A Time to Dance (19 page)

HOLDING ON

For twelve days,

priests light a ceremonial fire in the center of our hall.

For twelve days,

priests guide Pa as he performs Paati's final rites.

They pray to Shiva, creator of worlds, destroyer of evil.

He is bliss, they say.

From joy were we made,

by joy do we live,

and unto joy

do we return.

Pa mouths the prayers.

I can't tell if he takes any comfort in them.

The words fall with dull thuds on my ears.

On the thirteenth day, Pa's family from far away joins us.

We feast together and then they leave and the priests leave.

Pa says, “It's time we collected all of Paati's things

to give to the poor.”

But when he comes to my room to take Paati's trunk away,

I throw myself over it,

shouting, “No!”

Tears burst out of me.

“It's the custom,” Pa says, gently. “Giving her things

away to charity

is a tradition she'd want us to follow.

It doesn't mean we'll forget her.”

An endless stream of tears

pours down my face.

Ma rubs my back.

Pa returns the trunk to its place under Paati's bed.

But I can't

stop

sobbing.

VISITATION

A ghost visits me that night.

Not Paati. I'd have welcomed her.

Instead, the lost length of leg beneath my knee

prickles.

An invisible reincarnation

taunting me.

Worse than any ghost story Paati told,

this haunting phantom flesh.

My moans bring Ma and Pa rushing to my bed.

They can't exorcise my pain.

Not even Paati could.

But I long to feel

her touch.

FIGHTING PHANTOMS

Our doorbell rings. I hear Govinda's voice.

Before I can pull my leg on,

he's standing outside my bedroom door,

saying, “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

I feel caught unawares, holding my unnatural limb in my hands,

like a murderer dismembering a corpse.

Pain from my phantom limb

pierces me.

As if a million fire ants are stinging my nonexistent skin.

Govinda runs to my side.

“Veda? What's wrong? Tell me.”

“My

right foot

hurts.”

Gasps punctuate my words.

I grimace with pain from the ghost neither of us can see.

“Ever had your leg go to sleep?

Go numb for a while and later tingle back to life?

Like that. Only my leg's amputated.

So it hurts worse.”

Govinda kneels.

“Where's the pain?” He molds my hand onto his. “Show me.”

I guide his fingers over my ghostly foot.

I watch him

pressing my invisible ankle,

rubbing my invisible instep,

kneading my invisible toes

as though he can sense it as clearly as I can.

My ghost pain fades.

Bizarre.

“Thanks.” I shudder,

feeling like a monster.

A half leg of my own,

an artificial leg that can never feel,

an imaginary leg taunting my brain,

and one normal leg.

“I'm a four-legged beast.

Not a dancer.”

“The divine dancer has four arms,”

Govinda says.

He chants,

“Yatho hasta thatho drishti; Yatho drishti thatho manah;

Yatho manah thatho bhaavah; Yatho bhaavah thatho rasa.”

The hand leads the eyes; the eyes lead the mind;

the mind leads emotional expression;

emotion leads to experience.

No mention of feet

ghostly or real.

Govinda says, “People forget what they see onstage.

They remember only how deeply you touched their feelings.

Akka can dance even if she's seated the entire time.

The best dancers

can move an audience

without once moving their own feet.”

Govinda flattens my palms, fingers together,

straight except for the thumb;

shaping my hand into
Pataaka hasta
—my first hand word—

a symbol that can show many things.

He places my palms

together like the two leaves of a closed door.

Turns them gently apart to show the door opening.

Then he links one of his hands with one of mine,

interlocking our thumbs,

forging them into the wings of the divine eagle, Garuda.

Our feet are still. But we're dancing.

Our fingers flutter.

Our wings flap.

Our divine eagle flies.

Higher and higher.

Glides.

Soars.

THE COLOR
of
MUSIC

Outside the window of akka's study,

gray clouds smear the sky like ash.

I tell Govinda, “I wish we didn't cremate our dead.

So I could at least have a grave to visit.

But my pa scattered Paati's ashes

in the Adayar river, as she wanted.”

Govinda doesn't give me the usual reply—

that to hold on to someone's mortal remains

is to dishonor their eternal soul.

