Part 3 (starting with) on the road, day 14

We ever bow and adore Ganesh
From who fire, sun, earth and water come,
Who created oceans, moon and air,
And from whom living and inert things
And all kinds of trees came into being.


(Spiderman Ganesh from www.andiamnotlying.com)

On the road, Day 14

Ami was expecting a long haul to Jaipur when she slouched into the Ambassador, her eyes barely open, a thermos of milky chai, complements of Rafiq, clutched in her hand.

But as soon as Dev pulled on to the road, rounding the corner of the lake, crossing the bridge away from town, he revealed a new plan.

“Today we are going Mount Abu,” he announced.

“Really?” she sat up. “Was that on the agenda?”

“Original plan is to see Ajmer. Only I am thinking Mount Abu is better this time. Only Hill Station in Rajasthan,” he explained, as if that cleared up the mystery.
Ami shrugged and leaned back into the seat. “Okay, whatever you think.”

They still hadn’t talked about what had happened. Thirty-six hours later, it seemed, to Ami, little more than a dream. Dev had barely spoken to her, looking past her when he did talk, acting like a confused fourteen-year old after a game of post-office.

“Dev,” she said, leaning forward on her elbows, “do you know the game post-office?”

“What is this?” He looked briefly in the rear-view mirror, but dropped his eyes as soon as they met hers.

“Nothing really. I just wondered if kids played that game in India, too.”

“I’m not knowing this game,” he said stiffly, and focused on the road.

On the dashboard, the plastic shrine to Ganesh held its place, probably glued down. There was a string of prayer beads dangling from the mirror, swaying with the ruts and with Dev’s no-nonsense passing technique.

Ami had to admit to herself that he seemed a better driver than most, especially the maniacal lorry drivers, but Dev still employed the method of racing up to the back bumper of another vehicle, blasting his horn, they whipping past at high speed before settling back into a groove.

“Tell me about Mount Abu,” she asked; settling herself into a comfortable position, her legs stretched most of the way out and her head lolling against the seat back.

Dev offered his worried look, forehead crinkled and mouth drawn into a frown, but he did as she requested, his voice rising and falling, his broken English warm in the meager morning sunshine, making Ami drowsy, her eyes falling closed as she listened.

Mount Abu. High, craggy place, 1200 meters above the desert floor, city of fantastical rock formations, a town that never even dreamed of the sea. Favorite destination of honeymooners who posed for photographer touts, their hands joined to frame the setting sun between them. Home of Dilwara Jain temples, ornate examples of architecture carved from marble, the floors polished smooth by the feet of worshippers.

The oldest built in 1031, Dev was saying. Adinath. Tejpal Temple. House of Elephants. Nakki Lake, carved by the fingernails of the Gods, he said. They just reached down from heaven and scooped away the earth. Toad Rock. Shanti Shikhar. The words came like a chant, like the charting of another world.

Ami rode, not fully asleep, but allowing dreams to blend with the sounds of the day as the car rushed past. Light playing on her eyelids. She relished, without thought, the in-between-ness, just being in motion, being lost between two points. It didn’t matter where they were going; she was content to lay back, to dream, to be nowhere in particular.

And when had that happened? When had she changed from the person she’d been only two weeks earlier? Where was the woman who jogged three times a week, no matter how cold the weather, following a path along the river—and what about her work, the business she claimed to despise, but still clung to, trusting the routine of it to anchor her day?

She thought, fleetingly, of the people she knew, mostly from work, who occasionally invited her out for a drink. And how, though she called them her friends, she never knew much about them. At the most, the names of their spouses, what colleges they’d graduated from. Ami thought of Holly, wondered how Holly could bare it, having been out, been in the world, endured the change, the shifting perspective, only to return to the bleak cityscape of Philadelphia.

Nothing Holly had said had prepared Ami for that feeling, that lovely floating feeling of being born high above her worries, of looking down on her small cramped life as seeing that it was, indeed, only a dry husk in comparison to the lush, colorful reality of India.

How had she clung, for so long, to the driving ambitions that pulled her, day after day, in the direction of some unnamable but inarguably important goal? What, in the world she’d inhabited, fed her, soothed her, inspired her?

As she dosed, she let the pictures, the textures of her trip dance across her mind’s eye. Fabric in the markets, billowing and snapping. Marigold malas outside the temples. Rows and rows of orange and gold blooms. Mango lassis; dhal fry, swimming in ghee; red chilies spread across a tin roof, drying in the sun; the perfectly molded piles of tilak powders; sweets sizzling in a vat of hot oil.

Ami opened her eyes, focused her gaze on the back of Dev’s head, noticed, for the first time, how his short hair whorled over the crown and curled in at both sides of the nape. She felt something like longing, but a fearless sort of desire. Dev wasn’t of the world, the world of worries and schedules and traffic jams and deadlines. He was of the new world, where she could kick her legs out, stretch her being, absorb the sights, scents, flavors around her.

We’re here for a reason, she told herself in a delicious little whisper. This is how it’s meant to be.

