Ruthwa made for the bathroom.
“See you later?” Bhagwati was hopeful.
“Yeah, if you’re lucky.”
All these years, when they were forced from one country to another and to another, from one home to the next, one camp to a different one, Bhagwati often wondered how happy her brothers and sister were.
When a person had been as poor as she had for as long as she had, it was easy to assume that all her siblings, who would never lack money, were far more content than she’d ever be. In addition, not one of them would have caste issues to contend with. Her formal education, which Bhagwati often used to demarcate herself from the rest at the camps, had ended at high school, its posh public nature notwithstanding. Her siblings had gone on to receive advanced degrees. While she, the oldest, preferred obscurity, the youngest had become a critically acclaimed writer. Bhagwati had always been sure that her siblings were all so much happier than she was.
Now, as she explored her home, the house from which she had run away, she realized she had been wrong. Manasa’s life showed in her face. Her sister, the satisfied one, the happy one, had become the exact antithesis of her adolescent self. Manasa had a marriage that was going wrong and a career that was stalled. What had she worked so hard throughout life for? What good was a 93.75% in her board exams? Did Manasa get an Oxford degree, the proof of which stood so proudly framed on the windowsill by the landing, to become a home-care aide to her father-in-law? With an arranged marriage to a Brahmin from a well-known family, Manasa had won the lottery. But lottery winners paid for their luck after the initial jubilation died down, and Manasa was doing just that.
Agastaya was a doctor—shouldn’t he have had the most fulfilled life of them all? Yet, he was so guarded, so cautious. Bhagwati admitted that adulthood made you cynical, but to be as mundane as Agastaya was to not live at all.
And Ruthwa? For all his appearances, here was a boy trapped in a man’s body. Was he happy? Bhagwati didn’t think so. He was trying hard, too hard, to live up to the image he had created for himself. Yes, with the scandal he had been through a lot, but it didn’t appear as though he regretted it. If anything, her brother was remorseless—how happy could an unrepentant person be?
She may have been a dishwasher—a fired one—but she now had little doubt that she was more content than her siblings. It had taken her this trip to realize that she had been an idiot to question her joyless life all along, to hold her siblings’ nonexistent happiness as a benchmark.
Feeling guilty that besides a hasty e-mail that she sent him soon after arriving in Delhi, she had had no interaction with her husband, Bhagwati called him from the landline. It wasn’t Lakshmi Puja in Boulder yet, but Ram would feel nice about being thought of when this rare moment of positivity gripped her.
“Is it time for the puja yet?” he asked her right after picking up.
“No, no, it’s just morning here. Another eleven or twelve hours left. I’ve just made a beautiful discovery. You, Mr. Self-Help, will be so pleased.”
“Okay, I’ll call you back right away”—because phone calls from America to India were so much cheaper than those from India to the United States.
“Happy Lakshmi Puja to you,” he said when she picked up after the first ring.
“And to you, and to Virochan and Aatish—how are they?”
“The same.” He laughed. “Want nothing to do with Lakshmi Puja.”
“Why aren’t you at work?” She was afraid he might have gotten fired again.
“I will be in another twenty minutes.”
“How’s it coming along?”
“Good—not as bad as the last one. By the way, how are you doing, money-wise?”
“This is Gangtok.” It was slightly odd that Ram should ask the question. “I haven’t set foot outside the house since I arrived, so I’ve spent no money.”
“Good,” he said.
Something was definitely amiss. “Wait, what’s going on?”
“Nothing, to be honest.”
“You’re a horrible liar,” Bhagwati said. “Tell me what’s up.”
“First tell me how much money you have in your Chase Bank account.”
“I think I have about a thousand dollars.”
“Oh, thank God.”
“But there’s a problem—about eight hundred and fifty there is Agastaya’s. Remember he purchased my ticket? He hasn’t cashed the check I sent him.”
The line went silent for a few heavy seconds. “May I ask you for a favor?”
