The Two Krishnas (48 page)

She acquiesced and looked at him as if for the very first time. Too young to be Rahul and too old to be Ajay, Dr. Patel was somewhere in between.
What part of India was he from,
she wondered.
Who were his parents? Was he married? And most importantly, how had it all turned out so right for him?
She noticed the gold band around his finger and decided that for no other reason than the fact that he was wearing it, he must be a devoted husband. Why, his very profession inclined him to be nurturing. And then just as quickly, she wondered if he, too, was harboring some dark, shameful secret that his wife was unaware of, something that one day would tear them apart.

“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to,” he said, and there was so much kindness in his eyes that Pooja’s teared up. “But I may be able to help somehow, you know? If there’s anything you’re going through.”

“She told you, didn’t she?”

“Who?” he looked around, confused.

“What did she say?” Pooja looked away from him, covering her face with her hand. “We’re going through a separation.”

“I see. Sorry to hear that.”

“But it’s only temporary, you know,” she said quickly. “Nothing we can’t work out.”

“Of course, of course. Still, that must be hard.”

“You are married, doctor?” she said, jerking her head at the band on his finger.

He smiled. “Four years now.”

“Children?”

“Yes,” he smiled even wider. “One of each.”

Her head tilted up and she seemed to leave the room completely, the vision in her mind lifting her from all despair. “I remember how it was at first,” she said, a tender smile on her face. “We were so…” she could not bring herself to say it. In love. “It’s hard, yes, but I’ll be fine. I will.”

“I have no doubts.”

“I just came because she insisted, you know? Sonali can be so persuasive, you know that, don’t you? You’re her doctor.”

He nodded with a smile. “Everything’s going to be all right,” he said, and this made Pooja smile. “I’ll prescribe something for you, just something for a week or so and then we can see about—”

“I just wish the pain would stop,” she said flatly.

“Well, it will help. But I would really like for you to see a specialist—”

“No, no, not right now,” she said, waving her hand. “This is enough for now.”

“Okay, we can talk about it in a week and decide then.”

Pooja smiled and fought a strange urge to touch Dr. Patel. The crisp white coat, his lush dark hair, golden brown skin, the very scent and carriage of his youth made her yearn for a kind of transmigration to new beginnings. “You are from…?” she found herself asking.

“Torrance,” he said, rising to his feet.

“No, I mean, where are you
really
from, you know, originally.”

“Torrance, California,” he maintained. “I was born here.”

Her face fell. “You’re just like my son. No past.”

He looked at her strangely. “But my past is here, Mrs. Kapoor. Surely everyone has a past no matter where they’re born,” and then, realizing that he may have sounded insensitive, added, “But my parents, they were born in Uganda.”

“Uganda! In East Africa!” she cried, suddenly beaming.

“Yeah.”

“I’m from Kenya, you know?” she said excitedly. “I was born there. My father also and his father before that. In Mombasa. We’re like neighbors…I mean, you’re not from there but still in a way we are, you know.”

“Yes, I suppose we are,” he acquiesced, smiling.

“Did they have to leave because of Idi Amin?” she asked, distressed.

“No, no,” he said, smiling as if he had encountered this assumption many times before. “They left long before that tragic episode. They were lucky.”

“Yes, thank God,” she said. “Many were not.”

“I want you to call me in a week, okay? Sooner if you need to and let me know how you’re doing,” he said and then more emphatically, “And I really want you to consider seeing that specialist.”

She nodded wearily as if the weight of the world upon her shoulders was being negotiated.

He paused at the door and looked back at her. “I wonder what it’s like, Uganda, I mean. I’ve never been to Africa. I’d like to go there some day, take the family on a safari or something.”

“We went, you know,” she said excitedly, “On our honeymoon. So many people, they just want to go abroad to London, Canada but Rahul and I took a safari. After that we found out we had won the lottery to come here. I’m glad we did it while we could. You could live your whole life some place and still not know just how beautiful it is, you know? You’ll love it, I guarantee it. The people, the country, the food…it’s home, you know?”

But it was obvious Dr. Patel couldn’t relate to her attachment; he didn’t point out that they were referring to two different places in Africa, neighboring countries though they may be. Smiling warmly, he said instead, “I’ll be right back with some samples, okay?” and left the room.

Pooja looked at the Monet again, the two white water lilies floating alongside in a murky black pool even as time and the environment had stripped them off their brilliance. Still they remained, weathering all. Her eyes drifted past the walls and out the window to the endless, pale skies dusted with so much smog that it too looked to her like a painting robbed of its colors.

* * *

Ajay reached the bank branch in Westchester a little before five o’clock in case his father left early. In the open lot, he parked a safe distance from the black Mercedes and guzzled down a can of Red Bull while listening to a Tupac collection, his fingers thrumming on the steering wheel.

As he waited patiently, eager to see his father, it occurred to him that Rahul had worked for the same bank for more than ten years now and that the last time he had visited him here Ajay had been only thirteen. One of his fondest memories was when, over lunch, his father had escorted him to the large department store across the street and indulged him in the trendy acid-washed jeans with the rip on the knee. He had clamored for them but even Pooja, who normally gave in to all his demands, had stood firmly against this latest fad. “This?” she had cried, pointing at a fashion magazine spread he had brandished to validate his taste, “This is how you want to go out in public? In
fatela kapdas?
Well, then why don’t you just bring me some scissors and I can cut out all your pants for you. No need to spend money just to look poor!”

Even the Garden Café—devoid of an actual garden—where Ajay and Rahul had eaten cheeseburgers on the patio was still there, still trying to compensate with plastic ficus trees and wall murals of tropical flowers. It made Ajay long for the rare and special times with his father and the feeling, instead of calming his rage, only intensified it.

