End of the Road (30 page)

“
The Hindus might mistake
you for Surya, or Agni, or perhaps Indra, if they could see inside
your dreams. Maybe even Kali. Of course, Krishna would fit best of
all. But those
devas
are still trapped in the cycle of birth and death. They, too,
must be left behind eventually.”

“
I came here to find a way
past the violence of my life, but…”

“
I know,
Michi-
chhori
. When
the time is right, you will find that path, and you will be your
own
istadeva
. But
it is easy to see that the way of the warrior still beckons to you.
You may need to follow it, at least for a little
longer.”

3:
Asan Chowk

Breakfast eaten, the kitchen cleared and
made ready for the next meal, the other guests ushered out of the
house for a day of touring, Emily and Mrs. Kansakar finally had the
morning to themselves.

The fading measures of a
light rain tapped out a lazy
tandava
of
Shiva
Nataraja
, the lord of the dance, against
the ornate façade of the second floor balcony. Emily leaned across
the railing to take the temperature of the sky and decided to put a
denim jacket over a peach colored blouse. Mrs. Kansakar called up
to her from the sidewalk.

“
Hurry yourself, child,
while we have a break in the clouds.”

“
Coming,” Emily sang
out.

She peeked once more over
the railing and smiled down at Mrs. Kansakar’s outfit, a
traditional green sari with gold embroidery draped over a pale
blue
choli
and
orange skirt. The
choli
was short enough to allow the slightest glimpse of a plump
belly button.

“
You didn’t tell me this
was a fancy dress occasion,” she said in a teasing voice as she
stepped through the front door.

“
Perhaps we need to find
you some better clothes while we’re out.”

The walk to
Asan Chowk
wound through
the side streets of Bangemudha, where brick and wood houses crowded
the lanes, expanding with each story until in some cases they
practically touched overhead. Old men sat in doorways, placidly
observing the foot traffic, apparently waiting for the moment when
a witticism formulated years earlier might become relevant to the
scene unfolding before their eyes.

A wild-eyed man in once brightly colored
rags leapt into the street to accost Emily, chattering out words
she could not understand. He was so caked in mud and dust as to
render him unrecognizable even to his closest relatives. Mrs.
Kansakar stepped in front, holding both hands together under her
nose and bowing her head politely. She pressed a small brass coin
into his hands and said what sounded to Emily like a prayer.
Apparently satisfied, or at least distracted, the mud-covered man
bared what few teeth he had left and scurried off laughing. Emily
turned to Mrs. Kansakar with a quizzical look on her face.

“
A holy man?” she
asked.

“
Yes, just like the lamas
you run off to see everyday,” Mrs. Kansakar replied.

“
You disapprove of
them?”

“
There is so much else to
see in the world, child, so much to do. What a pity to waste such
beauty on men like that.”

Located at the intersection
of two ancient trade routes connecting India and Tibet, legend says
the
chowk
sprang up
on the spot where a fish fell from the sky. Today the market
spreads out along the six roads that meet in one little square,
crowded with shops and street vendors, and almost as many shrines
as storefronts including, of course, a shrine to the
fish.

Mrs. Kansakar steered Emily into a little
shop on Botahity Road. A sign over the door gleamed with ornate
gold lettering almost none of which Emily could read, just a name
in English letters: Ranjeet’s. Brightly colored fabrics hung from
high shelves and draped casually in front of all the windows.
Clothing hung from circular racks around the main room, folded
shirts and tunics filled lower shelves along all the walls. The
bell jingled as the door closed behind them and the owner, Mrs.
Ranjeet, invisible at first, called out from behind a stack of
fabrics on a counter in the back.

“
Welcome, welcome. I’ll be
with you straight away.”

A moment later she squeezed out from behind
the counter, long white hair pulled back into a bun and somewhat
smaller than Mrs. Kansakar, but in roughly similar dimensions. She
wore a deep blue tunic with gold embroidery that stretched almost
to her knees, and black pants hung down to her ankles.

