by Antani, Jay
I went out to the balcony. The air gritty and the breeze cool. On University Road, traffic droned and clattered. A bus roared past, a rusting obscenity, its horn honking like geese gone berserk. The tailpipe of a putt-putting rickshaw backfired. It pulled to the front of our gate, and the driver got out to inspect whatever had happened. Streetlights blinked on along the road and above the dusty shopping plaza. Bollywood pop music blared from speakers mounted on a truck plastered with Hindi movie posters, parked in the plaza lot directly below a streetlight. A man set up a canopy attached to the side of the truck and began piling music cassettes on a table. The evening crowds arrived.
“Here you go.” My father appeared on the balcony. He held out the check for $15 and the application to me. “Just let me know what you need, and we’ll take this one step at a time.” Then he stepped away, back through the door and to his Mahabharata program.
I stood there for a moment, grateful for this check. First thing in the morning, before college, I’d swing by the post office and send this on its merry way. I stayed out on the balcony, watching Navarangpura’s evening come to life. I stared at the check and noticed it was drawn on the University of Wisconsin Credit Union. I guess we hadn’t cut our ties to America completely.
* *
Back at college, I came across no sign of Priya. Each day, I kept expecting her to show up, to catch sight of her in Varma’s or Sridharan’s lectures or, if not there, then in the library. But she was gone and stayed gone.
I would see Manju and Hannah regularly—they were both in my French class—but something held me back from approaching either of them. I did notice that they stared at me coldly or made marked attempts to avoid me. I didn’t really care—Manju or Hannah didn’t matter much to me. I figured they knew what had happened between Priya and me, maybe Manju had seen us together that afternoon under the library. So I didn’t find their aloofness toward me surprising. What held me back was my fear that if I asked them about Priya, their sure-to-be snide replies would only confirm what I suspected—that she was never coming back.
One day, sitting in my customary spot in French class (a bench toward the back), I noticed Harish Rajkumar—old Ferret-face himself—saunter in with a slip of paper, dressed in the clerk’s garb of a short-sleeve shirt with a ballpoint pen tucked into the breast pocket. Madame Varma took the paper from him, set down her textbook, put on her half-glasses dangling from a chain. She inspected the note.
“Vikram Mistry,” she said, taking off her glasses. “Principal wanting to see you.”
What could the principal want with me? I braced myself, shoved my books back inside my bag, and went out, accompanied by Rajkumar.
We walked along the verandah, Rajkumar keeping a brisk pace. “You are Rahul bhai’s son, no?” He grinned at me, punishing me with the sight of his nubby brown teeth, his eyes becoming slits behind his enormous glasses. Whether his manner was malicious or ingratiating, I could not tell. Maybe both.
I told him I was and left it at that. Kept walking.
“How your father is doing?”
“Fine. Very busy.”
“Hmm … sure, sure.”
The air buzzed with the murmurs of students in the quad and the slap of Rajkumar’s heels against his sandals as he walked.
Rajkumar continued, “Rahul bhai was very studious, always like that. Are you like that also?” There was a petty, ironic tone to his question.
“No,” I said, “I’m the exact opposite.”
We arrived at the entrance to the foyer to the principal’s office. I walked on through when Rajkumar’s voice stopped me.-
“At Xavier’s, boys and girls must behave themselves,” he said. “Otherwise you are out.” He nodded, closing his eyes sagely, and continued back to the rat’s maze of the college office.
I didn’t bother pondering Rajkumar’s words. He wasn’t worth it. I knocked on the crackled-glass paneling on the door. A plate below the panel read, “FATHER D’SOUZA, PRINCIPAL.”
“Yes?” a muddy voice answered. I walked in.
“You wanted to see me?” I said. “Vikram Mistry, F.Y.B.A.?”
Seated at his desk, Father D’Souza looked exactly like the picture in the college office. His head was a firehouse plug with a pair of black spectacles and thick, silvery hair parted with military precision.
