by Rahul Mehta
This was not the outcome Bharat had wanted, but he could see he had no choice. Guru Ma had already started to walk away. As she made her way down the lane back to the main thoroughfare, Bharat and Kiran both could already feel her absence. It wasn’t just that with her went the crowd that had been following her as soon as she and Pooja had stepped foot in town. No, Guru Ma’s presence itself had been gigantic. She was a star. Not the twinkle-twinkle-little-star of lullabies, but the blistering, volatile ball of fire that, up close, all stars actually were. Her presence was incendiary, all-consuming. Now she was gone, leaving behind a hole. Pooja, a flickering ember, was trying not to become ash.
If Kiran had not known quite well that this was a desert town—brown, always thirsty (the opposite of rainy, snowy Western New York)—he could have easily believed Guru Ma was the one who had left this earth scorched. The yard in front of the three-story stone house looked, by all accounts, untended: dry, rocky dirt; a few scraggly bushes; a peepal tree only half alive, literally half, one side blooming, the other bare. It was under this tree that Pooja settled. Over the years she had become adept at simultaneously being absolutely anywhere and being nowhere. So much so that, almost immediately, it was as if she’d always been right there: another bush withering in the yard.
Later that day—after she had stayed under the tree for some hours and it was clear she wasn’t going anywhere—someone finally explained to Kiran about Pooja. He’d asked Bharat earlier, not two minutes after he had shut the door on Pooja, but Bharat brushed at the air with his hand and said, “Nothing. No one.” Two hours later, pointing out the open window to Pooja sitting beneath the tree and inspecting the frayed edge of her lehenga, Kiran asked again, and Bharat said—again brushing at the air—“She is no one. Just ignore her.”
Kiran tried asking Ameera Bhabhi, but she was preoccupied—as she always was these days—chauffeuring her belly from sofa to chaise longue to daybed. She clearly relished her upgraded status—Queen of the House—however temporary (she knew it only lasted as long as the pregnancy). “Ameera, are you comfortable? Do you need a foot rub? Let me bring you a shawl.” Bharat and his mother vied for the title of Chief Supplicant. Sometimes when Ameera wanted something she would simply sigh, as though it were too taxing to even form words, and then the person within earshot would have to scramble to divine what Ameera may have wanted—lime soda? biscuits? pakora? an extra fan? or the opposite, warmer socks? best to bring it all!—and would come bumbling back into the room, arms full.
Kiran didn’t try asking Prabhu Kaka, who barely left his room these days. Kiran had seen him only once since arriving two weeks earlier, which was his first time seeing him in seventeen years. Standing in Prabhu’s dark room had felt to Kiran like a haunting—Prabhu Kaka himself ghostlike, the past’s specter hovering, twelve-year-old Preeti’s voice calling out from some distant other place—and Kiran had no intention of going back in there.
Finally, as night was falling and they were getting ready to eat dinner, he went to the kitchen to ask Kamala Kaki, whom he’d kept as a last resort due to her poor English and his own so-so Hindi. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, rolling puris. She put down her rolling pin and held up a single finger, shaking it back and forth. “Not girl,” she said. “Not boy.” Then with a flat hand she made a chopping motion into her lap. Three times. Three quick chops. “Understand?” she asked. Kiran thought he did. He remembered learning about hijras in college in a gender studies class. Some hijras were biological hermaphrodites, but most were castrated men. They were considered neither male nor female but were recognized as a third gender. They were religious beings, devotees of the goddess Bahuchara Mata. For centuries they had occupied a place of respect and power—many people believed hijras had the power to bless or to curse, especially when it came to fertility and childbirth—but were now mostly prostitutes and beggars.
