Dev Dreams, Volume One (10 page)

The heat was beginning to bother Sumitra. She
wanted to sit down and thought if she wasn't able to soon, she
might faint. It made her wonder why she had agreed to this trip.
The motherland didn't hold much for her, just long hot days of
making relatives happy while dreaming of having her computer back
and a bedroom to herself. Finally it was their turn and she
shuffled behind her parents, following their lead to touch the
ground in front of the guru and then her heart.

Standing in front of the guru, listening to
her mother beg for a good husband for her daughter, Sumitra felt
unexpected embarrassment pricking at her face. When she had agreed
to do this, she hadn't realized just how humiliating it was going
to feel. She bowed her head and kept her hands in namaskar, but she
wondered if he had some magic ability to see into her head. God,
she hoped not. She didn't want the guru knowing how much of the
darshan time she spent thinking about sex.

The guru held up his hand in blessing and
smiled at the family. They backed away and all three
prostrated.

***

That afternoon they were going to see the
guru again; twice a day every day for the next week. “We came all
this way,” her dad said, “We've got to get the most out of it.”

Her mom wrapped Sumitra again and put the hem
of the sari so low, she tripped on it most of the way to the
ashram. As they approached the building Sumitra saw something that
stunned her. There was a wheelchair sitting empty outside the hall.
It wasn't an old-person wheelchair, either. It had no handles and
no arms and the foot plate was one solid piece. It was black, but
scuffed, and was missing its cushion. She had never seen such a
thing in India. This gorgeous, latest-style wheelchair couldn't be
Indian, it almost felt as though it had followed her from
America.

What was it doing here? This was some insane
coincidence. She could not let herself get too excited. It would be
a tease, a let-down, just like it always was. There was no purpose,
no signs, and no deeper meanings. Yet, they had just asked the guru
for a proper man for Sumitra, and today a wheelchair appeared. Did
the guru somehow cause it? No, that was crazy. He could not
possibly know, let alone arrange circumstances like this. Probably
the wheelchair belonged to some middle-aged, nasty-looking guy.
Maybe it belonged to a woman. Sumitra had a terrible tendency to
forget that it was possible for women to be disabled too. But to
see something as unlikely as this the day after the guru held up
his hand in blessing over her? It was too strange.

Her parents were oblivious to her inner
turmoil as they climbed the steps into the offering hall. Sumitra
was immediately on the look out for whom the wheelchair belonged
to. She saw him at the back, leaning against the wall and the only
reason she knew she had the right person was that he was sitting on
the missing wheelchair cushion.

He was a young man, around her own age, and
his parents sat on either side. His legs were barely crossed,
looking more like rag doll legs hastily arranged. Sumitra gently
herded her parents to a spot where she would be able to keep
observing him. Throughout the darshan, Sumitra tried to guess what
his disability was. She was guessing paraplegic. She had never
before seen an Indian paraplegic. Then again, the only disabled
people she had yet seen in India were dirty old beggars crawling
along the dusty roads.

Sumitra doubted it was possible to find in
India the kind of independent, resourceful, and self-assured
paraplegic she was hoping to marry. Disability issues didn't seem
to be on the radar here. Sumitra spent most of the darshan musing
about how the experience of disability was different in various
countries, while always keeping a subtle eye on the disabled young
man.

Then his family was going up for the guru's
blessing. He began scooting his body along the tile floor behind
his parents. Every single eye in the place was on him. Sumitra
looked around the hall at all the stares. It must be hard knowing
everyone was watching. She hated to be one of them, but she didn't
want to miss this either.

His chest was bare, as with all the men, and
his legs were wrapped in a dhoti, but there were sweatpants
underneath. Sumitra could hardly breathe watching his strong, naked
arms pulling his legs, the feet of which kept bumping into each
other. Whose bright idea was it to have all the men naked from the
waist up?

Some wore a shawl that exposed their right
shoulder, but no shirts were allowed. Her father had told her once
that it had to do with showing vulnerability before the guru. Now
instead of proving that the man was unarmed, it just served to
distract Sumitra from spiritual thoughts. Not that her thoughts
were ever all that spiritual.

