The Elephants in My Backyard

by Rajiv Surendra

  Now, in Pondicherry, I had a refreshed perspective. As we continued to stand before the stone statue of Ganesha, I finally understood that he was just a point of focus, an ancient means of concentrating on an idea or notion of an energy that ran through the entire universe. This made sense to me. Hinduism was all about consciousness. I looked around me and noticed the locals, dark-skinned Tamils from all walks of life, gathered here to worship. India, filled with such poverty and suffering, was a place where religion was alive and thriving. However unreal, however far-fetched these ideas and concepts might be, it helped these people get through each day, in some way. Their suffering, in the context of their faith, fit into some kind of order, with a reason for its existence, and this simple notion made it that much easier to deal with. I stared up at the elephant-headed god, cozily surrounded by masses of flower garlands. Ganesha, Lord Overcomer of Obstacles. I subtly looked to my right and left—Akash, Nosey, Deepak, and Karthik all had their palms together in prayer, facing the god, but their eyes were closed. I closed my own eyes and sought out the obstacles that I was currently struggling with.

  “Scientists in the West peer through powerful telescopes, looking deep into space in the hopes of learning about the universe, while the Hindu approach couples inspection of the world around us with a self-disciplined inner journey . . .” I recalled, from my handbook on Hinduism. Now I was ready to put it into practice—focusing and looking into the depths of consciousness in my own mind. Know thyself. Inquire. Be free. Hippie talk? Maybe, but all this was being revealed to me at just the right time.

  In that crowded inner chamber, Akash took my hand once again, and walked me even closer to the stone idol of Ganesha. The priest continued to circle the idol with the camphor flame, and then he stepped down from the altar and brought the tray of fire to the worshippers. We were pushed together as people crowded in and reached toward the flame with both palms, quickly making contact with it before touching their fingers to their foreheads. “The fire shows us to God,” Akash whispered as we both reached in, “and we come in contact with it to accept his blessing.” Another priest followed closely behind and marked our foreheads with red Kunkumam powder, a sign that we had received the deity’s blessing, but also a reminder of the “third eye”—the most important means of viewing our external world, through our mind’s eye. Karthik, Nosey, and Deepak were behind us and as they knelt to the ground, I joined them and followed along.

  “Ask for what your heart desires,” Akash said in his lilt, “and all will be granted.” I closed my eyes, and when our heads touched the stone floor, my tears began to flow. As three priests chanted in unison and the ringing bell continued in tempo, I wished for my efforts to prove fruitful, and not be in vain. In that temple, in that small Indian city so far from my home, I was now incredibly comfortable, finally connecting to a part of my identity that had never been fully realized. Here, a world apart from my parents, I felt closer to them than ever before. This was the world they came from, and I had finally become a part of it.

  “You cannot leave India without having Pondicherry ice cream,” Deepak insisted later that evening as the boys and I walked along the seashore, stopping to purchase chocolate and nut-covered bars of deliciousness from a vendor on the boardwalk.

  “You are truly a good person, Rajiv,” Akash exclaimed randomly, in between bites of his pink ice cream bar coated in crushed cashews. Karthik and Deepak made sounds of agreement and nodded with their mouths full. “Not like another boy who once visited us from America,” Akash continued. “He showed us pornographic magazines he had brought with him. Very corrupt fellow, he was.”

  We stopped and posed for pictures together under the huge statue of Mahatma Gandhi. They took me through the old French quarter of town, streets lined with well-kept colonial-looking houses painted in a variety of pastel shades. Ladies had laid out elaborate kolam patterns on the ground in front of their houses, using white rice flour. When I asked questions about culture and customs, my four friends eagerly shared their insights and opinions. I marveled at how mature they were for sixteen-year-olds, but also how naive they were about things that seemed inherent to teenage culture back home—clothing, music trends, and sex. When the conversation turned to the rampant corruption that plagued politics in India, Deepak piped up, “Raaajeeve, we have a saying in India: even a dead man would open his mouth for a rupee!”

