She stood up and put her palms together in a namaskar to Yuvan’s mother, who had a friendly face. Then she turned to Yuvan’s father, and was startled. He was slim, with a thick head of graying hair. He was handsome. In fact, he looked like Kanchan Uncle. Of course, not exactly. His eyes seemed kinder, and he was shorter. Still, her heart began to race, and her throat felt dry. She could barely whisper, “Namaskar.”
Yuvan calmly shook her hand and seated himself next to her. He didn’t seem to notice her agitation. She took a few deep breaths to calm down. He spoke slowly and softly, in English, just as he had over the phone. His manner was very cultured and cool. He didn’t smile. He didn’t seem in awe of her beauty. Of course, she wasn’t much to look at today with her pimples and face powder and ugly sari. He asked her about the plane ride. “I’m sorry we had to insist on meeting you right away,” he said. “It’s just that you are here for only a short while.”
“It’s fine. I understand.” She tried to smile. Her face felt stiff and dry.
He clasped his hands on one knee, cleared his throat, and launched into a description of his career. He wanted to work on artificial intelligence. “The field is broad enough to keep me interested,” he said. “Cognitive science comprises not just computer science but also philosophy, linguistics, neurobiology, and other subjects. I tend to get bored of a single subject. And the career possibilities are very good.”
Her mother and Yuvan’s mother were chatting with animation, and Rasika was shocked to see Yuvan’s mother reach out and take Amma’s hand. Had things progressed so far? Maybe Yuvan’s mother was just naturally affectionate. Her father’s face was calm, and his hands were still as he sat next to Yuvan’s father. Pramod was talking to Yuvan’s brother, whose name she couldn’t remember.
Suddenly the electricity went out, and the room was plunged into darkness. “It is because of the road construction,” Mridula Auntie said. The elders were all speaking in Tamil.
“They are constructing an underpass for the new airport road,” Prabhu Uncle said. “Right on the next street. When I take my morning walk, I go that way and watch.”
“Every day, five or six times a day, they cut the current,” Pati said.
Mridula Auntie left the room and returned with two bright lanterns, one of which she placed right next to Rasika and Yuvan. Rasika didn’t even want to think about how she looked in the glare of the lantern.
“You do not have this problem in the U.S., I think,” Yuvan’s mother remarked.
“In the U.S., when the electricity goes out we don’t even know what to do,” Amma said. “We don’t even remember where we put our flashlights or candles.”
Amma and Mridula Auntie carried a lantern into the kitchen and came back with cups of juice and plates of crunchy murukkus. No one spoke for a long time. It was like eating in the beam of car headlights. Rasika tried to choke down some food. This was not how she’d pictured her first meeting with Mr. Right. She could hear him crunching and sipping next to her. He apparently didn’t feel the need to say anything, and she couldn’t think of what to say to him.
The next day, Yuvan was scheduled to take her out for lunch. This time she did her own makeup and chose a simple pale yellow tunic, embroidered all over with blue flowers, worn over matching yellow straight-legged pants. Yuvan arrived in an autorickshaw. Again, he was very polite. He made sure to say hello to her parents, and to sit in the living room chatting with the relatives for a few moments. Yet he was distant. He didn’t smile at her or look at her.
As they left the house he said, “There’s a fairly good restaurant nearby. We’ll walk. The traffic is very bad.” He didn’t seem to care what she would prefer.
Whenever she was out in a Bangalore street, Rasika felt the pollution depositing a layer of grime on her skin. Nevertheless, she had always loved this particular street, with tall trees on either side forming a green canopy. They strolled past the decorative gates of two-story middle-class houses whose courtyards overflowed with bushes and potted plants. The grinding of the machinery from the road construction nearby, combined with the usual traffic noise, made talking difficult.
The restaurant was nothing special—just a brightly lit, noisy neighborhood place. They entered the air-conditioned section and ordered different kinds of chaat, and when Yuvan received his plate of six tiny pooris filled with potatoes, he carefully lifted half of them onto her plate. Rasika normally loved crunchy, spicy chaat, with piquant tamarind and yogurt sauces, but today she didn’t have much appetite. She lifted her plate of bhel puri and spooned most of her puffed-rice-and-onion concoction onto his plate.
Yuvan seemed content to eat without speaking. Rasika couldn’t think of anything else she wanted to know about him. The table next to them was occupied by a love-struck young couple who stared into each other’s eyes. The young woman had a plate of mini pooris, and she was placing them, one by one, into the mouth of her beloved.
Desperate to break the silence, she pointed to the pimples on her chin. “My mother acted like I sprouted these on purpose.”
He raised his eyes from his plate. “Yes, I noticed you had a problem with your skin.”
For the first time, Rasika began to wonder if Yuvan might actually refuse to marry her, perhaps because she wasn’t beautiful enough. Her beauty was always the one thing she could be sure about. “I normally have very good skin,” she said.
“While you are in India, you should see an ayurvedic physician. Our mutual cousin, Mayuri, used to have the same trouble.”
Mayuri was Mridula Auntie’s daughter and Yuvan’s cousin.
