Looking For Bapu

by Anjali Banerjee

  Izzy shoves the gate and it squeaks open. We enter a weird world of headstones and towering firs, maples and pines. I've never seen such huge trees anywhere, not even in the woods behind our house. The air smells of autumn leaves. A cracked road curves around the grounds and back to the gate. Robins and sparrows twitter in the trees.

  Izzy and I traipse across pine needles and huge pinecones. “Anderson, James,” Izzy says, reading a shiny red granite headstone. “1841 to 1909. Anderson, Henry, 1889 to 1931. Anderson, Laverne, 1898 to 1953. It's an Anderson family plot.” A red-leafed bush grows from Laverne's grave. I wonder if she's inside the bush, the way the gods are in everything. Different plants grow from different graves— boxwood, Oregon grape. Bapu loved birds and plants, and he taught me the names, but I don't let on that I know. Kids at school would call me Garden Boy. Or worse, Garden Anus.

  We pass many graves with different-size headstones, some so old the names and dates are worn off. Other graves have only mossy stone edging around a plot and maybe a plastic plant nearby. I feel sorry for those dead people who got plastic plants. Nobody knows who they are. I want everyone to know who my Bapu is, that he's special, that my family can't live without him.

  Two graves have only white crosses. “Military,” Izzy says. Some just have a stick with a typed sign. American flags flap over others.

  Izzy strides to the west corner and points at a headstone. It looks new. “My daddy.” She kneels. “My mom takes care of the grave.” She runs her fingers along the carved name: IAN MUMU.

  “Mumu was your dad's real last name?” I ask. Hard to believe he died when Izzy was a baby.

  “Mom and Dad wanted to give me a first name like his, starting with I. So they named me Isadora, Izzy for short.” She straightens up. “I love you, Daddy.” She blows him a kiss. I touch the cool headstone. I can't feel Bapu here. He's not whispering in the air, not touching my shoulder.

  No matter where we go in the graveyard, there's no sign of him. No Siddharthas, no Gangulis. No Krishnaswamis or Indras or Vishnus or Shivas or Lakshmis or Anus. Not a single Indian name. Like when we pass the FLOWERS-4-YOU sign that reads, “If your name is Mary, come in for a free rose.” I know the sign will never read “Priti,” my mom's name, or “Rijoy,” my dad's, or “Bapu” or “Siddhartha” or “Anu.”

  The world turns blurry again, and a cold, scared feeling comes into me. The picture of Bapu isn't helping. The Web site was wrong. All the way home, I hold the photo in my pocket.

  apu was just here in his room, in the scent of his pipe smoke. He stepped out for a minute. He'll walk back in and tell us all to leave so he can pray. He likes to pray in private.

  The Shiva shrine waits in the corner. The Great God of Destruction holds one arm up and one down in blessing and protection, while the other two arms hold a drum and a single flame from a sacred fire. How could I have found him scary? He grew big in my mind, but he's only a small statue. What scares me now is what I can't see.

  Ma packs Bapu's pajamas, shirts, kurtas, chappals, boots and pants into boxes. Bapu can't take care of his things now. Ma can give them to Goodwill or Auntie Biku when she comes, and his belongings are helpless.

  I open the window and let in the air from the woods. My scalp tingles in the breeze. I feel Bapu's fingers brush my hair.

  Ma works steadily, folding clothes, a determined look on her face. I sit cross-legged in front of Shiva and press the palms of my hands together in prayer, the way I saw Bapu do a million times. What does the prayer pose do? Can the gods see my hands, like a lighthouse from the sea? Can they stop Bapu from leaving?

  Ma stops folding behind me. I feel her watching me. She never prays. Bapu's singing always jolted her awake too early. But just before dawn, when the sky is still new, Bapu said, the gods come closest. You can almost touch them.

  I speak to Bapu in my mind, and Ma keeps folding. She's decided not to talk to me now. I know she's figuring out what to say.

  “Anu, Auntie Biku will be here soon,” she says finally. “She'll sleep in this room.”

  My legs go numb. “But this is Bapu's room.”

  Ma pauses. “She's his very dear sister. Bapu would want her to sleep here.”

  I slump onto the bed. I'm sorry, Bapu. Sorry I couldn't stop them from cremating you. Sorry you can't keep your room. Where are you now? Floating up near the ozone layer?

