I stood there a moment, hand off door handle. Was this the right Maruti?
—Dimple! laughed Sangita, catching up. —It’s Arvind. He’s just been to Tirupati, that’s all.
Aha. Another pilgrimage — this to the foothills of the Eastern Ghats, as Akasha did not hesitate to share. Another shaved head.
It was a squeeze: my mother in front, and Sangita, Maasi, and me behind. Akasha curled up on my lap, in the middle-hump zone. Upon her own she held that large square sheathed thing, which she’d apparently left with Arvind.
I could have sworn I heard a tiny chirping sound.
—Akasha, that’s not … ?
But it had to be. I realized now, as we’d exited, I’d noted in peripheral vision that Zepploo’s space by the threshold had been cleared out.
—It’s time, Maasi, Akasha replied solemnly, as if she were the elder.
I supposed it was.
And to the tune of that most recognized song in the English language — that world’s-your-oyster-and-you-be-the-pearl, make-a-wish ditty penned by two near-party-pitch-perfect near-pitch-skinned Kentucky sisters over a century ago, including a third Patty Smith (Hill) — Arvind reversed out of the parking space.
We crossed S.V. Road and turned into Cama Lane.
We slurred upslope, a winding road a-tumult with shops and stalls and people, peopling, steepling.
Window view: an egg vendor, the dizzyingly white orbs throbbing in turquoise and tangerine stacks. Another stall blocked by a bevy of haggling women, heads brightly clad against the near midday sun, bangled fists plunked on hips as some item was weighed on a silvery scale. Parked motorcycles beneath teepeeing tarp, in-motion motorcycles that appeared parked since zero momentum could be gained on this crowdydow market street. Laundry hanging to dry, buildings the hue of tea-stained teeth, corroded poles, a ruffle of ravaged trees. Schoolkids mucked about in dirthills the opulent shade of saffron.
And so we rose, inching our way up beyond the spirited village until the glorious edge of Gilbert Hill manifested itself in the near distance. In a funny way, it was like spotting a celebrity on a New York City sidewalk, so long had this jig of upthrust earth been viewed from window frame, a distance, memory.
It was stunning. Shocking, nearly. A profile regal enough to emboss on a gold coin.
Arvind parked and leapt out with us, even lighter on his feet without his hair. We spilled out into a resounding riot of color: the bloom-bling of a phoolwallah stand in the midst of another pile of saffron dirt. The wallah stood stringing garlands of mogra and marigold, filling small wicker baskets with blossoms and baubles, sun-dunked chunnis and sundry sweets from the laden table.
My mother and aunt set about purchasing a few of these baskets to offer to the goddess atop the hill. We clasped them like bouquets, a motley procession of bridesmaids approaching the steps that would lead us to Durga’s sky-high abode.
Those steps commenced just past a low building in a clearing — which wasn’t clear but beautifully wreckaged with luminous plants in broken pots, more dirt piles, stacks of folded chairs, and one other parked car that looked as if it had been there as long as the sixty-five-million-year-old monolith.
From so close up, it was difficult to see the hilltop itself, only the stairs, which mounted like a crooking ladder up one of its craggy sides.
An unhill.
My aunt and mother gazed skeptically up. We halted just before the climb began, in front of a massive sign, its top half Devanagari, bottom a reprint of an English-language New York Times article.
—Gilbert Hill has appeared in Sholay, Akasha reported. —And one of the US versions of this type of monolith — only three in the world, two in America — in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
—You don’t have to translate, I pointed out. —The English is just below.
—I’m reading the English. The Hindi says nothing of the sort.
I wondered if every dual-lingo sign I’d viewed in India through my NR eyes had in fact been conveying two different pieces of information. After all, so many people were a minimum of bilingual in this city; perhaps it made sense signs wouldn’t waste time and precious space repeating themselves.
—Should we wait for Kavita and Sabina? my aunt asked.
—They’ll text when they’re here, I beige-lied, buying them time just in case. —So let’s just go up? They may overtake us in any case.
I took a step towards the steps — and buckled at the knee on my more tuk-tuk tizzied side.
