And Laughter Fell From the Sky (25 page)

Rasika was still coughing. Yuvan didn’t seem to notice. Her eyes watered, and she caught her breath and took a sip of limeade.

“Is India going to just imitate the West, and start overconsuming?” Abhay felt his hands under the table curl into fists. He opened his fingers and consciously tried to relax them. “What about India’s own wisdom and traditions? What about creating India as a world innovator in some way, instead of an imitator of Western ideas and values?”

“Indians are just as materialistic as anyone else.” Yuvan picked up his fork and tapped the handle on the table. “If you give us a chance, we will buy everything we can afford.”

Rasika patted her eyes and upper lip with her napkin. She seemed out of breath.

“I notice more people have air conditioners now,” Abhay said. “And along the road near the golf course they’re cutting down all those big trees to widen the road. That’s going to make the city even hotter, and you’re going to need even more air conditioners.”

The waiter deposited their bill on the table, and Yuvan put his hand on it. “That is the way life is.” Yuvan stood up. “I will take care of this.”

Abhay pulled out his wallet. “Let me at least contribute.”

“No, no. Don’t worry.” Yuvan headed toward the cash register near the door.

Mayuri excused herself and walked toward the bathroom. Yuvan was in the lobby, waiting his turn at the cash register, leaning over and peering at the glass case of desserts. Abhay and Rasika were alone at the table.

“You’re not really going to marry him, are you?” Abhay asked.

“Shh.” Rasika stood up.

“Give me your phone number.”

“Stop it, Abhay.” She gathered her purse.

“I’ll send you an e-mail, then.” He stepped in front of her so she couldn’t just walk away. “I need to talk to you. In private.”

“No.” She attempted to squeeze between him and the next table.

“I came to India to find you. I didn’t think I would. It’s a miracle. I think it means something.”

“Everyone ends up on MG Road at one time or another. It’s no miracle.”

“When’s the wedding?”

“None of your business.”

Abhay sensed someone looking their way, and saw Mayuri approaching, her eyebrows raised, and her lips pursed. He backed away from Rasika, and she stepped out and walked toward the front of the restaurant. Yuvan was waiting for them by the front door. Abhay wondered, as he strolled out beside Mayuri, if Rasika had said anything about him.

On the sidewalk, Abhay watched as the three of them hailed autos. “Which way are you headed?” Yuvan shouted to Abhay as a couple of vehicles stopped.

“I don’t know,” he replied. He stood with the strap of his backpack slung over one shoulder, hands in pockets, as Rasika and Mayuri climbed into one of the autos. Abhay watched as it sputtered away. Yuvan left in the next.

Abhay remained on the sidewalk as tourists and wealthy Indians milled past. He didn’t know what to do now. Another auto pulled up to the curb, and the driver gestured to him. Abhay shook his head, and the auto veered away. He felt rooted to the spot. This is where he’d found Rasika. Now what? She was gone again into the mass of humanity in Bangalore.

Chapter 15

T
wo days later, Abhay boarded a luxury bus early in the morning from Bangalore to Pondicherry. He’d sent Rasika an e-mail from a little Internet browsing place—fifteen rupees per hour—near his grandmother’s house. She hadn’t responded. He was starting to feel like a stalker. He was beginning to think he had to finally move on.

He turned his attention to the book in his hand. He had found, in Gangaram’s bookstore, a book about the new Indian economy. However, it proved almost impossible to read on the bumpy bus ride, along a narrow, rutted path that everyone pretended was a two-lane road. He gave up and looked out the window. From his high, plush seat he saw scrubby meadows, groves of coconut palms, fields of tall grasslike plants with feathery purplish heads. Every once in a while the bus barreled through a village with low houses, the streets choked with people, bicycles, and vehicles. Between villages, the road was shaded by rows of squat, gnarled trees. He loved this Indian practice of planting trees along almost every roadway. How long before these trees were also cut down to widen the road?

They drove by an outdoor market in one village: mounds of flowers, pyramids of fruit, neat rows of leather chappals for sale. What would it be like to live all one’s life in one of these small, crowded, anonymous towns? From the high bus window he could see all sorts of people busily selling things, buying things, going places. They all seemed reasonably content with their lives. Why was he alone unable to find something to keep himself satisfied, some way to get involved with the world?

Eight hours later, the bus finally pulled into Pondicherry. Like Bangalore, Pondicherry was full of trees and plants, but was not nearly so crowded with people. At the bus station he arranged to hire a taxi to drive him the ten kilometers to Auroville.

Once they were out of town, the car turned off the busy main road onto a smooth black ribbon of asphalt, with red dirt on either side and green trees all around. These must be some of the two million trees planted by the Aurovillians. It really was beautiful and peaceful, and perhaps this place would be what he had been seeking for so many years. Soon the cab turned onto a red dirt road and dropped him off inside the Auroville gate at a large, clean, tree-shaded courtyard.

