The Body Myth

by Rheea Mukherjee

  Mira, don’t think I haven’t been able to read you, understand you, know you. Not everybody’s answer is taking off to start again. I see you with Rahil these days, it gives me hope. The type of steady friendship you have. The utter thrill you have with the mundane, the internet scrolling, the sofa chats. You ought to teach, you ought to write, you ought to say more things to the world. But as I write the word ought I realize the futility in it. Your ought is emerging now. I see you here, happy, and I see Rahil happy with you.

  Of course you may leave the house now that I am gone. But I know this much: you won’t. You might be angry, hurt, outraged. But you’ll stay, and if I am right about you, you’ll be happy too, not long after.

  Don’t try to find me, for you will not. I’ve done my bit: my phone will not work anymore, nor will my email. I will deal with my parents too, don’t worry—neither Rahil nor you will have to deal with them ever again.

  I want you to find the bliss I am carrying in my body right now. It is one with such love for the breath, for the feeling of now; it is the love that makes you fearless. And for that I will always chant your name, in the steps I take, in the food I eat, in the life I now make for myself.

  Let there be only a brief moment for anger and hurt. Once it leaves you, you will begin to feel the way I do.

  With all the love in my heart and head,

  Sara

  Epilogue

  It is traditional to end a story when one of two things occurs. The first way to end it is after one has found the love of one’s life. After the challenges and obstacles have ended, then so does the love story. Whether you perceive that to be happily ever after is your prerogative. The second way to end it is in tragedy. An unrequited love. A lost lover. A dead lover.

  I am not ending the story because of these reasons. After all, Sara is not lost, she is only starting to find. And if she is dead, well, we won’t know for sure. But her love now lives between Rahil and I. It took us months to convince ourselves that it was not a brief experiment. It took many readings of that letter to see how biblical it really was. How each sentence had been measured to reflect her rising sense of freedom. And it only took one last read, eight months into her departure, to understand that there was nothing to contest.

  Nothing has changed in the house we three once used to live in. The sheets are the same colors, the kitchen as pristine and dustless (I make sure it is). We have given up drinking chamomile tea altogether. Our life had demanded coffee at some point, and now we drink it every morning. Two cups each, black, with one teaspoon of sugar.

  Rahil still comes home every evening at six o’clock. We cuddle on the couch, we watch movies, we go out for walks. We stroll past that park I had given up going to since I met them. We’ve moved permanently to the guest room now. Sometimes we make love in Sara’s bedroom. Our old bedroom.

  Rahil took it worse than I did, which surprised me. I had expected to collapse, but instead I found grit and resolve. At first Rahil sulked and lowered himself into a boiling pot of depression. I didn’t worry, though, because it was what Sara had predicted. His temporary descent into sadness only strengthened my conviction in Sara. I was inching closer to her truth and Rahil would undoubtedly follow. I was the calm one, the sturdy, durable one. But for me, her ache is constant and never heals. Her loss is a raw wound that stays willingly and acceptingly. For Rahil, you see scabs turning into new skin. You see new healthy tissue that has forgotten that Sara was once his, then ours, and then God’s.

  We played our newly invented game for months: Where Did Sara Go? We’d pick a hilly region in Himachal Pradesh and wonder what she was doing there at that very moment. We traveled with her to the northeast: Meghalaya, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh. We’d look up facts and obscure towns in these regions and imagine Sara living her life. She’s selling tea to people in a mountain village. She is teaching history in Imphal. She has been accepted into a Buddhist monastery in Nepal. But none of our guesses gave us the satisfaction we were looking for. We stopped playing our game six months after her departure.

  Appa has never asked me to marry Rahil. He is happy I live with him. He visits on the weekends. We go to Appa’s all the time, and he quizzes us on pop culture and historical facts every chance he gets. Rahil has started to read more to keep up with him, while I have lost regard for any new learning. Sara had put an end to it. She had spent years accumulating the profound truths I thought only came from books. And then she put it to use. My truth was simple, it had always been. It took the loss of Sara to embrace it.

  We haven’t heard from Sara in three years and we’ve learned to live differently without her. She, in the end, was right. I was not a renegade; I was just a reader. I wasn’t looking for new answers; I just wanted to find one that was comfortable enough. I have chosen my freedom within the walls of this home. Women before me wrote about these confines and made a strong case to move out of them. But here I am, and what comforts me is the fact that no man was responsible for bringing me here. It was Sara.

