Jason swallowed hard and took a breath before speaking. “Wow.”
“You like it?” Rachel said, her whole face brightening as she popped up in her seat. “I thought the bit about him dying was too much, but it seemed to fit. Usually I have him lose a leg in Manitoba but the eye was a nice touch.”
Jason felt his face redden. “You made it all up?”
“Always tell people what they want to hear. It makes them happy and it doesn’t cost you a thing.”
“So there was no grandfather, no dying request?” His voice matched his waving hands, rising and dropping as he spoke.
“Of course there was a grandfather, silly. He sold insurance. Lives in Florida now. He likes my trains, at least I think he does, but he thinks I’m kind of weird.” She looked at him and smiled. “Close your mouth before a fly lands in there.”
“You…but…why….”
“Why would I lie? Because the truth is never as interesting. Oh come on,” she said, giving his arm a playful punch, “like you never made up a story when you were flirting with someone you liked.”
He drew in a breath to answer and held it, wondering what she had meant.
“Other than the Freudian ‘trains into tunnels’ thing,” she said as she stood up, “I just think they’re neat. Now I’m going to see if they’ll let me do something stupid and climb up to the engine. I’d ask you to come along but I’m sure there’s a rule against it.”
***
Jason tied the grimy curtains together and wedged the knot under the top horizontal bar of the window. The side doors were propped open and the hot, dry air of the Rajasthani plains blew in, providing the sun-baked car with an illusion of relief. Although more passengers had boarded the train at the small stations along the route, the car was quiet, the mid-day heat and the gentle rocking of the train lulling the riders into a lethargic doze.
With variations on the theme, the view from the window remained the same. A line of hills was visible on the horizon, indicating where the flat farmland came to an end, and towns too small to earn a stop blurred by in seconds. Despite the heat and the dust, neat, green rows of some hearty crop ran away from the tracks, the mile-long fields separated by dirt roads or pump-fed irrigation ditches. Shacks appeared at unpredictable intervals, thrown up by the side of the tracks or plopped down in the middle of the field, not large enough to store a motorcycle, yet Jason knew they probably served as homes for the army of workers that dotted the landscape.
The few men he saw stood stork-like, with a bare foot propped against a bony knee, arms pulled tight across their chests as they leaned on homemade walking sticks. They watched as teams of women attacked the arid soil with pointed sticks or loaded the unknown harvest into the back of an ox-drawn cart, the tall wooden wheels replaced with bald truck tires. Some men chatted on cell phones and a few slept in the shade the rare tree provided, but most were content to just watch.
While the men wore an assortment of tattered slacks, tee shirts, jeans, and white cotton dhotis, the women all wore saris, the neon-bright colors and festive patterns shining through the dirt and sweat. Under their saris the women wore tight half-shirts that covered their shoulders and upper arms but left their stomachs bare.
Ancient women—one bracelet-covered arm balancing a heaping basket of dirt, the other drawing the end of the sari to veil a leathery face—snaked through the fields, the men pointing with their chins where each load should be dumped. Jason wondered if the saris they wore were the gift of a dutiful, stork-standing son.
Although no one seemed to have a problem staring at him, he felt uncomfortable studying the saris of the women who walked down the aisle of the train. At the station in Jaipur he had smiled when one girl, looking up suddenly, caught him admiring her form-fitting yellow sari. The girl’s eyes widened in horror and, covering her face, she ducked into the crowd.
From what he could tell from his sidelong glances, the sari was wrapped around the waist, somehow creating a row of pleats in the process. The older the woman the higher up the waist the sari was wrapped, with girls in their twenties daring the sari in place on their hips. It took him an hour to notice that there were different ways of wearing the final length of fabric. The fashion conscious preferred a style that swung up from the left hip, across the chest and over the right shoulder, with the most elaborately decorated section of the sari hanging below the waist. The old women on the train—and everyone he saw in the field—passed the final yards of fabric around their backs and over their left shoulders, pulling a portion up onto their heads to serve as a veil, a toss of the fabric separating the trendy from the traditional.
Vidya had never worn a sari, happiest in tight jeans and midriff-bearing tops, a look that matched her attitude.
He thought about the sari balled up in the bottom of his backpack and the friend who asked him to hold on to it, the friend he thought he knew.
Attar had made it clear that he believed Sriram had cheated him and his former classmates out of a fortune, his sudden move to the States evidence of his crime. And even if the program was as “academic” as Ravi had claimed, Sriram had still betrayed his friends for a chance to make it rich. Attar’s faith—or whatever this Krishnamurti thing was—helped him, to a degree, move past the betrayal, to focus on today and forget about yesterday’s lost millions, something Jason was sure few others would do. And he wasn’t sure he could blame them.
