Bindi

by Paul Matthew Maisano

  “Turn to page three,” the Italian director said with an accent that could have sounded Indian if she hadn’t been looking at him.

  He spoke from his seat on the wooden stage at the front of the hall, between two Indian swamis cast in bronze. His call: Jaya ganesha jaya ganesha jaya ganesha pahimaam sri ganesha sri ganesha sri ganesha rakshamaam. The room, a chorus, echoed its response. Even after days of repetition, it was the only line Nayana could recite without the aid of the pamphlet they provided, from which the director also chose supplementary mantras. “Jaya Ganesha,” however, was a staple. It started and ended each day. In the morning, it loosened stiff bodies, and some began to sway now and pat their knees. A man at the front incorporated the beat of a tabla. There were tambourines being passed around. The woman to Nayana’s right offered her one. She smiled and shook her head, then watched the woman tap it gently against her palm, her thigh, then alternate between the two, her head following along. It was still incredible to witness the mounting joyous abandon in the room as the chanting and beating picked up their paces. What were all these people looking for, so far from home, all the way in Kerala? What had they found that Nayana had not? None of it seemed real. Not that the others were faking anything; not that she believed this was an experience reserved only for certain spiritual Indians. It was unreal because she would never be able to tell Aditi about any of it. Then she noticed a woman who, like Nayana, was watching it all take place. Still observing, still reserving judgment. Perhaps it was being discovered that encouraged this woman to relinquish her role as spectator. She shrugged at Nayana, as if to say, Why not, right? and she looked down at her pamphlet and began to sing along.

  After chanting, the director made the day’s announcements, as he had each day since her arrival: there would be yoga after morning tea. Breakfast at ten thirty. New arrivals who hadn’t been assigned karma yoga duty were directed to meet by the big tree at eleven to learn how they could contribute during their stay from Dario, who waved a hand above his wild curls. Everyone pitches in, said the director, as a daily reminder. At twelve thirty, there would be an optional yoga coaching class. Then tea again at one thirty, followed by the daily lecture at two. Today’s lecture would be on Bhagavad Gita. How strange, she thought: all these Westerners learning the obscure scriptures she hardly knew herself. After the lecture, a second yoga class, then dinner at six. Evening satsang would be at eight, with lights-out at ten thirty. The strangeness of the ashram schedule made her time there a little more agreeable.

  When this retreat had been suggested, Nayana had not objected. By that point, she’d all but given up. And she trusted Mrs. Nair’s nephew. Benji had always been kind to her family. He was their translator, too, so they depended on him. She remembered him from Srikant’s funeral. He might have suggested a madhouse and Nayana might not have objected. She simply wanted to disappear and didn’t care where. If they’d left her at Aditi’s, she might have spent the rest of her life in her sister’s bed. He told Nayana she would feel like she’d left India, and that’s what she wanted. He was right, too. Whatever was familiar was outweighed by all that was foreign. She was grateful for the structure provided by the ashram schedule in any case and even more for the silence. Meals were eaten in silence, and yoga was a mostly silent affair. One could even choose to take a vow of silence, wearing a sign around one’s neck. If that would have silenced her thoughts, Nayana would have done it. Still, she spoke little to the others. Even with her roommate, Judith, conversation was kept to a minimum, and this seemed to suit them both. That Nayana was Indian and there among so many Europeans was a kind of sign she wore in and of itself, and she was mostly left alone. She avoided the social areas, such as the big tree where everyone gathered for tea and the communal tables in the Health Hut, where people went during the intervals of free time in the early afternoon and again after dinner. The only silence that she couldn’t bear was her sister’s.

  For three days she hadn’t been sure if the routine was keeping her together or simply delaying an inevitable collapse. She watched the whole procession each day, waiting to learn. Mostly she marveled as the white men and women before her worshipped two dead swamis, learned about Hindu gods, practiced yoga, ate vegetarian meals, and chanted in a language even she didn’t know, finding their bliss.

