Bindi Read online

  Nayana passed a pay phone and thought of her sister again, of the two letters still waiting for replies. She passed through a noxious peroxide cloud that hovered in front of a beauty salon. It was time to trim her ends again. They now reached her tailbone when she let her hair down. If Aditi were only in London, she could do that for Nayana as well.

  She was adding cream and tomato paste to the chicken when the door to the flat opened. Murgh makhani was a dish Ramesh loved and ordered often in restaurants. She rarely took the time to make it at home and hadn’t done so once since she’d started teaching. She remained at the stove with her back to the hallway, stirring in the cream and hoping Ramesh would say hello and keep walking. He stopped at the entrance to the kitchen, and the muscles in her shoulders and neck contracted.

  “That smells good. What are you making, jaanu?”

  “Butter chicken and some spinach with rice.” She didn’t turn around. She fiddled with the knobs and lids, sensing that he wasn’t leaving the doorway. Go on, she begged silently, and squeezed her eyes shut. She wanted him to carry on to the bedroom, change out of his work clothes, then sit in his study as he always did, decompressing. She needed their routine, the table and food between them on those nights when she was home and cooked. “It’ll be ready soon,” she added.

  She heard the strain in her voice. Did he? He didn’t leave. A chair slid a few inches gently, across the tile floor. He set something down. His briefcase?

  “So how did it go with the dean?”

  “What? Oh, yes, fine,” she lied.

  He approached from behind and rested a hand on Nayana’s hip, sending a wave of sensations—guilt, pleasure, hope—that finished with goose flesh up her arms. And then he smoothed that over with the soft skin of his palms, parting her hair and breathing in the nape of her neck from behind. She set the spoon down and let her hands fall from the stove, limp at her sides. A tear fell as well. Her body began to fold into his. He kissed her neck now, and she was reminded how long she’d deprived herself of him, even on the occasions they’d been together, how she’d cut herself off from his affection.

  “I’ve missed you, jaanu,” he said.

  His voice was soft and penetrating, her body once again permeable to his love. He pulled her even closer, as if she could pass right through his skin and into him, his body a place to hide, even from herself. This embrace unleashed the part of her that had forgotten to want him, to trust absolutely in him, in their love. Why hadn’t she gone there first? Why had she ever left? And how did he know she was ready to come back to him now? She hadn’t even known it for certain herself. She turned to face him. He was smiling with more affection than she felt she would ever deserve but as much as she might ever need. He turned the stove off and took her hand.

  “The cat,” she reminded him.

  He guided her out of the kitchen and into the hall, toward their room.

  “Felix,” he said, “can wait.”

  VII

  Birendra rode wedged between Mr. and Mrs. Nair in the rickshaw to the train station. Feeling entangled in so many conflicting emotions, he was returned to silence. There was his fear of leaving the only home he’d ever known, his eagerness to return to school, and his immense gratitude for all the Nairs had done for him. Each on its own could have succeeded in overwhelming him. On the platform, Mr. Nair handed Birendra his backpack and reminded him there would be someone to pick him up in Trivandrum. He was to wait beside the luggage storage office, on the platform closest to the entrance of the station. Mrs. Nair was doing her best to hold back tears. She told him to be careful and promised to visit and to bring any mail as soon as it arrived.

  “And when your auntie and uncle arrive, of course I’ll bring them to you myself.”

  Birendra had already stepped into the train by the time Mrs. Nair’s words fully registered. It was possible that his family would arrive before a letter, or instead of one. It took much less time to fly to India than it did for mail to arrive. His aunt had told him all about her travels when she last visited Varkala. He was six, and it was the first time he’d ever thought about what it must be like to pilot a plane, to be floating up with the clouds. Any day now, they could arrive for him. And with this newfound hope, Birendra viewed the passing landscape from the train window with less trepidation than he’d felt in the rickshaw, even though he was now on his own. This was the beginning of his journey to a new home. The orphanage would only be a waiting place.