—Are you sure you want to do this, Dimple? my aunt asked anxiously. —You’ll be okay, beta?
I rubbed my ankle. —I’m sure.
—Well, you lead the way, then, my mother instructed me. —That way, if you fall, we can catch you.
—And if you fall?
—What kind of altoo faltoo comment is that? Do I look like a woman who falls? my mother said with her end-of-discussion look. She took her sister’s arm. —Chalo, ya. I don’t have all day for enlightenment, you lot.
Sangita joined me, impressively steady in those platforms on pockmarked earth.
—Okay, people, I announced, foot to rung-like step. —The only way is up.
And so I led the weird unwedding procession — well, that is, after Akasha, who was scampering upwards with a downhiller’s ease, and Arvind, who’d gone ahead with the cheeping flower-fabric box to check out the Durga demographic (and get a sense of how far off we were from the summit).
—Let me carry the mithai, my mother was saying to my aunt, trying to extract the bag from her arms. —I’m stronger physically.
—Stronger! my aunt scoffed, hanging on to it with surprising might. —From all that fast American food? Well, I’m stronger mentally.
—What nonsense! What, from all that —
And here, my mother did an exaggerated (no easy feat) rendition of kapalabhati breathing. Actually, it was more like the sound of a water buffalo blowing its nose.
—Mom! I cried, horrified. The two were now practically engaged in a wrestling match — not advisable on such a steep climb — over the package of sweets. Sangita turned around and nabbed the bag.
—For god’s sake, I’ll carry the bloody thing. You’ll both fall to your deaths.
—But —! they both protested. Sangita held up a warning finger. And it worked.
Arvind was back, and herded the squabbling sisters protectively from behind. With a guilty look, our moms now wordlessly followed us up. I reached back to lend a hand a couple times, but despite their suppressed panting (or single-nostril breathing), I was ignored, now that they were trying to prove their fortitude to each other.
A few more steps and they were ventilating enough to have desisted arguing completely.
Gilbert Hill felt like a living thing, as if we were clambering upon a munificent giant’s back. The steep stairway chiseled right from the volcanic colonnade teetered skyward, the scant blue-and-white angling rail along one side offering little in the way of assurance; it looked like it was hanging on for dear life itself. But this was about faith, people!
The grey steps were bordered in pink and pistachio; as we climbed, I photographed the crimson markings running up their centers.
—Dimple! Stop walking with camera face! my mother called out from behind me. —You are going to fall — and then what kind of photographs will those be?
I lowered my camera, turned to Sangita.
—Paan? I inquired, nodding down at the red marks.
—Dimple! Not on a pilgrimage route. This is kumkum — you know, tikka, bindi powder. The way devotees bless the path.
—Shouldn’t we do that, too? I asked her. Blessing one’s path seemed a pretty good idea, come to think of it; I wondered how it would go down in Manhattan. Sangita delved into her bumpack. I expected a travel-size container of acrylic paint or stainer to emerge, but she now presented me with a tube of swish lipstick.
—A little pricey, I laughed. —I’m sure Durga wouldn’t want you to squander MAC.
Laxmi, maybe.
—It’s almost finished. I’ll just do a couple strokes — a symbolic gesture.
To either side of the tikka’d (and now lipsticked) stairs: a slabdashery of rock, sienna dirt, that ubiquitous trashfetti. Burnt-looking brush and bramble and crackle-dry hibiscus trees jutted out at random slants, as if someone had just stuck them into the side of the hill in a haphazard rush.
About halfway up, the stairway veered sharply at a slipshod landing, bordered by a jumble of landslid-like, paint-dappled rocks. We paused to discreetly allow our mothers to catch up.
A group of hoop-earringed and nose-ringed schoolgirls were descending towards us, holding hands — perhaps for balance, perhaps the way so many same-sex friends did in this city. The girls’ braids were looped up like Princess Leia, chunnis dropping on their chests in a V, ends trailing off their backs like dark double bridal trains.
They held perfectly still, surprisingly sweatless — and then I realized they were patiently awaiting Chica Tikka. I smiled back: Click.
