by Jenny Feldon
And if someone happened to discover me sitting in Coffee Day one day, practicing my newly acquired but highly advanced Hindi skills, and begged me to take a small role in, say, Dhoom 3? Well, that would just be icing on the cake.
***
Sundar, accompanied only by Devika today, was sopping up lentil juice from a pressure cooker incident. The electricity had gone off, then surged, while he was preparing his “much secret recipe” black dal. The results were all over the kitchen ceiling. Sundar swore up and down that a pressure cooker was the “only way to achieve perfect food preparing, Indian and all other kinds,” but today’s fiasco was only strengthening my resolve to toss the cursed appliance in Lake Hussain Sagar at the earliest opportunity. Tomorrow, I was going to use some of my precious frozen turkey and teach him to make chili the old-fashioned way: On the stove. In a plain old pot.
Tucker, who had been asleep in his dog bed far away from the chaos in the kitchen, leapt to his feet and started barking and wagging his tail like crazy. Jay walked in and dumped his briefcase by the door. He grabbed a fresh paratha from a stack Sundar was arranging near the stove. “Mm. Onion. My favorite.”
Simrahn and I were sitting at the table. She was glaring at me. I’d been tracing Hindi characters in a Mickey Mouse workbook for over an hour. I’d yet to get a single one right. I didn’t appreciate Mickey, such a beloved, American character, taunting me from the cover of the book. Wasn’t he supposed to be on my side? Didn’t Indians have their own anthropomorphized mascot to endear their language to newcomers? A Hindi version of See Spot Run? A buffalo would be good. A garland-wearing buffalo, pointing to the hieroglyphic characters of the Hindi alphabet with a dainty hoof. See Buffalo Sleep in Road.
“Hi! You’re home!” I jumped up to greet Jay. Tucker was thrilled to see him too. He barked with joy and wove circles around Jay’s ankles.
“Decided to cut out early. I had an errand to run.” He kissed me. “How’s the Hindi coming?”
Simrahn rolled her eyes.
“It’s coming. It’s just that everything is so…backward,” I said, shooting Simrahn a look. “Simrahn keeps telling me I’m saying everything the wrong way. But why would it be ‘sleeping you are’ instead of ‘are you sleeping’ and ‘name what yours is’ instead of ‘what is your name’? I feel like I’m learning to speak Yoda, not Hindi.”
Simrahn patted my empty seat and pushed my pencil across the table. “Madam, please. We are having thirty minutes more. Let’s finish writing ‘ka,’ at least.” She drew yet another capital T with an ampersand through it. “Try again, please.”
Jay smirked at me and shoved more paratha in his mouth.
“I’m going to the gym before dinner, OK? Looks like you’re not quite done here anyway.” After months of claiming he was too busy at work to make time for the gym, Jay was finally getting back into his fitness routine. In New York, he’d spent every weekday morning working out at Equinox. The exercise was lightening his mood, making him smile more—lately he’d been more affectionate and playful than he’d been in forever. I knew going back to yoga would yield similar results for me, but I still hadn’t managed to find a class.
“Don’t leave me here. I need moral support.”
“You’re doing great.”
I pouted.
“Seriously. I’m proud of you.” He kissed my forehead. “Love you. See you later.”
“I love you too.”
Simrahn coughed.
“Um. I mean…tumse pyaar kartaa hoon.”
“Tumse pyaar kartEE hoon,” Simrahn corrected gently.
“Right. That.”
Jay was smiling as he walked out the door.
“You are very fortunate,” Simrahn said when he was gone. “My husband, he is not so nice. My children and I, sometimes we are afraid. I am Muslim and he is not, so my family has cast me out. It is only he and I now.” She wrung her hands in her lap, toying with the ends of the long dupatta shawl she wore over a pale green salwar suit.
“Your family cast you out? That’s awful. Have you tried talking to them?”
“I have disgraced them. It is as if I did not exist. I miss them very much, my mother mostly, and my baby brothers and sisters. I am the oldest. I used to care for them. But if I went back, they would merely cast me out again. Such shame has no forgiveness.” Simrahn shook her head, like she was trying to force the sentiment back down where it came from. “One more row, and then our lesson is concluded.”
