He leads me up a sweep of stairs
into a sun-soaked hall where music’s playing
and all the furniture’s pushed against walls.
Radhika spots me and gives me a hug.
“Thanks so much for coming.”
She looks lovely
in a curve-hugging dress and high-heeled sandals,
her dimpled cheeks accented with rouge.
Even her toes look perfect—
painted with a soft pink nail polish.
“Dance?” Govinda asks me.
“Don’t know how,” I say.
Radhika giggles. “You
don’t know how
to dance?”
“Not to this music, I don’t.”
“Good thing your teacher is here.” Radhika gives me
a playful shove. “Lesson time, Veda.”
Govinda pulls me to the middle of the room.
“Put your arms on my shoulders.
Now move. With me.”
I sense where he wants me to go
through the tensing and easing of his muscles.
It feels like learning a new language.
I remember daydreaming of dancing this way with Jim.
My stomach clenches with guilt.
But only for a moment.
Jim feels long ago and far away.
I feel the way I did when my cracked ribs finally healed:
delighted to discover there’s no longer any pain in my chest.
“Something wrong?” Govinda says. “Did I step on your foot?”
“If you did,
it was the foot that doesn’t hurt,” I say.
He smiles.
Dazzling as polished topaz,
the tiny gold flecks in Govinda’s eyes
catch and toss
sunlight.
SACRED
WATER
Paati’s tortured breathing wakes me.
A cool predawn breeze shivers in through our window
but sweat lathers Paati’s forehead.
She mumbles something,
her words slurred, her eyes unfocused.
“Pa! Ma! Come quickly!”
I grab my crutches, then, realizing I need to use my hands,
I get my leg on instead
and hurry to fetch the small sealed pot
filled with water from the sacred Ganga river.
A copper pot that’s sat in a corner of our household altar
for as long as I can remember.
Waiting for a time of death.
I know Paati will want a drink of this water
from the holiest of rivers.
She believes it will help wash away her sins.
Though I don’t believe she sinned in this life,
I break open the seal and
dash back to our bedroom,
Ganga water sloshing.
Paati’s drawn cheeks
crease into a faint smile.
For a moment her eyes clear.
Her lips part.
I splash some water into her mouth.
She swallows.
My arms tremble.
I pour an unsteady stream on her tongue.
She lifts a hand
as if to touch my cheek
but her hand falls back
on her chest.
Her lips close.
The last of the water
spills on her chin and dribbles
down her neck.
Ma leans forward.
Shuts Paati’s eyelids.
Slides her arms around Pa.
Pa covers his face with his hands.
STRANGE COMFORT
My body feels heavy
but I go to Pa
and stroke his shaking shoulders.
When the heart-shaped leaves
of the pipul tree outside our window
start sifting through the rays of the rising sun,
Ma leaves the room.
I hear her on the phone, telling people Paati’s gone.
I stay with Pa.
Hug him tight.
Feel his tears wet my curls as he cries into my hair.
“Paati would have wanted to die this way,” I tell him. “Quietly.
At home. In her bed. The three of us close by.”
He nods, still hunched over.
Finally,
he says, “I didn’t think of the Ganga water.
I’m glad you remembered.”
Tears well up within me
but they can’t find their way out.
Day breaks in
through the window.
A bucket of gold melting from the sky.
Visitors gather on the sitting room floor in a circle:
the Subramaniams and our other neighbors;
three old students of Paati’s;
Pa’s and Ma’s colleagues;
members of Pa’s extended family.
Chandra arrives with her grandma, parents, and sisters.
I lean my head against Chandra’s shoulder.
Still, I’m unable to weep.
People speak about Paati’s kindness,
her helpfulness, her wonderful cooking,
how brave she was, how unusual a widow for her time,
how her firm faith inspired them.
One of Paati’s old students says,
“She taught us not only in class,
but also by setting us an example
of how to act in our lives.”
Mrs. Subramaniam says,
“Your paati treated everyone so lovingly
I’m sure her soul doesn’t need to be reborn in the world.
She’ll now be united with God.”
