The Leaving of Things (19 page)

“We
all
sacrificed,” I said. “We all sacrificed. Mummi sacrificed just as much, maybe even more. She didn’t know
if Pappa would have a job from one year to the next. Maybe we’d have been better off if we’d never left.” That thought was new to me, I realized, said as soon as it had occurred to me. “Might’ve avoided a lot of hardships. I mean, we were coming back here anyway so …”

Hemant Uncle nodded, considering my words. “But without America, your Pappa would not have the job he is having now. It’s quite a big position.”

“It is.” I shrugged. “But what about you at the State Bank? You stayed right where you started and worked your way all the way up. Pappa could’ve done the same right here in India somewhere, and we’d have avoided the last eleven years.”

Hemant Uncle tsked several times and flipped his hand in a dismissive gesture, stopped pacing, and faced me. “You know how I got job at State Bank? They knew I was a cricketer at Xavier’s. They hired me so I could join State Bank team only. Otherwise, I was flop as a student. History major, second class.” He chuckled to himself. “It is lucky I was a good player, bhai, otherwise I would be just … a … clerk now God knows where.”

Just then we heard the front gate open on its creaky metal hinges, and Anjali came scampering through on flip-flops, followed by Anand. Anjali was in heady spirits and asked if we could all go to Dairy Den for ice cream. It was her favorite ice cream parlor; we’d gone there soon after arriving in Baroda—a cool, sweet-scented haven where the ice cream, Anand and I had to admit, was better than the local Baskin-Robbins in Madison.

In his mock-weary tone, Hemant Uncle said, “Chalo,” and that got Anjali jumping off the steps in delight before she disappeared through the gate, saying she needed a few
more minutes at the neighbors’ and she’d be ready to go. Anand took a seat next to me on the porch swing.

“School will start soon,” he said, “then all this
tamasha
will …”—he made a calming gesture with downturned palms—“finally end.”

* *

“It was hard, no doubt, for you all in States,” Hemant Uncle conceded, a few minutes later as Anand, Anajli, he, and I piled into the Fiat. I took the front seat, next to Hemant Uncle. “But ask your Pappa how hard it must have been to lose his parents while being so far away. Not enough money or proper visa to come back for visit.”

That was true, I had to admit. Then again, I reasoned, had we stayed in India, my father would never have had to deal with the loss of his parents long distance. We’d all have been better off, I repeated.

“He’s thought of all that many times, I am sure. But
his
father, your
dada
, made him promise about that.”

I turned to him. “Promise?”

“Ask him about that some time,” Hemant Uncle replied, shifting the car into reverse and backing out of the drive. We pulled into the smoky, darkened lane, haloed with streetlights and the occasional pulse of firecrackers.

Soon we turned onto the road linking us to the city, buzzing with scooters and rickshaws. The road led past the cricket stadium, the train station, and into the carnival-like madness of commercial Baroda beyond. Hemant Uncle continued, “Just be happy your father took this job. You do not know it,” his eyes shifted from the road to me, “but he has given you a future.”

To my left, we passed a long, dark stretch of land, punctured here and there with the reddish glow of kerosene lamps. Once or twice, our headlights flitted past a goat or a dog in the road or small children in rags or women carrying copper pots. And I realized that, beyond the darkness, was the shantytown that I’d passed so many times before in the daylight, a maze of passageways and low-squatting huts that stretched a half mile before we arrived at the outliers of paan shops, tailors, and chai cafés that preceded the cricket stadium and the train station. In the darkness, the shantytown was invisible—a cruel bit of irony that India could play on you, using the night to pull the wool over the ugly truths that the day made naked. I was going to mention the shantytown to Hemant Uncle, but he was ahead of me: “You may not like your college, you see the streets are dirty, and all the
zupadpattis
.” He gestured out at the shantytown, as if the sight of it were obvious to all of us in spite of the darkness. “But we all feel these things too. We wish it were not so.” He breathed deeply, his mind turning over these thoughts. “One day, India will change. It will take time. Twenty years, fifty years, hundred years, but it is inevitable. People cannot live like this forever.”

We drove on.

“I guess when you can’t see your future,” I said, “you live in your past.”

