The Red Carpet (9 page)

Later, he’d emerged from May-dum’s study in a curious state of horrified delirium. Horrified that he had divulged everything so freely, he who always kept his own counsel. Delirious, because May-dum had said that she would take care of little Hema’s education herself. He was not to worry.

Furthermore, she said, she would like to see where the little girl studied, and could he please arrange a visit?

When his excitement had settled down, it had taken a full month for him and his family to organize things. His father had assumed generalship of the affair, and Raju let him. He himself was at work the whole day, and this was not a matter he could leave to his wife; she lacked the experience. She was not a man of the world.

Raju and his father would stay up late every evening, immersed in progress reviews: What should they do to the house? Could they afford to repaint it? Didn’t so-and-so’s brother-in-law work in a paint shop? Perhaps he could get some cheap color for them at a discount. And what would they offer her to eat? Would she consent to eat anything at all? Would she show them that respect? And how should they all dress? As if for a wedding? Or more casually? “Respectably,” said Raju, to whom that word evoked the best images. “Respectably.”

And so they had planned and arranged and organized. Raju spoke to his daughter’s schoolteacher, who was awed and delighted at the prospect of a visit to her little school from such an important patron.

The day before the visit, he reviewed everything. And now, as he stood outside his employer’s house, cleaning her car as never before, he acknowledged that the only unforeseeable, unplannable catch in the whole event was May-dum herself.

His family probably envisioned her as a routine memsahib, traditionally and expensively dressed, preaching morality and good family values. And—uniquely—acting upon them too. What if, after all his talk and boasting, she disgraced him? As only she could—carelessly, in the things that were to her utterly trivial, matters of dress and feminine comportment. He would still be loyal to her, but his pride and prestige in his family and neighborhood would be lost forever.

The car was cleaned and ready and polished. Instead of following his usual practice of going around to the kitchen for a cup of coffee, he stood waiting expectantly, staring at the door. Yesterday she had said that she would be ready to leave around ten o’clock. He still had almost forty-five minutes to go, but he didn’t feel like wandering away, as if that might cause her to change her mind, or tempt her to sneak out of the house on foot or on her daughter’s small bicycle.

At ten minutes past ten, his heart sank. He scolded himself for getting his hopes up, for expecting this visit to actually happen. He hadn’t yet seen May-dum, but he’d seen enough to know that she wouldn’t be going anywhere that morning. Just five minutes earlier, the bungalow gates had opened to allow a car to come through. It was May-dum’s mother-in-law, come to pay a surprise visit. These could last anywhere from five minutes to a full day, depending on her mood and her daughter-in-law’s quiescence.

The elder Mrs. Choudhary vanished in a blaze of satisfaction down the drive, exactly one hour later. Raju began to feel nervous all over again. Would May-dum decide to leave now, or would she decide it was too late and that they would have to postpone the whole thing till the next day? Would he be able to? His family had used precious water to scrub themselves clean that morning, and they were all instructed to be on their best behavior. His wife had prepared a sweet and a savory with ghee, the clarified butter that he had bought specially for the occasion. The food wouldn’t last long in the hot weather. He didn’t know if he could marshal all these resources for two days running.

Shanti the ayah appeared. “She wants you to bring the car to the porch,” she said routinely. His heart skipped. He watched her walk back to the house, and was almost tempted to call her back. He hadn’t yet confided in any of his colleagues about May-dum’s proposed visit to his house. The very idea of it would be as startling to them as it was to him. Would they approve, or would they be envious? They were all good people, but Raju didn’t want even a hint of a jealous, evil eye cast upon this visit. Let it happen, he told himself. Then he would tell everybody.

He drove the car around to the porch, watching the door and wondering once again how she would be dressed.

The door opened. He heard her voice call out to the cook to bring her a glass of cold water. Two minutes later she emerged. Raju almost laughed in delight and relief. She was wearing a lovely
salwar khameez,
the full-sleeved tunic flowing elegantly down to her calves, her ankles modestly covered by the loose pants below, the crisp, transparent, shawl-like
dupatta
draped and pleated over one shoulder. She looked like a movie star. Better than that, even, she looked every inch the memsahib.