What Ami doesn’t know is that her friends at home all envy her, and in their envy they turn cruel. People who don’t even know her last name take bets around the office coffee maker. There’s a fifty-dollar pool on her coming home before her three weeks is up. There’s twenty-five on her getting some sort of parasite, but not as many people are in on that, because it’s not as likely that she’d confess. Unless she just stays home with the curtains drawn until her scheduled return to work, she won’t be able to hide coming home early.

With her tail between her legs, says one woman bitterly. India, really. Who goes there but strung out hippies? And even they stopped at the end of the seventies.

Holly, who doesn’t work with Ami, checks her mailbox for postcards, but she of all people knows the drill. Probably three weeks for them to arrive. She tried to push Ami to take a longer trip—a leave of absence from the job she was so lukewarm about anyway. India’s too big, she said, more than once. You’ll be like the jet-set, cruising in on holiday, leaving before you even absorb the smell of the place into your clothes. Which wasn’t really true. It didn’t take long to absorb the smell of India, to wear its smoke and grime, a permanent black tinge around the nails and behind the ears.

Holly had told her friend to forget about telephones. She didn’t bother with the sympathetic “I’m only a phone call away.” Just put it out of your mind, she advised. Break your ties. If you need me, write it all down on a post card. But don’t go dragging America back into your experience. If anything can, America will dilute India.

But she didn’t really think Ami would listen. She expected a frazzled call at the wrong time of day, Ami homesick in some dingy hotel, crying about craving pasta, tap water, clean sheets.

Holly imagined herself, a voice of reason and experience, saying get out of that place. Pack your stuff, call a taxi and go to a really posh hotel. Put it on your credit card and don’t even think about it. Eat all the western food you can handle, take a long hot bath and have all your clothes laundered. You’ll see—a night in a high-end hotel will turn your world around.

But that call didn’t come. And Holly had to admit to herself that either her friend, one of the less likely backpacker types, was getting along just fine, or else she’d been kidnapped by revolutionaries or brainwashed into a cult.

Something like that.


(mango lassi image from www.annaparabrahma.blogspot.com)

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After the last winding, carsick miles, Dev pulled the car into the parking lot in front of a tall hotel.

“This place?” Ami asked. It looked way out of her price range.

“Off season,” Dev replied. “I am asking the rates.”

Ami climbed out of car, glad to have her feet on the ground. She wasn’t usually bothered by car rides, and this one had been shorter than usual—only a couple hours compared to the eight and twelve hours stretches they’d been covering. But the switchbacks and seemingly endless climb to Mount Abu, complete with harrowing swerves out of the way of oncoming lorries, had taken its toll. She felt rather green, her stomach turning despite the half-packet of digestive biscuits she’d nibbled in an attempt to battle the nausea.

The hotel in front of her looked wonderful. Its cream-colored exterior clean and well kept, its gardens tidy and its car park free of rubbish heaps and ragged families camping in the far corners.

She found herself hoping they could stay there.

Dev took his time to return, but finally brought good news—“Six hundred rupees only,” he said, his brow furrowed as if he thought she’d refuse, adding, “Twenty-four hours hot water.”

Ami wondered if he’d gotten the impression that she was cheap, or that she liked to stay in dives. But before she could give the matter much thought, Dev had unloaded her pack and was carrying it back toward the hotel lobby.

“I can do that,” she called, running after him, embarrassed.

“Ami.” His voice was low, calm. “It’s better this way. I am the driver. You are the tourist.”

She wondered if she should take that literally—was he commenting on their relationship—the tension between them, the jarring memory of a kiss? Or was he just pointing out that at certain times, protocol must be followed?

Ami signed in, showed her passport, waited for the clerk to painstakingly copy all of her information, and then she produced her credit card, glad to be able to save her cash. Finding a bank to cash traveler’s checks or give her a credit card advance was sometimes tricky, and always a hassle. There was always a long line to wait through before being passed along to the tourist window, where she’d have to wait again until being ushered to a back office. Then a stiff, suit-wearing banker with a mustache groomed to a line as thin as if it had been drawn in with an eyeliner pencil watched her suspiciously while she executed the three identical signatures. Once her signatures were scrutinized and determined to match her passport, she was given the money—often in a ridiculously large stack of small bills.

They walked up the wide staircase, Dev leading with the backpack slung over his shoulder, a reluctant porter, and Ami following. He stopped in front of her room, waited while she fiddled with the key, then stepped in behind her.

“The room is good?” The worried look, eyebrows drawn together.

She looked around—the large bed on a low frame next to a tall window. A clean white duvet—no signs of pan stains the color of dried blood. No signs of dried blood. No hair grease. The window looked out over the empty polo field.

“Yes, it’s perfect,” she said. “Really nice.”

He smiled, his face relaxing. “I am free now?”

Again, she couldn’t help wondering what he meant. Damn the language barrier. “Yeah, maybe I’ll go take a tour, see the Jain temples,” she told him. “You should get some rest, or whatever you like.”

“Tomorrow morning, eight o’clock I am meeting you,” he said, all business and polite distance. “We are staying one night only. Mount Abu is small, not much to see.”

“Okay. Eight.” She crossed her arms over her chest, and he backed out the door, not meeting her eyes as he left.

