The Two Krishnas (28 page)

He remembered humid nights in another lifetime, the hours before sunrise over another ocean, the barreling herald of ships at the port of call, carefree days of innocence. Pooja was his only enduring link to that memory and he began to think of her and Ajay now, feeling for the first time removed from them, wishing that he could have found a way not just to be corporeally present with them, but to be content also.

Why now was he missing the fragrance of her freshly washed hair, peonies and vanilla, when she gave him a hug or leaned over his shoulder at the table to lay down breakfast? He saw her sleeping alone, now, still sticking to her side of the bed, turned away from his side as if afraid to look at the vacancy there, lonely and wondering about him. He was connected to her in a way he wasn’t when he was sleeping beside her, more there now than he had ever been.

But he also wished he could stay on here, the whole world dwindled into a murmurous quiet, swaddled in white cotton sheets with Atif, letting himself be held like an infant by a boy half his age, and not feel like a convict awaiting his sentence. So he remained somewhere in the middle, neither here nor there, too late to change anything, to have made other choices.
We are more than just the sum of our mistakes,
Rahul thought.
But that, sadly, doesn’t make them any less costly.

Rahul thought now of Hanif again, saw the boy’s face as if he had seen him only yesterday and not more than thirty years ago, as it had been. He remembered that scorching afternoon in Fort Jesus, that brief and shameful moment of weakness when they had, as two young boys, found shade and privacy in the ruins of the still formidable Portuguese relic. He saw them frottaging against the rough, ancient walls resembling coral, tainted with moss and blood, and the two of them, who seldom spoke to one another in public, now slapped against each other with lust. Rahul saw his semen splatter against Hanif’s white polyester school pants. He remembered the shame and alarm that overcame him, before he had zipped up and, deserting the frequently bullied, gentle Muslim boy, darted out of the sunken cove as the sounds of people encroaching had grown louder.

Because he hadn’t actually been there to witness it, Rahul now imagined Hanif’s casketed body, adorned with fragrant frangipanis, being lifted high above the heads of tall Muslim men, being carried to the community hearse and then to the burial site. “He drowned, the poor boy, can you believe? Such an expert swimmer but he drowned!” he heard other students—the same ones who had reproached Hanif for his effeminacy—lament a few days later. Rahul had frozen then, thinking of how Hanif had reached out to him at school, only some days before the incident, trying to say something, and how Rahul had rebuked him, as if rejecting his own deed.

Atif’s words came to him: “Rumi’s
Mathnawwi
begins with the flute crying out for the reed bed from which it was plucked. All Sufis—regardless of the religion you were born in, because one is ultimately a Sufi by heart—feel this homesickness. But there is also a kind of hope in this pain because essentially, we are all exiles, longing to return home.”

Strange tears prickled at his eyes. What if you didn’t know where home was anymore? The last time he had felt like he was at home was too long ago. He had been just a young man then and now he was older and suddenly he didn’t know how the years, all at once bedraggling and rapid, had passed. Nothing remained of that home in Kenya but debris and ash, echoing howls in his mind. Would talking about it with Pooja, who had been there, made things any easier for him or for her? He decided that there had been no other choice. The events, so horrific and purely evil, had left him no choice but to be at a distance from himself, as if the life he had been leading up to that point, and the events that marked the end of its carefree blissfulness, had happened to somebody else, in a foreign language he could not speak.

Sensing Atif stir, he looked back at him, the slender arm stretched out across the vacant pillow, as if to feel reassured, even as he slept, that their togetherness was not just a dream. Lifting the sheets, Rahul climbed back into warmth, pulling himself closer into Atif, as if to shut out the rest of the world out and thoughts of consequence that hung heavy in the night.

Many times in the night, each would wake up, their bodies intertwined, sweat matted between their skins, and sleepily they would wipe it away, change positions, always an arm harboring, a leg flung across, some part of the body entwined, as if from the touch they were drawing life.