She paused near the top of the steps and smiled in his direction. “Ready to go, Raju?”

Raju spent an hour and a half on two buses to get to and from work every day. The gleaming air-conditioned car did the same job in thirty minutes. The route took them away from the posh residential areas of the city, into and past industrial areas, and into regions that weren’t really scaled for human consumption but had nevertheless been colonized by the hordes of workers who fed the appetites of a hungry city. As they neared his neighborhood, Raju kept glancing nervously into the rearview mirror. She was gazing intently out the window. What was she thinking? As he’d done for a month now, he tried to see his surroundings through her eyes.

“How much further to the school, Raju?”

“Hardly five minutes, May-dum.”

She started asking him questions about the neighborhood, and as he had once before, Raju found himself talking freely to her. Housing ranged from slums to small single-room dwellings. There were few power connections, even fewer legal ones. The water supply was haphazard. The buses, thankfully, ran fairly close to the area—he could catch one into the city just a half kilometer away from his house.

He turned off the main road and immediately encountered a problem—one that he hadn’t foreseen. The road changed from asphalt to muddy pathways ravaged by the rains. The people who lived here usually either walked or traveled on two-wheelers that could slither and slide and navigate their way through these roads that were never intended for heavy four-wheel traffic. Raju inched the car along, feeling it slip down muddy slopes and miniature sand crevasses, hearing the wheels catch and spin in the mud. He had a horrible vision of getting his employer and her car stuck here, and forcing her to walk in the hot, muddy road. He shifted into the lowest gears and concentrated on getting the car down the side of the sloping hill. At the bottom lay the school. A little further on, his home.

They were two hours later than planned. Raju parked the car and escorted May-dum to the door, where the schoolteacher immediately appeared, ready and waiting for them. Raju noticed that the room inside was a little cleaner than usual. The chairs were in a straight line. The twelve little children who studied with his daughter were dressed smartly, in clothes that were cleaner than their stained faces and dusty hair; a few were in newly acquired blue-and-white uniforms. There was a new map on the wall. A chair had been placed next to the teacher’s, so May-dum would have somewhere to sit. He glanced briefly at his own daughter. She was staring openmouthed at May-dum, as were all the children. He was pleased to see that she was the best-dressed child in the class, but that was natural. For months now, she’d worn nothing but May-dum’s daughter’s castaways: best-quality outfits, thick sweaters, sturdy shoes—clothes that made Raju’s heart squeeze with pleasure when he saw his daughter in them.

He went out to wait by the car. He could hear the murmur of voices as May-dum talked with the teacher, and then the shrill sounds of the children as they were put through their paces in front of their audience: spelling, geography. In Kannada and in English. And finally, their mathematical tables, recited in a monotone: vun-toojh-a-too, vun-theejh-a-thee, vun-fojh-a-fo.

May-dum followed him out fifteen minutes later, her face pensive. Her voice, though, was brisk. “I have paid your daughter’s school fees for the entire year. In return, the teacher should provide her with books, two sets of uniforms, pencils. Please see that she does do all of that. Let me know if she doesn’t.”

“She will,” said Raju. “She is a good woman. A good teacher.” After a pause, he said awkwardly, “May-dum, thank you so much for this. It is a great kindness on your part.”

“It’s nothing,” she said. “I am happy to do it. Now, Raju, do I get to meet your wife?”

He grinned and held the door open. “Yes, May-dum.”

The visit was as he had hoped it would be. She didn’t let him down.

From the time the car stopped outside his house, he knew. It was written in the manner of her walk, her look of interest, her polite and gentle words to his father, who was waiting at the door. It was in some oblique way a reciprocation—for all the times he had anticipated her movements and moved in concert with her expectations. Now it seemed she was doing the same for him.

He watched his father usher her into their house. She paused at the door and, respectfully, slipped off her shoes.

