The Ever After of Ashwin Rao

by Padma Viswanathan

  We, Indians, have never given them sufficient credit for that.

  As one Canadian parliamentarian put it, with quaintly rough-hewn grammar: “The Hindoos never did one solitary thing for humanity in the past two thousand years and will probably not in the next two thousand.”

  Canada had always courted European immigrants while barring the Brown Peril, exercising Canada’s right to Keep Canada White. In 1914, under newly written (and, because of successful legal challenges, repeatedly rewritten) immigration laws, Canada famously turned a shipload of Indians back at Vancouver harbour. “Hindoo Invasion Repelled!” the headlines hollered, floating on strains of “White Canada Forever!” an anthem sung by mobs ten thousand strong.

  When the emigrés returned to India, they were fired on by the Brits, who feared that this rejection—demonstrating that all British subjects were hardly equal within and throughout the Empire—might have converted some of them to the Ghadars’ cause.

  Which it did.

  Each humiliation grew the Sikhs’ pride. Each galvanized a small subset into quests for purity and self-rule. Each formed a rough link on history’s rattling chains.

  Once upon a time—

  No, be specific.

  Punjab, the Land of Five Rivers, at the dawn of the sixteenth century.

  Better.

  There was a Hindu who was bothered by empty ritual and hierarchy. His name was Nanak. He founded a cult devoted to humility, service, and meditation on the word of God. Its adherents were called Sikhs, which means, I think, only “disciple.” His fame spread; his following grew.

  On his deathbed, Guru Nanak appointed a successor from among his disciples, who begat another guru in the same manner, until this lineage culminated in the Guru Granth: a book composed of centuries of wisdom from the Sikh gurus and from others: devotees, mystics and saints professing Hinduism, Islam, and shades of belief in between. The final guru: a perfect admixture, a true immortal, a book.

  Was there persecution, over these years? There was. Martyrs were made. Sikhs believe in valour. But I recall a young Sikh telling me the story of the ninth guru, who was killed while defending Hindus. “Sikhs are in the world not for Sikhs alone, but for anybody who needs a Sikh,” he said, eyes shining.

  And yet.

  By the time I came back to India, Sikhs were no longer seen as defenders of any interests but their own. “It used to be that if we were riding on a train and saw a Sikh in our carriage, we would feel safer,” my mother told me, in the midst of the riots. “Nowadays if we see one, we feel scared.”

  When I repeated to a Sikh colleague what my mother had said, he grew heartsick. “They are tarring us all with the same brush,” he said. “Khalistan, land of the pure!” Disgusted, he had become tempted to shave his beard and yank off his turban. Others had been convinced, by repeated acts of oppression and discrimination in India, England, Canada, the USA, that self-determination was the only way, but most of them still would not follow the self-appointed guardians of orthodoxy, so the purists were attacking them. The terrorist’s dilemma: acting on behalf of constituencies who cannot be convinced except by their own deaths. Purity: the old lie.

  When I think on the Air India disaster, I hear the chain of history rattle. Its links are loops. Loops have holes. Was the bombing a Canadian or an Indian tragedy? Why pose this false division? Canada was colonized when India was, and their fates were ever linked. There is no expiation. The declaration of any single truth is itself an act of violence.

  Once upon a time—here, I cannot be specific—Hinduism arose, perhaps on the soil south of the Indus; perhaps brought by Northern invaders. Without Hinduism, there would not have been Sikhism. Without India, could there be Empire? Without Empire, could there be radicalizing? Without Canada, could there have been a bomb?

  Once upon a time: poetry, syncretism, mysticism, death.

  Once upon a time: evolution, matter, being.

  Once upon a time: time.

  Night had fallen early beyond my Canadian windows. I had a message on my phone from Seth. Would I tell him what Venkat had told me?

  Don’t you think it’s important that Seth be made aware?

  I’m not sure.

  Maybe you are not sure you are the one to do it.

  I doubt my telling him will do anything but anger me.

  So why lay these links out, in order, as you have?