As the girls passed us, my mother commented:
—Something about them reminds me of us.
—They are from the slums, my aunt protested, but her eyes had softened.
Akasha — who’d already several times run to the top and back to join us, in ever-shortening laps — reappeared.
—It’s so amazing up there! I can’t believe all this time it was just in our backyard!
—But I keep getting this feeling of déjà vu, my mother said now. —Not just with the schoolgirls. Nahi, Meeroo? That we have been here before …
—In a past life? I wondered aloud.
—Yes. I know what you mean, my aunt concurred. —Each step up takes me back to this feeling.
I laughed now. —Frock! Are you two actually agreeing for once?
—It is too hot to argue, my mother said defensively.
—It is not too hot, it is too steep, my aunt retorted.
Nearly there. At the top, we could now just see the mandir, a beckoning wedding-cake white. A yelp of vertiginous steps to the right … and suddenly, a final set expanded and flattened, slipping its confines to pool up into temple pavilion.
Arvind, evidently satisfied we were in no danger, now 180ed back down, with a mild look of resigned confusion following Maasi’s instructions to keep an eye out for Kavita and Sabina.
—Ta-da! Akasha exclaimed. —Feels pretty cool standing on something sixty-five million years old, doesn’t it?
Our eyes flooded with the blinding white of the temple, so open-arched it seemed carved out of sky — the marble secondary, the way you could imagine stars as pinpricks in a vast throw of black velvet, a glimpse to a geodetically radiant land behind.
Here, a couple hundred feet in the air, turned out the top of this primeval protrusion was absolutely shockingly pancake … no, chapati … chowpatty … flat. Most of the plateau was made up of the temple, fronted by that shining pavilion, and ringed by an ironed-looking lawn fenced in, just barely, from the sheer drop.
We took a moment, some among us catching our breaths. No crowd here as at Prabhadevi, Mumbadevi, ISKCON. No gatekeeper, bouncer; no corralling queues.
—It’s like Durga knew, I marveled now. —Like this whole experience is just for us!
Sangita rolled her eyes.
—Dimple, don’t flatter yourself. It’s because it’s eleven A.M. and we’re the only idiots climbing a zillion steps in this heat.
My mother and aunt, carrying their twin offerings for Durga, for Dadaji, stood staring at the temple now, tilting their heads like little chaklees. Akasha, who’d already run to the railing for the view, gestured us over. We climbed the last few steps, crossed the pavilion to join her.
—You become more spiritual when you’re higher, my mother now claimed with great authority. —Altitude ushers out your inner divinity.
—That’s because there’s less traffic when you’re this far up, Sangita commented.
—No, it’s not just that. It’s as if you are literally closer to God, my aunt said. —And when you look down, you see how insignificant our little lives are.
—Or how significant they are? I countered. —How we are, in fact, in it together? I mean: Why is up closer? What makes us think the divine isn’t viewable from any, every angle?
Rising higher than high-rise, than Sagar City’s steep-fee swags (and surely delving deeper), the hues of the hill merged, taupes and tawns melding back down into the baked landscape, itself visually slaked by the azureous tarps, glowing like slam-dunks of swimming-pool water, of the tenuous surrounding slums (here, the doodhwallah’s home, Akasha informed us, the burtanwallah soon to be shifting to the redevelopment building, left).
Far below, in one of the recycling centers: cardboard stacks camouflaged between brush and branch, and a pale blue door to nowhere, supine in the sea of undulating brown.
Akasha leaned over the railing to point out some sights.
—The Arabian Sea. Airport. Lokhandwala. Madh Island, Jogeshwari. Juhu. Those high-rises over there? Powai.
Powai Lake, the site of my youngest visits to Dadaji, before he’d relocated to the Andheri apartment. Now many of these place-names held memories for me — some bringing to mind a very different map not so long ago not-only-fingerprinted into my skin.
—And there. Ramzarukha. Our home.
How tiny it appeared from here, this building that housed the flat that had been a beacon for me these past days as I sank, floated, then swam.
