The Leaving of Things (18 page)

I returned with my camera to discover a party already in full swing outside. The fluorescent lights in the living room were switched on, flooding out the quiet warmth of the diyas. The TV was now blasting at high volume from its corner stand. Diwali or not, Kamala Auntie still wanted to follow her favorite serial, if only by half-listening to it from out on the porch. From the other houses up and down the lane, I could hear voices raised in celebration above Hindi pop music that filled the air from unseen speakers and the whizzing, popping, and whooshing of fireworks that lit up the dark lane.

Anjali twirled a sparkler in her hands. Two neighborhood boys, who seemed only a couple of years younger than Anand, had come over, and they stood with arms across each other’s shoulder, watching Hemant Uncle sort out firecrackers from a plastic shopping bag stuffed full of them. My mother and Kamala Auntie sat together on the porch swing while Anand stood quietly and aloof in a
corner until Anjali gave him a sparkler and Hemant Uncle called him over to pick out firecrackers.

Using the porch light and the flares of the fireworks, I snapped pictures quickly, hoping for a hint of Anjali’s and Anand’s faces and that the pictures, with their blurred, hectic framing, would carry the laughter and energy of the night. Soon Kamala Auntie brought out bowls of
chavanu
that she’d mixed together herself, along with boxes of meethai fresh from the confectioners’ and glasses of chilled, divinely sweet rosewater.

Everyone took turns setting off firecrackers in the small patio. Unlike the kids, who were nervous about lighting the fuses, bolting like rabbits as soon as the first sparks flew, Hemant Uncle stood calmly, a Diwali veteran, striking a match in one hand, lighting the fuse in the other, then waiting, timing the moment when he tossed the bomb skyhigh so that it exploded in the air above the lane to the shrieking delight of Anjali and the boys.

Immediately, I was reminded of a Diwali from twelve years ago—a Diwali that took place two months after my father had left for America and the year before my mother, Anand, and I left to join him. In preparation for that Diwali, I sat beside my grandfather on the edge of the cot where he lay weakened from a heart condition. Together we made a list of all the firecrackers we wanted for Diwali. On the last day of school before our holiday, Hemant Uncle and I sped off on his scooter to the fireworks vendor and picked up armfuls of firecrackers aided by my hand-scrawled list.

“We had a whole wicker basket full of them that year, didn’t we?” I asked Hemant Uncle. He nodded, impressed that I still remembered.

“That was also the year you burned your hand,” he reminded me. Of course. How could I forget? When no
one was looking, I had tried to imitate Hemant Uncle’s daredevil manner of lighting fireworks only to have a cherry bomb go off in my hand.

“Whatever Hemant Uncle was doing, you used to copy,” Kamala Auntie added with a laugh and a flip of her hand.

I laughed, telling him I must’ve blocked that part out, but now I could recall the tears, the panic, the trip to the clinic for injections and bandaging. I stared at the palm of my right hand. Healed now, no remnants of the burn peels and blisters.

One of the kids placed the tail end of a rocket inside a Thums Up bottle, lit the fuse, and scrambled out of the way. A few seconds later, the rocket shot out, trailing embers in a whistling hiss before it burst in a sparkling shower high over the house.

“That was our last Diwali,” I reminded Hemant Uncle, “before we left for America.”

“And it was also your grandfather’s last,” he said, handing Anjali another sparkler.

My grandfather’s last. I remembered now. Two weeks after that Diwali, my grandfather died. I remembered the tiny living room filled with mourners, all in white. Many sang
bhajans
as others lined up to pay their respects along the cot where my grandfather lay garlanded in white and yellow flowers. But my mind was too numb, confused. What was happening? Had I stumbled into a terrible dream? Everything was so weird, disturbing to grasp.

As I stood in the midst of that gathering, Hemant Uncle took me by the hand, and we joined the line of mourners. I kept my eyes on my grandfather, familiar but distant, serene. I stood next to the cot, studying him, when
Hemant Uncle whispered to me that I should join my hands and say a prayer. I did as I was told, understanding nothing, vaguely wanting to escape, to wake up from this dream, when I felt Hemant Uncle suddenly pull me into his arms and begin to cry. He shook with tears, his face pressed against my shirt. That’s when I knew that, whatever this was, it represented the end of something. A leaving, a falling away. Hemant Uncle’s gesture had made me feel I was not alone, had said to me it was okay, it was safe to drop away the walls of restraint and numbness and to shed my own tears.

