Happy Birthday!: And Other Stories (27 page)

Jamie spoke, for the first time in six days, his own voice alien and threatening, ‘What do you think you're doing?'

The boy had the wits, or the gumption—Jamie couldn't tell which—to put a finger on his lips, reminding Jamie that he wasn't supposed to talk. Jamie caught him by the starched collar of his white half-sleeved shirt and dragged him to the reception office where Mata was sitting alone.

When he accused the boy of stealing, Mata looked up at Jamie through her spectacles, resting on the bridge of her nose, and said in an unruffled voice, ‘He was not stealing, Mr Henderson. It is part of his ashram duty to look through the resident's belongings and ensure that forbidden items like alcohol, reading material or writing paper have not been sneaked in. My advice to you, if you please, is that you focus on your course and trust us to do our job.'

Jamie saw that the boy was not going to be punished, would never be. ‘I want my things back,' he blurted out, knowing no other way to vindicate himself.

‘I am afraid that is not possible, Mr Henderson. It is against ashram policy.'

But Jamie was adamant and Mata finally relented, telling him that she was doing it so he didn't succumb to the emotion of anger that was forbidden during the course. On taking his orange duffel bag, Jamie knew that he'd achieved the goal of Noble Silence: to see things for what they were. Spiritual cleansing was a lie meant to lure unsuspecting tourists like him and take their money. So, over the next few days, he spoke loudly to himself, woke up at ten instead of four-thirty and took photos of the ashram, which was strictly forbidden. He demanded Coke when given nimbu paani, and pizza when given lauki. He read a magazine, a novel, and pretended to write in his notepad—all in the garden, openly in defiance of the rules. His Aussie roommate asked to be moved out. On the last day of the course Jamie was shifted to a single room, and that was where he fell ill.

The illness was Jamie's true meditation; his mind and body alternated between anguish and quiet. He remembered little of the hospital or the doctor whose accent he couldn't follow, but the noise from the street outside his window, the fan in his room, the busy nurses and gurney wheels against the cement floors, remained with him when—after recovering—he went back to the ashram room to collect his belongings. There, with his bag tucked safely below the bed, the lull of the ashram in contrast to the hospital, and the antibiotics, eased him into a deep sleep.

He woke up to discover that he'd been robbed of everything.

Jamie runs his hand through his hair. It feels coarse. The path to austerity doesn't allow the use of shampoos or conditioners, so he's been washing his hair with hard tap water. What baloney!

‘It's that boy, the boy who cleans the rooms,' he says definitively to Olga.

Olga looks at him with her thin mouth slightly open, as if she doesn't quite believe what he's said, and replies, ‘It is not possible to do much of anything about this.'

‘And why not?'

‘The boy you say is like son of ashram, adopted by Guruji. The boy's father leave him before birth and the mother, she was sweeper in ashram, fall off ladder and lose mind, so Guruji give him house to stay and free school. Maybe it will help if you have, how to say, proof of his robbery?'

‘Proof? How was I supposed to know that I'd need to be collecting proof in an ashram?'

‘Then no one believe you.'

‘You expect me to just sit here and do nothing?' Jamie asks. He puts his hands on his cheeks and feels hollows that weren't there before. How much weight has he lost?

‘I do not know exactly. Maybe you go to Mata.'

‘Mata,' he scoffs. ‘She'll never believe me.'

‘Maybe you go to police then. You have copy, I think, of your passport and visa?'

A warning rises in Jamie like seltzer. He makes a quick calculation and realizes that his tourist visa expired four days ago. He's living illegally in India. When he tells Olga this, she informs him of the endless rounds he'll have to make of the police station, the American Embassy, the passport office and the middlemen. The bribes. Jamie curses the boy and without another thought, steps outside Olga's office, leaves the double-storey cement building for residents and walks across to the single-storey brick administration building.

He barges into Mata's office, ranting out his story.

Mata waits till he's finished before saying, ‘I am sorry to hear this, Mr Henderson, but I did warn you about your bag. However, I cannot imagine what motive a little fatherless boy will have to steal your clothes and passport.'

