The Leaving of Things (36 page)

Near the clinic was an Air India office where we bought my ticket—Bombay to Chicago, via London. To buy the ticket, I insisted we use the money from the compensation check issued by the Bombay airport customs office for the lost video camera. It seemed fitting somehow.

* *

At my usual photomat, I asked Ajay where I could get film rolls for the Bell & Howell. He scratched his head and ponderously swung it side to side. “No such film in Ahmedabad for such old camera. Bombay maybe or Delhi but here no.”

Still, I trolled around Ahmedabad’s camera and antique shops in the old sections of the city—in the hive of bazaars, alive with bartering and music and the fantail sparks from welding torches. Bicycle and moped parts, scooter and motorcycle parts, cassette and radio parts, TV and VCR parts. Men pushed past each other, past the cows and over the dogs that had retreated from the scorch of the open streets. I asked around for where or how I could get my hands on more film rolls, but everyone stared at the camera as if it were a prehistoric turd and shook their heads. By the end of that afternoon, Ajay had proven himself right.

As I rode west on my Luna over the Sabarmati, the grit buffeting at my face, I thought of how in a month’s time, the monsoon would be here again. The winds would cool off the asphalt and concrete, and the thunderheads would roll in like an armada from the Arabian Sea over the Gujarat plains. In the hours before the first storm, the city, like a muscle that had for months kept itself contracted under the weight of summer, would relax. The streets would feel deserted, its noises muted, and everyone felt a quiet kinship in having survived together long enough to enjoy that very moment. I looked forward to it. It would only be a few weeks now. But I realized that no sooner would the rains arrive than I would be gone.

26

I
was stingy with the second film roll. I wanted it to last the whole week we spent at Hemant Uncle’s place in Baroda. He and Kamala Auntie seemed happy for me when I told them the news of my leaving for the States but not Anjali.

“But you just got here,” she said, “and now you want to go away again?”

I told her this was only for school, and that I’d be sure to visit. She didn’t look at me though. Only shrugged her shoulders and dangled her feet from the chair where she sat, eyes on the TV screen.

“I promise,” I said. She tipped her head sideways once—an indifferent gesture for “okay.”

From the half-open front door, over the cartoon playing on TV, I could hear Hemant Uncle coaching Anand and a couple of neighbor kids on batting techniques. The cricket bat smacked against the ball; Hemant Uncle shouted instructions and encouragements. “Keep the bat closer,” I heard. “With the wrist like this, then turn away.”
Another smack. Laughing followed from Hemant Uncle, yelling from the kids.

I turned to Anjali. “Want to get a Cadbury? My treat.”

She said nothing at first. “You must really not like here with us.” Her eyes kept straight ahead on the TV screen.

“I never said I didn’t like it here.”

“You don’t need to say,” she said flatly. “But I know it. From the first day we saw you at airport. You were not so happy to be with us.” She slid off the chair and went out to the porch. “So go then.”

I found myself watching the rest of the cartoon—a videotape of
Sleeping Beauty
. I’d noticed Anjali watching it often over the past Diwali holiday. That visit had begun well, I remembered, but it had ended with me in a foul temper over the permanent loss of the video camera.

Anand came back in, flushed and out of breath, his skinny arm hoisting the cricket bat over his shoulder. “I think I can do this,” he said between breaths. “I could get the hang of this game.”

A moment later, Hemant Uncle strode in, swinging his stout arms as he tossed a tennis ball from hand to hand. “Good practice,” he said to Anand. He wiped at his brow, shiny with sweat and darkened bronze by his youth spent on cricket fields, and pulled at his wet polo shirt. He chucked the ball into the dining room, putting a tight spin on it so that it caromed at a sharp angle after it bounced.

“You should coach a cricket team,” Anand said. “Maybe we could get a team together. Like a beginner’s team.”

Hemant Uncle sauntered through the archway into the dining room, nodding in contemplation. “Could be, could be.”

“You’d be a great coach,” I said, remembering when he played for the State Bank cricket team, going to the cricket
stadium with my grandfather, mother, and Kamala Auntie, sitting in the covered benches, watching him in his floppy hat and batsman’s uniform sprinting across the pitch. Even now, I could almost smell the air redolent with chutney sandwiches and roasted peanuts.