The light had risen as they’d been talking, still in bed, and the room was filled with a warm glow. It was only now that they began to realize that the room had dreamy goose down comforters but no TV set, a black rotary phone and old books that once belonged to someone else and had been left behind for others to find, but no locks on any of the doors. Everything felt different here, slower, more focused. Even their speech had slowed down and they had gained the gift of concentration. Thoughts came up and lingered in the air for full moments before they articulated themselves in words or dissipated like bubbles.

Atif turned to look at Rahul lying by his side, his chest rising and dipping with each breath, the pasture of hair converging into a serpentine trail that ran down Rahul’s abdomen and dove under the sheets below his navel. Even the inches between them felt like too much distance, so he reached out and took Rahul’s hand in his.
This,
he thought,
was what Rumi must have meant when he felt consumed by Shams; the yearning to merge with someone else, the dissolution of distance. And yet, even now, there was so much he didn’t know about this man he loved. Would Rahul reveal himself now, away from the city and those who awaited him?

Atif rolled over on top of Rahul, straddling him.

“Already?” Rahul laughed. “I’m not that young anymore.” Atif held Rahul’s hands apart messianically, massaging the mounds on his palms. “Ah, okay, keep that up…I think it might be working.”

“Rahul,” Atif began carefully, “you never talk about your past.”

Rahul looked away, the smile fading.

“I just want to know more about you…”

Slowly, Rahul withdrew his hands. “It’s gone, Atif.”

“Look, really, I know how difficult it must be for you. My own past—”

“It’s much more than that…” And then he said nothing more, his voice strangled, the words lost, signaling that this was as far as he was willing to go. The change in their surroundings made no difference in how much access he would provide. He had sealed all doors to his past and was standing guard over them. Diffidently, he sat up in bed. Atif slid down to Rahul’s lap, keeping him pinned so that they were sitting up against each other, their chests barely touching. Atif looked down on Rahul’s head where a few strands of silver penciled through his still-dark hair and the faint fragrance of citrus and mint from the remnants of his styling gel rose up. He reclaimed Rahul’s arms that had fallen off to the side and circled them around his waist. He got the sense, as he often did, that the more he asked on this subject, the less he would get but it was too late to turn back now.

“Still, your parents, Kenya. You act as if—as if by not talking about it, it doesn’t exist. You tell me about how you had to leave Kenya, leave everything behind, but there are gaps in your story, Rahul. The details,” he said, skimming his thumb across Rahul’s lower lip as if coaxing the words out, “they’re missing.”

Rahul gave a short laugh and shook his head, unable to believe Atif was being this persistent. A tear trembled at the corner of his eye. “I can’t do this.” He started to bolt.

“I’m sorry,” Atif said, quickly wrapping his arms around Rahul and pulling him in. “I’m sorry. Shhh. I just want to be there for you, that’s all.” Atif felt Rahul’s heart pounding, sensed the panic that had paralyzed him. He wanted to avenge whatever had hurt him, to heal the wounds, but the enemy remained faceless. He clung on to Rahul, covering him with kisses.

“I wasn’t there for them,” Rahul said finally, his face resting upon Atif’s shoulder, looking past the walls of the room. “That’s all you need to know. I wasn’t there.”

While Rahul showered, singing some old Bollywood song that Atif recognized, something about a beautiful journey on a beautiful day and of being afraid to lose oneself in it, he picked up the tanned leather wallet that Rahul had left on the dresser, and found them in a laminated sleeve between credit cards.

Pooja Kapoor was an astonishingly beautiful woman. Ajay was the inheritor of both his parents’ good looks. Atif thought that she resembled a legendary Bollywood actress who, even in her forties, remained one of the most beautiful faces to have ever graced the screen. They appeared to be at a party, decked out, looking normal, enviable, like those perfect family pictures that could be used to sell insurance premiums and could be believed by the most skeptical and unromantic. Jealousy and admiration simmered within him.