  You tell me.

  I can. Firstly, for you, my son, thinking is action.

  (No reply. I was thinking.)

  At least insofar as you write down your thoughts.

  This causal chain must frame my book?

  It must.

  New links on the chain are still being forged.

  Yes, that is why.

  And what else?

  Think.

  I had what I needed and now I wanted to leave Lohikarma: I wasn’t ready to see Seth and it would be too hard to avoid him if I stayed. I would perhaps call him from Winnipeg to say I could do nothing for Venkat, promise to return in winter. Would Brinda come home for a winter break? Pang! Excellent word: from the beginning of pain to the beginning of anger, the sound replicates the feeling, of being snapped in the heart. Would I ever see her again? How was she? I thought of her not only because I regularly thought of her, but because I felt now a little of what she might have felt on leaving me: a tenuous, suspicious sense of peace.

  That’s it—that’s the other thing, my son.

  You felt that a little, after my mother died.

  Come now! I always felt it.

  Seth was so like my father—gracious forbearance—how had I not seen it before?

  On my visits with Appa, toward the end of his life, I would go into his room to say good night, and sit beside his bed until he slept, practising for his death, worried he would die awake and alone. He did, anyway.

  And yet. Here I am, old boy, like it or not.

  I crossed to the dining table, opened my computer, and wrote an e-mail to Vijaya, a response to a dull, polite note of inquiry she had written to me months earlier. I was cordial and distant and, without saying so, made it clear that there was nothing to be hoped for between us. I was vague on when I would return to India. I said I hoped she and her children were well, but asked nothing about any of them. I did ask about the cat.

  Did I let myself think about whether I would contact Rosslyn when I got to Ottawa? Likely I did. Think about it, that is.

  I drank a final drink. I slept alone, as always. The next morning, I drove east.

  WINTER 2004/05

  If you want to play this game of love,

  Bring me your head in the palm of your hand.

  —GURU NANAK

  BRINDA DROVE WEST. No one knew she had gone. No one thought to expect her. She drove over frozen Canadian roads, hairpinning up and up then down, up and up then down, through blinding Kootenay snow. She had not expected to drive her car this winter, and her snow tires languished in the storage room of an Edmonton apartment building. She wasn’t seeing the edge of the road so much as intuiting it. If she saw anything, it was the home and future she was abandoning, floating in her mind’s eye. She drove slowly, aware in some dim and peevish way of her vulnerability. Her face was stony; it was wet with tears. She was alone with the sound of her breathing. It was hard to get the radio here, inside the mountains’ cradles.

  A bounding shape coalesced out of the snow, curled horns and shaggy bearing. Brinda heard a whistle, as if from a flute, and swerved. A mountain goat, it must have been, grinning and unaware, caught by the headlights but not in them. If she had swung the lights back, it would have been gone, the teasing snow drawing aside to reveal nothing but darkness and more darkness behind. But she was sliding, now turning the wheel the opposite way, feeling the crunch that was the edge of the road, the rear of the car dipping toward the precipice.

  She put the car in neutral, remembering vaguely some prescription of that sort, though whether it applied in this situation, she didn’t know. Sh
e tapped the brake pedal, then pushed hard. Nothing happened. That was a first. The car was spinning, very slowly, turning her away from where the view would have been. She knew there were mountains hovering out there in the darkness, and in daylight she would have trusted they touched the earth, but she couldn’t see the mountains nor where they touched, and so, for her, all that was behind her was snow falling through space and time without end. She slid toward endless falling, some version of herself endlessly falling.

  Then the back wheels of the car slipped off the road and the nose tipped up: space and time were infinite, but not for her, not tonight. She forehanded the gearshift into drive, depressed the accelerator and rose up out of death’s jaw, braking as soon as the car was horizontal. It didn’t stop her from hitting the cliff walling the other side of the road, but stopped her from hitting it too hard. She reversed very slowly back into her own lane and started, again, to drive.

