Bindi Read online

  My diya are always lit for you.

  Your loving sister,

  Aditi

  V

  Though each day was much the same—frequent visits from the neighbors, Birendra helping Mrs. Nair prepare food for this period of mourning, for there was no one else to help and it occupied their time—the first week, mercifully, had finally come to an end. On the fifth day, they received a visit from the priest again, and with Mr. Nair’s help, they gathered the ashes and remains from the pyre, placing some in an urn for the final ritual, in ten days’ time. Those remaining went in a pot they buried at the site of the pyre, over which they planted a coconut tree, along with rice and wheat, holy basil and turmeric. Birendra no longer hoped to return to school, though there was nothing he would have liked more. The priest had made it clear that the activities of his former life had to stop during this time, when his duty was to his mother’s atma; he alone was charged with delivering her peace. Birendra wanted to do this for his mother, but knowing that she, too, would not like him to be kept away from school, every day he missed it dreadfully. He listened carefully to the priest’s instructions, which he explained were different from the ways of the north, where his mother was from. But because they were in Kerala, and because it was what they had done for Birendra’s father, the southern customs would guide them.

  And when the second week came, and the visitors disappeared, and Mrs. Nair’s kitchen was stocked with the food they’d made together, Birendra found the time to worry about how much school he was missing and how he would fall behind. He wondered about Mr. Mon’s plans for the reading club and about the library books he still needed to return. But he intuited that these concerns held no weight in the atmosphere of mourning, so he kept quiet and waited. He tried to focus on the fact that the letter he and Mrs. Nair had written was, each day, that much closer to its destination, but when days passed as slowly as this, it was small comfort. And while he felt certain that, upon learning the terrible news about his mother, his aunt and uncle would surely send a response immediately, he couldn’t make his own letter go any faster. Mr. Nair must have known this. When the sixteenth day arrived, and his mourning period had come to an end, where would he go?

  Birendra realized in time that, though Mr. Nair was a quiet and brooding man, he was not mean. Birendra was especially grateful to him on the fifth day of rituals, for he had not wanted to retrieve the pieces of bone from the ash, and Mr. Nair had seen his fear and helped him do this, then helped him prepare them for the urn. His kindness was just a little different from what Birendra was used to. It could be found in Mr. Nair’s actions, not in his words.

  On more than one morning the second week, Birendra awoke to damp earth, to droplets collected on the leaves of trees and plants from the night rains. He visited the site of his mother’s cremation often, to see if the seeds they’d sown had sprouted. He wanted proof that time was moving forward, that each day he awoke was different from the one before, that the letter was on its way, and that his family would soon follow. But the mound of dirt showed no signs of life or of time passing.

  And yet the fifteenth day finally arrived. Time had been carrying on after all. Mr. Nair had not forgotten his promise that Birendra would leave. He spoke to Mrs. Nair of his cousin in Trivandrum, who was “better suited” to take Birendra in. Mrs. Nair shushed her husband at the mention of sending Birendra away, using his mourning as her excuse. That evening, at the dinner table, Mr. Nair spoke, and, for once, he seemed to be addressing Birendra as much as Mrs. Nair.

  “I have some good news,” he said. Birendra’s head went fuzzy with excitement, but then he remembered that not enough time had passed for a letter to return from London. “I’ve spoken with my cousin Mr. Channar, and he’s agreed to take you in.” Birendra turned to Mrs. Nair, who was shaking her head at her husband. This made Mr. Nair angry, and Birendra thought he might shout at her, but he did not. He spoke slowly, in a way that left no room for doubt. “He will go Friday, and he will wait for his family there.”

  Mrs. Nair sat back in her chair and stifled her tears. She seemed not to want to look at either of them. Birendra wanted to understand why she was opposed to the idea. Trivandrum was, after all, closer to his school, and he would be able to go back on the seventeenth day, wouldn’t he? He so wanted to see his friends and his teachers; he wanted homework again and to be able to check out new library books. He wanted to have something to remind him how life was when his mother was still part of it, instead of, day after day, to have nothing except the reminder that she was gone.

