Karma Gone Bad

by Jenny Feldon

  Contrary to its illustrious title, Bikram’s Yoga College of India was not actually located in India. And it wasn’t just Hyderabad; there wasn’t a single Bikram studio in the entire country. Bikram had founded his yoga school’s world headquarters in Los Angeles. If I wanted to rediscover my yogini roots, I’d need to find another lineage to follow. It had been the very top of my India bucket list: study yoga with ancient masters. But like so many items on that list, written in New York a million lifetimes ago, that dream had fallen to the wayside in the face of my new reality.

  The studio was the nicest Bikram space I’d ever seen. Quiet and serene, the woodwork was lush polished mahogany. The whole space smelled like tropical flowers. Gentle chimes played in the background. In class, I let the familiar dialogue wash over me. Even Bikram’s grammatical errors and linguistic impossibilities were music to my ears. My spine groaned in thanks as I worked deep into muscles I’d been sorely neglecting. The heat melted my limbs into blissful puddles of acquiescence. Even with sweat streaming down my body, my lungs gasping for air, I felt healed. Transcended. This is my religion, I thought during final savasana, deeply relaxed for the first time in months. This is home.

  “We need to move,” I told Jay at dinner. We were at Les Amis, a French restaurant on a quiet back street in the Orchard shopping district. Our darkened corner table was lit with a single tapered candle in a pewter holder, the perfect setting for an intimate night. I slathered cold, salted butter on a fresh baguette and moaned with ecstasy under my breath.

  “What do you mean? We’re not even halfway through yet. We can’t go back to New York now, Jen. You know that.”

  “No, not to New York. Here! To Singapore! Wouldn’t it be perfect?” Singapore was the answer to all of our problems. We’d still be expats, only the kind of expats I’d imagined all along—chic and cosmopolitan, with designer clothes and vacations in Bali and plenty of coffee. My writer’s block would disappear. Instead of sitting around the house, rotting away in my own misery, I’d finally be happy again. I could be the wife Jay wanted me to be, the one he deserved. Jay could do his outsourcing thing here, and I’d spend my days writing like crazy, doing Bikram yoga, and eating dumplings at Din Tae Fung. What could be better?

  “God, it’s good to have an actual wine list. What do you feel like drinking?” Jay asked, sliding his hand onto my thigh under the table. His hands were strong, with smooth tanned skin and calluses I loved to rub my fingertips over. I’d fallen in love with his hands long before I’d made up my mind about the rest of him.

  “Don’t you think it’s a great idea?” I persisted, taking his hand and rubbing my thumb across his knuckles. There was tenderness in his touch. I wanted to grab on to it and hold tight before he slipped away from me again.

  “It doesn’t work like that,” Jay began, just as the waiter arrived to recite the daily specials. Jay ordered wine and changed the subject. The moment was lost.

  ***

  When we got back to Hyderabad, everything was the same, except worse now that I had Singapore to compare it to. The unpaved roads felt aggressively bumpier. The airport, lacking air conditioning and carpet and a Coffee Bean, smelled mustier than ever. Even the mosquitoes buzzed louder and closer, welcoming me home with their subtle, ever-present threat of baseball-sized flesh wounds and malaria. The magical bubble of Singapore had popped, leaving all that was left covered in an oily film of disappointment. Vacation was over. Real life was here to stay.

  “Why don’t you do something fun tomorrow?” Jay suggested as I trudged upstairs, holding a traumatized-looking Tucker in one arm and my overnight bag in the other. The thought of unpacking my dresses, shoving them to the back of their cramped cubby to collect another six months’ worth of dust, was unbearable.

  “Fun?” I said, not bothering to turn around. “Yoga is fun. Going to the beach is fun. Eating out in fancy restaurants is fun. We left all that behind in Singapore, remember?”

  “I’m sure if you think hard enough, you’ll figure something out,” Jay answered, duplicating my cold sarcasm with pitch-perfect tone.

