by Anne Cherian
“We’ll see,” she said, staving off making a decision. How could she tell him why she didn’t want to go there? What if they ran into Aakash?
“Let’s do it,” he urged. “We’ve been wanting to go for a while, and this is the perfect opportunity. You will have seen your friends the day before, so they won’t be expecting to spend more time with you.”
She couldn’t come up with a good excuse.
Then she realized that Jonathan was right. They had been talking about a San Diego trip ever since Aaron was in fourth grade. Aaron had wanted to see the aquarium and the zoo, but something—work, another commitment—had always stopped them.
If they hadn’t gone in all this time, she reasoned, there was hope that once again, something would intervene.
“DAD!” NIKHIL’S VOICE resounded in Vic’s ear, “are you out of your mind?”
“I am quite fine. I went to the doctor only last week. He announced that I was hale and hearty, in body and mind.”
“I told you I didn’t want you throwing another party for me. The one when I turned eighteen was enough.”
“That was not for your age,” Vic corrected his son. “It was because you had graduated as valedictorian from your high school and were going to MIT. Now you have graduated again, so naturally we are having another party.”
“You better not have mailed out the invitations.”
“We posted everyone’s invitation three days ago. Yours took a little longer to reach you because you are on the other side of America.”
“Dad, don’t you ever listen to me? I told you when I came home for winter break that no way was I going to have anything to do with a party.”
“What? A father cannot be proud of his son’s achievement?”
“Don’t make this about me, Dad. It’s always been about what you wanted. Look, I went to MIT because you wanted me to go there. But I told you that after I graduate, I’m a free agent.”
“Here, speak to your mother.” Vic handed the phone to Priya, who, as usual, was hovering, waiting to talk to Nikhil.
“Beta, did the package of spices I sent you arrive?” he heard her ask as he left the room.
Priya invariably had the right words and touch to calm Nikhil.
He knew his son did not want the party, just as he knew that Priya would make sure Nikhil attended it. He hadn’t lied when he told his son he was proud of him. He had hoped, from the moment he saw Priya holding the tiny baby in the hospital, that, unlike him, his son would have easy access to the numerous opportunities America presented.
He had worked hard to come to this country, beginning in the mud-walled school that went from kindergarten to tenth standard. Vikram, as he was known in the village, learned on the first day that the teachers hit bad students. Teacherji took out the ruler for those who spoke during class, forgot to bring their slate to school, and could not recite the alphabet. He never wanted to feel the whack of the wooden ruler, so he studied hard, even though his father kept saying that history and English would not help him grow better crops. But as Vikram learned about other places in geography class, he learned that there were other ways to live besides farming. He read stories about tall buildings that reached the clouds, and long bridges that spanned great rivers so that a man could live on one side and work on the other.
No one in the village had ever gone beyond the tenth year of school. That included some of the teachers, many of whom had tormented his own father. They were given the job because there was no one else able to do it, and they took it because teachers were afforded more respect than farmers.
Vikram knew that his only opportunity to get away from the village was to do well in the final, the ICSE exam taken by every high school student in India. Surely, he reasoned, it would be ranked, just like the report cards the teachers handed out after every exam. He routinely came in first in his class, and, in his final year, studied extra hard to achieve the same rank for the big exam.
He took the exams, two a day, in January. The results would come months later. All the other children soon forgot about the results, but Vikram kept track of the days and weeks and months. The festival of Holi came, and everyone in the village celebrated the onset of spring by throwing colored powder and water on each other. It was the only time in the year when old and young, rich and poor were equals. Along with his classmates, Vikram hid behind a tree and, as their former teachers came into view, pelted each one until they were dripping wet, shirts a crazy kaleidoscope of colors. The teachers could not scold them, and the boys took advantage of their one day of freedom, rubbing powder into their faces and hair.
Now that Vikram did not need to attend classes, he tried to encourage his younger brother Vijay to study. But Vijay hated school, and kept quoting Pitaji. “Why do I need to know about Yumrica or Inglaand?” he asked Vikram. “I am never leaving our village.”
So Vikram went about his chores, all the while wondering if he had done well enough on the exam to achieve a rank. He helped his father ready the land for the next crop. As the sun blazed overhead, every field was tended to by bent bodies, the men plowing the land, the children and wives planting seeds.
When the plants were a foot high, Vikram went out with his father to check for bugs and to water the crops.
“Vikram! Vikram!” he heard, and he looked up to see Mr. Pandey, the main class teacher for the tenth standard—the only one who had not come out during Holi—running toward them.
“Your name is in the paper,” Mr. Pandey said excitedly, waving the newspaper.
“What has he done?” his father asked in a frightened voice. Vikram could almost hear Pitaji thinking there was no money to bribe the corrupt police, and how would he manage the lands while his son was in prison?
“He has achieved a rank in the ICSE exam,” Mr. Pandey beamed. “That is why his name is in the paper. See here, Vikram Jha. I knew he would do it, which is why I was always searching for the results every day.”