Much later that night, as Kiran was trying to fall asleep, he remembered something else. He got up from his bed and looked out the window. It was a Hindi movie from his childhood, Amar Akbar Anthony: three brothers separated as infants, one raised Hindu, one Muslim, one Christian. As adults they reunite, but they don’t know they’re brothers. In those days, the India Association—which was really only a dozen or so families, scattered across fifty miles of rural Western New York State—would get a different Hindi film every two months, reels someone would fetch from Buffalo or Rochester, and they would screen the film in a different family’s house each time, the projector and the portable screen both property of the association purchased with dues each family paid. Kiran would sit in his mother’s lap, or when he was older sit next to her, and she would whisper into his ear English translations. There was a particular scene Kiran remembered, a comic scene, garish women dancing suggestively in the street, singing off-key in deep voices. Everyone in the room laughed. Even as a small child, Kiran had recognized that laugh not as a regular laugh, but something much meaner. Kiran looked up at his mother. “What is it? What is everyone laughing at?” “Nothing,” his mother had said. Now, looking out the second-floor window of his room, Pooja lying in the dark beneath the tree, Kiran thought he understood.
The next morning Kiran awoke thinking of Pooja. Power cuts in the middle of the night had halted his overhead fan, and Kiran had left the curtains open. The morning sun barreled through the window of his east-facing room: a lion pouncing on him, laying its full weight upon his body, roaring the day into life.
The details were murky and half lost to that other world, but Kiran knew Pooja had visited him in his dream. He awoke with an image of a vast field of giant sunflowers, like the ones he’d grown up with in Western New York. He and Pooja were making their way among the five-foot-tall stalks, flower heads the size of humans’. Were they trying to find a way out? Or were they happy to be wandering, lost together?
The previous day, as they watched each other through the gated doorway, standing like children hiding behind their mothers’ skirts—Kiran behind Bharat, Pooja behind Guru Ma—their eyes had locked and something passed between them. In that moment, Kiran had felt with Pooja a kinship he didn’t feel with his own kin. He understood what it was to be standing outside the doorway.
Upon awakening, Kiran had the immediate impulse to rush to the window, but something stopped him. He worried that Pooja wouldn’t be there. Could she actually camp beneath the peepal tree without pillow or bedroll or blanket? He was skeptical. How long could she possibly stay there? Until the baby was born? How long would that be? What would she eat? If she was gone, as Kiran suspected she would be, he wanted to delay his disappointment.
Besides, during his time in India, Kiran had grown mistrustful of the window in his room, as though it were deliberately trying to deceive him. Day and night, through the open window, he heard children playing. Not just during school hours, when one might expect it, or in the evening after the worst of the heat had passed and people started coming alive again, but during all hours of the day. He heard the crack of cricket bats, laughter, the happy squeals of girls being chased. But when he roamed outside, he was unable to identify where the sounds could possibly be coming from. He searched every direction but found no schools, no playgrounds, no open spaces where children might gather. He heard, too, morning and evening calls to prayer, yet saw no mosques, and the Muslim section, small as it was, was fully on the other side of town. And then there were the shrieks—cries he heard for days on end, so primal and human he worried someone was being hurt. He hadn’t believed Bharat when he’d told him what they were. But then he saw them: two peacocks, or rather one peacock and one peahen, picking their way among the trash and the ruins of a burned-down building in the nearby abandoned lot, which seemed to have been designated as the dumping ground for the neighborhood. The male had spread its tail, iridescent and proud and impossibly beautiful among all that had been discarded.
Kiran resisted the impulse that morning to search for Pooja from his window.
He went instead
to the small sink in his bedroom, splashed cold water on his face, and did not wipe it off, it felt so good on his face and neck. He pulled his hair back into a ponytail, traded his pajamas for a pair of cargo shorts and a T-shirt, and went downstairs to find breakfast.
That evening, Kiran folded food into a large leaf he’d plucked from a potted palm, food he’d surreptitiously saved from his own dinner: a bit of rice moistened by a few spoonfuls of dhal. He brought it out into the yard and, crouching, wordlessly laid it before Pooja.
Pooja herself had no explanation for the phenomenon; it was as much a surprise to her as to anyone else. Still, she understood that it added to her authenticity in the eyes of the townsfolk, buoyed their belief that she possessed powers. That was a good thing, she supposed.
They arrived the same day as she did, blackening the sky in undulating waves. The flap flap flap of their wings rippled through the town, rushed down the jumble of narrow streets in the old section like water from a cloudburst too sudden for the ground to absorb. Notoriously clever, these crows were no one’s friends. They seized food, ravaged farms and gardens, squawked menacingly at passersby, swiped shiny objects left unattended. Always alert, always watching, they were nonetheless easy to forget about, the way they settled in trees, black leaves hiding among the green. Then something would excite them and make them take flight: all of a sudden the rumbling above startling as thunder.