“Her mother took her to an ayurvedic physician,” Yuvan continued, “and he prescribed a diet and some ointment. Her skin is quite clear now.”
Rasika felt humiliated to receive beauty advice from a man.
Yuvan seemed unaware of her discomfort. He pushed his plate away, leaned back in his chair, and began discussing American job possibilities. It became clear that, if they got married, they might not be able to remain in northeastern Ohio. He preferred a job that involved a lot of research, either at a university or a corporation, and it really depended on where the openings were. “I know you have a good job already, but I am sure it will be easy for you to find another one. You are in a flourishing field.”
By the time the saffron and pistachio ice creams arrived, Rasika felt thoroughly confused. She put her spoon down. Yuvan was socially adept, poised, handsome, and had the potential to make a good living. He didn’t talk too much, and he didn’t insist that she quit her job. Yet he was not terribly friendly. She hadn’t thought friendliness mattered all that much, but could she stand to be married to the perfect man if he didn’t love her or even like her very much?
She thought about Abhay, and how much fun they’d had together in Portland. He’d been calling her and sending her e-mails. She’d virtuously deleted all his messages without listening to or reading them. Now she pushed thoughts of him out of her mind. She was just going to have to steel herself and go through with this.
In mid-December, on his first morning in India, Abhay stepped out of the front bedroom of his father’s family home, stood under the portrait of his late grandfather hung above the front door, and eased open the metal bolts on the wooden door. He could hear murmuring in Kannada from the kitchen, but didn’t understand the language.
“Abhay? Where you are going?” His aunt yelled in English from the kitchen.
“Just for a walk.”
His aunt, a small, perpetually cheerful woman, hurried through the living room, holding a stainless steel bowl full of cilantro stems and leaves. “Why so early? Have coffee first.”
“I don’t drink coffee.”
“Don’t walk all by yourself. You may get lost. Stay and I will send Mahesh with you.”
Mahesh was Abhay’s cousin. “Thank you, but I’ll be okay. I just want to be alone.”
“Later on you must tell us where it is you want to go. Pondicherry, you said?”
; “Auroville. It’s ten kilometers north of Pondicherry.”
“You can take bus from here straight to Pondicherry. Guru Uncle will book for you.”
“It’s okay. I can do it myself.”
“We will do for you.” She laughed. “For so many years you have not been here. We will take care of you now. Anyway, it is good you will be gone next week, because we are having the bore well drilled. It will be very noisy.”
“Bore well?” he asked. “So you’ll have a better water supply?”
“We are selling the house and land!” she said happily. “We will have eight apartments built. One is for us and your granny. Mahesh, when he marries, he will have one. Another will be for your parents when they come to India. The others will be rented out. For that we must have a bore well drilled.”
Abhay was stunned. He hadn’t realized his own relatives would be participating in the transformation of the neighborhood from single-family homes to apartments. “But it’s so cozy with everyone living in the same house!” he blurted out.
“It is cozy for the children, but it is difficult for women to share a kitchen. My daughter-in-law will want her own kitchen.”
Abhay was amused that Auntie was speaking of a daughter-in-law as though she already existed.
“We will still all be here in this compound. We are not going anywhere.” His aunt bustled away. “Guru!” she called as she entered a bedroom.
Abhay walked out the door, past the motor scooters parked between the house and compound wall, and unlatched the gate. There he turned back and stood, looking at the house. It was a typical Indian house—one story, with a flat roof and plaster walls. If his father hadn’t moved to the United States, this is probably where Abhay and Seema would have grown up. His father was the oldest son, who was expected to live in the family home and take care of his parents. But since he didn’t stay in India, the second son—Mahesh’s father—took on those duties instead.
Abhay felt sick about the idea of tearing down the house and putting up apartments. This was the house where he’d had his first experiences with communal living: three or four generations of relatives living together in one household. When he’d visited this house as a child he’d loved waking up in the morning and having his grandmother give him a cup of warm milk to drink, and his aunt reminding him to take a bath, and his uncle driving him and his cousins out to Cubbon Park for a picnic. He’d loved having more people to interact with every day than just his parents and sister.
Now the household would be cut up into small apartments, with every family living on their own. There was nothing he could do about it. He closed the gate behind him and stepped carefully along the bumpy granite sidewalk. Being in India after so many years was eye opening. Why had he ever thought India dull as a teenager? If anything, the country was overstimulating. The traffic itself was an amazing sight. He could hardly even cross the street in front of his grandmother’s house, there was so much activity from early morning until late at night. There were no crosswalks, no stop signs, and very few stoplights. Vehicles paid no attention to lane markings. The buses, cars, autorickshaws, and motorbikes simply maneuvered into any space that could fit a wheel or a portion of bumper. If there was space in the oncoming lane, people casually drove along that lane until they encountered a wave of traffic surging toward them, and then, just as casually, horn honking, they veered back into their own overcrowded lane. If there was a suggestion of a pause in the traffic, pedestrians would insert themselves into the mix, calmly strolling across the vehicle-choked road.
