Feeling the Vibes (11 page)

Amir’s mother came out waving two bulging paper bags. She’d apparently forgiven Amir because she said, “I made Vikram’s favourite, omelette sandwiches with red chillies, just how he likes it!”

She did a last-minute swoop on her son, smoothing his glossy hair, rubbing a completely invisible mark off his face.

Obi seemed to be loving this little scene: mischievous Amir, his fusspot mum and his elderly hard-to-please dad. They were the kind of parents who drive kids mad, yet they obviously adored Amir, even if they didn’t really understand him. He was so full of life, I think they were actually a teensy bit dazzled. He was one of those humans who seem to come into the world with their own personal supply of sunlight.

Amir and his friend set off, heads close together, chatting. I could see Obi yearning to follow. “They fly kites at the fort,” he said wistfully.

“Indian fighting kites?” asked Reubs.

Obi nodded, his eyes sparkling.

“Fighting kites are cool,” Brice conceded. “Then we’re out of here,” he added in an undertone.

“How?” Then I realised what he meant. “NO way. We’re not taking Obi through those time tunnels.”

“Darling, I like them less than you do, believe me, but do you want to be chasing your little
bodhisattva
through Time and Space for ever?”

“That’s not the point. It’s not safe.”

“And this is?” he said witheringly.

I gave up trying to explain. I did understand that the wrong thing is sometimes the only thing. What bothered me was the way we seemed to have to keep ON doing the wrong thing, to get ourselves back on track.

We caught up with the boys in time to hear Amir laughing in amazement. “Do you realise that’s the first time our fathers have agreed on anything! My father says Mahatma Gandhi has made it impossible for the British to stay on. Without them to keep law and order, Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims will tear India apart.”

“My father says that too,” said Vikram, “Like mad dogs fighting over a chapatti, he says.”

“Well, I think that is TOTAL rubbish,” said Amir cheerfully. “Pakistan is just a name. We have all lived peacefully together in Lahore for centuries. We are not going to turn into mad dogs just because the British are leaving.”

Amir’s words made me want to rip out my hair. He didn’t know about the Dark Agencies, how they watch and wait for a weak moment then sneak into your head, twisting the truth, whipping up fear and violence. I thought the politicians’ logical-sounding “Partition” had the PODS’ fingerprints all over it.

At the fort adults, as well as kids and teenagers, were up on the battlements, enjoying the beautiful golden evening. This ancient earthworks had surely seen a LOT of human bloodshed over the centuries, but today it was like an innocent playground. Hundreds of kites dotted the sky, criss-crossing strings shining in the honey coloured evening light. Some kites had lighted paper lanterns tied to their strings, adding to the magical atmosphere.

Like Amir and Vikram some people had brought picnics. The majority, though, were ferociously defending their kites.

Indian kite flying, if you didn’t know, is utterly ruthless! It’s not just about who has the most powerful kite or flies highest, it’s about disabling the other person’s kite by all available means. This includes coating your string with a lethal mix of glue and ground glass!

“See the Sikh guy with that massive red kite,” said Brice as we watched a dramatic kite duel. “He’s going to cut the turquoise one out of the sky any second - NOW!”

Admiring shouts and applause came from the battlements as the blood red kite successfully sliced the turquoise kite from its string.

Eight or nine kids set off sprinting towards the plummeting kite.

“Amir will get it,” said Obi confidently. “Amir is a very fast runner.”

Amir was a spectacularly fast runner, returning breathlessly with the kite.

The boys placed it between them as they unpacked their home-made omelette sandwiches, tiny mangoes and bottles of pop.

While he ate, Amir chatted almost non-stop.

“I don’t know if I will be a musician when I grow up actually, Vikram. Lately I’m thinking I would like to make movies. There are not enough good Indian movies being made, and if Indians never see themselves in movies, I am afraid they will start to think they are not real! I think it is a very real danger, Vikram.”

From movies he suddenly looped back to Mahatma Gandhi.

“It is just so amazing how Gandhi-ji forced the British empire to change its ways, without ever once using force! He is teaching the world that violence is only for dinosaurs, Vikram. I would go so far as to say he is showing us the future!”

“Gandhi?” I said vaguely. “Wasn’t he that skinny old guy who went around just in his flimsy little loin cloth?”

“It’s called a
dhoti
, darling,” Brice corrected scathingly. “And that ‘skinny old guy’ was one of the greatest human peacemakers the world has ever known.”

“Oh, OK!” I said with relief, “I wondered why his name kept making me all tingly!”

Vikram had been picking at his sandwich, not really joining in Amir’s one-sided conversation.

“I brought you a present,” he said abruptly. He rummaged in his bag, shyly bringing out an old-fashioned box camera.

Amir looked up at Vikram with a questioning expression.

“It is the right one, isn’t it? It’s the one we saw in the shop?”

“Yes, but, Vikram, it cost so much!” Amir was already delightedly investigating the camera. “I can’t believe it, you even put a film in!”

“There are two more reels in the bag,” his friend said.

Amir mischievously snapped a picture of Vikram with the warring kites above his head, then a thought struck him.

“But why did you get it? It’s not my birthday for months yet!”

Vikram quickly looked away. “It’s a goodbye present. My father is taking us to Amritsar next week.”

Amir just stared at him. “But - Lahore is your home!”

“My parents say when Lahore becomes part of Pakistan, it won’t be safe for Hindus any more.”

Another kite fell to shrieks and clapping.

Amir was struggling not to cry. I saw him making a huge effort to pull himself together. “Vikram, we are not going to spoil our evening talking about sad subjects. And you know what I just remembered?”

He biffed Vikram on the arm. “Gandhi-ji is coming to Amritsar! It’s true! We will kill two birds with one stone! I’ll come to visit you and we’ll both go to hear him speak.”