  Chapter 16

  Jay’s hours continued to get longer as he tackled Region 10’s ever-growing challenges. I was proud of him for taking on such a huge task and making it work, against the odds, with no beaten path to follow. You’re doing great, I wanted to say. I should have said it often and loud and with feeling, so he’d hear me and know how much I supported him, believed in what he was doing. But every time I opened my mouth to say the words, my misery took over and different words came out instead.

  The power was off all day again.

  You’re working too much. I’m lonely.

  I hate it here.

  I want to go home.

  I called my parents every couple of days, hating how pathetic I sounded but unable to stop myself from rattling off an ever-growing list of complaints.

  “Hang in there. It will get better,” my dad said, eternally optimistic. It was one of the things I loved most about him—and clearly something I’d failed to inherit from his DNA.

  “We’re coming to a visit in a few months. That should give you something to look forward to,” my mother reminded me. They continued to believe I’d somehow triumph, that I’d make the best of my journey no matter how often and how loudly I complained. I felt like I was letting both of them down. They’d raised me to be a fighter, but all I could think about was crawling into a corner and giving up for good.

  The walls closed in around me a little more every day. The house was a marble cage I was trapped inside, so many doors and windows but no way to escape. Some nights, when Jay stayed out late, finishing work at the office or grabbing beers with the team, I sat alone in the dark on the cool marble floor and waited. There was a tennis ball in his nightstand drawer, left over from the days when we used to play together, and I threw it in listless arcs against the bedroom wall, letting it bounce and echo in the darkness again and again and again.

  Everyone but me was consumed with work. Diana spent even more time at the office than Jay did, leaving only to shower and sleep before she returned again, drinking lukewarm Indian Diet Coke by the case. Kyle had gone to China on a business trip, leaving me behind as the only non-BKC employee in our eclectic circle.

  Peter’s rotation in Hyderabad was over. We’d had one last celebratory dinner at Ginger Court, with Jena scurrying around preparing “bon voyage” drinks and fussing over every detail of their final Indian meal. We’d driven him and Alexis to the airport, helped them load their bags onto the conveyor belt, and exchanged one last round of hugs and handshakes and see-you-soons, even though we wouldn’t. Then Alexis and Peter had walked away through the crowds, ready to return to their lives in Philadelphia, leaving me more friendless and alone than I’d ever felt in my life.

  ***

  Electricity on. Wireless working. Such a moment was so rare and so sacred that, at first, I spun in helpless circles, trying to decide what to do first. I wiped a layer of orange dust off my laptop and fired it up, elated to find the Internet operating without a hitch. I opened browser windows and closed them, lifted the VOIP phone off the receiver and listened to the glorious sound of a dial tone. I reunited with the Internet like a long-lost lover, gorging myself on digital media. I scoured online newspapers and gossip magazines, shopped for clothes I couldn’t wear on websites that wouldn’t ship to India. I caught up on my favorite blogs and even wrote a new post of my own, uploading pictures from the Singapore trip and indulging in a whiny rant about how much better things were there. Then I opened up Google and typed in “Hyderabad hair salon.”

  The Singapore trip, brief as it was, had inspired me to start taking better care of myself. Just one yoga class had me sleeping better, moving more freely in my own skin. Staring at my haggard reflection in the broken mirror day after day made me slip deeper into the endless circle of my unhappiness. I looked the way I felt. I felt
the way I looked. But in Singapore, I’d felt pretty. And it wasn’t just the wine or the clothes or the makeup I’d finally mustered the energy to apply. It was my emotional landscape, radiating outward. Jay had looked at me differently in Singapore. Less like a liability, an endless source of complaints and tears he needed to endure. More like someone he wanted to be around. I wanted him to look at me that way again. Because most days, he didn’t look at me at all.

  One afternoon, reading Gone with the Wind and twirling a strand of hair around my index finger, I noticed something terrible: split ends.

  When I’d told Nikki, my NYC stylist, that I was moving to India, she’d looked completely aghast.

  “What about your hair?” she cried.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, confused.

  Forget malaria, cholera, monsoons…according to Nikki, India was going to be more hazardous to my hair than any other part of me. I left the salon with a list of strict instructions: no washing with tap water (contaminated), no drying with a blow dryer (high-voltage electricity), no sun (would wreck highlights), and no swimming (hyper-chlorinated water). And under no circumstances was I to cut or color my hair any farther east than York Avenue. If only she’d known how very true all of her dire predictions would become.

