by Balli Kaur
That was the moment he decided to be less vigilant about where he stepped. Over the next few weeks, he became more aware of how he walked and paid less attention to where his feet landed. He practised making himself look wider and taller, gauging his progress by watching his dim shadow on stony November mornings. Scant sums of pocket money sent from home were spent on a new wardrobe – winter boots and bulky cable sweaters with smart V-neck collars. He took a campus job in the library and saved his wages to replace his thick frames with contact lenses. Reading passages from his textbook into a mirror, he practised deepening his voice. During lectures, he doodled in the corners of his notebooks and didn’t bother completing assignments. He despised the other foreign students for their simplicity and eagerness. He strived to be their exact opposite – disinterested in his studies, witty and self-assured.
In the process of planning his transformation, Narain had to consider his hair. In Singapore, when passing another turbaned Sikh man, Narain would initiate a customary nod. His father had taught him and his brothers to do this because it represented religious solidarity. Despite teasing from Chinese and Malay children, Narain never once dared to think about cutting his hair. But now the turban felt bulky and awkward, making him stand out even more.
He focused on his face first. Hair had taken its time to sprout on Narain’s cheeks and chin. It was such a delay, in fact, that Father accused him of shaving when he was fifteen. Narain had to convince him that he was just developing more slowly than the other boys, a fact that Father was willing to accept all too readily. At the time, Narain had been mortified, but now he saw advantages to having only a thin spread of beard. It didn’t seem wrong to eliminate what was hardly there to begin with. He felt little remorse as he dragged the razor across his cheeks, even when he nicked his skin. However, the thought of his next task made his heart race.
Narain unravelled the fabric of his turban and loosened the pins and rubber bands that held together his fat knot of hair. It tumbled down his back in waves, releasing the light, flowery fragrance of Johnson’s Baby Oil that he used to smooth it down after washing. He pictured his home in Singapore – a modest bungalow like the others that housed local officers for the British Police. In his imagination, it expanded to the proportions of an enormous old mansion with creaking corridors and hidden sections constructed for concealing secrets. He shut his eyes and manoeuvred his way around the house. Perhaps if he was careful, he could cut his hair to a shorter length and somehow conceal it from Father’s view when he returned home for the summer.
As he searched for a pair of scissors, his enthusiasm quickly diminished. The weight of his hair and the daily routine of oiling, combing, braiding and wrapping were too familiar to eliminate so suddenly. Changes were necessary but a haircut would be too drastic, so he kept all of his hair but exchanged the turban for a baseball cap under which his braid sat coiled like a millipede in terrified defence.
At his first party, Narain was disappointed to find that nobody noticed the difference. He expected classmates to approach him with congratulatory smiles, warmth restored to their eyes. Deciding that going unnoticed meant that he blended in, he pushed through the crowds. Music throbbed through the walls of a three-storey brick house. Students leaned against the walls and nodded, sharing a familiar secret. Girls in tight skirts writhed and gyrated against boys they didn’t know. He smiled at them and they smiled back, their dances a lazy trance to invite him into their world.
A blonde wearing heavy green eye shadow allowed him to put his hand up her skirt, then she led him up the stairs towards an empty room. Pausing at the threshold, Narain was struck with a profound and dizzying sense of despair – at that moment, he was sure of who he was, but this certainty brought back memories of the army and everything he meant to repair. Narain recalled the officers’ grim faces as they explained to Father that Narain would have to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. As the girl shook off her clothes, Narain watched her and relied on the distant throbbing music to pump away his past. Behaviour management. Removed from duties handling sensitive information.
This is America. This convenient phrase, which came to him that night, obliterated his sins over the next few months. He began smoking cigarettes, but this was America. He wasn’t studying, but this was America. He did not respond to Father’s letters because this was America. The accumulations of all his misgivings – even for acts he was preparing to commit – occurred to him with an electric jolt.