  When Dad gets home, I hear him fixing a snack, and then he helps Ma yank the sheets off the bed.

  “Will you give the statue to Biku?” Ma asks Dad.

  “Can you leave Shiva here?” I ask. “Bapu prayed to Shiva. He taught me all about the gods. They're everywhere.”

  Ma and Dad trade glances, and then Dad sits next to me on the newly made bed. He puts an arm around my shoulders. He smells of spicy aftershave, not like Bapu. “Anu, you can decide to be anything you want—Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, atheist. We've taught you about all religions so that, eventually, you can make up your own mind. Maybe you don't understand what I'm telling you now. Whatever you choose to believe, it's six of one and half a dozen of the other.”

  There he goes with the numbers again. “Didn't you ever pray to Shiva?” I ask.

  Dad shakes his head. “I left for boarding school when I was very little. I never prayed with your Bapu. He was stuck in the old days. Old days and old ways.”

  “The gods never get old!”

  “I'm just telling you to think for yourself,” Dad says.

  “I am thinking for myself. I always think for myself. You want to forget Bapu. That's all. You don't want him anymore. You're giving away everything. You burned him. He won't even know where to sleep, or where he lived, or anything!”

  “That's not true,” Dad says, his voice breaking. “Bapu is always with us, but not in his clothes and his statue. He's in our memories.”

  I swallow, my throat dry. My chest aches, as if someone dropped a Massive Stroke on it. Is Bapu hiding in my memory? I remember him and remember him, but our moments together are fading. I don't want to forget.

  Ma and Dad carry Bapu's things into the garage.

  I stay awake late, wait forever for Ma and Dad to go to bed. Then I tiptoe to the hallway. The kitchen clock ticks and the refrigerator buzzes. The light's off in my parents' room, and Dad's soft snores drift from under the door. I tiptoe through the house. The floor groans underfoot. I stop and wait, my heart thudding. Then I keep going. The garage door squeaks. I take about a year to open it, then another year to shut it behind me.

  I gulp, turn on the light and search through the boxes. The Shiva statue hides at the very bottom of one, wrapped in a kurta. I steal Shiva and then stuff all the clothes back into the boxes. A sleeve sticks out here and there. I'm not good at being neat.

  I tiptoe back to my room and keep Shiva next to me under the covers. Outside, the rain falls in sheets, tap-tap ping on the roof and gutters. The rain has been falling so steadily for days, without a breath in between, that you start to believe there was never a sunny day, that there will never be another.

  apu visits my dreams.

  He shows up on our doorstep with a suitcase, as if he's arriving from India instead of from the heavens. Relief floods through me. My happiness spills out. He didn't die. He wasn't burned. Here he is, the way he was, except he looks strange wearing a white dhoti punjabi, the long shirt and baggy Bengali pants. Somewhere between earth and the gods, he got rid of the poncho.

  “You're here for good! I knew it!” I shout, glancing in triumph at the suitcase, but Bapu shakes his head. He shimmers like a mirage as he steps into the house. He hands me a yellow daisy. “From your garden. Spring is coming—”

  “But it's fall!”

  “Spring will come eventually. I can't stay long. I've only come to tell you—”

  “What do you mean, you can't stay long? Why not?” My lungs squeeze and squeeze.

  “I can't keep dropping in. You've got other dreams waiting. Your friends Unger and Izzy. Birds and baseball and all that.” />
  “No, Bapu. I want to be with you.”

  “I'm not long for this place. You know that, Shona.”

  My happiness hardens into stone in my chest. “What do I do, Bapu? Auntie Biku's coming. Dad and Ma packed your things—but I kept Shiva! I hid him in my top drawer.”

  Bapu frowns. “Not a good place for a most powerful god, is it? Swimming around in your undershirts?”

  “I have to hide him, or Ma and Dad will send him to Goodwill, or Auntie might take him to India. I'm afraid they're going to throw your ashes away and forget all about you—I'm scared.” There, I've said it. The stone inside me is … fear. So many terrible pictures pushing up from blackness—Bapu and me in the woods, the sky so quiet, too quiet. Bapu falling, people falling, buildings falling, and ashes and explosions shoving at the edge of my mind. I clutch the crumpled daisy in my palm.