“Oh yes, oh yes.” He sounded as if his mouth were stuffed full of cotton. For a moment, D’Souza stared about the surface of his desk with an absentminded air before he folded his hands and assumed a stern, solemn expression. His bulldog cheeks hung gloomily on either side of his tight, downturned mouth.
Just as I sat down, D’Souza stood up. I debated in my mind whether to stand back up but decided to stay put and play it cool. Folding his hands behind his back, D’Souza turned his round-shouldered bulk around to the barred window that looked onto the trees and shrubbery fronting the college. The bleached-out afternoon light filled the window, angled sharply into the room, directly into my face.
“Mr. Mistry,” he said, “I’ve received complaints about you from a student. Saying your conduct here is not befitting the reputation of Xavier’s.”
“Complaint? Who complained—?”
“Name is not important, Mr. Mistry. What is important is that you understand that you are not in America now, you are in different culture, and you must respect the customs of our culture.” The syllables spilled from his mouth like marbles. “So when I hear that you and a certain female here are not conducting yourselves in a decent manner, I am forced to take action.”
“I am sorry,” was all I could muster.
D’Souza pivoted toward me. “Mr. Mistry, at Xavier’s”—he raised his downturned palms side by side—“we want to discourage boy-girl pairing.” The palms slid away from each other. “It is okay for boys and girls to mingle in groups, but when they pair up, it tends to interrupt the flow of college life and academic progress. I am not just saying this to reprimand you, Mr. Mistry. We have proof of this.” I wondered what proof. “This rule we enforce for the social and emotional health of Xavierites. It is also consistent with our Indian culture. You seem not to understand that.”
Just then Rajkumar strode in through a side door, from the college office.
“Just needing your stamp, sir,” he said obsequiously, laying a sheet of paper on the desk. He took a step back and waited, eyes lowered.
D’Souza grunted, reached for his inkpad and began thumping the document with the stamp. Then he picked up a fountain pen and signed in several places. As he did this, Rajkumar shot a quick glance at me, closed his eyes, and shook his head.
Rajkumar took the document from D’Souza and spun around with a “Thank you kindly, sir.” He threw me another look, and faintly so I could hear it, tsked a few times as he trotted out through the side door.
D’Souza sat back down, hatched his meaty fingers together, and trained his pig eyes at me. “So where does this leave us? Suspension. Probation. What choice do I have?”
Suspension, did he say? Probation? I sensed my life, my Wisconsin college application vanishing into the black depths. “Father D’Souza,” I began, my brain reeling, “I apologize for my conduct, and whatever distress my actions with another student may have caused a fellow Xavierite. My action was stupid, insensitive, thoughtless. I request humbly that you take into account this has been a jarring shift for me and to make an exception. You are right. This is not America. And for a brief moment, I lost sight of that. But I promise from here on in to keep the reputation of Xavier’s in mind and to be respectful …” I grasped for the words, felt I was losing steam, “… of our cultural … of our culture. I would be grateful if you would do that.” Did I just use the word “Xavierite”? I felt like a cheap, spineless whore, but it had to be done.
D’Souza studied his thumbs. “Your records show you are doing well thus far.” Then with a sigh, he looked at me. “If I find you are back in this office again, for any reason, you will find your standing in grave j
eopardy. The complaint lodged against you has put you on the dock. Is that understood, Mr. Mistry?”
“Absolutely, sir.”
“You may go.”
I got up, gripped my book bag in my hand. “Thank you, sir.”
I walked out, my shoulders hunched contritely, keeping my gaze on the ground. As I walked back to French class, catching my breath, I felt numb, like I’d escaped the firing squad.
* *
After my French lecture, I followed Manju across the quad. She swayed along in her lime-green salwaar kameez, chattering with Hannah, taller than Manju with her European skin and chestnut hair cut short. They talked closely, chuckled together. Before they entered the canteen, I called out, “Manju.”
She turned and the grin dropped from her face. I stepped up to her, faced her. “Did you go to the principal and say something about me?”