In the years since, I’d come to identify what it was I’d felt at that moment of grief—it was gratitude. I was grateful to Hemant Uncle for trusting his grief to a six-year-old boy.

“One second,” I said to Hemant Uncle now as he prepared to set light to several firecrackers arranged in a circle on the patio. I stepped beside him, placed an arm around his shoulder. I reversed my hold on the camera and held it out so that it pointed back at us and snapped a picture.

“Funny way to take snapshot,” Hemant Uncle laughed. “Will it come out?”

“It’ll be great.”

Anjali stood with sparklers in both hands, twirling them fancifully in radiant arcs. “Vikram-bhai,” she said in Gujarati. “I am so happy you all came for Diwali.”

“Me too,” I said.

13

T
he next several days felt easy and relaxed, a much-needed break from Xavier’s and the daily grind back in Ahmedabad. My world became a cycle of festive meals with the family, roaming the bazaars of Baroda with Anand, Anajli, Kamali Auntie, and my mother; watching cricket games on TV and pirated James Bond movies that Anand and I rented from the local paan shop; and, of course, Diwali fireworks. Anand and I joined in on pickup games of cricket out in the lane with Anjali and the neighborhood kids—they might’ve been smaller or younger than us, but, compared to our stumbling and fumbling, they may as well have been pros. And while I thought of my friends back home all the time, being so removed from my mailbox gave me an excuse not to dwell so much on the distance between us.

Five days into our holiday, my father arrived in Baroda from the conference in Bombay. Anand and I were out in the lane with Anjali and a few neighborhood kids who were teaching us the basics of cricket when we saw Hemant
Uncle’s car arrive from the station. The car pulled into the drive, and my father got out. He looked drawn, weak, and walked slowly into the house while Hemant Uncle got my father’s bags out of the trunk.

“Malaria, I think so,” was Hemant Uncle’s guess when I asked him about my father. He told me he’d gone straight to bed, right after he had his cup of chai, complaining of fever and chills.

“I knew he was not going to take his pills,” my mother said bitterly as she and Kamala Auntie fixed dinner. “I knew it all along. ‘Too bitter, too bitter.’ Well, look now what happens.” Kamala Auntie calmed her down, saying he would feel better in a few days, that getting malaria was like catching the flu here. Later that night, Hemant Uncle summoned a doctor—someone who lived nearby and ran a neighborhood clinic. He confirmed the malaria, gave my father an injection and a prescription for chloroquine. For the next three days, my father shook, sweated, kept to the guest bedroom upstairs, emerging only to throw up.

It was true: my father hadn’t taken his pills in weeks. Hated the taste, the nausea, and stomach upset it caused. He also complained that the pills disturbed his sleep. So, in my mother’s words, “Look now what happens.”

* *

Bombay gave my father malaria, but it did not give him back our video camera.

“He went to the customs office,” my mother explained one afternoon, a few days after my father’s return. She sat on the floor of the living room, chopping vegetables into
a colander set down on the coffee table. “He spoke with them, spent whole day there.” She shook her head despondently. “They apparently lost camera.”

“Lost?” I hadn’t seen the camera among my father’s bags, so my mother’s words only confirmed my fears. “They didn’t lose it,” I said, dropping to the couch with a sigh. I remembered that customs inspector now, a troll of a man, a bureaucrat. Thieving Indians, I thought. “I knew we wouldn’t get that camera back,” I said. “Can’t catch a break in this goddamn country.”

The room fell quiet. Hemant Uncle cleared his throat and sipped his tea contemplatively in his chair. I felt a twinge of shame saying those words around Hemant Uncle, a man I knew to take great pride in India, in being Indian. He was like my father that way. But that didn’t change the fact of my anger, my despair. The camera was gone, and so were the videotapes. The tapes were a more sentimental loss because they contained the images I wanted close to me—my old room, old friends, parties, wanderings, jokes, conversations, all recorded on tape in the last weeks before we left. Was there some conspiracy, with the loss of my wallet and now the camera, to wipe out all my means of remembering?

We heard my father shuffle downstairs in his slippers. He appeared, tousle-haired, pajamas rumpled, small and hunched from his battle with malaria, and shambled to the dining table. He poured himself a tumbler of water from the steel pitcher and took a gulp before he turned to face us. “Hmm?” he said, taking his glasses off and rubbing at his eyes to wake himself up.

