Happy Birthday! And Other Stories Part 19

The next morning, Pramod didn't get up from his bed. Meenu-who hadn't slept the entire night-bathed and wore a full-sleeved brocade salwar-kameez. It kept her wrist hidden. She went to the bed, put Pramod's head on her lap and asked him, *What's wrong, jaan?' He just stared at Meenu, not saying anything. His face looked withdrawn and old, like he'd aged a thousand years. What did he know?

But he didn't mention last night's disturbance or the missing bangle.

Meenu was so relieved that she remained teary-eyed the whole day, fussing over him like he was a child. But he wouldn't eat, not even accepting juice. The day pa.s.sed in silence. At night he didn't put his arms around her, but lay in a corner of the bed, completely still, his body moving only when seized with coughing.

By the following week, there were b.l.o.o.d.y sores on Pramod's neck, his arms and chest. He was wasting away, not moving from the bed, except to use the bathroom for which Meenu had to help him up.

The nurse continued to come every day, but her visits now lasted for hours and on some days she stayed till almost midnight.

One day as the nurse was leaving she addressed Meenu for the first time. *Very soon Sir will not be able to move at all. You will have to change his sheets every two or three hours. Give his medicine on time. And keep the room temperature on medium.'

*What's wrong with him?' Meenu asked.

The nurse looked sharply at Meenu and said, *Shouldn't you know that?'

When the nurse left Pramod beckoned Meenu to his bedside.

*I will be gone in a day or two,' he said.

Genuine hot tears rolled down Meenu's cheeks.

*No, you will not,' she said. *Not when your Chand is here.'

He gave her a small sad smile.

*I am going to my Chand.'

*No, don't say that.' Meenu stared at him and couldn't help but ask, *What are you dying of?'

He smiled weakly.

*Please tell me, I beg you.'

He bent his forefinger and signalled for her to come forward. She leaned into his face as he whispered, *Heartbreak.'

She giggled then, standing up pertly. *No one dies of heartbreak.'

*I am, twice over,' he said, grimly. Then he looked at her and added, *But I don't want to leave the way my Chand did.'

*What do you mean?'

He grabbed Meenu's empty wrist and held it with all his remaining strength. *I mean that I didn't tell my Chand the truth on her deathbed, but I want you to tell me yours.'

Meenu's wrist burnt in his grip as if he'd thrown boiling water on it. Pushing a strand of hair behind her ears, she said, *What are you talking about? I have nothing to tell.'

*Are you sure?' he asked, his eyes piercing hers.

She could tell him the truth, Meenu realized. Pramod would understand. He would.

*I-' she began. But what if he didn't? She'd been wrong about men before, and she could be wrong now. There was too much at stake.

*Would Chand ever lie to you?' Meenu replied instead, batting her eyelashes. She laughed then, a high-pitched sound that echoed thinly in the silent room.

Pramod studied her quietly for a minute.

And then he too laughed, sickly, weakly, and his teeth showed, yellow and nauseating. *So you prefer to serve in h.e.l.l than to reign in heaven?' he asked.

Meenu didn't reply. She stood by Pramod's bedside and waited for whatever had to come next.

SHAITANS.

Shortly after waking up, Jamie realizes his bag has been stolen.

*These b.l.o.o.d.y Indians,' he exclaims, getting up so fast from his hard bed that he has to lean against the wall till his head stops reeling. He feels an urgent itch on his forearm and looks down to see a large welt emerging. Is it possible to get malaria immediately after recovering from it?

Don't let the bite distract you, he tells himself, knowing that he has to deal with the more pressing matter of finding his pa.s.sport, money and clothes so he can get back home to San Diego. He walks to the ashram's seva office.

*I came to this meditation course to find peace, you know?' he tells Olga, refusing to sit on the wooden chair she offers him. The peeling wall behind Olga has a laminated sign stating the code of discipline for the ashram's residents. He clicks his tongue angrily on reading the second rule: abstinence from stealing.

*It's ridiculous. I flew a thousand miles in search of spirituality, stayed in silence for ten f.u.c.king days, recovered from a life-threatening disease and then lost everything.' His voice sounds strained against the quiet of the ashram and he wishes he hadn't said f.u.c.k.

