The Two Krishnas (39 page)

“
O-pho
, Suchitra, I am only saying—”

“You are saying what? Nothing! Nothing you are saying!” she shouted, tears in her eyes. “What are you thinking that now you are the
Mzee
or something? After everything we have done for this country, do you need me to remind you of what happened to my uncle?” She was referring to the time shortly after Independence when, in the wake of misguided nationalism, it was not unusual for a young African to walk into an Asian’s shop with a letter from some city official and intimidate him out of his own business. Suchitra’s maternal uncle, who owned an auto-parts store on Nairobi’s River Road, had met such a fate and rather than be deported, had given up the business he had nurtured most of his adult life. But then, heartbroken, he had moved back with his family to Bombay where starting a new life proved daunting. A few years later he hanged himself.

Ravi sat up in bed. “Oh, Suchitra, that was a long time ago. This is a different age.”

She glared at him. “
Hainh?
There is nothing different! If anything, this is a worse time than before. Now they actually think they can do everything themselves! What do they need us for?”

“Why must you say this? We fought for this country too, Suchitra. It is as much ours as it is theirs.
Arre
, we must not forget our fathers, people like Makhan Singh and Pio Gama Pinto who spent years in detention for Kenya’s freedom. And…and those Patels, who was it? Ambu Patel? Lila Patel? They almost gave their lives for the release of Kenyatta—”

“But why are you giving
me
this lesson in history?” Suchitra asked, getting more incited, raising her hand at him emphatically. “And why do you think any of it matters to anyone anymore? We are like unwanted guests in their country, can’t you see that? Look! Look at all those poor people in Uganda. When that
rakshas
Idi Amin threw them out, what, did he even say ‘thank you, come again sometime, thank you for building and fighting for our country?’ No, he just threw them out, overnight, just like that!
Phata-phat
, don’t even worry about taking your
potla-bistras
, just get out, go back to where you came from! But no, you want to give me history lessons…oh!” she cried and it all being too much for her to bear, slumped down on the edge of the bed as tears gushed from her eyes.

Ravi hauled his arthritic self out of bed and came around and kneeled diffidently by her side, taking her hands in his. “I know, I know—”

“What do you know?”

“All this,” he said. “All this, it is my fault, Suchitra, I know. But, I am so bloody lucky to have you,
na?
Things will get better now, you just wait and see, I promise. No more history and no more
jugar!
We will start a new life.”

“Yes, yes, why not?” she snapped, flipping up her hand as if she was volunteering for a campaign. “I’m only sixteen years of age. I have my whole life ahead of me!”

The Kapoors, including Kiran, traveled to Nairobi so that the sale of the Coastal Commercial College could be finalized with Alnoor Samji, an eccentric and wealthy old
khoja
friend who had moved back to the capital several years ago and now owned Sadolin, the largest paint manufacturing company in Kenya. Ravi would continue to run the college for a respectable salary (which Suchitra would have to safeguard from the roulette tables and especially the private card parties).

Also, because Rahul and Pooja were emigrating to America soon, there was no way of knowing when they’d all be together again, they decided to make a family getaway out of it. While they might still have managed to travel by Kenya Airways—and Ravi, in his extravagant fashion insisted that they all do—it was decided by Suchitra, with an eye on the shaky financial situation, to either drive or ride the train to Nairobi.

In the end, Pooja’s sentimental suggestion won out. They would drive so that about a hundred miles outside of Nairobi they could pay their respects at Makindu, the legendary Sikh
Gurudwara,
and hope to procure the blessings that the family needed so badly. After all, it was rumored that whatever one asked for at this shrine was granted as long as you came with a clean heart and cloaked in humility. Makindu had a legendary reputation and a special place in the hearts of all Kenyans.

During the building of the railway, Makindu became an important service point on the railway’s advance from Mombasa. Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims gathered together in the evenings to sing the praises of God under a tree, where the current temple was erected in 1926. Since then, weary travelers stopped by for a night or two on their journeys to and from Nairobi and Mombasa, always finding a hot meal waiting for them without the slightest discrimination against their race or color.