“May-dum, you don’t have to do that!”

“That’s all right,” she said.

Raju was later glad that his father seamlessly took charge. He watched May-dum being escorted to the bench inside, where she sat down. He watched her join her palms in greeting to his mother and his wife, and then make animated, interested conversation with his parents as though they were acquaintances that she might meet at the Club. He felt his cheeks burn as May-dum praised him to his family. His wife vanished into the kitchen, presumably to reemerge with refreshments, but she never did. Raju went in after her and found her waiting there nervously, a hot tumbler of coffee prepared and a plate with the sweet and the savory ready to serve.

“Go on,” he muttered to her.

“No. You do it,” she whispered back, shaking her head.

“Don’t be silly,” he said, but he saw that she really was too shy. So, in a facsimile of the tray that Julie the cook used, he picked up a metal plate, placed the food and coffee on it, and took it out.

“Oh! So much trouble!” his May-dum said. “Really, you shouldn’t have.”

“No, no. Please eat,” they murmured.

Raju’s mother, with a feeling of duty done, joined her daughter-in-law in the kitchen with great relief. Raju could see them peeping at May-dum from behind the curtain that hung in front of the door. So it was Raju’s father who chatted with May-dum: Yes, it was a nice little house, two rooms and a kitchen for the six of them, but the rents were too high and increasing every year. Their landlord lived next door, and had built two more houses just like this down the road. He was a lucky man, great foresight, to have bought this land when it was cheap. Perhaps someday Raju would be able to do so also. Already, in this one year of his employment, they had been able to acquire a radio and a black-and-white TV. They were grateful, deeply grateful. He didn’t mention that the house had been painted this clean, bright pink just a week ago, or that this impromptu living room was usually cluttered with the mess of living, now shoved into the room next door. Now, in addition to two benches, it had the pink walls, clean curtains, the pooja altar, and the TV.

Raju watched May-dum eat. She finished all her coffee, and ate enough of the sweet and the savory to indicate that they were nice, to her taste, not beneath her at all. She praised the food, and Raju could hear his wife giggling with pleasure inside the kitchen.

When they finally stepped outside, Raju could see that word had spread. The road was filled with neighbors, all watching him, May-dum, and the car with unabashed curiosity. May-dum slipped on her shoes and said her good-byes to his family, and then paused outside the car instead of climbing in immediately. With every eye upon them, she exchanged a few pleasant words with him with a casual air that provoked his neighbors to ask him, even a week after the visit: “So, what did she say to you then?” to which Raju would shrug and say, “Nothing special.” And that would impress them even more.

On the drive back into the city, they continued to chat about his family. May-dum praised his home and his parents, and Raju filled her in on his sister, and their plans for her marriage. He found himself talking easily, and was surprised that he hadn’t really ventured to earlier.

“If you need any assistance with your sister’s wedding, please speak to me about it.”

“I will, May-dum.”

“And please do see to it that your daughter’s schoolteacher provides all the things that she has promised. . . .”

Raju nodded. He would do that. Raju turned the car into the Club. He wanted to thank May-dum again for all her kindness, and also for the courtesy of her visit, but her attention was suddenly distracted.

“Tara! . . . Raju, stop the car.”

May-dum’s friend looked at her elegant dress in surprise as she got out of the car.

“Oh, my! Look at you! Where have you been?”

“Visiting,” said May-dum.

He watched her for a minute, walking away towards the main clubhouse, one arm linked loosely around her friend’s and listening appreciatively to some anecdote; then Raju-once-Rangappa climbed back into his seat behind the wheel, shifted into first gear, and swung the car slowly around the flowered lawns and up to the parking lot, where all the drivers waited until they were summoned.

ALPHABET
SOUP

Priyamvada knew that her father was, once again, not listening to her.

She was used to it, however, this paternal preoccupation with things that didn’t matter, so she didn’t let it put her off her stride. She was speaking on her favorite topic: what sounded (to the inattentive ear) like a discourse on art and the impact of yellows, browns, and blacks on red, white, and blue, but was, in fact, all about race relations and American politics.

