On the Road, Day 21

image from www.ganeshacademy.com

They stopped on the road. “Lunch,” Dev said and pulled over. They had a routine—he pointed her to the bathroom and she pretended not to be horrified.

This one was a door-less outhouse overlooking a cow pasture. A mangy dog scuttled by as she squatted, hoping no human beings would follow. She imagined the indignity, being gawked as while she crouched, kameez gathered around her waist and pajamas lowered to her knees.

No intruders happened on the scene: a white woman relieving herself. Ami committed a minor crime—pulled a crumpled length of toilet paper from the small, embroidered purse she wore across her chest. She wiped and dropped the contraband down the hole, poured a bucket of muddy water after it.
By the time she found a spigot and washed her hands, Dev had cased the open-air restaurant and prepared a menu. “You like alu gobi? Palak paneer? Dahl fry?”

She ordered dhal, chapattis, chai; sat beside him at the rough table.

“What are you having?”

“Khichdi.” He looked guiltily at his hands, then turned his eyes up to meet hers. Something flickering briefly.

Ami reached out, squeezed his fingers in hers, rested her hand lightly on his. They sat like that, not speaking, for several minutes. A warm mid-day breeze tousled the multi-colored flags strung around the perimeter of the restaurant and parking lot. Dust stirred, danced, settled again.

“One Limca,” Dev called over his shoulder toward the kitchen, and a boy, maybe eight years old appeared, the cool bottle clutched in his warm fist. He slammed it onto the table, glanced at the hand holding and smirked. A child’s smirk, not accusing—amused.

“Your wife?” he pointed at Ami with his thumb.

Dev jerked his hand away from hers and said something in Hindi. The boy skipped back toward the kitchen, unaffected by the scolding.

“Why is he not in school?” Ami asked as Dev apologetically placed his hand back over hers. “Is this a holiday?”

The driver shook his head, looked toward the road.

“But surely he’s old enough. A second grader, or even third.”

“But this boy is poor.”

“So?” she shrugged, waiting for an explanation.

“This boy is having to work to help his family.”

“But they must have some money. They have this restaurant.”

Dev shook his head, gazed at her. He hated her naivety, loved her innocence. “This restaurant is not belonging to boy’s family. He is only working here.”

Ami stared. Could she have heard right?

“Also,” Dev continued, “School is costing for the uniforms, the books. The poor family is not having money for these things, so the boy is not going to school.”

“But isn’t there public school?”

Dev smiled sadly. “Many children are not affording education.”

Ami sat back, looked out at the landscape around her. The stark winter beauty of it fading into lush springtime. Brown edges blurring into green. And yet the underbelly of cruelty, right under her nose all along. She’d been blind.

And then the idea hit her. Dropped on her full force as the boy returned, setting two steaming dishes on the table. She could teach. Certainly she was qualified—a college degree, years of employment experience, some time spent working with children in day cares and summer camps… of course, it would be a challenge. To get the funding, to build the school, then procure the supplies. What would she need? She started ticking off the list in her head. Desks, books, maps and globes, pencils, notebooks, maybe some record players and headsets…

“Maybe I could teach,” she said, trying the words out.

Dev looked at her strangely. “You? You are teacher?”

“I could be. I mean in India. People do it, you know. Come to rural villages and dedicate their lives to helping the poor children.”

He nodded slowly, let her talk.

“Maybe I could sign on with a ministry or one of those groups. Maybe the Peace Corps or something, just to get started.” She dunked a wedge of chapatti into her dhal, soaking up the pool of ghee on top. The food was wonderfully hot and spicy in her mouth. She could live on that food.

And really, why not? What did she have to return to? There was nothing. This idea was the beginning to a life, a real life, one of meaning and importance. The sort that resulted in a memoir in later years. Stories to tell her grandchildren, should there ever be grandchildren. She returned to her mental list.

Fundraising. That would be the big thing. Getting the backing of some influential group. And then she’d have it—the first free school in India, not discriminating against position, creed or caste.

Caste. That was the thing. She hadn’t really thought of it, and at first it thrilled her. She’d be taking steps to undo the caste system, giving untouchable children a chance at an education. And not just any education—a western education. They’d come out of elementary school speaking English.

But, of course, not everyone would like that. Perhaps, most of all, the parents who depended on their pre-teen children to help support the family.

“Ami,” Dev broke her reverie. “I am thinking this is nice. That you are wanting to do some good works.”

She looked at him. There was, of course, no trace of irony across his face. Just the usual brow furrows, serious dark eyes. She wanted to touch his cheek, but resisted the urge.

“Really? Do you think I could live in a village?”

