Karma Gone Bad

by Jenny Feldon

  “No, thanks. I want vodka. Do you have Smirnoff?”

  “Ah, yes, sir. Smirnoff we have. India Smirnoff. But we are not having vodka.”

  A collective eye roll went around the table. I was beginning to think this impromptu nightclub visit was bad karma for my path to enlightenment.

  “But Smirnoff is vodka,” Jay said, voice calm but emphatic.

  “No, sir,” the bartender said. “Is no vodka, sir.”

  “Well, then, what is it?”

  “Is alcohol, sir.”

  Kyle laughed out loud, but Jay’s patience was waning. He was still smiling, but a few more minutes and I was afraid something might happen. Like my dad, Jay’s fuse was extra, extra long. But when he reached the end of it, the results could be disastrous.

  “Let’s just go, Jay.” I climbed off my barstool. Jay pulled me back down and held up one finger. Wait.

  “Sir!” The bartender exclaimed, suddenly excited, like he’d just remembered his locker combination or found a five hundred rupee note in the pocket of his apron. “We have Flin, the American vodka!”

  Jay sighed. “So you DO have vodka!”

  The bartender heaved a mournful sigh in return. “No, sir. I am sorry, sir. We are having no vodka.”

  “But you just said…”

  “Yes, sir, but I am remembering that Flin, the American vodka, is actually being gin.”

  “Bring me the bottle of Smirnoff,” Jay snapped.

  The bartender dipped low, disappearing behind the polished mahogany bar. Clanking sounds ensued, the sound of glass shattering, then some Hindi curses. A moment later, he returned with a bottle of Indian Smirnoff and a bleeding finger wrapped in a towel. Jay snatched the bottle from his grasp, turning it so the label faced the bartender, and ran his finger over the word VODKA.

  “See? This here? This says VODKA.”

  The bartender grinned. “Ah, yes, sir. Vodka we are having. Shall I get you a vodka drink?”

  It took Jay one and a half vodka drinks to stop scowling at the bartender, who bobbled his head in delight every time we looked in his direction, pleased he’d found the perfect solution to our situation.

  “I’m just glad it’s not always me,” I said, stirring the ice in my glass with a plastic toothpick.

  “What, getting frustrated with the Indian way of communicating?” Diana asked, laughing. “Jay does this all the time at work. You should see him in line for lunch at the cafeteria. ‘NON-veg! NON-VEG, I said!’” She imitated him with surprising accuracy.

  I turned to Jay. “Maybe you need to start coming to yoga with me.”

  “Probably not. I’ll stick to the gym. I like to find my inner peace in the weight room.”

  “Ugh.”

  “Speaking of yoga, are you going to stop at that ashram in Kerala when you visit with your mom next month?” Diana asked. “Someone at work told me about it. It’s supposed to be amazing.”

  “I think so. Anjali’s been before and she said I shouldn’t miss it. It will just be me and my mom, so I think we’ll have time to stop for a few days.”

  “I’ve heard those places are like cults,” Kyle said. “Is it one of those silent ones where you can’t say a word the whole time you’re there?”

  “Just don’t sign anything or give them any money,” Jay said. “Your new attitude might make you easier to live with, but I’m afraid you might sell our first-born child if you go too far overboard.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said primly. “The path to enlightenment is often invisible but for the first few steps.”

  Jay rolled his eyes and kissed me on the forehead. “I might miss the mean, nasty you after all. That one was a little more realistic.”

  “I’m trying to find a balance.”

  “Keep working.”

  I glared at him.

  “That’s more like it.”

  Chapter 24

  Six months after my desperate flight back to the United States, Hyderabad felt like a totally different place…less like someplace we’d stumbled into and more like where we lived. Jay spent his mornings at Latitudes, a brand-new Western-style fitness center, and raved about his workouts with a new personal trainer. I went to yoga class and spent a few afternoons a week hanging out with Kamala and the other children at the Township. I started writing again, finally able to give words to the emotions of our journey. When the power was on, I blogged like crazy, catching up on all the anecdotes I was now eager to share. The carved wooden idol Venkat had given me on Ganesh Chaturthi became my good-luck charm, an elephant-shaped champion of my creative aspirations.

