Darshan

by Amrit Chima

  He did not have any specific aspirations toward becoming a pathologist, and was entirely unqualified when he went in for the interview two years before. It was still extraordinary to him that he had gotten the job, although the head pathologist, Dr. Levi, later told him that a good judge of character could always recognize a capable man the instant he walked through the door.

  “Referred by Dr. Rosenthal, I see,” Dr. Levi had murmured when Darshan first introduced himself. Then, his voice suddenly crisp, he said more loudly, eyes magnified behind thick glasses, “I like him…Rosenthal…a brilliant teacher. Very regrettable when he retired from Kaiser. In any case, to the point. My man is leaving on short notice. I need someone right away to fill his spot. When can you start?”

  His mouth very dry, Darshan replied, “Now, if you need.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes.”

  Considering this, after a moment Dr. Levi said, “That’s good. Very good. So you say you drove ambulances?”

  “Last year.”

  “So you’ve got some familiarity with anatomy?”

  “I am not exactly sure what you mean,” Darshan replied, suddenly uncomfortable.

  “You had to help sometimes, yes?” the doctor asked, the large orbs of his eyes widening expectantly. “With the patients in the ambulance?”

  “Not much, but I took a CPR class.”

  “So you do then? Have some familiarity with anatomy?”

  Darshan slowly bobbed his head up and down. “Yes, I suppose I do.”

  “Do you know anything about pathology?”

  Sweat had begun to bead on Darshan’s lip. “Yes,” he lied with feigned confidence, feeling as though he was being too timid. Pathology, pathology, he thought desperately, rapidly flipping through his brain in search of some memory in which he might have heard of it before. Perhaps in class. Maybe his father’s medical journals. Or did he know it by a different name? He wiped his palms on the front of his pants, dreading being turned away to face a lifetime of washing dishes and serving food in restaurants, fated never to apply his knowledge and love of science.

  “You have good hands,” Dr. Levi said approvingly.

  Darshan looked down at them.

  “Surgeon’s hands,” the doctor told him. “And a very good temperament.” He removed his glasses to polish them on his white coat. “Well, all right then. The job is yours.” His eyes were strangely beady when naked. They blinked cheerfully.

  “Mine?”

  “I like Dr. Rosenthal,” Dr. Levi said, sliding his glasses back on, the innocent pleasure on his middle-aged face once again intensified behind the lenses. “And as far as I can tell, you know enough about bodies to satisfy me.”

  “Bodies?”

  “Anatomy.”

  “Dr. Levi, I…I have classes.”

  “Yes, yes, Rosenthal mentioned part-time. I understand. Now, let’s begin.”

  When, on that very day, Dr. Levi had wheeled out a dead body on a steel table and explained that his new employee would need to eviscerate the organs, then cut them open to examine them, Darshan had nodded somberly. He concentrated every effort on appearing professional, like he had known all along that pathology was the slicing open of a dead body and the removing of its organs. He was given only two days of training—which included how to replace the organs after they had been examined; how to suture the body, wrap it in plastic, and roll it into the cold box; as well as how to section the tissue samples doctors had taken from live patient organs so the lab could check for cancer or inflammation. After those two days, Dr. Levi had abandoned him in the morgue. Though it should have terrified Darshan to be alone, holding the scalpel over the bluish, gray chest of his very first dead body, he had been invigorated. That first one had made clear his capabilities, the extent of his talent for defeating the unknown, and doing it well.

  And the unknowns in those days had been numerous. From the moment he landed at San Francisco International Airport, nothing about the city resembled his fantasy of it while flying thousands of miles across the Pacific to America’s West Coast. Though aware it had modernized since 1912, he had still imagined San Francisco to be the place he read about in one of his father’s history books, as Ranjit Singh Toor might have experienced it: his great uncle striding through the hilly dirt roads past trolley cars and horses toward 5 Wood Street, the Ghadarite headquarters. Two generations back and just a short bus ride from Kaiser Hospital, Ranjit had been one of the Punjabis voicing his intention to eradicate global racism against their people.