Olga replies in an even tone, *You have any, how to say, suspect?'

Jamie looks at Olga. He knows she's volunteered at the ashram for a long time, but she is white-from Croatia, but white. She'll understand what he's going to say: *It could be any of these Indians. In the name of spirituality these people give big smiles and say the sweetest things, but turn your back and they take your buck. I can't believe these-' he can't think of something vicious enough to say *-shaitans.' It's a word he's heard the local residents sometimes whisper during the evening discourse.

Olga continues in her accent, stretching her vowels as he's seen her stretching her thighs during yoga. *Maybe you think of person who could do this type of thing?'

Jamie remembers the little boy who cleans his room every day. He'd seen the boy on his first day in India, when he came straight from Mumbai airport to this ashram in Nashik, filled with possibility and hope. He entered his room, with its plywood bed and doorless bamboo cupboard, and saw a boy sweeping under the bed with a broom. The boy could have been six or ten-Jamie could never pinpoint an Indian's age-and he smiled timidly when Jamie offered him a tip.

*No, Sahib,' he said in impeccable English. *I want to honour your presence in this ashram by performing this simple duty for free.'

How Jamie smiled back, taking a mental snapshot of that moment, marvelling at the wisdom of a mere child, vindicated in his impulsive journey to this unknown land. His own childhood seemed shameful, for all he remembered doing was drinking Mountain Dew and eating Twizzlers. And even his adult life was spent in futility, chasing eyeb.a.l.l.s and ratings as a TV sales executive. Empty things, really. He wished he had his camera to capture the boy, that moment, but the lady at the ashram's reception office, who told him to call her Mata, had locked away his Canon camera, along with his Seiko watch and his bag containing money, credit cards, a travel guidebook and pa.s.sport. Mata allowed him to take only three pairs of clothes of the ten he had, and a hundred rupees in change.

But this happiness-of which he was so certain that day-didn't last, his mood shifting once the n.o.ble Silence course began. The silence that he was supposed to maintain for ten days grew vines around his swirling mind within the first hour. Guruji's taped voice during the evening discourse warned this would happen, residents would suffer heightened emotions, but expecting to feel a certain way was not the same as actually feeling it.

Jamie was told that he could speak only once a day, only to his evening teacher and only to ask one pertinent question. This also unnerved him for he was unable to divide his life into blocks and pick one block that was more relevant than the others. He waited instead for something, a word or an emotion, to carry him to the meaning of his life. Nothing happened.

In the focused environment of the ashram, with its sincere and serious residents, Jamie realized the disappointing truth: he couldn't live his life in anything but its superficiality. By sitting under the dome of a big white meditation room, his mind could not go on a journey to self-discovery and gather some elusive form of wisdom.

One afternoon, finding the peace grating on his agitated nerves, Jamie left the honeycomb-shaped cell where he was supposed to be meditating alone and went up to his room. Upon entering, he saw the boy, the cleaner, rummaging through his cupboard. The boy didn't hear Jamie's fury build up behind him, engrossed as he was in his task. It was when Jamie put his hand on his shoulder that the boy was startled.

Jamie spoke, for the first time in six days, his own voice alien and threatening, *What do you think you're doing?'

The boy had the wits, or the gumption-Jamie couldn't tell which-to put a finger on his lips, reminding Jamie that he wasn't supposed to talk. Jamie caught him by the starched collar of his white half-sleeved shirt and dragged him to the reception office where Mata was sitting alone.

When he accused the boy of stealing, Mata looked up at Jamie through her spectacles, resting on the bridge of her nose, and said in an unruffled voice, *He was not stealing, Mr Henderson. It is part of his ashram duty to look through the resident's belongings and ensure that forbidden items like alcohol, reading material or writing paper have not been sneaked in. My advice to you, if you please, is that you focus on your course and trust us to do our job.'

Jamie saw that the boy was not going to be punished, would never be. *I want my things back,' he blurted out, knowing no other way to vindicate himself.

*I am afraid that is not possible, Mr Henderson. It is against ashram policy.'

