Quarantine: Stories (2 page)

I
was sixteen the year my mother’s father died. She hadn’t seen him in years. She got a call from Bombay that he was ill, and left the very next day. By the time she arrived, he was dead.

When she returned, she was different, quiet. She didn’t go back to her job right away. She stopped cooking. She spent most of the time in her room with the drapes closed.

My father tried to keep house. I helped, too. We took turns cooking dinner: burned rice, overcooked vegetables with too much chili pepper and salt. After ten days, Bapuji said to my father, “How long is this going to last?”

“I don’t know,” my father said. He was rummaging in the fridge.

“It is her duty to take care of us. You must tell her.”

“Her father died.”

“My Motiba died. You didn’t see me behaving like this. She is selfish. She has always been selfish. Why must we suffer because of her?”

My father picked up the phone and ordered pizza.

I went upstairs to my parents’ bedroom. The door was slightly ajar, and I wondered if my mother had heard them talking. I knocked twice and she didn’t answer. I opened the door fully. It took several seconds for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. My mother was lying in bed on one side, the covers pulled over her head.

“Are you OK, Mom?” I asked, still standing in the doorway. She didn’t answer. “I’m worried. Please, Mom. Do you want to go out? I can take you for a drive. Maybe some fresh air. We can get buckwheat pancakes at IHOP.”

My mother was silent. I walked toward the bed, and as I approached I could hear her crying beneath the covers. I stopped, not sure what to do. I wanted to put my hand on her shoulder, sit on the edge of the bed stroking her the way she would stroke me when I was a kid and I was sick or upset. But I didn’t. Instead, I turned around and left, pausing for a moment in the doorway. “I love you, Mom. Please get better.”

A couple of days later, my mother returned to work. She started cooking again, but she still didn’t talk much, and she didn’t smile. I saw her standing at the stove one evening, stirring the dhal. My grandfather was sitting at the kitchen table, watching her.

I
want to take Jeremy on a road trip. There is a town seventy miles up the Ohio River, famous for three things: ancient Indian burial mounds, after which the town is named; a state penitentiary; and a large Hare Krishna commune.

When I was young, my family visited the commune often. It is beautiful, set atop a hill with views of the river valley. There is a temple and a Palace of Gold. My family went a couple of times a year to worship. In those days, there were no Hindu temples nearby, and my father figured the Hare Krishnas were the next best thing. But my mom was wary. She thought they were weird.

“This isn’t our religion,” my mother said.

“Krishna is our god,” my father said.

“These people aren’t our people,” my mother said.

When we had visitors from India, my father always took them to the Palace of Gold, which the Hare Krishnas called “the Taj Mahal of the West.”

One summer, he tried to send Asha and me to summer camp at the commune. He showed us a brochure. He said he wanted us to learn something of our culture, to understand where we came from. But looking at the children in the brochure, their white faces blank as they sat in the temple while a white man in a saffron robe read from a book, I couldn’t understand what my dad meant. Asha, on the other hand, was lured by the pictures of kids riding horses. In the end, my mom refused to let us go. Even Asha, who had seemed so excited, was relieved. She was nervous the Hare Krishnas would shave her head.

Now, as Jeremy and I plan our trip, my father warns us the commune isn’t what it used to be. He says there was a murder a couple of years ago, and the head of the commune was arrested for tax fraud and embezzlement. Still, I insist on showing Jeremy.

It is my father’s idea to invite Bapuji.

“He’ll get in the way,” I say. “We’ll have to stop every five seconds so he can pee.”

“C’mon,” my dad says. “He hasn’t been to temple in years. Besides, he can use an outing.”

I tell my dad I’ll think about it. Later, Jeremy says to me, “If we stay late it will give your mother a break from your grandfather. Think of it as a favor to her.”

T
he three of us drive up the valley on the two-lane road. We drive through one-light towns with old church steeples and country general stores, and picturesque hills broken only by the spitting smokestacks of the chemical plants that have proliferated along the river.

When we reach the town, it is even more depressed than I remember. The penitentiary was shut down a couple of years earlier when the state ruled that the prisoners’ cells were too small, that keeping inmates in such cramped quarters was cruel and unusual punishment. Many people lost their jobs. The town is still suffering.

To get to the commune, we have to take a narrow road that snakes up a large hill. It is separated from the rest of the town. Both the Hare Krishnas and the town’s residents prefer it that way.

The Hare Krishnas own the whole hill, including the road. It is in such bad condition, I have to drive extra slowly. The sign for the temple is so faded I almost miss it. Once there were cows on the green hills and white men with shaved heads wearing necklaces made of tulsi beads, and women in saris with hiking boots and heavy coats in the winter. Now the hills are empty. Many of the houses are boarded up. The cows are gone.

Our tour guide at the Palace of Gold speaks with a Russian accent and explains how, in Moscow, under the Communists, he had to practice his religion in hiding, at secret prayer meetings. He is lucky to be in America, he says.

The palace isn’t heated, and Bapuji shivers beneath his layers—two flannel shirts that don’t match, two crewneck sweaters, a heavy jacket that once belonged to my dad. He pulls the coat collar closer to his neck.

Outside, much of the gold leaf has flaked off the structure, and inside there are cracks in the ceiling. The marble and wood need polishing. One stained-glass window is broken. The tour guide tells us we should come back in summer when the rose garden is in bloom. “It’s really beautiful,” he says.

After the tour we eat a late lunch with the devotees. There are only a dozen of them, and we all sit silently in rows on the floor eating off stainless steel thalis. The food is modeled after Indian food, but it is nothing like my mother’s. It is bland and tasteless—beige and brown and gray.

