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while disembodied TV laughter echoes through the room

Mrs. Basu

Sagar

Shyamoli

Mrinalini

Pradeep

bent over a model plane.

Molli

labor strike, everything closed down, not even the buses running. But you can't really blame them, can you? After all, factory workers have to eat too.

Are you happy in America?

Mrs. Dutta knows that Mrs. Basu, who has been her closest friend since they both moved to Ghoshpara Lane as young brides, cannot be fobbed off with descriptions of Fisherman's Wharf and the Golden Gate Bridge, or even with anecdotes involving grandchildren. And so she has been putting off her reply, while in her heart family loyalty battles with insidious feelings of -- but she turns from them quickly and will not name them even to herself.

children being allowed to close their doors against their parents.

though the minty toothpaste does not leave her mouth feeling as clean as does the bittersweet neem stick she's been using all her life.

"But, Mom, she's in there. She's been there forever... " Mrinalini says.

Whenever she lifted her hand to him, her heart was pierced through and through. Such is a mother's duty.

Mrs. Dutta bends over the sink, fists tight in the folds of her sari. Hard with the pounding in her head to think what she feels most -- anger at the children for their rudeness, or at Shyamoli for letting them go unrebuked. Or is it shame she feels (but why?), this burning, acid and indigestible, that coats her throat in molten metal?

alu dum

the meat safe

ground fresh by Reba, the maid,

coriander, cumin, cloves, black pepper, a few red chilies for vigor

Proper Indian food

"cholesterol," "all putting on weight," "she's spoiling you."

she might as well admit it a disappointment.

For this she blames, in part, the Olan Mills portrait. Perhaps it was foolish of her to set so much store by a photograph, especially one taken years ago. But it was such a charming scene -- Mrinalini in a ruffled white dress with her arm around her brother, Pradeep chubby and dimpled in a suit and bow tie, a glorious autumn forest blazing red and yellow behind them. (Later Mrs. Dutta was saddened to learn that the forest was merely a backdrop in a studio in California, where real trees did not turn such colors.)

A strange concept, a day set aside to honor mothers. Did the sahibs not honor their mothers the rest of the year, then?)

others, who thought of her as a shy, sheltered woman

being mistress of her own life

Even in bed she'd been at the center of the household,

Therefore she had no reason to get well.

even though they have put away, somewhere in the back of a closet, the vellum-bound Ramayana for Young Readers that she carried all the way from India in her hand luggage.

Indian Shyamoli, the docile bride she'd mothered for a month before putting her on a Pan Am flight to join her husband

And being the only Indian family on the street, we have to be extra careful. People here sometimes"

She knew she should not store unclean clothes in the same room where she kept the pictures of her gods. That would bring bad luck. And the odor.

wisps of lace, magenta and sea- green and black, that were her panties,

he wished the ground would open up and swallow her, like the Sita of mythology.

"No, no, no, clothes and all is no work for the man of the house. I'll do it."

So she has taken to washing her clothes in the bathtub when she is alone

Ignorance, as Mrs. Dutta knows well from years of managing a household, is a great promoter of harmony

ust tidy grass and a few pale- blue flowers

whose name she doesn't know

privacy

she disapproves of smoking, especially in women

She does not wave back or smile.

Khoka

d it is as though merciful time has given her back her youth, that sweet, aching urgency of being needed again.