  “It’s my cousin’s business to deal with orphans,” said Mr. Nair. “It’s right the boy should go to him.”

  It took a moment for the full weight of the word to register. Birendra had never once considered that was what he was—an orphan—until he heard Mr. Nair say the word. Wasn’t it different when you were waiting for someone to come for you?

  After dinner, seated once again by the mound of dirt at his former home, he recalled the sad tales of orphans that he’d heard from his mother or read in books, the difficulties and dangers they almost always faced. It took two weeks for a letter to arrive from London. If they responded right away, it could be thirteen more days. And that meant at least thirteen more days before he could become an orphan.

  He awoke the following morning to the hush of voices in the darkness. Then the faint glow of candlelight in the kitchen. The priest had returned and was drinking tea with the Nairs. They were ready for him. His mother’s remains would now be taken out to sea. He carried her all the way from the village. Others joined them at the beach. For the first time since his mother died, Birendra wished that time would slow down. He wasn’t ready to let go. He clung to the urn and watched Mrs. Nair prepare three rice balls, which she placed on a banana leaf before the priest, who chanted a repeated prayer over them. Then Birendra cast his eyes out to sea, hoping to find his father there waiting. The banana leaf was placed to one side, and Birendra was told to set the urn down and clap three times. A crow and two pigeons immediately descended on the rice. And the priest told him that the crow was the representative of Yama, the god of death, who would be pleased by the offering and grant passage to Birendra’s mother. She had never told him that part of their story, and he was uncertain how he felt about its sudden revision. He chose instead to think of Yami, Yama’s twin sister, and imagined her standing beside his father, with her diya lighting the path and her song guiding his mother. The tide was low, and he kept walking out to sea. Soon he could no longer hear the little waves lapping on the shore. Or the priest chanting. He felt like he’d arrived in the middle of the ocean, where there would be no shore in sight, alone with his mother. The water had reached the base of the urn. He closed his eyes and tried to see Yami’s lanterns, to hear her song. The rhythm of the ocean guided him as he upended the urn.

  The sun had yet to rise behind him, but the moon was nearly full and bright in the sky above. A faint lone star hovered close by. The shore was still there when he turned. Sometimes he and his mother had come to this beach to eat mango ice cream and walk along the shoreline, wade in its waters. Birendra knew it was because she had missed his father. He had missed him, too. He looked down at the water. There was still a film of ashes traveling across the ripples of its surface. There, it was done. His mother was free. Tomorrow he would go to Trivandrum.

  VI

  Nayana stepped off the bus and stood there on the sidewalk for a moment. Outside it was damp and gray, because when wasn’t it in London? She was going to meet the dean. Just the year before, he had called her in for a meeting regarding changes that would occur as a result of the school’s impending incorporated status. As a relatively recent hire, she’d been sure then, too, that she would be let go. Instead he told her she was his choice for the department’s full-time evening lecturer. She’d been so surprised and relieved by the offer that she hadn’t had the wherewithal in the moment to consider the repercussions of refusing the honor, which she did
for fear that a larger class load would drain the creative life from her—she’d begun to think she might return to the book she abandoned in graduate school. She had no doubts about today’s meeting. Whether it was irony or not, the part she’d played in arriving at this point today, about to be terminated, was not lost on her. And yet had Nayana been a man, a white, English man, there would undoubtedly have been no meeting at all.

  Soon after she’d refused the promotion, Nayana realized her mistake, that she had offended the dean’s sensibilities, that he regretted ever going to bat for her. He resented Nayana. It was not an unfamiliar position for her once she recognized it. She was a woman, foreign—an Indian in England—and she was expected to take whatever was offered, grateful to have been noticed and offered anything at all. Her preferences were inconsequential and her value diminished as soon as she forgot her place, that is, when she claimed to have one. It wasn’t as though she were instructing the queen’s greatest minds at Oxford; she was in West London teaching evening higher education courses. Her Tuesday night class was taken away in the new year, and now she was certain he would tell her the next semester would be her last.