Just what was going on? “Go ahead.”
“Can you ask Agastaya not to cash the check?”
Ram had always been adamant about not using her family’s money. For him to make this request was disconcerting. She said nothing.
“I feel horrible, but something has come up,” Ram said.
“Is it one of the kids?”
“No, no, they’re fine.”
“Then, what is it?”
“I was learning how to drive.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m fine, by the grace of God.”
“Did you finally get a learner’s permit?” Molly, their Christian friend at the International Organization for Migration, had told them time and again that they shouldn’t take driving lessons without a proper permit, which they could easily acquire by passing a written test. Both Bhagwati and Ram had been putting off taking the test all this while.
“I am sorry to say that Ravi Daai, of the second floor, and I took his car for a ride.”
“And you do not have a permit.” She knew the answer. “What happened?” she asked.
“It wasn’t anything major. I didn’t slow down enough when making a turn, so I ended up driving the car into a ditch. I am so sorry, Bhagwati.”
“Does Ravi Daai not have insurance?”
“He told me the premium would go up if he notified the insurance company. He has been kind enough to allow me to compensate him after you return.”
“He could’ve simply called the insurance company.”
“The repair center estimated the damages to be around eight hundred dollars.”
“Eight hundred dollars that we don’t have.”
“I am so sorry, Bhagwati.”
“I am, too. Excellent news on Lakshmi Puja.”
“I am not driving another car until I pass the driver’s test.”
“Good decision, Ram—too bad it’s already too late. I have to go.”
“Wait, what was the amazing discovery you made?”
It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter how happy she had felt. Somehow, she wasn’t feeling chipper anymore.
•
Agastaya had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
Bhagwati had three times asked him about seeing some girl—a pediatrician six years younger than he who had recently graduated from JIPMER, his alma mater. The third time, he had been impatient with his older sister, asking her to stop masquerading as Aamaa’s mouthpiece, an insinuation at which she appeared hurt. She didn’t deny the accusation, though, so he was sure that she and Aamaa were in cahoots to see him married off.
That, though, was only a small problem.
The bigger issue—again—was Nicky. For days, his boyfriend hadn’t replied to any of his texts or calls. The first message Agastaya sent Nicky after arriving in Gangtok was to let him know that he had finally reached home. The second one asked Nicky how he was doing. The third wondered if everything was all right. The fourth was to ask his boyfriend if he was sick. The fifth message was a plea to call him. This, Agastaya followed with a handful of phone calls, all of which went straight to Nicky’s voice mail.
Agastaya had last felt this nauseated only when Nicky stormed out of One If by Land, Two If by Sea on their anniversary. The reason: Agastaya had asked his boyfriend of a year to go easy on the Dom Pérignon.
“I can’t have you dictate every damn thing in my life,” Nicky had said.
“But you’re slurr
ing.” They hadn’t even begun their main course.
“As I should. It’s our anniversary dinner.”
“Please be quiet.” He could sense that other patrons, out on romantic dinners, were distracted by Nicky’s belligerence.
And, out of the blue, Nicky had dropped the bomb. “I think we should take a break from each other. You’re a control freak and boring.”
Agastaya lost all appetite for his lobster bisque. Before he could say anything to placate Nicky, his boyfriend had made a dramatic exit. The two-day-late text that Nicky deployed to explain his misconduct stated that he had been feeling suffocated for a long time and that perhaps they should consider dating other people. Agastaya was aghast. Nothing in his partner’s comportment had suggested that things weren’t all hunky-dory in their relationship.
Yes, when Nicky was a handful, Agastaya did consider leaving him, but Nicky was not just the first man Agastaya had been with—he was also the first person. The highest extent of Agastaya’s physical intimacy pre-Nicky had been two drunken makeout sessions with barely conscious women in college. Agastaya hadn’t ever courted women (or men) and hadn’t ever been on dates. Nicky, one of his nurses at Beth Israel, had initiated him into the world of nonplatonic relationships and helped him navigate his way through it.