Bharat had always known he would have a baby. He took for granted that—as an only child, and a son, at that—it was his duty to do so. What was surprising, at least to Bharat, was how the desire—the genuine, deep, pit-of-your-stomach desire—had taken hold of him, palpably and viscerally, one evening a few years earlier.
At the time he and Ameera had already been married a year and had been trying to conceive, without much luck. Bharat didn’t mind. He was enjoying those early days of marriage, the occasional opportunity here or there to linger in bed with Ameera in the morning, to sun himself in her incandescent laughter and smile. Even though childless, they still weren’t alone, of course: his father and stepmother lived with them. But the ancestral house was large, and it was the closest they’d ever come to being alone, and they were, after all, still getting to know each other.
On that particular evening, Bharat had gone alone for a stroll. The neighborhood was beginning to quiet; dim yellow streetlamps lit the lanes. People were pleasantly tired, having had their evening meals, their warm bucket baths. Everyone was moving slowly, the hot, sweaty day finally behind them. Soap-scented, they lazed in loose-fitting nightclothes, kurta pajamas, the occasional lungi. It was at the milk stand that Bharat saw them: a boy and his father. The father placed some coins in the boy’s hand and then, beaming with pride, and with such exquisite tenderness, lifted the boy to the counter to pay. The counter clerk smiled at him, and he smiled back, and the light from the shop fell on the boy’s face in such a way that Bharat couldn’t help thinking—full well knowing it was a terribly sappy sentiment, a cliché if he’d ever heard one—that the boy with his enormous, bright eyes, his luminescent face, his crisp white kurta, looked like an angel. Knowing that the father must have moments like this every day, that for him this wasn’t a particularly special moment, Bharat felt such a pang of jealousy. Not just jealousy of the father, but of the son as well. Bharat did not have such childhood memories of his own father. He’d always known his father loved him, but as for tiny shared moments of joy, he could remember none. His father was so serious, so quiet. Bharat would be a different kind of father. He would laugh and lift his child into the air every chance he could get. From that moment of seeing the father and son at the milk stand, Bharat knew he wanted this. Now, years later, he was about to have it.
Bharat had indicated to Guru Ma that he’d pay the offering once the baby was born, though in truth he wasn’t sure he would. What exactly was he paying for? He didn’t believe in curses and didn’t want to submit again to the same sort of superstition that had sent him into exile (unnecessarily, he was convinced) in America seven years earlier. He didn’t believe in any of that. After all, when he and Ameera were struggling to get pregnant, it wasn’t the Hindu priest, the numerologist, or the vaiddh who helped, and certainly not a hijra (never mind their purported powers to bestow fertility); it was the ob-gyn. It wasn’t ancient potions or prayers that did the trick; it was clomifene tablets and intrauterine insemination.
The economic liberalization of the 1990s meant a changing India. It wasn’t the India that Bharat had grown up with. His country felt to him full of possibilities, on the brink of something new. The communal riots that would ignite in the nearby city were still four years away. They would rip through the city and across the state, leaving, by some accounts, two thousand dead, mostly Muslims. Afterward there would be allegations that the largely Hindu police force did nothing to stop the slaughter. Bharat would remember the boy from his school—Aziz, Asleaze, Disease, allergic to his own sweat—and the taunts from his classmates: Of course, even he can’t stand himself. He would shake his head in profound disappointment, thinking, “Nothing has changed. This is like Partition. It is 1947 all over again.” But that was still four years away. Now Bharat was full of hope.
He found it difficult to muster sympathy for the hijra beneath the tree. In his eyes she was only a beggar. Worse than a beggar, because she preyed on people’s fears and superstitions, claiming powers bestowed by a goddess. No, that was the old India. He was bringing a new life into the world. Which world did he want for his baby? The old India? Or a new one?
