Nothing Like Love (2 page)

V
imla Narine stole across the uneven stepping stones, the staccato ring of her silver anklets beating in time with her heart. Her mother’s gold wedding earrings swung against her flushed cheeks. The sequined
phaloo
of her new sea-green sari flashed in the early-morning sunlight, undulating over her shoulder like a wavelet chasing her home. Vimla shut her eyes, sprang through the air and imagined herself soaring. She landed with grace, her silky sari pleats whispering against her calves before she took flight again. A smile lit her face and made it pretty.

Vimla followed the stepping stones through the guava and coconut trees, around the duck pens and dog kennel. She darted past the bull and cow, a stray cat swollen with young and an old rooster scratching the earth. She barely noticed her fast breath and the beads of perspiration gathering at her hairline, but she
could feel the rush of adrenaline through her body, propelling her forward until she tore through the tamarind trees and the back of her home came into full view.

As Vimla drew nearer to home, she reined in her wild energy and drove it back into her soul. She willed her legs to slow their pace and filled her lungs with long deep breaths until the thudding in her ears subsided. She adjusted her sari pleats, which had shifted to the left. She tried to flatten her hair, but it leaped through her fingers and flung itself in errant waves down her back anyway. Vimla shrugged, deciding to blame her dishevelment on the heat, on the dogs, on whatever else came to mind should she be questioned. She set about the wearisome task of focusing her mind on today’s responsibilities. She squared her shoulders, repeated the fourteenth times table to twenty until an almost-calm came over her, and then slowly permitted reality.

Of course she was late for the
puja
, prayer. She scolded herself for gambling with time this morning. It would be inappropriate to preface this ceremony by a quarrel with her mother. This wasn’t just any puja, after all; it was an offering of thanks to the deities for helping Vimla pass her A Level exams with such success. It was important to her mother.

Vimla looked up from the swish of fabric around her toes and noticed her father, Om, reclining against a house pillar, a brass
lotah
, water vessel, in one hand. Placidness softened his round, weathered face as he stared beyond his backyard across his five acres of sugar cane.

Vimla stopped in front of him. “Pa?” She tilted her head to one side, hunting for annoyance somewhere beneath his dreaminess.

Om grunted. “Where you went? The pundit reach. Your mother looking for you.” Then his frown gave way to an affectionate smile. “You looking like a fairymaid in that sari, Vims.”

Vimla smiled at her father, delighted. She remembered how he had rushed to the Indian bazaar the morning her name was printed first in the
Guardian
of all the students who had passed their A Levels. “One pretty sari to match my pretty daughter with the pretty smart brain,” he had said as he spread the paper open on the counter and pointed to Vimla’s name. Her mother, Chandani, had said the sari was too heavy with jewels, too expensive, too grown up for a seventeen-year-old girl, and yet she swallowed her protests when Vimla draped the fabric across her body and beamed back at her.

Om shoved the lotah into Vimla’s hands. “Take this. Fill it up with water from the standpipe. Pundit Anand almost finish setting up. Do fast before your mother cut your tail!”

Vimla hurried away with the lotah, grateful for a reasonable excuse for her tardiness. She was careful not to let the water slosh over the sides, more careful still to accentuate the sequined border of her sari pleats with delicate kicks as she walked toward the
bedi
assembled in the middle of the downstairs living area. Without a single spilled drop, she set the water vessel down and shone radiant in the sea-green drapes of her sari, a smile inviting compliments playing on her face.

But nobody was looking at her.

Pundit Anand, the village priest, busied himself taking inventory of the materials necessary to conduct a successful puja. Om regarded him with suspicion, searching as he always did for an oversight, while Chandani observed her
husband’s irreverent behaviour, her lips pulled into a straight line of petulance.

Vimla sighed quietly and moved beside her mother in front of the bedi set on the ground. The bedi was a wooden box, twenty-four inches long on each side and four inches deep. It was packed firmly with earth and cow dung and smoothed to create a flat working surface. Pundit Anand had used rice grains to decorate the top with designs and holy symbols.

Vimla watched as Pundit Anand’s eyes swept approvingly over the brass
taria
, rubbed gold for the occasion. The first plate overflowed with fresh neem, tulsi and mango leaves. The second contained a myriad of fragrant articles like cloves, camphor and sandalwood incense. The third was arranged with materials Vimla thought would feel nice against the skin: a mound of soft cotton balls, an orb of red and yellow string, a dusting of vermilion powder. Fresh fruit, hibiscus, marigold and jasmine flowers filled the other trays. The fruit would be offered to the little brass
murtis
, statues of the gods, the flowers to adorn them.

Pundit Anand inhaled the burning incense deeply and pretended to close his eyes. Vimla knew he was trying to avoid meeting her father’s distrustful scowl and she could see that he was peeking beneath his half-closed lids at her mother’s now reverent expression with an opportunist’s beam. It was common knowledge in the district that Vimla’s success would bring greater academic opportunities, and that unlike many of her peers, she had the potential to truly excel. But according to Pundit Anand, if Vimla was to be successful, she needed her planets completely realigned, all the holy deities appeased and all the evil spirits dispelled from her home. He
had warned Om and Chandani that such services did not come cheap these days. Vimla saw Pundit Anand’s mouth turn up in a half-smile and then vanish.