Her parents had just finished dinner, and were relaxing in the family living room in Chicago, surrounded by the artifacts of a well-sprung suburban life. Her mother was absorbed, insensate, in
People
magazine; Priya flipped through an old favorite, the
Guinness World Records,
1984 edition, and tried to grab her father’s attention as it wandered between the golf being played on the television screen and her mother’s occasional interjections on family and neighborhood gossip.

Priya’s father had moved his fledgling family from India to America when she was a baby, and for the first eighteen years of her life Priya had somehow blamed herself for being brown in a country where the popular icons were all Pale-Shades-of-Pink.

Her very first year at an elite East Coast school (tuition bills sent to her father, pizza bills sent to her), Priya munched on strawberries, sipped champagne, pondered the academic life choices open to her (archeologist? accountant? anthropologist? shaman? earth mother? computer-age hero?), signed petitions complaining about the college cafeteria (“the sushi sucks!”), and—finally—learned the vocabulary of political victimhood.

Now, when asked, Priya still referred to herself as a student. Of life, she usually added, but only in her mind. Reluctant to graduate, the fact was she enjoyed nesting in the cerebral comforts of an American university, moving eagerly from her undergraduate studies to a master’s program, and now toying with the idea of working towards a doctorate in something else altogether. Through it all, she had never allowed herself to forget that: as a Person of Color in America, she was hopelessly Disenfranchised, and that it was up to the System to do something about it.

She could but complain.

That is, until she one day was confronted by the true epiphany of every student of political activism, printed on a piece of paper and stuck, right there, on her professor’s door: THINK GLOBAL, the sign said. ACT LOCAL.

Local, for Priya, was her parents, and for several years she acted upon them, trying to drag them up to her level, but with very limited success. “Assimilation is a betrayal of your skin,” Priya explained to her father more than once.

“How can it be a betrayal of your skin to work hard and do well?”

“Do well—at what
cost
? And on whose
terms
?”

Her father looked around their home (five bedrooms, swimming pool, three-car garage) and smiled. “It’s nice that you have the luxury of your opinions,” he said.

Which was no answer at all.

Her mother remained equally impervious to her multicultural obligations. She loyally supported her husband in his Americanized life (even without the testosterone to excuse her bad judgment): cutting her hair short, dressing in suits and skirts, abstaining from any prayers or special Indian rituals, and working hard to eliminate all traces of melody from her accent. She had almost succeeded, but she would never sound like her daughter, who, like her, had the facial features of a tropical rice-eater, but who opened her mouth and was pure corn-fed Chicago. (Alas, her mother’s reluctance to embrace a higher quality of life extended to other areas as well: she wouldn’t abandon her vegetarianism to join in Priya’s recent experiment with veganism, and, for that matter, refused to run with wolves, free her inner child, live in integrity with her spirit, or even indulge in some straightforward vaginal mirror-gazing, meeting all such requests with a simple: “What nonsense!”)

Undaunted, Priya focused her efforts on her father. Not for nothing was she a member of the Color Coalition and the Wymyns’ Alliance. “The mistake you made,” she told him, “was in moving to America all those years ago.”

“You would have preferred to grow up in India?” Priya’s father was tall and thin, with a receding hairline and eyes hidden behind thick glasses, which sometimes made his daughter miss the twinkle that lay deep in them.

“The more I think about it . . . yes,” said Priyamvada. “There is a strength in being Brown in a Brown Country.”

“And what is that?”

“Well, look at the way we’re treated here.”

“Meritocratic promotions, good education, nice homes?” He didn’t say it, but Priya knew he also meant: his country club membership, his partnership in a multinational accounting firm, and the fact that both his children studied in universities that had groomed American presidents.

“Not that stuff,” she said. “You’re always focusing on material comforts, ignoring everything else. Here in America, nice stores treat whites better, and blondes best. In a brown country, everyone looks at each other with respect and feels the bond that comes from having the same color skin. There, there is a sense of pride about their own history, a refusal to cater to eurocentric notions of the world, a joy that comes from being perfectly centered culturally . . . Are you
laughing
?”

