The books on the shelf before me bore beaten bindings and dated titles, and I set my attention on those. The USSR Today, one stated gloomily. Myanmar: Temples of Splendor, read the cracked yellow spine of another. When I tugged it down, opening the long cover that drew stickily back, a flattened moth broke off and spiraled to the floor. The pages showed Technicolor tourists admiring a crumbling, sunlit temple.
Those books were like the labyrinthian, rutted streets outside, the old men on rickety gray bicycles, even the street children, their cries at once pitiful and joyful, and the beggars with their practiced wheedling. I would remember each one as an enduring Indian staple: worn by time, accustomed to crowds, doggedly resilient. Teddy, on the other hand, was fresh, with pearl buttons on his Western shirt and pointy shoes on his feet. “Have you read this?” I heard him ask. I looked up; he waved Carrie. I couldn’t help it: I smiled, shook my head, and pretended to look grim. No, he wasn’t at all like India’s enduring things; he was tall and upfront, his face unlined, his eyes flickering.
“What’s wrong?” Teddy asked, seeing the look on my face. “What’s it about?” His question was mockingly innocent. Even if you knew nothing about Carrie, the cover, with the heroine’s body covered in cow’s blood, told you everything. “Just joking,” he said at my raised eyebrows and flipped fast through the pages like he was just seeing how long it was, how closely set the type.
“So, you can’t stand the gore?” he asked after another moment. When I looked at him, he winked. Be careful, a voice inside me said. But Teddy continued talking, and I kept listening. How welcome his English sounded, because everyone who’d told me that English was spoken all over India had been wrong. In the cities, sure—the language was used, marked with that charming and plucky accent, but in other parts of India, it wasn’t nearly as common as I’d expected.
“That Stephen King—he’s something else,” Teddy remarked, lowering his voice a little as an elderly Indian couple brushed past us. “He’s American, like you?”
I could tell by the way he said it that he knew the answer, but I nodded anyway. His own accent sounded imprecise, a little off-kilter, rolling and round. He was from South Africa, if I had to guess.
He looked at me like he was waiting to hear me ask where he was from, but I remembered Aman’s warning and said nothing. Don’t push it. When I looked up from the Myanmar book again, he’d bent to examine the rest of the Stephen King section. I slid my book back beside the others on the shelf, and as I walked toward the door to leave, I ran my fingertips along the soft spines once more. I love the way old books feel, the way they leave their scent on my hands, the way their pages can feel leathery or dusty, brittle and crackling or soft as butter. Anywhere you’ll go, you’ll find books, if you look hard enough. I like knowing that.
Just before I reached the end of the stack, the pad of my first finger caught on the broken coil of a spiral-bound book, and I drew my hand back. I thought I felt a tiny spark as my fingers left the book. I stopped, peered at it, then eased it out from between the others. It was a loose-leafed notebook, the kind you buy in American drugstores. I felt Teddy glance over, but in that moment, nothing could keep me from lifting the cover and looking inside. There was something funny about it, I just knew. There’d been a spark.
Handwriting choked the inside cover and the very first page: all Sanskrit and all in pencil, delicate marks made by a trembling hand. The words spilled onto the next page, and then the next and the next. In places, the writing ran over itself, and as I turned the pages the characters grew smaller and began to march up and down the margins and snake between each coil of the binding. It was as if the book had been the writer’s only source of paper for a very long time.
“Someone’s journal,” I heard Teddy whisper beside me.
“Maybe,” I said. Put it back, the little voice said, and leave Teddy. That’s what Aman would want you to do. But I just couldn’t take my eyes from those pages. The notebook felt both heavy and flimsy, like the words were weighing down the cheap paper. Teddy didn’t try to take the book, didn’t say anything else, and together we looked at the pages the way little kids look at picture books without reading the words. The tightness of those lines; their growing frenzy.
Toward the very end of the notebook, we came across a nearly clean page, startling and white like a flat, smooth stone in grass. The lines resembled veins on a wrist, and the only other thing on the page was a signature at the lower right. The signature was both scratchy and looping, if that can describe it: hard at its points, but soft in its curves. How had it happened, this page? I heard Teddy’s breath quicken a fragment. Had the writer waited as he filled up every other page for the person who would sign their name on the only blank one? I imagined a prisoner, or someone exiled. Someone banished. Was it a hastily scribbled prayer?