  He and his mother had taken the same train two years earlier, to pick up his aunt Nayana from the airport. On the way home, he sat between his mother and aunt. He watched how they held each other’s arms and hands as they spoke, then he closed his eyes and listened for the ways their voices were different. At one point he laid his head down in his mother’s lap. He made a frame around his aunt’s face with his hands. It was so like his mother’s. She reached down and squeezed his nose and told him he was getting to be such a big boy. She spoke to him with many English words, which delighted him. He’d made so much progress since then, more than she would know from their brief conversations on the phone, and he hoped she would be proud of how much he’d learned since they’d last seen each other.

  In Trivandrum, he stepped off the train and wondered which man might be Mr. Nair’s cousin. He found a spot beside the luggage storage room and waited as he’d been told, watching the people come and go. A man was approaching, and he seemed to smile at Birendra, but he did not stop, and Birendra saw that he had been smiling at someone else. When he turned again, a tall and thin woman appeared. Even though she said his name, he was confused; he had expected a man to come for him. She said she was called Rani and told him she was there to take him to Mr. Channar.

  “Is that Mr. Nair’s cousin?” he asked, recalling the name.

  “I believe so,” she said. The way she smiled at him made him trust her. She had kind eyes, but he was suddenly reluctant to follow, to take up residence at an orphanage, even if it wouldn’t be long now before his family came and even if he wasn’t an orphan. “Are you ready to go?”

  He had no choice but to accompany her. There was nowhere else he could go, and Mrs. Nair would bring his aunt and uncle to the orphanage as soon as they arrived. From the station, they took a rickshaw. Birendra searched the streets for a familiar landmark from his most recent visit, the year before with his mother. Then he looked for the busy restaurant they’d gone to, not far from the station on their way to the zoo. They’d eaten dosa for lunch. The coconut chutney was the best he’d ever had. His mother preferred the green chili and mint. But there were many restaurants in Trivandrum, and even more cars, so it was difficult to see anything at all. He asked Rani if they were getting close to the zoo. She pointed ahead in the distance and said it wasn’t far from where they were going.

  “And are there many children my age?” he asked.

  “Not so very many. You will be the oldest. Mr. Channar prefers to take in babies and toddlers and children under four.”

  Did she think he was an orphan? Had she been told he was?

  “I’m just waiting for my aunt and uncle to come for me.” She smiled and made no indication that she didn’t believe him. Perhaps she just didn’t know. “They’ll be here any day now.”

  “Then maybe they will take you to the zoo when they come.”

  He did not tell her that his mother had already taken him there or that he’d found the zoo to be a sad place in the end, the animals sitting alone in their cages, bored, scared, or angry while so many people gawked at them from the other side of the bars. He was growing more nervous by the moment, and now he imagined a cruel Mr. Channar locking the orphans in cages. They were filthy and hungry, screaming and crying, waiting to be thrown scraps of food, just like the sad animals at the zoo.

  “Is Mr. Channar a nice man?” he asked, forcing himself to speak to escape the visions in his head.

  “He is a good man.” She touched his knee. “It will be okay, Birendra.”

 
They rode the rest of the way in silence, the bustling city streets gradually giving way to quieter roads with tall trees, until finally they arrived. The orphanage wasn’t the dark and scary building he’d imagined, but he followed closely behind Rani all the same as they entered through the large wooden door, ready to bury his head into her side if he got scared. He heard no children crying in the hallway. It was quiet and peaceful and clean as they walked along. On either side, there were a number of doors. Rani had picked up her pace and called to Birendra to keep up. She would introduce him to Dipika, who helped Rani take care of the children, and then she would show him to the room where he would sleep. She stopped in front of one of the last doors on the right.