Abhay generally avoided the main road on his early morning walks. Now he turned off the main road and walked down a side street. He moved carefully along the roadway—there was no sidewalk on this narrow street—to avoid running into anyone who happened to be wheeling a motorbike out from a compound gate, and to escape being hit by any cars that happened to be lumbering along. He made his way around women stooping in front of their gates to sprinkle rangoli powder in pretty patterns on the ground. He barely avoided being splashed by a bucket of water being dumped from a second-floor balcony. The traffic from the main road was already starting to surge, with cars, motorbikes, and autorickshaws roaring and beeping along.
In mid-November, a week after Rasika had left him, Abhay had mentioned to his mother that he was thinking he might go to India in December. She had immediately bought him a plane ticket and telephoned the relatives. His parents even insisted on paying his plane fare. Maybe they wanted to make sure at least one of their children identified with India, since Seema was so enamored of African-American culture.
He was here in a last-ditch quest to see Rasika. Mom had run into Sujata Auntie at the Indian grocery store near Cleveland, and had heard about the eligible bachelor Rasika planned to marry. Apparently Sujata Auntie had even shown Mom a photo of this guy. “Very handsome,” Mom had informed Abhay, rolling the r in very extra-long, to emphasize his good looks. “And so intelligent, they say. No trouble he will have to find job in U.S. Beautiful children they will have.”
Abhay had pretended to be completely uninterested, although he felt like he might explode with anger and frustration at Rasika’s stupid choices. He’d tried to contact her several times after she left Portland. He knew Rasika’s relatives lived somewhere in Bangalore, but he didn’t know where. It was insane to think he was somehow going to run into her here, but he felt compelled to see if it might happen. Of course he wouldn’t see her, and that, he hoped, would be enough of a sign for him to forget about her once and for all. Anyway, he had public reasons for visiting India, too—to reunite with family and to check out Auroville.
He had decided to come to India right after Kianga’s birthday party. Kianga said Auroville was started by a group of people who had reclaimed a desert by planting two million trees, and that she was going to volunteer there at an organic farm. She invited anyone interested to visit her in India. With these words, she gave Abhay a long look.
The night after the party, he’d done an Internet search on Auroville. At first he was put off because it seemed to have a religious foundation; the place was started by some sort of Hindu guru, and the Web site spoke of a “divine consciousness.” Nevertheless, the Auroville home page insisted that they followed no religion and wanted only to unify people. They experimented with rammed-earth buildings, creative ways of educating children, all sorts of healing therapies. The place was quite large, with almost two thousand residents. Could this be the community he’d been searching for? He planned to go and see Kianga in about a week, after spending a polite amount of time with his relatives.
Abhay turned left and passed a construction site, with piles of sand and stacks of bricks. The scaffolding was made of straight branches. As he approached the railroad tracks he could smell something burning, and soon came across a small trash fire. People stepped over the rails, seemingly oblivious to the litter strewn around: juice boxes, potato chip bags, banana peels, random shreds of plastic and rags. This was one of the things Abhay disliked most about India—the way the trash dispersed itself on the ground in certain public places. As he stepped over the tracks he encountered, on the other side, a few people picking through a mound of rubbish.
He looked up at every house he passed, wondering in spite of himself if Rasika might be behind the walls. At the end of one narrow street he stumbled upon a rectangular neighborhood park, about two blocks long. He walked along bricked paths among the formal arrangements of low shrubs with yellow or red leaves. The place was immaculate, with women workers in saris and men in their skirtlike lungis sweeping and clipping hedges.
He sat on a bench and gazed at the scene. Next to the park was a row of three-story apartment buildings, with laundry hung over the balcony railings. Many of the older single-family houses in the neighborhood were being torn down to create these small apartment complexes. The colors were pastel: light yellow with blue trim, light peach with a dull red trim. On one balcony, a slim woman in a long blue nightgown was shaking out
her hair, bending over at the waist as her long black hair fell over the railing. She straightened up, flung her hair back, and started combing it. She reminded him of Rasika. A small naked child toddled out onto the balcony and clung to the woman’s nightgown as she combed.
Had Rasika met her intended already? For all he knew, she was married and on her honeymoon.
The woman on the balcony picked up the baby and went inside. Abhay raised his eyes to what was happening behind the low apartments. Looming over everything were the gray skeletons of twenty-story apartment buildings under construction. Who would live there? How would the residents even maneuver all their cars along the roads? What was happening to the Bangalore he knew? Abhay tilted his head back and looked up at massive yellow cranes moving slowly against the blue sky. He could hear faint clanging sounds from that direction. There were no branches for scaffolding on this monstrosity.
Bangalore was growing like crazy. He’d heard his parents talk about it, and now he could see for himself. Since the Indian economy opened up in 1990 to foreign investments, many multinational companies had set up operations in major Indian cities. Bangalore had been one of the early targets of this, because of its relatively mild climate.
Now that Abhay was being confronted with the polluted, crowded, and often incomprehensible reality of this rampantly developing country, he wondered whether he was crazy to even be checking out an intentional community in India.
And Laughter Fell From the Sky Page 22