Listening to stranger after stranger
speak of Paati with love and admiration,
I begin to understand how Gautami
took comfort in the tales of strangers
after she lost her son.
The strangers’ presence feels warm as a blanket.
But not warm enough
to thaw the sea of unshed tears
frozen inside me.
SWOLLEN
After
Pa leaves with Paati’s body for the cremation ground,
others leave but Chandra stays.
She helps
me and Ma clean the house.
Ma is afraid I’ll slip and hurt myself
but I mop the floor of what is now
just—my—bedroom.
Crawling on hands and knees
I dip a sponge in soapy water,
scrub the tiles, wring it dry.
Chandra’s cheeks glisten.
Wet as the mopped floor.
I’m a soaked sponge.
Swollen with tears.
A TIME
to
DANCE
I mail Govinda and akka a note
to say I won’t be at our dance school
until Paati’s twelve-day mourning period has ended.
A condolence card arrives
signed by akka, Radhika, and Govinda.
Govinda alone also sends a letter.
Dear Veda,
The verse below is from the Bible, not a Hindu text, but
it helped me when my favorite aunt died.
To every thing there is a season,
and a time to every purpose under Heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to reap;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a tim
e to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance . . .
Whenever you feel it’s time to dance again,
I’ll be here, waiting.
Love,
Govinda.
I sleep with Govinda’s letter
under my pillow.
HOLDING ON
For twelve days,
priests light a ceremonial fire in the center of our hall.
For twelve days,
priests guide Pa as he performs Paati’s final rites.
They pray to Shiva, creator of worlds, destroyer of evil.
He is bliss, they say.
From joy were we made,
by joy do we live,
and unto joy
do we return.
Pa mouths the prayers.
I can’t tell if he takes any comfort in them.
The words fall with dull thuds on my ears.
On the thirteenth day, Pa’s family from far away joins us.
We feast together and then they leave and the priests leave.
Pa says, “It’s time we collected all of Paati’s things
to give to the poor.”
But when he comes to my room to take Paati’s trunk away,
I throw myself over it,
shouting, “No!”
Tears burst out of me.
“It’s the custom,” Pa says, gently. “Giving her things
away to charity
is a tradition she’d want us to follow.
It doesn’t mean we’ll forget her.”
An endless stream of tears
pours down my face.
Ma rubs my back.
Pa returns the trunk to its place under Paati’s bed.
But I can’t
stop
sobbing.
VISITATION
A ghost visits me that night.
Not Paati. I’d have welcomed her.
Instead, the lost length of leg beneath my knee
prickles.
An invisible reincarnation
taunting me.
Worse than any ghost story Paati told,
this haunting phantom flesh.
My moans bring Ma and Pa rushing to my bed.
They can’t exorcise my pain.
Not even Paati could.
But I long to feel
her touch.
FIGHTING PHANTOMS
Our doorbell rings. I hear Govinda’s voice.
Before I can pull my leg on,
he’s standing outside my bedroom door,
saying, “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
I feel caught unawares, holding my unnatural limb in my hands,
like a murderer dismembering a corpse.
Pain from my phantom limb
pierces me.
As if a million fire ants are stinging my nonexistent skin.
Govinda runs to my side.
“Veda? What’s wrong? Tell me.”
“My
right foot
hurts.”
Gasps punctuate my words.
I grimace with pain from the ghost neither of us can see.
“Ever had your leg go to sleep?
Go numb for a while and later tingle back to life?
Like that. Only my leg’s amputated.
So it hurts worse.”
Govinda kneels.
“Where’s the pain?” He molds my hand onto his. “Show me.”
I guide his fingers over my ghostly foot.
I watch him
pressing my invisible ankle,
rubbing my invisible instep,
kneading my invisible toes
as though he can sense it as clearly as I can.
My ghost pain fades.
Bizarre.
“Thanks.” I shudder,
feeling like a monster.
A half leg of my own,
an artificial leg that can never feel,
an imaginary leg taunting my brain,
and one normal leg.
“I’m a four-legged beast.
Not a dancer.”
“The divine dancer has four arms,”
Govinda says.