  During the lecture that afternoon, Nayana studied the paintings of gods that lined the hall while the others listened to their tales. She’d heard the stories growing up, and she knew them well, even if she rarely thought of them since leaving India. She tried to see them now as if through foreign eyes. Siva, a beautiful aquamarine, with his many arms, wielding a trident high in the air, dancing—a Hindu Poseidon; blue Krishna playing his flute, with his crown and peacock feathers; half-breed Ganesh’s elephant head and trunk hanging around his big belly; golden Hanuman with his strong form and simian face; Lakshmi posed on her lotus offering abundance from her four arms; a raging purple Kali with a severed head in one hand and bloody sword in the other, wearing a necklace of shrunken heads; behind them all trailed eight-armed Parvati, riding her tiger. These were just a few of the gods and goddesses, and they appeared more fantastic to her than ever before in the context of these halls, where foreigners found refuge in a borrowed religion. What could they possibly hope to discover in these garish, often gruesome icons? For her, growing up Hindu meant being taught to understand these gods as symbols to be admired and feared; they were stories to teach lessons. Humans were not made in their image—Hindus didn’t see themselves as anything like gods. Was this world of colorful deities simply an easier fantasy to escape into? These were characters in a grand tale meant to guide people to goodness, like all religious tales—full of beings that would never materialize to embrace her, or love her, or save her from herself. If she prayed, it was only to her sister, and, like the gods, Aditi was now silent.

  XXXV

  Leaving Varkala in a taxi as old as he was, Edward had the impression he had gone back to the beginning, his own beginning. He had started over and taken the fast track. He was so close. Almost to Nayana, as long as she hadn’t slipped away yet again. If she had, he wasn’t sure he could follow. This might have to be where his search would end. With the window rolled down, he breathed in the passing landscape in its entirety, the good and the bad. The sweet smell of burning coconut, which gave way to the noxious odors of melting plastic, black clouds of exhaust from unregulated vehicles, thick and metallic. A cluster of sacred cows as pungent as cattle on a ranch. He was leaving behind the green waxy leaves of coconut trees, wet with sea-salt air. He observed the passing motorcycles and scooters with their helmetless riders: a family of four, a family of five, two men transporting plumbing pipes twenty feet long—they all tested the center line of traffic as they bypassed whatever slowed them down ahead. In fact, the lines on the road served no purpose at all. And if there were two vehicles in any kind of proximity—and he couldn’t imagine that there ever wouldn’t be—their horns sang. As the warm wind blew against his face, stench and all, Edward embraced it with a stupid grin.

  The farther he traveled, the denser the jungle grew. He hadn’t known it would be so lush. So green. At a certain point, the asphalt road stopped and dirt roads continued, full of potholes, forcing the cars, trucks, and motorbikes to come to a crawl and choose circuitous routes, crossing the entire width of the road if necessary. The sign for the ashram at the last turn promised only one more kilometer. But Edward wasn’t convinced his taxi was going to make it up this hill. He felt that he should offer to get out and walk the rest of the way. Or maybe get behind and push. The old car crawled and sputtered as they slowly climbed, as the trees grew denser, and the sun disappeared behind them. Edward leaned forward, scooting to the edge of the cracked vinyl bench seat, as if to urge them along the final stretch.

  A lake came into view on the right. Across the road was an orange wall. He had to duck his head to see beyond to the temple gate. Bag in hand, he climbed out of the taxi and up the steps, passing
under an archway. On the other side, he had the feeling he had left the world behind. Here, time itself moved slowly; a droning voice reverberated throughout the courtyard, the same two words repeated, though Edward couldn’t decipher them at first through the elongated, nasal delivery. Then he understood: “Inhaaaale…Exhaaaale.” It was coming from an open-air structure at the center of the complex: a yoga class in progress. He removed his sunglasses and could see the inverted bodies under the shade of the tile roof. He wondered if yoga was mandatory there. If one of those bodies was Nayana. No one seemed to be walking around.