  Bapu opens the suitcase and pulls out a golden book. Elephants dance across the cover, blocking out my dark thoughts.

  “Whoa—what's that?” My jaw drops open. I've never seen moving pictures on a book. Then I remember that I'm dreaming. Anything can happen in dreams. I want to stay in this dream with Bapu forever.

  “You're running out of stories, Shona,” he says. “So I've brought one to help you.” He opens the book and the pictures come to life in brilliant colors. An Indian marketplace, merchants selling silk and silver and vegetables and fruit. Women, men, children, dogs and cows rush through the scene and disappear. Shouts and laughter, the squeaks and clatter of carts and rickshaws fill my ears. I smell burning cow dung and incense.

  “There—the story is about this man.” Bapu points to a thin man wearing a dhoti and carrying a cane. “He believed God was in everything, and he did not question it, and then—” Bapu turns the page. A great rumbling rattles my teeth, and an elephant crashes onto the page. “He saw a rogue elephant pulling a cart, stampeding through the marketplace. The driver of the cart kept yelling, ‘Get out of the way!' but the man did not listen. Since God is in everything, he believed the elephant could not hurt him. But the elephant crashed into him and threw him into the gutter, where he landed bruised and battered.”

  I'm watching the events unfold as Bapu turns the pages.

  “A holy man came to him and said, ‘Why did you not get out of the way?'

  “The man explained—if God is in everything, how could God allow the elephant to hurt him? He was disappointed and disillusioned.

  “Then the holy man said, ‘Don't you know? If God is in everything, he is also in the driver who told you to get out of the way.'”

  Bapu closes the book.

  “What does it mean, Bapu?” But I think I know. He told me this story before.

  Bapu winks at me, and then he's gone and I'm lying in bed in the rising light of morning. The dream—Bapu, the book, his voice—fades so quickly, and my real world rushes in from all sides. I press my eyes shut and try to bring Bapu back. Please, please. I try to fall asleep again, but the birds twitter outside in the soft rain. The darkness, the colors and sounds of my dream, are slowly disappearing. I'm clutching the dream daisy in my fist, but when I open my fingers, my hand is empty.

  e're going to the Indian bakery in Bellevue. Dad is driving again, while Ma reads all the way to the ferry. I stare out at the American flags sprouting everywhere—on store windows, lawns and cars. I wait for Bapu, but he doesn't drop in, not even when the ferry crosses churning black-blue waters.

  In the bakery, I blend into a sea of dark heads. I can't help staring. Everyone in here has brown skin. Some men have turbans and beards. It's as if all the Indians in the world gathered here for sweet gulab jamin, jelabis and barfi, an Indian dessert sometimes covered with a thin layer of silver. You actually eat the silver, and your insides become richer.

  Half the bakery is a video store featuring Hindi films I've never heard of. The actors and actresses are all Indian, usually with fierce or romantic expressions on their faces.

  The other half of the store is a long glass case filled with cakes and sweets. There's a lot of waving and shouting going on, mostly in languages I don't understand. Dad stands at the case, hands shoved into his pockets. Ma went next door to the Indian grocery, although I don't know what she plans to buy, since Bapu did all the Indian cooking. Ma never has time.

  “What do you want, Anu?” Dad asks.

  “Payesh.”

  An Indian girl behind the counter comes up and asks, “Can I help you?” in an American voice. She's wearing jeans and a kurta. She's chewing gum. She's a few years older than me. Where did she come from? Are there more Indian kids in Bellevue? Why do they hang out here instead of where I live, on the other side of the water?

  “Do you have payesh?” Dad asks.

  She shakes her head. “You could check over at Taj Mahal restaurant, about four blocks down.”

  I'm staring at the multicolored cakes in the glass case, and my mouth waters.

  “Do you want to go there, Anu?” Dad asks.

  “I want some of these.” I press my fingers to the glass.

  “Okay, you choose which ones.”

  The girl brings a big empty box that we will fill with desserts! I grin at Dad, and he grins at me. I haven't seen him smile in a long time. His shoulders relax and his face lights up and looks totally different.

  Then, in Hindi, he asks the girl something. I recognize the sharp edges of the words, but I can't understand. She nods and replies in Hindi. When we go outside, Ma is standing there holding a huge bag of groceries. Her eyes shine with excitement. “I didn't realize they had the high-quality basmati rice. And I found good saffron!”