“How do you feel?” my mother asked. “Want something to eat? Chai?”

“So-so,” he said groggily, replacing the glasses. He tsked, “Nothing,” and shook his head. “Just can’t stay in bed any longer.”

My mother got up and pressed her palm across my father’s forehead. “Fever’s down,” she said, starting for the kitchen. “I’ll fix you something.”

“So that’s it?” I said. “They get away with losing people’s things?”

“I’m sorry,” my father said, lowering himself onto the couch. His voice was weak; his eyes looked dimmed. “They did give a check. Equivalent to the camera value. In rupees. So that’s something.”

Anand perked up. “Maybe we can use that for the Nintendo?” Since arriving in Baroda, he’d modified his fantasy baseball game for cricket. He lay on the floor, propped on an elbow, presiding over his paper, pencil, and dice.

“Or we can get another camera,” my father suggested.

“Don’t want one.” I slouched lower in my seat.

My father went into further detail about his trip to the airport, his voice sounding weak. He told us he’d rushed to the customs office on the last day of the conference, just before heading to the train station. The customs people searched their files and their storage rooms, found our paperwork but couldn’t locate the camera. They offered to mail us a compensation check in a few weeks. “But I knew that was just their way of getting rid of me,” he said. “No one was sending any check.” He demanded they cut the check right there and then. “I didn’t budge,” he said, “went right up to supervisor and stuck right there in his office and said, ‘I’m not leaving till you give me check.’ And that’s what they did.” His voice warmed over, and he seemed pleased with himself.

Hemant Uncle went on to ask details about the visit, the amount of the check, etc., but I’d stopped listening. Soon Kamala Auntie was commenting on the quality of the okra, the price of oil and onions, and my brother asked if we’d still be celebrating Christmas and for a cricket bat as a present. The subject of the camera had effectively ended. With a check.

But I couldn’t see putting money value on memories, and I was shocked by how deep the loss felt—the loss of the camera, the tapes, and what they represented: my access to memory. I wanted to rage at that moment. At my father for bringing me here, at India for being such a cruel and despicable place to come back to. But all I mustered was, “Unbelievable.” I don’t think anyone heard me.

* *

After dinner, my father went back to bed, Anjali and Anand went over to a neighbor’s to set off more firecrackers, and I decided to sit out on the porch swing by myself. I’d closed the front door to muffle out the blare of the TV news from the living room. Moths skittered around the single bulb above the door, casting flickering shapes in the grainy light. From up the lane, I could hear the snap and bang of fireworks and the whoops and whistles of children. A greenish-blue cloud from the firecrackers, backlit by streetlights filled the street, gave the neighborhood a smoky, somewhat apocalyptic look.

I wondered what Shannon was doing that very minute. Maybe she was sitting in a lecture or sitting out on the terrace of the Union between classes? I wondered whom she was with? I pretended I was sitting beside her, breathing in the
fresh air off the lake, watching the boats, holding her arm across the table. If I had my video camera right now, I could at least watch images of her, just put in the videotape and watch the playback through the viewfinder. That’s what I would’ve been doing this very minute … if I had the camera: watching Shannon’s face from that afternoon we spent at Vilas Park or watching scenes of Nate, Karl, and me goofing off in Nate’s kitchen the evening of Nate’s graduation party.

From an upstairs window, I could hear my father coughing, hacking, and clearing his throat. I heard concerned chatter between him and my mother, too low and muffled to make out. Then silence.

The front door creaked open, letting out a stream of TV noise and fluorescent light before it closed, and Hemant Uncle stepped onto the porch. He smiled at me and shuffled to the edge of the porch, barefoot, his hands in his pants pockets.

“You are enjoying fireworks?” he asked, gazing out at the road.

I told him I was.

“About your Pappa,” he said. “He will be all right. Nothing to worry.” He spoke softly, yet the deep baritone of his voice filled the air impressively. He began pacing along the edge of the porch, his hands clasped behind his back.

I didn’t know what to tell him, but saying I didn’t much care at that moment if my father got better didn’t seem the best reply. “He’s a giant, really,” he said admiringly, shaking his head. “Sacrificed so much. Gave up his whole life here so he could pursue
exactly
what he wished.”