Instead he says, “Would you like to go

to where her ashes are, Veda?

The river-mouth is near here.”

Govinda walks me

to the Theosophical society—a green oasis in the city—

along the banks of the Adayar river.

Scattered inside the grounds,

between acres of trees,

are a few old Victorian villas

and several places of worship: a church, a mosque, a synagogue, a Hindu temple.

Govinda and I stand together on the sandy shore

of the Adayar estuary,

where the river that bore Paati's ashes rushes toward the sea.

I think of a prayer Paati used to say,

that each soul has a different path to reach God

just as each river takes a different course to the one great ocean.

“Maybe Paati's soul is with God and I can't sense her presence

because I haven't figured out what God is,” I tell Govinda.

A light drizzle wets the earth. Raindrops

split sunlight into bands of separate color.

White light—one color containing myriad others—

I understand.

Water—one substance with many forms—I can feel.

God—one yet infinite in form—I can't understand.

“When I dance,” Govinda says,

“or when I'm in a beautiful place,

I feel I'm in the presence of something

large and good.

It doesn't give me answers. But I don't need them.

For me that feeling

of wonder, of awe, of mystery,

of being in touch with something larger,

is as close as God comes.”

Wonder. Mystery. Awe.

In touch with something large and good.

The way I felt as a child in the temple of the dancing Shiva,

exploring every crevice of His sculpted feet with my fingertips.

I had no questions then. Only a yearning to learn dance.

I have questions now. But perhaps I don't need answers.

Like Gautami, who, in the end, didn't need an explanation

for her son's death, because she found

experiencing Buddha's compassion was enough.

Perhaps even God doesn't know

why some suffer more, some less.

Paati seemed sure what God meant to her.

Maybe, like Govinda, I don't need to be sure.

Maybe all I need is to feel what I felt as a child. Through dance.

By dancing a different way,

dancing so it strengthens not just my body,

but also helps me find, then soothe, and strengthen, my soul.

CLOSE

Govinda and I arrive at a pond filled with dark pink lotuses.

“This is my temple,” Govinda says.

He sits next to me on the grassy bank.

There's a space between us, a sliver of air.

He held my waist the day of the party.

Now, with no one else nearby,

with no excuse to touch me, he's careful and correct.

I love that he's such a gentleman.

I hate that he's such a gentleman.

While we sit together, sharing silence,

my impatience slowly falls away.

Music enters my mind,

notes as sweet as I always heard as a child.

A frog hops onto the grass,
tha thing gina thom.

In the distance, a woodpecker raps at a tree trunk,

tha thai tha, dhit thai tha.

Govinda whispers,
“Tha thai tha, dhit thai tha.”

He's saying aloud

the same rhythm I hear in my head.

“Veda, can you hear it?

Music to dance to. All around us.”

“I hear it.”

I feel closer to him

than if we were in one another's arms.

A PART

The evening of our performance

as a minor player in the large sweep of a dance production

the nervousness I feel is not for myself

but for Govinda, who is in the lead,

and for Radhika and all the others

who stay longer onstage than I do.

Akka lights a lamp backstage and we bow to it.

When it's my turn,

my right foot leads my left

onto the stage

into the pain

I felt when my body and part of my life

were torn away.

My back hunched, I play the woman

overcome by age and illness.

In the scrape of the cane I hold,

I hear the echo of my crutches.

In my second role, as Gautami, I hold

not the body of my lost child,

but my severed limb.

When Gautami is comforted by strangers,

I hear the words strangers said to me after Paati's death,

and feel a sense of peace.

Dhanam akka nods and gives me quick pat on the shoulder.

Radhika hugs me and says I was “amazing.”

Govinda's little sister, Leela, joins me in the wings.

Together, we watch the rest of the play.

At the end of the evening,

Govinda leads me onstage with him,

ahead of the rest of the cast

despite my minor role.

Standing together in a group, we press our palms together

and bow our heads to salute the audience.

When our shared applause comes,

it feels like being part of a winning cricket team,

only far, far better.

Because I'm part of a dance team,

together with people who share my love of dance.