‘He is poor, that's his motive.'

For the first time in the four weeks that he's been in India, Jamie sees someone's mouth clench and eyes narrow. Yet, when Mata speaks her voice is calm: ‘It is not always the poor who steal, Mr Henderson. As an American you should know that.'

Before he can respond, she gets up and adds, ‘The boy you speak of lives ten minutes away. I will have his place searched. If he is not the culprit, I will try to find out who it is in the next few days.'

Jamie finds he cannot argue with her. He asks, ‘What will I do till then?'

Mata amazes Jamie with how swiftly she replies, as if she's answered this question before. ‘You can stay in the ashram for free, but you will have to volunteer your services like Olga does.'

Jamie hears the purpose in Mata's voice and knows that the boy will be caught in a matter of hours. He'll go to the police after that, with his passport and a letter of apology from the ashram. So he accepts Mata's offer and goes back to his room. That evening he doesn't leave his room, though he's supposed to assist Olga in serving herbal tea and fruits to the other residents. No one disturbs him.

The next day at five o'clock, there is a knock on his door. He opens it to see Mata holding out his bag casually, as if she's giving him a glass of water.

‘You found the culprit?' he asks, taking the bag, but she turns around and walks away. Jamie runs after her, shouting, ‘I knew it. It's the boy, isn't it?' She continues to the exit. He follows her. ‘You know, the least that you guys can do is have him apologize to me, and admit that you were wrong. Is that so much to ask?' Mata walks ahead, not replying, and stops near the ashram gate. He goes and stands next to her. ‘Don't think this matter is over. I will go to the police and report the criminal.'

His eyes follow Mata's stare and he sees Olga standing among a group of people at the ashram gate.

‘Olga,' he shouts. ‘Hey, Olga. They found the thief!' Olga looks at him and turns away. He wonders why there is a suitcase next to her feet, when a black-and-yellow rickshaw pulls up at the gate. He sees two people grab Olga by the arms and force her into the rickshaw as if she is a … convict.

By the time her rickshaw leaves and the crowd disperses—Mata included—Jamie realizes how wrong he's been. He's slandered the boy, Mata and this ashram, only because he couldn't imagine that a white person—Olga—could have stolen his things.

He can't stay in the ashram a moment longer.

He rummages through his bag and, on seeing that everything is intact except some cash, he runs to the administration building, drops most of the Indian money he has left (twenty thousand rupees) into the donation box—his apology to the ashram—and heads straight back to the gate. He asks the watchman for directions to the nearest police station where he needs to report his expired visa.

‘You big sahib need visa to come to India?' The toothless watchman laughs incredulously, giving him directions. Jamie slips a hundred-rupee note into the surprised man's hand and steps out of the ashram. In both directions there are miles of highway lined with rows of trees and shrubs, behind which are endless fields. It is three kilometres to the police station, he should hail a rickshaw, but his mind is too burdened for his legs to remain still. So he starts walking, unable to appreciate India's sights or sounds, hearing only the silence of his own mind. After a few minutes he sees a boy ahead of him, thin legs dragging on the ground, shoulders slumped, dark hair clinging damply to the back of his neck. It's the boy from the ashram.

If dejection has a form, Jamie knows it's this.

He shouts: ‘Hey!' and realizes that he doesn't know the boy's name. Though they are alone on the muddy path lining the highway the boy doesn't turn. Jamie jogs up to him and taps his shoulder. The boy looks up at him, and—startled—drops what he's holding and starts to run.

‘Stop. I want to say I'm sorry,' Jamie shouts. He has no energy to chase the boy. He picks up the wire contraption that the boy has dropped—two circles held horizontally by a stick—holds it out and shouts again, ‘I am not going to hurt you. Take this back.'

The boy peers over his shoulder and steps onto the highway.

Jamie sees a truck, a large looming beast, coming from the opposite direction. It is hurtling straight towards the boy.

Jamie wants to shout a warning, but he is not able to find his voice. The boy is still looking at him, running across the highway.

Now the truck is just a few feet away, honking and hurtling, honking and hurtling.