  The split ends were the least of it. My hair was dry, brittle, and continued to suicide-leap off my head in tangled clumps. My gold highlights were slowly creeping toward my ears, but I knew better than to mess with those. I saw a blond woman at the Taj hotel salon once, blissfully unaware, sitting beneath a purple heat lamp while two dozen foils baked her hair a minty shade of green. The terrible roots would have to stay.

  After some rigorous Google searching, I booked an appointment at Manea, the new L’Oreal salon on Banjara Road. Diana had already been and swore it was great. Her blond locks had been as carefully cultivated in LA as mine were in New York. Surely she wouldn’t steer me wrong with something so important. Just to be on the safe side, I booked the appointment on a Tuesday. Tuesday was an inauspicious hair-cutting day in India. Very bad luck.

  When we arrived at the salon, even Venkat—hardly one to stand on form—seemed reluctant to let me out of the car once he figured out what I was up to. But I figured the Tuesday thing guaranteed me the whole place to myself, so there wouldn’t be any extra people staring. Besides, where I came from, there was no such thing as an unlucky day to cut your hair.

  After a blissful Indian head massage and a hydrating scalp treatment, I settled into a revolving salon chair. This was turning out to be quite relaxing. Everyone in the salon was easygoing and professional, treating me like a valued client, not some white-skinned freak from another planet. The head massage had left me sleepy and agreeable, like I’d just finished a delicious meal. I stretched, catlike, in my chair. I could get used to this.

  “Will you be wanting a whole new style, Madam?” asked Akbar, my L’Oreal International Certified Stylist, as he twisted his fingers through my hair, pulling it this way and that as he examined each strand.

  “No, thanks. I just need a trim.”

  Akbar frowned at me in the mirror.

  “The style you have is quite unflattering, Madam. I need to be recommending something more suiting.”

  “No, really. Thanks, though. I like it the way it is. Just a tiny trim, please.”

  Akbar nodded, scissors in hand. He lifted my long brown hair up high above my head. With a single flash of silver, he made his first cut.

  Half my hair hit the floor.

  I lost it.

  Oblivious, Akbar snipped again, and again.

  “It is proper Indian hair, Madam. Very becoming, highly in fashion,” a distraught Akbar cried, wringing his hands at my distress when the haircut was finally finished. My reaction clearly astounded him. Between fits of hysteria, I felt guilty for causing so much drama.

  “It’s fine. Really. It’s not your fault,” I squeaked between gasps, tossing a handful of rupees on the counter and fleeing down the stairs so he wouldn’t witness another single second of my sorrow. I’d just paid triple for a haircut I hated beyond words. I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was somehow my fault, that my misery had culminated in an epic disaster of hair karma.

  When I got to the car, I was crying so hard that Venkat thought I was ill.

  “Hospital, Madam?” he asked. I stared at my reflection in the tinted glass until a fresh wave of sobs forced me to turn away. I looked terrible. Beyond terrible.

  India had taken the last of me, stripped the final vestiges of the girl I’d been when I left New York. I wasn’t a writer or a jet-setter or even a halfway decent Indian housewife. The transformation was complete. My image in the broken mirror was who I’d become.

  “It’s not so bad,” Kyle said at dinner that night, forcing me to take the scarf off my head so he could examine the damage. He’d just flown in from Shanghai, jet-lagged and full of stories of why everything there was better than here. “I think it makes you look like Grace Kelly.” I just scowled, fighting back tears. I’d written a tearful, self-pitying blog post describing the hair salon drama, but instead of making me feel better, like writing used to do, I felt worse than ever. I looked at Jay, hoping he’d tell me I looked beautiful anyway or, at the very least, acknowledge my distress. But Jay, absorbed in a conference call with New York, said nothing at all.

