Karma (6 page)

-  Trains are arriving from Punjab. Filled with Hindus murdered by Sikhs.

We will never be forgiven, Bapu says. For these lies.

Blood for blood!

Khoon ka badla khoon!

Marauding gangs search the districts of New Delhi for turbaned men:

Munirka

Saket

South Extension

Lajpat Nagar

Bhogal

Jangpura

Asharm

Connaught Circle

Beating and burning as they go.

A red-painted
X
marks the spot where Sikhs can be found:

In their houses.

In their shops.

In their temples.

Even the
gurudwaras, Bapu cries.

Is no place safe?

Despair

Sikh men are cutting hair shaving beards removing turbans as if they never mattered at all.

Shorn

No, Bapu. Not your hair.

I'm a marked man, Jiva.

But what about God?

He'll have to understand.

You will be
patit,

I cry into his shoulder.

No longer a Sikh.

A Sikh man must be more than his hair. He is his word and his belief. And if I'm dead, Jiva, what good is my word?

I remember Mata washing my father's hair. The river flowing through her small hands.

Please don't, Bapu.

Listen, Jiva. I must keep you safe and I can't looking like this.

Now cut it!

He puts a pair of silver scissors into my hand. (Where did they come from?) I have never held anything so heavy in my life.

You are asking me to kill what is most precious to you.

I am asking you to save my soul and my daughter.

The blades cut through the night.

But not easily. Even they resist, dulled by sorrow.

Bapu sings. A battle prayer.

Daiwo Shiva Bar Mohay Aihoo—

The hair falls to the floor.

My father weeps. For all that he has lost.

I cry too. As Hindu and Sikh.

Help

I want you to wait here. I'll be back as soon as I can.

His hand rises, the nervous tick of forefinger to the temple. He is startled and then remembers why the turban is gone. fingers run through the short stiff spikes, my handiwork.

I'm going to go and get help, Jiva. In the Mangolpuri district. Kiran Sharma lives there. He'll help us get out of Delhi. Or hide us.

(We are criminals. We are fugitives.)

Is he Hindu?

Yes. An old friend from university. A highly moral man who doesn't believe in violence.

Sometimes friends change, you know, Bapu.

(A stolen sari. A stolen kiss.)

Not this man. He lives a life devoted to tolerance.

And we are close friends like you and Helen.

My throat tightens. Like me and Helen?

Let me come with you, Bapu. I don't want to be left here.

I can go faster alone, Jiva, and you'll be safer here. You heard what they're doing to the women. I can't take the chance.

But what if you're seen?

I'll stay out of sight. In the shadows. Or I will blend in. I don't think I look Sikh any longer without my hair.

I look at him. His hair won't lie down even with the coconut oil. His beard has been trimmed, but there was no razor to shave it close. I don't know if he looks Sikh or not, but if someone stands close, they will see the fear in his eyes.

What should I do if you don't come back?

I will. I promise, Jiva.

A mistake

There's something I have to tell you, Jiva. Before I go.

His hands hold his head.

The heavy weight. Of sorrow?

Or something else?

What is it, Bapu?

I made a terrible mistake in bringing you here.

But how were you to know someone would kill the prime minister? We had to bring Mata's ashes. I understand.

No, not that.

There's another thing.

The nervous tick.

Though the turban is gone.

What other thing, Bapu?

The great desire. Of your mother.

What desire?

For you to have a husband.

I know that.

An Indian husband.

I know that too.

An Indian husband in India.

In India?

She never said India!

I'm sorry, Jiva.

The hands. The head.

But you can't mean now!

I know. I know.

You brought me to India to leave me here?

His fingers shake. Search for his hair, his beard.

Your mother's wish, Jiva.

My hands are fists.

The nails pierce my palms.

So Amar Singh will give away his daughter because he couldn't make his wife happy!

I thought she'd get used to Canada.

Don't talk to me.

(Not even sixteen.)

I thought there would be more children.

Don't talk to me.

(A husband.)

I didn't listen to her. It's my fault.

Don't talk!

(Sex with a stranger.)

Please, Jiva. Forgive me for everything.

(Sold! For the price of a father's guilt!)

Red sari

And now I remember.

That one is only for brides,
the saleslady at the sari shop had whispered.

While I was touching the red silk, Bapu had smiled at me. He was imagining my worst nightmare.

A marriage to a man I'd never met.

The wedding night:

The sari slip pushed up my thighs.

The husband forcing his body into mine.

And later:

The mother-in-law checking the bedsheets.

For proof of virginity.

My reluctant and conquered blood.

What is happening to my life?

Oh, Mata. Do you see what your actions have done to me? Or was this always your plan?

Dear Maya,

We cannot see how our lives will unfold.

What is destiny and what is accident?

And how can one ever be certain?

Leaving

Bapu gets up and walks to the door. His eyes rest on Mata's urn. Then he pulls them away to look at me for what seems like an eternity.
Be ready, Jiva.
He turns the handle. Steps into the hall, ducking under the doorframe. An old habit. Now, without the turban, it's no longer necessary.

I've always thought of my father as tall, taller than most, but tonight he has shrunk. To half the man.

I let him go. Not even a kiss on his cheek. And not a word. A good daughter would have accepted his apology.

I turn the lock and lean my back against the door. The turban is tossed on the bed. It looks like a giant seashell abandoned by its former inhabitant.

The empty home.

Questions

I didn't ask him.

Am I betrothed to a Sikh or a Hindu man?

Or just a boy?

