The Elephanta Suite (25 page)

Alice kept a list of these Indian English words in her notebook. Comparative linguistics was a subject she had thought of pursuing in grad school—what else could an English major do?—but first she wanted to take this year off after graduation, the trip with Stella—who had slipped into thin air, just bailed, selfish bitch. But Alice smiled to think that here she was, enjoying herself in this adventure to Bangalore, while Stella and Zack were sneering at Mumbai and discovering how shallow each other was. It gives me no pleasure to think that you're unhappy, Alice thought, and smiled, because it did.

"You are ruminative," the young man said.

"Ruminative," Alice said, thinking, Write that down. "That's me."

"Cudgeling your mind."

"The expression is 'cudgeling your brains,' only I'm not."

"You are indeed thinking out loud."

"You learn fast," Alice said. "Where are you going?"

"Bangalore," he said.

He was going the whole way in this sleeping compartment?

"Job interview," he said. "Eye Tee. Bee Pee Oh."

"A call center?"

"Can be call center or tech-support center. Voice based or computer driven. Wish me luck."

Alice was touched by the fat young man's saying that. She said, "I really do wish you luck. I hope you get the job. Maybe I'll call the tech support line someday and you can help me fix my computer."

"It would be my pleasure. You are smiling."

"Because we're in this train. India out there, rolling along. It's so Merchant-Ivory."

When Alice glanced out the window, she saw that dusk had fallen and they were pulling into a station. It was Gurgaon. Many people got on, and just as the train started again, a woman entered the compartment with two suitcases. She did not offer a greeting but instead concentrated on chaining her luggage to a stanchion by the door. Then, muttering, she claimed the lower berth and sent the young man to the upper berth and out of sight. It was as though a chaperone had intervened, for he was at once both obedient and less familiar. While he appeared to read—Alice heard the rattling of magazine pages—the woman made her bed and lay down to sleep. Alice was reassured by the woman, whom she saw as not an intrusion at all but a typically bossy Indian woman who would keep order.

A man came by with a tray of food—dhal, rice, two puris, a pot of yogurt, the sort of meal that Stella had begun to call "the slimy special," but Alice found delicious. And after she ate it and the tray was collected, she lay down and read a Sai Baba pamphlet, "The Meaning of Love," in preparation for the ashram, but had hardly turned a page when she fell asleep, rocked by the train.

In the morning a coffee seller came by. She bought a paper cup of coffee, and some bananas from a woman with bunches of them in a basket, and she sat in the sunshine, feeling on this lovely morning that a new phase of her life was beginning.

"Can you please inform me, what is your good name, madam?"

She looked up and saw the tubby young man smiling at her, sitting in a lotus posture. She had forgotten him.

"Sure thing. Alice—Alice Durand."

He was now leaning over, his arm extended. "My card. May I obtain yours?"

"I don't actually have a business card," Alice said. "But I'm sure I'll see you around. We're both getting off at Bangalore."

"No. You must be getting off at Cantonment, for Whitefield."

"How do you know that?"

"Sai Baba Center. You have been perusing pamphlet."

Anyone's watchfulness slightly unnerved her, but she also admired this man's. He was a fast learner. He would get the job.

"We are sitting on eight o'clock. Cantonment is coming up."

"And what is your good name?"

"Amitabh. On the card. Also mobile number and Hotmail account. Also pager. You will find me accessible."

He was still sitting, wide in his solid posture, when Alice hoisted her topheavy rucksack and struggled off the train to face the squawking, reaching auto-rickshaw drivers, who seemed to know exactly where she was going.

The passage of time was not easily calculable in the ashram. You didn't count hours or days, but rather months, maybe years. A month had gone by, though time meant nothing here, even with the routine: up at four or so to queue for a place at the hall for the darshan and a chance to hear Swami at six-thirty; then bhajans until eight or so, and breakfast; then chores and food prep and more queuing until more of Swami at two and more bhajans, of which Alice's favorite began,

 

Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey Gajaanana
Gajaanana Hey Gajavadana...

(Victory to Gajaanana,
The elephant-faced God...)

