Follow the Elephant (16 page)

“Oh, my dear friend,” said Dr. Vivek, clearly so overcome he had no more words.

Ben could see that Gran’s eyes had a look in them he hadn’t seen since his father had died. “I would like to make a donation of three thousand dollars.”

“Indeed you are most generous,” Partha said.

Dr. Vivek said, “Perhaps we could name the new addition after your son? After Ben’s father.”

“You mean the Tom Leeson Building?” Ben asked. He had never imagined a building named after his father.

“We are agreed?” asked Dr. Vivek, smiling widely.

“That would be wonderful. Absolutely wonderful,” Gran said, beaming back.

“Excellent,” Ben said. A place to help other people. It might be a kind of reincarnation for his father. Not the kind of reincarnation Rani talked about where a person came back to live another life, but a way of helping other people after you died. A way you could live on. It made sense. If his father had to die, at least something good would come of it.

Ben watched as Gran wrote a cheque and handed it to Dr. Vivek. She was donating a lot of money, and when the Bangalore government matched it, there would probably be enough for a start on the new building. The Tom Leeson Building.

“My most sincere thanks, dear lady,” Dr. Vivek said. He took off his wire-rimmed glasses and wiped them.

“It’s my pleasure,” Gran said.

In their hotel room, Ben sat down on the bed across from Gran. “I thought your idea for that donation to Dr. Vivek’s hospice was awesome. Do you have enough money to do that?”

“I can’t think of anything I’d rather give my money to,” Gran said, as she crawled into her bed. “It feels better than giving bits of money here and there to beggars. When you told me you’d given your pocket knife to that boy, it made me realize that there are other ways to help. The hospice will make a difference to people, and besides it means there will be a memorial to your father in India, in a country I’ve cared about for so long.”

Ben bent over and gave his grandmother a hug. She hugged him back, and he was reminded how much he used to love her hugs when he was little.

Lying in the narrow bed across the room from his grandmother, Ben said, “It’s been like a scavenger hunt, Gran, hasn’t it? One thing leads to another and another, and now we’re almost at the end of the search.”

“It has been like a scavenger hunt, but who knows what kind of a welcome we’ll have in Rishikesh.”

Ben reached for the top sheet on his bed. His biggest worry now was that Gran might have her heart broken if Shanti didn’t recognize her. He had to be prepared for that. He could see himself standing on the streets of Rishikesh holding up his weeping grandmother.

“YOU HAVE ARRIVED
, madam, sir,” said their tonga driver.

Ben read the sign over the Rishikesh hotel:
JOURNEY’S END
.

From the veranda of their room on the second floor Ben had his first sight of the snow-tipped peaks of the Himalayas. He took a deep breath of the clear air, then turned to the room and tossed his pack on a bed. “Okay, let’s go!”

“I’m not ready,” Gran sat on a chair by the window, twisting her hands in her lap. “It’s almost five o’clock. I’m tired, and I think we should find Shanti tomorrow.”

“Gran!” Ben said, whirling around on her. “We’ve come such a long way already. We’ve crossed India twice. We’ve spent hours in planes, cars, trains and buses. How could you think of quitting when we’re so close?”

“I’m tired.” She slumped in the chair.

“You’re stalling. You can’t back down now that we’re practically on Shanti’s doorstep!”

“Maybe we should have something to eat first, Ben,” Gran said.

“No. We had lunch on the train. Get with the program.” He grabbed his grandmother’s arm and steered her to the door. The desk clerk said it was a short walk to Shanti’s address on Lapar Road.

The neighbourhood streets were wide and shady, but Gran was moving slower and slower. Ben kept his arm through hers, feeling as though he was dragging her onto Lapar Road. Half a block along, he found a yellow house with vines growing around the door. Number 62 was plainly visible.

He led his grandmother through the gate and up the path. Gran stopped. “The curtains are pulled. You see. No one’s home.”

“Come on, Gran.” Ben tightened his hold on her arm.

“Now that we’re so close, I’m afraid. I’m afraid she won’t have any idea who I am.”

“There’s one way to find out. Stand beside me, Gran. Here goes,” said Ben. He stepped up to the door and lifted the knocker.

“Wait a minute. What should I say?” Gran whispered, running her hand over her hair.

“I’ll speak for you, Gran,” Ben said. He dropped the knocker.

The door was opened by a small woman tidily wrapped in a bright blue sari. Her face was lined, and her hair, much greyer than Gran’s, was held in a neat twist at the back of her head. The most startling thing about the woman was her eyes, which were filled with light. She said in English, “May I help you?”

Ben cleared his throat. “My grandmother and I have come from Canada and we are looking for Shanti Mukherjee. My grandmother …”

The woman looked at them blankly. Ben’s heart stopped.

