chapter IX

Although her uncle is already out and about buying things for the wedding, we want to see Shilpi at least one more time before we commit ourselves. We invited her on a Sunday, but she never showed up and after calling her house and complaining, her uncle came alone and ate with us. We request that she come one day during the week.

She arrives in a pink salwaar which, I later learn, she sewed herself. Ma has asked her to take over in the kitchen since the cook is off and Ma had yet to finish making lunch. I use the opportunity to get to know Shilpi better. Joining her in the kitchen, I observed her cooking and made sure she has whatever she needs.

Amar katha’ta boosta parcen?

“Do you understand my language?” Shilpi asks. She comments on how surprised she is to be cooking in her in-laws’ house before marriage.

Shilpi asks for a picture of me to send to her family. I have only one good shot that was taken some time ago [above] and I am pleased that she likes it.

After a while, I noticed Shilpi’s smell. Although it isn’t overly hot in the kitchen as the fall weather was just about perfect, she is moving around a lot and obviously must be heating up.

Normally I would have found such a stench bothersome, but Shilpi’s odor does not affect me the same way. I had always heard that humans are attracted by scent the same as all other animals, but I had never experienced the power of sweat. It’s not like other Indians with whom I had been in contact, but more astringent, more raw and primal somehow. Indeed, Shilpi’s family is an odd class in Bangladesh. They are almost like tribals and they are well known for only marrying amongst their own caste.

Shilpi continued mashing dahl and adding spices to make a paste for bora [fritter]. Her odor is stronger now and I am surprised to find myself turned-on by it. Having visited the Caribbean many times as a youth, I know the smell. It is an exotic, African scent.

By Shilpi’s aroma alone I am transported to lavish Dominican estates where the dark-skinned help invariably had the same distinctive smell. I am reminded of the cobble-stone streets of bustling old Santo Domingo, the feel of cool sand beneath my bare feet as I munch on fried plantains in a thatched beachfront restaurant, the taste the pinacolada served in a prickly hollowed-out pineapple, the amplified meringue music late at night as I lay awake beneath a slow-moving ceiling fan, and the sweat on my back sticking to the car seat as mile upon mile of sugarcane plantations pass by my open window.

Shilpi smells of Port-au-Prince.

While waiting for her bora to fry, Shilpi is growing impatient and tries her hand at English;

“Many, many time.”

I suppress a laugh as I don’t wish to embarrass her. She picks up on her mistake and, coming close to me, looks right into my face and opens her eyes comically wide. Shilpi lets a out laugh that comes from deep inside.

And I am hers.

Before she leaves, I give a Shilpi small gift. It is an elaborate hair-clip of a silver butterfly covered with different colored stones. I bought it in America before I came, so that I wouldn’t be caught without a present to offer from my country. Ma instructs her to not to wear it until the wedding. The butterfly is the symbol of marriage in West Bengal.

“Beautiful,” she says in English, placing it along with my photo in her little blue bag.

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chapter X