Jamie finds his voice: ‘Watch out! There's a truck coming!'

The boy doesn't hear him and the truck is now almost upon the child. Jamie is about to close his eyes, unable to watch, when a silver-grey Mercedes comes out of nowhere, directly in front of the truck. They crash—the truck and the car—and there is a noise that rips Jamie's heart. He bends over, shielding his eyes to avoid the glass shards and red dust flying around him.

The car lies smashed into itself, as if it's taken a deep inhalation.

Despite the coughs that seem to have seized his entire body, he sees the truck driver reverse his vehicle. In an instant he's driving away. Jamie quickly pulls out his camera from the bag and photographs the back of the truck, the licence plate and a painted sign that says: ‘Obay The Rullz'.

His eyes search for the boy but he is no longer there.

Jamie hears shouting; the highway that was empty a few seconds ago is filling up with people. Where are they coming from? He backs away, unsure of how to navigate a big crowd. A woman's bloodied body is taken out of the car and laid out on the road as people yell, pushing each other in confusion. A few minutes later an ambulance arrives, a doctor checks the body. Jamie hears the word
dead
. The crowd begins to disperse. There's nothing left to do. The boy is still nowhere to be found.

Jamie continues on his way towards the police station, walking briskly because this time he has proof of the crime he intends to report. Something pokes his hand. It's the boy's wire contraption. Mud clings to it. Jamie stares hard at it and a thought strikes him like lightning: the boy had run onto the highway because of Jamie; a woman is dead because of the way Jamie has been acting and feeling since coming to India.

For a moment, Jamie cannot move, truth seeping into him like unrealized pain.

And then he walks.

He walks till he reaches the police station. A constable is sitting in a khaki uniform in front of an old tattered register.

‘I'm here to report a crime,' Jamie says to him.

The constable lifts his pen and brings it down on the paper, ‘Against whom?'

Jamie licks his dry lips and clears his throat, before replying, ‘I want to report a crime against myself.'

~

It's a crime to be rich, Anita thinks as she clips on her diamond earrings. Guruji has told her that wealth is like a wounded dog: it concentrates only on its own slow death. Or did he say that about America? Or India? It's a bad sign when she can't remember Guruji's words.

She's been feeling bold since waking up, and it's making her uneasy. Knowing that in this mood she will not be able to sit still in the back of the car, she dismisses the driver and drives her silver-grey Mercedes to the ashram herself.

On the way she sends Guruji a text message asking him the purpose of her life. Each time she asks him this he gives her a different reply, saying there is no one answer for certain questions. This time he replies: ‘Your purpose is to be true to what lies inside you.' He's always telling her to look deep within herself, to journey from the outside to the centre, like a Mandala painting. She tries this and finds nothing.

She reaches the ashram gate, where the watchman gives her a salaam, and after parking in her reserved spot she walks to the school. Mata is waiting for her. She looks ruffled today, her tightly arranged face thrown into disarray.

‘Is everything okay?' Anita asks Mata.

‘Someone has stolen a resident's bag, Mrs Kotak. I'm investigating the matter,' Mata says in the severe voice that runs the ashram.

Anita says, ‘What has the world come to?' It is a line that she finds suitable for every situation.

They walk along the brick school buildings where scores of the surrounding village's children pile into wall-less classrooms. She knows they're here because of her very generous donations, but this doesn't make her proud.

She stops at class two and asks Mata, ‘How's Ramesh?'

Mata's face relaxes as she smiles at her. Anita knows Mata thinks that she shows concern for Ramesh because he's deaf and she's childless. She shifts uncomfortably on her feet as Mata says, ‘He is the same; same grade for the last three years though his Reading Comprehension has improved.'

This gives Anita an excuse to look more closely at Ramesh. She wants to memorize him because she doesn't know him. The mole on his upper lip has grown a little darker. He's tanned from the summer heat, like his father, and he seems thinner, though he's always been thin, like her. When she worries about his weight, Guruji assures her that the ashram feeds him well every day. When she weakens, wanting to cook for him, feed him with her own hands, Guruji tells her to stay away for both their sakes.