Ami let her breath out in a sigh. Right. On with the next thing, she told herself. Find the rest of the westerners and do what they do. If in doubt, take a tour.


(image from www.traveller.outlookindia.com)

Dev left his bag in his room, glad to see he was, at least for the time being, alone. No other drivers had claimed beds or were sprawled out, smoking bidis in their undershirts and sarongs. Usually Dev enjoyed the company of men, especially after growing up in the stifling company of his mother and sister, but he found himself in Mount Abu wishing he could sit in a corner of his mother’s kitchen, listening to her gossip with other women from their village, letting her boss him about his life, making his decisions for him.

“What you are needing is nice Indian girl,” she’d say. “You know Pushpa, Mrs. Sharma’s daughter? What a lovely girl. And so intelligent! You know, was sent to Udaipur to study the miniature painting, And her poetry! So moving. I will introduce you.”

But, of course, he couldn’t go to his mother, so he did the next best thing: Went out to eat.


(image from www.travelblog.org)

Wandering toward the lake, trying to gain her bearings, Ami came across the horse boys. They were milling around on Raj Bhavan Road, scanning the area near the hotels in hopes of spotting tourists.

It occurred to Ami to turn and walk away from them, to escape before she was drawn into their banter, their peddling and pleading, but in the end she didn’t change direction. Something about the horses, dark Arabian animals with silky black tails and pointed ears standing upright.

“Madam like horses?” one of the boys approached her, leading his mare.

Ami reached out, stroked the velvety muzzle, felt herself turn into a little girl, mad about the creatures, wanting to feed them carrots, to comb their manes, to ride them.

“You are knowing much about horses” the boy attempted again to draw her into conversation.

“No, not really. I had some riding lessons when I was a kid, but that was ages ago.” Her English was too rapid, too American for the boy to grasp, but he nodded, going by instinct.

“The horse is liking you. You are wanting the ride?”

She started to shake her head, but he didn’t give her a chance. “Low price, see all the sights. One hour ride around the lake, 30 minutes ride, no problem.”

His rambling was less intended to make sense and more intended to keep her there stroking the horse, letting the animal pull the tourist in. That’s how it worked.

Ami tried to find it within herself to be annoyed by the tout—couldn’t she have a walk in peace, just one time, without someone trying to sell her something? But there was a certain innocence, a kind of mischief in the boy’s face. She couldn’t be angry with him, especially when he gave up his spiel and settled into quietly petting the horse along with Ami.

They stood like that for several minutes, perfectly silent, the horse anchoring them to each other. Then she gave in.

“Thirty minutes ride — how much?”

“Two hundred rupees,” he said.
“I’ll give you one hundred.”

“Okay,” he smiled, revealing a row of straight teeth. Something passed between them unsaid, an understanding.

The boy helped Ami onto the leather saddle and then took the reins himself, guiding the horse down the street by its ornately wrought bridle.

It wasn’t exactly what Ami had expected. She felt herself flush as people on the street looked up at her, a white woman dressed in a salwar kameez, sitting astride a mare, being led by an Indian boy. She wanted to feel like a Maharani, a queen, but instead felt like some sort of Imperialist.

The boy led the horse toward the lake, passing a few hotels smaller and more run down than the one Ami was staying at. “Hey, do you want to ride, too?” she asked the boy.

He pointed back at his friends, who held their horses as they watched Ami ride slowly away. “Cannot, Madam.”

“Is it against the rules?”

“Yes, against the rules.” He laughed, his eyes bright.

Ami slouched into the saddle, feeling ridiculous.

They rounded a bend at the same slow, even pace, the boy leading the horse and looking straight ahead for another hundred yards. Then he stopped, offered a curt command to the horse, and passed the reins to Ami.

“What do you want me to do?” she asked, confused.

“Hold only.”

He ran around behind the horse, and before Ami could figure out what he was up to, the boy had mounted in a smooth vault. Sitting, spread-legged behind the saddle, he took the reins from Ami’s hands, gave them a firm thwack, and the horse took off at a steady gallop, easily crossing the distance to Nakki Lake.

Ami was startled at first, but she quickly relaxed into the rhythm of the horse and the warmth of the boy behind her. He gripped the saddle with one hand and held the reins with the other, executing his balancing act while politely refraining from any physical contact with the woman riding in front of him.

The lake glimmered lazily, a few honeymooning couples gliding over the surface in rented paddle boats. The day, nearly flawless, had warmed a bit, enough for Ami to enjoy the sun against her hair and the cool breeze on her face as they moved away from the town and toward the wider end of the lake.

The road meandered a bit, sometimes close to the water and then away, veering past plaster shrines and rough statues of deities—Hanuman in orange, spray painted bright as a traffic sign; Shiva in pristine white, the layers of paint blurring his figure into oblivion.

Away from the last of the hotels, past an empty park, toward the line of scrubby trees and boulders that seemed piled haphazardly out of the way of Nakki Lake. As if, indeed, some God in a whimsical mood had reached down from the pale blue sky and scooped out the crater, shoving the refuse to the side. Ami let herself sway with the horse, surprised at how relaxed she felt. It was sort of like riding off into the desert on Babalu; everything fading away into the background as she waited for the horizon to swallow her.

