Good Indian Girls: Stories (20 page)

Anil merely said, You know Papaji and I, we had our differences.

The dying lawn, fading into dusk, and I thought of my father’s house in India, in Punjab, standing next to Kirpal’s with its constant guards. Our small, cramped rooms leaked out onto roads of dust, fields of dirt. How far we had come in so few years.

Both houses looked out onto a large square of dirt, where every now and then, tents blossomed overnight like mushrooms, heralding the sudden animation, the music, the air of license and possibility of a wedding celebration. At other times, we kids played in the square, kicking up dirt, running, a kite string threading through my fingers, the paper kite behind me, rising until it was almost gone, smaller than the sun, and I would pull it in, afraid it might disappear. Anil, eyeing the dead kite, a lazing bird, feathers ruffled by the breeze, would shout at me, Why did you stop? Why did you pull it down? His face angry, as though my fear had lost him that world up in the sky where he could look down and see his father only as a dot, growing smaller and smaller.

Those days, my legs stuffed into trousers, a white cricketer’s shirt, and Anil the same, his fingers pulling at the collar, Papaji, it’s so hot, and Kirpal saying, This is how real cricketers play. And on the far edge of the field, the
kids we always played with, dressed in torn shirts, no shoes, we envious of their freedom, they awed by the shadow of the great man, too timid to approach. They said he argued with Nehru over Partition. They said his voice rang out in fury when Jinnah announced, a day early, the formation of Pakistan, casting the shadow of a split land onto the fireworks, the celebrations of India’s birth, because, they said, Kirpal didn’t care whether the British stayed or left, all he wanted was India whole. Nehru’s ears rang with his abuse, Why do you let Jinnah split up the land? Why do you let them take a knife to our Punjab? But to us he was the memory of fame, that arc of muscled arm, that streak of red through the sky, toppled wickets, victory.

Kirpal’s thick fingers enclosed my arm, holding it just right, forcing my hand around the red ball, hard enough to kill a man. Like this, no, like this, he said, his fingers pushing my hand into impossible positions. Cricket is a dance of the hand and you must learn the moves precisely, that’s it, yes, that’s right. I would throw the ball, watching it skid far off in a momentary breath of dirt pulsing up from the ground. His shout, Anil, get the ball! And Anil would run, faltering, his father’s voice, Quickly, quickly, my arm still hurting from where he had gripped it, where his fingers pressed into the soft flesh. And Anil, standing, his eyes on the ground, in the distance the kids watching, a kite on the ground, unmoving, Come on, boy, that’s it, hold the ball, just so, no, not like that, here, put your arm like this, here, bend your elbow when you bring it back up, keep the wrist loose, no, Anil, not like that at all, you’re holding the ball like a girl, hold it like a man, you can’t always throw underarm, a man, Anil, do you know what a man is? Do you know what a Sikh man is?
Come on, hold it properly, who formed the Khalsa? Do you know why? Anil! Hold the ball like a man, properly, no, I’m not hurting you, I’m only showing you how to, Anil! Okay, go inside, go sulk, be a girl! And the great man watched his son kick up dirt, hands on the tight collar, his eyes on the ground. Now, Raj, again, but keep your wrist more loose when you run, yes, that’s it, great! I threw the ball as hard and fast and straight as I could and watched it bounce some distance off, the red of it fading. I knew, even then, that if I were a real friend to Anil, I would have dropped that ball at Kirpal’s feet, I would have walked away, my hand fingering my collar, my feet kicking at the dirt. But this was Kirpal, the dying sun behind him, and even so young, we had our gods.

Anil double parked his orange Mercedes outside my store in Berkeley, one hand pressing on the horn, the other waving at me, his lips moving, Hurry up! Hurry up! It was a busy morning, the students filling the sidewalks with their bodies, their nervous, urgent energy, and I, not even finished with my first cup of tea and already in the middle of a big sale, and then Anil, the horn blaring, the arm waving. Neema! I called out to my wife. Neema, Anil bhai is waiting, and I still haven’t finished with Mr. Sheik. I smiled at Mr. Sheik. Neema, please finish with Mr. Sheik, and to Mr. Sheik, thin, balding, though young, eyes alive, I said, My dear wife will conclude the sale if you do not mind. My business partner is impatient this morning. Mr. Sheik nodded, Yes, he said, Please to tell we are all sorry for his loss. Yes, yes, of course, gathering up my briefcase, the horn blaring, and Neema, Don’t forget your jacket. She is frowning, her eyes not on Mr. Sheik, an important customer, but on the orange Mercedes,
orange, the national color of Khalistan, her tongue nervous, Give him my best, and say I will call Anita this evening. I nod. The street, treacherous with students. Why the hurry? But the car is already swerving onto University Avenue, and Anil, his face dense, illuminating nothing, says only, These bloody hippies, If I could kill one . . .