Hemant Uncle pondered, “State Bank could organize few youth teams.” He wiped his hand across his jaw, nodding. “Let me see. I will speak with the branch director here.”

“Cool,” said Anand before he plucked up the tennis ball, hoisted up his bat again, and went out the front door.

“Where did he go off to now?” my mother asked, shaking her head, bringing a pitcher of water while Kamala Auntie began setting the table for dinner.

“I think he wants to be next Sunil Gavaskar,” Hemant Uncle chuckled.

“Or Hemant Mistry,” I said.

Kamala Auntie made my favorite dessert that evening—
doodh pakh
, rice pudding served cold, scented with cardamom and laced with slivers of pistachios. I went through three helpings. “Who knows in America who will make this for you?” she joked.

“Could be,” my mother teased, “he will find some good Gujarati girl there.” Then she gasped with delight, “Maybe we should put ad in India Abroad.”

Kamala Auntie began giggling.

I looked at the food laid out on the table. I wondered how long it would be till I ate Indian food this good again after I set foot on that plane for America.

As we ate, my father asked Hemant Uncle about what it would take to build a home in Gandhinagar, just outside Ahmedabad. My father already had ideas for acreage and
square feet and how many rooms and floors, even building materials and landscaping. I had no idea he had already given the subject so much thought, and I sensed that this was the culmination of something, the peak after a long climb.

“You’ve thought this all through, my god,” Hemant Uncle remarked.

“It was her,” my father admitted, pointing a thumb toward my mother. “Home layout is all her idea and landscaping also.”

“I managed,” my mother said, tossing her head in a whimsical gesture, “to remember few designs and ideas from the old days.”

“And you thought your heart wasn’t in it anymore,” I said.

My mother smiled, helping herself to more doodh pakh. “Heart can change its mind.”

Hemant Uncle said he could help with loan arrangements at the State Bank and spoke of his own experience building his own home. He said he could recommend a contractor, a close friend from his days in Ahmedabad.

“You remember him?” he asked my father. “Kirit bhai.”

My father narrowed his eyes, trying to remember.

“Sure, I remember him,” I said. “Didn’t he used to go to the movies with us?”

“Exactly,” Hemant Uncle nodded.

It was as if the memory, long embalmed in the back of my mind, were suddenly animated back to life. It had been like that all year: A trove of childhood memories, more than I’d ever imagined I’d stored away—memories of everything from cherished, long-gone family members and treks to the revival house to see vintage Tarzan movies with
Hemant Uncle to the heavenly taste of that Italian bread smothered with Amul butter—had all sprung to life. I was glad for their company.

“Kirit bhai will do all the contracting, subcontracting for you,” Hemant Uncle said, assuring my father that he would do the job quickly and well. “But first you will need land itself.”

“We have already begun that process,” my father said.

Anand and I looked at each other.

“We have?” he asked.

My father turned to us. “By end of the year, we should have it finalized and start building.”

I was stunned. “So everything will be different. Next time I see you.”

“Hmm,” my father finished his doodh-pakh, cleared his throat. “You won’t be coming back to that bungalow in Navarangpura. But a brand-new house. All ours.”

“Congratulations,” Kamala Auntie said to me. “On scholarship and admission.” In Gujarati, she added, “That’s a big achievement.”

“Hmm,” Hemant Uncle concurred, nodding, watching me with a bemused smile.

Kamala Auntie got up, stepped around the table, her plate in one hand, and tousled my hair. “Make us all proud, huh?” And she went away, taking up Hemant Uncle’s empty plate on her way to the kitchen.

At that moment, I felt myself on two continents, one foot on each, and I could feel them drifting apart. I knew that soon I would have to lift my foot away and be entirely on the one continent while the lives of all those around me would be on the other, pulling farther and farther away. I didn’t want my family ever to drift, to choose between them and my own life. I felt like an island in that room.

I looked at Anand and Anjali in conversation, at Hemant Uncle and my parents, and felt my breath catch in my throat. I sniffed deeply, blinked, and took a gulp of water, hoping nobody had noticed that my eyes had teared up. But it wasn’t easy to hide the tears. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to.