Then the woman’s eyes widened as she stared at Gran. “No! Could it be …? Is it you, Norah?” Shanti raised both hands and pressed them to her cheeks.

Gran made a small strangling sound and reached out her arms. “Beloved friend, we meet at last.”

Shanti stepped forward, and for what seemed a long time, the two women held onto each other, not speaking, only pulling back for a moment to look into each other’s faces and then reaching to hug again.

Ben stood awkwardly on the veranda, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, as his grandmother and Shanti laughed and cried at the same time. He stared at the houses across the street, and when he turned back, Gran was wiping her cheeks. Why did old people cry when they were supposed to be happy?

“Dear Shanti! I can’t believe you knew it was me!”

“I know I was a bit slow, dear Norah, but so many years have gone by.”

“Fifty years! And it’s Ben who found you.” Gran turned to Ben, who was shuffling his feet. “Come and meet my Shanti, Ben.” Gran was talking quickly now. “Shanti, this is Ben, my grandson and travelling companion.”

The small, dark woman turned to Ben and took his hand in both of hers. “Thank you, Ben, for bringing your grandmother to me.”

“You’re welcome,” Ben said. “I was just lucky.” He felt kind of choked up himself. It had taken only a minute for Shanti to recognize Gran. Maybe her brother had been wrong.

“Come in, come in.” Shanti motioned them inside the house, leading them through the hallway into a sitting room.

“My daughter and her husband are at work in their sari shop now.” Shanti motioned to the sofa. “You must please sit down.”

Gran sat on the sofa and Ben took a chair beside the window. Shanti went back and forth between them, patting Ben on the shoulder, then turning to touch Gran, sitting down beside her and getting up again. “I am far too excited to sit. Wait, I have something to show you.” She went to the desk and searched through one drawer after another. “I know it’s here somewhere. I’m not so good at remembering these days.” She pulled out every drawer again and then stood in the middle of the room frowning.

Ben felt sorry for her. She looked so puzzled that she couldn’t find what she was looking for, and he didn’t know how to help her.

“Oh, I remember now,” Shanti said, going over to a small framed picture on the mantel. “I always keep the photograph up here.” She smiled, looking so relieved as she handed Gran a black-and-white photograph in a silver frame.

“You’ve kept it!” Gran said. Ben leaned over and saw his grandmother as a pretty girl, with her same high forehead and wide smile. Then Gran reached into her backpack and brought out the photograph she’d carried from Vancouver. Ben’s eyes went from one to the other. Trying to imagine them as teenagers was as impossible as imagining himself as a sixty-year-old man.

Gran was talking. “I remember when we exchanged these pictures with our letters. We were thirteen, Ben’s age. Do you remember I wrote and said I’d come to India one day?”

Shanti put her hand on her heart. “I remember everything you wrote, dearest friend. You see my memory for the past remains strong, but these days I sometimes can’t recall what I did yesterday. My family worries about me, but I’m not unhappy, especially when the memory of our special friendship is so alive in my heart. And now, at last you are here. Oh, I forget my manners.” She jumped up. “Please, I must make you tea.”

Ben watched the two women standing side by side in the kitchen, their heads bent together beside the stove where the kettle boiled, Shanti so small and neat in her blue sari, Gran in her long brown skirt. They talked, stopping only to shake their heads or laugh softly.

It felt good to see them together at last. Gran looked so happy and relaxed. And he was proud of himself. Gran was right. He was the one who had found Shanti. With a little help from Dr. Dhaliwal and the internet, Rani and maybe Ganesh, too.

Shanti brought mango juice for Ben and put a plate of sesame honey cakes down beside him. Ben ate the delicious honey cakes while the two grandmothers carried on talking as though he wasn’t in the room.

Gran took a deep breath and seemed to have made a decision. “Shanti, I have to talk about something.” She moved closer. “It means the world to me that you remember me. I’ve been afraid you might turn me away. I thought you’d be angry because I questioned your decision to let your parents choose your husband.”

Shanti’s eyes opened wide. “I was never angry at you, my dear Norah. But I did feel perhaps you might have been angry with me.”

“Why would I be angry with you?”

“Because you’d see me as weak for allowing my husband to be chosen for me.”

“I questioned it, my dear, but I was never angry.”

“Then why didn’t you write again?” asked Shanti.

Gran exclaimed, “I did. I
did
write. But there was no answer from you.”

“But I answered every letter you wrote.”

“What happened to them, I wonder?” Gran said.

Ben wondered why Gran and Shanti hadn’t telephoned each other, but in those days phoning would have been expensive and probably most people in India didn’t even own phones. Ben thought maybe he should try to help them figure it out. “It’s strange,” he said. “Did either of you move?”

“I did,” Shanti said. “I moved to Delhi when I married. Shortly after that, my parents moved from Agra to manage the hotel in Varanasi so my old address would have changed.”