Then the boy stopped in what looked like a pull-off of sorts. A flattened clearing of dusty ground, large boulders forming a natural wall of sorts, protecting them on two sides. The boy hopped down, announcing, “break time,” and made a beeline for the bushes.

While he was gone, Ami looked around, trying to pick out the landmarks she’d read about. Where was toad rock? Honeymoon point? Gazing across the lake, she thought she could see a door set into one of the massive boulders. Did someone actually live there? And at a small ghat, no larger than a flight of porch steps, two sadhus were taking turns bathing.

The boy returned, his mount fluid, almost weightless, and he grinned happily at Ami. “Back to town now, thirty minutes only.” He gave the horse a slap on its flank and they were off.

When the two riders turned back onto Raj Bhavan Road, the boy planted his hands firmly on the horse’s rear, propelling himself backward. He landed easily, took the reins from Ami’s hand, and led her in, just as she’d left. Madam Raj, astride her mare. But she didn’t let it bother her.

She tipped the young horseman an extra fifty rupees, which he tucked into the worn pair of slacks he was wearing, and then she asked directions to the tour busses. The boy pointed just a little farther up the road, the way she’d been heading when she’d first encountered him.


(image from www.nkf-mt.org.uk)

While he waited for his food, he looked around. A few groups of westerners. Some young Indian couples. Many of them got married in the winter months, when the weather was cool, and then they packed off to Mount Abu for their honeymoons, posing against the backdrop of sunset, bundled into thick sweaters and wool scarves. But they didn’t mind, Dev thought, looking at a couple snuggled into a booth. They were starry-eyed, enjoying the few days they could be alone from family and friends, suspending the rules about not touching, not showing too much affection in public. They have each other to keep warm. He zipped his fleece jacket up to the neck.

The food came, rice and vegetables, spicy with thin chilies. He ate slowly, ordering a cup of masala chai and then a King Fisher.

A western couple, both dreadlocked like Shivaite sadhus, ate Jain pizzas with their fingers. Dev wondered at them, at their ease with each other, the casual way they brushed against each other, inhabiting the same space, laughing too loud as if they didn’t care who heard.

Americans, he thought. Or English. Germans. Maybe Canadians. How was it that those countries were so full of people who simultaneously horded space when it came to riding on crowded busses or trains, and yet so easily invaded each other’s space when it came to relationships? All the rules were reversed.


(image from www.traveller.outlookindia.com)

The tour bus puttered around the lake, retracing some of the road Ami had already covered, and then slung off toward the hills in search of Shanti Shikar. It was all about photo ops, of course, and Ami quickly found herself the official photographer of the dozen people on the bus—all couples or families. Being single relegated her to the task of photographing everyone else’s trip.

White arrows pointed the way along a path up to the white washed temple, it’s pointed peak reaching skyward, though balanced on the summit it seemed to scratch the heaven—if, indeed, the heaven were there to be scratched. Some Sadhus sat along the road where the bus parked, selling malas and picture-postcards of Shiva. The men, mostly older, sat beside the blankets on which their goods were displayed, their long, matted hair wrapped like beehives on top of their heads. They rarely made eye contact with the passers-by, unless offered a coin for a blessing. Ami wanted a blessing, but didn’t know how to ask, didn’t know who to ask to help her. She feared if she tried to engage one of the photo-crazed Indian tourists, they’d see it as a great scrapbook moment and there she’d be, glued into someone’s album, the token white girl posing, squatting, next to a pissed off sadhu.

She shook off her frustration and tromped along the path, hoping to gain some sort of blessing, an enlightened moment, from the view she’d been promised by the bus driver who had given his spiel in Hindi with the occasional English word tossed her way. “Panoramic view,” he said. “Holy, holy.”

The group moved on to the Devi temple, where the Hindus flocked, shuffling together and pushing each other in a race to kick off their shoes, rush in, make an offering and collect a blessing. Ami stood in the back of the dim, dusty temple, watching. An old priest, his eyes squeezed shut, muttered a continual prayer, his hand milling around and around, dispensing good fortune to the camera-clutching minions.

A younger priest—or maybe just a novice—came in carrying a bucket of milk and poured it into small bowls set around the perimeter of the dark building. He crossed in front of Ami, smiling, his matted hair tucked under a bright orange ski-cap, the kind hunters would wear in the Pennsylvania woods.

She followed him out the back door, into sunlight.

“What’s it for?”

“Madam?”

“The milk.” She pointed to the bucket in his hand.

“For the cat.” He mimed stroking an animal. “Sorry, no English.” He smiled again, showing his crooked teeth. But his eyes were bright and clear.

Ami wanted to ask if he was happy, if he had always been happy or if this was the secret, living at the temple, looking after an old priest, feeding milk to the holy felines.
He stood for a moment, expectant, watching her, and then nodded and turned away, wandering back toward the crude house he’d come from.