* *

The day we left Baroda was the day the monsoon clouds appeared. Throughout the morning it grew darker, and the world looked as if all color were drained from a photograph, leaving only shades of gray. Anand, Anjali, and I went up to the rooftop terrace where I ran off my last roll of 16mm film: figures silhouetted against the pregnant sky, the anxious earth, the branches stirring in the first cool breezes of the season. The rain fell in tentative drops at first then began smothering the city in a lovely and luxurious torrent. It sizzled against the asphalt, pattered like mad against the city’s rooftops. In seconds, we were drenched. I ducked into the doorway, covering my camera with a towel I’d brought upstairs with me. Anand followed me into the doorway, but Anjali stayed out in the terrace, mouth open to catch the rain, jumping up and down, arms flailing. Hers was the last image I framed—a laughing, capering girl, gesturing for us to join her—before I heard the roll empty, and the camera wheezed with nothing left.

* *

When the train arrived at the station platform, Kamala Auntie was sniffing back tears. Hemant Uncle stood, his
hands in his pockets, composed enough for both of them. I touched his feet then Kamala Auntie’s, hugged them both.

“Vikram bhai,” Anjali said, pushing in between Kamala Auntie and Hemant Uncle, “send me all pictures, okay?” Her tone was as direct and authoritative as ever. “I am curious to see how you’re doing.”

“You got it,” I said.

“And what else?” Kamala Auntie said as if prodding her.

Anjali turned away, her eyes on the floor. In a hushed voice, she muttered something, stopped, tried again. Finally, she gave up, came forward and threw her arms around me. No one had ever hugged me like that before—doing away with words because the act of embracing meant so much more.

I pressed her close and told her we would see each other again soon. She nodded and wiped at her eyes.

“And I don’t hate it here at all,” I told her. “How else would I have met you?”

27

T
he monsoon winds had swept away the remaining days of summer break. Classes had started up again at Xavier’s, and I was a couple of weeks away from leaving. Letters from Karl arrived, ecstatic about my return. He offered the spare bedroom at his parents’ place on the west side of town till he and I found a place on campus later that summer. I promptly accepted. Nate wrote too, a rambling and profane recap of his past year. He said he needed to buckle down this sophomore year and really hit the books. With the letter, he sent along two short comedy scripts that he and Karl had managed to crank out for shooting that summer, said he was glad I’d be home soon to join their collaborations. Nate also mentioned he’d begun fooling around with his roommate’s girlfriend, Debra, and couldn’t decide what to do about it. He felt awful, he said, just awful: he liked his roommate just that much. But Debra was game and far too cute to turn down. What to do? It seemed an appropriate predicament for Nate.

That week, through a colleague at work, my father tracked down a lab in Bombay that could process the 16mm film rolls. We booked a train ticket for two days in advance of my flight so I could get them processed and avoid the risk of the airport’s X-ray scanners ruining undeveloped film.

* *

“You’re all set then,” Anand said, home from his first day back to school and seeing the pair of suitcases lying open on the cot. He set his backpack on the desk and slung his water flask behind the chair.

“How was ninth standard?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Both Mayank and Joyti are in my class, so that’s something.” His eyes scanned the contents of the suitcases.

My mother came in, arms loaded with blankets and a full-to-bursting plastic shopping bag. She set everything down on the suitcase. The bag’s contents—metal canisters—all tumbled onto the bed.

“Not all that stuff,” I said. “That’s way too much.”

“Just snacks,” she said, pointing out the canisters one by one. “I have
chakris
in one,
ladoos
, and few
burfis
in this, and in this, I have
khari puris
. You like those. Have with yogurt.”

I argued with her that I was running out of room, but she said she wouldn’t stand for my not having a few Indian snacks with me.

“And this,” I said, lifting a light, paisley-patterned blanket and another of coarse, dark-brown wool off the suitcase. “I can’t weigh my stuff down with blankets.”

My mother became solemn. “This wool blanket kept us warm our first winters in New York, remember? They were a gift from your grandfather. So we thought you should have now.” It felt thick and heavy in my arms, and a memory flickered back: that first year in America, when we all slept together in the big bed with this wool blanket spread out over us. “And this thin one,” she said, drawing the paisley-patterned blanket from my arms, “I bought when you were few years old. I put you to sleep on it.” She shrugged. “It was only sentiment, anyway. It’s okay. You can leave it.”