  There is one person who is still enthralled by my mind. Samina, an adult now, at least legally. She hasn’t moved out of her parents’ home, but she did have the guts to email me two months after Sara left. I am her silent advocate, her cheerleader. We’ve been corresponding a couple times every week. She updates me on a life so different from mine: protest rallies, her academic papers, vegan outreaches, fights with the parents, and even her first sexual experiences. I respond with half-remembered quotes from those men and woman who kept me alive after Ketan. But I notice my replies have slowly shrugged off their density. Maybe it’s because I know that Samina just wants my approval and support.

  She’ll do well for herself, move the world in her own unique way. In ways I had hoped I could. I cheerlead a shadow of myself, but my freedom remains in this house. One day soon I know I’ll end up inviting her to our home for a meal.

  There are levels of awareness, and each level requires a different set of coping methods. My mother had no access to alternatives. And that’s okay. My father found more than her, and that’s okay. I am here now, so happy at home, so thrilled with the morning coffee, with a morning kiss from Rahil. I am happy watching an old Hindi movie in the afternoon and dusting the TV and cutlery right before he comes home. I like the rhythm of folding laundry; I like teaching Manju our cook, new recipes and talking to her about her children as she washes our negligible amount of dishes every day.

  We socialize too, and Rahil has moved up in his career. We’ve spaced out the public story we give everyone. He and Sara had divorced, and then he had quickly remarried.

  In the beginning, Kamala told people in the neighborhood that I had seduced Rahil and had made Sara run away back to her parents. But no neighbor had the courage to ever ask us. We told people it was a quick court marriage. No one batted an eyelid; when you live in busy towns you can get away with such tales. Now we sit with his new colleagues on some Saturdays, interchanging houses for dinner and drinks. We go to the occasional play and watch bands at nightclubs as we sip whisky on the rocks. We talk about movie stars and enjoy making long lists for groceries. We make love fiercely, slowly, cautiously, unabashedly. We’ve made love in every way with every mood.

  Last year the media was abuzz: Chile had managed to re-create soil conditions for Rasagura to grow. And now that the chemistry was out, they had tried it in Mexico too with decent (but low-yield) results. Our town bowed its head to science, and grandmothers were told to stop perpetuating magic tales to their grandchildren. Nothing is impossible in this world, nothing. I imagine Sara laughing at the authority of science. Was it the language of chemistry that made Rasaguras possible in Chile? Aren’t things always and continuously possible, even when we lack a language to explain it?

  There is a picture of the three of us in our bedroom. Sara in a white shirt, smiling between us. Her shoulder-length hair hitting my shoulder and Rahil’s head curved and nestled on top of her head. We don’t talk about the picture, but we both know it
will always be there. We catch each other standing by it, in the early mornings or late at night. We pretend to be involved with something else. Those moments are private, like the letters to us that have remained secret.

  Today, I am shuffling around the house, listening to a Sufi song on YouTube. One Sara used to listen to. It’s not for me as much as it’s for the baby. I rub my six-month swelled belly. I coo to the harmony of the song. Child, it took three parents to make you. Anything is possible in this world you will grow in. It’s important for any child to know its roots. One day, this child will know how it came into this world.

  There is only one fear that occasionally swirls in my heart. And that is the blood of my mother. How it may change me once our baby is born. But these fears are fleeting. Because in the end, there is Sara. Sara was always there, before Ketan, after Ketan, and after she left. Sara’s always becoming. And that’s what we’ll tell our child.

  Acknowledgments

  It takes a village to raise a book. We’re told writers create in isolation, but that’s only technically true. The creation itself comes from our engagement with the world, the relationships we create, build, destroy, and even imagine. It takes a village to consider a book and to inspire the writer in unlikely moments. It takes the potency of our collective imagination to allow for one perspective to manifest as a book. This is why it’s impossible to thank every person responsible for this book to be published. Some people and environments are tucked deep into my subconscious mind.

  And yet, there are so many lovely, amazing people who had a direct influence on this book.

  My mother, Rosemary Mukherjee, for the love, the wings, and the constant generosity. Indrayudh Ghoshal, my partner who builds life with me and offers me a new way to evolve every day.