“No, no,” her father said, hastily.

“You are. I can’t believe this. You’re not taking me seriously. . . . Is he, Ma? . . . He’s belittling me. Isn’t he? Ma?”

“Yes, yes,” said her mother absently. “I mean, no, sweetie. Of course not . . . Do you want to watch that new movie with me? Julia Roberts and that other fellow, I-forget-his-name. You know,” her mother said, returning to her magazine, “if you comb your hair the way she does, you’d look very pretty.”

Priyamvada slammed the
Guinness World Records
shut. “I can’t believe this.”

“Come on, Priya,” her father said. “You’ve got to understand, there is a vast gap between the social theories they preach in the universities and the realities outside. You’ve got to understand this. . . . Maybe if you put your intelligence and education to work in a practical sphere you’d understand what I mean.”

“You’re saying I don’t know what I’m talking about,” said Priya. “What am I, stupid?”

“No, no,” said her father. “Not stupid at all.”

“And what’s so damn impractical about what I’m doing now? What am I, a space cadet?”

Priyamvada saw her father hesitate, and she coldly decided not to pursue the conversation any further. But her father still had the parting word: “If you’re so sure of your ideas,” he said, “why don’t you go visit India and see for yourself?”

Priya was startled. Her last visit to India had been when she was a sulky five-year-old; she and her brother had subsequently never joined her mother on those annual pilgrimages she made to a place, twenty years on, still referred to as Home. (Priya was used to her mother’s careful sophistry: “Let’s go home” meant their house in Chicago; “I’m going Home,” with that extra little resonance, meant a visit to South India, to Bangalore, where she’d grown up.)

The idea festered in her brain as she returned to college, and to the arms of her boyfriend. Eric was, regrettably, not dark-skinned, but he was very colorful, with naturally orange hair, blue eyes, and brown freckles atop pink skin that flushed a deep red in moments of intellectual excitement; indeed, a veritable Coalition of Colors, all in himself, along with the sort of muscles that looked, Priya thought fondly, as though he spent his days working with his hands, close to the earth. “I do wish, though,” Priya had once wistfully told her mother during a dinner at home, “that I were a lesbian.” To be Officially Oppressed by gender, skin color,
and
sexuality would be no ordinary distinction.

Tchi, her mother had said. What a horrible thing to say.

“Perhaps,” her father had said, “you could dress your young man in a frock. In drag, as you say. Then you could at least be a lesbian couple.”

Both Priya and her mother had turned reproachful gazes at him, though for different reasons.

But despite his inherent limitations, Eric was a credit to her. When not bench-pressing at the gym, or working with other friends at the Tree Hugger’s Café (where Everything was Recycled, including, Priya suspected, the food), he spent his time protesting innovatively, usually against the World Trade Organization. He was rather an expert in the art of collecting signatures.

“I think it’s a great idea,” he said enthusiastically, when she’d finished exploring the contents of his underwear to her satisfaction. “We can ride the trains, third-class, around the smaller cities of India, then perhaps work in a forest conservation program for a few weeks, and end our visit with a week of meditation in an ashram.”

Priya paused. Her notion of standing, shortly, in a world where the color of the skin on the street matched hers, did not, for some reason, include having a pink-and-orange man by her side (however well muscled).

“You know, you really shouldn’t bother coming with me,” she said. “You should go do that Greenpeace thing, like you’d planned. They need you there.”

Yes, he said, flexing his muscles meditatively. I think you’re right. But you should follow the program I suggested, he said. Don’t do just the tourist stuff.

Priya threw herself into planning the trip with her customary fervor and attention to detail. She read guidebooks, she surfed the Web. As an afterthought, she spoke to her parents.

“Do the Delhi–Agra–Jaipur triangle,” said her father, as he did to anyone who planned to see India. “Some really lovely things there. The Taj Mahal. Palaces. Maybe you’ll even get to see a snake charmer or some dancing bears. Nice hotels,” he added, “so you don’t have to deal with the dust and the dirt.”