When we go to the temple, the alcoves with the statues of gods are all covered with velvet curtains. A devotee tells us they won’t open them until the aarti at five o’clock. He says we should stay. Jeremy and I decide to take a walk around the commune, and Bapuji says he’ll wait in the temple. He is talking to the devotees when we leave him.

Jeremy and I find a pond flanked by fifty-foot-high statues of Radha and Krishna dancing. Their hands are joined in the sky, forming an archway. Small cottages, modern-looking with large windows, surround the pond. I tell Jeremy that one year my father wanted to rent one so we could visit on weekends, but my mom refused. I tell him there used to be peacocks. We walk around searching for them. We find deer and swans and rabbits, but no peacocks. Not even a feather.

When we return to the temple, the aarti has already begun. The curtains have been lifted, revealing a gold statue of Krishna in the center and Hanuman and Ganesh on either side. They are layered with garlands and surrounded by candles. My grandfather is standing in the front of the room before the statue of Krishna. To our surprise, he is leading the aarti, chanting “Hare Krishna, Hare Ram.” He is holding a large silver platter with coconuts and flowers and a flame and burning incense, and he moves the offering in clockwise circles. He seems too weak to carry such a heavy platter. I wonder how he is managing. Everyone is watching him, following him, echoing his chanting. Jeremy and I sit in the back silently.

Afterward, several devotees talk to my grandfather. They want to know about India. Are the temples beautiful? Has he been to Varanasi or to Mathura, birthplace of Krishna? He is smiling and gesturing and he has more energy than I have ever seen. It is only with great difficulty that we are able to pull him away.

When we return to the car, it is almost dark. Bapuji is quiet again, moving slowly. I ask if he wants to sit in the front seat. He shakes his head no.

After twenty minutes in the car my grandfather says, “I want to go back.”

“We are going back,” I say.

“No,” he says. “To the Hare Krishnas.”

“Did you forget something?”

“I want to stay there,” he says.

“You can’t,” I say.

He taps Jeremy on the shoulder so that Jeremy turns around, and then he whispers, “I am not happy.”

Jeremy looks at me.

“Don’t talk nonsense,” I say.

The road winds around a corner and I can see the moon reflected on the river up ahead. After a couple of minutes, Bapuji says again, “I want to go back.”

I grip the steering wheel tightly, and my shoulders tense. “Be quiet, Bapuji.”

“Your friend understands me,” he says, tapping Jeremy on the shoulder again.

“He’s not my friend,” I say. “We are a couple, like you and Motiba were.”

Bapuji is silent for a few minutes. Then he says, “Your mother is a bad person.” “Do you want to talk about bad people?” I say. My hands are shaking. “You are a bad person. You are the worst person I know. You have caused nothing but pain in my family.”

“Be careful,” Jeremy says. “Watch the road.”

“Your life is nothing anymore. Look at you. Pathetic. Let my mother be happy.”

I look in the rearview mirror and see my grandfather’s face in shadows. It catches the light from a streetlamp, and through his glasses I can see his eyes and cheeks are wet and he is trembling.

Jeremy screams and grabs the wheel. I hear a horn and look forward and see flashes of light.

When we finally come to a stop, our car is in the grass beside the road facing in the wrong direction. A car honks loud and long as it passes us, and the sound disappears in the distance.

I flip on the overhead light and look over at the passenger seat. Jeremy is OK. He is staring at me, trying to catch his breath. I look in the backseat. I can see my grandfather’s seat belt is fastened, but his head is down, his chin on his chest. “Bapuji?” He doesn’t respond. “Bapuji?”

I get out of the car and open the back door. I put my hand on his shoulder, shaking him gently. Even with all the layers of clothes, his shoulder is thin and narrow. My grandfather looks up. His glasses have fallen on the floor and the lenses are cracked.

“Are you OK?” I ask. He nods.

I walk around the car a couple of times to see if there is any damage. We try the engine, and it starts. Jeremy drives the rest of the way home.

When we reach the house, Bapuji goes straight to his room.

“Is something wrong?” my dad asks.

“He’s probably tired,” I say.

My mother asks us if we are hungry, and we say we already ate. I tell them I am tired and we have to leave early the next morning so we should go to sleep. Even though it is early and it is our last day, my parents don’t argue. My mother says she is tired, too.

A
few years ago, while I was away at college, Bapuji contracted tuberculosis. At first, we couldn’t figure out how he got it. We had never heard of anyone getting TB in America. Then my father remembered that Bapuji’s younger brother had died from it when they were both children. The doctors said Bapuji must have been exposed to the bacteria then, and that it had been dormant in his system all these years, waiting for his body to weaken, waiting to attack.

For the first few days of his illness, Bapuji was quarantined in the house. He wasn’t allowed to leave his room except to take a bath and use the toilet. The doctors said he could be dangerous to others. They advised my parents to limit their contact with him, and not to let anyone else enter the house. Later, when his health got worse, he was admitted to the hospital and isolated in a room with special ventilation. Whenever anyone visited, they had to rub antibacterial liquid on their hands and forearms and wear masks and gloves before entering the room, and they could only stay for a short time.

My mother visited the most. She brought him homemade food during lunchtime and sat with him every evening. My father came less frequently. My mother said it was too difficult for him.

One weekend, I flew home to visit my grandfather. Just before going to the hospital, I gulped coffee and ate nachos. When I put the mask on, I couldn’t believe how vile my breath was. I couldn’t escape it. I thought,
This is what’s inside of me.

Bapuji seemed disoriented and didn’t recognize me at first. He was tired. The mask must have made me look strange.

In the car, on the way to the hospital, my mother had told me that when Bapuji’s brother was dying of tuberculosis, and he was miserable and in pain, Bapuji would let him rest his head on his chest, and sing to him until he fell asleep. This is how Bapuji got exposed to TB. I couldn’t quite picture the scene. Such tenderness didn’t fit with the grandfather I knew.