Manju’s eyes flared up for an instant, her mouth parted in shock. “I did not say anything to the principal.” But something about the way she averted her eyes only added to my suspicion.
“If you want to ruin other people’s lives, find someone other than me.”
She sneered. “And look who ruined Priya’s life? Her future was all set, she liked the boy she was going to marry, and you had to start toying with her.”
Hannah stood to the side, glowering at me, an implacable statue.
“I wasn’t toying with anyone,” I said, lowering my voice. “Priya’s her own person. She does what she wants with her own damn life. Or is that too crazy an idea?” I wanted to get away from the stares I was drawing from the canteen when the implications of Manju’s words struck me. The boy she was going to marry. “Wait,” I tried, “did Priya not get married?”
“Let’s go, Manju,” Hannah said, touching Manju’s elbow, but Manju swiped her arm away and glared at me.
“No, she did not. Her fiancé found out about her running around with other boys and called off the wedding.”
This was turning into one of those overblown Doordarshan soap operas my mother watched in the evenings. I was stunned. “Who told him?” I gave Manju an accusing glance.
“Priya did so herself,” she said brusquely. “She wanted to be honest with him.” She took a step toward me. “And if you don’t like our culture, why don’t you get out of here? We don’t want any of you Indians here thinking you’re so superior because you lived in America. Just get out of here.” She turned away and disappeared into the rabble of the canteen, talking heatedly with Hannah.
* *
I finished recording lecture notes into Pradeep’s tape recorder—Sridharan’s lecture that day concerned “the major characteristics and practitioners of pre-Raphaelite poetry.”
The lecture had been a grueling exercise in staying awake. But I managed, driven by my determination to take thorough notes for Pradeep. I hit “stop” and, seeing the tape was full, ejected it from the recorder.
“Thank you, Vikram bhai,” Pradeep said, taking the cassette from me. “Very helpful, yaar, very helpful.” He sat at the edge of his dorm-room cot, his shades covering his eyes, his ever-genial smile on his face. I said no problem, put my notebook back in my bag. After my run-in with Manju, I felt the urge to get the hell off campus.
“So you had fine time in Delhi?” Pradeep asked.
He had asked me that question before, and as before, I said I did and that I’d taken a lot of pictures.
“I spent my Christmas break performing in one function after another,” Pradeep said, rising from the cot. He took up his walking stick and followed after me as I started for the door.
“That’s really awesome, Pradeep. Your future’s taking off,” I said.
“But I’m so much busy nowadays,” he said.
I stopped and touched Pradeep’s shoulder. “Well, I guess I’ll leave you to it.”
“I’m so busy nowadays I really must take care not to get too lost in my engagements”—he shook the tape in his hand—“and study all these notes you and Devasia are providing.” I got the feeling Pradeep was trying to stall me. As I stood at the door, I saw him reach an arm out for me. I took the cue.
“What is it?” I stepped toward him.
“Vikram”—his voice became a half-whisper—“did something happen between you and Priya? I do not mean to intrude, you see, but I don’t like gossip. Especially concerning my own friends.”
I told him Priya and I had “gotten close,” left it at that, and said nothing about my chat with D’Souza.
Pradeep nodded thoughtfully. “I did not know she was planning on marriage, bhai,” he said.
“She wasn’t,” I said. “But her father was.”
“She is only eighteen, I think so. Why now?” He swung his stick around and made for the metal cabinet that stood on the wall opposite his cot.
“Not sure,” I said. “Either she really did fall for this guy, or her father put her up to it. Anyway, I guess she didn’t go through with it. Hence, all the gossip.”
“Achcha,” Pradeep muttered. Then, his head tilting slightly away from me, he beckoned me over to him with a swing of his stick. Pradeep leaned sideways toward me and asked confidentially, “You think she is … in love … with you?”
I laughed, shaking my head, stepping away, relieved Pradeep couldn’t see because he would’ve seen me flush, get fidgety and embarrassed. “Maybe … maybe she felt like we had something in common. I don’t know. I mean, I don’t think so.”
