Good Indian Girls: Stories (21 page)

At the sari auction, all deals went to us. It was a large cold hall with makeshift chairs and tables set up informally, everything hopelessly confused. Bidders wandered for minutes, unable to find where to sign in. Anil watched smiling, his eyes on the eyes of others, searching for what they were looking for. He was a master at these auctions, his instincts exact, knowing when to let off bidding, certain always when no one would challenge his last bid, when to give in and allow something to go to another determined hand. But this day he never gave in. Everything he wanted, he got. I don’t know if it was out of respect for his father, or because Anil looked exceptionally fierce, unstoppable, something burning inside
him, but no one challenged him for long, their hands fading from exhaustion. That day, Anil made for us the greatest deals of our lives. It was something to watch.

Hands slapped him on the back, others hugged him nervously. Sat Sri Akal, we are all so sorry to hear, Parvati, she says, Oh, what a great man Kirpalji was, oh, what a great man. And others, Wah Guruji, So terrible, not only a personal loss but a loss to the country, and the way he died, oh, oh, oh. Such a pity. Anil backed away from the hands and the long lines of condolences, many mixed with a look of awed respect at how much he had made in a single day. His eyes no longer searched through the room, guessing at tactics, but drew into themselves, in what appeared to be remorse, almost grief. There were other voices, ones I heard but I doubt Anil did. Shhh, not here, the ashes still warm . . . All his money goes to them to buy . . . I caught the conspiratorial nod that ended the sentence. Still others, voices lowered, my own hearing heightened. They say it was he who gave the stories to the papers, those stories that brought him down. The disgrace, the shame of him. I told Anil that we should be leaving now, that Neema was swamped back at the store, and there was no one else to help today. As we walked out, eyes on us, I felt uncomfortable, even though I was among so many familiar faces, as though I too had played a part in Kirpal’s death.

My father was a communist. Not the modern type, the failed type now eulogized on CNN. He was a successful communist, as far as one can exist. He was the old sort, the intellectual who read Marx and Engels, had in his youth modeled himself after Trotsky, and even after Stalin’s
betrayal, could find no stain on the body of the Soviet Union. His world was one of ideals, of possibilities, but also one of a genial pragmatism. It was not my world. I never saw any sense in equality. What could equal Kirpal’s arm as it bowled one of his famous fastballs? Why did the neighborhood kids always stand in awe of Kirpal, afraid to approach? These were elemental questions my father’s politics could never solve. When Kirpal was elected to the National Assembly on the Congress ticket, my father saw no contradiction in walking across to his neighbor’s house with a plate full of freshly made laddoos to celebrate the victory. I never forgave him for that, to bring Kirpal down, to make him an equal.

But still, he was a communist, and with that went regular raids, occasional imprisonments, sometimes even of guests, his papers searched through, and once, Neema’s letters, the letters of his new daughter-in-law were confiscated, examined for potential subversion, and to this day rot in some file in Delhi. When my father died, he died broken hearted, recently returned from jail and countless rounds of humiliating questions and beatings. Kirpal wrote to tell me how sorry he was for my father’s death, and that—and here the pen wavered slightly on the paper—it was he as Home Minister who had ordered the raids, the persecutions that had slowly withered my father’s heart, finally eroding his faith in all politics, until, in his last days, all I am told he did was watch cricket, the red ball arcing through the air, the wickets flying, a place finally where he could find grace and justice. I didn’t feel resentment or anger against Kirpal when he wrote to tell me this. I don’t even know if I still have the letter. It was necessary. In those days, everything seemed necessary, reasonable. It made sense to me, and strangely, it
revived my faith in my father, restoring him to an order he had always sought to break. I sympathized with Kirpal’s anguish and was shocked to find Neema so angry, almost screaming, when I showed her the letter. He was a communist after all.