“
Ah, Sunita-didi,” she
exclaimed, hands clasped before her face. “It’s been so
long.”

Mrs. Kansakar nodded and grunted.

“
Manisha-
bahini
, let me introduce my house guest, Michiko.”

Mrs. Ranjeet smiled and bowed her head, but
looking her up and down the whole time, as if she were measuring
her for a dress. Emily smiled uncomfortably. The two older women
chatted, apparently amiably, in Nepali, or perhaps Hindi, or maybe
some other tongue altogether. They spoke too quickly for Emily even
to identify the language, much less what they might be saying.
Judging from the frequency with which they glanced in her
direction, she could guess the topic of discussion. Emily cleared
her throat loudly.

“
I’m so sorry,” Mrs.
Ranjeet offered politely.

“
I’m sure you want to know
what we were talking about,” Mrs. Kansakar said.

“
Oh, don’t worry about me,”
Emily said.”

“
Mrs. Ranjeet thinks you
are too skinny, and so do I.”

“
I’ve heard that before.
But it’s not like I don’t eat.”

“
That’s true,” Mrs.
Kansakar said with a conciliatory nod. “But all that running and
exercise. It’s not healthy.”

She turned to Mrs. Ranjeet, muttered a few
clipped, incomprehensible phrases, and smiled.

“
Come here, child,” Mrs.
Ranjeet said, taking her hand and leading her into a tiny backroom.
“I have just the thing for you.”

Before she quite knew what
was happening, the two old ladies had her in a pair of lime green
pants and a long peach colored
kurtha
, or tunic. They bickered over
the color of the shawl to drape over her shoulders while Emily
tapped a foot. Another quick change had her in a purple
choli
and pale blue pants
wrapped up in a saffron sari. Both women giggled and clucked over
her. Perhaps they’d just discovered that being skinny wasn’t so bad
after all. At least it was easy to get her in and out of
clothes.

“
Excuse me, guys,” Emily
said, trying to get their attention. “This is wound a little too
tight.”

“
Nonsense,” Mrs. Kansakar
snorted. “You’ll get used to it.”

“
She’s so tall,” Mrs.
Ranjeet whispered. “Everything looks good on her.”

“
Shhh,” hushed Mrs.
Kansakar. “She’ll get a swelled head. She’s hard enough to manage
as it is.”

Finally, they threw her into a broadly
pleated skirt with an ornate paisley pattern and a short half-tunic
on top. She did a half twirl and watched as the skirt belled
out.

“
I like this,” she said.
“Lots of room to move.”

Emily put her foot down about the sari. She
couldn’t imagine going through a day in an outfit that confining.
How would she defend herself? It was an old habit of thinking. So
much for choosing a different path, or for leaving behind her
warrior self. What would Rinpoche think if he saw her now?

After everything had been tried on, refolded
and put in one stack or another, all three women were exhausted. No
saris, Emily had held firm. But everything else was an explosion of
color: jewel tones, ruby red, lapis blue, emerald, and bright
pastels, robin’s egg blue, coral pink, lime green. “I won’t be
sneaking up on anyone in these,” she mused.

A few feet away, the old women were holding
hands and smiling at each other.

“
Thank you,
Manisha-
bahini
,”
Mrs. Kansakar said.

“
Maybe she’s not too
skinny,” her old friend said with a laugh. “Now I
understand.”

The women slipped again into another tongue
she couldn’t understand, obviously exceedingly pleased with
themselves. Emily cleared her throat.

“
How much is all this?” she
asked, reaching into her pocket.

Mrs. Kansakar laughed out loud. Mrs. Ranjeet
bowed her head to Emily with both hands pressed together. Then she
reached up to place a hand on her cheek.