(image from www.lh6.ggpht.com)

Dev wandered around the market for awhile, not feeling like going back to his room. It was colder than he liked, though he’d grown up close enough to the Himalayas to know the sting of frost in his lungs on winter mornings. In fact, he’d often told his mother that he wouldn’t stay there, in that small village, being no one in particular. He had it in mind that once he finished school, he’d go to Bombay, maybe get into films. He didn’t see himself as a film star so much as a director, perhaps. Or a camera man at the very least. A job important enough that the stars would rely on him, invite him to their parties, ask his opinions.

As a child, he’d seen too many movies, spent long hours in the movie house eating spicy, toasted grain and drinking bottles of Limca. He’d loved the movie houses, the gathering of men—rarely did the women come—the timelessness of sitting in the dark while a bright, shining, bigger-than-life world was projected against the screen. He liked feeling the crush of the crowd during intermission, blinking in the sunlight when he stepped outdoors, then ducking back into the dark to be reabsorbed into the drama.

Instead of Bombay, he’d gone to Delhi, though, when an uncle promised him a job as a driver. And then the plan changed. Plans do that, Dev noticed. Especially when you don’t tend to them, look after them, cajole them into being.

But driving was good. The money was good—he made enough to send some home to his mother each month and still keep himself in the little luxuries he enjoyed. He didn’t mind Delhi—his sister, Meena, was there, and Sunny, Apu and Maya. Dev loved doting on his niece and nephews, loved being the favorite uncle, blowing in from the road with pockets full of sweets and little presents that Meena insisted spoiled the children.

Dev loved the complexity of his life—all the little worlds he frequented. His time in Delhi, his visits to his mother, his stop offs with his friends in each of the towns he drove through, and then the tourists he met. He loved the way his worlds never quite collided, the way they remained separate, orderly, manageable. And he liked the way he could leave them all behind, all the little details—as soon as he was behind the wheel everything else drifted away like so much road in his rearview mirror.

But walking through the market, his mind tumbling over everything, he felt only a nagging lonely feeling. Something like homesickness, but he couldn’t say for where. And something like a sense of loss—like maybe he was a fool to have let his dreams of fame escape him. Only that didn’t quite ring true. Maybe it was a feeling of disappointment, as if he’d somehow failed. The life of a driver—was that anything so great?

Dev let his feet carry him down to the lake, daylight fading as he witnessed a few sadhus making their evening ministrations on the bank. He wondered if he wouldn’t have been better off with the life of an aesthetic—a question he’d pondered before. In fact, it was probably a question most Indian men asked themselves, and a few of Dev’s friends had lived as renunciates for a time. A year, two years. They took the vows to bring honor and good karma to their families. It was a duty of sorts. And after their time was finished, they gave up the robes and returned to the world of cars, jobs, wives and children.

Instead of joining the ranks of sadhus, Dev’s duty had been to help his mother. With Meena needing dowry and their father passed away, he had to work and help the family. In the end, Meena had met Raju and married for love, but by then Dev was settled into the life of a driver, and so he stayed with it.

He looked in the direction of the setting sun, thought of the honeymooners making their way to the look out points and the photographers following close on their heals, hawking clichéd memories at two hundred rupees a shot. He shook his head, patted his pockets, and decided to go in search of a bottle to finish off the evening.



Vinod Mahajan watched the brown-haired woman wend her way through the darkening market, gliding in and out of the shops. Proprietors shivered in their sweater vests, their heads wrapped with thick scarves while on their feet they wore only rubber sandals. They reached for her with their voices, calling out: “Madam, you like bidi? You like nice cassette?”

Vinod watched as the woman nodded and shook her head, attempted the confusing bobble that the Indians offered as an affirmative. She failed, of course, but he found it endearing. He liked brunettes, the nut-brown shimmer of hair glancing off the shoulder. He liked blonds, too, maybe liked them better, especially if they came with pale skin and damp blue eyes. But a brunette is what he’d imagined himself with. He wasn’t quite the sort of guy who could win over a movie-star-type blond, but he could certainly rate a pale skinned girl with brown hair.

This particular girl was busily looking for an extra book of postcards of the Jain temples—She explained to a store clerk that she’d bought some postcards while she was there, but later it occurred to her that if she had two packets, she could write on one set and save the other since she hadn’t been able to take decent photographs.

That was the thing about the picture-postcard booklets, she rambled on, though the clerk obviously knew no English—the ones they hawked in front of any of the tourists sites were nearly always better than what an amateur photographer could manage, especially with a cheap automatic camera. Plus, buying the postcards saved paying the camera fee.

“Madam, you like nice sari? You like something—Limca, Thums-up?”

She turned down offers for cold drinks. “Post card?” She tried to pantomime writing a letter and was shown a display of greeting cards emblazoned with large red roses and Valentine hearts.

In frustration she turned away. Vinod thrilled at the look of hopelessness on her face, reveled in the golden opportunity to come to her rescue.

“I am speaking English,” he offered, stepping up behind her. “I am helping you, Miss.”