Teddy brushed the signature delicately with one calloused thumb. I reached out myself and felt the way the writing cut into the page. It was impossible to tell whether the signature was a man’s or a woman’s, in the way it both rolled and cut into the page. I glanced at Teddy; he shrugged. When I returned to the book I felt a little chill, even in the hot store: looking at that page was like seeing a secret.
I felt increasingly guilty as I held it in my hands. What was it doing on these shelves, anyway? I glanced toward the counter at the young shopkeeper, who was typing into her cell phone intently, perched on a stool with her legs crossed. I closed the book, knelt down, and slid it onto the lowest shelf, taking care to tuck it in so that it wasn’t easily visible to a browser. Teddy didn’t protest. It didn’t occur to me to even ask whether the book was for sale, for it seemed a mistake, placed on these shelves by accident when really it belonged in a locked drawer, or behind a pane of glass in a museum. For one selfish second I imagined waiting for Teddy to leave, and then slipping the book into my purse, hurrying back to Aman’s and holding it open again, this time alone.
We stood there silently for a while, looking at the place where I’d slid the book back. What could be said, after all, except that those pages held a mystery?
Teddy broke the spell. “Can I buy you a coffee?” he asked, and then, all of a sudden, I was aware once more of the shouts of chai wallas and the shotgun explosions of motorbike engines. No, I didn’t have time for coffee; meditations started in an hour, and I still had to meet Aman beforehand. I shook my head.
“Can I at least get your name?” Teddy asked, and I told him. What the hell; we’d already shared one secret.
“I’m Teddy,” he replied, and plucked Carrie back up off the shelf. “I’m taking this one,” he added, grinning.
“Good luck with that,” I said, and without looking again for the spiral-bound book on the shelf, I left the store and went back out into the sunshine.
The ashram wasn’t like the rest of Pune, which was built, as far as I could tell, around the wide, trash-littered, dried-up river that divided the city. Aman lived on the northern side, opposite the ashram, up a little street lined with apartment buildings built in the seventies. Most of Pune’s streets were unpaved—except for the wide avenues that circled the city center—and were crowded with vegetable stands and bidi shops, vegetable wallahs and munching cows. The deeper you walked into the old city’s heart, the farther you stepped back in time: no cars, just cows and bike rickshaws and a crumbling red temple, centuries old. Strings of marigolds for sale.
But the ashram was perpetually manicured, forever gated to keep the scented flowers protected, the wood floors gleaming, and the servants immaculate in their starched white linens. Beggars gathered at the ashram gates, but guards planted there day and night made sure they’d never get inside. You could feel the shift as soon as you entered; gone were the noisy cars, the shouting hawkers, the trash on the ground. Fake waterfalls obliterated all unpleasant noise, and neatly shorn grass or tall, carefully planned stands of trees replaced the city’s broken pavement.
I was late to meet Aman after the bookstore, even though I’d
been rushing. It always took longer than I thought it would to race back to the flat and change into my red robe. Everyone at the ashram had to wear the red robe, even the guards and front-desk agents. The robes kept us all looking the same, and the most enthusiastic attendees wore the red robes everywhere. Those devout, red-robed souls stuck out like sore thumbs among the city’s chai wallahs and rickshaw drivers, fruit vendors and street children. As for me, I hated my robe—it chafed my skin and made me sweat profusely—but when I didn’t wear it to the ashram, Aman took offense. He’d given it to me as a gift and wore his each day, washing it carefully in the evenings and putting it out on the little balcony to dry in the night.
I didn’t tell Aman about Teddy as we sat sipping our tea before meditation. Of course I didn’t, for he’d only frown and warn me. Aman was a little man with large, dark eyes and glasses that magnified them further. I knew he took pride in showing me his city, his ashram, introducing me to his friends and neighbors. It was strange to be led around the city by this little man who’d taken me in with delight; sometimes, I just wanted to walk by myself. Still, I was grateful for Aman’s kindness, and I tried not to let my occasional grumpiness show.