But Jamie was adamant and Mata finally relented, telling him that she was doing it so he didn't succ.u.mb to the emotion of anger that was forbidden during the course. On taking his orange duffel bag, Jamie knew that he'd achieved the goal of n.o.ble Silence: to see things for what they were. Spiritual cleansing was a lie meant to lure unsuspecting tourists like him and take their money. So, over the next few days, he spoke loudly to himself, woke up at ten instead of four-thirty and took photos of the ashram, which was strictly forbidden. He demanded c.o.ke when given nimbu paani, and pizza when given lauki. He read a magazine, a novel, and pretended to write in his notepad-all in the garden, openly in defiance of the rules. His Aussie roommate asked to be moved out. On the last day of the course Jamie was shifted to a single room, and that was where he fell ill.

The illness was Jamie's true meditation; his mind and body alternated between anguish and quiet. He remembered little of the hospital or the doctor whose accent he couldn't follow, but the noise from the street outside his window, the fan in his room, the busy nurses and gurney wheels against the cement floors, remained with him when-after recovering-he went back to the ashram room to collect his belongings. There, with his bag tucked safely below the bed, the lull of the ashram in contrast to the hospital, and the antibiotics, eased him into a deep sleep.

He woke up to discover that he'd been robbed of everything.

Jamie runs his hand through his hair. It feels coa.r.s.e. The path to austerity doesn't allow the use of shampoos or conditioners, so he's been washing his hair with hard tap water. What baloney!

*It's that boy, the boy who cleans the rooms,' he says definitively to Olga.

Olga looks at him with her thin mouth slightly open, as if she doesn't quite believe what he's said, and replies, *It is not possible to do much of anything about this.'

*And why not?'

*The boy you say is like son of ashram, adopted by Guruji. The boy's father leave him before birth and the mother, she was sweeper in ashram, fall off ladder and lose mind, so Guruji give him house to stay and free school. Maybe it will help if you have, how to say, proof of his robbery?'

*Proof? How was I supposed to know that I'd need to be collecting proof in an ashram?'

*Then no one believe you.'

*You expect me to just sit here and do nothing?' Jamie asks. He puts his hands on his cheeks and feels hollows that weren't there before. How much weight has he lost?

*I do not know exactly. Maybe you go to Mata.'

*Mata,' he scoffs. *She'll never believe me.'

*Maybe you go to police then. You have copy, I think, of your pa.s.sport and visa?'

A warning rises in Jamie like seltzer. He makes a quick calculation and realizes that his tourist visa expired four days ago. He's living illegally in India. When he tells Olga this, she informs him of the endless rounds he'll have to make of the police station, the American Emba.s.sy, the pa.s.sport office and the middlemen. The bribes. Jamie curses the boy and without another thought, steps outside Olga's office, leaves the double-storey cement building for residents and walks across to the single-storey brick administration building.

He barges into Mata's office, ranting out his story.

Mata waits till he's finished before saying, *I am sorry to hear this, Mr Henderson, but I did warn you about your bag. However, I cannot imagine what motive a little fatherless boy will have to steal your clothes and pa.s.sport.'

*He is poor, that's his motive.'

For the first time in the four weeks that he's been in India, Jamie sees someone's mouth clench and eyes narrow. Yet, when Mata speaks her voice is calm: *It is not always the poor who steal, Mr Henderson. As an American you should know that.'

Before he can respond, she gets up and adds, *The boy you speak of lives ten minutes away. I will have his place searched. If he is not the culprit, I will try to find out who it is in the next few days.'

Jamie finds he cannot argue with her. He asks, *What will I do till then?'

Mata amazes Jamie with how swiftly she replies, as if she's answered this question before. *You can stay in the ashram for free, but you will have to volunteer your services like Olga does.'

Jamie hears the purpose in Mata's voice and knows that the boy will be caught in a matter of hours. He'll go to the police after that, with his pa.s.sport and a letter of apology from the ashram. So he accepts Mata's offer and goes back to his room. That evening he doesn't leave his room, though he's supposed to a.s.sist Olga in serving herbal tea and fruits to the other residents. No one disturbs him.

