Darshan

by Amrit Chima

  “Yes, I was the same,” the mechanic replied. “And when I was eleven, I did not do my schoolwork either. It is normal.”

  Manmohan shook his head. “Mohan does not have to love it like I did. Why is it not enough that I ask him to improve? I am his father. Shouldn’t that be the most important thing a son can offer, to always do his best?”

  Junker Singh’s expression changed, his mouth tipping downward in sympathy. He stuck his hands in his pockets, which made his paunch seem even larger and rounder. “He is a boy, ji. It is what boys do. I was sometimes disobedient. Remember that and do not be so hard on him.”

  Manmohan looked away, into the bright sun of the courtyard beyond the garage, the rope used to pull down the sectional door dangling in his periphery. It was hard to admit to his friend that he had never been that sort of free-spirited boy, rebellious or badly behaved, and that he could not understand or condone such behavior. He had always done as he had promised, had always done exactly what he believed would make Baba Singh proud.

  ~ ~ ~

  Mohan gaped at the motorcycle as Manmohan wheeled it into the backyard, positioning it near his old bike where weeds had started to grow around the base of the flattened tires. Resting it on the kickstand, he stepped back to admire it. His son rushed over, touching the steel frame and the torn saddle, gliding his hand over the bike’s surface, over the bumps of rust, the rough, unpolished metal, the glass of the speedometer, the broken side mirror that hung limply.

  “Come over here, Mohan,” Manmohan said, going to the patio and lowering himself into one of the chairs.

  “It is bigger than the other. Is it faster?” Mohan asked, following his father.

  Manmohan wordlessly pulled out the grade report and handed it to his son.

  Mohan’s face fell.

  “I believe you are a smart boy,” Manmohan told him. “I have no doubt about what you can accomplish. That is how I know you are not trying.”

  “But Bapu, I am working so hard. Nothing I do makes any difference.”

  “I am sure that is not true,” Manmohan said gently. “But you have to study. That is what I tell you all the time. It is wrong to disobey your parents, to tell them one thing and do another.”

  “I really am trying,” Mohan said, near tears. “But nothing comes out the way it is supposed to.”

  Manmohan put an arm around his son’s waist and pulled him close. “I think you are saying that just to make me happy. You think it is what I want to hear. I even believe you mean it when you say the words. But what would please me most is to see results, to see action follow your words.”

  “But, Bapu, I don’t know why—”

  Manmohan put up a firm hand, finished with excuses. “I understand that school may not be your favorite thing, so I have decided to balance what you do not like with something that you do.” Pointing at the motorcycle, he smiled. “We can work on this bike together, and one day, when you are old enough, perhaps if you deserve it, you can have it.”

  Mohan glanced at the bike, but he did not seem excited. Perhaps he was sorry. That was good.

  “But you have to promise me that you will make real improvements,” Manmohan continued. “Do not just say the words.”

  Mohan hesitated for a moment, still regarding the motorcycle. “Bapu,” he began, turning hesitantly back to his father. Then he took a deep breath and spoke with more confidence. “I promise.”

  “I will hold you to your words,” Manmohan said. He kissed Mohan’s cheek. “Go. Help your mother with dinner. We will start tomorrow.”

  Mohan loosened himself from his father’s arm and ran inside the house. Manmohan watched him go. After a moment, feeling satisfied, he stood to clear a space opposite the cucumber garden where they would work on the bike.

  With Mohan’s help the next day, after the larger rocks had been moved and a small square of land prepped, Manmohan staked a gray tarpaulin to the ground and nailed another over tall four-by-four pillars of lumber that he pounded into the dirt. During the following days, once the pillars had been reinforced with concrete, they built a row of shelves for parts and tools and set it as a wall in the back of the tarpaulin shed, the finalizing touch on their makeshift auto repair shop.