Jason thought back to the dinners at the Sundarams’ and how little Sriram had discussed his job. He loved to ramble on about the role of computers in society and the philosophy behind artificial intelligence and self-writing programs, but when it came down to what he did each day, Sriram had said little. If he was to believe Sheriff Neville and the reports in The Leader, there were a lot of things Sriram didn’t share. Jason knew that his feelings towards his friend were shifting, that he was beginning to accept that Sriram had sold out his partners for thirty pieces of silver and a pair of green cards, but he still couldn’t imagine Sriram murdering Vidya and then shooting himself. With the more he learned about Sriram he wondered if that, too, would start to shift. Maybe they weren’t as happy as he thought, maybe there were passions he never imagined burning behind the smiling mask. He didn’t know what went on when they shut their door.
And he still didn’t know where to find Sriram’s mother or what he would say when he handed her the gold-embroidered, blood-red sari.
A sari with a pattern he knew he had seen somewhere before.
A pattern that Rachel seemed to recognize as well, as she had folded the makeshift blanket early that morning.
Chapter Nine
With his spiral-bound notebook atop his carryall, M.V. Dharmadeep, Ph.D., rushed his hand along the page, documenting the conversation before it slipped from his memory. His penmanship was neat and tight and, although the train rocked heavily on this stretch of track, the notes on this page were as precise as those he had written yesterday in his university office, a skill acquired from decades of travel on India Railways.
When he had finished he reread his notes, placing a small star by the most salient passages. It was, as his students were wont to say, good stuff. Of course there was no place for anecdotal evidence in his monograph, but the interview was filled with the kind of trivial quotes that the general public lapped up, too undisciplined to understand that the truth was to be found not in the individual, but rather in the statistical collective. The kind of quotes that would help fill out that fluff piece he was ghostwriting for The Express.
He had spotted the couple before they had boarded the train, the man tall and proportionally built, his wife shorter, that silly cap making her look like the sport-mad co-eds he had seen around the university. She was attractive, yes, but her beauty was hidden by her slovenly appearance. He had planned to speak to them as soon as the train was underway, but, in typical liberated, western-feminist fashion, the woman was wandering about the train on her own, eventually opening one of the car’s side doors to s
tand in the doorway for all the world to see. It wasn’t till some time after noon that she settled back in her seat, and he had used that opportunity to introduce himself and conduct his research. He flipped back to the first page of his notes and read them through a third time.
Question: Is your marriage an arranged marriage or a love marriage?
Answer: (wife) It was definitely a love marriage. More like a love at first sight marriage.
Dr. Dharmadeep shook his head as he reread the line. They had seemed like such a nice couple.
He had been quite up front with them, explaining that he was the chair of the sociology department at the university in New Delhi, his specialization the statistical analysis of marital systems, specifically the inherent instability of love marriages, and yet, without hesitation, the wife proudly declared theirs to have been the worst kind of love marriage possible. His files were chock full of data that foretold the sad and predictable end of their relationship. A sixty-seven point nine two percent failure rate for love marriages in general, even higher when their youth and their self-described “love at first sight” foundation were factored in.
Question: Did you ask your mother for her assistance in finding a husband?
Answer: (wife) You’re kidding, right?
Each semester, Dr. Dharmadeep found himself having to defend the institution of arranged marriage, the students too easily seduced by the west’s deceptive liberalism. They would bring up the same threadbare arguments—free-will, independence, human rights—the brighter among them quoting Shakespeare and that Friedan woman, the others spouting pop-culture clichés, some finding a way to twist Gandhi around to their side. But it made no difference. He had the statistical proof to dismantle each argument, the weight of tradition and common sense on his side. And, despite what they said in class, when the time came for marriage, ninety-five percent of his students would rely on their families to make the arrangements.
Question: Did you ask your father’s permission to marry?
Answer: (husband) You mean ask her father?
Note—question was rephrased and repeated.
Answer: (laughing) My father would be shocked to hear I was married.
Marriage is not a union of two individuals, he would lecture his students, but rather a union of two entire families. Who loves you more than your family, who knows you better than the people who raised you? Finding a perfect match for one’s child is the single most important task a parent must face. The process is not entered into lightly, the selection not the result of some chance encounter, some drunken meeting at a discothèque. An arranged marriage is a true marriage of love—the pure love of a parent for an offspring. This is why, he liked to point out, India enjoys a divorce rate of less than two percent, noting that that number included all the Indians living in the west, implying skewed results.
Question: How long have you been married?
Answer: (husband did not know and deferred to wife) Eighteen months.
Question: How does it feel to know that, statistically, your marriage has less than one year before it fails?
Answer: (husband—surprised) It seems like we just got married yesterday.
What was this obsession with love in a marriage? He had spent a lifetime studying marriage and was no closer to understanding why, from culture to culture, people assumed that love was the sign of a “successful” marriage. No one spoke of responsibility or obligation, a few mentioned respect but seemed to equate the word with equality. His parents had raised nine children—nine—and he never heard the word used. And hadn’t he himself been married for thirty years now, raising two sons, both engineers, and a daughter, happily married to a barrister, all without once telling his wife he loved her?
Although it was too late for them, he had taken a half hour to explain the superiority of the arranged marriage system, the husband interrupting with objections, the wife telling him to be quiet, her feminine nature sensing the truth.