Pradeep turned the handle of the cabinet and jerked open the metal doors. He placed the cassette on a stack of them on a shelf at shoulder level. Then his hand switched over to a stack of brand-new cassettes, still in their wrappers, sitting beside the used ones. He grabbed the top one. “For months,” he said, “I felt something was not right. Priya sounded happy, but it was obvious she was not. I am surprised that her friends didn’t see it.”
“She didn’t talk much about it,” I said. “She always seemed so sure of herself.”
Pradeep considered my words for a second, smiled. “Then you were not listening.”
A knock sounded at the door, and Devasia appeared, his notebook and a pocket-sized Macmillan edition of The Way of the World in hand. He strode in, sharp-featured and shiny-haired in his kurta and slippers. “Happy New Year.” He smiled, shaking my hand. Pradeep held out to him the new cassette, telling Devasia to use it for his dictation, when I noticed what looked like a box upholstered in red velvet with a worn gold clasp sitting on the floor of the opened cabinet. A sturdy padlock hung from the clasp.
“What’s with the treasure chest?” I asked.
“Treasure chest?” Pradeep pondered my words and turned toward me. “Oh-ho! You mean—” he tapped the box with his stick and lowered his voice. “For winning that Diwali contest, I got trophy, of course, but on top of that, they gave me cash prize. Three thousand rupees.”
Devasia and I replied with cries of “fantastic” and “wonderful.”
Pradeep clanged shut the cabinet door. “But we must be, how do you say, discreet.” He tapped his nose with his index finger and held out his palm in a gesture for us to keep things under wraps.
Devasia asked why Pradeep didn’t just deposit the money. “There’s a Bank of Baroda here,” he waved his hand toward the college building where the Bank of Baroda did indeed have a tiny branch on the second floor.
“This is only temporary, yaar,” Pradeep assured us. He said his cousin would be visiting in the next couple of weeks, and he planned to hand the money over to him as soon as he arrived.
“Why your cousin?” I asked.
“He is living in Bombay, you see,” Pradeep explained, “and this coming summer, he’s planning to book one recording session for me in studio there. He knows few friends in music business, so I am hoping … we will see now.”
“Nothing to see,” Devasia said, beaming. “You will be most popular singer in India.”
“A Bollywood recording star right here,” I said.
Pradeep chuckled,
a bit shyly and incredulously. Devasia went over to the desk at the far end of the room to get started on the dictation. We waved goodbye as I walked for the door, and Pradeep followed close behind.
“Priya is a smart girl,” he said to me privately. “Independent. Whatever she has done, wherever she has gone, she is happy. I feel that.” I stepped out the door, into the veranda. “She was not happy here,” he added. “Even I could see that.” He laughed softly.
“I just wonder how she’s doing, that’s all.”
Pradeep lingered at the doorway. He tapped his stick a few times against the floor. “I think,” he said, “you will hear from her again.” And though his eyes were masked by his shades, I could tell there was a coy twinkle in them.
I told Pradeep congratulations on his success and hurried off campus.
19
My father bought an off-white Premier, an upgraded version of the classic Fiats that Hemant Uncle and Dharmanshu Uncle owned. He drove it home from a showroom in Paldi one Sunday afternoon. We went downstairs, stood around it, and I had to admit it looked stylish, like one of those boxy European sedans I’d seen in German or Italian movies.
“So what do you think?” he beamed. “You like it? Now we can drive to Baroda whenever we want and visit Hemant Uncle. I’ll teach you and your mother how to drive, and you can go wherever.”
The exterior shone like a trophy; the light-brown leather interior had that factory-direct smell; the dashboard, the gear-stick, everything glossy, untouched. “It’s really something,” I said. I thought of Ahmedabad’s traffic—a stock car rally, a zoo, and an open-air market all mashed together—and knew the Premier wouldn’t stay so squeaky clean for long.