I didn’t mention the notebook to Aman, either. Instead, I held it in my mind like some precious stone, a thing to be guarded and saved. Aman and I just drank our tea, and he went over our schedule: noon meditation, another at two, and then the White Robe ceremony in the evening.
Aman had taken great pains to ensure that I attended at least one White Robe ceremony. In the first few days after I’d arrived, we’d both been too exhausted; meditation at 5 A.M. followed by afternoons of touring Pune tired us out. But today, Aman was determined. The morning before, he’d sent me across the street to his neighbor’s, a woman who lived with her teenaged daughter. They lent me a white robe stamped with cream-colored flowers. Aman laundered it again for me after I brought it home—just in case, he’d said. In case of what? I wanted to ask, but bit my tongue; anyway, I figured I knew why. While Aman kept his flat spotless, right down to the shoes lined up by the door, the neighbor’s house was just two rooms, smaller than Aman’s and stinking of cigarettes, the windows shut tight to preserve the air conditioning. I didn’t mind the smell much, just the close, freezing air. The television blared.
Aman drank down the last of his tea, and we made our way to the meditation room. It was just like the website pictures: the whole room sparkled with mosaics made of mirrors. A few dozen people already sat cross-legged on the low, wide steps that rose toward the back of the room, their eyes closed. Silently, Aman and I joined them, and he settled into a lotus position, closing his eyes and slowing his breath.
I tried to let my thoughts slip from me, but my legs fell asleep right away, still unaccustomed to the position. I cracked my eyelids open: everyone around me kept their backs straight and their hands folded. Someone had dimmed the lights, and when a gray-haired woman wearing lots of turquoise jewelry lit a candle up front and clicked two little chimes together, the room fell into an even deeper quiet, steady breath the only sound.
But I couldn’t keep my mind still. This wasn’t like the yoga I’d practiced up in Rishikesh, in an old man’s living room that became a studio every afternoon. In this glittering space, thoughts crowded in on me and raced around. Little twinges in my muscles and on my skin grew into itches, cramps. I wanted to stretch but knew that doing so would disturb my neighbors, breaking them from their trances. The candle smelled sickly sweet, and the room grew heavy and warm with all the bodies. Notice your breath, I reminded myself, but my thoughts just shot away again. I was hungry, and where was that scarf I bought last week from the woman on the corner? I hadn’t seen it lately. Meanwhile, my leg pricked and my foot fell numb. My mind circled over itself, reeling.
Then I remembered the journal. I thought of the words that filled the pages and the startlingly empty sheet. I thought of the scrawled signature, and imagined touching the penciled words. Teddy’s breath on my neck. When the gray-haired, turquoise-clad woman touched the chimes together again, I blinked in the light with everyone else, understanding for the first time the way opening your eyes after meditation can feel like waking from a dream. I hadn’t emptied my mind, but at least I had thought only of that creamy blank page for the final long minutes of the session.
After meditation, we ambled to the German bakery, still in our robes, and ate soup together at a long table where other soul searchers congregated. Outside the German bakery, vendors displayed long racks of red and white robes for sale. I tried not to meet their eyes on the way out. How foreign I felt in my robe, how conspicuous.
Aman liked to wash before the White Robe ceremony, so after we’d attended the second meditation and eaten dinner, he went into the bathroom. I could hear the water running as I changed into the white robe. At least it was cooler, sewn of thin cotton instead of scratchy polyester. Aman emerged from the bathroom eventually, his hair slicked back with water, his white robe cloaked over him. He’d ironed it that morning; I told him it looked nice. He nodded humbly, and I thought I caught him blushing; this ceremony was where he shone, I realized. We walked back across the river to the ashram, where a hundred other people in white robes waited outside the big auditorium, its silhouette reflected in the meditation pool that lay before it.
It took a while to get to the door, because everyone needed to remove their shoes and place them in cubbies, then grab a handful of tissues for the breathing meditation. We all murmured and mumbled in line, but no one spoke loudly or laughed, unwilling to break the stillness of our reflections in the meditation pond. Slowly we made our way up the stairs and into the cavernous auditorium lobby.