“Yes of course. People are living in villages all the time.”

He was right. It wasn’t a matter of ability, just adaptability.

“Only I am thinking all this time I could have been teaching you Hindi,” Dev continued. “All these days driving we are only speaking English.”

She thought about that. “Well, I only just had the idea to teach, just right now.”

He nodded, returned to his food. Ami let her lunch cool, staring off into the distance, thinking. Maybe she could make a change. Maybe if she put her mind to it, she really could do this thing. Maybe the project would be met with a positive response—maybe those parents did want more for their children.

Of course. That must be it.

The boy returned, his bare feet dirty, heels already calloused and cracked. “You are liking one Limca?” He looked at Ami.

“Sure.” He scurried off, returning with a lukewarm bottle, the cap already removed. Ami looked at the suspect opening, wondered how sanitary it was, knew she wouldn’t drink it. Instead, she offered the boy a five-rupee coin for his trouble.

“Too much,” Dev pointed out once the young waiter had left. “He is only doing his job. Now he is thinking all tourists are giving him baksheesh only for bringing them a dirty bottle.”

Ami threw her hands into the air, exasperated. “I just didn’t know what else to do. How can I help?”

“I thought you were becoming teacher?” He said it as if it were settled. She’d had a passing fancy and yet he accepted it at face value. This was enough—a sign from the gods. Her course was set.

“Dev, would you like it if I returned to India?”

“Yes.” He gazed into his near-empty plate. “I am liking this very much. Maybe you are calling me, or sending email, and I am meeting you at the airport. I am being your private driver.”

She searched the words for a deeper meaning, wondered if there was something else in there. Wondered if somehow “private driver” meant that he would go with her into the countryside, into the new life she was conjuring. Wondered if it meant they could live together in a grass hut, change the world, be happy.

“You’ll have to give me your email address, then,” she told him, as if it was a normal response, as if they were having a normal conversation.

More cars pulled into the dirt lot, more people filled the tables at the restaurant. Some men stretched out on charpoys and called for chai. The day went on, a ribbon of time stretching toward nightfall, toward Delhi, toward the fast approaching end to a journey.


image from www.telegraph.co.uk

Even in her dreams—and especially in her waking dreams—Ami heard the rhythms, felt the steady beats in the core of her being. She became slowly aware of the constant thunder of traffic, or heavy-loaded trucks and wooden-wheeled carts rolling across highway miles, of the high pitched hum of scooters and the low growl of double-decker busses.

If she listened, certain sounds found their way above the din. The drums of the village dance shows, played for tourists, and the hand claps deep in the desert where the camel guides accompanied a lone singer against a backdrop of stars. She heard the two-sided drums played by Tibetan monks, drums made of skull, spun between the palms.

Bhajans floated out over lakes in Pushkar, in Mount Abu. The metered words, names of gods, devotional prayers chanted over and over until the words lost all sense. Hindu voices mingled with the Moslem call to prayer in Kashmir, the Sikh chants in the Punjab, the Christian choirs in Goa. Sometimes the voices came separate, calling Shiva, Kali, Lakshmi, Krishna.

Calling La illaha illa Allah.

Calling Waheguru.

Calling Our Father who Art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name.

And sometimes they sang as one voice, one plaintiff cry to a nameless God.
The rhythm came, steady as a pulse at times; the rhythmic cycling of all life; the flow of automobiles through a round about; the constant march of Pilgrims to Allahabad, to Varanasi, to Rishikesh and Ayodaya. The measured crack of a million hammers on hard roads; a million dhobi wallahs swinging laundry on to the rock. Trains crossed and recrossed the country from every angle. Tailors worked antiquated sewing machines with foot peddles. And sometimes the beat was out of sync, ambling like a herd of buffalo, unconcerned and unhurried.

The cacophony carried her buoyant, on a river of sound. She flowed on the pulse of the subcontinent, swept along. Flowed like blood through veins, like the Ganges, the Jamuna, the Saraswati; carrying the hopes and dreams, carrying the black silt and fetid sins; carrying the refuse, decay and decomposition of so much life.

Back in the safety of her apartment, looking down upon the Schuylkill, she suddenly understood her own ability to be carried. She understood the way she’d been borne through the country, through its innermost organs. She understood the metaphor of water, of baptism in a river. How she’d let herself be submerged and how the dank, polluted water had cleansed her.
She knew, too, in retrospect, that the river—her river—wasn’t any one waterway rushing through India, but the whole of the journey. And that she carried that flow, that buoyancy, that longing for water with her.
But, of course, she didn’t know that in the moment, on the road heading back toward Delhi. She only knew, through a blanket of shallow sleep, that the road pulsed and throbbed beneath her and that she, too, pulsated in the confluence of rhythm. And that the red and green lights on the dashboard shrine blinked in time, as if the plastic rendering of Ganesh was conducting the whole blessed symphony.


image from www.shunya.net

Dev wanted to tell her, but there were no words. He wanted to stop time, even pulled over at a Hanuman shrine, ran up the steps and tossed a hand full of coins at the statue. Uttered a jumbled prayer asking for the impossible.