  Over the next several months, Manmohan rolled out the cabinet radio from the living room so they could listen to the Hindustani station while they worked. He took great pleasure in restoring the analog gauge and barrels, the carburetor, and the leather bench seat while humming along with the music and sipping an occasional cold beer. During his few years in the army, the Amritsar barracks were often quieted by the voice of one of his bunkmates who sang beautiful love songs while polishing his boots. The music from the radio reminded Manmohan of the harmony and simplicity of those days, when he had been pulled away from all that made him restless and insecure at home.

  And on some days, when the air was dry and not humid and it seemed to fit the mood, he wound up his gramophone and played the Duke Ellington LP he had run across in a shop on Victoria Parade. His favorite recordings were “Sepia Panorama” and “Bojangles.” When he listened to them he was young again, but having never heard jazz when he was in India, the songs made him feel young without the ache of nostalgia.

  Though Mohan was not particularly skilled with tools—holding them awkwardly—he engaged in each task with absolute focus and a clear desire to accomplish it well. Watching Mohan strip the paint off the bike’s metal frame in order to coat it with an oxide layer before repainting, Manmohan could not fathom how one so capable of hard work and dedication could have ever done so poorly in school.

  Mohan had taken a greater effort with his schoolwork since their motorcycle project had begun. Each evening, before they opened up the tarpaulin bike shop, Mohan was required to complete his school assignments, solve mathematical equations and write essays on the history of India and Indians in Fiji. Manmohan offered to help once, but Mohan did not want it, adamant about doing it on his own.

  So Manmohan would read one of the books from his great collection while he waited, Duke Ellington wound up and sweetly melodic in the background. He loved the musty smell of his books’ yellowing pages. He drank in the paragraphs. He wanted to know everything about the world. They were perfect evenings, both of them learning, embarking on journeys of the mind, together. Sometimes Mohan studied for so long there was not time for the bike. He would eat dinner and slump off to bed, looking utterly drained. For Manmohan, these evenings were great successes.

  Nonetheless, many of the evenings during those last months of 1949 ended with the clank of tools being returned to the shelf of the tarpaulin shed, the silencing of the radio or the scratch of the needle as it was pulled off the LP, and a twist of the knob on the Coleman lantern by which they had been working after the sun set. As Mohan would head inside, smiling and wiping the grime from his hands, Manmohan would stare out into the darkness of the backyard, listening to the crickets and feeling the hint of ocean breeze on the back of his sweaty neck, Duke Ellington still playing in his head. Jai and Darshan were usually already asleep by the time the two of them trod heavily to the washroom to rinse the grease from their bodies. They would eat the meal left for them on the kitchen table and then drop onto their beds, the day feeling like a series of accomplishments worthy of their exhaustion.

  ~ ~ ~

  It is always good, Manmohan thought, clinging to the happy evenings with his son, the two of them out in the backyard, the pleasant music and the sweet, agreeable smell of grease. That was exactly what he needed now. An evening with Mohan and the bike to remind him what sort of man he was, and what sort of father. Standing outside his house, he took a slow shaky breath. Jai was likely in the living room playing quietly on the floor with Darshan, the house smelling of freshly prepared roti and bean curry. And Mohan had no doubt been working diligently on his homework, was now finished and had seen him pull up in the truck. He had probably run to his room to change out of his school shorts and button-down shirt, putting on
the clothes he had designated as his mechanic’s gear: a raggedy black pullover shirt and an old pair of trousers that he said made him feel like he was allowed to get dirty. This last thought made Manmohan brighten, a momentary elevation from the bitter mood he was steeped in, relieving some of the pressure in his chest.

  Taking another breath, this time slower until his lungs tingled with the pressure, he then released it like he was exhaling a steady stream of cigar smoke. He had just left the dairy farm, and though he tried his best not to think of it, not to let it consume him, the memory of Satnam standing around all day doing nothing made him sick.

  Sinking to the ground, Manmohan rested his back against the house by the front door.

  Satnam and Priya had spent the entire day on the dairy farm for the first time since its opening because Priya had said they wanted to learn about what she called “the family trade.”