  We were eating at Laguna, the top-floor restaurant in a newly opened, three-story shopping complex in Jubilee Hills. The menu featured veg and non-veg “Mediterranean delicacies,” which mostly included flatbread pizza and a variety of deep-fried appetizers. Still, the change of scenery was nice. I missed Jena’s comforting, hovering presence, but I was as sick to death of Indian food as I was of India itself.

  The best part about Laguna was watching people fall into the moats. Narrow, concrete trenches snaked across the restaurant’s floor. Each trench was filled with a foot of dingy water, perhaps lending to the Asian minimalist aesthetic the management seemed to be aiming for. The moats wound through the restaurant in lazy patterns, dividing sections and cutting between tables. Laguna, like all the hip new eateries in Hyderabad, was so dimly lit it was almost pitch black. So it wasn’t surprising that every third person being led to their table by a hostess in a chic black pantsuit walked right into a moat, soaking themselves to the knees.

  Diana, early as usual, had been the one to warn us about the watery death traps. She’d sent the rest of us anxious SMS messages: Look down when you’re walking to the table. Very dark and water pits everywhere.

  “Someone could break an ankle or something,” she worried aloud when we arrived, taking small anxious sips of her Diet Coke. Around her neck was an intricate gemstone necklace, rubies glinting in the dim light. Diana dealt with stress by shopping too. Her jewelry collection grew every time BKC gave her another impossible deadline. By the time our two-year assignments were up, she was going to need her own vault. “I can’t believe they aren’t warning people. This is a lawsuit waiting to happen.”

  I sipped my Sula chardonnay and watched people fall into the moat. It was a mean-spirited, schadenfreudic way to be entertained. But each unsuspecting splash and its accompanying outraged cry put a small, dark smile on my face.

  Kyle, equally amused, caught my eye and smiled. Jay and Diana launched into yet another discussion of Region 10 drama. They gestured wildly and talked over each other, rehashing the events of yet another disaster Kyle and I knew nothing about. Kyle sent me a text under the table.

  Do you think they’ll ever stop?

  No, I typed back. Save me.

  Just keep drinking. At least we’re somewhere that provides entertainment.

  As I read the message, there was another giant splash, followed by a torrent of furious Hindi swears. Kyle and I laughed. He reached over and tapped my wineglass with his bottle of Kingfisher.

  “Ah, ’Bad,” he said, chasing a cur
ried jalapeno popper with another swig of beer. “Just think of the stories we’ll tell if we ever get out of here. I really do think you look like Grace Kelly, by the way.”

  I smiled wearily and looked away.

  ***

  “Ma’am. Please. Ma’am. Please. Please. Ma’am.”

  The old woman—clutching a tree branch, wrapped in rags—pulled on my sleeve, chanting for attention. She pointed to her toothless mouth and then her stomach, wringing ravaged fingers. “Ma’am. Please.”

  It was impossible to help all of them—I’d learned that the hard way. Beggars swarmed the car at stoplights and clawed at my clothes outside shops and restaurants. They camped outside our development at night. The sacks of coins I took with me into the city were never enough. For the polio-ravaged children. For the burned women, victims of “cooking accidents” after their lack of a dowry rendered them useless and unwanted. For the injured, limbless men too broken to get work. No matter how badly I wanted to, I couldn’t help them all.

  The bazaar was crowded. I scanned the streets, waiting for Venkat and the Scorpio to appear. The woman drew closer. I stepped away, trying politely to avoid the old woman’s desperation.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She moved closer still, blocking my view. I recoiled instinctively, wanting her out of my personal space. Wanting to disappear rather than face her naked, wretched need.

  The action made her angry. She lashed out with an elbow, spilling my bag of groceries to the ground. As I knelt to pick them up, a single rupee coin rolled from my pocket and came to rest between us. She grinned, pounced—and then there were others.

  Two other women, a man, several children, all drawn in by the glint of precious metal in the dirt. They circled around me, pulling at my clothes, backing me toward the street on my knees. Traffic whizzed past, so close I could feel rushes of air at my neck, and I scrambled to my feet, trying to run before I was fully standing, trying to shout for help above the clamor of the beggars’ voices. “PLEASE MA’AM. PLEASE MA’AM.”