Chapter 18
“Nice shoes,” Bharat said, though they were not particularly nice shoes. They were cheap skateboarding shoes, never mind that Kiran had not been on a skateboard since childhood. Bharat was holding one, turning it over in his hands. “Heavy,” he said. “Solid. Not like Indian shoes.” He handed it to Kiran. Seeing Kiran’s confusion, he said, “Come on. We’re going out.”
Kiran searched for the tag. “These were made in Bangladesh,” he mumbled to Bharat, but Bharat didn’t seem to hear. Kiran pulled on the shoes, having tied the laces loose enough that he could slide them off or on without having to untie or retie. Bharat held out two baseball caps and Kiran selected the blue one with the Yankees insignia because it was cotton, not stiff synthetic material, and he thought it would be more comfortable.
“Shouldn’t we be wearing helmets?” Kiran asked, standing in front of the Hero Honda motorbike, even as he realized it was a silly question. He hadn’t seen anyone wearing helmets. Bharat gave him a green bandana. “Tie this around your neck. If the dust or exhaust fumes get too much, cover your mouth.”
“What about the car?”
“You want to go in the car?”
Kiran hesitated. “No.”
“The bike will be faster, especially if there’s traffic.” Bharat smiled. “You’re scared? You don’t trust me?”
They’d only been riding for a couple of minutes, had made not more than three turns, and already the baseball cap had flown off Kiran’s head twice and Bharat had had to stop the bike and pick it up and hand it back to Kiran to put back on. The second time Bharat put it on Kiran’s head himself, first tightening the band very tight, then pulling the cap low onto Kiran’s head, angling the bill down with a rough motion; Kiran felt like a child being reprimanded. He did not want to hold on to Bharat when they rode. At first he tried to clutch the bar on the back of the seat, and then he tried putting his hands lightly on Bharat’s shoulders. But when they were out of traffic and hit a long stretch of empty road, Kiran had no choice but to encircle his arms around Bharat’s waist, press his chest into his back, and hold on tight.
Kiran noticed the other people around him on cycles, sometimes whole families: a man in front; a woman behind him riding sidesaddle and clutching an infant; an older child holding on in back. He thought about how in America if the child’s car seat were facing in the wrong direction you’d get a ticket and be branded a neglectful parent or get a visit from Ch
ild Services. As they picked up speed, Kiran had visions of Bharat stopping short, of himself flying forward, his head hitting the pavement. His skull suddenly seemed so fragile.
It was evening. The sun was setting and the markets were reopening after shutting down during the afternoon heat. Couples and families congregated in outdoor cafés. Vendors served tin plates piled high with fried snacks. Bharat switched on the headlight. He hadn’t told Kiran where he was taking him, and Kiran hadn’t asked. So much went unsaid between them that Kiran sometimes wondered if it was a language barrier, even though Bharat spoke perfect English and Kiran’s Hindi had become, well, passable.
What Bharat hadn’t told Kiran was that he didn’t know where they were going either. Just that he had seen in the jumble of footwear by the door Kiran’s huge sneakers looking out of place—bright and loud against the brown chappals and Bata slip-ons—and he’d had the urge to remove them. And just when he was holding them, Kiran happened by and saw, and Bharat, to save face, had to hand him the shoes and say they were going out.
On the bike, Bharat wondered what Kiran saw. He remembered his own first impressions of America, peering from the car window during the long drive from the Buffalo airport to his aunt and uncle’s house. Green. Everything had seemed so green. It had been an unusually cool day in late August, early morning; he was exhausted from being in transit for almost two days, breathing only the stale air of planes and airports. In the car, he cracked the window. The air was cool and rich. And green. He felt like he had never in his life seen quite this color.
Brown must be what Kiran was seeing now in this desert landscape, Bharat thought. Dust and dirt from the roads: brown. The air from the heavy traffic: brown. Bodies and faces and skin: brown.
It had been a little over two weeks since Kiran arrived from America. Kiran’s parents had given Bharat instructions: “Show him where he’s from. Help him understand.” Understand what, they had not said. Perhaps they were hoping that being in the house itself would shift something in Kiran, this his ancestral home, nothing like the split-level construction he grew up in, a brand-new house, a house with no history.