The next day at five o'clock, there is a knock on his door. He opens it to see Mata holding out his bag casually, as if she's giving him a gla.s.s of water.

*You found the culprit?' he asks, taking the bag, but she turns around and walks away. Jamie runs after her, shouting, *I knew it. It's the boy, isn't it?' She continues to the exit. He follows her. *You know, the least that you guys can do is have him apologize to me, and admit that you were wrong. Is that so much to ask?' Mata walks ahead, not replying, and stops near the ashram gate. He goes and stands next to her. *Don't think this matter is over. I will go to the police and report the criminal.'

His eyes follow Mata's stare and he sees Olga standing among a group of people at the ashram gate.

*Olga,' he shouts. *Hey, Olga. They found the thief!' Olga looks at him and turns away. He wonders why there is a suitcase next to her feet, when a black-and-yellow rickshaw pulls up at the gate. He sees two people grab Olga by the arms and force her into the rickshaw as if she is a ... convict.

By the time her rickshaw leaves and the crowd disperses-Mata included-Jamie realizes how wrong he's been. He's slandered the boy, Mata and this ashram, only because he couldn't imagine that a white person-Olga-could have stolen his things.

He can't stay in the ashram a moment longer.

He rummages through his bag and, on seeing that everything is intact except some cash, he runs to the administration building, drops most of the Indian money he has left (twenty thousand rupees) into the donation box-his apology to the ashram-and heads straight back to the gate. He asks the watchman for directions to the nearest police station where he needs to report his expired visa.

*You big sahib need visa to come to India?' The toothless watchman laughs incredulously, giving him directions. Jamie slips a hundred-rupee note into the surprised man's hand and steps out of the ashram. In both directions there are miles of highway lined with rows of trees and shrubs, behind which are endless fields. It is three kilometres to the police station, he should hail a rickshaw, but his mind is too burdened for his legs to remain still. So he starts walking, unable to appreciate India's sights or sounds, hearing only the silence of his own mind. After a few minutes he sees a boy ahead of him, thin legs dragging on the ground, shoulders slumped, dark hair clinging damply to the back of his neck. It's the boy from the ashram.

If dejection has a form, Jamie knows it's this.

He shouts: *Hey!' and realizes that he doesn't know the boy's name. Though they are alone on the muddy path lining the highway the boy doesn't turn. Jamie jogs up to him and taps his shoulder. The boy looks up at him, and-startled-drops what he's holding and starts to run.

*Stop. I want to say I'm sorry,' Jamie shouts. He has no energy to chase the boy. He picks up the wire contraption that the boy has dropped-two circles held horizontally by a stick-holds it out and shouts again, *I am not going to hurt you. Take this back.'

The boy peers over his shoulder and steps onto the highway.

Jamie sees a truck, a large looming beast, coming from the opposite direction. It is hurtling straight towards the boy.

Jamie wants to shout a warning, but he is not able to find his voice. The boy is still looking at him, running across the highway.

Now the truck is just a few feet away, honking and hurtling, honking and hurtling.

Jamie finds his voice: *Watch out! There's a truck coming!'

The boy doesn't hear him and the truck is now almost upon the child. Jamie is about to close his eyes, unable to watch, when a silver-grey Mercedes comes out of nowhere, directly in front of the truck. They crash-the truck and the car-and there is a noise that rips Jamie's heart. He bends over, shielding his eyes to avoid the gla.s.s shards and red dust flying around him.

The car lies smashed into itself, as if it's taken a deep inhalation.

Despite the coughs that seem to have seized his entire body, he sees the truck driver reverse his vehicle. In an instant he's driving away. Jamie quickly pulls out his camera from the bag and photographs the back of the truck, the licence plate and a painted sign that says: *Obay The Rullz'.

His eyes search for the boy but he is no longer there.

Jamie hears shouting; the highway that was empty a few seconds ago is filling up with people. Where are they coming from? He backs away, unsure of how to navigate a big crowd. A woman's bloodied body is taken out of the car and laid out on the road as people yell, pushing each other in confusion. A few minutes later an ambulance arrives, a doctor checks the body. Jamie hears the word dead. The crowd begins to disperse. There's nothing left to do. The boy is still nowhere to be found.