  “While you’re here, you’ll be helping us.” He heard a child scream behind the door, then the laughter of children playing. There were also babies crying. He tried not to fret and to focus instead on the instructions Rani was giving him. “Mr. Channar has asked me to prepare a list of daily chores. Today Dipika and I will show you, and then you will do them on your own.” He nodded after a moment, realizing she had been waiting for him to accept these terms. As she opened the door, the noise of the room at full volume gave him a start. Rani had to raise her voice to be heard. “This is the nursery.”

  Dipika had a plump-faced bundled baby in each arm and was speaking to another in a crib. She turned and appeared relieved to see Rani. She said something quickly, something that sounded like “Pasha is at it again,” and Rani went straight to the children fighting in the corner. Three of them stood together. Two, a boy and a girl, were crying and pointing at the third, another little girl. Rani put out her hand, and the oldest girl reluctantly relinquished the wooden block she had been holding, which Rani gave back to the others, restoring order and stopping the flow of tears. She took the little girl by the hand and brought her to a chair alone in the corner. She seemed to be scolding the girl. With the noise in the room, he couldn’t hear what Rani was saying, but he could see she was being gentle in her reprimand. There were babies crying in their cribs and toddlers crawling all around the room, occasionally stopping to shout at the top of their lungs for no apparent reason. He could hardly hear his own thoughts. But nothing seemed so terrible, and this, for the moment, was a relief despite the chaotic din of the room.

  Now Rani retrieved the two babies Dipika had been holding so Dipika could change the diaper of another. Birendra set his bag by the door and approached, but he only got close enough to see a screaming purple face through the wooden slats of the crib. He thought again of the children in cages, but Dipika lifted the naked wailing baby from her crib, deftly swapped out the soiled diaper for a fresh one, then went about changing the child, unfazed by her continued screams. Dipika laid the child back in the crib, and her little arms reached and trembled as tiny fingers grasped at the air. Birendra came closer still. He put a finger out tentatively for the little girl, then jerked it back when a fresh wail departed those powerful lungs. Dipika had moved on to another crib, but she smiled at him and urged him on. She was younger than Rani, he thought, and she had a very long and pointy nose. The rest of her, unlike Rani, was not thin. She seemed friendly as well, and this put him more at ease. He tried again. He wanted the baby’s trembling to stop, and it did when her fingers latched on, which surprised them both. The baby ceased her crying altogether for a moment as well, then let out a lesser cry and gradually fell silent.

  He counted eight cribs in all. Some of the babies were sleeping, but others were reaching out and clasping at the air, as this little one had been, with their pudgy pink hands. He understood their need to hold on to something when everything around them was so uncertain. There were children crawling around him as well, and one went by him, brushing his leg. He would have to learn to look around him before he took a step in that room, which was as big as two rooms, really, and lined with windows high up on the wall, so he could only see the treetops and sky above. On the other side of the room, the little girl who’d been causing trouble was up from her chair now and talking to a boy Birendra hadn’t yet seen, perhaps the oldest among them.

  “You’re very good with babies, Birendra,” Rani said. “Did you have a brother or sister?” He shook his head. “Well, here you have many. That little girl over there,” she said, pointing to the one she’d had to scold, “we need to keep an eye on her. She doesn’t always play nicely with the others, but she will learn. Her name is Pasha. And the boy she’s with is called Sanish. He doesn’t talk much, but he is sweet and good for Pasha. The other two, with the block, they are Vidip and Sunita. Those are the four older children who will share a room with you. I’ll show you now.”

  The hallway felt even quieter after his time in the nursery. Rani pointed out the kitchen, and she showed him where to find glasses if he wanted water and fruit if he was hungry in between meals. If he made a mess, though, he had to clean it up. Mr. Channar did not abide dirtiness, and he was old enough to care for himself, wasn’t he? He promised he would clean up after himself. She showed him where they kept the broom and dustpan and said they’d be back for those after she showed him his room and the bathroom, for that would be his first duty. He followed her to the bathroom for guests, which was large and white and clean, and then to the bathrooms for the children—there were two, and they were smaller—each of which had a big bathing bucket inside. She asked if he had his own thorthu with which to dry himself, and he said he wasn’t sure if Mrs. Nair had packed one or not. He would have to check. If not, she said, there were some on the shelf outside the bathroom, where he could also find soap and toothpaste and where he could keep his toothbrush.