  The Dudes of Petit gave me a glimpse into what my life might have been like had my parents not immigrated to Canada. My lonely dinners at the hotel restaurant were soon replaced by home-cooked ones at the boys’ houses. It started with dinner at Deepak’s, but once the word got out that I had visited one boy’s house, the invitations aggressively poured in from all the other boys’ parents and I was made to promise that I’d make time to join them for a meal. These boys meant so much to me, and I wanted to do whatever I could to show my gratitude and contribute to our budding friendships. But I also saw this as a valuable research opportunity—a true grime and grit exposure into the kitchen cupboards of Pondicherry.

  In every home, I was treated with an overwhelming amount of hospitality—the food overflowed from my plate and I was constantly asked if I wanted anything else to eat or drink. At Karthik’s house, I relished the new experience of sitting on the floor and eating our rice and curries directly off of banana leaves laid on the ground (in the place of plates)—as Ma and my dad had often described as being uber-traditional. I made sure my left hand was securely tucked into my lap, far away from my food.

  I had one shirt that was my go-to article of clothing for these visiting dinners and special occasions in India. It was a white linen button-up dress shirt with short sleeves that I had bought just before leaving Toronto—I was in H&M and was impressed with how thin the shirt was, but also that it had a subtle white-on-white plaid pattern woven into the cloth. The shirt was too scandalous to wear on its own (nipples visible) so I bought a thick, white tank top that would go underneath. I’d hand-wash the shirt back at the hotel after each outing.

  I spoke Tamil, to the best of my ability, to Deepak and Karthik’s parents. Akash’s father (a lawyer) was eager to practice his English.

  I became versed in local social etiquette, buying garlands from the flower ladies on the side of the road and offering them to the boys’ mothers. The “aunties” (as I addressed them) would accept my gift with both hands, close their eyes, and reverently touch the garland to their forehead before hanging it on a statue of a Hindu god in their home altars.

  Once, at Deepak’s house (where I learned he was a mama’s boy—she’d lovingly call him “Deepuuuuu,” which the dudes and I used to heckle him with), his mother was attempting to apply henna onto his younger sister’s hand. The two were seated on the front stoop of their house, where the early evening light was its brightest, and I noticed the mother doing a terrible job, making noises of frustration between her teeth as she continued to struggle with a plastic cone of henna paste. I offered to take over. The two of them looked up at me, bewildered. She handed the henna cone to me somewhat hesitantly, perhaps feeling obliged to accommodate the request of her guest.

  What she didn’t know was that I had a knack for applying henna designs. It began as a fluke when I was about twelve and a Muslim friend of mine in elementary school, Syed, noticed me carefully piping out paint onto a canvas in art class. He asked me whether I might go to his house that evening and do henna on his sister’s hands for the festival of Eid, and after warning him that I had never done it before, I consented to taking a shot.

  His twenty-year-old sister rolled a sheet of plastic into a tight cone, filled it with henna paste, and then carefully cut a tiny hole at the tip. She handed me a pattern book full of traditional designs to refer to, and told me to relax and have fun. Three hours later, I had her hands and feet covered in leaves, flowers, and paisleys. When the henna design started drying, she gently moistened it with a cotton ball soaked in a viscous mixture of lemon juice and sugar, and then held her
palms over the warm smoke created from cloves heated in a cast-iron skillet on the stove—all part of the process that would help darken the henna stain, she said, which would be revealed the following morning, when she flaked off the henna paste after a night of allowing it to soak in.

  Syed’s short and stout mother pulled her headscarf tight to her head and casually handed me a crisp hundred-dollar bill on my way out, and my jaw hit the floor. I saw a business opportunity here, and after honing my skills on my sisters’ hands for weddings and religious functions, word of my skills spread around the local Muslim and Hindu communities. I eventually began making quite a bit of money from my little henna business.