  “We’ve got to know what it’s about,” she said. “We cannot just sit around at home and expect to make a profit if we do not know our own business. What if something happens to any of you?”

  Manmohan stared at her for a long moment. He wanted to laugh hatefully at her, but she gave him that infuriatingly wide-eyed stare that, for her, meant sincerity.

  “Well,” she said, “show me what it is you do around here.”

  “It has been three years,” he finally replied, the weight of the two bucketfuls of milk he was holding straining his shoulders.

  “Well, yes. I was talking it over with the ladies. Our friend’s husband simply collapsed while milking a cow. Now she’s got nothing.”

  “You want to learn to milk a cow?”

  She laughed. “I wouldn’t do that this minute. Observation is eighty percent of learning, isn’t it?”

  Not pausing long enough to wonder where she had heard that, he turned and walked away toward the pasteurizing shed where Satnam was talking quietly with Baba Singh.

  “I’ll just see what you do next,” Priya said in a cheerful, singsong voice. “To the shed, is it?”

  “What kind of game are you playing?” Manmohan asked her, setting the buckets down by the shed door near Baba Singh.

  “It was my idea,” Satnam told him. “I wanted to come.”

  “Why now?”

  “I thought—”

  “As I have told him so many times,” Priya replied, adjusting her chuni over her severely pulled back hair. “We have got to participate. We have got to play our part.”

  “It is their place, too, Manmohan,” Baba Singh said, taking one of the buckets inside.

  “They have been here all morning and haven’t done one thing,” Manmohan said, heat rising to his cheeks.

  “We have every right to observe,” Priya said.

  “Of course you do,” Manmohan replied with sarcasm. He turned to Satnam. “While I work you can observe all you like.”

  “Leave him alone,” Baba Singh said, stepping protectively in front of Satnam, annoyed. “Do you always have to pester him?”

  Glancing behind his father at Satnam, Manmohan spoke slowly and evenly, tension in his jaw. “I just mean that if he wants to learn, I am about to start the boiler.”

  “He did not come for that,” Baba Singh said quietly, taking the second bucket inside.

  “What did he come for?”

  But no one had answered him.

  The front door of his house cracked open. “Gharwala?” Jai said. “What are you doing out here?”

  “Enjoying the sunset,” Manmohan replied.

  “Will you come in soon? I have been waiting.”

  He scooted over and patted the ground. “Come sit with me for a minute.”

  He had to steady her as she lowered herself down awkwardly. She was pregnant again. Being pregnant always made her look so much tinier than she already was.

  “I am a good husband to you,” he said. It was not a question, and he was not really speaking to her.

  She took his hand.

  Sighing, he squeezed, the smallness of her palm engulfed by his large one, making him feel protective and less tense. “Why have you been waiting?” he asked.

  “Mohan’s grade report,” she replied. “He brought it home with him today and went straight to his room. He said he was sick from the bus fumes. I have told him many times not to sit in the back.” She gave the envelope to Manmohan. It was unopened. “I have not seen it yet. I waited for you.”

  “Is it already January?” he murmured, always struck by the oddity of Fijian summers beginning in what had been winter in India.

  Gently releasing her hand, he ripped open the envelope marked Fourth Standard Completion, his mood lightening a little. He unfolded the paper, smiling. “I am sure when Mohan sees this, he will feel much better.”

  But as the print at the top of the report registered in his mind, his smile fell. The black ink was stark against the white of the sheet, unwavering and clear, telling him that Mohan had failed every single course.

  He crumpled the sheet in his fist and gave it to Jai who unwrinkled and assessed it, frowning. Never in his life had Manmohan known trying, doing, then failing. If a person tried, inevitably he would succeed. If he did not eventually succeed it was because he simply did not care.

  Jai placed a hand on his shoulder. “You deserve his respect,” she said somberly. She struggled to stand. “Talk to him. I will have dinner waiting.”

  Manmohan pushed her up, watching her step out of the darkness and into the light of the open door. After a moment, he followed.