  Manmohan had told Darshan that the world was more tolerant now, that the newer generations would benefit from Ranjit’s efforts, that there was no more fear of being beaten in the streets, of being hounded and abused. And yet, the year Darshan washed dishes in the humid and steamy kitchens of popular restaurants, the clank and chink of silverware against china mingling with the happy chatter of light-skinned customers in the dining room, proved that there was still progress to be made. Sikhs were nominally numbered in San Francisco proper, and unlike Hindus, their striking appearance—long, full beards and turbans—was unsuitable for a society that favored clean-cut men.

  Darshan had been so discomfited in the beginning, so hyper-conscious of his dissimilarity. After resigning from his ambulance-driving job—in which he was rarely seen and never heard—he had not been able to find proper work, and he knew it was because he was different. He endured a year of fruitless interviews and menial jobs before finally cutting his hair and trimming his beard. Perhaps he should have been more troubled by the sight of his long tresses on the barber’s floor, more distressed by the betrayal to his culture, but when he looked in the mirror and saw before him a new person—hair long enough to resemble the cool hippies he saw loitering around campus, but short enough to be acceptable—he could not help but admire his own courage, the fortitude it took to make this concession, which was simply one of the many he had made in order to adapt here, just as with his plans for UC Berkeley.

  Though he had been accepted and was due to report to the enrollment offices of the university in 1966, no one had warned him of the cost, and he did not have the money to attend. The tuition rates at San Francisco State were more reasonable, and disillusioned, he signed up for classes at what he initially deemed a far more inferior college. His disappointment, however, was quickly curbed by a number of challenging courses and the equally exhilarating events that were taking place on the State campus. He watched from the sidelines as students doggedly protested the Vietnam War. Police with batons and helmets patrolled the campus, their job to prevent students from scaling trucks where speakers had been set up for pro-War speeches. Darshan had seen it once. Samuel Hayakawa booed away, his voice drowned by the crash of a massive speaker hitting gravel, several small pebbles shooting out like shrapnel, stinging one man in the shin, and all the voices raised in outrage. Though remaining strictly on the fringe—not willing to risk deportation with only a student visa—the anti-Vietnam movement had roused Darshan’s idealism, had made him feel as though he was in the middle of something significant, the world changing drastically at his feet.

  For all his unfulfilled expectations, for all the rejection and adversity, for all the times he had gone to Ocean Beach to stare homesick at the sea, he had grown fond of San Francisco, the city awash in love, free spirit, youth, and bright colors. Everywhere he looked, a twenty-something baby boomer emphatically threw him the peace sign. Surfers-turned-skateboarders skirted the hilly streets, and Barbie dolls and G.I. Joe figurines decorated storefront windows. The city was a place to be young and adventurous.

  Halfway up Terra Vista Avenue, Darshan turned toward one of the houses and climbed a short cement staircase. From the small square landing at the top, he knocked on the apartment door.

  A young woman cracked it open. “Hey you,” she said, eyes bright with affection.

  San Francisco was the place where he had found Elizabeth Quinn.

  “Hey.” Darshan smiled, pressing a p
alm against the cold paint of the door as she playfully tried not to let him in. Stepping inside her studio apartment, he set his bag down and pulled her close. “You look nice.”

  “You always say that.” She kissed his cheek, then brushed the bangs out of her eyes. She had been a Catholic nun, in Oregon. When they met last year, she was only four months out of the convent where she had spent five sequestered years of her life. The first time he saw her, when he approached the Kaiser admitting desk with a clipboard of paperwork where she sat at her secretarial post, he could not understand how it was possible, how four months out of a convent she had no signs of it on her. No cross on a chain at her throat, no stiffness in her posture, only a shy self-consciousness normal for a girl of twenty-two fresh to the city from a small town in Oregon.