When he returned to the car, Ami was awake. She climbed into the front seat and looked at him in surprise. He thought, at first, that maybe she’d heard what he asked for, but then realized it was only curiosity. She’d never seen him pray before.

He drove on, listening to her music, her Red Hot Chili Peppers, her Jane’s Addiction. Music he didn’t understand, music connected to a time in her life that he couldn’t relate to. College. Parties, dates, summers off to go to the beach.

He drove and thought, meditated on the words but they refused to come. No way to say what weighed heavy on his heart.

With the English girl parting was easy. A relief, really. His guilt nearly bent him under the weight, and to see her go freed him from the burden. Sex was a burden. And more often than not, romantic love was only the illusion created by sex.

But that wasn’t what he wanted to say.

They drove into the late afternoon, slanting light painting the landscape gold. Dev kept watch, counting seconds in between groups of pilgrims on the road, carts pulled by buffalo, children walking home from school, women carrying water. There was never a time when the road was empty. No such thing as privacy.

He pulled over again, letting the engine cool in a spot of shade. He turned in the seat, looked at her.

“What?”

He waited for the words. Surely they would come.

Nothing.

“What is it? Something wrong with the car?”

The Ambassador ticked, its engine hot from so many hours running.

“Nothing is wrong. Only I am needing a break.”

She looked at him suspiciously. Never before had he asked for a break, so why all of a sudden? As if to make sense of it, he slipped out of the car, walked toward the bushes. She wouldn’t follow.

He didn’t have to pee but forced himself, stood there and thought. But no thought came. Just a sleek imagining of being with her there, in the expanse of nature, under the sky fading toward evening. Just the silken fantasy of her skin against his, her body letting go, accepting him, her blood-warmed torso, her thin arms holding him against her.

To melt with her into the landscape. To not need the crutch of words.
He shook himself free of the thought, zipped his pants, retuned to the car.

“You know,” she said as he turned the engine over, and he paused expectantly. “You know, what I think I’ll miss most are these mustard fields.”

“Mustard? Why?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Just something about the color. Like I’m supposed to get it—get something. That gold. That intense gold color, and the green all around.” She turned to him, smiling. “What do you think it all means?”

He looked, too. And saw it through her eyes, just for a ephemeral moment. Saw what had always been there but what he had never really seen before.


image from www.cache.daylife.com

Ami walked into the bank, surprised by its order, its neatness. It wasn’t really a bank, just a large ATM vestibule, as sleek and modern as any she visited at home.

Home, she thought, and the word dissolved into nonsense in her mouth.
A short line of people made their transactions. Students. Fashionable twenty-somethings in dark blue jeans, crisp oxford shirts, the girls wearing platform sandals, lipstick, their hair piled on top of their heads. The girls hung on the boys as if fused at the hip, as if no one had clued them in on the Indian custom of modesty in regard to the opposite sex.
Ami couldn’t help but marvel at them, at the ease with which they moved, laughed, collected their cash and prepared for an evening on the town. She felt envious of their light spirits, their glittering plans, their Saturday night. She felt envious of their jeans, their trendy shoes, their makeup. She felt drab next to them. Road-weary, dusty, spent.

The man in front of her moved away from the ATM and Ami stepped up, conscious of her dirty shoes, her wrinkled Kameez, her disheveled hair. She wondered how she’d managed to let herself go so completely—not that she was ever really one for preening. Utilitarian was the word she’d most often heard used to describe herself. But that didn’t mean she didn’t know how to wear a little mascara, a silver necklace, a well-tailored dress. She usually did her hair, even if doing it just meant clipping it back into a sleek ponytail.

She sighed, dug into her backpack and found her ATM card, started punching the buttons. It was automatic, the western world coming back to her like riding a bicycle.

But how much? The thought stopped her. She quickly tallied what she’d paid to Dev and to his boss, totaled the trip cost and figured ten percent. But was that enough? Something like a hundred dollars. She looked around, wondering if anyone could answer for her, even pulled out her guide book but couldn’t locate any information on tip etiquette.