I focused on the letter I was tracing, pressing my pencil hard into the paper. When I finished the row, I held the paper up for her approval. She nodded and gathered her things. At the door, I paid her for the lesson and watched, silent, as she slipped worn leather shoes back on her feet and wound a dupatta around her head. In Hindi or English, I just didn’t have the right words to say.
Chapter 21
Sundar’s daughter Anusha sat cross-legged on the kitchen floor in jeans and a kurti, doing her homework. She flipped her textbook’s pages aimlessly, scribbling out math problems in a worn black-and-white composition notebook. Every so often, she’d crane her neck to peek at the television screen. The electricity had made a late afternoon cameo. I was watching Sangam, with Raj Kapoor, for the third time. It was old-fashioned and Technicolor and epic. I liked vintage Bollywood almost as much as I liked the motorcycle races and flashy dance numbers of modern Indian cinema.
“Anusha,” Sundar barked, waving his spatula. She slumped forward over her book with a hassled sigh. I shot her a sympathetic look. She smiled back.
“This is being the reason good Indian girls will be wearing blue jeans,” Sundar muttered into the bowl of mashed potatoes he was fighting with. He knew cooking Western foods would increase his marketability with the expat crowd once Jay and I were gone, but taking instructions from a semi-clueless American (me) and a book called How to Cook Everything seemed to be damaging his pride.
“What, Sangam? This movie is, like, a hundred years old,” I said.
“Bollywood is not real India,” Sundar sniffed. He licked a blob of potato off his index finger and grimaced. “Just like this recipe is no real use for aloo.”
“Mashed potatoes are delicious,” I countered. “They’re comfort food. My mom makes them all the time.”
“No comfort for me. No spice. Much too plain.” Sundar’s hand hovered near the shaker of garam masala. “Maybe if we are adding just a portion of spice…”
“No way,” I said firmly. “Add more butter if it needs something.”
Sundar sighed his long-suffering, why must I take orders from this crazy American woman sigh. “If you are wanting to learn true Indian culture, you should stop watching so much this garbage,” he said stubbornly.
“Well, where should I go, then?”
“Charminar,” Sundar said firmly. “There you will find the true spirit of old Hyderabad. Just wrap your head and keep firm hand on your possessions.” He pounded an emphatic fist directly into the bowl of potatoes. “And while are you visiting, bring me home please some saffron. The best spices in the world are in the bazaar at Charminar. This American mashed aloo is needing of more help than Sundar can give.”
***
I called my mom on the way to the bazaar.
“Sounds great. I can’t wait to get there and do some exploring with you. A spice market sounds like my kind of place. Think you can bring me back some saffron? It’s so expensive here.”
“Sundar asked for some too. I’ll see what I can find.”
“I like that cook already. Can he teach me how to make biryani?”
“I’m sure he’d be delighted. I’m not turning out to be the world’s greatest student of Indian cuisine. He’ll be much happier with you as long as you let him use all the spice he wants.” I made a face. I could hear my mother laughing as I hung up the phone.
The Charminar itself was an enorm
ous marble and granite monument, with four ornately carved minarets reaching twenty feet into the sky. The Laad Bazaar just outside was so crowded that Venkat couldn’t get the Scorpio through the masses of people. He agreed, not happily, to let me out so I could walk.
“Meeting here one hour, Madam. No more. Muslim peoples no good people. You remember.”
I sighed. Venkat’s hatred of Muslims ran deeper than I could penetrate with my preachy talks about equality, most of which I was certain he was merely pretending not to understand. In the West, the Muslim-related conflicts we heard about usually had to do with Israel and the Middle East. Being Jewish in a Muslim city made me nervous at first; I wasn’t sure if our heritage would make us stand out even more or cause us to be targets for discrimination. But in Hyderabad, Muslims weren’t fighting with Jews. In fact, no one seemed to be clear on what “Jewish” even was—most Indians assumed because we were white, we were also Christian, which earned us rousing choruses of “Happy Merry Christmas, Ma’am and Sir!” nearly everywhere we went from early December until long past the new year. Most of the time, we just said “thank you.” It was too confusing to try and explain.