She leaned forward over her crossed legs to
keep watching, but he was starting to be blocked by crowds of
people standing near the guru, waiting for their audience. She
wanted to ask why the ashram didn't allow his wheelchair inside.
Was it too much like wearing shoes in? It seemed ridiculous to make
him go through this circus. Asking would alert suspicion, though.
She didn't want anyone noticing that she had more than a passing
interest in him. She had to appear the same as everyone else:
staring out of pity, glad that his was not her karma.

Sumitra was too far away to hear what his
parents asked the guru for. Even if she had been closer, it was
unlikely they were speaking in English and that was the only
language Sumitra knew. As she watched him repeat his crawl back to
the far wall, she felt frustrated that such a fantastic potential
match for her was so near and yet still so far in many ways. She
couldn't flirt with someone in India. She couldn't try to start
something with someone when she was half way around the world from
her home, let alone someone that no one in her community would see
as an acceptable match. So many of her opportunities were a mixed
blessing, almost worse than nothing at all because she couldn't
find a way to take advantage of them.

If this situation really were somehow caused
by the guru, if this was the answer to her parents' prayer, was she
supposed to continue to sit back and let the magic spiritual energy
do its work? Or was she now supposed to act on it?

When her parents gathered their things and
prepared to leave, the young man and his family were still there.
Sumitra said, “I think I'll stay a little and try to absorb some of
that grace.” Her father beamed and patted her on the shoulder.

Sumitra closed her eyes and, in her head,
said what was probably the first prayer of her life. Please, she
thought, let me have a love match.

She opened her eyes and his family was
leaving. She followed as he left the hall, walking very slowly so
as not to surpass him pulling his body along the white tile floor.
She noticed now that he didn't place his hands flat against the
ground, but his fingers stayed curled in towards his palm. She
reassessed and decided he must be a low level quad.

She hovered in the doorway at the top of the
stairs and watched while his father hoisted him up over one
shoulder and grunted as he shuffled down the stairs. His mother
took the black cushion from the ground. She placed it on the
wheelchair and his father dropped him onto it. The mother started
trying to push him, but he shrugged her off and pushed ahead with
expert strokes, the edges of his hands on the rims, but not fully
gripping them.

Sumitra took a deep breath and pushed her
worries out of her head.

“Excuse me,” she called out, lightly rushing
down the stairs, not sure what she would actually say once she got
his attention. She didn't even know if he spoke English.

His entire family turned around to look at
her.

“Hi, I'm Sumitra. Pretty cool in there, eh?
Are you staying the week or just in for the day?”

They were all staring at her in stunned
silence. The guy was very cute up close. She met his eye and
smiled. Still there was silence, and tremendous confusion showed in
his face. “Okay,” she said, “Well, I hope I'll see you tomorrow
morning.”

She walked off down the path as quickly as
she could with her too-long sari, grateful that her dark skin
didn't show embarrassment easily.

***

The next morning Sumitra was early for
darshan. Her dad was impressed with her new enthusiasm for
spirituality. She sat at the top of the stairs outside and waited,
hoping to see the paralyzed man again. She was not disappointed. He
wheeled up the path to the hall, this time alone.

Sumitra still didn't believe in this grace of
the guru thing, but it was getting difficult not to. She couldn't
think of anything more unlikely than to meet a cute disabled guy on
a spiritual trip to the motherland. How could the guru have caused
this? How could the guru have known this? Only three other people
in the world knew she was attracted to disabled men.

The young man stopped at the bottom of the
stairs and looked up at her, shielding his eyes against the
sun.

“Hey,” Sumitra said cheerfully.

“You again,” he said and she couldn't tell if
he was glad or disturbed.

“You speak English,” she said.

“Yeah, I'm from New Jersey.”

“Seriously?” Okay, it was now officially
impossible not to believe in the grace of the guru. Nothing this
crazy had ever happened to Sumitra. Disabled men were hard to find,
they didn't just appear conveniently in front of her.

“Yeah.”

