The Elephanta Suite (29 page)

Miss Ghosh said, "Why are you smiling?"

"I'm thinking of that line about a dog walking on its hind legs. You don't care that it's done well—you're amazed that it's done at all."

"I'm not sure what you mean," Miss Ghosh said, pursing her lips—she was offended. "But this is your accomplishment."

Miss Ghosh seemed to mean it as praise, but Alice construed it as sarcasm.

The ashram was a retreat from the ambition and worldliness of Electronics City. Electronics City was a refuge from the selfish spiritualism and escapism of the ashram. In his stable on the side street, the elephant was balanced between them, sometimes swaying like a prisoner, now and then the whole of its head and trunk painted in colored chalk, designs of whorls and flowers. One day the elephant wore a brass bell on a heavy cord. When the mahout encouraged Alice to ring it, the elephant nodded and lifted his great head and stamped his feet, his leg as thick as a tree. He knows me, Alice told herself.

And her trips from Swami to elephant to InfoTech, in a taxi or an auto-rickshaw, were a weird reminder of another India, of traffic and skinny cows vying with cars, and people, thousands of them, walking in the road carrying bundles. The whole of it lay in a dust cloud during the day and was eerily lighted at night, the dust-glow like the soft edges of an incomplete dream, lovely to look at, but at times it gagged her.

Hers was a divided life, but shuttling among these places, she thought of the original idea of keeping the ashram as a base and traveling from there to the nearer cities of Mysore and Chennai, just to see the sights. That had been the plan she'd made with Stella. Without Stella, Alice felt that a trip to the coast to see Mahabalipuram would be a pleasure, especially now that she'd found a friend in the elephant. Her only hesitation was that Amitabh had reminded her of it. It annoyed her that he knew of her desire to see the temple by the sea—she was cross with herself for having mentioned it. Probably she had casually said something to someone in the class: "You're from Chennai? I've always wanted to go to Mahabalipuram." But that was unlike her, because she made a point of never telling anyone the things she yearned for, since those were the very things that must never be revealed; speaking about them was the surest way of destroying them.

This irritated memory convinced her that she must go. She asked Priyanka and Prithi if they wanted to take the trip.

"I've never been on an Indian train and I don't intend to start now," Priyanka said.

In the same reprimanding tone, Prithi said, "We feel our place is here with Swami."

That was another disturbing aspect of the ashram, the notion that the female devotees were like old-fashioned wives of Swami.

"I see this trip as a kind of pilgrimage," Alice said, appealing to their venerating side.

"Isn't this enough for you?" Prithi said.

"This is your home," Priyanka said.

Alice said, "I'll find my own way of going."

That remark was one she went on regretting, because its brashness, she feared, would attract bad luck or misinterpretation, as overconfidence often seemed to. And why? Because such confident certainty helped people remember your words and want to hold them against you.

For reassurance, she paid the elephant a visit, and in the course of fifteen or twenty minutes she emptied a big bag of cashews into the pink nostrils of his trunk, contracting and inquiring and vacuuming the nuts from her hand. He was a marvel, and he gave her strength. No wonder the first Central Asians worshiped great gilded bulls, and the earliest Hindus the smiling elephant Ganesh. A powerful animal was a glory of the natural world and suggested such strength and innocence, such a godlike presence, it seemed to link heaven and earth.

Instead of going to Bangalore Cantonment Station, which was near the ashram, Alice took a taxi to Bangalore City, so as to keep her plans secret. When she showed her passport as an ID at the booking hall, the clerk asked her if she was paying in American dollars.

"I could."

"Upstairs. International booking for foreigners."

"What's the advantage?"

"Quota is there."

A better seat, in other words. Alice went upstairs, where she found a young bearded man bent over a low table, filling out a form. His backpack was propped against a pillar.

"Do I have to fill out one of those?"

"A docket, yeah."

Australian, or perhaps a kiwi—she could not tell them apart, though they could identify each other in an instant. She found a form, filled it in with as much information as she could muster, then brought it to the ticket window.