Flow. A love-illumined lighthouse as real as Sunk Rock, Dolphin Rock, Prong’s … and from whose sitting room I’d gazed to this summit where we now at last stood as my trip drew to a close.
Return to zero: the source. I recalled the funeral that day we’d arrived, the white-swathed throng of mourners sitting quietly to the side of the parking area. There would have been no sight of them from this vantage point. And for the denizens of that building: no peak of us, here, now.
And tomorrow? From the plane? What would I see — what would I know about this city, these people I’d compassed and encompassed myself?
We fell into a silence, our eyes drinking in the world we were in.
This view was the prayer, the blessing.
Rani. One day we will walk there, to the summit, you and I. And you will see, truly see, where you are.
—What is it, beta? my mother asked now, pulling up close beside me.
—This, I said, indicating the vista. —All this time. This is where I’ve, we’ve, been.
—Yes. This is where we are.
—And we have been here before, my aunt added, joining us. —How lush the view during the rainy season … Remember, Tai, the wet earth smelled so good, we even tried to eat it as children?
—Yes, my mother said slowly. —That Diwali we came to the base to see all the lights wound around the hill like a Christmas tree …
—Remember that man who wrote our names on those grains of rice at the top one day? Yours on mine, mine on yours —
—I do. How could we have forgotten?
—Too incredible, this amnesia. As if it were another lifetime only.
—Perhaps it was, my mother said now. Heptanesia, I did not say. They looked at each other.
—Sitting with Dadaji on the edge, perhaps just here, Tai. Plane spotting. Imagining the places we’d one day go …
—I suppose I imagined extra hard, my mother said quietly. —And that’s why I went.
My aunt’s voice was rife with rivulets. —I always wished I’d left, too. Oh, how I couldn’t believe it when you were gone.
My mother took her sister’s hands in both her own.
—And I couldn’t believe it when you were gone from my new world, she confessed. —Oh, Meeroo, I always wondered what would have happened if I’d stayed back. It’s as if I’ve never been able to have a fixed sense of home since then. How I envied your rootedness. And perhaps still do.
—And I your freedom. I suppose the grass is greener on
the other side.
I was so moved, considering those two little girls who once couldn’t have envisaged life one without the other … eventually making their homes eight thousand miles apart.
—Actually, my mother laughed, pointing down, around, to the parched panorama. —It is greener.
Home was certainly not a place. That’s why there was no place like it. I wasn’t even sure it was a noun — more a verb, a direction. A movement, horse in motion, towards a feeling.
Of sanctuary. Which you might find in a place. In a person. A song. Sight.
—Home is not a place, I confirmed aloud.
—Dimple Maasi! You’re so deep, Akasha commended me.
—Of course home is a place, my aunt interjected. —Beta, I think you may be dehydrated.
—It is not dehydration. She hasn’t slept, my mother begged to differ. —Home is a time. And that is why, whenever I return to India, I cannot find it.
I nodded.
—Exactly. What I mean is, I explained, figuring it out as I did, —It’s always elsewhere and here. In transit, like us. When I’m in Bombay, home’s New York. From New York, sometimes it’s Jersey.
And I wasn’t sure why, but I was welling up then.
—It’s like … I’m only at home under unfamiliar skies, I said with difficulty.
—But, beta. Every sky is familiar, Maasi said gently, tipping my chin. —Just look at it.
I did. And it was familiar, this sky. Yet something looked, felt different as well, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
Another jet plane. The same day-moon Dadaji and I had watched, wished upon over the years and miles.
—Shall we? my mother suggested. And we moved towards the temple, to honor this man who was in part the reason we were here: today upon this unhill, and every day, on this planet.
We passed the unusual figureheads of this shrine-ship (two sculpted mustached maharajahs flanking the entry, prompting my mother to grumble, What is this? Air India? Out of 330 million gods, this was the best they could come up with?). As she kvetched on in, my eyes saw what my mind knew:
We weren’t the only ones here.
Through the arch, a flash of a snowy-haired man dozing in a plastic chair — the temple priest? Why did he look so familiar?
Bombay Blues Page 45