The parties continued and the girl became Narain’s first girlfriend. She was Jenny, a Philosophy major from Fairfield. She was near-sighted but hated wearing her glasses. Her parents had divorced each other and then re-married five years later. She had joined every activist group on campus and she confessed to spending more time at their meetings than in her classes. Her skin was so pale it sometimes turned blue in the eerie winter light.
Jenny was not ashamed to admit that she did not know where Singapore was. ‘Tell me more about it,’ she said to him one night, as they walked past a row of college bars. She backed herself against a brick wall in a narrow alley and drew him to her, pressing her thighs against his. ‘What’s it like in Sing-a-pore?’ she drawled, making the city’s name sound like a scientific term. She planted a loud kiss against the side of his neck. The acrid mix of stale cigarettes and beer was wet on her skin.
‘I’ll show you,’ Narain said. He took her hand and led her back to his dormitory. From his shelf, he retrieved his book of photographs. The first page contained pictures of decrepit kampongs flanked by the thick trunks of coconut trees and gnarled bushes. Children with legs like twigs stared into the camera, their expressions solemn. A pick-up truck was parked at an angle on a street corner and the driver stood nearby drinking juice from a clear plastic bag. Groups of women squatted among tall stalks of grass and grinned as they dunked their laundry in basins at a public standpipe. Narain felt a flash of panic. Nothing about this world would be familiar to Jenny. He hastily flipped to a picture of the modest city skyline.
‘This is what it looks like at night,’ Narain said. ‘See how the buildings light up?’ He traced his finger over the buildings and the calm river below. The city looked glamorous at night. Not a trace of the broken bottles and plastic bags that clogged the river could be seen in the shadows. Instead, lights melted across the water’s surface.
‘It’s sort of like Chicago,’ Jenny said.
‘Yes,’ Narain said, wishing he had the nerve to deny this. Singapore was nothing like Chicago. The air was sticky all year round and crickets filled the dusty kampongs with mournful songs after the rain destroyed their nests. There were people who slept on thin mattresses above the shops of their trades, their skin soaking in the smell of preserves and herbs. His favourite place to eat was not a restaurant or a diner but a street stall with only one dish listed on a handwritten sign. The facade of his local cinema betrayed its age with smears of soot and dust but nobody cared as long as the snack man was outside to serve sugar-coated nuts in paper cones. As Jenny shifted closer to turn the pages, Singapore came back to Narain in a rush of tangled telephone cables, houses with slanting tin roofs, vendors pushing wobbling trolleys, incense sticks glowing in the night like stars, men racing barefoot across coals to prove their faith to cheering crowds outside a Hindu temple.
Jenny smiled and pointed to a grainy photograph. ‘Here we are,’ she said. ‘That’s how I pictured it.’ In grey and white, a bony Indian man wearing nothing but a loose piece of checkered cloth around his waist stood next to a lopsided rickshaw, gesturing to the camera, his mouth open wide, mid-speech. Behind him were the dark entrances to provision shops where bulging gunnysacks filled with rice, seeds and dried fruits leaned against each other. As Jenny tipped her head and cast him a dreamy gaze, Narain understood what they needed from each other. One day she would muse about her foreign boyfriend just as he would always remember the American he dated in college. Both would keep this relationship as a souvenir of the people they had once
dared to be.
‘Tell me more about where you’re from. Tell me everything,’ Jenny said, lying across his bed. She was clumsy at being sexy, drawing a slow circle low on her tummy with the tips of her fingers.
That day, Narain showed Jenny Singapore’s place on the map. He told her how families had crowded around their television screens the day Malaysia announced it wanted Singapore out of its union. Tears nearly sprang to his eyes when he described their fear at watching their own leader cry on the screen. He told her about the race riots, and the odd calm that descended over the island after curfews were imposed to keep the Chinese and Malays from clashing in the streets. Jenny responded with a mixture of sympathy and approval, encouraging him to continue. Then he accidentally mentioned the army.
‘Wait. Start again,’ Jenny said. ‘You were in the army?’ Betrayal flashed across her face. ‘You never told me that.’