A little after five-thirty, Rahul appeared in the parking lot, tall and majestic in a way that would make any son proud. Ajay lowered the volume on the stereo and studied his father almost clinically in the couple of minutes it took for Rahul to reach his immaculate car, throw his leather briefcase and jacket in the back seat and get into the driver’s seat. He realized that he knew almost nothing about his father, this man who had given him life but whom he had admired only from an unbridgeable distance and as a result, had never wanted to imitate him, be like him, aspire to be him.

Yes, he knew that Rahul had been a heroic cricketer in his youth back in Kenya, the country that neither one of his parents ever wanted to talk about and which, even to Ajay, only meant what it did to most Americans—an exotic land known for its safaris and coral reefs. He also knew that his father, unlike most Indians who were mired in superstition and tradition, was an atheist; that Rahul, since arriving in America, had been a banker, one whose career had run the course from being a stellar salesperson to burning out in mediocrity. And he knew from the coy remarks of his mother that his parents had been in love when they had married.

Still his knowledge of his father amounted up to so little in the end, fragments that gave him clues but never constituted a full picture. How could one be born of someone, occupy the same orbit, breathe the same air, and still know so little about him? Could the link between father and son be this tenuous? Things that you always thought were eternal—your parents, the love between them, their love for you—could be lost overnight?

He followed his father on a thirty-minute drive, always keeping three or four cars apart, through Marina del Rey, past their street—Rose Bouleverd in Venice, where Ajay almost expected his father to turn—and into the heart of Santa Monica where the weather dipped a few degrees thanks to the Pacific’s beneficence. He watched his father parallel park the car in a permit zone under a tree profuse with magnolia blooms and cross the road to a three-story building.

Ajay, parked about a block behind, close to a church and on the other side of the street, was so overcome with the burning need to know more, to see the woman who was responsible for all this, that he didn’t even think about how it would look if he were caught. He sprinted out of the car and to the building but Rahul had disappeared from sight by then. He foraged through the building, trying desperately to detect something, perhaps the voice of his father or that of his welcoming hostess, catch a glimpse of them through the vertical blinds of the apartments he tried to peer into, but he saw and heard nothing, only the insipid laugh track of a sitcom from someone’s television set and the din of someone hammering away. His father, it seemed, had been transported into another realm, one to which his mother and he had no access.

Crestfallen, he began walking back to his own car when he noticed the parking permit hanging on the rearview mirror of his father’s car. That fact that it hung there constantly, indicating a kind of permanence, hurt him. He bent down and peered through the vehicle’s tinted window. A forty-something woman walking by briskly in a sweat suit, sun visor, and gold crucifix pendant around her neck eyed Ajay suspiciously and for a moment, Ajay wondered if she could be the woman his father was seeing. When he stared back at her she picked up the pace fearfully and disappeared around the corner. On the plastic permit, under the holographic logo, he found what he was looking for.

Apartment #5.

* * *

After several indomitably foul-tasting shots of alcohol at a billiards bar in Santa Monica, Ajay and Nicky made their way through the traffic of Wilshire Bouleavard to a trendy new bar in Hollywood.

Nicky’s connections assured their unencumbered entrance into any hotspot roped off to most who weren’t close to the managers so they were in no rush to get anywhere on time. “Fucking pretentious bougies,” Nicky would often say of the celebrities, the spoiled and mostly white patrons, and the club owners who called him incessantly for one party-favor or another, sanctioned his dealing in their clubs and secured his VIP status. “They may have all the fucking chips in the world but they’re nothing without me. Fucking crackies. I have no cheese but let me tell you, bro, I live better than they do!”

The mobile phone was still in Ajay’s hand from when he had punched in an aggressive, inebriated girl’s phone number at the bar as they had exited. When the phone both vibrated and emitted the current R&B chart-topper momentously, he thought that it might finally be his father. It was a blocked number. Assuming it was some girl stalking him, Ajay pushed a button and dismissed the call. The disappointment made his anger mount and he contemplated visiting his father at that very moment. He took more shots of the caustic, unpalatable booze, feeling his legs tingle and the world around him appear subterranean.

“So, has he called you yet?” Nicky asked, sensing his friend’s preoccupation.

Ajay shrugged. Being familiar with Nicky’s past, how his father had deserted them when Nicky was only four, he knew his friend had no faith in fathers or in familial ties. But this wasn’t supposed to be happening to him. He had been brought up in a different world, one in which he had always felt protected by his parents, a world in which they had always been there for him and for each other; if the placidity of his parents’ relationship had signified anything to Ajay, it had been their maturity, that they were a dutiful couple, far from the passionate, calamitous couples that ended up in divorces and cannibalized each other through attorneys. “He’ll call sooner or later.”

“So, he hasn’t?” Nicky persisted, coming to a stop at the signal. A red Ferrari zipped past the red light and the traffic signal camera flashed twice. Nicky howled delightedly. “Oh, shit! That wiseass is gonna’ get a bitchin’ surprise in the mail tomorrow,” he said, bursting into high-pitched hysterical laughter which was typical of him when he was high, but which was so incongruous with his tough, intimidating demeanor that even after all the years of friendship, it never ceased to startle Ajay.

“He’s called a couple of times,” he replied miserably.

“Man, if he was
my
father…If I only knew where that fucker was,” Nicky said contemptuously, his eyes still looking into the distance where the car had sped off while all sorts of violent thoughts boiled up in his mind, “You know what pisses me off, man? It’s not that he’s not around no more. I mean I don’t need his ass anyway, right? I can take care of myself just fine. It’s just…you know, isn’t he even curious to know what I look like? Who I am? Anyway, so what’re you gonna do?”