  The dean had Nayana sent in right away. He had taken to making her wait since she’d refused the full-time position, but he must have been eager today. He was unusually friendly in greeting her, inappropriately so, she thought, considering the task at hand. He asked her to sit and began to conduct the first part of their meeting with a faux-friendly formality that reeked of stale, colonial air. Would the British ever actually accept that the sun had set on the empire?

  “It’s jolly bad luck, Nayana,” he said, eventually coming to his point, through an ugly grin. “We’re still restructuring, you see, getting settled in our new setup, as it were, and, well, we just have no justification for two part-time appointments in addition to Jonathan.”

  Jonathan was the white man who’d received the position she’d been offered. The dean didn’t even bother to subdue the pleasure he was taking in delivering the news of her dismissal, making it clear as well that she’d fallen from first to third place, become expendable. He kept using her name, overemphasizing the second syllable, as he always had done, as he danced around the subject of their meeting the previous year. It was as if he wanted to remind her that she’d had the audacity to refuse him while avoiding any acknowledgment that she was ever a candidate in the first place. After a while she stopped paying attention to his words, though she did follow his lips with a kind of disgusted glee, as the flabby expressions bounced about his pallid face. He’d probably expected her to weep or beg, or worse. That she’d been silent so far was, no doubt, another disappointment, so he kept repeating himself, perhaps hoping for a reaction.

  “I see,” she said, finally interrupting his redundancy. “Well, I guess it’s good I don’t have an office to pack up.”

  He didn’t like her cheek, and she was pleased to see his complexion find a little color. It was something she’d taken pleasure in doing to her adviser in graduate school as well. These men and their prejudices, the way they pretend everything a woman does is extracurricular and therefore not a serious loss when taken away. They forgot she was actually qualified to be there. What did they see besides a pretty Indian girl? Did they congratulate themselves on finding a place for her in their ranks? The dean, unamused, closed the file on his desk and informed Nayana with a bland authority that she would finish out the autumn term, but in fact she would not be required to return in the new year. Her classes had been redistributed. This wasn’t what she had expected to hear. If she was going to leave sooner than planned, she’d wanted to be the one to say so. But she was determined not to listen to this man gloat. She scooted to the edge of her seat and forced a cool countenance.

  “So only a week to go?” she said, imitating his initial jolliness.

  “That’s right,” he said, standing, with his arms immovable at his sides. He could no longer look at her, but she took pleasure in looking at his face for, she hoped, the last time. “Good luck, then.”

  He might as well have said “good riddance.” Nayana left his office and felt herself flush as she walked, on instinct, to the break room down the hall.

  What would Ramesh say about so sudden a change? What would she tell him? He would want her to rest anyhow once he knew she was pregnant. She could easily use it as an excuse not to return to work after the holidays. Again she could get away with lying to him. Why was it always so easy? Why did she continually take advantage? She knew the lies were adding up. Soon they would crush her—or, worse, they would crush Ramesh—completely. There would be the loss of income as well. It wasn’t that they would suffer horribly without it, but it had enabled Nayana, for instance, to send money to her sister. Not a lot, but enough for her nephew’s school and whatever else Aditi chose to spend it on. Nayana had been trying to get her to spend some of it on a phone installation for a year at least. If she had only not waited so long, Nayana might just call right now and tell Aditi the whole story—about Daniel, too—shocking her sister, yes, but ultimately Nayana would be relieved just to have heard Aditi’s voice, even her dismay, perhaps especially that. The day she told Aditi she was going to stay on in London after university, to pursue a master’s, she heard both Aditi’s disappointment and her admiration. That now undeserved praise remained, however many failures later, haunting every letter Aditi wrote. When Nayana told Aditi of Ramesh’s proposal of marriage, her sister had only asked if the wedding would interfere with Nayana’s schooling. By wedding, she knew that Aditi had meant the whole of married life, just as she’d meant Nayana’s career when she said schooling. Despite the very different path Aditi had chosen for herself, already married and starting a family of her own, in Varkala, of all places, her faith in Nayana to do more had never faltered. Even when Nayana had only managed to do less. It must be such a burden, she thought, for her sister to have to hide that much disappointment.

