So you’ll have more time to study.”
But my words
don’t work the way I want.
Govinda nods. Says softly, “It’s probably good
for you to work on your own for a while.
We’ll still find ways to meet.
I promise.”
I shrug
as though
I don’t care
if we see each other again.
Because I feel
like a heap of discarded clothing.
RED DOT
That night, I crawl to Paati’s trunk
and I take one of her saris back to bed with me.
Paati was soft—soft as her sari.
Yet also strong.
Govinda’s softness I love,
but his caving in to his parents I don’t even like.
His need to please them seems stronger
than his need—for dance and me—both.
Unable to sleep, I twist and untwist the fabric.
My phantom comes alive.
Beneath my right knee,
nails scratch at invisible skin.
I bite down. Sweat beads on my lips.
I bolt upright and grip my residual limb.
This is all I have.
My pain is an illusion.
I will not give in.
A beam of moonlight gleams through the bronze circle of flame
in which my Shiva dances.
Shiva, I pray,
open my third eye.
Help me sense the truth
and drive away this unreal pain.
Open my third eye.
Show me your light.
And let me see
Govinda’s feelings for me
and mine for him
clearly.
I press on the spot between my brows.
Desperate.
My forehead wet with sweat.
Concentrate.
Reality is the pressure between my eyebrows.
Next morning, I see a red dot
bored into the skin at the center of my forehead
by my fingernail.
HAUNTED
Chandra knows right away something’s wrong
when we meet for lunch at school.
“What’s the matter, Veda? Someone say something?
Need me to punch the terrible twins?”
“Govinda said he liked me
but I messed it all up, Chandra.
Acted like I didn’t care
if we never met again.”
“So call him and apologize.
It’s as easy as that,” Chandra says.
“But it—scares me
how Govinda gives in to his parents.
What if Govinda and I get together
and his parents don’t like me?
Will
he give me up, too,
like that rich boy who dumped your sister?”
“Not every rich boy is an invertebrate like my sister’s ex.
And look at your ma. She married your pa
though her family said no.”
“My ma admitted she still misses her family.
It takes a lot of strength to do what she did.”
My voice shakes. “Chandra, I don’t know what to do.
I miss him. I’m so confused.”
“You’ll work it out,” Chandra says.
I’m not sure if she means
Govinda and I will work things out together
or if she means
I’ll work him out of my system.
OFFERING THANKS
I’m practicing on my own at home
trying not to think how much I miss Govinda,
when our doorbell rings.
I’m surprised to find our neighbors
Mrs. Subramaniam and her daughter
standing on the landing.
“We have something for you,” Shobana says.
“For me?”
All these years the Subramaniams lived below us,
I never once thought of getting anything
for them.
“After your accident, we prayed for your recovery,”
Mrs. Subramaniam says.
“We saw you onstage again,
at the performance about Buddha’s life.
So we went to the temple and offered thanks.”
Shobana gives me a package of blessed food
and a packet of vermillion powder.
“Here is some prasadam from the temple.
And some kumkumam.”
“Thank you.”
How do I apologize
for being so involved with my own dance
that I never found time to talk with them?
Shobana waves her hand at me
as though waving away my thanks.
She and her mother disappear down the stairs.
Guilt makes
the packets they gave me
feel heavier than rocks.
FINDING
MY WAY
Every time the phone rings, I hope it’s Govinda.
It never is.
Every time I enter dance school,
my eyes search for some sign of him.
He’s nowhere to be seen.
So I find Radhika,
and ask her to come to the concert with me and Chandra.
Radhika tucks an arm through mine and she
tugs me toward the empty stage under the banyan tree.
“Veda? I’ve known Govinda all my life.
He’s crazy about you.”
“He doesn’t act like he cares, Radhika.
I asked him out to the concert
and he turned me down.
He hasn’t called since.
Has he given up dance altogether? Is he avoiding me?”
I cross my arms over my chest
like that will help me
hold myself together.