  Lunches with Anjali, Hindi lessons, hanging up the laundry I’d finally figured out how to do on my own. Cooking with Sundar. Walks with the dog around the neighborhood, quiet afternoons with a chai and my journal beneath the banyan tree. I ate mangos by the basket and watched Mary play fetch with Tucker, her tinkling laugh echoing through the hallways as she threw his ball again and again. When her duties were finished, she’d teach me things, like how to braid my hair and wrap the blue sari I’d bought to wear to the Township’s year-end assembly. Watching me wrestle with the complicated mess of fabric, pins sticking out everywhere, made both of us laugh.

  Jay and I were back in rhythm with each other again. The sparks that used to ignite our arguments died before we let them catch fire. Instead of forcing us apart, life in India began to draw us closer together. It may not have been the journey we planned for, but it was still the experience of a lifetime. Both of us were forever changed. I realized that the unthinkable had finally happened—life in India had become some kind of normal.

  Maybe even the good kind.

  ***

  We were sitting around the table at Ginger Court after an early dinner, sipping one last round of Jena’s now-legendary mango cucumber cocktails, when a chorus of beeps and vibrations erupted from everyone’s cell phone at once.

  “That’s weird,” Diana said. “It’s Saturday. Usually they try to keep work emergencies out of my hands until at least Sunday morning.”

  But my phone was ringing frantically too.

  Where are you? Are you OK? Answer now please! said an SMS message from Anjali. I had three missed calls from my mom and a dozen unread emails. Jay scrolled through his BlackBerry messages, confused, then looked up at us with an odd expression.

  “There were bombings,” he said. Around us, the restaurant was awash in sudden panic. Everyone was shouting into their cell phones. A woman was crying. Jena rushed past us, calling out his wife’s name. “There were two, one at Lumbini Amusement Park and another one at a chat restaurant three miles away. A bunch of people are dead. They think it was terrorists.” He paused to scan the report again. “It’s already been picked up by the international wires. Front page of CNN. That’s why everyone is calling.”

  The panic in the air was a living thing, choking us all. The city went on lockdown. We called our families to let them know we were safe, but Airtel was already succumbing to the crushing influx of calls and texts; we could barely get a few words out before the signal disappeared and our mobiles went silent. In the parking lot, Venkat was stoic and calm. He’d already spoken to his sister, who was safe with her husband at home. The rest of his family was far away from the dangers of the city. Jay and I climbed into the car, stricken and silent.

  Madhapur Road was teeming with riots; police were everywhere, trying to control the mobs. On the radio, early reports of the death toll came in: at least forty people had been killed. Two more bombs were detonated in other parts of the city as the Scorpio inched its way through the frenzied streets toward home. Barricades and security checkpoints were everywhere. Venkat pressed our U.S. passports against the windshield. A quick pass of the flashlight and the officers waved us through.

  When we finally made it back to Jasmine Heights, my initial numbness turned to panic. I to
ssed things in suitcases, then took them out again. Jay called BKC’s SOS International hotline to try and get more information. Were we safe here, as expatriates? Were the attacks targeting Westerners? Should we stay put in Hyderabad or try to catch the next flight home? With the city on lockdown, an eerie quiet settled over the night. The absence of commotion was deafening.

  Later, we’d learn that police discovered nineteen more bombs planted around the city, in popular areas like movie theaters, restaurants, and pedestrian bridges. Most were homemade explosives devices fitted with timers. The victims of the terror attacks were all ages and from all backgrounds: women, children, businessmen. A group of engineering students and faculty visiting Hyderabad on holiday from a college in Maharashtra had been watching a laser show at Lumbini Park when the first bomb went off. Seven of them were killed. Early reports implicated a militant Islamic group from Bangladesh.