“What past?” Hemant Uncle said, his tone stern and admonishing. “You’re only seventeen, eighteen, Vikram. Your life is in the future, not past.”

* *

On the train back to Ahmedabad, I watched the sunflower fields and the dust-strewn, cement-built towns that I had passed weeks before. But then they had been shrouded in night, so now it was like passing this country for the first time. I studied the gathering of strange faces whipping by at the railway crossings, the whole circus of Indian traffic waiting for the train to pass. We crossed huge tracts of Gujarat farm country, studded with mud-brick sheds and the enormous fossil remains of disused farm implements. Blackbirds, bigger than I’d ever seen, scudded low over the fields.

The compartments were packed with families returning home from their holidays. The children on their fathers’ laps, housewives in their saris, veils pulled over their heads against the wind, knees folded on the benches. Such strange faces, strange ways, and a strange planet—yet I was the only stranger.

When we stopped at a station, vendors whisked past the windows or through the compartments. “Chocolate-candy-ice cream-cigarette,” went the dry, monotonous call as one passed with a tray of wares slung at his waist, another sold bottles of cold, sweetened Amul milk out of a metal basket. The bottles
tink-tinked
in his hands.

The man at the end of the bench got out of his seat and signaled for a cup of water from a passing vendor. Dipping a ladle into a clay pot that he lugged around, the vendor scooped the chilled water into a steel tumbler and handed it through the bars of the window. The man tipped the tumbler over his mouth as he stood in the narrow space between the benches. He gulped heartily, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down his thin neck. He never let the tumbler touch his lips. I felt thirsty, and my father informed me that the
water came from the taps at the station. Remembering the dysentery, I shuddered at the thought of drinking it.

Drifting through the compartment, a walking stick clutched in one hand, came a blind beggar, a palm held out while he sang a devotional song about Krishna in his high, reed-thin voice. The beggar’s eyes were cloudy orbs floating back and forth in their sockets, and his head and sunken cheeks bristled with a silvery stubble. A small boy walked beside him, skillfully beating a small drum. They passed our compartment, their music receding slowly toward the other end of the car.

“Right here,” I heard my father call to the Amul vendor passing by the window. To my surprise, he bought a bottle of the sweetened milk. I couldn’t blame him. It had been a hot, stuffy trip in that compartment. He paid the vendor, took the cold, water-beaded glass bottle, peeled the foil cap off the top and took a slug.

“You were just sick,” my mother reasoned with him. “You want to repeat that?”

My father did not answer, offered the bottle to my mother. She shook her head. He handed it to Anand, who swigged deeply from it. Anand passed it to my mother, who consented to a few sips. I took the bottle from her, tipped it into my mouth, and finished it off. It tasted as delicious and cool as it looked, dysentery be damned. The vendors cleared out, and the train pushed off as evening settled over the countryside. The compartment swayed and rattled across dark farmland, and a row of dim incandescent lights blinked on overhead. The red-orange of the horizon faded, and the lanterns and stars were the only lights to go by.

* *

A packet arrived from Karl. Inside was a cassette—a dub of the latest R.E.M. record. The word “Green” was inscribed on the label in Magic Marker, an attempt by Karl at funky, artistic lettering.

November 12, 1988

Vik!

Here it is. R.E.M.’s long-awaited
Green
. Give it a chance, I think you’ll hook into it the more you listen.

Well, my first semester is a month away from wrapping up. Intro to Film has been amazing, and it’s got me 100 percent sure I’m majoring in film and about my (our?) decision to launch a film career after college, in whatever form that might take.

Do you remember that girl Bridget I mentioned to you? Well, I’m taking creative writing with her. Her idea. Don’t laugh. This past summer, we saw a ton of flicks together at the Union and the Majestic. Then, after the semester began, SHE asked ME if I wanted to get SERIOUS. I’m flabbergasted. So far, so good.

Sorry to hear about you and Shannon. I know it doesn’t make it any easier, but you knew it would come to this. If it helps, I ran into her at the Union (she’s working now at the Directorate, did you know?), and she was telling me how much she’s been thinking about you.