“I live just outside the city.” She got up
and walked down the steps. “How would you feel about skipping
darshan and going to find some food?”

“I don't even know you.”

“Right, which is why we should get food. Two
Americans at a remote Indian ashram...I mean, what are the odds? We
should definitely get to know each other.”

“I don't know...”

“Look, I know accessibility around here is
crap, but we'll make do.”

“How do you even...” He shrugged, frowning
and shaking his head.

Sumitra used her magic fix, the one sentence
that always made her seem innocent and not creepy. “My last
boyfriend was a para.” The best thing Jack had ever given her was a
good excuse to use when flirting with other spinal cord injured
guys.

The man visibly relaxed. “Oh,” he said,
“That's cool. I'm C7, incomplete.”

Sumitra nodded. “You going to tell me your
name?” she asked, smiling.

He laughed. “This is my life,” he said, “The
first most relevant thing about me is my injury level. I'm Adithya,
known as Adi to everyone but my parents.”

“I'm Sumitra. Come on, let's go check out the
town.”

“Okay, you've worn me down, but it's not
going to be much fun trying to go around this town with a
wheelchair. It's like one long lesson in humiliation.”

Sumitra smiled. “I'm up for it.”

She walked slowly beside Adi as he pushed
down the rough ashram path. Her bare feet stung and the wind picked
up the end of her sari, blowing it across her body. From the corner
of her eye she watched the smooth beauty of his movement.

“Sorry I'm so slow,” Adi said, “This surface
is really hard to push on. Usually I'm quicker.”

“No worries,” Sumitra said.

The temple was situated on the edge of a tiny
town, just two streets, each one packed with little shops pressed
up against each other, narrow and uneven sidewalks, and cows laying
in the street. Bundles of dried herbs were hanging across the
doorways all down the main street. There was no way that Adi's
wheelchair would fit on the sidewalk, even if the curbs weren't
five inches high. They stayed on the street, Sumitra ducking behind
him whenever an auto-rickshaw honked.

A baby cow wandered up and pushed her nose
against Adi's knee. Sumitra laughed and scratched the cow's head.
Adi did too and Sumitra watched with delight at the way his hand
flopped strangely from his wrist. People streamed past them,
ignoring the cow. The women all wore saris in gold, pink, green,
and blue with embroidered flowers or geometric designs. Groups of
school girls walked past, all wearing identical blue uniforms with
blue ribbons tying their hair into braided loops on each side of
their heads.

They continued on to a little open
restaurant. The whole front was open air, but it, like all the
shops, had wide, steep steps that ran the length of the front.

“You hungry?” Sumitra asked.

Adi laughed. “Yes, but there's no way I'm
getting in there.”

“That's okay, I'll get them to bring food
down.” She paused. “What language do you think they speak?”

“I'm pretty sure it's Kanada.”

“Makes sense. I wonder if they'll understand
my Hindi, I've been taking an adult learning class, but I
suck.”

She hopped up the steps and Adi waited below
watching her. She pointed down to him and the woman behind the
table frowned. Sumitra tried hand gestures and broken Hindi. When
she came back down the steps she was carrying two large metal
plates with fresh, large crepes on them.

“Nope, my Hindi is as unintelligible as my
English. At least 'masala dosa' is only called one thing.”

“Nice job,” Adi said, smiling. “I don't speak
any Kanada either.”

“Two totally useless American-born desis!”
She sat on the steps with one plate on her lap and put the other
plate on his lap.

“Um,” he said and licked his lips nervously,
“My hands don't really do the whole Indian eating thing.”

“Oh, right,” Sumitra said, “Sorry, I didn't
think of that. What can I do?”

He started to look embarrassed and the easy
connection they had was fading quickly. When he didn't say
anything, but looked away, Sumitra reached onto his lap, tore a
piece of dosa and gently held it to his mouth. His eyes jumped to
hers and she looked at him with the most sultry look she could
manage, giving him a wink. She wanted to make sure he knew she
wasn't feeding him like he was a baby. He opened his mouth and she
held eye contact as she fed him a bite.