Girl in Shades (31 page)

“Her name was Ivy?”

“Yes, Ivy — like the veins that covered the brick of the building where we met. I was much older than she — ten years — so that started out as a bit of an issue.”

“And what was my real father like when he was growing up?” My long-lost grandfather stands and walks to a cabinet, where he removes a stack of photos, square and in colour. He lays them out in front of me on the table.

“This is Amar.” He points to a crying baby with dark hair, naked in a bathtub. “And this was his mother.” A woman, long hair and wide eyes, leans over the baby, scrubbing him with a white washcloth. She smiles in a tired sort of way. I pick up the photo and look closer, amazed.

“She has my eyes! I mean, I have her eyes.”

“I noticed as soon as you walked in. In fact, I said to myself, ‘What do you know, there are my dead wife's eyes.'”

The rest of the photos show the same dark-haired boy at various points in his childhood and young adulthood: climbing a tree in the backyard, holding a cricket stick in a park, graduating from high school with one of those flat hats, alone on a bed in an empty apartment with red, blurry eyes.

“Amar put off university a little too long. He got mixed up with the wrong group of friends, I'm afraid, and although the strong light of his soul never dimmed, he never stayed in one place or one job for any length of time.”

“I'm putting off university right now too.”

“But you'll attend, I hope?”

“We'll see what life throws at me.”

“Anyway, enough of this talk about your father. I thought you came here to find out for yourself?” I nod several times fast. “Tomorrow we will board a bus and travel to Varanasi. There, I will introduce you to your father.”

In the morning we walk to the bus station. I know Grandfather Raj must be tired because I heard him pacing all night long. Up and down the halls, in and out of the toilet, back and forth from room to room of the empty house. When we woke up and I asked him about it, he said he was restless. “At eighty-three years old, I have not much left to sleep for” were his exact words.

Colour coats the street, red and orange powder sprinkled on the ground we walk over.

“Festival last night,” Grandfather Raj tells me. “This powder was used as a way to honour the gods.” I walk slow to keep in line with his hunched-over limp. Simple sandals are strapped onto his dry feet, his skin already coated in red dust. Dirt settles on our legs as we walk, and the smell seems a bit better in this part of town. That, or I have gotten used to it already.

He pays for my ticket and allows me to sit by the window in the rickety old bus. When the men turn around in their seats to stare at me, he shoos them away with his hand, saying words in Hindi that I imagine mean something like, “That's my granddaughter you're ogling.”

The journey to Varanasi is slow. The packed bus hits every bump in the road. Speakers at the front blare out high-pitched voices that remind me of chipmunks crying out in pain. I have only my backpack with me, with an extra sweatshirt and underwear, my money, and some things that belonged to my mother.

“When we get there, don't tell him you are his daughter right away, it will be too much of a shock,” Grandfather Raj says. “I will tell him you are a student at the university interested in learning more about his lifestyle.”

“And what kind of lifestyle is that?”

“We're almost there now.”

Soon, the bus stops and the men push their way out onto the streets of Varanasi. Narrow passageways are filled with bicycles and rickshaws coming from all directions. Young women balance fruit on their head while boys push carts piled with vegetables. Stray dogs brush their prickly fur against my bare legs as they pass. I follow Grandfather Raj to a river, where men and women bathe and dry their clothes on dusty steps.

“The river Ganges,” he tells me and then points ahead of us and to the left. “And on that small hill, we will find your father.”

We hike another ten minutes to the top. A man with a yellow turban and long black hair greets us outside what looks like a makeshift house made out of old logs, tree branches and mud. He's not wearing a shirt and his eyes are only half open.

“Bom Shiva!” The man says to Grandfather Raj as he reaches down and sucks smoke from a clay pipe. Grandfather Raj scrunches his lips and looks to the sky in annoyance.

“Amar Ghosh?” he says, and the man lifts his thin arm to direct us behind him.

“Stay close to me,” Grandfather Raj instructs as we maneuver our way around fire pits and rusty cooking pots.

There are two old logs holding up a piece of striped fabric like a lean-to, and underneath this teepee sits a man. Grandfather Raj moves towards him in recognition. The man lifts his grey beard, looks up at Grandfather Raj, and says with composure, “Ah, Father, what an old man you have become.”

Also shirtless, he is wearing ochre-coloured pants and his thin knees press into his chest. He supports himself by bare feet in the dirt and I can see the shape of every muscle holding his skeleton together. Beads hang around his neck, his hair white and frizzy on top of his head. He has two white lines drawn on his forehead, leading between his eyes. Oily skin and lighter eyes than the other men I have seen. Eyes that shine in the midday sun.

“Have you been keeping well?” Grandfather Raj has tears growing under his thick eyelashes. He strokes his hand through his beard.

“Ah yes, well as Shiva,” Amar answers back with a complacent smile. Then he looks at me and reaches out his hand towards my arm. “Where did you get those bracelets, girl?”

My hand falls on my wrist. I am wearing the bangles. The ones my mother left in the picnic basket in her closet. The ones that Amar gave to her after they spent the night together. The bangles with the butterfly charms hanging down, flying around my arm when I walk.

“They were my mother's,” I say to him, and a crease forms between his eyebrows.

“Amar, this is Maya,” Grandfather Raj says. “She is a student from the university, studying the life of the Indian sadhus.”

Amar's eyes grow wide with surprise. He nods and points to a log beside him, where we both lean down to sit.

“Tell me, Maya, where are you from?”

“Canada,” I say. “Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.”