The more Nicky talked about how difficult a time his friends were having finding “the one,” the more Agastaya became convinced that eschewing his relationship in favor of the unknown wasn’t a wise idea. Agastaya was not interesting; he was not beautiful. Financially, he did all right, but he would hate to be out on a date where his biggest selling point was the size of his wallet. Agastaya was aware that he was a difficult person to date, not because he threw temper tantrums or was high maintenance but because his partner would have to go without letting many people know that they were in a relationship. It’d have to be kept secret from Agastaya’s world—no introductions to his friends, no movie nights with relatives. It was a solitary, isolating relationship. That was a big sacrifice, and for three years, Nicky had put up with it.
To win Nicky back after the restaurant incident, Agastaya had asked him to move in. It had meant some big adjustments—firing Sabitri, his Nepalese maid, for one. To live together was what Nicky wanted, and this Agastaya had found out when he checked their e-mail. The e-mail, by the way, wasn’t just Agastaya’s. It wasn’t just Nicky’s. Coined by a conflation of their names, [email protected] was the e-mail address Agastaya had created a few months before. Nicky had said the new ID made him want to vomit, but he was mighty pleased to have his name kick it off. Sneakiness, not sappiness, had driven Agastaya to create the joint address: he could now keep track of his boyfriend’s goings-on. Nicky soon migrated from Hotmail to Gmail once he discovered how much more user-friendly the latter was.
With the password still unchanged, [email protected] became Nicky’s primary e-mail. And with that, it also evolved into an all-encompassing source of anxiety and stress for Agastaya. He read and reread e-mails between Nicky and his friends, tried discerning flirtations, and wondered if he was being cheated on. When the contents of his boyfriend’s e-mail gave him sleepless nights, Agastaya would try to wean himself from checking the account. But he would always relapse a few days later, when, like a man possessed, he’d rifle through every e-mail he had missed out on and obsess over it.
When things were going very well or terribly, Agastaya would check the e-mail twice a day. As the relationship returned to normalcy—a place between too much love and too much hate—he’d stay away from [email protected], password: gastayanick. Things were bad now. His boyfriend wasn’t responding to any of his texts or phone calls. Agastaya needed to check the account desperately, but at eight in the morning, on Lakshmi Puja, he was sure no Internet café would be open. He wished he had brought his laptop. At the last moment, in character for a person who was living a secret life, Agastaya had left his MacBook Air behind in New York. In Gangtok, notions of privacy were left at the door the moment he stepped into his grandmother’s house. He wouldn’t check his e-mail on the decade-old desktop computer even if it had Internet connectivity, which he doubted. He wasn’t about to risk being outed by one of his siblings to all the other members of the family. Nothing in his family was a secret. He decided he would activate the Internet on his phone for the rest of his trip.
Outside, in the garden, as though with thoughts as heavy as his to bog her down, nursing a cup of coffee and staring at the balcony upstairs, was Bhagwati.
“Beautiful day,” she said when he approached.
“Yes, it’s getting colder, though.” He shivered.
“Would you like some coffee?”
“I’ll pass.”
“Are you angry with me?”
Of course, he was. “For what?”
“For talking to you about the doctor woman.”
“I’ve made it clear to you that I don’t want to get married,” he said, glad he could talk about the issue in private before everyone was in his face. “You need to be in the right mood for it. I don’t feel like marriage now. Perhaps I’ll be up for it in a few years.”
“That’s fine. But what harm is there in going for lunch with a girl or two?” Bhagwati said. “Who knows if you might click?”
“And how is that any of your business?”
“It’s not. But I want to see you happy. Marriage made me happy.”
“Huh?” Agastaya said.
“What?”
“Nothing, Bhagwati,” Agastaya said. “It will sound too mean. Forget it.”
“No, no, tell me.”
“Sure, if you want to hear it. You’re hardly the person I’d look at as a model of happiness.”
“Because I’m poor?”