Ami looked up, all grateful and pleased to make his acquaintance. He stood in front of her, a man mid-thirties, still trim but far from over-worked skinny, hair close-cut around the neck and ears, a little longer on the top because it gave him a certain devil-may-care quality. He wore the best clothes he could afford—all western clothing, to Ami’s surprise—nylon windbreaker, jeans and tennis shoes. European knock-offs purchased at the Delhi underground market twice or three times a year. A fake Rolex displayed prominently on his hairy wrist, and Adidas crest lifted from some discarded garment and carefully stitched to his pullover.

“Thanks,” she said. Just thanks, not Oh, I’m so happy to meet you. Please save me from this ridiculous, backward country. But the thanks was enough. Vinod offered a small bow and turned to communicate her desire to the shopkeeper, who soon produced a packet of Dilwara temple post cards.

Ami was duly impressed.

“Vinod Mahajan,” he told her, sticking out his hand to be shaken. “At your service.” He added the last bit, hoping it came off as smooth.

“Ami,” she said, shaking his hand briefly, then smoothing her hair back from her face. She dropped her cards into her daypack and fished around for something—a hair-tie, which she used to secure her hair into a loose bun on the back of her head. “Well, thanks again,” she offered, as if just realizing that her rescuer was still standing before her.

Vinod roused himself. Obviously this girl wasn’t going to fall into his arms. “Please to come for a nice chai,” he insisted, taking her elbow in his hand.

“Well I…”

“Yes, Miss. Please. You are most welcome.”

She allowed herself to be led down the street to a restaurant, and eased herself warily—somewhat amusedly—into a chair opposite her new acquaintance.

Vinod took a good look at her while she perused the café, the wall decorations, the other customers. She was thin, but not busty the way movie-stars tended to be. He was disappointed, but pressed on anyway. He liked her sporty look, her fleece jacket and track shoes, her American blue jeans.

“You are American?”

“How did you know?” She leaned forward, cupping her chin in her palm as if it was the most fascinating question she’d ever been asked. “No, I didn’t mean to be sarcastic. It’s just that I feel so…obvious.”

“America. Very good country.” Vinod gave her a knowing glance, wanting to convey to her that he was at least as sophisticated as the American men she met. “India is also good,” he continued, “though many people are having poverty.”

“So, how do you deal with that, day to day?” Ami sipped the chai that had been set in front of her.

“Day to day?” He had no idea what she meant.

“You know. You go out for a walk and fifty beggars want money from you. What do you do?”

“I am not giving the money. It is these people’s karma, these lepers and beggars.”

She looked astonished. “But some are only children! Don’t you want to help them?”

“I am not deciding their karma, Miss,” he told her, knowing she could never understand the intricacies of Indian society. “Only God is deciding this. If these people accept their lot in this life, they may have a more auspicious reincarnation.”

“Oh.” Ami pursed her lips and looked down.

“In America there are no beggars. Only very rich people, like Dallas and Hollywood.” He winked at their shared understanding.

“No, that’s not true—”

“I am having one cousin-brother going to America. He is now a big doctor, a very wealthy man.”

She just shook her head and went back to sipping her tea.

Vinod was pleased with himself. He felt that she was growing to like him. He snuck another look at her. Brown eyes, not blue or even green. Another disappointment, but still…

“Well, thanks for the tea. I have to be going,” Ami said. She began gathering her pack and jacket.

“Wait, I’ll walk with you. Which hotel are you staying?”

She faltered. “Um, I’m not sure of the name.”

“No problem. I am seeing you back, it is my duty.” Again he tried the half bow, but she was looking around impatiently.

“Really, I can make it. But thank you.”

He insisted again, and she gave in, letting herself be guided by the elbow.

Vinod felt the thinness of her arm, the small weight of her, and delighted in walking this close to the possessor of such hair. He hoped someone he knew would spot him, would cross his path so he could introduce his American companion. But the pair encountered no one.

At the edge of a darkened park, Vinod pointed to a bench and suggested they sit and gaze at the stars.

“Really, I should get back,” she protested, but let him tug her into the seat.

“You know, Mount Abu is very romantic.”

She didn’t say anything, just sort of sighed and tilted her head up.

He seized the opportunity, hurriedly taking her face between his hands and pressing his lips to hers.

Ami jerked back, freeing herself. “What are you—”

He tried again, lunging at her, gripping her by that soft brown hair.

She gasped, yanked back only to find herself trapped by his hands.

Vinod attempted the kiss again, sure she’d like it if she would just settle down. He’d heard about white women, how they liked that sort of thing. A little force.

She twisted her face away from his and he slapped her lightly on one cheek. “Miss, be nice,” he scolded.

“Let me go,” she bleated, her voice coming out in an uncontrolled sob. “Get your hands off me or I’ll scream.”

“No problem,” he tried to sooth her, pulling her closer to him. “Shhh. No problem.”

“Let go.”

He held on.

She sucked in her breath and let out an ear-splitting scream—one certainly loud enough to arouse suspicion if anyone was around.

Vinod dropped the handful of hair, seeming to reevaluated whether or not this particular brunette was the right sort of girl for him. Or maybe he was listening for approaching footsteps, watching for a light to come on in the surrounding dark.

But before he could come to any conclusion, she was running, propelling herself away from the park and toward the main road, the street lights, the hope of other people.