He wanted to enjoy his first impression of this international community. He hoisted on his camping backpack and spent a few minutes reading the series of white placards at the entrance, which explained that “Auroville wants to be a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realise human unity.” He liked that statement. He saw various people strolling around: a plump Indian woman in jeans, a few white women in gold-bordered skirts, Indian men in pants and polo shirts, one woman who looked like she might be Japanese wearing a salvar kameez outfit, and some slim, dark-skinned Indian women in saris. Were these all Aurovillians, or just tourists like himself? There did not seem to be any kind of religious uniform or a rigid standard of dress.

He walked over the paving stones to the visitors’ center ahead, a low white building in a sort of Frank Lloyd Wright style. A slim, elegant, very dark brown Indian woman in a sari walked out onto the porch and closed the door behind her.

“Excuse me.” He held up a hand. “I’m looking for—”

The woman turned the key in the lock. “We are closed for the day.”

“Yes, but I just got here. I’m staying at the—”

“You will have to go to the restaurant.” She pointed across the courtyard at a tan brick complex with a series of arched entranceways under the palm trees. She strolled away, her sari palloo swaying as she walked.

He stood there feeling lost and angry and exhausted. He didn’t have any way of contacting Kianga. She’d said she would get hold of him through his guesthouse. He unzipped his waist pack and pulled out a ragged sheet of paper on which he had written important phone numbers. He scanned the list and found the Central Guest House, where Kianga said she had booked a room for him, and then, holding the list in one hand, he proceeded down the pathway and under the arches to what looked like the restaurant. There was a cluster of outdoor tables on a patio. Many of the patrons were white. He heard what sounded like French, and perhaps German, or maybe Dutch, being spoken. No one looked his way. He gazed around for some sort of helper or waiter, and seeing none, approached the counter of the restaurant, where there were cakes and cookies displayed in the glass case. Behind the counter an Indian man and a blond woman were busy putting desserts on plates.

“Is there a phone here?” he asked tentatively.

The Indian man looked up. “Is it a local call?” he asked in what sounded like British English.

“I need to reach the Central Guest House,” he said.

“Come round this way,” the man instructed, and Abhay went around the corner to the cashier’s table, where there was a telephone.

Although he reached someone at the guesthouse, and although she confirmed his reservation, she was not able to help him get to his room. “You will have to walk,” she informed him. He couldn’t quite place her accent. Maybe Italian? Spanish? “It is not far. Half a kilometer.”

“Isn’t there a bus or something?” He had no idea where he was heading.

“No. We have no buses. See you soon.” And she hung up.

So he was still stuck in this very pretty visitors’ complex at Auroville. He walked to the entrance gates, where he remembered seeing some sort of information booth. His back was feeling the effects of the bumpy bus ride, and he just wanted to get to his room, take off his backpack, and lie down. Of course now there was no one in the booth.

“Where you want to go?” someone asked from behind, and he saw, to his relief, an Indian man approaching him. This must be the entrance guard, and he would undoubtedly have a map.

“The Central Guest House,” Abhay said. “Do you know where it is?”

“That way.” The man gestured vaguely down the road. “Three kilometers.”

“I was told it was only half a kilometer.”

“Three kilometers. I will take you. Only one hundred rupees.” The man pointed to an autorickshaw sitting outside the entrance gate.

This man was not the guard, but an enterprising auto driver. Abhay had now been in India long enough to be outraged at this price. “A hundred rupees to go three kilometers?”

“I come from Pondicherry. You will not find auto here.”

Abhay stood there fuming. How could Auroville realize human unity if they wouldn’t even help people get into the place? He slipped his arms out of his backpack and thumped it to the ground.

“Eighty rupees,” the man said. “I will take you.” He reached for the backpack.

Abhay waved him away. “I’ll walk,” he declared, slung on his backpack again, and stepped out onto the dirt road. Probably if he kept walking, he’d come across a sign. His sneakers padded over the soft red dirt. The trees all looked alike, a tangled forest of thin trunks along the sides of the path, and it felt like he was just walking in place instead of proceeding to his goal. He could see no signs of any sort, and there was no one ahead of him to ask. Should he go back to the courtyard? At least there were people there. He might have a chance of getting some help, if he kept asking. Out here, he was all alone.

He heard a motor puttering toward him, and turned in relief. Maybe the autorickshaw driver had followed him. He was now willing to consider paying whatever it took to get to his room.