  A large metal rack stood to the side of the steps that led up to the reception office, but it was mostly empty, and many sets of sandals and flip-flops and two pairs of sneakers were scattered around the base of the steps. Edward removed his shoes and his socks, which he rolled up and slipped into the mouth of one sneaker, then placed them on the rack. His feet were grateful for the air and the cool earth and the even cooler tile floor at the top of the stairs.

  A couple was seated at a table filling out a form, their burgundy passports at the ready. Edward felt for his own passport in his front pocket. A man with glasses and black curly hair approached him with his hands in prayer. He spoke with a strong Italian accent and introduced himself as Dario. When Edward was asked how long he would be staying, he answered that he was unsure. They had a three-day minimum stay, and yoga was strongly encouraged; there were mats he could rent or buy if he didn’t have one. When he’d finished signing in, he took his rented mat and his suitcase and followed Dario to what was to be his bed in the men’s dormitory. It was almost dinnertime, he was told, and he could join the others when he heard the bell.

  He did as he was told, silently following the others into the hall where he’d seen the yoga class. He fell in line. The guests took their seats on the long woven mats that lined the hall, each finding a place behind one of the round metal trays placed in front of the mats. Two men in yellow shirts chanted at the front. There were six mats in all, stretching from the stage at the front to the middle of the room. And dozens of trays were already placed in front of each row. The trays looked like something from a hospital or military cafeteria, perhaps a camping store, with several compartments for food and a little metal cup off to one side. Were there this many guests? He looked behind him and saw a steady flow of people still entering the hall. If Benji hadn’t warned him it was a place that catered mostly to Europeans, he would have been shocked to see so much white skin in one place.

  A few of the guests walked along the rows serving food from one metal container or another—scooping or ladling their offerings onto the trays. There was a spongy white rice, a thin red broth with root vegetables and tomatoes, a sliced-carrot and purple-cabbage salad, and a white liquid flecked with green, which he assumed was some kind of yogurt sauce. The chanting finished, and a few prayerlike phrases were called and repeated. Hands were clasped together and swiftly raised to foreheads. Edward was too slow and uninitiated to follow along, so he watched. They were finally asked to eat in silence. There were no utensils. Those around him quickly and expertly set to work on their trays, using their fingers to create bite-size mounds. The servers circled perpetually, refilling as necessary. The steel cups remained empty, but he noticed a woman in the next row pouring an almost clear liquid he thought might be herbal tea. He reached for a carrot slice and brought it to his mouth. The woman seated across from him was smiling at him. He’d only seen her agile hands before, but now he saw her unruly frizz of hair, her tanned skin. She was young—much younger than Edward—and she looked like she’d probably been touring around India for a while, like her skin had resisted the sun until it could no longer do so. He returned her smile and felt suddenly very far from home and everything familiar. He was thirsty more than hungry. The teapot was slowly making its way up his own row now, and he tried again to determine what was coming out of it. When the person beside him reached out his cup, he thought maybe it was water despite its rosy hue. He’d been studying it so intently he forgot to lift his own cup when it was his turn, making it harder for the woman to reach, so she paused and waited for him. And then he looked at her, and he knew it was Nayana standing before him. It wasn’t that she shared some feature in particular with Birendra, but somehow the whole of the relationship was immediately clear. Edward felt himself go pale. He must have had a horrified look on his face because she shrank away, visibly confused, ready to move on down the line if he wanted none of what she had. He thrust his cup forward.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  She nodded once and looked around because, he realized, he’d broken the silence. Then she moved on. Now he flushed with embarrassment and grew nauseated. He sipped from the metal cup. It was an infused water, slightly herbaceous and warm but not hot. It quenched his thirst and settled his stomach, which was tied in an empty knot, both wanting food and rejecting the very idea. Edward watched Nayana carry on down the line. She was wearing the long sturdy white cotton pants that so many of the guests wore here and a thin long-sleeved shirt that revealed the outline of her spine as she bent to serve tea to each guest. He couldn’t stop watching her. She was thin, perhaps even too thin for a pregnant woman, and this reminded him that she’d recently been in the hospital. He could see that she might be unwell, yet she remained absolutely beautiful. He didn’t know if he found her so striking because she was his nephew’s aunt and he’d gone through so much to find her or if she was simply a stunning woman. She reached the end of the row, checked her pot, and disappeared through a door.