He chants,
“Yatho hasta thatho drishti; Yatho drishti thatho manah;
Yatho manah thatho bhaavah; Yatho bhaavah thatho rasa.”
The hand leads the eyes; the eyes lead the mind;
the mind leads emotional expression;
emotion leads to experience.
No mention of feet
ghostly or real.
Govinda says, “People forget what they see onstage.
They remember only how deeply you touched their feelings.
Akka can dance even if she’s seated the entire time.
The best dancers
can move an audience
without once moving their own feet.”
Govinda flattens my palms, fingers together,
straight except for the thumb;
shaping my hand into Pataaka hasta—my first hand word—
a symbol that can show many things.
He places my palms
together like the two leaves of a closed door.
Turns them gently apart to show the door opening.
Then he links one of his hands with one of mine,
interlocking our thumbs,
forging them into the wings of the divine eagle, Garuda.
Our feet are still. But we’re dancing.
Our fingers flutter.
Our wings flap.
Our divine eagle flies.
Higher and higher.
Glides.
Soars.
THE COLOR
of
MUSIC
Outside the window of akka’s study,
gray clouds smear the sky like ash.
I tell Govinda, “I wish we didn’t cremate our dead.
So I could at least have a grave to visit.
But my pa scattered Paati’s ashes
in the Adayar river, as she wanted.”
Govinda doesn’t give me the usual reply—
that to hold on to someone’s mortal remains
is to dishonor their eternal soul.
Instead he says, “Would you like to go
to where her ashes are, Veda?
The river-mouth is near here.”
Govinda walks me
to the Theosophical society—a green oasis in the city—
along the banks of the Adayar river.
Scattered inside the grounds,
between acres of trees,
are a few old Victorian villas
and several places of worship: a church, a mosque, a synagogue, a Hindu temple.
Govinda and I stand together on the sandy shore
of the Adayar estuary,
where the river that bore Paati’s ashes rushes toward the sea.
I think of a prayer Paati used to say,
that each soul has a different path to reach God
just as each river takes a different course to the one great ocean.
“Maybe Paati’s soul is with God and I can’t sense her presence
because I haven’t figured out what God is,” I tell Govinda.
A light drizzle wets the earth. Raindrops
split sunlight into bands of separate color.
White light—one color containing myriad others—
I understand.
Water—one substance with many forms—I can feel.
God—one yet infinite in form—I can’t understand.
“When I dance,” Govinda says,
“or when I’m in a b
eautiful place,
I feel I’m in the presence of something
large and good.
It doesn’t give me answers. But I don’t need them.
For me that feeling
of wonder, of awe, of mystery,
of being in touch with something larger,
is as close as God comes.”
Wonder. Mystery. Awe.
In touch with something large and good.
The way I felt as a child in the temple of the dancing Shiva,
exploring every crevice of His sculpted feet with my fingertips.
I had no questions then. Only a yearning to learn dance.
I have questions now. But perhaps I don’t need answers.
Like Gautami, who, in the end, didn’t need an explanation
for her son’s death, because she found
experiencing Buddha’s compassion was enough.
Perhaps even God doesn’t know
why some suffer more, some less.
Paati seemed sure what God meant to her.
Maybe, like Govinda, I don’t need to be sure.
Maybe all I need is to feel what I felt as a child. Through dance.
By dancing a different way,
dancing so it strengthens not just my body,
but also helps me find, then soothe, and strengthen, my soul.
CLOSE
Govinda and I arrive at a pond filled with dark pink lotuses.
“This is my temple,” Govinda says.
He sits next to me on the grassy bank.
There’s a space between us, a sliver of air.
He held my waist the day of the party.
Now, with no one else nearby,
with no excuse to touch me, he’s careful and correct.
I love that he’s such a gentleman.
I hate that he’s such a gentleman.
While we sit together, sharing silence,
my impatience slowly falls away.
Music enters my mind,
notes as sweet as I always heard as a child.
A frog hops onto the grass, tha thing gina thom.
In the distance, a woodpecker raps at a tree trunk,
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