Because Rahul was committed to a send-off party thrown by his buddies from the local
gymkhana
that Friday, he would follow them later and drive down in the family’s second car, a modest Honda that was also going to be sold off eventually now that he was emigrating and Kiran had joined her well-to-do in-laws who flaunted an unthinkable three luxury cars.

On their journey, the Kapoors would stay with their eccentric friends, the Sadolin-Samjis, whose second home was located in the Ngara area. Although the Kapoors would have preferred to stay in a modest hotel or at least in a more upscale area, like Parklands for instance, they obliged for fear of offending their sometimes bizarre hosts and jeopardizing the main purpose of their visit.

Even in Mombasa, they had all heard about the latest Samji-scandal involving, of all things, color. They had painted their palatial four-bedroom house in the upscale Muthaiga area a startling shade of yellow so that passersby gawked and joked that God had blessed them by pissing on it. Farida Samji had also been known to create infamy by taking her pet dogs, Kiki and Bubbles, everywhere she went, including the Jamat Khanna, an Ismaili mosque at Parklands. A maid was kept on guard by the mosque’s shoe stall, minding not only the expensive, imported high-heels, but also the indulged, hyperactive canines that barked disruptively all through the evening prayers as devotees entreated God with closed eyes and supinated hands. But nobody in their right minds complained, at least not to their faces, for the Sadolin-Samjis were also the generous donators of hefty English chocolate bars for all the members of the community during their celebratory occasions or
majlises.

When Suchitra first heard about their incumbent visit with the Samjis, all she could do was slap her head and groan, “I don’t know which one is worse, not selling the college or meeting those crazy
khoja
friends of yours!” To which Ravi had replied with the patience of a parent with a child, “Yes, Suchitra, but when you are rich, you can afford to be eccentric,” then muttered under his breath as he turned his back to her, “I married you, didn’t I?”

* * *

As the gleaming white Mercedes cut across the infinite heart of Kenya, along the historic Mombasa-Nairobi highway, an ebullient and robustly competitive game of
Antakshari
swelled up in the car. In a flash, each player had to come up with a song starting with the same letter that ended the previous song.

Kiran was the unrivaled champion, plucking out
ghazals, filmi
songs and religious
geets
as if from an invisible archive in the sky. Even their Arab driver Salim, caught between Suchitra’s scolding that he was going much too fast and the abetting nudges from Ravi next to him, joined in excitedly; although Salim’s knowledge of Bollywood music was limited and he kept plugging “
Mera Joota Hai Japani, Yeh Patloon Hindustani
” even when the previous song didn’t end with an “m.”

Occasionally, the car would have to slow down or come to a complete standstill on the tarmac to let a troop of baboons cross the road, or to see majestic giraffes dipping over dwarfed, flat-topped acacia trees and Grevy’s Zebras with their voluptuous carriages and large ribbon-like ears. When Kiran promptly framed the family of monkeys prancing in front of them with her Nikon camera, cooing at the baby clinging on to her mother’s gray coat, Suchitra, alarmed that the gadget would attract the beasts and encourage them to spring onto the car, struck her forehead with the flat of her hand and shouted, “Haven’t you seen a monkey before?”

“
O-pho
, Suchitra, let her take a photo,
na?
” Ravi tried.

“What photo, photo? Next she’ll want to get out of the car and play cards with them!”

When they continued their trek, Suchitra, who couldn’t come up with yet another song starting with the letter ‘K,’ claimed it wasn’t her turn. Salim tried again in vain to sing the legendary Raj Kapoor song, hoping he would get the chance to belt out at least a few verses and show off his acclimation to the Asian culture. By the time it was Pooja’s turn, the panorama outside her window, in all its primordial beauty, had claimed her and she was gone from them.