  Edward had barely touched his food. The woman with the hair across from him was being served rice yet again. And then more of the vegetables. She seemed to empty her tray just as quickly as the servers filled it. She acknowledged this, rubbing her belly, when she caught him staring in amazement. After he’d eaten his salad and a few mounds of the bloated rice, he brought his tray to the wash area outside, as he’d seen some of the others start to do. He hadn’t touched the liquid yogurt, which filled a compartment at the tray’s edge, so he had to be careful not to spill it as he left the hall. He wanted to lie down and sleep. He wasn’t ready to talk to Nayana yet. Knowing she was there was enough for the moment. He would rest before they were called to come together again later that evening. Under the cover of darkness, he would find her and tell her who he was and why he had come. His head was spinning, and he felt slightly feverish. At the end of the dormitory, he found his bed again. His head touched down on the pillow, his eyes closed, and he slept through the night.

  Nayana wasn’t serving water or food at breakfast, and he hadn’t seen her anywhere in the hall during morning yoga. He felt slightly less clumsy eating today and was able to sop up half his yogurt with a couple of the fried disks they were passing around. The woman with the hair and the big appetite was two rows over today, with her back to Edward, but he liked that she was there, that there were distinct individuals whom he had noticed and who had noticed him. And he felt rested after a long sleep. He thought of Jane, of his sister and nephew, of his life in Los Angeles, all so far away. What would they think of his being in this place? Not a single person, he realized, had a clue where he was, including Jane. He hadn’t even told Nayana’s husband in the end. His throat clenched, and he reached for his cup, but he couldn’t swallow. He was going to cry, not knowing exactly why, only that nothing would prevent it. He picked up his tray and quickly walked out of the hall, the tears wet on his cheeks against a warm breeze.

  After breakfast, he was to meet the Italian man who’d signed him in by the big tree in front of the hall. New guests would be informed of the duties they had to perform while staying at the ashram. Perhaps he’d serve food with Nayana in the evening. But what good would that do, being both silent and public? Dario was going around asking people what their professions were in their “other” lives. This apparently helped him decide what their jobs would be at the ashram. The nurse beside him would prepare and set up afternoon tea. The bank clerk
would pick up trash on the road outside the gates of the ashram.

  “A film scout, eh?” he said to Edward. “Then you are an important man.”

  “Not really,” he insisted. But Dario ignored him and searched his clipboard. “It’s very low on the totem pole.”

  Something about the exchange or the young man’s mannerisms made everything seem suddenly comical to Edward. He was practically giddy as he scrubbed the tile floors and toilets in the men’s dorm bathrooms. He was actually enjoying himself. Drinking the Kool-Aid, perhaps, or just happy to have a concrete task that didn’t involve broaching the subject of Birendra with his aunt. He worked up a sweat and felt hungry again. He would see what he could find to eat at the Health Hut.

  True to its name, the “hut” had a dirt floor and a thatched roof. The perimeter had no permanent walls but was surrounded by a thin bamboo matting that had been nailed to several wooden posts in order to secure it. A small food-preparation area was partitioned off by a double stack of the matting, and there were several benches under the hut’s roof as well as a table with a parasol just outside, where Edward could see what looked like a valley and open sky. Despite his taxi’s struggle to arrive, he hadn’t realized how high up the ashram was. He wanted to see the view unobstructed and walked past his friend with the appetite and the hair behind the counter. She looked up from her book and waved as he passed.

  The sun looked hot and white beside the gathering rain clouds that hung over a lush and vibrantly green valley. Exiting the hut at the other end, he closed his eyes and breathed in the open space, relieved to find the world again beyond the ashram walls. When he opened his eyes, he saw someone lying on the bench on the other side of the table and parasol, hiding behind a book. Nayana lifted her head to see who was there. She hadn’t been visible from inside the hut. Now he had to resist the urge to turn back around.