In a moment Seema’s quiet monotone was on the line. Abhay had no intention of discouraging Seema from dating anyone she wanted, so he just chatted with her about her classes. But Seema brought up the subject herself.
“Mom doesn’t want me to get involved with the Pan-African Studies department,” she said. “When I told her there were a lot of black people in my class, I thought she’d be happy that it was, you know, more ethnically diverse. But instead she said, ‘I didn’t know so many blacks went to college.’ I never realized Mom and Dad were prejudiced.”
“I don’t get it either. How can one group of brown people look down on another group of brown people?”
“It’s crazy,” Seema agreed. “I feel at home when I visit the Pan-African Studies department. Their offices are in the basement of Ritchie Hall. It’s cozy and colorful, and they welcome everyone. They’re not like Indian people, who look you over and want to make sure you’re good enough for them.”
“That’s great, Seema. Are you thinking of changing your major?” Maybe she’d come to her senses and would choose something that really mattered.
“I’m still in engineering. But I’m going to sign up for a class called the Black Experience next semester. My friend Jawad suggested it. He said it would be a good introduction for me.”
Jawad was obviously the boyfriend. Abhay was delighted and amused. He wondered how his father would react to Seema’s defection from the role of obedient Indian child.
He said good-bye to Seema and sat for several minutes, staring at the phone in his hand. He wondered what Rasika was doing at that moment. It was about noon in Ohio. Was she happy? She’d said she wanted to live an honest life. He wanted her to be true to herself, yet he still wanted her truth to include him.
To prevent himself from calling Rasika he dialed Chris Haldorson’s phone number instead.
“Hey, Adios! How goes it in Portland?”
“It’s going OK. I have a job. Not too many friends yet, though.”
“I imagine it’s tough moving to a new place. You get lonely.”
At these words, Abhay realized that his heart did feel empty. “Yeah, I have been kind of lonely.”
“Don’t worry about it. You’ll find some friends soon. What about women? You looking for a girlfriend?”
“Yeah. I guess I kind of have a girlfriend here. Maybe.”
“That’s great, Adios. What’s she like?”
He told Chris briefly about Kianga. Chris talked about his business, and about his father’s continuing ill health. “He just got out of the hospital,” Chris said.
“So he’s fine now?”
“He’s home,” was all Chris would say, and Abhay felt guilty for not having called Chris since he arrived in Portland. Chris was being a good son, and Abhay could tell the situation at home was stressful.
After inviting Chris to call him anytime, Abhay pushed the “off” button and sat with his elbows on his knees, staring unseeing at the floor. Chris was right. He was lonely and virtually friendless in a strange city. What was he going to do about it? He sat up and, holding his breath, quickly dialed Rasika’s cell phone. It rang six times, and Rasika’s voice informed him that she was not available to take his call. He turned off the phone, stood up, and flung it away from him. It skidded down the hallway, and the battery popped out. He sat with his head in his hands for a moment before walking over to retrieve it and put it back together again.
He didn’t want to be in love with Rasika. She’d made her choice clear and he wasn’t it. He set the phone into its holder near the refrigerator. He should forget about her and try again with Kianga. He’d told Chris that she was his girlfriend, and maybe she ought to be. He just needed to figure out the situation there.
He rode his bike to Kianga’s. She was leaving the house with a few shopping bags over her shoulder, on her way to the farmers’ market. “You want to come?” she asked Abhay.
They headed toward campus, where, on the long green park space between the buildings, a field of white-topped shelters had sprouted, like mushrooms after a rain. He wandered with Kianga from one stall to the next, tasting chèvre spread on minicrackers, and roasted hazelnuts, various flavors of pesto, and a tiny spoonful of lavender-blueberry jam.
“I need to stop by the peace booth,” she said. “They’ve got this beautiful button I want.”
“Kianga!” a gruff voice called. “Kianga, honey!”
Kianga stopped in the midst of the shoppers streaming by. A heavy white woman, half-drunk it seemed, wavered toward them through the crowd.