The coast, a city of salt, is ancient, blisteringly hot, flaking, a lattice of lanes, mosques, cramped old houses and kiosks, lost in its own maze of time. Nairobi, its antithetical capital, is a city of flowers perched atop the highlands, with cooler air, volcanic red earth, rife with Western-style sophistication and the idiosyncrasies of metropolis, like a city fulminating from a desecrated womb.

But it is in between these two states, in the sprawling plains mottled with sunlight streaming through clouds,
thought Pooja,
that Kenya actually breathes, where her arcana reveals itself. In the vast plains where the air blows unhindered across the land and the scenery—a mixture of grasslands, scrub, forest, still water, stark and grim mountains, dust—grows so monotonous and sprawling she actually comes alive.

As her eyes adjusted to the land’s infinity, its elusive horizons, she had to wonder if the feeling inside her meant that she was melding with nature or if she was just missing Rahul and the silence in their togetherness. She had felt no particular attachment to the land her eyes were drinking in now, at least not to this virgin, unsullied part of Kenya, but she couldn’t help wondering now what it was going to be like to have to give up all this and move to a strange land, profuse with opportunity but divested of family.

Her head leaning against the window, her eyes drifting over the savannah, she continued to drift until Kiran slapped her hand, startling her. “Your turn!
Arre,
where are you lost?
Oho-ho!
You’re missing Rahul?” she teased, bursting into delicious peals of laughter.

Suchitra leaned forward to smile at a blushing Pooja, who was sitting next to Kiran. “You will be spending the rest of your lives together, I’m telling you, you’ll become sick of each other,” and here she threw a look at Ravi. “So you can enjoy some time with us now,
na, beti?
Hai, Bhagwan
, we’ll miss you so much! I don’t know what I’ll do!” and the tears sprang to her eyes instantly.

Pooja reached over Kiran and squeezed her mother-in-law’s wrist, feeling the gold bangles around them. “It’s going to be okay. I don’t know what came over me, sorry. It was nothing. Just thinking…”

“It was nothing?
Arre,
I caught you! Nothing?” Kiran started pinching and tickling her as Pooja bubbled in her seat. “Really? Come here, I’m going to show you nothing—come here,
sali!
”

“Kiran! You stop behaving like a little girl!” Suchitra said. “You are a married woman now, do I have to remind you? And why aren’t you missing your Prashant even a little bit,
hunh?
Might not be such a bad idea not to look
this
excited about leaving him at home!”

“
Arre
, Ma, one Laila in the car is enough,” she said, likening her sister-in-law to the Juliet of India.

Pooja pretended to be angry and gave Kiran a playful slap, but in fact she could not help smiling and blushing, and thinking that, yes, theirs was truly a love story.

They decided not to stop at Makindu after all, forgoing the blessings for expediency and just slowing down outside it as a mark of respect.

* * *

The Samji’s live-in African maid, Mariam, had grown visibly excited upon receiving the Kapoors. Bored of looking after an empty house now that the Samjis lived almost exclusively in Muthaiga and spent most of their time at its country club, Mariam had started to fear her dispensability. Demanding guests who would need tending to and require the Indian cooking she had become such an expert in were a boon and filled her with a sense of security.

Mariam, now in her forties, lived in the same graveled compound, in a modest servants’ quarter located next to the warehousing garage at the farthest end of the grand house. She had grown accustomed to the smell of paint and thinners, and though the house remained empty most of the time, she felt no compulsion to take advantage of its availability, preferring to spend time in her little dwelling. A couple of stray mewling cats sauntered around it, apparently safe for the moment from the Samjis’ pampered dogs. Mariam was kept company by servants from the neighboring houses, also belonging to wealthy Asians. Most of the other servants envied her leisurely lifestyle if not her dwelling and called her “Mariam Malkia” meaning “Mariam the Queen,” to which she would say, “What kind of a queen stays isolated from her family and only gets to see them one time in a month?” Whether she was referring to the Samjis or her actual family—two teenaged sons and a much older, frail husband—living in the Kangemi slums on the outskirts of Nairobi, nobody knew for sure or cared enough to inquire.