“We know about those moves. My grandmother and I have been following that trail, but isn’t there a system for forwarding mail in India?” Ben asked.

Shanti nodded. “Now, yes, but perhaps not in those days. I’m sure I sent you my new address, Norah. I wonder why my letters didn’t come to you?”

“Did
you
move anywhere, Gran?” Ben asked.

“Actually I did. It was right around that time that I began my travels and went to live in England for eighteen months,” Gran said, “but my parents would have sent on any letters from Shanti.” She thought for a minute. “You know, there was a long postal strike when I first went overseas. I remember I was upset when I didn’t hear from my parents for more than a month.”

Ben had an idea. “My guess is that Shanti’s letters could have been lost in the postal strike.”

“That might be it,” Gran said. “And then, I stopped writing because I was certain you never wanted to hear from me again.”

“I stopped writing for the same reason,” Shanti said, nodding her head. “I thought you saw me as a silly Indian woman with no mind of my own.”

Shanti and Gran were so absorbed in each other they’d forgotten him. He sat there like an invisible man. Ben took the last sesame honey cake and glanced around the room. There were pictures along the top of the mantle and a long dining room table in the next room.

Gran was saying, “How foolish and strong-headed we both were.” She put her hand over Shanti’s. “Were you happy in your marriage?”

That was his grandmother. Always wanting to talk about people’s feelings. How much longer would this kind of talk go on?

Shanti smiled. “It was a happy marriage. My parents chose wisely for me. My husband was a good man.” She wrinkled her brow as she tried to concentrate. “Now I live here with my daughter’s family. My oldest grandson is studying computers in the south, and the youngest is still at school. Rajiv will be home soon.”

“I chose my own husband,” Gran said, “and we were happy. But I’ve been widowed for ten years now. Ben’s father was my only child. He died not quite a year ago.”

“He would have been young,” said Shanti. “My poor Norah. So hard to lose your son.” She turned to Ben. “I am so sorry, Ben, that you are without your father now.”

The one thing Ben didn’t like was sympathy. He needed some fresh air. He leapt to his feet. “Okay if I go outside and have a look around?”

“Of course, Ben,” said Shanti. “Go out the back door and see what you can find.”

The garden was full of plants with spiky flowers and a tall fig tree, but what caught Ben’s attention was a green parrot perched in a cage hanging from the tree. The parrot hopped back and forth on a bar, cocking his eye to look at Ben and squawking loudly. There was a box of peanuts beside the cage and Ben began tossing them to the parrot when he heard a voice behind him. “Don’t feed Mikul too many or he’ll get sick. Being a Canadian you’ve probably never been around a sick parrot, but it is not a pretty sight.”

The speaker was a boy about his age, though smaller. He had hair that stood more or less straight up and he was grinning. “I’m Rajiv. I came in through the front and met your grandmother. Welcome to India, Ben.”

“Thanks. Our grandmothers used to be pen pals,” Ben said.

“They’re in the house talking like two crazy parrots!”

“It was too much for me,” Ben said.

“I think we should get out of here. Like a ride on my scooter?” Rajiv asked.

“I’m there,” Ben said.

The boys rushed into the house to grab helmets.

Ben didn’t want to admit he’d never ridden a scooter before. At the side of the house he got on behind Rajiv, who kick-started the engine and headed onto the road with Ben holding on tightly to his jacket. The wind rushed past Rajiv and onto Ben’s face as they steered around rickshaws, buses and trucks to the edge of town. Rajiv slowed the scooter at a wooden gate in front of a park. “That’s our famous elephant reserve.”

“I seem to have been following elephants all over India. Think I could see these?” Ben asked.

“No problem. I’ll take you tomorrow.”

Ben laughed. “You say ‘no problem’ up here too!”

“That’s just the way life is in India. No problem!” Rajiv called, revving up the engine again. They circled back through town and crossed onto Lapar Road.

They arrived just as Shanti’s daughter and her husband came home from the shop. Savita was a smaller version of her mother, with dark hair that came down to the middle of her back. Uday, her husband, with hair that stood up like Rajiv’s, shook hands to welcome Ben and Norah.

Later, they all sat down in the dining room for a celebration meal cooked by Savita. Toasts were made to the reunion of the grandmothers, to the grandchildren, to India and to Canada. Most of the time, Shanti seemed to be involved, but Ben noticed that often she’d peer around the table in a bewildered way as the conversation went on without her.

Gran tapped Shanti’s shoulder. “Do you remember telling me that your brother talked all the time? He still talks a lot, doesn’t he?”

Shanti’s face brightened. “Vivek is such a sweet man, but he can be a chatterbox. He also worries about me too much. I know my memory isn’t as good as it used to be, but my daughter’s family takes care of me.” Shanti smiled around the table.