Anil is a short man, strong, broad shouldered and muscular, hair creeping down the sides of his neck. Ever since those days of playing cricket, he has grown to the sides and not up, building layer upon layer of muscle, fat, as though preserving that self he was as a child, kicking up the dirt, his eyes down, the cricket sweater tight, hot, the collar suffocating. Before he started wearing a turban, his hair was already thinning, greying, and his hands, when we sat together some evenings, a bottle of Johnnie Walker between us on the table, his hands would find his head, straightening, covering up those first signs, not wanting to admit that one day his hair would be like his father’s.

I didn’t know what to say, so I said, quietly, Anil bhai, searching for traces of grief in his profile, but all I found was the hard shell of something else. Anil bhai, I am so sorry. Neema too. Mr. Sheik even. He shook his head. At a light, he pressed his hand on my arm, and briefly, he glanced over at me. Do not say anything. I know. It is not easy, but work must go on. I said to Anita this morning. Anita, I need to work, without work, what am I? And she still crying. Did I cry? No, he was an old man, and old men die. The car lurched forward, his hand on the stick again, and then he burst out, Bloody hippies! A young woman dressed in tie-dye, her long hair flowing, walking in the street, casually, and Anil had to swerve to miss her. That was why I was late
this morning, he shouted, because of gora hippies like that one! They parked me in, some VW with stickers all over it. The Grateful Dead, and all that whatnot your daughter listens to. Next time . . . But he broke off. We were on the freeway, and his foot went to the floor as the car menaced across four lanes, the horn suddenly blaring at someone who tried to cut us off. I had never seen him drive like this, overtaking without giving cars a chance to get out of the way, or if this was impossible, flashing his lights, pressing the horn, Come on! Come on! What are you doing, you stupid woman! Go back to Mexico! Berkeley became Oakland, its long stretches, dead tires rolling between lanes, sixty, seventy, eighty . . .

Over twenty years ago, our parents waved to us from the dock, their small figures submerged in the crowd, until eventually, we couldn’t distinguish between the families and the whole dock, those thousands of faces, merged into the grey horizon that kept us looking back to India, enchanting us with its memory of stillness. When we approached the United States, for several minutes we had the illusion of returning, but this disappeared when we saw the hubbub on the dock, the skyscrapers behind it, and no one there, waving to us. We started a business in Berkeley, and in a few years, our small import-export storefront had expanded so fast that soon we controlled much of the sari trade on the West Coast, and even parts of Canada. Our parents found us wives, and we flew back for the wedding, nervous, laughing, smuggling Johnnie Walker in our luggage, all the time talking boldly of what we would do that first night as men.

Anil, come here, son, he said. I stood watching, hours after the wedding. He looked so much older, the grey in his beard
having expanded like a fungus, eyes tired. He hugged Anil, his broad chest pressing his son close. Now you are married, and Anita such a fine girl, with a degree and everything, just like you wanted. The old man beamed. Anil, his body limp in his father’s arms, already strong, stocky, no turban yet, pushed Kirpal away, though gently, without force. Thank you, he said formally. And Kirpal again, Now I am in the government, you know, I hope you do well to my name abroad. I am more important than ever. I have meetings with our dear Indira almost every day. Indira! snorted Anil. She is a . . . But he stopped himself, and I could see the red rise to his face. Sorry, but I don’t share your politics, Father. Anil moved back, turned, and quickly pushed out through the tent which stood on that old field where we had practiced cricket until our arms hurt and our knees ached. I thought I saw in his retreating figure something of the boy pacing away, angry. But he was a man now, and there was nothing Kirpal could shout at him. Kirpal stood alone, suddenly ancient, his shoulders slumped, his eyes looking down at the dirt, one foot etching a circle. If there had been a cricket ball in sight, I would have picked it up, running, my arms and hands perfect, the arc of that ball, just to show that after all these years I had not forgotten who he once was. But there wasn’t, so I said, Sat Sri Akal, bowing slightly, and followed Anil, nervous, thinking, Neema is more beautiful than in the photographs, but I hope she doesn’t want too many babies.