And it seemed weird anyway. To pay him. To figure an amount and offer it as a reward of some sort to the man who had been her lover. What exactly was she paying him for, and how could she settle up for his services keeping the romance aspect separate. She’d never paid for sex before, and she wanted to find that idea funny, but it sort of sunk to the pit of her stomach and sat there.

The machine beeped at her and she looked up. What to do. She took a deep breath, picked a number—a hundred dollars, US—and entered it into the machine. It spit out a tidy pile of rupee notes. Just like that. Done. She gathered her money, moved to the side and found an envelope on one of the smooth, marble-topped tables. Ami slipped the bills into the envelope, weighing it in her palm, deliberating. Should she jot a note, something affectionate, and slip it in with the money?

No. That only complicated the fast-blurring line between tourist and girlfriend. Let the business stay business, she told herself. Dev had been a good driver, he’d done what she’d employed him to do, and he deserved a reward for his effort. Ami reached into her money belt and took out her emergency fund—three one-hundred dollar bills. American money. When she slipped them in with the rupees they barely made a difference in the thickness of the stack. Four hundred dollars; less than a week’s pay, but hopefully it would help Dev. He deserved that. Dropping the envelope into her pack, she left the vestibule and crossed the dark lawn to where Dev was waiting, perched on the hood of the Ambassador.


image from www.phaseloop.com

Sitting in the car, outside the guest house, Ami didn’t know how to feel. She couldn’t imagine getting out, closing the door to the Ambassador, taking her bag and walking into the door of the hotel. But of course she would. That momentum was already carrying her, had been carrying her all along. Toward Dev, and then away from him. Toward India, and then away. In her mind, Dev and India were one and the same. He was her country, South Asia, the whole Hindu pantheon, the land she clung to.

She couldn’t see the end of the journey, though she sensed it was right in front of her. All she saw was the ink black night pulled close around Delhi, around Connaught Place. She couldn’t see the end, because really, there was no end. They’d just remain in the car, she thought, her and Dev. He was next to her, one arm resting on the steering wheel, the other draped across the back of the seat. As long as they remained, just like that, close but not touching, she was fine.

As if reading her thoughts, he raised his hand and touched her hair.
With that simple gesture, the sheer sweetness, she felt herself crumble.
Immediately, she knew the vastness of the ocean, the expanse that would divide them, and the unlikelihood of ever seeing Dev again. She wanted to tell herself that it wasn’t true, she’d return, they’d keep in touch, but it all rang false. All the words between them, the talk of him coming to the US, following behind her once he arranged a visa—and her ideas of returning to India, living there, maybe teaching—she saw the imprudence of it all.

She’d go home, tell herself that everything would be different, and for a while it would be. But then the routine of her life, the normalcy, would swallow her up again and she’d drift in that current just as she’d been carried along in the current of India.

Ami felt the warmth of Dev’s hand on her head and wanted to cry out. She wanted to throw her hands out, slow the speed with which her trip was racing to a close. She wanted to say something poignant, memorable, profound—but her voice stuck in her throat. So, in the end, she said nothing, just sat still in the dark car, Dev’s fingers twined in her hair, knowing that his hand was all that held her there. Her gravity came vicariously through him. If he moved his hand, she’d vanish.


Guest House image from www.horizonsunlimited.com

“What is the time of your flight,” he asked, all politeness.

“Eight a.m.,” she told him, already weary of the details.

“I am meeting you, six a.m.,” he said. “I am driving you to airport.”

She looked at him. His face was steady. “It’s okay. I hate to have you wake up so early. I’ll just take a cab, and you can get some well-deserved rest.”

He smiled. “I am only staying with my sister. You are thinking my nephews will let me have any rest?”

She tried to laugh, felt as if her face would crack. “Please, Dev. I’ll be fine.”

“Yes, I know this.” He hugged her close with one arm, an awkward gesture.

“Still, I am meeting you here, six a.m. Please don’t be late.”

“Okay.” She leaned in, kissed his cheek softly. “Six a.m. it is. One more ride in the Ambassador.” She fished in her bag and pulled out the envelope, slipping it into his hand.

“What is this”

“Nothing, really. Just a little something to say thanks for all you’ve done for me.” She gestured widely as if she could encompass all of the past weeks.

“This is not necessary.”

“Dev.” She gave him a stern look.

He shrugged, tucking the envelope into his jacket pocket and leaned toward her, kissing her again. It still made his heart leap, her yielding mouth, the soft, welcoming warmth of her lips. “Six a.m.,” he said again. “You are telling desk clerk to make wake up call.”

“I promise.” She slid across the seat, letting herself out of the car. She leaned back in, as if to say something, but only smiled at him. Then she closed the door and ran up the steps to the guest house without looking back.


sunset over Delhi from www.indiamike.com