"Me go Chennai in a week or so. One person only."

"We have four trains daily. Super Express is fastest day train. Which day had you in mind?"

The man's fluent reply was a reproach to her clumsy and patronizing attempt at broken English.

"Say the twenty-ninth."

The man tapped his computer and peered at the screen.

"Down-train, departure is seven-thirty in the morning, arrival Chennai Central at two
P.M.
, give or take. What currency are you proferring?"

Alice paid in dollars, a little more than five, which she counted into the man's hand. She received her change in rupees, with a freshly printed ticket.

"Have a nice day," the man said.

She smiled at him, grateful for his efficiency, his effort to please, the accent even, which seemed like a favor to her, the man being himself.

But it wasn't a pleasure trip to the coast, as it had probably seemed to the clerk. She had told Priyanka and Prithi that the journey to Mahabalipuram was more in the nature of a pilgrimage, and so it was. The elephant carvings on the wall and the great rocks at
The Penance of Arjuna
awaited her. It was not a comfortable summer-camp-like place, protecting her, as the ashram was—Swami in charge, the devotees like cultists and counselors—but rather a quest. She was not looking for shelter and ease; she sought revelation and inner peace. Stella had found an easy option with Zack. The devotees at the ashram were complacent in their piety, as the workers at InfoTech were boringly ambitious. And as for their mimicry—putting their education and achievement to use by making phone calls to the United States, something American housewives and college students had done as part-time workers in the past—these InfoTechies were making a career.

It is not my career, Alice vowed. She was sad that the employees were satisfied with so little, but of course if they asked for more, if they demanded to be fairly paid, they would not have jobs.

She told Miss Ghosh that she would be taking a week off.

Miss Ghosh made an astonished face, her lovely dark eyebrows shooting up. "You have applied for leave?"

"I guess you could say that's what I'm doing now."

"This is rather sudden. We must have ample notification."

Alice smiled at her, gladdened that Miss Ghosh was confounded.

"I am a casual worker, as you said. I can be dropped from the roster at any time, without prior notice. I have no medical benefits. I'm not even paid very well." She smiled again, to allow what she said to sink in. "And you tell me that I am obliged to give you ample notification?"

"We take a dim view of irregular shed-jeweling practices."

"It's called a vacation. I haven't had one."

The woman had spoken to her in the tone of a headmistress, and it was odd how quickly the tone had changed from the other day. Just when you thought you had a friend in India, you looked up and saw a rival.

"The normal procedure is that one builds up leave over time."

"But I'm casual labor, and on the lowest pay scale."

The woman, Miss Ghosh, merely stared at her.

"So I guess I owe you everything and you owe me nothing."

"May I remind you that this is a company and not a charitable institution. What if everyone did what you are proposing to do?"

"I don't believe this. Does this mean you're refusing me permission to take a week off?"

"What it means," Miss Ghosh said, picking up a pencil and tapping its point on her green blotter, "is that because of the precipitate nature of your request for departure, I cannot guarantee that your job slot will still be vacant on your return."

This was the same grateful woman who had said,
You have worked wonders. I think you are being modest about your achievements.

"What is your purpose in this holiday?"

"Excuse me?"

"Where are you going, may I ask, and who with?"

Alice said with a hoot of triumph, "With all respect, I don't understand how that is any of your business."

And she knew in saying that, in seeing Miss Ghosh's face darken—the prune-like skin around her sunken eyes, the way Indians revealed their age, and the eyes themselves going cold—that she had burned a bridge.

Things went no better at the ashram. She did not need to seek permission to leave—after all, she was a paying guest. Yet when she broke the news to Priyanka, who, because she spoke Hindi, held a senior position as a go-between and interpreter with the ashram staff, Priyanka became haughty and said in the affected way she used for scolding, "I am afraid that Swami will not be best pleased."

"It's only a week."

"Swami is not happy to see people using his ashram as a hostel, merely coming and going willy-nilly."