  Mohan was on the couch, watching Darshan play with blocks in the center of the living room. He was afraid, as he should be, fidgeting with the hem of his shorts. “I am sorry, Bapu,” he said without waiting for his father to speak.

  Manmohan sat next to him on the couch. “Explain it to me.”

  “I don’t know what happened. Every time I thought I was prepared, when I would sit down to take the test, the words looked funny. Everything was backwards and I would start sweating and—”

  “Now you are making up stories. How can words change on the page? How can they stay the same in your books but not on the test?”

  “When Mr. Gupta is talking in class, I understand everything. And it is not just the tests, it is in the books, too. Sometimes, if I focus really hard, I think I can read it, and then—”

  Manmohan shook his head. “No. I do not know what you have been doing. You told me you did not need my help, that you could do it by yourself.”

  “But Bapu, I only wanted to—”

  “I always give you so much: toys, visits to the cinema, ice creams, and now that motorcycle. And so many times, even if you are disobedient, I ignore it because I tell myself it is what boys do. People are always telling me that boys are sometimes badly behaved or rebellious. But I never did that. I never disrespected my father.”

  Mohan’s eyes began to water.

  Manmohan kneaded the back of his neck, just under the rim of his turban where his muscles were tight. “You cannot continue to have something for nothing. That is your lesson. My lesson, which has been a hard one for me to understand, is that trust must be earned. Words have no meaning without actions to support them. I should never have given you anything before you earned it. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, Bapu,” Mohan replied in a shaky voice.

  Manmohan stood. He ducked past the curtain and went outside to the backyard. He remained still on the patio, frozen in his anger, listening to the sounds of the island, the whisper of water and of leaves. He glanced at the motorcycle under the tarpaulin shed. The anodized metal frame still needed a coat of shiny black paint, but the bike was otherwise restored. Approaching it, he realized that what he wanted most now was to be on the saddle, in the darkness of the island where no person could find him. Rolling up his sleeves, he swung a long leg over the seat. Flicking back the kickstand, he pushed his feet along the dirt to roll the bike down the side yard of the house.

  When he was on the street he started the engi
ne. It rumbled low and loud. He turned around and saw Mohan in the house staring at him through the window. Looking away and toward the paved road ahead, Manmohan pulled the throttle and sped down the hill toward Suva, the bike sounding like a thousand growling lions racing through Fiji.

  ~ ~ ~

  It was well past midnight when Manmohan got home. He tiptoed through the house to bed, his family already sleeping.

  He had gone to the beach, gazing out into the water where the horizon was impossible to discern because the black sky merged so completely with the black sea. He sat there wishing for India, especially for the time of his life when he was fatherless: the pond, his mother’s voice as she read from the Holy Book, and Vikram’s yowls while chasing bullock fearlessly through the fields. He remembered Satnam as a young boy carving wood and the gentle way he helped their mother serve dinner, saving the largest portions for everyone else. Strange that he had thought of that, to recall his brother once being so selfless. Satnam had grown so much out of that virtue.

  Manmohan had not stayed long at the beach. Growing restless with nothing but darkness in front of him, he had sped away from the shoreline through Suva to the main road that cut into the jungle. But somewhere around Veisari, just past the dairy farm, he had turned back, prickled with guilt. Maybe he was not seeing the situation from the right angle. Maybe he needed to reassess.

  His bare feet were quiet now on the linoleum floor. Grit was on his cheeks and lips from the ride. He stopped in the washroom to rinse off, patting his face dry with a clean towel.

  On his way down the hallway toward his room, he peeked in on Mohan. His son was flung face down on his bed, still fully dressed. Sighing, Manmohan carefully closed the door and tiptoed on. Climbing under the covers next to his wife, he decided they would have a talk tomorrow evening to clear up all the misunderstanding.

  The next day, however, his son did not come home.

  “He did not go to school today,” Jai said, shoving a note from Mr. Gupta at her husband.