There were occasional reports of religious violence between Muslims and Hindus, but mainly the unrest in India lay between the Sunni and Shia denominations of Islam. There were whispers about militant groups, rumors of terrorist attacks that happened in other parts of the country. In Hyderabad, we’d never felt unsafe, but a ripple of tension was always present. It wasn’t surprising that Venkat blamed Muslims for the threat of violence in his city. Hinduism was one of the most peaceful religions; any religious violence in Hyderabad was always attributed to the Muslims. Still, how he could call all Muslim people “no good people” when Younus was one of his best friends, I simply couldn’t fathom.
Venkat stared at the giant mosque looming before us with suspicious eyes.
“No safety here, Madam. I coming?”
“No, thanks. I’ll be fine.” I climbed out of the car and wound a tasseled dupatta shawl around my head and shoulders. My white face still stood out, telltale pale against the sea of dark faces. But as little anonymity as it offered, I wanted a layer of fabric between myself and the teeming crowds.
Tourists were everywhere, jostling each other on the narrow staircases that climbed to an open observation deck. But I reached the top, and the atmosphere changed from charged and chaotic to serene and near-silent. All of Hyderabad was laid out before me, cars and buildings and people transformed to tiny dots on winding streets, a whole intricate, moving world I could fit into the palm of my hand. From up here, it was easier to see the beauty in the chaos, all those moving parts woven together to create a whole.
Along the upper walls were dozens of prayer spaces. Charminar opened into a mosque on the western side. On Fridays, the tolling bells that announced morning prayer rang through the vast bazaar, calling the male worshippers to prayer. Today, the bells were quiet. Only a few men knelt at the prayer spaces, facing west toward Mecca.
A few dips and turns through the narrow streets that led away from the main bazaar and suddenly the crowds disappeared. It reminded me of the tiny village road Younus brought us to when Jay was sick so many months ago. The street, too narrow for cars, was filled with wooden-wheeled pushcarts. Grains and fruit spilled from overstuffed baskets. I found the saffron easily, the crown jewel in tall stacks of spices. The bundles of fragile crimson threads were tied into scraps of canvas, filling the air with their delicate scent.
I followed the lilting sound of a sitar down a slender alley. Cross-legged on a stack of wooden crates was an old, bearded man in a long embroidered coat, a worn white turban wound around his head. He played his instrument with hypnotic skill, drawing out elegant notes that lingered in the air above us, three-dimensional in a way only he and I could see.
“Bathiye,” he said, pointing to a crate beside him.
I sat. The old man began a different song, swaying in time to the melody, transported by his own music. When he finished, I stood back up and bowed, my hands to my heart in namaskar. He bowed back. But when I tried to hand him a crumpled fifty-rupee note, he frowned and turned away. I sighed. I hadn’t meant to offend him, just to show my gratitude for his talent and the small moment of harmony he’d provided.
“Sorry,” I said, stepping away. “Your music is beautiful. Sundar musica?”
He stared at me for a moment. Then his papery face, creased with sun and years, broke into a toothless grin. He cradled the sitar and played again, serenading me as I continued down the alley.
It was so different here, this old-world India, away from the honking horns and gangs of child beggars, the endless smog and traffic and construction of HITEC City. Yet the two parts of the city were inextricably linked, two halves of an unlikely whole. The tent camps next to the guarded, palatial mansions, the IMAX theater just minutes from the ancient bazaar. Could one world exist without the other? I wondered if all the technology and American industry forcing its way into the city was taking something from Hyderabad that could never be replaced. Would paved roads and high-rise buildings eventually take over everything, ruining these centuries-old back alleys, forever altering what was authentic and elegant and real?