  A semi-trailer passed her going the other way, a motorhome appeared behind her, and she saw them crossing each other where the ghost of her car might have sat ruminating on the fate it had escaped. Each vehicle had half her ghost-car stuck to its nose; the blood on their bumpers was hers. Exit ghost.

  AT 8 P.M. ON A SNOWY NIGHT in mid-December 2004, the Sethuratnams’ doorbell rang. Lakshmi, on the treadmill in front of the TV, started. She would never answer the door alone at night, however, and only interrupted her exercise under duress, so she did nothing but wait for Seth. Seth was in the bathroom and so expected Lakshmi to go. The doorbell rang again. They met at the door, each looking annoyed as Seth undid the dead bolt and Lakshmi opened the door.

  It was Brinda, whom they weren’t expecting for another ten days.

  “Sweetheart!”

  She endured their embraces, then unzipped her down-filled jacket. Her hair fell in her face as she took off her boots. Even when she straightened, though, she didn’t look her parents in the eye. She hadn’t said anything yet, and didn’t seem overjoyed to have surprised them. She looked strange and had some strange mark on her face, and when Seth took a last look outside before closing the door, he saw that the front of her little Honda was pugged, with one headlight smashed.

  “You drove here in that car?”

  Brinda looked at him, grey and weary. “I had a little accident, a bighorn. It’s fine, I’m not hurt. I need to—I’m leaving Dev.”

  “Oh, oh, oh.” Lakshmi folded their girl into her arms and Brinda’s tears started up. “Of course you need to,” the mother said, and Seth thought, She does?

  It must be something only a mother could see. Lakshmi could be critical of her daughters but her claws came out at the first sign that anyone else might have hurt them. And neither she nor Seth loved Dev.

  But Brinda had never told them anything before this, before saying she was … oh God, it couldn’t be true. What had happened to her? What had happened to her car? What had he failed to protect her from?

  They shuffled to the family room, Lakshmi’s arms still wrapped around her daughter. She gestured at him as he sat. “Seth. Get her a glass of water.” He went.

  “I hadn’t—” Brinda paused, not exactly waiting for her father to return, but not wanting to repeat herself in case she said something he needed to hear. She was herself curious to hear what she would say. She hadn’t known she was certain about leaving Dev until she made her announcement at the door. The idea was six months old and the marriage was in tatters. But still she hadn’t decided. Seth gave her the water, she sipped and tried again, “I wasn’t …” She realized now that she had in fact been certain only since escaping death in dark and snow, since backing away from the mountain, hands up.

  Her mother sat, holding Brinda’s hand and looking down tactfully so that her daughter wouldn’t see in her eyes the distress and anxiety that she was communicating, anyhow, through her fingers. Seth sat on her other side. Brinda felt an ancient surge of impatience—even now, when she needed them, when she was breaking their hearts—impatience with her parents’ love and worry. Prompted by this familiar inner storm, she lied.

  “He’s been seeing someone else for awhile.” She pulled her hand out of Lakshmi’s. She had loved her mother’s hands as a child, soft skin, ridged nails, ropy veins she played with in moments when her mother couldn’t pay attention to her. She wished she could play with them now; she wished her mother were distracted and she were small again. She moved to an armchair, where they couldn’t crowd her.

  “It wasn’t the first time, though it was the first time I threatened to leave him. He came to visit me in Baltimore, but when I got back for Christmas, I could see there’s no way anything’s changing. So yesterday, while he was at work, I jumped in the car and drove.” She waved vaguely toward the great darkness without, began to cry again, and moved back to the sofa, where her mother put her arms around her. They had not left Seth quite enough room, but he perched where he could and put a hand on Brinda’s back.

  She wiped her cheeks hard, felt her parents’ hands warm and heavy on her back and wished she could shrug them away. “I’ll be fine.”

  Rage clawed at Seth as he went to the meditation corner, at one side of the hearth in their family room. He bent to take up his rudraksha mala, his hands shaking. Canada! What ever possessed them to come here? His mother had had it right when she said her greatest regret was letting him emigrate. It opened up the flood, in their family. Now half of his siblings’ children also were located abroad—oh God, what would his brothers and sisters say when they heard?