Because a Sikh would make Mata furious. And a Hindu would make Bapu ill. But how deep is my father's guilt?

And there's something else I didn't ask him: Why is it when Mata was alive, we couldn't afford to fly to India?

It's really all you had to do, Bapu. Take your wife home once in a while. And maybe she wouldn't have gone crazy. And we wouldn't be here.

And my father wouldn't be running in the darkness with a bare head.

And I wouldn't be alone. My life falling apart so spectacularly

Shhh

I am to stay quiet.

Don't open the door, Jiva
.

Don't answer the telephone.

Let no one know I am here.

Stay away from the window.

It is dangerous to be seen and heard.

Don't speak.

Not a sound.

Remember. No one should know you are here.

Without a voice, I am safe?

A shiver climbs up the steps of my spine. What does Helen's mother say?
Someone is walking over your grave.

(Someone is taking my hand in marriage.)

I feel cold.

(Someone is kissing the boy that I like.)

I pull Mata's sari over my shoulders. Orange. Mrs. Gandhi wore orange too.

Fire

I close my eyes and see the prime minister's body shattered on her funeral pyre. Torch-Bearing gangs of Hindus call to Sikhs to
come out, come out, wherever you are
. Flames, ignited with flesh, flare and spread like a bushfire chasing thin stalks of people across the city. Bodies combust instantly, that rare phenomenon where people catch fire from the inside. Flaming coils of cotton, ripped from knotted heads, dot the streets like stars. The red moon rises, bearing witness to a flooding tide.

Be ready to go

Bapu's parting words.
Be ready.

I was silent.

We'll take a train if we can.

But for where?

Simla? Kanpur?

Does tolerance live in the hills to the north?

Or to the east?

Will we still go to Chandigarh?

To the relatives who don't speak to each other.

Except at weddings. Mine.

Before he left, Bapu asked for my forgiveness.

It was a mistake to promise me to a man.

A mistake he would correct.

But what if he can't?

And my fate is sealed?

A mother's last wish?

A dowry paid?

Too much shame on the family for a cancelled bride?

Be ready. Pack your bag. Just one. The smallest.

I push a new
salwar kameez
with scarf to the bottom of my backpack. One pair of blue jeans. Two T-shirts. A blouse. Then Mata's orange sari. (Bapu doesn't know I brought it.) The zipper won't close when I try to stuff the diary in too. I know he'll be mad but I throw the
salwar kameez
to the floor and put on Mata's sari.

I find some rupees under the mattress.

Our passports in the drawer.

And two first-class tickets to Chandigarh.

I lay them all beside Mata's urn on top of the dresser. Like an offering.

I can't believe he left her behind.

Heat

I lie down on the bed. Wait alone. I am tired of alone.

Remember, be still. No one should know you are here.

I stare at the ceiling. Dry curls of paint. In stiff white waves. Like Helen's back after she got sunburned at Hollow Lake last summer. When she came back from holidays, I peeled two-inch strips from her shoulders, thin as parchment.

(Were her lies already forming in new skin?)

I stare at the ceiling fan, stirring air like warm pudding.
Click. Click.
It counts out time.
Click. Click.

(Is there still time left? For Sikhs to escape? for Bapu, for me?)

Outside, the city is heavy with humidity and dread. No wind or breeze ripples. No fresh air enters the lungs of a country maddened with fury.

India is suffocating.

I hear voices float in from the street below, up to the fifth-story window of the Rama Hotel. Angry. Crying. Demanding a victim. Sounds of vengeance carried on wings. Like the eagle god Garuda, hider of the moon, destroyer of obstacles in its way.

(Is Bapu in the way?)

People are dying in New Delhi, he said. And elsewhere too. Violent, bloody, noisy deaths. Not like Mata's death. The narrowed airway. The scarf. The wind. Alone in the afternoon. The quiet fan.

Out of sight

I had known where to hide after Mata did what she did. In a field. Under the dry sunflowers.

Face buried in the iron-scented earth. Trying to forget

her feet

bare

cold

blue

a silver anklet

tinkling in the breeze

an orange sari

circling the neck

a green sari

falling on straw

feet

bare

a naked breast

Mata

Helen

orange sari

green

blue

The wind betrays me

A mauve evening sky pushing a long current of air across the flat prairie. Ripping through the crops, dividing the rows, and revealing my hiding place.

I dig my hands into the soil, fingers clenching the short roots. Hold on, inhale the smell, a scent of safety, of comfort, of assurance,
love
, but something pulls at my ankles and rips me from the dead garden. Seeds fall from above.

I cry out for Mata, but there's no answering voice, just Bapu's arms dragging me away. Along a trail of broken stalks.

Leave me here,
I cry.
I'd rather die.

You cannot die. It's not what your mother would have wanted.

(But she wanted this? That I would find her hanging from a ceiling fan?)

A fan. But no
click.
No
whir.

Because time had stopped.

Your mother had a dream for your life.

The least we can do now is try to honour it. So, you cannot die.

Bapu said this just before he opened the door to our small kitchen and the police sitting around the table.

Bapu had known even then what he would do.

We'd be leaving Canada. For a red sari.

The police

Where were you, Jiva?

In the fields.

Before that?

At a friend's house.

Who?

Helen

(Of Elsinore.)

What were you doing at Helen's house?

Nothing.

What were you planning to do?

Nothing.

(Spy on her and that creep Michael.)

Your father says you come home every day after school to be with your mother. Why not today?

I don't know.

Nothing special about today?

No.

Helen would say it wasn't special either?

No. She wouldn't say that.