‘No, no,’ Narain said. ‘I mean, yes, I was, but it’s different over there. It’s National Service. It’s compulsory,’ he was quick to say. ‘I was in the country’s very first cohort.’
‘I’m against the military,’ Jenny replied.
‘I know,’ Narain said. One of the few times Jenny had interrupted one of his long stories about home, she went on a rant against the draft and the war in Vietnam, where her friend from high school had been so badly wounded he would never walk again. ‘What they’re making our boys do over there is wrong – it’s so fucking obvious,’ she said, slapping her hand against her head. ‘Why don’t people see it, though? You know how long it took me just to get twenty signatures on my petition the other day? Nobody wants to believe the government’s a bunch of lying bastards.’ Her forwardness was titillating. Back home, people had become more cautious about voicing such strong opinions.
On another occasion, Narain showed Jenny pictures of his family. She pointed out the strong resemblance his cousin Karam had to Father, and remarked that he was handsome. Narain laughed. ‘My brother Gurdev would not like to hear that.’ Jenny nodded and placed her fingers lightly on Gurdev’s image, a gesture of consolation. A hint of his belly pressed through his shirt and his cheeks retained his baby fat even in his late twenties.
‘You must be very close to Karam,’ Jenny said. ‘He’s in all the pictures.’
‘He’s close to the family,’ Narain said carefully. ‘His own parents died on their way to Singapore. There was a problem with the ship and it capsized but Karam was saved and brought over. He was raised by a distant aunt in Singapore – his father’s cousin. She and her husband didn’t have any children and they were happy to adopt Karam but I don’t think they knew how to raise a child. They treated him like a guest. He started coming over to our house every day. He and my father had a special bond. By the time he was about ten or eleven, he was practically living with us.’
Jenny cast a sad glance at Karam’s picture. ‘It’s like you have two brothers then.’
‘Not really. More like two fathers,’ Narain said. Jenny probably thought he was only referring to physical appearance.
Jenny commented that Narain’s mother was pretty, with her pale skin, her sharp nose and those tiny, pursed lips that made her look even younger than her sixteen years in his only photo of her, balancing a baby Gurdev on her lap. ‘I bet she still looks like that,’ she said. Narain said nothing, but pointed out that daughters often resembled their mothers. He showed her Amrit. Jenny smiled. ‘The boys must be after this one.’
‘She’s too young,’ he said, tersely.
‘What, fifteen? I started dating around then,’ Jenny said, with a shrug.
For days afterwards, Narain found himself thinking about Amrit. Amrit dashing past his room. Amrit sprawled on their rattan furniture. Though he never admitted it out loud, he had always sought her approval more than anybody else’s. For her age, Amrit had a surprisingly acute knowledge of relationships. He wondered what she would say if he told her he wanted to bring home this pale-skinned girl with her accent that widened every vowel. Would Amrit welcome the idea? Would she be disappointed? Would she explain that what he felt was not love? He could not see it any other way – Jenny was unwittingly helping him to become more like other men, and for this, he loved her. His love for her was so strong that it overrode those impulses that had led to his troubles in the army. Yet whenever he thought of asking Amrit about love, he imagined her leading him through an uncharted passageway in their house, laughing at him for not knowing it existed.
The morning Father called, Narain was still half asleep. Jenny’s arm rested across his chest and she stirred slightly when he reached for the telephone. ‘Hello,’ he mumbled into the receiver.
‘Narain? Please speak up,’ Father’s voice gripped him. He sat up in bed and pulled the sheets over Jenny’s bare shoulder, as if Father might be peering into his room.
‘Sat sri akal, Father,’ Narain said.
‘Sat sri akal. How are you?’
‘I’m well.’
‘I said speak up.’
‘I’m doing fine,’ Narain said loudly. Jenny rolled lazily to her side.
‘Have you read my letter?’
‘I haven’t received it yet,’ Narain lied, eyeing the envelopes scattered across the dresser.
‘Well, what are you doing now?’
‘Nothing. I mean, I was just waking up,’ he said. A soft moan escaped Jenny’s lips. Her eyes blinked open. ‘Who is it?’ she mumbled as he leaned away from her.