“Among other things. Look at you—so self-righteous. How about you concentrate on getting your life in order before straightening mine out?”
Bhagwati was sullen. He might have said too much. “I am sorry,” he said. “I sound as insensitive as Ruthwa. I’m just tired of all this marriage talk.”
“You don’t have to look at it like it’s prison, Agastaya. You’re thirty-three. Marriage will do you good.”
“I know. It’s just not the time now.”
“Look at you—you’re so unhappy,” Bhagwati said. “You need some fun in life.”
He clenched his fist. “Again, how do you know I am unhappy?”
“I can tell. Everyone can.”
“What if what you see of me is not who I am?”
“It’s a very unhappy face that you decide to present to the world, then.”
“What’s it to you, Bhagwati? Seriously, I’d understand it if it was a lady of leisure analyzing my unhappiness. But don’t you have your plate full? You need to start with admitting your kids to a private school. Do you know how bad state schools in the U.S. are?”
“From what I know, they’re better than private schools in Bhutan,” she said defensively.
“Is that what your target is? If it’s better than what it’d have been in Bhutan, it’s good enough for your children? Dream big.”
“We were talking about suitable women for you.”
“And now we are talking about your poverty. Marriage is a topic that makes me scream. Poverty is a topic that makes you see red. We’re even.”
“If that’s the way you want to look at it,” Bhagwati said, taking a big gulp of her coffee. “If that’s the way—fine.”
He had to get out. It didn’t matter if the Internet cafés didn’t open until later. He needed to get the hell out of there.
Up a dingy flight of waterlogged stairs on MG Marg was a cyber café that was just opening for the day. The skullcaps on all the three workers’ heads explained why. Become even more in-your-face with your faith during some other religion’s festival, Agastaya thought, surprised at the vitriol in him.
Urdu conversation droned in the background. The Internet became even more lethargic in the foreground.
Username: nickg
astaya
Password: gastayanick
Agastaya felt guilty about checking the e-mail, but then again, he was only going through what was jointly theirs.
There it was. The e-mail. The answer to everything. The answer to Nicky’s behavior. And, yet, the answer gave way to so many questions. It made way for so many emotions. First, Agastaya was elated. Then his mouth went dry. The hair on his hands stood up. He hoped the men around him wouldn’t see his torrent of tears. He was curious about so many things, and he wouldn’t find the answer to them in the cacophony of Urdu that grew louder by the minute.
Deep in thought, grave in demeanor, Agastaya walked to the window and stared out on to the square, where, sitting on one of the benches and smoking a cigarette was his younger brother—legs spread wide apart, the hair on his head an unruly mess, and his eyes on the posterior of every woman who walked by. Gangtok was such a small place.
Agastaya called Ruthwa’s name. His younger brother continued smoking.
“Hey, look up, Ruthwa!” he shouted.
“Ha.” Ruthwa strained to see in the sun. “What are you doing here?”
“Came to check my e-mail. Want to go for a coffee?”
“Nah. I like the sun.”
“Why don’t I grab some coffee and join you in the sun?” Agastaya asked.
“Yeah, do that.”
The skullcapped men had no change on them, so Agastaya asked them to keep the hundred-rupee bill.
“Lakshmi Puja?” one of them asked.
“No, no change on you, and no change on me.” Agastaya hurried out. He hated Muslims today. He was a bigot today. He hated everyone today.
Baker’s Café was closed for the holiday. Agastaya purchased a bottle of Coke from one of the stores lining MG Marg and strode over to his brother, who was scratching his groin.
“You, too, couldn’t bear it, could you?” Ruthwa said.
Agastaya was quiet.
“The house and its forced festivities—couldn’t bear it?”
“I had to step out to check my e-mail. I had a little tiff with Bhagwati.”
“Yeah, I had a talk with her, too. I wouldn’t call it a tiff. It was more a talk—not pleasant but not wholly a tiff.”
Land Where I Flee Page 17