  Kirsten Lepionka, my Pitch Wars mentor, who truly nourished this book with love and fierce insight. My agent, Stacy Testa, who made me believe in people who choose a profession via heart, soul, and passion. I thank you for the countless insights and utter belief that this “strange little book” would find its home.

  Chris Heiser, for the tremendous editing process that allowed me to expand slumping narratives and straighten up sagging sentences. The editorial eye is truly the one that allows for readers to be present in every paragraph they read. Olivia Smith for the roaring enthusiasm and marketing support. Jaya Nicely for the stunning cover art.

  Kalabati Majumdar, for the creative life we’ve built together and for the oodles of love.

  Julie Carrick Dalton, for the unlikely email friendship and the amount of support you’ve given me during the birthing of this book.

  The faculty and friends from my time in CCA in San Francisco, for the foundation that let me imagine what life could be as a writer, and for all the vision and countless classes that allowed me to dream big enough.

  Nisha Abdullah, for reading the first draft of this book. Michelle D’Costa, for being my first public reader and cheerleader.

  Paromita Dhar, because of her unabashed opinion on what I had to do with my life. Arun Nagarajan, for the early years of complete and utter belief. Disha and Kaushik Chatterjee, for the tight security of family. Pallavi Chander, for the woo-woo conversations that help me conquer the walls of pure rationality with more imagination. Manjiri Indurkar, for manifesting as a true writing friend.

  The Pitch Wars community and my past students at Bangalore Writers Workshop for the support, love, and community.

  A special thanks to Tom Roach for an essay excerpt I used that was published in Friendship as a Way of Life: Foucault, AIDS, and the Politics of Shared Estrangement, published by State University of New York Press in 2012, and to translator Daniel Ladinsky for his translated poems by Hafiz.

  I thank the internet and all the creative giving that is channeled on it for allowing me to become an expert in philosophy for a brief period of time.

  I’ve missed many others who have participated in my life as a writer and, as a result, this book. I hope they will know who they are and will feel my gratitude.

  About the Author

  Rheea Mukherjee received her MFA from California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Her fiction and nonfiction has been published in Scroll.in, Southern Humanities Review, Out of Print, QLRS and Bengal Lights, among others. Her previous stories have been Pushcart nominees, Glimmer Train Very Short Fiction Finalists, and semi-finalists for the Black Lawrence Press Award. Rheea spent her childhood in the US and her teens in India. She currently resides in Bangalore where she co- founded Bangalore Writers Workshop in 2012, and co-runs Write Leela Write, a Design and Content Laboratory. The Body Myth is her first novel. You can learn more at www.rheeamukherjee.com.

  “Like the Rasagura fruit Rheea Mukherjee so eloquently writes about, The Body Myth is a tender love story at its core: sweet, sour, and bursting with wisdom. An intoxicating read.”

  —Neel Patel, author of If You See Me, Don’t Say Hi

  Mira is a teacher living in the heart of Suryam—a bustling metropolis and the only place in the world where the fickle Rasagura fruit grows. She lives a quiet life, binge-reading the French existentialists and visiting with her aging father, until the day she witnesses a beautiful woman having a seizure in the park. Mira runs to help even as doubts begin to creep in. Was the seizure real? Or had she glimpsed the woman waiting, until just the right moment, to begin convulsing?

  Soon, Mira is drawn into the lives of this mysterious woman, Sara—who suffers a constellation of undiagnosed maladies—and Sara’s kind, intensely supportive husband Rahil. Striking up intimate and volatile friendships with each of them, Mira discovers just how undefinable both illness and love can be. Mukherjee delivers an unexpected love story that reconciles reality with desire in this riveting debut set in a fictional city in India.

  “…A thought-provoking and memorable meditation on the meaning of life. In seductive prose, The Body Myth explores the depths and boundaries of relationships, conventional and unconventional, and the meaning of intimacy in sickness and health. A fine novel.” —Soniah Kamal, award-winning author of Unmarriageable: Pride and Prejudice in Pakistan

  “Witty, melancholic, and dramatic by turns, Rheea Mukherjee’s The Body Myth is a touching love story about misfits searching for togetherness, even if that togetherness might not be healthy for all concerned.” —Foreword Reviews

  Cover Artwork by Rachel Levit Ruiz

  Distributed by Publisher Group West

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