The chai vendor made his way through the car and Dr. Dharmadeep waved him over with a five-rupee note. He sipped the steaming tea as the boy fished in his pockets for change, recalling the intent look in the young woman’s eyes as she absorbed everything he said, nodding as she realized the logic of his arguments. In a way he felt sorry for her, forced by her culture into a marriage that she now saw for what it was—convenience and hormones, an exercise in myth-driven egocentrism.
Maybe there was hope after all, he thought as he read over the last page of his notes. Not for her, of course but for her children or her grandchildren. He put a large star next to the woman’s final comment. He would use it in the article, a western woman admitting that arranged marriages were indeed best.
It was exactly what he had wanted to hear.
***
“Hold on to this and don’t run off,” Rachel said, holding her backpack out by one of its straps. “I want to get a shot of this train coming into the station.”
“Won’t it look just like the last train?” Jason asked, surprised at the heavy weight of her bag, wondering what she could be hauling around India.
“It’s an express,” she said, pointing at the fast approaching headlight down the tracks. “It doesn’t stop. I want to get an action shot.” She turned and he watched her as she walked down the platform, her low-slung khakis and her short shirt framing every move of her tight hips, the tattoo peeking over her waistband. He wondered if she knew what a great shot she was missing.
Their train from Delhi had stopped just long enough for them to climb off, pulling out of the station five minutes later and right on schedule, taking with it the bustle its arrival had caused. The few passengers who had gotten off had dragged their luggage through the turnstile and out into the late afternoon sun of Ahmadabad, leaving only transfer passengers and railway employees on the platform. The chai vendors had stopped shouting, the red-jacketed porters had slid back down against the station wall, and the shoeshine boys, spotting Jason’s Nikes, had wandered off in search of more fashionable prospects. Down the platform Rachel was adjusting her camera, attracting the attention of a mangy puppy that sniffed at her feet. Other than the distant sounds of a hectic city, it was quiet and he was glad for the few seconds alone. He didn’t notice the man behind him until he spoke.
“Mr. Jason Talley?” the high-pitched voice said, cracking.
Jason sighed and closed his eyes, fighting the urge to ignore yet another Indian welcome his email message had caused. He forced on a smile and turned to meet his new friend. “Yes, I’m Jason Talley.”
The knife was a blur in the man’s hand as it swung up at his neck and Jason’s back arched as his reflexes took control. The tip of the knife clipped his chin, splattering his attacker’s shirt with bright red spots, the man shouting in Hindi as his arm swept past, paused, and came back again. Jason stumbled, his feet tangled in backpack straps, watching as his left arm shot up to block the blade. He saw the knife slow as it cut through his forearm, the blade pulling free and scratching the face of his watch, saw the stream of blood that trailed after the knife as the attacker’s arm flew by, and watched as the man, wild-eyed, shifted the blade in his hand and charged.
Jason tumbled backwards, the packs skidding along the dusty concrete, his arms flailing to keep his balance, thick drops of blood forming curved patterns that seemed to hang in the air. The man leapt towards him, stabbing out with the knife as he came, forcing Jason to step back, his heel catching the edge of the platform.
The tin-roofed terminal shook as the express train roared into the station, horn blasting. In a frozen moment Jason could see the yellow and red engine closing, the conductor leaning out of the window, frantic, waving them away from the tracks, could see Rachel looking his way through the viewfinder of her camera while a wall of porters sprinted towards him, armed with brooms and handcarts, and could see the man, his shirt covered with Jason’s blood, lunging, his shouts lost in the engine’s diesel roar.
Jason launched himself forward towards
the knife and away from the oncoming train. Startled, the man rose up on the balls of his feet, his momentum carrying him forward. Jason ducked to the side and the man spun to renew his attack, pivoting on his right foot, his left leg thrusting back, off the edge of the platform. Jason saw surprise in the man’s eyes as he tumbled backwards in slow motion, his head catching on the train’s iron bumper, yanking his body forward onto the tracks and under the steel wheels. The engine was fifty yards past the station before the airbrakes hissed, and screaming, the train began to slow.
Jason felt a dozen hands pull him back from the tracks, the train running just inches away, and he noticed that people were talking to him, rapid-fire in a language he didn’t understand. Dark hands wrapped a dirty tee shirt around his left arm, one of the porters holding a damp sweat rag against his chin to stem the flow. They crowded around, grabbing at his clothes, helping to keep him on his feet as his knees buckled.
“What the hell are you doing?” Rachel said, elbowing her way through the knot of porters and train officials, stopping short when she saw all the blood. She looked at Jason, and he saw her lip tremble as her eyes welled up.
“It was an insane assassin,” a portly railway official said, his chubby hands brushing aside the porters. “He tried to slice this man open and deposit him in front of the Avantika Express. We saw it but were unable to get to the poor blighter in time.” He looked over his shoulder to the pool of blood that dripped off the platform and down to the tracks, the open train window above the spot crowded with gawking passengers.
Out of Order Page 7