The 1980s closed around his neck like a noose, those years before his murder, when the rumors began to surface. Slowly at first, like the dead bodies on the side of the road, those rare births of night, first a Hindu, an old man, then two nights later, a pair of Sikh brothers, then a Hindu family in
a neighboring village, then . . . The rumors expanded in the heat of the worsening trouble, when so many years had gone by and all Kirpal wanted was the mantle of the old statesman, the dignified aspect of his beard, one shake of the hand and the deal done. He felt forced to give a speech against the separatists, against the widening cycles of violence. Punjab must never become Khalistan, thumping his fist on the armrest of the chair, his face on every television. India must remain whole, though wounded, having already lost its pound of flesh in 1947. The radicals were murderers, arsonists, nothing more than petty criminals and terrorists. The police must be given full authority to quell these troublemakers. I did not walk with the Mahatma to see our country come to this. His face lost in nostalgia. I watched the videotape he sent Anil of the speech, specially copied to play on an American VCR, only to sit as Anil frowned, grinding his teeth. The old fool, he doesn’t know history when he sees it, Khalistan will overrun him. But watching Kirpal’s face on television filled me with an old feeling, and I remembered I had always thought of him as my father, the one who made it possible for me to come to the States. But to Anil I said, You’re right, the old fool. And it felt right.

It was only a month after this speech that Indira ordered the attack on the temple, and it was Kirpal, so rumor had it, who pressed her to rout the fighters from our holy shrine.

But other rumors were already being passed by whispers. They said reporters started them, always pushing their noses in, but others that someone in the government, in his ministry itself, an internal power struggle after the attack on the temple, a hand that forged originals, changed the past, but others that CIA was involved, or even KGB—they all knew
his hatred for communists. No one could prove anything. They said, wasn’t it strange he retired from cricket in 1947, at the height of his career? They said, but this was only a rumor of a rumor, that he refused to play for a free India, that he only ever played for the glory of the Raj. They said, laughing, the old man wants the British back. Why not send him over there, retire him with an OBE? There were photographs from the forties—him, no turban, on his knees to some white sahib, his lips approaching the feet—and this on the front pages of all the rags. And then they said he never marched with Gandhiji at all—he was playing a match in Trinidad. Where were his loyalties in 1947? Was his argument with Nehru only a speech he gave attacking Nehru, attacking the bloody passage of independence? And where were his loyalties now? Why did he attack the separatists when everyone knew what his son was up to? The old man’s hand in every pot, his fingers dirty.

They made him resign, made him leave the humiliations of Delhi and return to his Punjab under martial law. Arthritis in his joints, feet shuffling from the house, across that old square field, barely the strength to kick up any dirt, walking to the bomb-scarred and shattered walls of the temple. They said he sat for hours in prayer, often overnight on the cold stone of the Golden Temple, his eyes on the water of the temple pool. Anil said it was better this way, better he was out of politics, even though he still gave speeches, still attacked the separatists. It gives me a free hand, no more of his damn meddling, always messing things up. Do you know, but . . . I had stopped listening, knowing this was not the way it should be. An old world, an old nostalgia had been laid bare, battered, dead. Those ancient gods had vanished, and all I
wanted, middle-aged, was an order that would assure me, tell me who I was, now, so far away.

It was during these years that Anil started wearing a turban, attending gurdwara regularly, a kara on his wrist, a painting of Guru Govind Singh garlanded in the living room, and a kirpan, the sheath studded with jewels, hanging over his desk. Often, when I needed him, he was gone, his secretary smiling, Sat Sri Akal, Mr. Gill Singh, Anil Singh is at the gurdwara, so please to wait because he will be back soon. At the gurdwara at two in the afternoon? I would ask sometimes, and she would smile, nod happily, Yes, of course, Mr. Gill Singh, your partner is very devoted these days, and her secure voice would intone, Wah Guruji. On the wall a calendar showed Hindu atrocities against the Sikhs. This month a man lay in a pool of blood, an old man, his body riddled with bullets, and somewhere in the shadows, where the camera lens could barely focus, a woman caught in her sudden grief.