(image from www.rpsc2007.blogspot.com)

Cold air slipped around his ears, reminding him of his days as a naughty school boy, sneaking off with a friend, a bottle between them to nip from, or a bidi to share. Rarely had he been led astray, though. For the most part he’d passed his childhood as a mediocre student, better at cricket than math, never complained about going to temple, fond of holidays—most of all Diwali.

Still, there was the occasional night, slipping away from his mother’s clutches, that Dev had managed to find a little trouble with his friends. He still saw those same friends when he made the trip back to his village, and in some ways it was as if nothing had changed. Dev usually managed a trip home once during the winter season—after Christmas and before the European tourists really descended on the Indian continent. And on those cold evenings, he’d call on a friend and they’d slip away—from a wife now, instead of a mother—and find some place to hide with a bottle, catching up on old times.

But everything was different, too. More different than the same. The friends were all married now, and fathers. They had demanding wives, children wanting attention, jobs to be done, bills to be paid. Even those who had stayed in the village, certain that the simple life was a far better path than the city life, still found that the simple life wasn’t so simple.

“Oh, Dev, you lucky devil,” they would say, breath boozy and thick. “You’re still free. You have your whole life ahead of you—who knows where you’ll end up? Maybe you’ll meet some famous person, some star who will give you a passport to Germany, France, America—hire you as their personal chauffer.”

The friends would look at Dev in those moments, starry-eyed, seeing their own stilted dreams borne in his adventures.

And sometimes Dev let himself be carried along in their enthusiasm, imagining the great promise of the future. Certainly a rock star or a very private multi-millionaire would hire Dev, take a liking to him, and see fit to catapult him into a shiny new life.

But that was just the drink. And once that wore off and took the night and the camaraderie with it, Dev found himself waking to the cold reality that he was not a chauffer to the stars, not even that adventurous. And by daylight his sober friends would only extol the virtues of the married life, the family life. They offered no trace of the jealousy and longing they’d exposed the night before.

Even worse, in retrospect, Dev could never fully recreate the excitement he’d felt fueled by his friends’ desires. Instead he only found himself alone, an eternal boy with a bottle in his pocket, refusing to grow up. He found himself alone with his own brand of unspeakable regret. He found himself alone and standing outside the warmth of family, with no way to get in. He found himself a man without a home. But most of all, he found himself alone.


(image from www.mountabu-india.blogspot.com)

The desk clerk looked surprised when Ami rang the bell, her face flushed and eyes wild.

“Madam? Some problem?”

“Yes,” she said, her breathing fast. “Big problem. Very bad man. Very very bad man.”

“You are having some problem? This man is in hotel?”

She shook her head. “No, he’s gone now.”

“This is good news, Madam. You are needing some doctor?”

She shook her head again, tried to catch her breath. Think, she told herself. What do I need?

The desk clerk was watching her curiously. Three years of working there, and the habits of white tourists never ceased to amaze him. But he’d learned to wait patiently. Anything else, and they tended to freak out.

“Can you tell me,” she began after a moment, “Where to find Dev?”

“Who is this Dev?” the clerk asked, glancing down at the guest registry.

“I’m sorry, my driver. I arrived this afternoon with a driver, his name is Dev. Devesh… I’m sorry, I don’t know his last name.” She looked down at her shoes, dismayed.

But the clerk understood. “You are needing driver? I am calling him.”
“No, please…” Ami reached up as if grasping for the clerk, but instead only gripped the marble counter between them. “Can you tell me where his room is? I want to go find him in person, please.”

If this request was odd—and it was—the clerk managed a look of complete indifference. “Yes, Madam. This way.” He shouted a few words of Hindi to another man in the office, and led Ami toward the back entrance.

Ami recognized the Ambassador—it was the only one parked out back—and notice a row of ground-level rooms which she guessed were driver’s quarters. Kind of like the servant’s quarters, she thought, and then realized that was exactly what she was dealing with.

The clerk knocked at the closest door to the car, and together he and Ami waited, but there was no answer.

“He is coming later,” the clerk offered, as if he knew.

“I’ll just wait a moment, then,” Ami told him.

He thought to protest, to usher her back into the hotel, but something—the resolution in her voice—told him she wouldn’t budge. Besides, who was there to see? And what business was it of his if the crazy American woman wanted to stand out in the cold waiting on her driver? He shrugged and left her standing there.

Once the clerk had disappeared back into the hotel, Ami tried knocking again, and calling Dev’s name, but he didn’t answer. She jiggled the doorknob, then gave it a twist.

It turned. She pushed the door opened, stage-whispering, “Dev?”

No answer. She flipped on the light switch—a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling—and took in the room. No wide white bed, no tall windows, no clean-tiled bath. Just a charpoy, a couple faded duvets, a battered table and chair. She recognized Dev’s duffle bag, one of his shirts spread neatly over the chair, a tiny brass figure of Krishna set on the table.

The right thing to do, of course, was to leave and pretend she’d never invaded his space in the first place, but she couldn’t walk back out the door. She needed to talk to someone, needed to get her head straight. She sat down on the bed, resting her head in her hands, trying to think.