“And you are interested in the life of the holy sadhus?” I nod. “Well, let me tell you then. The sadhus know that by letting go of all material possessions and attachments you become truly free.” Grandfather Raj studies my face, eager for some sort of reaction. I give him none.

“We accept change as a constant in life, and through this transcend the ultimate fear, the fear of death.” Amar points around him to the other men milling about, some with matted hair, turbans, and long orange robes wrapped around their bodies. “Here, we live for the god Shiva, the destroyer and rejuvenator.” His eyes are locked onto mine like he is trying to get into my head, and at that moment, I am able to get into his. I hear his inside words like I'm listening to a Walkman.
Tell me why you are really here
, he says.

“Are you one of them?” I ask.

“Yes.”

Grandfather Raj rocks back and forth on the log, taking deep breathes, coughing, wringing his hands in his lap.

“How did you become like this?”

“A calling,” Amar says with a solemn certainty. “And then, many years following my guru.”

“Can I stay with you?” I surprise myself with this question.

“As I tell all visitors, you are welcome.” He spreads his arms wide, running his long fingers through the warm air.

“All right then.” I take off my backpack and put it on the ground. Grandfather Raj turns his head towards me.

“Are you sure, Maya? Are you sure you want to stay?” I nod. “Very well then, but an empty hill is no place for an old man. You can take the bus back to my home when you are ready.” He stands up, places his warm hand on the top of my head, and shuffles away through the dirt.

Amar and I speak very little throughout the afternoon. Above us, the clouds churn in the sky, threatening rain. The wind increases and blows Amar's grey hair about his head. His eyes are closed most of the time, like he is dancing inside himself. I sit on my feet and watch boats floating in muddy water in the distance. Smoke rises from arched domes along the riverbed. When the sun begins to descend into the ground, and the air grows cool enough that I need a jacket, I open my mouth to speak.

“I'm hungry. Is there something I can eat?”

He opens his eyes halfway and smiles with only his lips.

“Of course,” he says and stands up. He enters into the makeshift shelter and returns with a small plastic plate of vegetables and rice, which he places on my lap.

“Thank you,” I say and he nods, raising a black cup to his lips. The carrots and peas are cold, but the rice seems to have retained some heat since it was cooked. I eat the food with my hands and when I'm done, place the plate on the ground beside me. “What happens in the evening here?” I ask him.

He sighs before he speaks. “We pray to Shiva and then we sleep on the ground.” From the other side of the shelter, someone plays a guitar. Strummed notes dance from strings and through the air. “Celebrations are beginning,” he says. “Let's go round.”

He stands up and I follow him around to the other side of the shelter, leaving my bag on the ground where we had been sitting all afternoon. The man we met with the pipe is there, as well as some other men wearing orange robes, wooden beads, and yellow turbans. Though they are sitting around with each other, they all smile to themselves.

“Bom Shiva!” the man with the pipe says each time he takes a puff. Then, he passes the pipe along.

The guitar has three strings, and the man playing wears a headband to hold back his thick black hair. He sings quietly, something in Hindi. I sit near him to listen closer.

“Hare Om Nama Shiva,” he says over and over, each time with a new melody.

“What does that mean?” I ask him, but he keeps singing without looking at me.

“He is praising Shiva,” Amar says, sitting on a log beside me. “Praising Shiva in his own way.”

The pipe has reached Amar and he wraps his lips around and inhales the smoke, which slips out from his lips and wraps around us both. “Hash?” he says, offering the pipe to me. I take it in my hands and suck a small amount of smoke from the head of the pipe, coughing it back out into the air. “Maybe not yet,” he says, laughing, and takes the pipe and hands it to another man with thick eyebrows and the same white lines on his face as Amar. Then, he sits with his legs crossed on the ground, each of his palms laid flat on his knees. He drags his breath in and out, his eyes closed.

I'm getting frustrated by his lack of communication, so in my head I start to talk to him:
I'm your daughter, you dope! Don't you even remember? Don't you remember my mother and what you did? Don't you remember getting her pregnant and leaving her?

Amar's state remains the same, and so I continue to yell at him from inside my head:
She's dead! She died, you idiot. Don't you even care?

And then I hear it, my first response to what I always thought would be my little secret. Amar's lips stay closed, but I hear his voice from inside his mind:
I did not know she had passed. Please forgive me.

I look at him. He's unchanged, and as an experiment, I respond to him with my mind:
Why did you leave?

Amar opens his eyes and looks at me like he can see through my clothes and my skin and all my insides. He smiles warmly. He looks at me like he has found a piece of himself. Light jumps from the fire now burning and reflects in a tear in the corner of his eye. He opens his mouth to speak. “I had to follow the path that was laid out for me. That's why I had to leave.”

I stare at him. My chin drops open, my eyes wide so that smoke burns them.

“You answered my thoughts,” I say.

“Were they really only thoughts? How do we know for sure?”

“I was saying something in my head and you responded.” Amar sticks out his bottom lip and shrugs his shoulders. “You know who I am?” I say and he nods. “You remember my mother?” He nods again.

“I am sorry you lost your mother.”

“Thank you” is all I can think to say. “It was a long time ago now though, six years.”

“You know, time can only help a little in getting us free from the past that is always present.”

“Did you love her?”

He shifts himself on the ground. “Perhaps I could have.”

“What does that mean?”

“I was foolish. I let myself be lead by something other than my head.” He coughs. “My life is meant for Shiva, for celibacy, for the removal of all material things. That is how I will transcend. I know that now.”

“But you were cruel to leave her like you did. You changed the course of her life.”