  He began the concatenation of syllables his God had prescribed for him when they’d met: Jai Shivashakti Jai, Jai Shivashakti Jai, Shiva Shivashakti, Jai Shivashakti, Jai Shivashakti Jai. The prayer was just under his breath, holding up that bridge of air between him and the outside world, barely loud and hard and real enough to drown out the sounds of his wife getting his daughter settled in her old bedroom upstairs.

  His mother had said that once you let your child leave India, you lose him. He comes back every four years, she said, with loving smiles and Cadbury’s chocolate, talking about all he misses, but then he fades away again to eat meat and speak English with white people in cold lands. He promised you he wouldn’t eat meat, he says he isn’t eating it, but you can smell it on him. If you let your child go, she warned the neighbours, you will never know him again and you will lose command of his children and his wife.

  Lakshmi loved it in Canada. Seth had heard her talk about the freedoms she had here: not to participate in the oppression of ritual; not to justify her choices for her children to all the relatives; not to attend every wedding of the season; to dress as she liked; to be alone when she needed. She had contrasted herself with Sita in this regard, whom Venkat had held to specific standards. Seth hadn’t had the strength, apparently.

  Lakshmi had not suffered Seth’s level of anxiety when their daughters came of marriageable age. It wasn’t her dharma at stake. Kanyadanam. He had asked his wife, when the inquiries started to arrive from other parents in their community, from out east, from California, one from India, to talk to Brinda and Ranjani, to ask if they would consider one of their boys—promising young professionals from good families. Seth found them, at least superficially, suitable. But, no. Even though neither girl had any other prospect at that point, they demurred: they had been raised Canadian, they said. They couldn’t agree to a marriage with someone they didn’t know. They could get to know the boy before the marriage, Seth said. What they meant, they said, is that they would have to get to know the boy and then decide whether to marry him; they couldn’t agree to marry him and then get to know him. That, they said, would be too weird.

  Jai Shivashakti Jai, Jai Shivashakti Jai, Shiva Shivashakti, Jai Shivashakti, Jai Shivashakti Jai.

  Being Canadian meant being fussy and then settling after all for second-best. Would Brinda be in this situation now if she had married into one of the families on offer? No, she would have finished her doctorate, gotten a job and had two babies by now. She
would be happy, like everyone else.

  There had always been something a little funny about Dev. Sure, he and Lakshmi had been happy at first: a PhD, Indian. Okay, the mother was uneducated, and Christian—not ideal. The father, not so communicative. Not Tamil. But overall, promising. Seth had been glad to be wrong in not trusting the young to choose for themselves. Now, look.

  And Ranjani. His nostrils flared.

  When she called to tell them she was pregnant, he had been enthusiastic. A baby is never wrong. They always liked Greg. Respectful to Seth and Lakshmi. Good to Ranjani, and good for her. But when Seth had asked when they were going to get married, she had said, “Dad.” Her tone: practised and ungentle. “We’ve been living together for six years. In the eyes of the law, we’re married whether we want to be or not.” And what were he and Lakshmi supposed to say to their friends? Their mothers?

  Lakshmi’s solution: when they announced the pregnancy, they said Ranjani and Greg had married a few years earlier in a civil ceremony without telling anyone, that the young couple didn’t believe in the spectacle and waste of weddings.

  “You’re right that’s one reason I don’t want to get married,” Ranjani retorted, impatience humming up the wires. “Why say I am married at the same time?”

  Lakshmi told her that unless she wanted to explain to each and every one of their friends why she wasn’t married, she should let her parents say what they want.

  Seth hadn’t liked the strategy any better. “Why would anyone get married like that?” Preposterous.

  “Seth! Remember that’s what Brinda’s friend Colleen did? She didn’t want to deal with the family politics, who to invite, this and that. I thought it was a great idea.”

  “Who would do that?” he asked, and Lakshmi threw up her hands.