  One of her dangly silver earrings caught the light, and he touched the end of it. Her appeal was not simply that she was beautiful, that she had a long body, that her face was comprised of sharp angles softened by round, kind eyes, or the way her pale back looked when he rested his brown hand upon it as she slept next to him, or even her ready willingness to laugh at everything he uttered because of his accent or the way he sometimes misunderstood the context of something she said. It was that Elizabeth’s story paralleled his. The convent had been her island, San Francisco the place where they met to explore the infinite possibilities that lay beyond the surrounding waters.

  “I made the bed for you,” she told him, pointing to the gold-colored foldout couch centered beneath a window that looked out to a brick wall. Nowadays he rarely stayed at the boarding room he rented from an old Russian lady who refused to let him sufficiently heat it.

  “Can you wake me at noon?” he asked her. “I have a one o’clock class.”

  “Sure. I’ll ring from work.”

  “Would you and Stewart like to meet at the Fillmore when I’m done?”

  “Sounds fun. Who’s playing?”

  “Jefferson Airplane.” He smiled, running his hand through his thick, black hair.

  “I promised my sister I’d have a late lunch with her after my shift, so save me a seat.”

  “Sure. Will you let Stewart know?”

  “Yep. Now, get some sleep. Lie down and I’ll see you later. I’ve gotta go or I’ll be late.”

  He kissed her lips.

  “Bye,” she said. “Lock up after me.”

  He sat on the edge of the bed, untied and pulled off his brown suede shoes. The apartment was so quiet in Elizabeth’s absence. Lining the opposite wall was a set of shelves, varnished planks of wood stretched across large decorative bricks, assembled layer by layer. It overflowed with knickknacks: purple and green hand-blown glass vases that dully reflected the light, a nail clipper, necklaces tangled with several pairs of earrings, a box of laundry detergent, a number of amethyst rocks that had collected too much dust to properly reflect light, a picture of Elizabeth’s father who had passed away when she was twelve. A vine drooped lazily down one side of the shelf from its pot. Another plant hung from a hook in the ceiling. The kitchenette was cramped, the sink always full of dishes. In the corner on the floor there was a pile of large red, green, and blue pillows. A lamp with a fiberglass shade was centered on an end table.

  Darshan leaned forward, took his wallet out of his back pocket, and placed it on the table. He could see his fish-eye reflection in the small television that rested on a flimsy stand. At night they sometimes watched Elizabeth’s favorite show, The Twilight Zone, and Darshan’s favorite, Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. Vinyl records were neatly arranged like books on the shelf beneath. He thought about flicking on the television, but too tired to get up, decided against it. He wiggled tiredly out of his coat, tossed it on the floor instead of hanging it in Elizabeth’s walk-in, swung his legs around and lay down against the corner-tasseled, orange throw pillows.

  He groaned, remembering, and sat up. Last night, before his shift, he had picked up the mail from his landlady and shoved it in his bag. There was a letter from his father that he had not yet read.

  His body heavy, he went to his bag to retrieve the letter. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he ripped open the envelope, expecting the usual correspondence: problems on the mill, a superficial account of the family’s well-being, questions about San Francisco, his job, and school, to which he always replied with the same tedious response, questions about why he had not visited between semesters, which he always evaded, and news that they had found yet another lovely Indian girl from a nice family he should come home to meet before someone else married her.

  As he unfolded this particular letter, however, he noticed that it was unusually short, which made him instantly uneasy. Quickly skimming the words, his stomach twisted in anxiety.

  Darshan,

  I have booked passage for the family on The Oreana. We will be arriving to San Francisco 17 August with our visas. As you know, it has been difficult these past years to manage the mill on my own. Concrete is more and more in demand, and Mohan has nearly stolen away my few remaining customers. I have decided to terminate my lease. There is nothing left here in Fiji. Make arrangements, and we will see you in August.

  Your bapuji

  Darshan stood, pacing, searching for a pen and paper, then gave up.

  A sudden flood of concerns struck him. They would need a place to live, furniture, a means of income, a car for Manmohan’s doctor’s appointments. He touched his cut hair, a bud of fear blooming in his chest, then said aloud, “Elizabeth.” He had not told his family about her.