  Deepak’s mom covered her mouth in awe when she returned to the room a while later and her daughter’s hands were covered with traditional intricate filigree designs. The dudes were flabbergasted as well and I was proud that I possessed an obscure skill that was rooted in their native traditions.

  The most vital elements of what I needed to learn from the boys were relayed to me without them even knowing it. It was how they addressed their parents and how they truly listened to each other, quietly, intently. Their very way of being. They had so little, but seemed so grateful for what they did have. I guess the same could be said for most of the people I met in India. I would leave a ten-rupee note (thirty American cents) as a tip for the waiter at my hotel restaurant (an older man, sixty or seventy). Ten rupees was probably an entire day’s wages for him, and he would always open the billfold, pick up the note, and touch it to his closed eyes—the common gesture that signified he was thanking God, even though I was the one actually tipping him. But I was coming to understand that God, to him, was really the force of the universe, an infinite series of intricately connected events that somehow brought this ten-rupee note to him, and he was acknowledging and appreciating this. That appreciation was probably a reason why the locals smiled frequently—and their smiles seemed warm and genuine. It gave me pause to wonder why it was rare to see such smiles on the faces of North Americans on a regular basis. In India, one’s spiritual life and social interactions were held in great esteem; relationships were valued here.

  One of the things I was repeatedly asked, by people like Father Antonisamy’s servant, Akash and Deepak’s parents and siblings—even the flower ladies—was that I “remember them” after we parted ways. It wasn’t just a salutation, the casual and empty “take care” that we use in the West. They looked me in the eyes and made this request with such earnestness that I wondered why it was so important to them. Maybe because to many of these people, their memories were all they had, so they cultivated them, collected them, knowing that they could look back and relive the small moments in their lives that brought them joy. Maybe the material obsessions we were after in the West were what plagued our minds with stress, fear, and feelings of emptiness that left us constantly dissatisfied with our lives and always wanting more than we had—bigger, better, faster, and flashier. More gigabytes for our handheld nooses.

  The boys were some of the most honest, genuine friends I ever had. They made me see a new side to my own motivations, and I began to ask myself why exactly it was so important to me to land this part, fame and fortune aside; why was there this desperate need, a quenching thirst inside of me, to be a part of this film? The boys had no grandiose dreams of becoming movie stars or super heroes; they would romantically talk of changing the face of India. I guess landing the role of Pi was a challenge that I felt would push me to become the best possible version of myself. I remember sitting with Akash one afternoon, recording his voice as he read aloud from my battered copy of Life of Pi, capturing his accent while he spoke the very words that I might eventually be auditioning with. It was astonishingly clear that this was the realest version of Pi. These boys inherently possessed the qualities of dedication, discipline, innocence, and good nature that the role would demand. I looked to them and saw a potential reflection of myself that was hauntingly beautiful. No six-pack or bulging triceps. No sex lines. It was all on the inside.

  From: yann_martel1963@yahoo.com

  To: rajivsca@yahoo.ca

  Subject: RE: Updates

  Date: Sat, 09 Apr 2005 02:17:34

  That’s right, Rajiv; Night has dropped out. He was stuck artistically, I think; he just didn’t know how to do it. And he wanted Pi in his filing cabinet, to be pulled out when he wanted. But Fox didn’t want to wait.

  It seems now that indeed it will be Alfonso Cuarón (Y Tu Mamá También and the latest Harry Potter) who will be coming up to bat. It will be his next movie, after the one he’s working on now, based on a PD James book.

  Don’t know when production would start. Perhaps sometime in 2006, but I don’t know. But everything is still tentative, as is everything in Hollywood.

  Greetings from Panama.

  Yann

  6.

  MA HAS AN OLD LEATHER-BOUND photo album from her childhood filled with flaking sepia photographs of life in Ceylon during the forties, fifties, and sixties. The pictures feature a repeating detail—strands of white jasmine garlands hang from the thick, black braids or tight, round buns of hair on Ma, my grandmother, and other female relatives.