“Miss,” I heard a woman call from behind me. I turned; “Miss,” she said again, and beckoned with her hand for me to come back.
“I’m sorry, miss,” the woman said as I pushed back through the doorway, against the flow of white. “You can’t attend the ceremony today.” She glanced at my robe. “It’s the flowers, these little flowers here. The robe needs to be totally white, just plain.” She shrugged her shoulders—sorry, they’re the rules, her look said.
“Are you serious?” I asked her, and a few heads turned. I was making a commotion, I realized, but really? After Aman washed the robe, the one we’d taken pains to borrow?
The woman nodded. “Sorry,” she said, out loud this time, then coolly moved her gaze from my face to monitor the others still trickling in. I glanced through the doorway to see if I could find Aman—he’d been ahead of me in line, talking with friends. I didn’t see him. So I laced my shoes back up and left, taking the stairs two at a time, my face aflame.
Mostly, I was annoyed—after the initial shock of being banished wore off—that I didn’t have a change of clothes. I figured, as I tried to steady my breath and slow my beating heart, that I had two choices. I could go home, or I could wait for the White Robe ceremony to end so I could still walk back with Aman. After pondering the walk home alone, across the bridge beneath the dimming sky, I chose to wait, and so I walked out the ashram gates, white robe and all, toward the German Bakery, where I thought I’d get a coffee and try to find a magazine or someone to talk to. Something to take my mind off the shame and frustration.
Stupid white robes, I muttered as I walked past the beggars and into the bakery. Damn flowers. And then I saw Teddy, standing there at the counter, and my cursing stopped short.
He turned and grinned, recognizing me immediately, then took a moment to study my white flowered robe and my flushed face. “Everything okay?” he asked carefully.
“I’m okay,” I said, then blurted it out. “I got turned away from the White Robe ceremony just now.”
He grimaced. “Was it the flowers?”
I nodded. “How’d you guess?” I asked, half sarcastic.
“I’ve been to a few of those White Robes in my time,” Teddy said. He put on a grim doctor’s face: “I’ve seen this before.” I laughed at his tone, which compared the cere
mony to a serious condition that lacked a cure. I felt, all of a sudden, less embarrassed. How silly it all was, and how funny I must have looked in the banished robe.
“Let’s have coffee and make fun of the ashram,” Teddy suggested.
“Or maybe something stronger,” I joked, but I was grateful for someone to sit with. Teddy eased the moment, and while we sat and talked, I forgot all about the empty page in the journal and the little voice that had warned me about Teddy. How kind he was being, paying for the coffee and then leading me outside. The air had cooled, the wind smelled sweet, the tables outside were littered with newspapers and crumbs. Our coffee was hot and thin and laced with sugar.
“So what do you do here?” I asked him as we sipped. I could smell chocolate emanating from the bakery.
“I’m a Ph.D. student,” he answered. “Anthropology. I’m especially interested”—he paused, put down his books, and stretched his hands out before him—“in the palms.”
“You read palms?” I asked, then immediately regretted my dubious tone. A true Westerner I was proving to be, doubtful of the softer, spiritual sciences. Sure enough, he looked offended.
“I don’t just read palms,” he insisted, as if he’d dodged the question all his life. “I read them in the traditional, voodoo-ey way.” He wiggled his fingers in the air to emphasize voodoo. “But my degree has many levels. Astrology, physiology, human biology, psychology …” the list petered out. He set his coffee down beside him and leaned back on the heels of his hands. “It’s a complicated degree,” he finished, drawing a pack of cigarettes from his pocket.
I watched him strike a match and light a cigarette. As an afterthought, he offered the pack to me. I shook my head. “So, what can you see in the palms?” I asked him. I looked at my own; they were sweaty, for one thing, with a few scooping lines.
“Oh, you can read many things,” he finally said vaguely, maybe still miffed. He drew on his cigarette and blew the smoke into the street. He took another drag, exhaled. “Many things,” he said again, this time as if to himself, drawing the words out like honey scooped with a spoon. I guessed he was going to make me beg. He turned and looked at me for a long moment, his gaze uncomfortably piercing. I looked away.
The Best Women's Travel Writing Page 21