Living at home has one advantage—it lets you save a ton of cash. I’ve managed to save a good chunk of my WHA paychecks. Why do I bring this up? Well, this to/from campus
commute’s getting to be a major drag in multiple departments, so next year I’m thinking—campus housing.

Anyway, let me know the latest. How’s life treating you? How did your exams go? How was your break? Details, Vik. I need details.

Karl

I put on my headphones and listened to the R.E.M. record beginning to end. Then I flipped the cassette over and listened to it all again. This was the pulse of America I was listening to, and all the noise of my life filtered away, leaving only a single wavelength of music. It was as if a dependable friend had reentered my life. The new songs were unfamiliar, but they weren’t strangers to me. They were just the spiffy new clothes that my friend came dressed up in. Here was a familiarity I’d craved for months.

Anand demanded to borrow it, but I told him to hold tight. There was something I needed to do first. Gathering up my R.E.M., Police, and U2 tapes, along with assorted selections of the Smiths, Ramones, Elvis Costello, and others from my shoebox, I went to the tape deck we kept in the living room. I switched on the transformer—it hummed as loudly as a beehive. I inserted one of my old R.E.M. cassettes, scanned the track listings for a personal favorite, then reached for a blank tape. Before inserting it into the tape deck, I wrote “MUSIC MIX FOR PRIYA” on the label. I put the tape in and pressed record, and for the first time since Shannon’s exit from my life, my ego felt recharged, this time with thoughts of a different girl.

14

I
thought the occasion of the mixtape warranted my picking up the phone and calling Priya. She’d given me her phone number, after all. I hesitated making the call at first—boys did not make social calls on girls, unless it was either an overture to an arranged marriage or the sexes were socializing in strictly mixed company. But Priya was surely an exception.

I dialed the number. A woman answered—her mother, I guessed—who seemed cordial but uptight, a stern Gujarati matriarch came to mind. She told me to hold the line. Then a few seconds later, Priya’s voice came on. She sounded hesitant, surprised, not entirely comfortable. Our Indian phone, with its rotary dial and dumbbell-heavy handset, made the whole experience feel even more Victorian.

“Priya?” I said. “I didn’t mean to catch you at a bad time. I know your birthday’s passed, but I made you a gift.”

“Really?” she said, “No, this is cool. Thanks. I’m …” and she began laughing nervously. “Thanks.”

“Well, don’t thank me yet. You haven’t gotten it. I want to give it to you before classes start. Can we meet up somewhere? Are you free?”

“Um … why not in college, tomorrow?”

“Neutral ground,” I said. “Xavier’s makes me nervous. You ever get the feeling wolves are watching you?

“You’re talking to a girl. We always feel that way.”

I was pondering this feminine insight when Priya suggested we meet up at the Havmor Café that night, near the Navarangpura bus stop. It wasn’t far for either of us.

* *

The Havmor Café was packed with local families and students. A canopy hung over the rickety tables, and customers thronged the order counter. Filmi tunes blared from scratchy speakers, drowning all the talk-talk to an unintelligible murmur. I had expected to see Manju, Hannah, or any one of her various tagalongs with her that night, but Priya came alone. She walked up the steps to the café, one hand hooked into the shoulder strap of her canvas-and-leather purse. As I got up to meet her, I noted that the purse looked too sturdy, too finely designed to be from one of Ahmedabad’s bazaars. Probably an American purchase.

“Here you go,” I said, handing her the tape. “Happy birthday.”

We did not touch, simply waved hello, hands in hip pockets. I sensed looks already from the packs of men and boys at the tables and on the sidewalk out front.

Priya took the tape, looked perplexed for a half-second, then her mouth made a perfect O of recognition.
“Oh, right,” she said, “you’re trying to improve my taste in music.”

“I wouldn’t say ‘improve,’” I said almost apologetically. “Just trying to broaden it a little. Add a little masala, you see.”

She glanced over the track listings on the back of the tape cover. “Oh, I know these bands,” she said. “I’m not totally out of it. I do have a Police album, you know.”

“It’s probably
Synchronicity
. Everyone has that one.”

She made a face, stuck her tongue out at me, but only briefly; I could tell she was a bit shy among this crowd.

“What I’ve got there,” I said, “you won’t have on those Top 40 mixes your cousins are pushing on you.”