The Leaving of Things (17 page)

“I also did not believe it would be such a party,” Devasia replied, putting the comb back into the top drawer of his desk.

I scanned the gray room, furnished with only two metal cabinets, two cots, and two desks. A wooden cross hung above Devasia’s desk. Other than that, only a calendar picturing the actress Sridevi, belonging to Devasia’s roommate, hung on the wall. I snapped a picture of him leaning over his desk with the cross behind him.

“You have got new camera?”

“Old camera,” I said. “But it works. Thought I’d send some pictures home to friends.”

“You can have exhibition or something here at college,” he said, snapping into place the metal wristband of his watch. “You are going somewhere for Diwali?”

“Just Baroda. My uncle lives there. You, Madras?”

His head swung in that bell-like motion I was now used to. “My parents, they are expecting me, no?”

Parents, I thought, always expecting something. It made me wonder: “Devasia, if you didn’t have to become a priest, what would you want to do?”

He turned to me with a puzzled look. “
Have
to, meaning?”

“Meaning most students study what their parents did, or what they’re
told
to study by their parents. Seems that way a lot here.”

Devasia cocked his head, not understanding. He checked his appearance one more time in the mirror mounted on the face of the metal cabinet then turned to
me. “See,” he said, “my mother is teacher, my father works for Madras electricity board. They have not said to me I must go for this profession or that one, or get married or not. I have made my choices myself. Since I was six, seven, I was active in church, our charity work, so forth.”

“So you’ve always wanted to be a saint?” I asked, more sarcastically than I meant to, as we made for the door.

Devasia chuckled under his breath. “But I enjoyed. Our minister encouraged me to begin seminary studies. And for that I am here.”

“And after you’re done with all your studies, you think you’ll be a priest in India or, you know, join a mission somewhere else?”

“In India. Why not?” he said. “There are many churches in South India. Many Christians. I will do my work in Tamil Nadu only.”

“What’s it like there?”

Devasia fished out a key from the pocket of his kurta, and we stepped out of his room.

“It’s not like this in South.” With a faint air of disdain, he gestured with his hand to indicate the surrounding city. He turned the lock on the door, and we proceeded along the hostel corridor to the stairs. “So dirty here,” he said confidentially. “People defecating on the road. It is disgusting.”

I did not consider Ahmedabad my city, but somehow I took what he said personally and felt ashamed.

We could hear another music performance come booming through the loudspeakers over the hostel roof. A male-female duo sang a bubblegum Hindi pop song, accompanied by its backing disco melody blared through a boom box. I recognized it as “Ek Do Teen,” a flashy number from a current Bollywood movie that I was beginning to
hear incessantly from car radios and the chai cafes around college.

We decided to check Pradeep’s room, and as we approached, we could hear Vinod’s voice coming from inside. Gently, I pushed the door open to find Pradeep, in a dress shirt and dark shades, shifting from foot to foot impatiently, his stick in one hand. Vinod lay back on the edge of the bed, wearing his Harley T-shirt, laughing hysterically—face sweaty, mouth wide open so I could see a missing tooth in the upper corner.

“Chalo, Vinod, I must go,” Pradeep said, at once agitated and nervous.

I knocked on the door.

“Who is there?” Pradeep turned, startled.

“It’s Vik and Devasia.”

“Ohhh,” Pradeep said, relieved, as if we’d just saved his life.

“Vik! Devasia! Help me to get Vinod from here. The show has already started. I’m now late.”

“Help him?” I wondered.

Vinod sat up on the bed, his eyes distant and a smile skewed across his face, hair disheveled. He didn’t reek of alcohol, but stepping into the room, I picked up the distinct whiff of marijuana.

“Hey, hey, American,” Vinod yelled. He broke into a fit of laughter and raised his palm. “High five.”

I humored him. “Vinod, we need to get out of here.” I touched his shoulder and tugged at him lightly. “Pradeep’s on in a few minutes.”

Vinod raised his arm as if to swat mine away. He looked at his shoulder where I’d touched him, then at my hands as though I’d infected him with something. “Why don’t you bugger off?” he said. “Go when I am ready, yaar.”
That familiar aroma of charred, pungent cannabis filled the space between us as he spoke.

I returned to Devasia, who stood at the door with Pradeep, and told him, “Why don’t you take Pradeep where he needs to go. I’ll get Vinod out of here.”

“Thank you, yaar,” Pradeep said. The two turned and left the room.

Vinod stood over Pradeep’s desk, humming a Hindi tune to himself and rolling himself a joint. When he finished, he toked deeply and sat down again.