She rolled her brown eyes. She would succeed in life because she was bright, not because she offered a jasmine flower at the feet of Saraswati Devi. In the nights leading up to the exams, when Vimla had studied by the light of an oil lamp, she hadn’t had time to pray. There had been too many formulas to memorize, too many practice compositions to write, to dither in front of the altar with expansive supplications. She had read until her eyes burned and then read some more, until there wasn’t anything that could surprise her on the exams.

Pundit Anand gestured for the Narines to sit before the bedi. He fixed his lips into a puckered O and summoned the holiest
aum
he had in his belly. It vibrated through his body and out the tunnel of his lips. His eyes twinkled at the effect, and the half-smile appeared again, barely peeking out from beneath his silvery-grey moustache. Then Pundit Anand fell into a jumble of Sanskrit mantras that had travelled a treacherous journey over time and dark waters in fragments from India to Trinidad.

Vimla wondered vaguely if broken prayers worked.

While her parents and Pundit Anand prayed, Vimla fidgeted with the sequin border at the hem of her sari, turning it inside out and flipping it back over again. She twisted the sequins on their gold thread until they became loose. She trailed her finger along the hem softly, thinking how much the sequins looked like green fish scales. When she grew tired of this, Vimla plucked a jasmine blossom idly from the brass plate of flowers and threaded it into her dark wavy hair, wishing she had a mirror to glimpse her reflection in.

Vimla heard a chuckle beneath the drone of chanting beside her. She dropped her hands into her lap and looked up to find Krishna Govind, Pundit Anand Govind’s son, padding across the concrete on bare feet toward the bedi. He had entered through the iron gates, left open by her father, and removed his slippers so as not to disturb the puja. Krishna was dressed in a simple white cotton
kurtha
pajama, a shirt that fell to his knees, and a pair of matching, loose-fitting pants. Tucked beneath his arm was a bundle of wood, five inches long and wrapped in yellow cloth. He set this bundle and his slippers down and then seated himself across the bedi from Vimla on a piece of white fabric spread earlier for him by Chandani.

Vimla glanced at her parents, then at Pundit Anand, but they were still chanting mantras with their eyes closed and their palms pressed together. She shrugged at Krishna, slipped another jasmine blossom into her hair and smiled.

Krishna shook his head, smiling back at her as he loosened the knot that held the wood together. He began to place the pieces of wood in the family’s
havana kunda
, a metal container used for fire rituals. While he worked, his gaze travelled the embroidery and sequins that roved the curves of Vimla’s body. He lingered longer on the soft sliver of flesh Vimla’s sari blouse exposed at her midriff as she reached to slide a third jasmine flower into her hair. And when she looked at him with her cocoa eyes, fringed with thick dark lashes and full of mischief, Krishna blew her a kiss across the bedi.

Pundit Anand, Chandani and Om bowed their heads in unison then, opened their eyes and placed the wilted petals between their sweaty palms at the feet of a brass deity sitting on the bedi. Vimla snatched the jasmines hurriedly out of her
hair and did the same, her face burning as Pundit Anand shot her a sidelong glance.

Pundit Anand took a deep breath and launched into a fresh string of mantras, rocking back and forth as the prayers tumbled out. He swept his hand over the havana kunda, nodding to Krishna to set the wood inside ablaze. Then he gestured for Om and Chandani to drop melted ghee, clarified butter like molten gold, from a spoon into the flames as he called upon the deities one by one to accept the offerings made to them in the fire.

Vimla and Krishna watched each other through the dancing flames and the black, choking smoke uncurling into the space between them; they exchanged brazen smiles under the noses of their parents and over the heads of the miniature brass gods on the bedi.

Thinking back on this day much later, Vimla would understand: this was the pivotal moment in her and Krishna’s relationship. The moment when the gods witnessed their audacious sacrilege. The moment it was decided a torrent of misfortune would rain down upon the pair.

And while the destiny of their children was being transformed, Pundit Anand Govind and the Narines chanted 108 names of a god who was no longer listening.

C
hance Market was already vibrating with activity at 5 a.m. Vimla zigzagged through the rows of stalls in search of a vacant space to sell her father’s long beans.

“Here, Pa!” She waved her arms at Om.

Gloria Ramnath, dressed in a new pink dress, bumped Vimla with her wide hips. “Eh, gyul, move from here. I selling my eddoes at this stall.” She heaved a heavy bag of eddoes off the floor and plopped it onto the stand. “Go and find a next place to play.”

Vimla stared at Gloria. She wore ten rings on her fat fingers and three chains like gold ropes around her bull-like neck. Her earlobes were stretched by the weight of gaudy earrings that dangled to her shoulders, and on her toes—Vimla flinched at the sight of hair on them—Gloria wore silver rings fashioned like coiling snakes. Her son was a jeweller in Port of Spain, and everyone knew it.

“Auntie Glory, this is my father’s stall.” Vimla pointed to the scale she’d placed on the splintering wooden stand to secure the spot for Om.

“Where is Fatty-Om? I ain’t see him anywhere, and nobody can miss Fatty-Om when he walk into a place.” Gloria chuckled and her gold-draped bosom danced up and down. She untied her bag of eddoes and pushed it on its side with a
thump
, rolling the brown hairy vegetables out onto the stand with her pudgy fingers.