  One tiny jasmine flower bud, freshly opened, measuring only a half inch wide, has the ability to perfume an entire room by subtly pulsating the air with a fragrance that is soft but also piercingly sweet. The closed buds are even more fragrant than the open flowers, and a short strand of jasmine garland is made up of hundreds of tiny buds. Their unique scent, unlike any other flower, marked my time in Pondicherry.

  “Four feet, ten rupees!” the flower ladies in Pondicherry would call out in Tamil, soliciting their wares from the edge of the sidewalk where they were seated. Every morning, as I walked to Petit Séminaire, I watched with wonder as women and young girls made their daily flower purchase and then, right there on the sidewalk, lifted the garlands to the backs of their heads and methodically clipped them into place. I was drawn into what seemed like a private moment, displayed in public. These women walked around all day with their hair garlands and there was something wonderful about seeing them withered and wilted at the end of the day.

  I started my own little tradition of buying a length of jasmine garland on the weekends, when Father Antonisamy would drive one of the school’s cars and take me on day trips to see the rural areas that surrounded Pondicherry. My Tamil was getting better by the day and I could hold my own while conversing with the flower ladies. Father Antonisamy continued to speak to me in English, since it was one of the few opportunities he had to use the language. He’d pull up in front of the hotel in a white Maruti Suzuki; I’d hop in and hang the garland from the rearview mirror, and we’d be off. The garland would sway from side to side as the car bumbled along the narrow red-dirt roads that took us outside the city.

  Father Antonisamy explained the flower’s significance in Indian culture, “Jasmine garlands are a symbol of auspiciousness and prosperity here, but superstitions aside, the scent is known to release chemicals in the brain, feel-good chemicals.” I knew exactly what he meant; the smell from these garlands was almost hypnotic.

  Botany, plants, and nature were a passion of Father Antonisamy’s. During our drives, he would pull the car off the road when he spotted breathtaking banyans or gigantic tamarind trees bearing fruit. He’d deftly pick a few of the ripe, cocoa-colored, beanlike pods and offer me a taste of the sweet and sour fruit, pulpy and unappealing in its appearance but distinctly unique in its flavor, refreshing as a snack on these hot afternoon adventures. Ma used tamarind in coconut chutney, eggplant curry, and various other Tamil dishes, but I grew up seeing it only in packaged form—an unappealing block of brown, taffylike paste compressed together and wrapped in clear plastic.

  Once, Father Antonisamy pulled me out of class on a particularly boring afternoon of physics and calculus to take me to the botanical gardens at the center of town.

  “I have been waiting for the most opportune time to bring yo
u here,” Father Antoisamy said as he walked me through the gates of the gardens, a large neoclassical archway with the French words “Jardin Botanique” spelled out on a sign. In Life of Pi, the botanical gardens were where the family had set up the Pondicherry Zoo—it was where Pi lived. I had told Father Antonisamy that it was one of the places in Pondicherry that I wanted to become more familiar with.

  “Take your time, and do not feel rushed,” he offered, “I have cleared the entire afternoon for us to look around at our leisure.”

  The gardens weren’t full of the spectacle and mystique of the Hindu temple, nor were they home to exotic animals like the Toronto Zoo, but walking through this unassuming grouping of trees, shrubs, flowers, and open lawns covered in patchy, yellowy grass warmed my heart. Yann Martel’s imagination had taken this place and transformed it vividly into Pi’s world. As we strolled along the wide pathways, paved with dry, red Indian clay, under gigantic boughs of pink, purple, and orange bougainvilleas in full bloom, I sunk into my own imagination a bit, envisioning myself as Pi, living on those grounds. If this were my home, my own garden . . . I wondered.

  Immensely tall palm trees lined the avenues and offered us shade as Father Antoisamy pointed out plants, monuments, and statues that were of notable interest. He had rummaged through his files and found a thirty-year-old, yellowed brochure that was handed out in the garden’s heyday, and somehow knew that I’d appreciate the nerdy details.