“Hi, sweetie.” Kianga gave the woman a long hug. Abhay stood behind them, holding the bags, and wondered what he was doing here. Kianga gathered around her people who needed help in one way or another. Ellen, for example: they’d met at school, and Kianga had helped Ellen when she was going through a hard time, something about an alcoholic and manipulative mother. Preview was another. Kianga had met him when she volunteered for some sort of peer counseling group, and he had shown up with suicidal urges. Abhay wasn’t interested in Ellen, or Preview, or this strange woman who was now dominating Kianga’s attention.
He began to realize that Justin was probably also one of Kianga’s “projects.” She had probably gotten Abhay the job with Justin because she felt sorry for Justin and wanted to help him out. And maybe Abhay himself was nothing more to Kianga than her latest project: she wanted to rescue a lonely, confused young man.
After the woman had invited Kianga to some event, and after Kianga had agreed to attend, the woman staggered away, and Kianga led Abhay toward the peace table, where she bantered with the folks while sorting through the pile of pin-on buttons on the table.
“Maybe you guys ought to make up some buttons,” Kianga said to him. She held up a button that said MAKE ART, NOT WAR.
“What d’you mean?”
“HOPE. Your organization. You could have buttons saying VASECTOMIES WILL SAVE THE EARTH.”
“HOPE is not my organization.”
She picked up a button of a penguin with a peace sign on its belly. “This is so cute!” She added it to the handful she had already collected. “You should suggest it to Justin. He doesn’t get out much.” She took out her wallet, extracted a five-dollar bill, and stuffed it into the donation jar.
On the way back to her house, Abhay held her bags bulging with bread, cheese, jam, mushrooms, apples, peaches, and flower bulbs. He carried them into the house and was about to deposit them on the counter, when he noticed it was covered in crumbs.
“Just put the bags on the floor.” Kianga set a large pot on the stove. “I’m going to make some hot spiced apple cider. There’s some couscous left over from last night.”
She handed him a wet sponge before grabbing a broom in the corner and starting to sweep the floor. Preview wandered in and opened the fridge door.
Abhay dutifully wiped off the counter. “Unfortunately, I have to leave for work in a minute.”
She bumped him lightly with her hip as she swept. Preview slapped a bagel on the still-wet counter and began sawing it in half, creating more crumbs.
“I want to take you somewhere tomorrow.” She replaced the broom in its corner and pulled out a jug of apple cider from a bag on the floor.
He rinsed out the sponge. “Where?”
“It’s a surprise.” Right behind Preview’s back, she gave him a noisy kiss. “Meet me here tomorrow morning at eight-thirty. Wear something nice.”
On Sunday morning, Abhay wore a dress shirt and pants, and took the streetcar to Kianga’s place. She was wearing a flowing yellow skirt and a lacy white blouse. They borrowed Ellen’s car—a heap of junk that smelled of cat pee—and drove to a nondescript two-story brown brick building on a side street somewhere in the suburbs of Portland.
In the parking lot, Kianga took his hand and led him into the building vestibule, where they were greeted by the scent of incense. He and Kianga took their shoes off, lined them up neatly on a shelf, and hung their jackets on a coat rack, be
fore entering the main room, which was carpeted and bare of furniture. At the other end of the room was an altar on a raised platform draped in white cloth, and on top of the cloth was a large framed color photo of a long-haired, dark-skinned man wearing a garland—some sort of Hindu saint, Abhay guessed. The altar was decorated with silver vases of yellow and white flowers, white candles, and a stick of incense. On the wall above the altar were religious symbols: om, a cross, a Jewish Star of David, a Muslim crescent and star.
“What is this place?” he whispered. It seemed like a Hindu temple, with the incense and the altar and the removal of shoes, yet he didn’t see any Indian faces. Also, it was much too quiet and orderly for a Hindu temple. People dressed in white and yellow were filing in silently to sit in neat rows on the carpet.
“It’s the Premananda Temple,” Kianga whispered. She picked up a couple of printed handouts from a basket near the door, and led him to sit down in the center of the room, just behind a full row of people. “Have you heard of it?”