  “Muslim peoples no good peoples,” Venkat spat when he arrived the next morning. “Much killing. Much bad. No more Muslims meaning no more problem.” He shook his fist at the sky, like he was demanding something from his gods.

  Things were just starting to feel normal. And now, for the first time, living in India made me feel truly afraid. But beneath the fear and doubt were other emotions. Ones I’d never felt about this place before. Empathy. Loyalty. I felt protective of Hyderabad and angry at its attackers. The Indian city suddenly felt like my city; a country I’d thought I’d never understand had finally found its way into my heart. For the first time, I wasn’t jumping at the chance to leave ’Bad for good.

  ***

  1.Ride an elephant.

  2.Sleep in a palace.

  3.Visit the Taj Mahal.

  4.Houseboat in Kerala.

  5.Ashram in Mysore.

  6.Eat at Leopold’s Café.

  7.Make a baby.

  “You can’t put getting pregnant on your India bucket list,” Jay said, snooping over my shoulder. “I don’t even think that belongs on a list at all. Shouldn’t we just keep quiet about it and do our thing?”

  “I’m trying to get organized,” I said. “There’s so much more I want to do.”

  “We have plenty of time, and you’ve got trips planned all over the place. If you spend every minute trekking all over India, you might as well forget about that last entry entirely. It takes two of us sleeping in the same bed to make a baby, you know.”

  “Very funny. I won’t be gone too long. I promised the kids at the Township I’d be back for the assembly. They’re performing a dance routine and we’ve been practicing for weeks. Bollywood-inspired, of course.” I smiled at the memory of them shimmying their hips in time with the music, trying so hard to get every move right. “You’re not going to miss it, right?”

  “And lose out on my one chance to see you in a sari? No way.”

  “We have our Golden Triangle trip, and my mom and I will head down to Kerala. Then there’s just Diana’s birthday trip to Mumbai.”

  In exchange for babysitting Tucker, we finally agreed to buy Venkat the “bike” he’d been dreaming about, a second-hand Yamaha motorcycle he’d picked out himself. Swapna’s fifteenth birthday was this weekend, and Venkat planned to ride his new bike all the way to his village to see her and, I imagined, ask her to marry him. I was dying to know if she’d say yes.

  The terror attacks made me jumpy and nervous for weeks. We were steadfast in our decision to stay in Hyderabad, but every loud sound made me duck for cover and wonder if I’d been crazy not to pack my bags and go. But gradually, the fear faded and the “normal” quality to our daily lives resumed. For the first time in ages, I wiped a layer of dust off my Lonely Planet: India and began dog-earing the pages of all the places I wanted to go, from the north tip of Delhi to the black-sand beaches in Goa. It had taken so long to make peace with my life in Hyderabad. Now I was eager to roam through the exotic locales of my current “home” country.

  Armed with my camera, the travel guide, and a pocketful of rupees, being a tourist gave me the freedom to ask questions and make my foolish American mistakes without feeling like a failure. An expat needed to blend into a society, but a tourist was only there to marvel and observe. And what better place to marvel than at the seventh wonder of the world itself, the Taj Mahal?

  My parents were arriving soon for their long-anticipated Indian vacation. After much coaxing, I’d convinced Jay to take some time off work and come along for a weeklong sightseeing trip in the Golden Triangle. Working with a travel agent, I’d planned the trip so that we’d arrive at the Taj Mahal on the morning of my parents’ thirtieth wedding anniversary—it was the perfect place to celebrate lasting love.

  Secretly, I was hoping our Taj trip might inspire a little extra romance between Jay and me too. The ground beneath our marriage was finally solid enough to try for the next milestone we both wanted desperately: parenthood. Conceiving new life in the shadow of the Taj Mahal would be the perfect metaphor for a love we’d rebuilt from the ground up.

  Now if only I could stop him from sneaking peeks at my bucket list. For, in black magic marker, he’d scribbled in a few items of his own.

  1.Roast a chicken.

  2.Learn how to iron husband’s shirt.

  3.Balance the checkbook.

  4.Make me some breakfast. I’m starving/late for work.