 

"Work is worship," Swami said, and "Hands that help are better than lips that pray," and "Start the day with love, spend the day with love, fill the day with love, end the day with love. That is the way to God."

Alice's days spilled one into the other, full and fluid, guided by Swami. And the passage of time was a consoling liquefaction of weeks in which she was gently turned, as though tumbled downstream, without any effort, feeling the buoyancy of happiness chanted into her ears.

Swami was smaller, slighter, older than his photographs suggested, the hair a less symmetrical frizz-ball, his smile more fatigued than impish. But he was eighty. His direct confrontation, his practical advice, his refusal to preach—the essential Swami appealed to her. He seemed to single her out at the daily darshan and to hold her gaze, and while seeming to preach, said, "I am not here to preach. Only to listen. Only to make suggestions. I tell you"—and here Alice felt the warmth of his attention—"if you are Christian, be the best Christian you can be."

"He will leave his body at ninety-six," Alice's roommate Priyanka said. "And after some eight years, the third and last incarnation will be born. Prema Sai. I wish to observe this."

Priyanka and her friend Prithi had gotten robes for Alice and allowed her to share their room, claiming they were spiritual sisters, since single women were discouraged from applying for rooms. The room was spartan and clean—well, Alice cleaned it, after bhajans. She was glad that Stella was not here to distract her. Stella would have hated the food, made a fuss about the flies or the heat, or else said, as she had at the temple at Muttra, "I don't see why I should take off my shoes here, since the floor is a heck of a lot dirtier than my feet."

Alice loved the simplicity of the place, the strict routine, the plain food, the safety of the perimeter wall, the knowledge that Swami was right next door, beyond the gate in his funky yellow house. It was like a nunnery, and yet there were no vows. She could leave any time she wanted. But the routine suited her, and the city—what she had seen of it—seemed pleasant enough. Too much traffic, though; too many people; honks, shouts, the crackle of music, new stinks.

Against Priyanka's advice—"Swami doesn't like us dibble-dabbling in the town"—Alice took a bus to Lalbagh Gardens and lost herself among the giant trees, the first real trees she'd seen in India, big old ones that spoke of space and order, that provided damp shade and coolness. Indian families roamed in the gardens, lapping at ice creams, and Alice regarded these people wandering among the great trees as worshipers of the most devout sort, without dogma, lovers of the natural world, as Swami was.

Some of the Bangalore streets were lined with flowering trees, like any good street in Providence, and the same sort of solid, smug-fronted houses and bungalows. Stella would have shopped—there were silks and pashminas and bangles—but Alice only looked. The Christian churches, an inexplicably large number of them, helped calm her, because all those Christians were a link with a world she knew and the faith itself had Swami's approval.

But the dust-laden and echoey churches were not enough. She was drawn to another place of worship, the Ganesh temple in the heart of the city, the elephant image smiling at her from the inner sanctum. That was how it seemed: another big soft gaze in her life. The other deities sat glowering, with horror teeth like Kali's, or else solemnly dancing like Shiva; with half-closed eyes like Saraswati playing the sitar, or goofy-faced with pouchy cheeks like Hanuman. But only the elephant god smiled, always the kindly eyes directed straight at her, and the full satisfied mouth chomping on the tusks like a tycoon with two cigars. The way the fat thing sat on the rounded cushion of his bottom, his center of gravity in his broad bum, was also a pleasure to see, but most of all his eyes reassured her with a
What can I do for you?
look and a guarantee:
I can help you.

The afterlife was not intimated in any of the elephant god's intercessions. He was worldly and efficient, not granting grace or forgiving sins, but promising to bring his heavy foot down to flatten a problem.

Alice's problems were small, but they were problems nonetheless. One was the memory of Stella's dropping out. Alice wanted to forgive her, but she could not rid her mind of the betrayal, and she remembered Zack trying to impress Stella, saying that his favorite line in
How to Marry a Millionaire
was the Marilyn Monroe one about maharajahs: "Think of all the diamonds and rubies. And all those crazy elephants." Stella had laughed, and now she had what she wanted.