It wasn’t the autorickshaw, but a motor scooter. Instead of passing him, the scooter stopped. “Can I help you?” The driver was a plump, light-skinned Indian man, with a fringe of graying hair around his bald crown, wearing a dress shirt and sandals. He looked as if he might be traveling to his office.

“I need to get to the Central Guest House.” Abhay tried not to appear too desperate. “Do you know where it is?”

“Please sit,” the man offered, pointing to the back of his seat. Enormously relieved, Abhay perched behind him and clung to the bottom of the seat with both hands, trying not to topple over with his heavy backpack as the scooter buzzed and tilted along the road. Within a few minutes the man stopped amid a cluster of low buildings. “This is Central Guest House,” he said, and Abhay eased himself off the bike. The man motored away before Abhay could thank him.

The next morning Abhay opened his eyes and gazed at the wood struts of the roof above him. Birds trilled and twittered outside. His room was small and clean, with a fan hung from the middle of the ceiling. The climate here was much more humid than in Bangalore, and during the night he’d felt chilled by the dampness and hadn’t slept well.

He wondered what the day would bring. At the guesthouse office last evening, he’d been given a message from Kianga. He’d called her back from the phone outside the office, and she’d given him directions to reach her farm, called “Guidance,” this morning.

Last night the manager of this guesthouse, Paloma, had given him a map and lent him her copy of an Auroville handbook, on the cover of which was a photo of the gold globe of the Matrimandir—the shrine or temple in the center of the community. It looked like some sort of extraterrestrial spaceship that had only temporarily landed on the red earth. Paloma had also given him detailed instructions as to how he could manage to gain entry into the Matrimandir grounds, as well as the temple itself. He wasn’t sure he would bother with the whole to-do, yet Paloma seemed to assume that the main purpose of his trip was to see the Matrimandir. He was starting to fear that religion, or spirituality, was far more important in Auroville than he had envisioned.

Before going to bed he had pored over the Auroville handbook, attempting to absorb all the details of Auroville’s history and its hundreds of communities and businesses. He read about the health care services available to Aurovillians; libraries within the community; language classes; community schools. There was a whole section on alternative energy experiments. He discovered a list of about a dozen organic farms, including the one Kianga worked on. The information was overwhelming and exciting.

He read far into the night, and now, in the morning, the booklet lay on the mattress next to him. He began to hear sounds of dishes clattering in the dining hall, so he got out of bed and bathed in the little adobe bathhouse, in which a large metal pot of water had been heated with a wood fire underneath, so the whole place was warm, toasty, and smoky-smelling. When he exited the bathhouse into the cool damp morning air, something hopped away from his foot. He startled, and then realized with relief that it was only a squat toad.

Relaxed, he made his way under the trees to the dining hall. Ferns and other plants grew alongside the bricked paths. A black stone bowl, filled with water, displayed floating red and orange chrysanthemum blossoms. Decorative shaded lanterns graced the outdoor seating area. Near the reception hut was a small statue of dancing Shiva, in front of which someone had lit a stick of incense that perfumed the morning air.

The line for breakfast snaked out the dining hall door. Abhay glanced at the bulletin board covering the outside wall of the dining hall. In the middle of the board was a poem:

Light, my light, the world-filling light, the eye-kissing light, heart-sweetening light!

Ah, the light dances, my darling, at the centre of my life; the light strikes, my darling, the chords of my love; the sky opens, the wind runs wild, laughter passes over the earth.

The butterflies spread their sails on the sea of light. Lilies and jasmines surge up on the crest of the waves of light.

The light is shattered into gold on every cloud, my darling, and it scatters gems in profusion.

Mirth spreads from leaf to leaf, my darling, and gladness without measure. The heaven’s river has drowned its banks and the flood of joy is abroad.

Abhay didn’t normally pay much attention to poetry yet found himself scanning the words over and over again.

“You like the poem?” It was Paloma, the office manager, standing in front of him. “Every week I put a different poem on the bulletin board.”

“Who wrote it?’

“This is from the
Gitanjali,
by Rabindranath Tagore. You must be familiar with his work.”

Abhay was familiar with the name of the famous Bengali poet but had never read any of his poems. He liked this one. It was full of joy and seemed to fit so well in the calm beauty of the morning. Before he stepped into the door of the dining hall, Abhay read the lines one last time.

After he’d filled his plate with buttered bread and fruits, Abhay took his plate and cup of tea to a table and sat down. At the next table, also alone, was seated the plump, balding, middle-aged Indian man who had given him a motor scooter ride the day before. Abhay stepped over and held out his hand. “I’m Abhay. I didn’t have a chance to thank you for the ride.”

The man held out a small, delicate-fingered hand. “Nandan,” he said. “Please, sit down,”

Abhay transferred his plate and cup to Nandan’s table.

“How do you like Auroville?” Nandan asked.