Help from Priya
“I’m coming!” Sowmya screamed to her father from upstairs. She closed the tab on her families computer that she had been looking at. It was the information for an art school in California, right near where Priya had gone to school. She knew her family would never let her go to art school, especially in America, so she kept this idea as a pipe dream and continued to look for a husband to appease her family’s wish. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to marry — in fact she had always dreamed of having her own family — she had just dreamt that her family would come after she had fulfilled every goal she had wanted for herself. Now, being in her mid twenties and still unmarried, having not so much as teased the idea of her going to art school until she had been looking up information on where Priya studied and came across the writing program at UCSB near San Francisco, she knew she would have to make some big decisions now or have to marry some guy her father picked.
She stepped downstairs and found Priya and her mother there, each holding a massive pile of mangoes ready to be pickled during their annual pickling tradition. She helped them with their things and then set out for the kitchen with Priya to gather the utensils needed to peel and cut the mangoes for pickling.
“How do you do, Sowmya?” Priya said.
“I am fine,” she said, “Not as good as you, how are you enjoying America?”
“It’s been very good to me,” said Priya, hinting that there was more to the story. Sowmya hoped she would get to talk to Priya a bit more later, but knew that it was a far-fetched idea to ask about living in America in front of every woman in their family. Mango pickling was not just a fun family activity, it was the chance for every matriarch in their extended family to get together and gossip about who was pregnant, who was getting married and to bug the members of the family who were not yet married, like Sowmya and Priya, into marrying a worthy man as soon as possible. “Get excited, you and I are the only unmarried girls in our family at this point. This should be a tough day,” Sowmya said to Priya jokingly, in a way that also begged her to help out in case any of the matriarchs attacked.
“It shouldn’t get that bad. I have brought gifts from America for each of them. Hopefully that should appease for a bit. Besides, it can’t possibly get that bad between the two of us,” Priya said reassuringly.
The two of them collected the utensils and headed back into the room where the rest of their family gathered. Piles of mangoes filled the floors until there was just a pathway to get to where each woman was seated. The natural sunlight in the room bounced off of the bright fruits and created a warm glow throughout the whole room. This was what summer felt like to Sowmya. In her memories growing up, she held fond ones of her family gathering to pickle mangoes. Unfortunately, it wasn’t fun for her anymore, now that she was older and of appropriate age to be judged. She knew that if she kept quiet and sat further toward the back of the room that the odds of her being picked on by her aunts and cousins for being unwed would only be slightly smaller, but it was a chance she wanted to take. Priya sat next to her mother in the middle of the room with a confident look as if she were just waiting for someone to say something. Priya’s confidence for this situation despite being unwed left Sowmya to wonder what she was hiding. Had she met someone in America? Sowmya speculated that she had, and realized what a dream that sounded like — to be able to choose your own husband, instead of being sold away like a product in a farmers market. Sowmya wished she had Priya’s confidence to do such a brave thing. She dreamed of telling her family that what she really wanted was to go to America on her own, study writing and live her own life but she was too afraid. She was too afraid to meet her prospective husbands alone, either someone had to come with her or she would request that they come to her house.
“Sowmya, when will you ever marry? You’re not going to look any better the older you get, and if you want a good man you should have been married long ago,” said Priya’s mother. Sowmya tensed up and thought for a moment. She had an opportunity to speak the truth and tell her family what she really wanted, or she would have to sit and listen to them talk to her like this until she settled for a man she wasn’t as interested in. She looked over at Priya, who sat tall with an air of confidence that she knew came from living in America and following her dreams and knew exactly what she would say all of a sudden.
“I want to go back to school,” she said. There were a few moments where no one seemed to have noticed what she said, but once the words sunk into their brains they slowly put the mangoes down and looked up at her with a puzzled surprise.
“I want to study writing in America. I studied English, now I want to study writing. I want to learn how to write books. Then I will find a husband and have a family,” she said shakily as every woman in her family stared at her, each holding a knife in one hand and a mango in the other. Maybe this wasn’t the best time to say that.
“Sowmya I think that is a great idea!” shrieked Priya, who obviously wanted to help the rest of the family to accept Sowmya. “Have you looked into any schools? There is a great one near me, you could come and stay with me while you go to school,” said Priya as her mother looked at her with a confused glare. For some reason Sowmya felt a rush of relief. Despite the looks on everyone’s faces she had a feeling that this was no longer an impossible goal. She suddenly realized that with Priya’s help, the likelihood of this dream becoming a reality was actually greater than most. She began to talk about her goals, and the looks on the women’s faces became less puzzled, only slightly angrier, but a little bit excited. Finally, for the first time in a long time, Sowmya had hope for the future.
I decided to write this piece about Sowmya because I found her character to be a little bit sad in the beginning. I wanted to expand on the idea that there was something Sowmya was hiding from her family beyond her wish to get married. There was a moment during the mango pickling party where the reader saw a different side of Sowmya when she was alone with Priya so it gave me the idea to write about a side of Sowmya that wasn’t jealous of Priya’s success, but inspired by it. One thing I really liked about Priya’s character was that she was pretty headstrong, and I kind of wanted to express that in this story from Sowmya’s point of view because I felt like what we saw reading this story from Priya’s point of view may not have been the entire picture. I chose to write this narrative from a third-person point of view because it’s the point of view I feel most comfortable writing in when I write fiction, I also think that this narrative gives a more unbiased view on the situation, whereas the first person narrative is better for expressing really strong emotion from one character. One thing I liked about this assignment was that I had the freedom to really go anywhere with it. I strayed from the original story a little bit because I wanted to express a side of Sowmya that the book didn’t get to see. I’d say the biggest challenge to creating this story was making it sound realistic, especially with how little I know about Indian culture and tradition. I knew it wasn’t common for Sowmya to want to go to school so late in her life, and I got kind of stuck because I had no idea how a family would react to that sort of thing (not well, I would imagine) so I finished the story more abruptly than I would have liked to.