  Setting the letter on the bed, he opened the envelope and ran a finger along the inside, but it was empty. His shoulders slumped as he balanced the envelope on his open palm in surrender. It had never once occurred to him that he would not return home to Fiji. A resurgence of homesickness he had believed long since conquered overwhelmed him. He missed the jungle, driving to Mahatma Gandhi in the Falcon, the scent of freshly-sawed wood, the feel of sawdust prickling the soles of his bare feet, the refuge of his shack, and the tuft of his favorite coconut tree. One last time he opened the envelope searching for something that would allay this abrupt onset of homesickness, an emotion that was in direct conflict with something else he was feeling: the distress of his parents’ alighting on his independent life and the desire to be left alone to explore the new things that were happening to him.

  Guiltily, he felt the weight of Manmohan’s old watch on his wrist. He had taken it to a repair shop on Valencia to shorten the leather band and get the face buffed. In the stillness of the apartment, Darshan could hear its faint mechanical tick. Placing the letter on the table next to his wallet, he lay down without undressing, pulling the covers over him. He remained like that for a long while, listening to the tick-ticking of the watch. When he finally fell asleep, he dreamt of blackness, of being blind. There was only a sensation of Fiji, the green smell of crushed taro leaves, the rain pelting the roof of his shack, and his coconut tree, which he wished he could still climb.

  ~ ~ ~

  The Fillmore was crowded with concertgoers. Darshan waded and pushed through, searching for Stewart, spotting his six-foot-six-tall best friend waving a gangly arm over the crowd, beckoning to him. A lean black man with slightly bulging eyes and a long goatee that pointed in a V halfway down the length of his long neck, Stewart was not much older than Darshan, but his sunglasses, his black patent-leather, pointy shoes, his bellbottom pants, and the suaveness with which he carried himself made him seem far more mature. Only when he was sad—which was not often—or when he laughed, was it apparent that he was not older than twenty-two.

  Darshan had first encountered Stewart over two years before, leaning against a lamppost just off San Francisco State’s campus, looking downright melancholy. That first meeting was one of the few times Darshan had ever seen his friend so vulnerable and unhappy. Without uttering a word, he had reached over and offered his sandwich. He did not know what possessed him to do that, except that food always helped him and maybe a man so big and sa
d was hungry. Their friendship was instantly solidified when Stewart accepted the sandwich, eating half without first introducing himself, a grateful smile around his watery eyes. Swallowing his last bite, he sat with Darshan on the curb to share what had happened. He had not filed his admissions paperwork correctly and the school had asked him to come back the following semester.

  “What in the hell will I do for a semester just farting around?” Stewart asked. “I don’t have money and time for that. They want me to go back home to Philly where my mother would go ape if I walked in the house when I’m supposed to be in school. And I hate the snow. I can’t go back there. It’s nothing like San Francisco where everything is fresh and bitchin’. Doesn’t this school care about anybody?”

  Trying not to appear so impressed by the vernacular, Darshan suggested they try again because perhaps the rotund lady usually sitting at the admission’s window had not yet had her lunch, which made Stewart chuckle. “You’ve got the funniest accent,” he said, wiping his eyes with his newsboy hat.

  Together they returned to the office, relieved to see a young, blonde woman beam at them as they approached, willing to let the error slide and push through the registration papers on account of Stewart’s thick charm. After that, the two of them had met every day after classes in the library until the afternoon Stewart had decided his new friend would benefit from some healthy American socializing and they should get down at the Fillmore for Darshan’s first concert.

  The auditorium was hotter than usual as Darshan struggled to reach Stewart. He began to sweat under his coat as he pressed through the thick crowd of bodies, shimmying past excited teenagers and college students until he was standing right up against his friend.

  “These were the best I could find,” Stewart said, gesturing toward their seats that flanked a pillar.

  “No problem,” Darshan said. “At least our view isn’t blocked.” Taking off his coat, he asked, “Have you seen Elizabeth?”