I’d spent so much time being frustrated with India, wishing it would catch up to the West, complaining about the electricity and the infrastructure and the livestock in the road. Now I was starting to realize some of the things I’d been wishing for didn’t really belong here at all. The heat and the dust, the spices and the jewels and the colorful, mystical gods and goddesses—that was what India was really about. As foreigners, we came in and tried to transform it all into something more familiar, more orderly, more modern. But why? Sundar had been right. The secret to India’s magic wasn’t in the overcrowded, traffic-clogged cities or in the Technicolor fantasies spun by Bollywood. It was here, in these alleys, untouched by the values of the first world. A place where chaos and beauty came together to form a perfect balance.
I wandered further, lost in my thoughts and the hypnotic rhythm of the activities around me—people cooking, polishing their wares, bartering and buying and laughing together in a haze of beedi cigarette smoke. Soon the spice carts disappeared, and metal pots and vases replaced spilling bins of produce. Ahead of me, there were stalls filled with piles of hand-crafted bangles. They were stacked high, dozens and dozens of them, in watercolor hues so vibrant they looked like candy.
I admired the bangles wistfully, knowing they would never fit over my oversized American wrist bones. I felt giant and awkward, hesitating even to touch the bracelets with my fingers for fear of breaking them to pieces.
A young girl sitting behind one of the stalls beckoned me closer.
“Ma’am?”
“Shukriya, nahi,” I said, shaking my head sadly. “Bahut bara.” I pointed to my wrist, then made an exaggerated circle with my thumbs and index fingers, hoping I was getting the Hindi words right.
She smiled and shook her head, long black pigtails tied with red yarn swinging merrily as she moved. Her plaid school uniform was covered in metal filings, which she swept carefully off her pleated skirt as she stood and grabbed my hand, leading me behind the counter. From beneath the display cases she pulled out plastic bags crammed tight with bracelets. She opened her eyes wide and shoved them toward me, motioning for me to try them on. I shrugged and gave in, choosing one at random to prove my point.
The first bracelet I tried was delicate navy blue painted with intricate scrolls of gold. It slipped over my knuckles, circling my wrist like it had been made just for me. The salesgirl grinned, triumphant, and stacked more bangles on my arms until I was covered from wrist to elbow. The tinkling metal circles glittered like magic in the sunlight.
“Beautiful,” she said, watching me carefully.
“Yes,” I agreed, admiring the kaleidoscope of color. “Beautiful.”
***
Sundar knocking at my door at the exact moment I needed him most. Finding old-world beauty in the last place I’d thought of looking. Suddenly, karma felt real again. The idea of the universe spinning with intention was something I’d abandoned months ago, but I was beginning to believe in the sense of higher purpose that had guided me so firmly in my old life. New signs appeared every day to show me I was finally on the right path. Even the water buffalo and I seemed to have formed an understanding. The white, long-legged birds that perched on top of them in the daytime made the buffalo seem friendlier somehow. When they weren’t charging the car or sleeping in the middle of Road #2 during rush hour, the stocky black beasts were even sort of…cute.
“I knew you liking city buffalo, Madam!” Venkat crowed when he caught me smiling out the window at a particularly benevolent-looking one chewing grass near the Jasmine Heights gates. There was something peaceful about all that rhythmic chewing.
“Not liking, Venkat,” I corrected. “More like ‘tolerating.’”
“I no knowing what is ‘tolerating,’” Venkat said with a grin. “But I knowing you smile at buffalo. Smiling buffalo much good fortune.”
In the name of much good fortune, I looked out the window and smiled grudgingly at the buffalo. I swear it smiled back.
Back at Plot 39, I took an extra-long shower, using up all the water in the tank. Then I turned my attention to my wardrobe. Half an hour later—three outfit changes, two applications of makeup, and both arms stacked high with my Indian bracelets—I stared at myself in the mirror and tried to decide if I looked like someone a total stranger would want to be friends with.
Karma was at work again, literally this time. Thanks to my blog, retitled Karma in the (Indian) City once we’d moved to Hyderabad, I had a date. A blind date. With an Indian person. Who I was hoping beyond hope was not some sort of crazy Internet stalker/ax murderer who would kill me and then dump my body in Lake Hussain Sagar.