After this, Pooja’s face was grafted onto his consciousness and he felt the urge to go back to the picture again and again to search for some kind of flaw in her. But he resisted, seeing now the wisdom in not having done so in the past. Until now she had been a phantom, but now he had helped her to materialize. He grew apprehensive. By crossing the line, violating the terms of their relationship, opening the verboten box, had he opened up a portal, provided her access to their world?

* * *

It was the aroma of sweating onions, sizzling in a pan of
ghee
as they anticipated a mélange of spices and vegetables that drew an eager Sonali Patel to her neighbor’s house that Sunday afternoon. How a little bit of Pooja’s food and a glass of cold sweet rosewater
lassi
would energize her for her important meeting, thought Sonali, smacking her lips as she made her trek across the well-manicured lawn. With her new Louis Vuitton handbag in tow and white, oversized Jackie-O sunglasses, Sonali was on her way to Elton’s where she was meeting the junior Goldstein, poring over books on Hinduism to understand his own soul.

She never thought of herself as metaphysical or spiritual but understood the simple fact that Hinduism was indomitable precisely because it was open to interpretation, providing myriad variations on its impassioned tales. The gods, in the context of their oft-conflicting histories, became like Plasticine dolls, moldable to your brand of belief. Each god is multidimensional, each story multilayered, the message morally ambiguous.

People knew little about Sonali Patel, or what they thought they knew was inaccurate, and she liked to keep it that way. She would rather be respected than liked, feared than taken advantage of. No shrinking violet, Sonali took pride in being known as formidable, even if it meant being abrasive and intrusive.

For instance, what did any of them know about how, as a young girl, she had watched her hardworking though plain mother, Jaya Desai, being abused and beaten by her drunk, debauching father? From a lower-middle class Mumbai family, her father, Ravinder Desai, a short, pudgy imp of a man, had worked as a lighting assistant in a Bollywood studio. He spent all day perched on precarious ladders, being barked at by temperamental filmmakers as he made sure that even the mediocre looked ravishing when the lights were manipulated correctly.

This should have turned Ravinder Desai sour to the world of glamour but instead, like a deranged man who learns the exact opposite from his lessons, he returned home at night from the red light district drunk on the local brew
chakti
, inflamed that his wife looked more like the dark-skinned
dhobi
who cleaned the utensils and trailers at the studio than like the heroines that lit up the screen. This might have been somewhat bearable had Jaya’s father been able to come up with a handsome dowry or had Jaya given him a son. Clearly Ravinder had felt cheated on both accounts so he even blamed Jaya for her mother’s death at childbirth. “What a face you have come with! Poor woman took one look at you and breathed her last! Meanwhile, look how fat you have become! One day you will even eat me up!” And then, mystifyingly, it was he who would break down sobbing like a child over his misfortune while Jaya tried to comfort him.

Sonali’s mother remained pained but demure, deprived but dutiful. She continued to cook and clean, to watch over Sonali and protect her from her father’s drunken wrath in case it spilled over on her. Every morning she touched his feet like he was God, and all he could do was grunt and pick his
paan
-stained teeth with a toothpick. In the evenings, she waited with cooked meals and the futile prayer that he would come home sober, even if she could never expect that he would look at her with love and not be tainted by the heady perfume of whores. Her husband, Jaya Desai often found herself explaining to little Sonali, was a version of god. To serve him was her
kartavya
, her duty, and which god doesn’t put his devotee to the test?

Then, one day, Jaya became deathly ill and began the steady decline into a bundle of bones. But even as fever inflamed her body and she took to cowering in a corner of the room, even as she carried on conversations with phantoms and deceased relatives, and her nondescript face began forming strange purple lesions, she refused to seek medical help. It was as if part of her was willing death on herself, the only way to find
moksha
.

She died alone. Nobody was with Jaya when she pulled the sheets high above her head, as if to hide from whatever was coming to get her—or could she have been inviting the darkness in? She didn’t struggle for breath, just let go with a sigh. It was unfortunate that even her daughter, whom she had tried so hard to give the love she knew could not be expected from her father, had grown apathetic to her by then.