We sped away from the auction, Anil driving faster now than before, as though possessed of some need to get away as quickly as possible, to escape those voices offering condolences and congratulations in the same breath. On the freeway, he pressed the horn at the slightest provocation, at people fifty meters ahead changing into our lane, or at a car going seventy-five in the fast lane. I was nervous now, though not about an accident, because I began to sense something else in Anil’s face, in his almost maniacal driving. I felt, strangely, that there could be no accident. The accident had already occurred, and that’s what gave Anil the courage to drive like this. My nervousness grew, ballooning, almost reliving the accident that hadn’t happened, spinning, tumbling over and over. On the city streets of Berkeley, Anil’s driving was no better. Ahead of us, an old black woman crossed against a green light, and I was jolted by the car horn, somehow more insistent than before. Anil didn’t slow down, though now the woman was out of our lane. The horn blared on, Anil shifted the wheel, pointing the car at the woman, and we headed for her, though she refused to acknowledge the screaming horn, the screeching brakes. The car spun out of control at the intersection. The seatbelt ripped into my chest as my body rushed forward, Anil swearing beside me. We came to a stop, all turned around, facing the oncoming traffic, horns blaring around us, the old woman still ambling away, ignoring the commotion, Anil’s yells, You bitch, you bloody bitch!

In those years of Kirpal’s waning influence, as the rumors gathered around him like a mist that no power seemed able to dissipate, that led him, blind, to his murder, Anil, they said, was seen in the company of certain men. I never asked him about this. It was none of my business whether his share of the profits went to help finance the separatists, to lay the foundations of a civil war. Even before the rumors began to strangle Kirpal, before the separatists became a threat to the fabric of India, Anil, they said, was sending them money. And later, when the temple was attacked and those thousands killed, and Anil stormed into my shop, I could read on his face a mood caught between the poles of emotion, a grand anger against Indira Gandhi for what she had done, yet a joy also, for he carried a newspaper which he waved like a flag and shouted, The war is here, clapping his hands together like a magician. I looked at him. Neema stood behind the counter and shook her head. I knew she was going to shout at him, and so I had to stop her. Anil, I said, what are you talking about? This is the temple they attacked, what is there to celebrate? But he laughed, Come with me, we should go meet some men I know, and I was already following him when I glanced back to Neema and saw anger and reproach in her eyes rising like dust on an old field. Neema said nothing, and I stood there, unable to move, and prayed for someone to tell me what to do, because all I wanted was to know who I was in this world and where my place ought to be. Nothing happened. Anil laughed and walked out as though there was no question in his eyes where I stood, and it was some months later that I heard on the radio of Kirpal’s death, and I thought of Anil’s laugh that day and of myself, standing, as though I was a child waiting for Kirpal to throw me a ball.
When Anil walked out, he no longer walked with a child’s self-conscious gait, and I remember this because I searched for something familiar in his retreating form and I found nothing that I knew.

Many people sent them money. We all knew that. Many were proud of it, and I wouldn’t take anything from that pride, well deserved if they were doing something for a cause they believed in. I did not finance the separatists, and neither did I speak out against Khalistan. I still remember that look of anger on Kirpal’s face, that look of defeat when I threw the ball and it landed only a few feet away, a look which said that it was this sort of failure, this specific lack of effort, that had allowed India to be split up. I don’t know if this is true. All I know is that all those around me—my father, Kirpal, Anil—they all seemed reasonable and honest men.

The car wasn’t seriously damaged and we were able to drive away before the police arrived. Anil was silent, no more swearing, and when he dropped me off at the store, he told me not to worry. With all we did today, Punjab will soon be free, a Sikh state. I placed my hand lightly on his lap and stepped out of the car feeling empty and exhausted. My heart was beating fast. The street was less crowded now, though a young man in torn jeans, no shirt, long blond and knotted hair took a meandering path toward me. I stopped. I don’t know why. I thought for some strange reason he was going to hit me, and that if he did, it would be right because that was the order of things.

Border Song

BIKRAM SANG. USUALLY OLD PUNJABI OR HINDI MOVIE
tunes, but her repertoire had expanded since moving to California. She had learned the theme to
M.A.S.H
. and all the songs on Abba’s
Greatest Hits Volume One
. She sang all the time. Her voice echoed the rhythm of frogs that had invaded her childhood nights with their persistent croaking. She filled up the spaces of the house with her songs, and she let her songs breathe outside—in the garden, in the busy, cramped aisles at the Safeway, during those hours she spent alone, when everyone was out, gone to work or to school. Song was the gold jewelry she had carried with her from one country to another, across freshly painted borders. Now it seemed an heirloom, an artifact excavated from a lost world.