Priya shrugged her shoulders in unfilial irritation. That was her father all over. Completely missing the point.

“I don’t want to see the tourist stuff. I want to experience the real India. . . . You know, it would be so great if I could actually stay in someone’s home instead of in a hotel.”

“That’s easily arranged,” her mother said. “If that’s what you want.”

And so her itinerary fell into place. Priya didn’t have any immediate aunts or uncles in India; all of her parents’ siblings were scattered across the globe, in America, Canada, England, and Australia, returning to India only for annual pilgrimages along with her mother. Priya would be staying, therefore, with distant relatives in Bangalore: Mr. and Mrs. Iyer; her mother’s cousin’s husband’s sister, strangely enough, married to her father’s second cousin.

“That’s not a relation at all,” she told her mother.

“No, no,” her mother said. “We’re very close. The Iyers will look after you well. Such fun it will be!” her mother said. “I wish I were coming with you.”

Her father simply said: If things in India are not as you imagine, promise me that, when you return, we will have a serious chat about your future.

Oh, don’t worry, said Priya, shrugging off the seriousness in his voice. They will be.

Priyamvada packed her bags carefully, mindful of the advice she’d read in the
Lonely Planet
guidebook (“Modesty rates highly in India”). She took long pants, full-sleeved shirts, and skirts that fell below her knees. She even went one step further and raided her mother’s closet, the very thought of which would once have shocked her. (Among other things, Priya and her mother disagreed on dress.) But to her mother’s closet she went and unearthed the special section her mother reserved for her own trips to India: full of sarees and salwar-khameez suits.

“I don’t think I’ll take any sarees,” she told her mother.

“No, you most certainly will not,” said her mother, staring indignantly at the pile of salwar-khameez outfits that Priya had selected.

She flew to New York and spent a celebratory night with friends. She barely made the airport the next morning, avoiding (by inches) complete annihilation by a passing yellow cab, whose driver cursed her in a colorful New York–Jamaican patois.

“Yeah,
yours,
motherfucker,” Priya yelled back, in a show of unity with the colored peoples of the world, and waved good-bye to America.

“It is a truth, universally acknowledged,” said Mr. Iyer, “that brahmins are clean, disciplined, and intellectual. You are agreeing with me?”

A voice in Priyamvada’s mind begged to differ, but she stifled it. Mr. Iyer, she already knew, didn’t really expect a response from her. He liked to ask a profound question (“What means brahminism?”) and immediately answer it himself (“You see, there is a cultural aspect, and a philosophical aspect . . .”), sweeping aside any interim waste-of-time discussion period. Conversation, for Mr. Iyer, was a one-man dialectic played to an attentive audience.

She had wondered, at first, if he was bothered by her incessant questions, but he had quickly reassured her. He enjoyed sharing his knowledge, he said, with a Bright Young Person. It reminded him of his days as an Indian Railways bureaucrat.

“Clean,” she said now. “You mean, like, baths and stuff?”

“Oh, no. Well, that is to say, baths, definitely. But much more . . . It is a glorious tradition,” Mr. Iyer said. “It is, after all, brahmins who have given the world the concept of zero, and yoga, and the philosophies that underlie Vedantic and Buddhist thinking. And it is all linked—the notions of cleanliness, personal discipline, and intellectual thinking. Holistic,” he said, relishing the word. “Is it not?”

As before, Priya nodded reluctantly. There was some rule, she knew, about observing native behavior without interfering. Was that out of her sociology classes or from
Star Trek
? She couldn’t remember, but she decided to play it safe and say nothing. She quieted her unease by reminding herself that Mr. Iyer was talking of times gone by. The caste system, relic of India’s cultural past, had nothing to do with the whole modern Mahatma Gandhi
liberté, égalité, fraternité
thing, pardon her French.

“And next week,” said Mr. Iyer, “you will be seeing a function that celebrates that very essence.”