  We drive to a park by the lake and eat our sweets while watching white ducks waddle near the shore, pecking for scraps of bread. We eat and eat, and Ma and Dad don't tell me to stop, until I'm full and giddy with sugar. I nearly forget that Bapu hasn't dropped in, that his ashes wait in the urn at home, that Auntie Biku is coming all the way from India to scatter them to the sacred wind.

  t the airport, Dad and I wait in line at the security area. The officers are talking to a man in a turban, a Sikh. “I bet they think he's Osama Bin Laden,” I whisper to Dad. “The medic thought Bapu was Osama too. He didn't even wear a turban! Can we help that man?”

  Dad's jaw tightens. “There's nothing we can do.”

  The security people lead the Sikh away, around the corner. He walks upright and proud, carrying a suitcase.

  I keep kicking the floor. Nothing we can do, nothing we can do. I want to do something. Anything.

  “Where did they take him?” I ask Dad. I already know what they're doing. They're interrogating him. I learned the word in class—it means grilling somebody with questions.

  “They don't understand Sikhs, Anu. They're afraid, and they're ignorant. One must never underestimate the power of fear.”

  I notice people glancing our way. The fear slithers all around me. We're at the end of the line. The blue-haired woman in front of us turns and wrinkles her nose. Maybe I stink, but I didn't fart. Or maybe she's like Curtis at school; she thinks we're terrorists here to blow up the airport.

  Then the Sikh man comes out and stands right behind us in line.

  “They give you a hard time?” Dad asks.

  “Nothing I haven't experienced before,” the man says with a funny British accent. He shakes hands with Dad. “Parvinder Singh.” Hair grows from interesting places on his face—on his cheekbones, from his nose. His eyebrows have grown together into a single bushy line.

  “Rijoy Ganguli,” Dad says. “This is my son, Anu.”

  Mr. Singh nods at me. “You off to India?”

  “My aunt's coming,” Dad says. “My father recently died.”

  “I am sorry,” Mr. Singh says. “I'm off to India. My mother is ill. Otherwise I would not travel so soon after—”

  “Of course. Neither would we,” Dad says.

  My legs go numb. My father. Recently died. My stomach dips with a sick, sinking feeling. The words are fin
al, as if Dad is closing the door on Bapu.

  Mr. Singh and Dad stare ahead. I can't stand waiting in line. I walk back and forth, slide from side to side.

  “Anu, calm down.” Dad puts a hand on my arm.

  I'll never be still. I think of what Bapu said in the woods. I must learn to be silent, to listen the way the holy men do.

  “Eager to meet your aunt, eh?” Mr. Singh asks, winking at me. “I have a son a few years older than you.”

  “Does he wear a turban too?” I ask.

  “Of course.”

  “Do some kids—”

  “Mistake him for a Muslim?” He pauses, pulls on his beard. I know his hair has grown long under the turban. I bet he ties his hair up in a bun to keep it from falling everywhere. “Of course. One kept calling him Mohammed, Mohammed, but rather than shout back, my son explained his religion, the ideals of oneness with God, the message of equality and peace for all.”

  “What did they say?” I can barely breathe.

  Dad's frowning.

  “They understood,” Mr. Singh says. “They told him it was a pity most people did not understand the fine message of his religion.”

  “Pity he was forced to explain,” Dad says.

  I wonder if Mr. Singh is telling the truth. I can't imagine a bully understanding any “fine message.” Could I explain anything to Curtis? How much information can he fit in his worm-brain?

  The wrinkle-nosed woman turns again. “You're brave to wear your turban, young man. With all the anxiety!”

  Young man? Mr. Singh must be at least forty. “I've been honored to wear this turban for many years,” he says, holding his head high. “Throughout history people have fought and died for the right to wear it. I will not take it off now.”

  The woman purses her lips. “Well, you're very brave.” She turns ahead again, and the line begins to move, finally. I glance sidelong at Dad. He looks Indian, but he whistles “American Pie” in the shower and reads the Seattle newspaper in the morning. My dad is not what anyone calls him. My dad is just my dad. Is it brave to be what you are, I wonder? Brave to just be yourself ?