‘Narain, I want to see copies of your exam results. You have no idea what this education is costing me.’
‘Results haven’t come out yet,’ Narain said, keeping his panic from edging into the conversation. ‘I’ll send them to you as soon as I get them.’
‘Yes, please do this,’ Father said. Also, when is your summer vacation? You are coming back to Singapore.’ Narain glanced at Jenny. ‘I’m not sure, Father. I might have some things to do here. Summer classes.’
‘No, you must come back,’ Father said.
‘But it will save you a lot of money if I just stay here. I thought I could get a summer job as well.’
‘I am paying your school fees and transport. This was the arrangement so you could return home every year and see the family. Please do not argue,’ Father said sternly. ‘Your sister needs you.’
There was a short silence. Narain found himself fighting the urge to listen to the noises in the background. On the phone with Father once, when the connection was poor, he had mistaken the static for Singapore noises – the buzz of midday traffic, sparrows chirping their uneven greetings, oil hissing on a hawker’s wok.
Father told him to read his letter and with a curt goodbye, he hung up. Narain reached for his dresser. There were four envelopes from home. He saw the most recently dated stamp and ripped the envelope open. After the usual formalities, Father’s letters always contained a paragraph on latest developments in the country, followed by a few words of advice. This letter was different. It launched into a subject that Narain no longer felt equipped to handle from such a distance.
I must inform you about Amrit. She is out of control. Twice I have caught her outside chatting with boys near the shops. She wears very red lipstick and does not study anymore. One day, I could smell cigarettes on her clothes but when I asked Amrit about it, she said she had lunch at a coffee shop where people were smoking. You should know what to do in this situation – she needs to be disciplined. You are to return as soon as your term is over so you can monitor your sister. Remember, this is an important year. Her exams are coming up, and she must do well, as should you.
Narain re-read the letter as he paced the cramped quarters of his dormitory room. He glanced at Jenny and found it easier to dismiss Father’s words. This was the problem? This was the reason he was being pressured to come home
– just because his sister was dating? In his mind, he drafted a letter telling Father all the things he wished he had the courage to tell him. Father was overreacting. Father was distracting h
im from more important matters with these trivial complaints. But the letter was never scripted. Instead, Narain retrieved the other letter expressing his doubts about Singapore’s progress and mailed it to Father that very afternoon. He hadn’t mentioned Amrit.
The next day, Narain went to the library and applied for extra shifts over the summer holidays. He began searching the newspapers for apartments available for rent. Jenny was planning on waiting tables all summer and he wanted to be close to her. Lately, he found himself wanting to spend every moment with Jenny. When they were together, he was always touching her – stroking her hair or grasping her hand, walking her to her classes – and he became unable to concentrate on his own work without her presence. At times, he felt as if he needed to be within Jenny, hidden away from the doubts that could spring without warning into his solitary moments.
A few weeks passed before another letter arrived from Father, reminding Narain to send his grades home once he got them. To Narain’s surprise, there was no mention of his argumentative reply.
Narain pretended not to receive any more of Father’s correspondence, wedging letters between a stack of unopened Engineering books. He decided to avoid telling his family that he was planning to stay in Iowa over summer until two weeks before he was due to come home. It would be too late then for Father to persuade him, and then maybe Father would realise that Amrit was not Narain’s sole responsibility. He took it as a practice step. If he could disobey Father in small doses, perhaps one day he would muster the courage for a graver disagreement about his life choices.
The weather became warmer as spring finally took hold. Tiny buds appeared on trees and began to blossom, spreading colour through the university campus. There were more people walking about now, riding bicycles, lying on blankets on the front lawn. Jenny prepared a picnic and they lay sprawled on their bellies. They made plans to attend an anti-war protest that Jenny had helped put flyers up for around campus. The sun was bright and a light breeze rustled Jenny’s hair, bringing strands into her mouth that Narain constantly had to pull away. ‘You’re not listening,’ she complained after he tried to kiss her mid-sentence.