“How long you been here, Vinod?”

Vinod held it in then exhaled. “It’s compulsory I am here,” he droned. “I am Pradeep’s manager.” The smile from his face morphed into a scowl, and his eyes wandered to the door. “He is gone?”

“They left because Pradeep’s about to sing,” I said, “so let’s join them.”

“One minute.” He held up an index finger, then two fingers. “No, two minutes, two minutes, two minutes …” He took another hit then extended the joint to me.

I waved it away.

“It’s good weed, yaar.”

“You smoke a lot, Vinod?”

Curls of smoke rose from his mouth, and he settled back on the bed, propped on his elbows. “Only way to get through Xavier’s,” he said. He considered his joint up close and spoke to it. “Need to get high once in while when you’re in such low place.”

I could tell the performance of “Ek Do Teen” was in its final stretch—the synthesized tablas and keyboards from the boom box rising in a crescendo with the onstage vocals. The audience clapped along to the happy rhythm.

“I’ve never been in such boring place,” Vinod muttered sleepily then began laughing again. “We got to get Sridharan stoned, man. Can you see it?” He rolled onto his side, doubled over. “That damn class would actually—I would actually
want
to attend in that case.”

The song finished onstage in a crescendo of tablas, and a round of applause rose up.

“I thought you were Pradeep’s manager, Vinod,” I said impatiently. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.” Vinod took another hit, then snuffed out the joint with his fingers and tucked it away in the front pocket of his jeans. “For you, American, there is no worry,” he said wearily, somewhat acerbically. “For me,” he waggled his thumb back and forth, “no chance.”

He sat up and hunched there in silence at the edge of the cot. Then he slapped his knee. “Let’s go,” he mumbled, but instead of standing up, I could see his body was threatening to lie back down. So I leapt forward and pulled him back up. He began singing a song to himself, a whimsical old Kishore Kumar tune from the ’50s that, suddenly, I remembered Hemant Uncle playing on the family stereo, back when I was a five or six. My father still sang that silly song now and then, and got a laugh out of it.

Vinod stood a head taller than me, and he was not small, so it took some work to get him to his feet and out the door. The stage was set up just around the corner, behind the hostel building, but Vinod was already dragging his feet halfway up the veranda.

We made it to the path that led from the main gate to the athletic field. I could see through the spangled trees, under the stage lights, that the announcer was back on, droning words through his microphone. Meanwhile,
the wind brought the aromas from the gathering of vendors outside the gate. I could hear the vats of oil sizzling. Pungent, flavorful smoke rose in clouds, illuminated yellow by the kerosene lamps. We moved past the scooters rolling in and out through the gate, hardly noticed in the half darkness and in the pell-mell of festivity.

Suddenly, Vinod stopped in his tracks. I asked him if something was wrong, but he only smiled and shook his head. Then he threw his arms around me, and I was steeped in the smell of sweat and cannabis. “I am gone,” he groaned.

“You sure are.”

He backed up on his heels, and a contented smile came over the half-dazed, half-tired look on his face. “No,” he said, pointing beyond the gate, “I am gone.” He turned around and shuffled toward the gate, past incoming scooters, weaving past the procession of half-shadowy figures.

“But Pradeep is about to sing,” I shouted. “Shouldn’t the manager be there when his talent is about to go on?”

Vinod’s shoulders shook, and he broke into laughs again. Jovially, he slapped a student on the back, startling him, and walked away. “Happy Diwali, American!” he shouted, raising his hand and disappearing into the busy road. I wondered where he was wandering off to.

I decided to locate Devasia immediately. I stood at the back of the audience, scanned the crowd sitting and standing in the aisles. Everyone from college had to be here. The audience had swelled to four hundred or so—a sea of heads backlit by the stage lights, but no sign of Devasia. I looked up to see a canopy of eucalyptus leaves lit magically in the stage lights, glowing as if from within against the night. I snapped a quick series of shots of the crisscrossing leaves.

“Are you Xavier’s resident photographer now?”

It was Priya walking by, joined by members of her clique. There was Manju beaming at me, and Hannah, Ashok, and a few other faces I didn’t recognize.

Pradeep went on next, and he was the sensation of the night. He performed an extended ghazal—I knew he had a nice voice, but tonight he sounded like a recording star. Mellow, nimble, untiring, and confident, his voice
owned
the ghazal, starting with a flamboyant up-and-down spiraling of notes, a steadying out before the tabla player accompanying him struck the ghazal’s rhythm. Pradeep had the crowd hypnotized, and we roared and cheered him on, and when he finished, everyone demanded an encore. He went to sing three more songs—more popular tunes that I had heard my parents sing around the house at one time or another—that got the members of the audience singing along excitedly.