One afternoon, having ducked out of the ashram to be soothed by a visit to the Ganesh shrine, she decided to walk back to White-field. A taxi always meant bantering with the driver and having to answer too many questions. In an area of narrow lanes she passed the courtyard of an old house and saw what looked like a stable. The air was rich with sweet decay here. What she sniffed as a relief from the sourness of traffic fumes she realized was manure that had the density of compost, the powerful suggestion of a healthy animal and also of the fertile earth. She took a few steps into the passageway and saw a large dusty elephant.

The smiling creature with the swaying trunk seemed linked to the deity she'd just prayed to, as if it were his living embodiment. She could not separate the two, but, having prayed, she saw this animal as the privileged answer to those prayers. His big staring eyes held her and seemed to fix her as an image, as though photographing her—certainly remembering her. As he stared, he danced from side to side, swinging his rubbery trunk. He reached toward her with the big hose-like thing and then lowered it, wrapped a broken stalk of sugar cane and clenched the pink edges of its nose holes, delicately plucking the fragment, and with one upward bend of the trunk popped it into his mouth and crunched it. He had teeth too.

The elephant still swayed, holding Alice's attention like a promise fulfilled. And for the first time in India she did not feel lonely.

She saw with sadness the collar of metal around the lower part of his left rear leg; the heavy chain was fastened with an iron spike. The elephant was male, yet he appeared to Alice like an enormous plain woman, chained to a post, overwhelmingly frustrated, murmuring to herself to get attention.

"Ha!" A man stepped forward, wearing a dhoti like a diaper, and a badly tied turban, and sprayed the elephant with a hose.

She decided to try the word that was in her mind. She pointed at the man and said, "Mahout?"

He smiled, said, "Mahout, mahout," and went on spraying, and the elephant too seemed to smile.

Alice lingered a little, watching the elephant being drenched, his gray dusty skin blackened by the water, thick and wrinkled, looking like cold lava. Then she clasped her hands, said
"Namaste,"
and was delighted when the mahout returned her greeting and somehow encouraged the elephant to nod his great solid head at her.

 

"You were missed," Priyanka said when Alice got back to the ashram.

Priyanka had a haughty, well-brought-up way of speaking that annoyed Alice, not for its Indian attitude but its English pretension.

The other young woman, Prithi, said nothing, but Alice knew what she was thinking.

They were her friends, but not so close that she could tell them that she'd just made a new friend. They were a little older than she was, Prithi a runaway fiancée, Priyanka a runaway bride. Told that a husband had been selected for her in an arranged marriage, Prithi had been rescued by Priyanka and had found peace here under the benign presence of Sathya Sai Baba.

Priyanka had her own story, another arranged marriage, but to an abusive husband, in a house with a nagging, possibly insane mother-in-law. She had suffered it for two years and then done the unthinkable—slipped away, disgraced her parents, infuriated her in-laws, and hid here. The ashram was her refuge. Although she was damaged, scandalous, unmarriageable, she was safe. And she had money.

Prithi also had money. She said to Alice, "Until I was seventeen, I had no idea there were poor people in India. I thought everyone lived like us, in a big house, with servants and a driver and a cook and all the rest of it, surrounded by flowers. I thought our servants had lots of money. Their uniforms were beautiful."

"Your father probably bought them their uniforms," Alice said.

"May I finish?" Prithi smiled in annoyance. "I wanted to walk home from school one day. The other girls weren't met by a chauffeur, as I had been all my life. The driver begged me to get in. He called me on my mobile, but I refused to answer, and I walked home while the car followed me." She folded her hands primly. "So there."

"I don't get it."

"I saw how people lived. Not like us. It was quite a shocker."

But Prithi said that she still had never been on an Indian bus or train. She had flown to Bangalore from Mumbai and had not left the ashram for eight months.

So it seemed more and more to Alice like a nunnery, yet with none of the fear, no talk of salvation, nothing of sin, no rejection of the outside world; simply the pleasure of being in a safe and loving place, among happy people, where everyone was accepted. Not like an organized religion at all, but perhaps like the first followers of Christ, the people who had been so moved by the Sermon on the Mount they had left houses and families to follow the Master and to witness miracles.