He shook his head. A short, smiling white woman slipped something into his hand. It was a brochure with the same long-haired, dark-skinned man on the front. He opened the brochure and read that Premananda was a Hindu saint who had come to the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century, for the purpose of spreading brotherly love throughout the Western world. Before he could read more, the room was filled with the sound of everyone chanting “om” as loudly as possible. Startled, he looked up. Everyone had their eyes closed and mouths open, including Kianga.
He tossed the brochure onto the carpet. He didn’t want to participate in this farce. Religious rituals were nothing but a way to manipulate people. He wasn’t going to surrender his mind to God, or eternity, or any kind of crazy group where the members all dressed alike. In the past, he had based certain life decisions on a vision or a dream, but they were his visions, his dreams, not something imposed from the outside. In any case, he wasn’t sure anymore that there was value in his visions or dreams.
He scanned the room for a way out. He was trapped, hemmed in on all sides by this sea of white and yellow. He clutched his hands together and hunched down to endure the ordeal. He could, if necessary, simply step over all these people and head for the door, but at the moment he preferred not to draw attention to himself. He decided to stay put. He wondered if this was how people got sucked into cults. They were polite, they went along with things, they didn’t make a fuss. He looked at his watch: almost a quarter after nine. He’d give this thing until ten, and if it wasn’t over by then he’d make a break for it, walk out, find a bus, get himself back to real life.
After everyone had finished “oming,” someone lit a small fire in a metal bowl on the altar, and everyone repeated a few prayers in unison—one in English, one in Sanskrit. Then everyone grew silent, with their eyes closed.
He looked around at all the people meditating. Some of the women wore Indian-style clothing, and a few of them even had round red kumkums on their foreheads. Here was this group of Westerners practicing what they believed to be Hindu rituals, following a Hindu guru, and yet they were doing it in an American way. The altar was clean, orderly, and symmetrical. There were no oily deepas or cracked coconuts or idols draped in silk and jewels, as in a Hindu temple. Hindu rituals never used printed handouts like the one he held in his hand. Instead, the priest mumbled whatever prayers were required, or a participant would start singing whatever song came to her mind, and the others followed along as best they could. Here, some of the devotees who sat along the wall were stretching their feet out in front of them, toward the altar. No Hindu would ever dare to show the soles of the feet to the altar.
This temple was not as extreme as, say, the Hare Krishnas, where all the white women wore saris, and all the men shaved their heads. It wasn’t as crazy as the Rajneeshees, that Oregon commune from the 1980s where everyone wore red and engaged in frenetic, exhausting exercise, which they called “meditations.” These folks were calm and measured and quiet.
After the meditation, a tall, gray-haired white woman stood up next to the altar and talked in a singsong voice about the war in Iraq and loving one’s enemies and world peace. Just before Abhay’s ten o’clock deadline, the whole thing was over, and everyone filed up to the front of the room, where a large tray of prasada, food supposedly blessed by God, was on a table near the altar. The devotees picked up the tan balls of prasada with their right or left hands—not only with the right hand. As a child, Abhay had had this important Hindu rule drilled into him: you accept and give things with the right hand only.
As Kianga and Abhay ate their prasada—peanut butter and dried apricot balls, not something he’d eaten at any Hindu ritual he’d ever attended—the gray-haired woman minister approached them.
“This is my friend Abhay,” Kianga said, and he shook hands with the minister. “He’s interested in communal living, and his family is from India, so I thought he’d like to come here.”
The minister nodded. “Some of us live upstairs. Swami Premananda taught that living together in a spiritual community is the best way to practice brotherly love. We try to share at least one weekly meal with the entire congregation, even those who don’t live in the building. Our congregation comes from all over the area.” She spoke softly and slowly. “We also have daily meditation every morning, and anyone is welcome to join us for that. And, of course, the weekly Sunday service, which you’ve just seen.”
Kianga must have thought his Hindu upbringing and his interest in communal living would come together in this community. The minister was now explaining something about the guru of Swami Premananda back in India, and how the swami had come to the United States, and how she herself was initiated by a direct disciple of Swami Premananda. Abhay tried to look politely interested.