  “And this is your room through here,” she said, stopping to take a sheet from a shelf beside the door.

  The room was dark and green and small. There was no furniture besides the four mattresses that were laid out all in a row against one wall. She told him to open one of the mattresses that was still rolled up and place it in the corner. She set a crate on its side beside the bed and said he could use it to store his things. He looked around once more. There were an additional two rolled-up mattresses by the door. A lightbulb covered by a brown metal shade hung low in the center of the room. He wondered if the other children would snore, though certainly no one would snore as loudly as Mr. Nair. Rani had unfolded a sheet and was casting it out over his mattress. He kneeled to help her smooth it down. Then he put his backpack inside the crate and remembered something he’d left behind. His favorite figure of Ganesh, the best one his mother ever made. It was still in the hallway shrine of his house in Varkala, next to the mango offering they’d made on the last day of Diwali.

  Birendra would be in charge of sweeping, first in the hall, then in front of the building and in the small courtyard at the back, where Mr. Channar smoked his cigarettes. When they had no visitors scheduled, or at the end of the day, he was tasked with mopping, which he did using a folded soapy rag Rani had given him. The hallway was so long that he wrapped the rag around the push broom and created a mop. Rani said it was clever of him when she saw him quickly moving up and down the length of the hallway. He should just be careful not to slip.

  When he had finished his chores, he was invited to join the others once again in the nursery. Birendra tried to make the toddlers laugh; he pulled faces and tickled their sides. Or he distracted the babies again with dangling fingers and stuffed animals that weren’t as nice as the ones his mother used to make. He felt a tug from the side on his shirt. It was the little boy who Rani said didn’t talk much. Birendra learned quickly enough that that didn’t stop him from laughing. Everything was funny to him, even when Birendra wasn’t trying to be. Contagiously so, and soon the other children had gathered, and they were all laughing together in the corner. It was then that Mr. Channar walked in. His entrance didn’t seem to faze the children, who carried on with their senseless laughter until they collapsed on the floor and rolled around and on top of one another with even more laughter. Birendra alone stood at attention and moved
away from the corner of the room, feeling the need to make a good impression. He’d promised Mr. Nair he would.

  When Mr. Channar had finished speaking with Rani, he left the way he’d come, walking past Birendra and taking no apparent notice. Then he stopped and looked back, realizing who he was. Birendra tried to smile. He felt very nervous. He hoped to broach the subject of returning to school as soon as possible. But Mr. Channar merely nodded, then continued on out of the nursery.

  That evening after dinner, Birendra told the children the first of many stories he chose from those he’d read so often with his mother, tales in English he translated into simpler stories in Malayalam so the children would understand. That first day, he told them about the boy who took up residence in a kangaroo’s pouch. He wished he had the book so they could see what a kangaroo looked like. Since he didn’t, he used his fingers and pretended to draw the kangaroo features around his body, the round ears and long tail, the big feet, and the pouch. He picked up a teddy bear and stuffed it into his trousers. Rani walked over, her hands full with a blanket-wrapped baby, to listen. He could tell she liked the story as well. The children paid close attention. And for the first time in weeks, Birendra felt close to his mother again, as if she were listening from wherever she’d gone.

  In the days that followed, Birendra received the same brief nod but no further greetings from Mr. Channar. He decided it must be that Mr. Channar knew Birendra would soon be leaving. He was a busy man who didn’t have time to get to know a boy who was only passing through. And yet if not Mr. Channar, whom could Birendra ask for news of his aunt and uncle or permission to return to school? And how could he ask if he’d not been granted the opportunity to speak to him?