"One week," Alice said, and thought, I have never heard an American utter the phrase "willy-nilly."

"But you are requesting checkout."

"I'm not requesting checkout, as you put it. I just don't see any point in my paying for my room and my food if I'm not here."

Priyanka turned sideways in her chair and faced the window. She said, "If you like, I will submit your request. You will have to apply in writing, in triplicate. I will see that your request is followed up. But I'm not hopeful of a positive result."

"Well, what's the worst that can happen? I'll leave my backpack in the storeroom and get it when I come back. And I'll hope there's a room available."

"Ashram cannot assume responsibility for your personal property, as though we are Left Luggage at a station. This is a spiritual community."

Alice said, "Swami has personal property. People give him money. He has a house. He has a big car. He has another house in Puttaparthi. Are you kidding me?"

Priyanka pursed her lips and said in a stern and reprimanding way, "Swami is our father and teacher. It is not for us to question him. He is the embodiment of love. He is a vessel of mercy."

"Then obviously such a paragon of virtue won't have the slightest problem with anything I say or do. He'll forgive me and give me his blessing."

As soon as she said it, she realized it sounded too much like a satire of Swami. Priyanka fell silent. Alice knew she'd gone too far.

Another bridge in flames. She went to see her last friend in Bangalore. He looked miserable. His leg dragged at the chain, and then she saw the stain running beneath his eye, gleaming on his rough hide. The mahout, Gopi, clasped his hands and with pitying eyes urged Alice to back away.

 

She boarded the Super Express to Chennai in a mood of triumphant farewell. Although Priyanka had said it was impossible for her to leave her bag behind, Alice found a devotee who was willing to lock it in a storeroom. She knew Priyanka was being destructive. Perhaps Priyanka saw that she was being left behind. Whose fault was that? She was the one who refused to travel on Indian Railways. Alice was leaving Bangalore, the ashram, and the job at Electronics City, but she was well aware of her slender resources. Eventually she might have to return and negotiate and be humble, but she hoped not.

The uncooperative people of the past few days only strengthened her, as Stella had done. I'll show them, she thought. I don't need them.

Though these Indians were difficult, India was not hostile. It was indifferent, a great, hot, uncaring mob of trampling feet in an enormous and blind landscape, damaged people scrambling on ruins. But why should anyone care about me? The country was so huge and crowded that if anyone seemed to care—to try to sell her something, as the hawkers were doing now in the train—it was because she was a foreigner and probably had money.

"Nahi chai hai,"
she had learned to say. Leave me alone.

She had come to understand what the solitary long-distance traveler learns after months on the road—that in the course of time a trip stops being an interlude of distractions and detours, pursuing sights, looking for pleasures, and becomes a series of disconnections, giving up comfort, abandoning or being abandoned by friends, passing the time in obscure places, inured to the concept of delay, since the trip itself is a succession of delays.

Solving problems, finding meals, buying new clothes and giving away old ones, getting laundry done, buying tickets, scavenging for cheap hotels, studying maps, being alone but not lonely. It was not about happiness but safety, finding serenity, making discoveries in all this locomotion and an equal serenity when she had a place to roost, like a bird of passage migrating slowly in a sequence of flights. The famous swallows that summered in Siberia, then wintered in the Zambesi Valley: they weren't taking trips, travel was an aspect of their extraordinary survival; they never lingered anywhere for long, yet the itinerant nature of their lives, their quest for food, had made them strong. The distances they flew were legendary, but their lives were made up of short economical flights to breed and then move on. She wanted to become such a bird.

She smiled, seeing that what had happened by accident to her was a gift, a further ripening of her personality. The jaunts in Europe hadn't done it, the experience of India had. By degrees she had been moved farther and farther from the life she'd known into a new mode of existence, as though soaring upward and finally, after some buffeting, moving with certainty onward, alone, no longer disturbed, in an orbit of her own, freed from her past, her unreliable friend, even her family, and pleased by the idea that the future would be like this—stimulated by the random lyricism of chance events, of good days and bad days.