By the time Abhay and Kianga were back in the car on their way home, it was drizzling. The windshield wipers squeaked.
“Whad’ya think?” Kianga pulled out of the parking lot.
“I’m not that interested in religion.” He tried to keep his voice bland, and not reveal all the frustration he felt about the morning.
“This is a community based on your tradition. I thought you’d like it.”
“What happened in that room has very little to do with my tradition. And even if it did”— he let out a huff of air in frustration—“just because I’m brown and my parents happen to be from India, doesn’t mean I’m into everything else that happens to be connected to India or Hinduism.”
Kianga pulled onto the freeway. “This isn’t about any particular religion. It’s about spirituality.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Religion is when you tell people they have to believe in a certain manifestation of God, and do certain rituals. Religion is about hating people who believe in a different religion, or trying to convert them to your religion. Spirituality is totally different. It’s about connecting with God at a fundamental level, connecting with the eternal, working toward enlightenment. You can do that through traditional religious methods like prayer or meditation, or you can do that by being out in nature, for example.”
He frowned out the windshield and watched the wipers slap back and forth.
She put a hand over his. “I get that you’re not interested in everything from India, but have you ever heard of Auroville? It’s an intentional community in India.”
“I’ve heard the name, but I don’t know anything about it. Isn’t it some kind of religious retreat?”
“A friend of mine is moving there. I looked up their Web site. It seems really amazing. People from all over the world live there. It’s devoted to peace and connecting with the earth. I thought you might know more, since you’re interested in communal living.”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry, I don’t.”
“Well, I’m thinking of visiting there, in December. Maybe you should come with me.” She glanced at him and gave him an encouraging smile. “You said you haven’t been
to India in years. So—maybe now’s the time. Maybe Auroville will be the place for you.”
“When I go to India, I don’t hang out at intentional communities. I’m stuck in Bangalore with my relatives.”
“Auroville isn’t that far from Bangalore. It’s just south of Chennai.”
Abhay didn’t want to try to explain to Kianga his complicated feelings about India, so he said nothing.
At Kianga’s house, the sun was out again. “Want to come in? Ellen’s at home, too.”
As they got out of the car, Ellen stepped out the door of the house and stood at the top of the stairs, her slim shoulders sloping slightly toward her chest as usual. She was wearing a pair of bell-bottom jeans with ragged hems. She waved to him, and he waved back.
“I’ve got some work to do,” he lied.
Kianga slipped her arms around his waist and pulled him into a tight hug. He felt embarrassed to be hugging Kianga as Ellen watched. Kianga rubbed his back. She felt soft and warm, yet his face burned, and he gently pulled himself away. He walked fast over the bridge above the freeway, and once he was sure they couldn’t see him, he broke into a run to the streetcar stop.
At home he plugged in and turned on his laptop, changed out of his nice clothes, and sent an e-mail to Rasika’s work address, inviting her to visit him in Portland. He didn’t think she’d take him up on it. Then, on impulse, he searched the Web, using the key phrase “organic flowers,” found a company that delivered pesticide-free bouquets, and ordered a vase of white lilies to be sent to Rasika’s office on Monday morning.
Chapter 11
Rasika wasn’t sure why she decided to visit Abhay. The first week of November he had sent her a very sweet e-mail, and a giant vase of beautiful lilies. Yet those weren’t exactly the reasons she decided to make the trip. She wasn’t in a position to be wooed by Abhay, after all.
As soon as she read Abhay’s note, she’d called and made her plane reservations for the coming weekend. She’d never made travel plans at the last minute, like this. She told her parents she was going to California with Jill, to visit an old school friend of theirs. Part of this was true. Jill was going to visit Amanda in Los Angeles. Her mother made a fuss because Rasika was buying the ticket so late. “When did Jill decide to go?” Amma demanded. “Why didn’t you book your ticket so you could get the two-week advance fare?” Amma also worried that Rasika’s boss wouldn’t like her taking time off on such short notice.
And Laughter Fell From the Sky Page 18