Vikram remembered the weight of his class teacher’s hand as the cane smashed the soft skin behind his knees. He had challenged Mr. Pandey one day, and even though he had proved that his way of solving the math problem was easier and faster, the old man had picked up the thin cane he always kept near him. Mr. Pandey had a reputation for being the only teacher who truly enjoyed hurting students. The other teachers would halfheartedly whack outstretched palms and deliver a few strikes on the backs of legs, because corporal punishment was expected. But Mr. Pandey loved to hit where it hurt the most. He had drawn blood that day, and Vikram had no power to stop him. The only power he had was not to cry.
Vikram looked at his name, then at the date of the newspaper. “The results came out two days ago,” he pointed out.
“Ah, yes, yes. But you see, it is not easy to get the paper in a timely fashion in our village.”
Vikram savored his first victory. He had now gone beyond every single person in the village. He had even surpassed the head landlord, the man who owned the village, to whom the villagers bowed down and called seth. The seth had not achieved a rank. The seth’s three sons studied in some big, fancy school up in the mountains and never played with any of the village children. The maid who cleaned their huge house told the villagers that the seth hired tutors to teach his sons during the summer holidays. One son had recently returned home, and though the seth said it was to learn the family business, the maid told everyone that he had been kicked out of the school because he had failed his final exam two years running.
Vikram folded the newspaper and tucked it under his arm without asking Mr. Pandey if he could have it. For the first time in their relationship, Mr. Pandey didn’t say a word. He raised his hand to pat Vikram’s shoulder, but Vikram stepped away. He was done with the cruel old man ever touching him again.
Pitaji thanked Mr. Pandey profusely and pointed out that they were busy. The crops needed a good soaking, and it had to be done now or the day would get too warm, causing the water to evaporate before seeping down to the roots.
Pitaji carried buckets of water from the well to the fields. As usual, he did not speak, his mind focused on the work that needed to be finished.
Mr. Pandey had already told Mataji, so when Vikram and his father went home for lunch, they sat down to a special meal, the parathas shiny with ghee.
“Our son has done the best of all the students, past and present,” Mataji beamed.
“Now he can concentrate on the crop,” Pitaji responded.
Vikram kept quiet. He hadn’t expected his father to be pleased. All these years of coming first hadn’t impressed Pitaji. His father delighted in Vijay, who did not mind skipping class to help during harvest season.
But later, when Vikram said he was going to IIT, in a place called Kharagpur, Pitaji had plenty to say.
“I need you to help me with the land,” he said. “We are in so much debt to the seth that if even one crop fails, we are done for.”
“You have Vijay, and I will help when I come for holidays,” Vikram promised. But once he got to IIT, he started working for the professors in any way he could. His visits home were sporadic, and short. His family could not understand what he was studying at IIT. They had never heard of it, and when Vikram explained that thousands apply but very few get admitted, his mother said they should thank the gods for such luck. Pitaji grunted. Then he said it must be very crowded, how could Vikram live in a place filled with people?
He always brought back small gifts for his family, but no matter what he said or did, Pitaji behaved as if Vikram was deliberately hurting him. Mataji was sad that she didn’t see him often. She worried that he was getting thin, was studying too much. His father just grumbled that all his thick books and papers would not help create better plants or crops, unlike Vijay, who was already so fast at digging.
At IIT, Vikram was on his own, unlike other students, whose parents had helped them get into the school by arranging for them to take special cramming classes. Those parents sent large food packages to augment the so-so food in the dining hall and used their contacts to set up internships and job interviews.
When he announced he was going to America, Mataji wept. She had heard about that country, she cried. It was across the ocean. The gods would be so angry he was crossing the ocean they might not let him live. If he did survive, he would be polluted by their meat-eating ways.
He told her not to worry, told her that Gandhi, too, had gone over the oceans.
“To the same place?” she wanted to know.
Vikram couldn’t tell a direct lie to his mother. He knew about Gandhi’s trips to South Africa and England. Then he remembered Nehru. Along with Gandhi, it was a name Mataji knew and respected.
“Nehru went to the same place in America,” he fudged. He had read an account of the great man visiting the University of California at Berkeley shortly after Independence, and how pleased he was when the band played India’s brand-new national anthem.
His mother’s fears had briefly resurfaced when he almost missed his flight in Amsterdam. He had taken advantage of the two-hour layover to hunt down the escalator Homi had told him about. Homi was a Parsi from Bombay, and his parents worked for the United Nations in The Hague, which meant he went abroad every year and returned with stories about underground trains and automatic doors. Vikram had been eager to see the engineering feat Homi said took people from one floor to another without their having to expend any energy. Vikram had only read about such marvels, and when he finally saw the smooth undulation that connected two floors, he didn’t care that a number of people stopped and asked if everything was okay. As he stepped on it, he realized that Homi had lied to him.
“You had better be careful if you ever have to go on one,” he had warned Vikram. “The first time I put my foot down, the step came up and threw me backward.” He should have known that Homi was having fun at his expense.