  5.Look in the mirror. You’re beautiful.

  I looked up, expecting a big sentimental moment, but he was in the kitchen, staring into the refrigerator and tapping one foot impatiently against the marble floor. I threw my arms around him anyway.

  “Really?”

  “Come make me breakfast,” he replied. He handed me the container of eggs, gathered fresh yesterday from the chickens that lived across the road. “I’ll make the toast.”

  Chapter 25

  All four of us were temporarily speechless as we stood at the entrance and stared at the Taj Mahal, impossibly huge and perfect and real. Sun glittered off white marble, making a thousand tiny rainbows dance in the air. In the reflecting pool, a perfect mirror image of the stunning mausoleum shimmered back at us. It was surreal, like walking straight into a history book.

  “I can’t believe we’re actually here,” I whispered to Jay.

  “I can’t believe we made it here alive,” he replied.

  I laughed. The ride had been harrowing, it was true, but I would have spent another eight hours with the same gasping, hacking bus driver who may or may not have had tuberculosis, another eight hours riding through an endless landscape of cow-patty-covered huts, just to see my parents as they were now, arms wrapped around each other while they took in the view. Celebrating thirty years of hardships and joys, tears and laughter, and still, somehow, standing together and ready to face thirty more.

  Jay stood behind me and rested his chin in my hair.

  “We should come here on our thirtieth anniversary,” he said, looking out over the horizon. “What a cool way to celebrate.”

  “Does that mean you’re not trying to divorce me anymore?”

  Jay pretended to think. “Well, let’s see. You did make me chicken soup. And my shirts are clean. You learned how to stand on your head, which is pretty cool. You haven’t written a bestseller, though, or figured out how to roast a chicken, and your taste in movies has gone a little crazy.”

  I turned my head and glared at him.

  “Yes, I’m keeping you,” he whispered, sending a shiver down the back of my neck. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Good thing one of us stays rational in times of crisis.”

  I jabbed him in the stomach. Some things would never change.

  “It’s so romantic,” I sighed as we climbed the marble stairs toward the Taj’s inner chambers.

  “You do know this is a tomb, right? Somebody’s grave?”

  “Not a bad
place to spend all of eternity.”

  “I thought you believed in reincarnation now.”

  “Yeah, maybe not. I think my Eastern philosophies are just about hitting their maximum. I’m ready to go back to the Upper West Side.”

  “We’ve got some time left. Think we’ll be bringing a little something extra back with us?” Jay asked, patting my stomach affectionately. “Six whole months of trying sounds kind of fun.”

  “I hope so. I feel ready to be a mom. I think I might be good at it. I hope so, at least.”

  “I never thought you were going to be anything but great,” Jay said. “But…”

  We reached the top and paused, taking in the stunning view of the gardens far below.

  “But?”

  “I think now you’ll be better.”

  A flurry of clicks interrupted the moment. We turned to see a rogue photographer beaming at us, immensely proud of his paparazzi-worthy sneak attack. He held out his digital camera so we could admire his work. In the photograph, Jay and I were wrapped together, relaxed and laughing, gazing out at the horizon from the balcony of the Taj. It looked like something out of a movie or a complicated daydream, an all’s-well-that-ends-well episode in someone else’s life.

  “Did you ever think we’d be those people?” I said, pointing to the young, happy couple captured forever in an impossibly perfect moment.

  “No. Not really. But I’m glad we are.”

  “Sir and Ma’am, you are being those people forever! For the bargain price of two thousand rupees only!” He snatched his camera back and held out his palm. “Isn’t love being wonderful thing?”

  ***

  We returned to Hyderabad a few days later, still buzzing with energy and laughter from our adventures in the Golden Triangle. Being an actual tourist in India was more fun than I’d ever imagined. I didn’t have to be an expat trying to fit in or a spoiled American princess getting a harsh dose of reality. I was just me, wide-eyed and appreciative. For once, I wasn’t trying to figure out how to live in a foreign world—my only concern was taking it all in.