Radhika gives me a quick hug.
“Veda, I think it was good for Govinda that you two fought.
He’s sorting out his life right now.
I can’t tell you a whole lot—but, yes,
he’s in touch with akka still.
He’s not given up dance altogether.
And trust me—he really likes you.
So if you like him, too, you’ll surely get back together.
Wait and see.”
A GIFT
The smell of semolina and cardamom and melting butter
surprises me when I return home.
Ma is back early, making hot sojji
like Paati used to.
“Thanks, Ma.”
My voice falters.
The spicy-sweet scent
makes me miss Paati.
“Not as good as your grandmother’s.”
Ma piles some on a plate.
I taste a spoonful.
“Different.
But also very good.”
Ma gazes at the steam
rising from the cooling mass of semolina.
“I wish your pa and I had been able to work less.
Spend more time with Paati and you.
Your paati was a pillar at the center of our household.
I never saw her death coming.
I let her do too much.
I never saw her age.”
“She wouldn’t acknowledge her age either,” I say.
“She never enjoyed people fussing over her.
She would have hated it if you’d tried to make her rest.
She wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.”
Ma’s eyes are tearful
but she smiles as if I’ve given her a gift.
SHARING
Ma’s made so much sojji there’s a huge mound left.
I decide to take some to our neighbors downstairs.
Ringing their doorbell
—after ignoring them all my life—
feels strange.
But Mrs. Subramaniam
welcomes me in
with nothing but friendliness in her tone.
Mr. Subramaniam says, “So nice you’re here, Veda.”
And Shobana’s eyes light up.
In one corner of the room, inside a glass-fronted cupboard,
I see a beautiful old veena, its seven strings
glinting as though someone just oiled them.
“Do you play the veena?” I ask Shobana.
“Yes, want to listen?” Shobana unrolls a straw mat,
places her veena on the ground,
and sits cross-legged in front of it, caressing the strings.
She loves music as I love dance.
“Shobana, perhaps you can practice what you plan to play
for the boy’s family this weekend,” her mother suggests.
She tells me a nice boy
is coming with his family to “see” Shobana
to decide whether she’s a good match,
in as old-fashioned a way as in Paati’s day.
Even Chandra’s family, though traditional enough
to set up a meeting for her sister with a boy they approve of,
will at least give the couple
the freedom to meet alone for some time
and choose whether to marry.
I glance at Shobana’s face.
I don’t know her enough to tell if she’s upset.
From her veena’s strings, she plucks
the pensive notes of a sad but hopeful key:
Raagam Hamsaanandi.
Listening to the mood of her music shivering in the room,
I pray that Shobana’s husband will be a good, kind man.
And that he’ll share her love of music.
SILENCE
SOUNDS
Roshan prances from the classroom, the last child to leave.
As I follow him out, I hear
Govinda say,
“How are you, Veda? How is everything?”
He looks more beautiful
and sounds more caring than ever.
I feel like I’ve stepped into a strong current of water,
pulling me toward him.
I wonder if Govinda was teased about dance, too.
He probably had to learn to stand up to other boys,
just as Roshan must.
Govinda must have a strength
I never recognized.
I want to voice my thoughts but they stay trapped in my mind.
Chained feet that can’t escape.
We fall into that unhappy place
where words are snatched away
and silence feels loud.
“See you later?”
Govinda leaves me
wishing I’d said, “Let’s meet.
Soon.”
FROM DANCER
to
DANCE
Radhika and Chandra come with me
to the evening of “transcendental dance”
for which Dhanam akka’s given us tickets
in the very front row.
On an open-air stage,
I see a dancer—a very old woman.
She wears long, loose, saffron-colored robes. No jewelry.
White locks wave wildly all about her face.
Her eyes look
at us
at me
at something beyond.
I see nothing but the darkness of the evening.
She sings, “What Your name is, I do not know or care.
Because I feel You everywhere I dance.”
Her notes rise into the air.