It was because of people like Homi that he had never told anyone at IIT about his background. He was “one of the boys” in the brains department because everyone at IIT had to be smart to get in, but he knew that the others would make fun of his poor family. So he listened to them talk about vacations in Kashmir, parties where both men and women drank, and he never joined in. If he told them that his parents lived in a mud-walled house without running water, and could not understand him when he spoke English, they would only laugh. Then they would bring it up later for more laughs. He learned to protect himself, just as he had learned to believe in himself from a young age.
The only person who knew his trajectory was the president of UCLA. He liked and trusted the man, who was the first one to start calling him Vic.
“What an incredible story. You’re just like Horatio Alger,” the president had said, and that was when Vic knew that people in America, too, though much kinder, would never really understand him. He was not like anyone else. Horatio Alger was one in a long line of individuals who had risen from nothing. The difference was that Alger knew of other such men. Vic had not had any blueprint to follow, any hero to imitate. He had done this on his own, in spite of all the barriers—and jokes—along the way.
So of course when Nikhil was born, he didn’t want his son to grow a watchful eye. He wanted Nikhil to know that he would never need to learn things on his own.
Yet Nikhil had started out doing just that. Priya insisted on speaking Hindi to Nikhil, who answered in the same language. Vic had not been worried. Everyone in India spoke a number of languages; there was no reason to fear that his son would lag behind just because he said “paani,” instead of “water,” at home. He anticipated that once Priya started meeting other mothers, Nikhil would pick up enough playground English so he would not feel lost in kindergarten. But he was completely amazed when Nikhil learned to read from watching Sesame Street.
One day Priya had taken him shopping, and he pointed out the cereal she was looking for. Priya assumed he had remembered the color of the box—until she realized it was a new cereal she wanted to try out.
“Nikhil can read,” she told Vic when he came home that night.
Vic thought of all the things he had done, and simply picked up his son, put him on his lap, and asked him to read from the newspaper.
Nikhil skipped kindergarten and started school in first grade. He was the youngest in his class, but he always got A’s. By the time Nikhil finished fifth grade, Vic determined that a public school—even the good ones in Newport Beach—was not the right place for his son. He put him in the best private school in the area and made sure Nikhil took every AP and Honors class that was offered, which brought his GPA even higher.
The only trouble Vic remembered with his son was in regard to sports. Nikhil preferred cooking to hitting a ball, and Vic had been very concerned that his son was growing up to be a sissy. He himself had laughed at the boys who could not throw a curve ball, and he hated the thought of his son being a joke on the field.
“Every man has a sport,” he told Nikhil.
“What do you play?” Nikhil had challenged him.
“Cricket,” Vic answered readily. “It’s too bad they don’t play it here, otherwise you would see what a top-notch player I am.”
After much discussion, Nikhil decided on swimming. He liked the water. Vic also knew that the individual sport suited his son because he was uncomfortable about physical contact and the attendant risk of injury.
As soon as Nikhil signed up for lessons, Vic contacted a designer and built a pool with a lap lane. Nikhil had practiced every day and won quite a few prizes before he stopped swimming in his last year of high school. By then he had gained early admission into MIT, and Vic had let it go.
But Vic wasn’t going to cancel the party. He was proud, of course, but he also wanted to make an occasion of giving Nikhil a position in his company. He had long planned that once Nikhil got his computer-science degree, he would start tutoring him to ultimately take over VikRAM Computers, his software company. He did not want Nikhil to begin at the bottom, the way so many Americans determined
was the best path. There was no need for Nikhil to know every aspect of the company. He could start in middle management and then eventually take over, by which time Nikhil’s brother, Nandan, would be old enough to start working. Vic had worried that Nandan had come along seven long years after Nikhil, but now he realized it might end up being beneficial. His oldest son would be able to guide the younger one, just as when they were small. When both boys were working at VikRAM Computers, Vic could become a consultant, stop going to the office every day.
Vic checked his watch. It was time to go and meet his biking buddies. He had just pocketed the keys to his motorbike when Priya called out to him.
“Where are you going?”
“I am meeting the group.”
“Are you going to drink with them?” Priya started, then saw his face and switched subjects. “Nikhil is very angry.”
“I’m sure you were able to make him see sense.”
“He wants me to make you see sense.”
“We’re having the party, and that’s final. The invitations have already been posted.”
“Actually, the invitations are still in the house.”
“Why didn’t you post them when I told you to?”
“I thought Nikhil should see it first.”
“Post the invitations today itself.” Vic was furious. Who was she to go against his wishes?
“It’s Saturday. The post office is closed by now,” Priya reminded him.
“I know what day it is. The invitations are stamped, are they not? You can put them in the mailbox outside the post office. Give them to me. I’ll do it.”
“You will be late for your motorbike ride. I’ll do it.”
Suddenly he did not trust her. “You already posted them, didn’t you?” he demanded.
Her silence confirmed his suspicion. “What were you going to do? Call all those people and tell them the party is off because Nikhil does not want to celebrate his graduation?”
“Nikhil is very angry. He says you don’t listen to him—”
“If I had listened to him, right now he would be taking classes at the community college, and cooking in some stupid restaurant on weekends.”