  Nayana opened the break-room door with more strength than necessary, interrupting a colleague and his sad lunch, which he ate while reading and marking up student essays. She didn’t know the daytime faculty well, and they weren’t inclined to know her, either. She checked her mailbox and enjoyed the thought that soon her name would disappear, that she would one day never return to that break room—or the campus, for that matter. She didn’t even enjoy teaching, not really. When the students took a real interest, it was easy to care about their progress, their learning, but mostly they were just ticking off boxes, uninterested in reading and writing, which were all Nayana wanted to do in life. Why wait? she thought, removing her name from under her mailbox and throwing it in the trash.

  In the corridor, she smiled at the thought that there were only a few class meetings left before she would be set free. Few thoughts had made her so happy recently. And then there was Daniel, walking toward her. He’d clearly thought her smile was meant for him, for he returned it with a relish she suddenly found repulsive. She couldn’t turn around, and there was no point in avoiding him.

  “You’re looking well,” he said.

  “Not too bad for someone who’s just got the sack.”

  Her greeting proved the perfect detour from his awkward entreaties. He laughed at what he assumed to be a joke. And by the time he realized it wasn’t, all threat of flirtation was gone. He reached for her shoulder to comfort her, but she retreated and smiled widely.

  “It’s a blessing in disguise, actually.”

  It was over now—seeing him again had just confirmed this—and she wished he could figure that out as well. Their meetings had been for one purpose only; she thought he’d known this. That he was still trying to get a read on her, perhaps hoping she was merely being coy, was now annoying her.

  “I’ve just come to pick up some papers,” he said. “Wait for me?”

  She stepped into the courtyard outside. He looked different today, no longer as boyishly handsome. He appeared simply disheveled up close and smelled bitterly of cigarette smo
ke. She kept her distance when he rejoined her and relayed the highlights of her meeting with the dean. Daniel seemed genuinely upset, and Nayana softened to his sympathy, but she remained determined. He needed to get that it was over.

  “I won’t beat around the bush, Daniel. Perhaps you’ve gathered that our little interlude has reached its end as well. In any case, I wish you good luck. I do.”

  What could he say? It was all so neat, his dismissal following the tale of her own. She left him there, his raised hand frozen in a parting gesture. She would have felt something for him, some pang of regret at her own laconism, at least, if it weren’t for the disarray of her life. Next up on this day of reckoning: her meeting with the gynecologist. She might as well know exactly where she stood in her life. Except, of course, she wouldn’t; pregnant didn’t mean pregnant by Ramesh.

  The midday traffic seemed to attempt to drown out her thoughts like a kindness as she sat on a concrete wall behind her bus stop. She allowed herself now, as she sometimes did, to imagine her life in a more dramatic telling, a more desperate tale, in which she simply walked into the stream of cars, as those before her had walked, laden with rocks, into other currents. But that was not her story. She would never do that to Ramesh, who would somehow find a way to blame himself. Nothing was his fault, of course. And he would be thrilled to learn of her pregnancy. But what if she had reached her limit? If she couldn’t tell another lie? What if she could only deliver that news along with everything else: the lost job, Tuesday nights, Daniel? What if she saw his face and confessed everything? That she had failed again, at work, in their marriage?

  Her bus had arrived and was departing without her by the time its presence registered. She wouldn’t wait for the next one. She stood and began to walk to her transfer point, running her fingers along the waxy leaves of the hedge bordering the sidewalk, trying to undo any damage to Ramesh that hadn’t yet been done. She would make him something nice for dinner, his favorite. She would try to remember how, in the beginning, it had been a pleasure to do simple things, to want to make him happy with some small gesture every day. When and why did it get so hard? And how could she find her way back?