“It was so pleasant to meet
you,
chhori
.”

~~~~~~~

Out on the street, Mrs.
Kansakar showed her the best spice shop. On another side street,
fruit and vegetable stands crowded along the sidewalks under large
umbrellas, produce bulging out of enormous, burlap-lined baskets.
Potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, several types of
khursani
peppers, spinach,
kale and mustard greens soon filled a large market bag.

“
This way, child. We still
need some bananas, a mango and beaten rice. It’ll make a nice treat
for Sonam after school.”

“
Who is that for?” Emily
asked, pointing at a large pagoda-like structure with several
stacked roofs, topped by a crescent moon. The entire upper
structure was wrapped in what looked like an immense fish
net.

“
The temple of the goddess
of food,” Mrs. Kansakar said with a snort.

“
And those two?”

She tipped her head toward two more
structures on the north side of the square.

“
The tall one honors
Ganesh. The little one is for Narayan, or Vishnu.”

“
Ooh, let’s go see,” Emily
cried out, tugging on her benefactor’s arm.

After some resistance, a frown and some loud
grumbling, Mrs. Kansakar allowed herself to be led to the entrance
of the Ganesh shrine. A golden doorway overhung with three large
bells faced them, topped by a large, semi-circular medallion
depicting the elephant-headed god surrounded by demons and assorted
serpents. The temple was too small for visitors to enter. One could
only admire the statues inside from the street.

“
Why does he only have one
tusk?” Emily asked.

“
Oh, who knows why people
imagine him in any particular way?”

Emily looked at her with a raised
eyebrow.

“
Oh, why must you be so
persistent, Michi-
chhori
?… Fine, he is the god of obstacles. Perhaps his tusk was an
obstacle.”

“
Is that the best you can
do?” Emily replied, with her arms folded.

“
Okay, if you must know, my
father liked to say he broke it off himself when he needed a
pen.”

“
A pen?”

Emily was hardly satisfied by this account.
Mrs. Kansakar shrugged.

“
That’s the story. He was
writing down a poem and his pen broke. He didn’t want to miss a
single verse, so he broke off the tusk and dipped it in the
inkwell.”

“
Must have been quite a
poem.”

“
I suppose, if you care for
that sort of thing. The poem is called the Mahabharata.” Emily
finally seemed satisfied. “Let’s go home, child. We have work to
do.”

4: Meditating with the Monks

Norbu and Pasang were resistant to the idea.
Rinpoche insisted on including her in a special meeting… as if she
were actually one of the monks, and he expected the senior monks to
meditate with her! What could he hope to accomplish?

Late that afternoon, Norbu met her at the
gate to the outer courtyard. She arrived dressed like a Newari
market woman, in tunic, pants and shawl. At least that was better
than the running suit or blue jeans she usually wore. He showed her
into the central hall, where Rinpoche and several monks were
waiting.

Rinpoche’s instructions to the monks: be
open to suggestion. To the girl, he said: “Slow your breathing.”
And then they sat, quietly, eyes closed or unfocused, breathing,
all around the room. She sat in one corner, as far away from the
rest of them as she could get. Perhaps she sensed their
disapproval.

The experience turned out to be quite
peculiar, and utterly new. For Norbu, the goal in meditation had
always been to leave himself behind, not to carry corporeal images
with him, to transcend the usual shapes of sensory experience. But
now he noticed the tug of a very particular sensation. Could this
be what Rinpoche had in mind?

He felt the sun on his cheek, and then the
shade. The clarity of the sensations was startling. Cool, crisp
dirt and fallen leaves crinkled under his feet. Water sounded in
the distance—a river, or a waterfall?—he followed the path toward a
light up ahead. Tall trees arched overhead, forming a canopy at
least thirty feet up. Smaller trees, tropical and lush, palm fronds
and oversized ferns reached out to him through the leopard shade.
The forest thinned out ahead and he saw the gleam of a clearing
through the last few branches. Tall grass, with butterflies and
other flying things dancing in the sunlight, the invitation was
irresistible. He pushed his way out of the shade.