Where Earth Meets Water. Pia Padukone

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СКАЧАТЬ The previous summer, she distributed all her bright saris and those with gold or silver thread to the twin neighbor girls upstairs. They are both in their forties, living with their parents. One of them was married, but on her wedding night, her husband raised his hand to her and she retaliated, striking him on the bridge of his nose. Stunned, he told her to pack her things and go, and she responded in kind, returning to the flat upstairs. At least, that’s what Ammama has heard.

      Gita told Karom about a ritual she loved as a child, first arriving at Ammama’s flat in the summers, tearing open her wardrobe door, running her hands across the yards and yards of silk, brocade and crepe-de-Chine saris, burying her head into the fabric to breathe in that familiar smell of India and begging Ammama to take out “this one. This one is my favorite.” Gita’s allegiances changed each time she visited, her tastes maturing and then reverting as trends came and went. In her tomboy years, she chose only the blues and reds, and when she finally embraced her girlhood, she lovingly pulled out more pinks and purples. Upon arriving at the flat a few days ago, Gita had flung open the wardrobe door and cried out softly as she sank back onto Ammama’s bed.

      “They’re gone,” Gita said. “What happened?”

      “I’m too old. I can’t wear those bright-bright things now,” Ammama replied. “And the zari work was too fine—I couldn’t iron them constantly. So I gave the whole lot to the girls upstairs. They needed some color in their lives.” Gita twisted her mouth, saddened by the gaping holes between the lonely, dismal saris that remained. But you need some color in your life, she thought.

      Ammama’s apartment building is set back in the compound, and the motorized auto-rickshaws buzz about like flies only in the main road. Karom goes to fetch one while Ammama walks carefully behind, holding her cane in one hand and Gita’s forearm in the other. Gita can see Karom in the distance with his arm up in the road as the little black rickshaws scurry past him.

      “I like him, Gita. I really like him.” Gita holds Ammama’s hand as they take dainty steps together. “Do you think you’ll marry?”

      “I hope so, Ammama,” Gita says, looking down into Ammama’s eyes. “I really hope he gets things together. I really hope he can move beyond his past. Because I love him, I really do. And I think we could be happy together.”

      “Give it time, child,” Ammama says. “Not everything happens overnight.”

      “It’s been years, though,” Gita sighs. “And he’s taking such baby steps that I worry he’ll never—” She stops and looks up toward him. He is standing too far into the road, extending his arm out as if he were hailing a cab on Broadway. He is getting impatient, pushing the hair out of his eyes and wiping his brow on his shoulder. He takes one more step into the road as an angry rickshaw driver shouts at him, gesticulating wildly. Panic rises and jets out of Gita’s nostrils.

      “Ammama, wait here.” Gita props Ammama against a low-lying parapet. Gita takes off at a gallop. It seems so filmic, her hair bouncing and her shawl flying behind her, as if she is running in slow motion to catch up to the man she loves. But as she approaches him, she catches hold of his wrist and swings him back into the ditch that follows the sidewalk along Ammama’s lane. Angry shouts erupt around them, rickshaws nestling close together like black beetles attacking a crumb to allow them through.

      “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Gita asks, panting.

      “Getting a rickshaw. What does it look like? Gita, let go. That hurts.”

      “You’re standing in the middle of the road and you know it. This isn’t Manhattan, where the cabs will actually stop. This is Delhi, Karom. People die.”

      “Stop being so melodramatic, Gita. No one’s filming right now.”

      “No, you stop it, Karom.” Tears prick the edges of Gita’s eyes as their voices rise to be heard with the thrumming and honking of the vehicles that speed by. “This is neither the time nor the place. Please don’t do this. Not now.” A honking interrupts them. Ammama pokes her head out of a rickshaw that pulls up alongside them.

      “Found one,” Ammama says. “Come on, get in.” Gita climbs up on the other side of her grandmother and Karom piles in the opening closest to him, his long, spidery legs nestling against the back of the driver’s seat. As the rickshaw speeds by on the newly paved highway, though they are landlocked and miles from the ocean, somehow the air fills their nostrils with the tangy, briny scent of the sea.

      * * *

      In December 2004 his family had gathered on Poompuhar Beach: a reunion. Karom had final exams in Boston and his parents were adamant that he see the semester through. His friends had all finished their finals and started packing up for Christmas break, but Karom was enrolled in a few master’s classes that ended later than the undergraduate program.

      “I can take makeup exams,” he’d complained. “Besides, I’m graduating next semester. All the important stuff is over. This is the first time I am going to see all my cousins together. And Naani and Nana and Ajja and Ajji will be so upset I can’t come.”

      “They’ll be upset that you are shirking your studies,” his father had said. “You can join us after the exams are over.”

      There were games, snacks, many opportunities to get to know one another over the course of two days. Some members of the family were traveling thousands of miles to meet one another, some for the first time, some after a long time. Karom imagined them as he sat with his head against the frozen window, snow melting softly in the courtyard of the library. Now they were probably having strong hot South Indian coffee. Now they were probably telling stories of his parents as youngsters, of their sweet but short courtship when he had wooed and won her. Now they were probably singing folk songs that would only—could only—be passed down by his generation, and if he wasn’t there to learn them, who would bring them to America? Now they were probably sitting on the beach, under colorful tents they’d have rented to stave off the relentless sun. Karom followed them in his mind, fabricating their activities, picturing their smiles. When he packed up his laptop case and closed the door to his dorm room, ready to jump into the cab that would take him to Logan Airport, he thought his heart might burst.

      Unlike most of his friends, who would joke about the tribulations of forced holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas, Karom enjoyed spending time with his family. This included his wise father, who had been the director on a television commercial starring his ageless, timeless, classically beautiful mother. And of course his mother, who doled out advice the way other mothers pass out homemade cookies. His cousins, whom he’d met piecemeal over the years, and their parents—his aunts and uncles whose stories his own parents had regaled him with for years and years and whose reputations spread far and wide from silly to sober—equally amused him. Both sets of grandparents, whom he saw dutifully every two years, servants his parents had grown up with, vendors who knew more about him than he would ever know about them. All of these people made up a life that was separate from the snowy, blanketed college he was leaving now, forlorn and empty, devoid of true familial love even when the campus was full.

      The cabdriver was talkative, which surprised Karom. He thought he’d have to combat surliness and tip heavily for a fare on Christmas Day.

      “Where you headed? Your family doesn’t mind you’re missing Christmas?”

      “India. We’re not Christian,” Karom said, hugging his backpack to his chest.

      “India? Is that safe? You hear about that storm?”

      “You must mean the monsoons. They happen in the СКАЧАТЬ