“Don’t!” said Vikram before he could stop himself.

Amir looked shocked. “You don’t want me to come?”

“No! I mean, I want you to come,” Vikram stuttered, “but I don’t think it will be safe, not until things calm down. I don’t think your father will let you actually.”

“If I don’t ask him, he can’t forbid it,” Amir said carelessly. “History is being made, Vikram, and I am determined to be part of it.”

A shadow fell across their faces.

“What’s this!” teased a jolly voice. “Bringing your own food to the fort! Are you trying to put a poor ice-cream
wallah
out of business?” The man looked down at them with laughing eyes.

I’d seen him before, only that time he wasn’t selling ice cream. He was brandishing a burning torch snarling his hatred.

Obi recognised the ice-cream man too.

The fort rippled and like a severed kite Obi went zooming off into history taking me with him.

Chapter Fourteen

I
‘m assuming you’ve never been dragged through Time by a terrified four-year-old
bodhisattva
? It’s not an experience you can very easily describe. Imagine that someone has thrown India’s history into a blender,
all
of it, everything that has already happened or is ever going to happen, all whirling and waltzing confusingly in one big cosmic smoothie, and you’re helplessly whirling around with it.

When it’s happening, when you’re swooshing in and out of centuries at hyperspeed, you’re not actually thinking in words, at first anyway, you’re more like YIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIKES!!!!!

“Helix!” I quavered, when I finally got back the power of speech. “Did you ever think we should maybe tie
me
to someone!”

Go with it, babe
, she said calmly.

Like I had a choice!

Trust me, it’ll work out
, she added serenely.

I’m being blasted through Infinity so fast, the skin on my face is vibrating with pure G-force, and she tells me to
trust
her! I
had
trusted her, that was my problem! I had totally followed her advice! I was now lost in Time with a future world peacemaker! Fat chance of getting Obi to the monks now. Not to mention finding the boys.

Omigosh, how was I going to find the boys?

I wasn’t just relying on the cosmic thread at this point. I was also hanging grimly on to Obi’s hand. We were swirling through some kind of festival where adults and children happily splattered each other with coloured paints. A vivid rainbow of pinks and greens and blues rained down everywhere. It was like a feverish outdoor party.

Obi was half enchanted, half bewildered, but I had never felt so alone. Imagine if I never saw Reuben ever again…

A heartbeat later I knew that couldn’t happen. My soul and Reuben’s are totally connected. That angel boy would find me somehow. I knew it as surely as if he’d whispered in my ear.

My panic instantly melted away. I’m like, OK, Melanie, you’re in charge of this incredible little boy, so get a grip, will ya!

You wouldn’t think you could adjust to swooping endlessly through Infinity, but it’s surprising what you get used to.

As we whirled in and out of monsoon rains and drowsy afternoon heat, my brain cells soon began to function more or less like normal. I started to notice that certain scenes and people kept recurring, like we were being pulled by some irresistible force.

I’d assumed neither of us had any control over what was happening, that we were helplessly freefalling through Time and Space. When you’re attached to someone by a celestial thread, though, you feel a little bit of what they feel, and I began to get the strangest feeling that Obi was
searching
for something, something incredibly precious. But what?

Several times we swirled back to the eighteenth century where we always saw the same sandy-haired Englishman. The first time he had recently arrived in India, hot and flushed in eighteenth-century riding gear. We saw him at the exact moment he fell in love with the dark-eyed princess who was peeping at him flirtily from behind a curtain.

The next time we saw the couple they were in glittering Muslim wedding finery, and we saw them again what must have been years later playing a mad game of tag up and down the marble corridors of a huge airy palace with five or six giggling little golden-skinned children.

I could feel Obi longing to stay with this warm, happy family, but something always pulled him back to his search.

One scene, though, came back over and over: a skinny old man in a white
dhoti
talking into an old style microphone while a rapt crowd drank in every word. I’d have known Mahatma Gandhi was a great soul, even without Brice to set me straight.

“We must BE the change we seek to see in the world!” he cried out in a cracked, urgent voice. “When night falls, it makes NO sense to stand cursing the dark. We must light a candle! We must light hundreds and thousands and
millions
of candles!”

I never got to hear the next part of this speech. The instant he said that part about cursing the dark, a pulse of pure fear always went through Obi and a conflicting force whirled us away in a different direction.

I saw the Gandhi scene five or six times before I spotted the boy in the crowd, his face shining, drinking in every word.

“That’s Amir!” I gasped. “He really went to see Gandhi in Amritsar!” And I felt a new jolt of terror go through Obi’s hand into mine. This time the fear was so extreme that we were literally blasted out of our whirling, waltzing holding pattern.

We just - stopped.

We were on a station platform at night. A rust-eaten sign said LAHORE.

We’d come right back to
where
we started - but not
when
we started. I felt it right away.

Karmen had told me Indian stations got crowded, but these people were all squashed up together like battery chickens. Nobody could so much as scratch his nose without elbowing his neighbour. No trains could have passed through for hours, maybe days.

What unnerved me most was the silence. Hundreds of humans packed into such a small space and they didn’t make a sound. A cough or a rustle maybe. Apart from that, deathly quiet. People kept glancing despairingly at the station clock.

I picked up flickers of panic. The Delhi train had never been this late. Something had happened. Something no one here could bear to think about.

Obi was trembling all over like a baby rabbit. It was like he knew.

I can’t tell you how long we stood there. I just know that at last the endless waiting was over, and an old-fashioned steam train came slowly winding towards us through the dark. It had no lights and this was obviously wrong. You could just see plumes of steam billowing, ghostly against the night.