When Pradeep finished his performance, the announcer wasted no time declaring him the winner of the talent show. The audience got to its feet in a wave of whistling, stomping, and clapping. A pair of students rushed onto the stage to wrap a silk shawl around Pradeep’s shoulders, the winner’s shawl, and a female student in a lilac-blue salwaar kameez walked on to present him with a bouquet of roses. Pradeep stood there beaming, a bit embarrassed by the attention, shifting his walking stick in his hand and adjusting his shades nervously.

Afterward, I hung out with Pradeep and Devasia. I snapped pictures as Devasia congratulated Pradeep, of others surrounding and congratulating him. Priya left soon afterward, but I made sure to get her face as she clasped Pradeep’s hand and told him how happy she was for him. I
knew the pictures would all come out a blur of overlapping faces, mouths, and eyes, all awash in Diwali lights, and in fact I hoped they would—I thought how perfectly that would convey what I felt, giddy, on the eve of a hard-won holiday and a celebration of a friend’s crowning victory.

* *

Before leaving for Baroda the next day, I bought five more rolls of film. I kept snapping all the way to Baroda. The windshield of the rickshaw festooned with festive tassels; the picture of the baby Krishna, an angelic blue, tacked up above the rickshaw driver’s seat; the electric lights decorating the façade of the train station, strung up to form “HAPPY NEW YEAR”; the cows maundering on stick-thin legs among the crowds; all Diwali travelers elbowing past each other or else slumped on the floor, awaiting their departures, babies, mothers, grizzled men with bidis wisping between thin lips. During the clattering ride, I stood at the train’s door snapping up what I could of forlorn fields and lantern-lit towns, phantasmagoric railroad signals, electricity pylons towering like exoskeletal giants against the violet and orange pulse of twilight.

In Baroda, Hemant Uncle came to pick us up in his Fiat. He lived not too far away from the station in a two-story bungalow in a housing colony. We passed a cricket field where a night game seemed in progress, pennants flapping in the evening wind, crowds in the benches cheering beneath bright lights. From speakers blared a commercial jingle for a laundry detergent, the voice high and chirrupy.

The roads in the colony had not yet been paved, so we bumped along on a dirt lane under scant streetlights.
Firecrackers greeted us from all directions, snapping and popping, along with fountains spouting showers of red and yellow, starbursts of sparklers in children’s hands. I heard the
tak-a-tak
of drumbeats from around a corner, raised shouting, whooping, boasting, and Hindi pop songs blared from nearby speakers.

As we approached Hemant Uncle’s house, a servant boy in a short-sleeved shirt and shorts rushed out to open the swinging gate, and we pulled into the short drive alongside the house. Kamala Auntie came out with a cheerful hello, hugged us all, and asked if we had adjusted yet to life in India. I shrugged, smiled, didn’t know how to answer, but she was in such good spirits I had to answer, “Yes.” Anjali appeared, back from watching the neighbors set off firecrackers, and wasted no time in asking her parents if we could start lighting off our own.

“Easy, easy,” Hemant Uncle said.

We took our bags into the house, and I noticed a
rangoli
pattern on the floor of the patio.

“That’s amazing,” I said to Kamala Auntie. She said Anjali had helped her make it, and it had taken them all week to put it together, an intricate, dazzling sunburst of colored powders. The rangoli was shaped like a lotus blossom with deep orange petals filled in with ornate symmetrical lines of pink, yellow, and blue. Swastikas patterned the inside of each petal, and a golden om symbol occupied the center.

Hemant Uncle had built this house three years ago, soon after he accepted his promotion at the State Bank and transfer to Baroda. It wasn’t a large house, but it was charming—a bright, clean sanctuary with red and green tiled floors that looked freshly swept. The place seemed
worlds away from the noise and crowds we’d just passed through. Copper-colored Diwali
diyas
glowed softly in the far corners of the living room beside the sofas. Incense sticks burned from a small, gold-lacquered Ganesh shrine installed on one wall of the dining room. Framed photographs of my grandparents, both of whom had died during our years in America, hung above the shrine. When I saw that, I bowed my head, closed my eyes, and said a quick prayer. I’m not sure why; it just felt right. I still had memories of them from before we left for the States, and the twinge of loss I felt in seeing their photographs surprised me in how deep and immediate it was. As I went upstairs to drop off our bags, I could hear Anjali out on the patio insist it was time for firecrackers.