The room was cold. She shivered a little, hugged her arms around herself, felt the choking feeling of tears in her throat.

It wasn’t even like she’d been scared, she told herself. That man was shorter than her, out of shape, she could’ve beaten him senseless if it had come to that. Not that it would. He was just ignorant. Pushy. Not really any danger.

The tears came anyway. Big, body shaking sobs, rocking her against the charpoy. She cried, hugging herself, drawing her knees into her chest, wailing and moaning until she’d exhausted herself. And then she fell asleep, hair tangled over her face, mouth open, one fist jammed against her lips, the other curled into her belly.


(image of Nandi Rock from www.picasaweb.google.com)

Dev noticed his light on as he neared the door, but thought nothing of it. He wasn’t drunk, just cold; chilled through with memories and melancholy. Distracted, not ready to return to the loneliness of his bare room, but not willing to stay out any longer, searching for something that wasn’t there. He turned his doorknob, let himself into the driver’s quarters, unzipping his jacket without looking up.

In his distraction, Dev almost didn’t see Ami, almost sat on the girl curled up on his bed.

As soon as he saw he, he started, jumped back. “Madam? Ami?” he whispered, not sure if she was alright, not sure what to do.

He crept closer, leaned over her, noticed her chest rising and falling with breath, noticed he eyes closed in sleep. She looked sweet, vulnerable, at the same time completely familiar and completely new to him.

Dev watched her for a moment, marveling over the innocence that had wrapped around her. He wondered how she’d come to be there, what had transpired while he’d been out. He wondered if he should just let her be, and then decided against it and gently gripped her arm.

“Ami. Ami, please wake now.”

She didn’t budge.

He tried again, shaking her just a little.

Her eyes fluttered open, focusing on him, looking confused.

He watched as she woke fully, her eyes registering recognition, then a look of terror. Those same eyes, closed so peacefully in sleep just moments before, flooded with tears. “Dev,” she sobbed. “Please forgive me for letting myself into you room. It’s just I needed to find you.”

“Ami, what is problem?” He sat down gingerly on the edge of the bed, and she flung herself into his arms.

Sobbing, tears and snot dripping onto Dev’s clean shirt, Ami recounted her meeting with Vinod.

Dev listened with wonder, not at the story—he’d heard similar accounts before—but at how angry he felt, how he wanted to protect her. When had he had such a feeling? For Meena, surely, but in a way he was duty-bound to his sister. And certainly he felt a sense of protection for his nephews and niece, but they didn’t need him as much as they needed their parents. His love for them was secondary, and he knew that. Ami was certainly different. Perhaps he felt a sense of duty—she was his responsibility as long as she was paying for his service—but he could no longer deny that his loyalty to her went beyond the bounds of the paycheck.

Lifting her head with his hands, Dev freed his handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped her cheeks and nose with the tenderness he’d show a child. “No more crying,” he told her, his voice low so it wouldn’t crack with emotion.

She nodded, her lips trembling a little, but she didn’t cry any more.

“We are making some report to the police?” Dev asked, not quite sure what to do next.

“No, I don’t even know this man’s last name. The police would only laugh at me. And really, it was my own fault. I knew better than to go anywhere with him.” She tried to laugh. “It wasn’t that I was afraid, I don’t know…” She let her head drop into her hands.

Dev curled an arm around her back, noticing her slight frame, the fragile feel of her spine. “You must let this man go from your mind. You are safe now, no more problem. One more week of traveling. There are still—many things for enjoying.”

Ami looked up at him, gratitude in her eyes. She cuddled into the arm that was wrapped around her. “Can I just stay here for a little while, Dev? I just don’t want to be alone right now.”

“Sure,” he replied, a strange but welcome sense of relief flooding his chest. “No problem.”


(image of Guru Shikhar from www.flickr.com/photos/)

It was well after midnight when Ami and Dev, stifling whiskey-induced giggles, crept past the desk clerk who’d long since nodded off in front of his TV. They scurried up the flight of stairs, Ami rummaging in her pocket for her room key.

When the door opened, they tumbled easily onto the large white bed, Ami settling her head on Dev’s chest; he unscrewing the cap and helping himself to another sip from his bottle before tipping it to Ami’s lips.

“No more pain,” she pronounced, leaning back and gazing out the window. “What the hell is up with this country, Dev?”

“What? You are not liking my country?”

She laughed, a warm rumble against his rib cage. “No, I love it. But it confounds me. How can I both love and hate a place? How can the people be so wonderful and so horrible at the same time? How can there be so much religion and so much filth in the same place?” She shook her head.

Dev thought about what she was asking, struggled to find an answer. “India is the joining of opposites. Good and evil, light and dark, spirit and nature.” He ran his hand through her hair, his fingers snagging on a tangle. “Male and female, too. Nothing exists without its opposite. That is the way of India.”

She tilted her head up, slid her fingers behind his neck and brought his mouth down to meet hers. “Madness,” she whispered. “None of it makes sense, does it?”

“You Americans,” he told her, smirking. “Too much worry about making sense. Nothing is making sense. You must learn to accept this.” And then he kissed her back, and did his best to let sense slip away.