Ravi, her nephew, believed when he was young that she sang solely for him. Her voice was high and sharp and full of force and energy and belied her small, self-effacing frame, always covered with an old silk sari and one of the many jackets Harbans brought back for her from the store. These were 49ers, or
Charlie’s Angels
, or The Who tour jackets, all promos, all sent gratis to one of Harbans’ several convenience stores. Bikram almost never spoke. She expressed herself
through her songs, and only reverted to English or Punjabi, or more likely a mixture, when a song couldn’t say it.

Years later, when Ravi was older, he would see how she always sang, or hummed, or muttered to herself, and it seemed a betrayal. It wasn’t for him, it never had been, and his aunt wasn’t a private songster. She was defective, he later concluded, her voice the manifestation of a person unhinged or askew.

The only time she stopped singing was to tell a story, and at such times she seemed to take substance before Ravi’s eyes, even gaining weight. His own mother never told stories, she worked late and was always gone when he fell asleep, often to the thickening night of his aunt’s voice. Speaking changed his aunt’s body. Her lips struggled against the words, as if trying to sing, to reform story into melody, and her voice, far from songlike, shuddered as if disturbed by the strange junctures that existed in speech. A word became unreal on her tongue and only lost this weight of speech when connected to a tune, when it would merge into the next word of the song.

Every story was different, mutated from the previous version, as if she had a horror of repetition. A leopard in one tale became a frog in another, a slighted crow transformed into the antagonist in the next. In one, an alligator ate the bird, in the following, the bird, like a snake, unhinged its jaw and swallowed the writhing, snapping form of the alligator, right down to the struggling tail. Ravi was never disappointed by these inconsistencies, and showed no surprise at the transubstantiation of mouse into elephant or tiger into hyena. They were no more curious than a mad aunt who sang, and one, sane, who told stories.

One day, Bikram told the story of the dying king and his three children.

The old king knew he was dying, and was unsure whom among his three children, two sons and a daughter, would succeed him. He decided to hold a contest. He gave each child one hundred pieces of gold, and the one who filled the hundred rooms and the great hall of the palace completely using only this money would be the future ruler
.

The eldest son took off immediately to the market, certain of his success. He spent the money on sacks of coal and soon a procession of donkey carts meandered up the hill toward the palace gates. But the unloaded coal barely filled a quarter of the great hall, and left the remaining rooms deserted—and the mess it made took several days to clean up
.

The second eldest, the other son, laughed at his brother’s idiocy. He also walked down the hill to the market where he spent his one hundred gold coins on something sure to fill every room of the palace from top to bottom—sacks of wool! The procession that now found its way up to the palace was like none that had ever been witnessed before. Indeed, when the first carts arrived, the last had not yet left and for some hours the road was a single organism of donkey carts wending their way ever upwards. But even all this wool, flung loosely through open doors and windows, barely filled the great hall, while the remainder, all those rooms and chambers, stood starkly empty. To the king’s annoyance, tufts of wool were being pulled from the carpets and chairs and tapestries for months after
.

The youngest, the daughter, remained slumped in contemplation of her brothers’ mistakes for several weeks, silent, then without warning, disappeared, taking the gold with her. She was gone for many months, leaving the old king despondent, thinking she had given up and was living in a distant land, frittering away the gold pieces one at a time. The brothers scorned her, believing now they would share the kingdom between themselves. Then one day, after many months, the daughter reappeared, climbing the hill, and a procession of one hundred men
and women followed. This was all she could muster, the brothers scoffed. Surely they had won the kingdom now! The daughter placed a single man or woman in each of the hundred rooms of the palace, and placed herself in the center of the great hall, and while the old king watched with surprise, she began to sing. The song spread from room to room, and soon the whole palace was filled with their voices. For she had traveled the countryside searching for the greatest singers in the land, and as the song stretched into the night, the old king died, and the first queen of the land took her throne
.