She follows her voice with her body,
turning slowly, her arms outstretched like beams of light
reaching upward from the earth.
Her palms carve a staircase into the sky.
I watch her skirts swirling around her ankles,
her hair flying around her face,
whirling faster than the rest of her.
She is the edge of a spinning circle.
She is the stillness at its center.
She is light as a petal rising in a spiraling breeze.
She is a petal dissolving into flower-dust.
Disappearing.
On the stage,
there is no dancer.
There is
only dance.
MY WAY TO PRAY
At home, bowing to my dancing Shiva,
I say silently
the words of the prayer Govinda taught me.
My hands are lips.
My body is voice.
As I shape the words
“the entire universe is His body”
an invisible hand flicks on the switch I’ve been fumbling with.
In my mind’s eye, I see my students.
See the strength, the weakness, the curve of each back,
the slope of each shoulder.
Elbows with a natural bend.
Upper bodies that jut out too far forward
as though they’re trying to race ahead of the feet.
No body perfect.
No two children the same size or shape.
But every dancing child a manifestation
of Shiva in human form.
LETTING GO
The morning of my birthday,
I ask Pa to come to the temple with me,
where I’ve gone with Paati every birthday morning
before this one.
In the vacant lot where the beggar lived,
I see a scrawny boy dressed in a filthy T-shirt.
He tears a thin roti in half,
holds the bread out
to feed a stray dog.
“Pa,” I say, “I don’t need to go to the temple.
I want to give something to that child.”
Pa looks at the boy sharing his meager meal.
At home Pa helps me pack a bag
with chappatis, mangoes, bananas.
From under her bed,
I take out Paati’s trunk,
still full with all her things.
We give the food and the trunk to the scrawny child.
“Shiva,” I say. “This is for you.”
The child looks puzzled.
“My name isn’t Shiva, but thanks for the food.”
He opens the trunk and nuzzles his cheek against a sari.
“I can use this as a sheet,” he says.
Above, I see a silver-gray cloud—
the same shade as Paati’s hair.
I let her image go.
And I watch the cloud drift
like incense smoke
rising up
high.
LETTERS
and
WORDS
Waiting at home are two envelopes addressed to me.
One is in Govinda’s slanted handwriting.
Inside it, I find three sketches:
the first of the lotus pond where we sat together,
the second
of two hands shaping the symbol for an eagle in flight,
the third of a boy and a girl flying a kite.
He writes:
Dear Veda,
Happy birthday.
Love,
Govinda.
My feelings leap and plunge like waves.
/> Plunge because his message is so short.
Leap because he remembered
and cared enough
to draw scenes of the times
our togetherness felt magical.
Stroking his signature, I reread it twice.
He called me dear. He signed love.
Does he call everyone “dear”?
Always sign with “love”?
I pluck up my courage and write Govinda a note.
Dear Govinda,
Thanks for the birthday wishes.
Let’s talk sometime?
Maybe we can meet at the stage beneath the banyan tree after my class, some evening when you can take a break from studies?
Love,
Veda
I read my note aloud to test
whether it’s enough or too little or too much.
Trying to stop worrying what Govinda will think of it,
I drop it in the mailbox.
The other card is from my old rival, Kamini.
“Veda, Many happy returns of the day, Kamini.”
Kamini, whom I’ve almost forgotten,
remembers my birthday.
Kamini, whom I’ve hardly thought of,
thinks of me.
She wishes me well even though the last time we met
I was rude and left her crying
in the middle of the road.
Looking at her card, I feel self-centered.
Childish.
Anything but a year older.
I start writing Kamini a letter.
Crumple the paper, toss it away.
Look at her address, scrawled on the envelope.
Sometime after my birthday,
I’ll go to her home and tell her I’m sorry.
CRESCENT SMOOTH
Pa and Ma have invited Radhika and Chandra over
in the evening for a not-so-surprise
birthday party.
Pa’s bought a cake and decorated the front room.
A Time to Dance Page 14