms off the plum and peach trees, and chilling us to the bone. Then the women worked inside, close to the brazier and the gas stoves on which the marmalade boiled in giant pots. Their hands grew shriveled and cold as they sorted, washed, cut fruit. Every hour they needed tea to keep them going. I made it thick and milky, with quantities of sugar
In a way it was a grim irony. Miss Wilson pointedly made comments about how ungrateful, unloving progeny deserved the suffering that came to them; I just thought it coincidence that while my father owned several pickle factories I worked in one for a small salary. My father’s factories had never been planned. My father’s father, whom the entire neighborhood called Thataiyya, or Grandpa, was a landowner who made a fortune out of growing rice and sugarcane along the Krishna River, renting out tenements, and selling arrack (though by my father’s time we were too genteel to admit to any of this). He built a big stone-flagged house, surrounded it with mango orchards, and trees of amla, tamarind, chikoo, and guava. By the time my father was a young man, the mango trees fruited, laborers were summoned to pick the fruit, and vast vats of pickle were made out of the green mangoes, which were a prized variety. The pickle and other fruit were distributed among the larger family—until my father sniffed a business opportunity, and began supplying a few shops. By the time I was twenty, and already cast out for marrying Michael, my father owned three factories across Andhra Pradesh, which pickled every conceivable thing from ginger to gongura, from lime to bitter gourd. The labels on the bottles said that they contained an ancient and secret mix of spices handed down the generations. I knew it had been concocted by Beni Amma, our plump, flirtatious, bright-saried cook, who had had a child by my middle uncle.
As a young girl I used to play at being shopkeeper. I weighed fallen fruit on a toy balance made of two tin plates and string, making my father’s workers buy hard green mangoes from me for ten paise each. It was much the same now, baskets and gunny bags of fruit all around me. Diwan Sahib said he could tell the month from the way I smelled when I came back from work every afternoon with his newspapers. “If you smell of oranges, it must be January,” he would say. “If it’s apricots, this must be June.”
* * *
Charu was one of our best workers. Like many of the other girls, she worked part-time, but unlike the others she was methodical and hardworking. She was so good at solving problems and so decisive that when I saw her at work, I often wondered why she had been such a disappointment at school.
That year, however, she was different. It was February, marmalade season, and where Charu’s slicing of the orange rinds was usually even and thin whether she had two kilos to do or ten, for no reason that we could determine she began slicing the rind too thick, or did not shave off enough of the pith. When adding the pulp, she let through so many seeds that the work had sometimes to be done all over again. She spoke less than usual, smiled to herself more, and when her friends asked why, she said it was a funny story she had just remembered.
“Come then, tell us the story.”
“No, this is time for work.” Her silver nose stud sparkled as she shook her head.
She started again on the orange rinds. She would not look up for a while. Then the secret smile returned to its lodging at the corner of her lips.
The room was scented with oranges and smoke from a brazier filled with pinecones and wood. Our windows overlooked the valley. Just outside was a small stone courtyard where village women sat sorting through great orange slopes of fruit. On these February days it rained often, sometimes with sleet and hail. A bitter wind blew over us from the north, rattling windows, blowing early blossoms off the plum and peach trees, and chilling us to the bone. Then the women worked inside, close to the brazier and the gas stoves on which the marmalade boiled in giant pots. Their hands grew shriveled and cold as they sorted, washed, cut fruit. Every hour they needed tea to keep them going. I made it thick and milky, with quantities of sugar
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