Traveling with Spirits (33 page)

  “But what kind of driver will you get?”

  First class, the man said, but she holds her tongue. “Really, Ashok, I think it will be perfectly safe.”

  “Nothing is perfectly safe.”

  “You’re just a worrier.”

  “Can’t you hear I don’t want to lose you? You’ve become a huge part of my life.”

  In spite of herself, it slips out. “Oh, you’ll forget me once you get to Madison.”

  “Monica,” he grows more serious, as serious as she’s ever heard this serious man, “Monica, I could never leave without you.”

  Heart in her throat, she manages, “When will you hear?”

  “Funding is up in the air.” He’s disappointed, impatient, eager to resume admonishing her. “Typical academic hold-up.”

  Now that she has her visa, Ashok can’t leave, he just can’t. But it’s not her choice. Thy will be done.

  “Back to the point,” he insists. “Do check this outfit out thoroughly, Monica. I’m not happy about this at all.”

  “Sudha isn’t getting this kind of discouragement from Raul any more.”

  “Raul is a cowboy.”

  “You’re certainly no cowboy.” She laughs. Thank God, she hasn’t fallen in love with her father. Still, is she, perhaps, a cowgirl?

  “I have an idea. I’ll contact my cousin in tourism.”

  “How many cousins do you have?”

  “Enough.” He is no nonsense, “Ashish can look into things for me. For us.”

  It’s late. She has an early surgery. Still, she’ll finish the letter to Beata. She’s relieved to unload the anger and frustration about her evangelical colleagues. This is good practice for the talk she must have with Father Freitas. She ends the letter on a grateful note, because, despite the difficult week, she feels blessed.

 
So you see, it’s all settled. The visa. Our dream trip. I can’t believe how lucky I am. Kevin balked at first, but he admitted I haven’t had more than a few days of real holiday since I arrived in India. Sudha is giddy as
a
school girl. I wish you could join us. Then it would be perfect.

THIRTY

May, 2002, Himalayan Journey

  Spicy deodars scent the early evening air. Setting a suitcase on the step, Monica notices wild pink roses and purple irises. Radiant red rhododendrons shine from high branches.

  Before coming to Moorty, she never imagined rhododendrons as trees. Nearer the ground, here, grow foxglove and periwinkle. Late May is the prettiest season she’s known in the Indian hills; this is a mad time to leave. Yet they have a narrow weather window for the trip. From the tenuous season to the rugged route, the whole journey does seem precarious. She tries to ignore Ashok’s worried echo.

  “Hi there, traveler,” booms Father Freitas. “Ready for adventure?”

  Of course Father would give her a cheerier send off than the fussy professor.

  “As ready as I’ll ever be.” She grins. “Thank you for your blessing this morning.”

  “I shall keep you in my daily prayers.”

  “Hola!” Raul swoops up her bag. “The Jeep is here. Padre, shall we escort the dama to her chariot?”

  Monica follows, clutching her purse and pillow. She recalls Jeanne and Mom helping her move to the medical school dorm. She feels that familiar jumble of excitement, confidence, fear and perhaps a touch of hubris. What is she doing setting off to the Himalayan Mountains? Well, Father says she’s taking a classic Indian trek. Although Kevin maintains grave doubts, he did advise a pillow for her spine. Raul nodded in agreement. Sudha considers the pillow silly, for she believes in karma. Monica has sent too many SI victims to physical therapy to believe in spine karma.

  Sudha steps down from the jeep and waves as they all approach.

  Shankar, tall in his seat, hand gripping the wheel, leaps out for her luggage.

  She watches Raul and Sudha beam at each other. Subtle deportment and palpable attachment. Father Freitas’s eyes shine knowingly. No one else at the hospital has been told of their betrothal. Surely Brigid and Kevin suspect.

  She raises her hands in
Namascar
to Father and Raul.

  Sudha does the same, then holds the door open for her.

  “Bon Voyage.”

  “Hasta luego.”

  “Welcome, ladies,” Shankar says in careful English. “Please inform me if you require anything.”

  “
Dhanyvad
, Shankar,” Monica replies, explaining in Hindi that they speak both languages.

  “No, no, English only. I am a first class driver, offering a first class service.”

  He’s facing forward, sitting erect in a freshly ironed beige shirt. Monica catches his face in the rear view mirror—young, confident, handsome.

  As they wind down the Cart Road, Monica fumbles around, digging her hand beneath the seat and back rest.

  “What’s the matter?” Sudha asks. “Have you lost something? Already!”

  “The seat belt.” She gropes. “The mission jeep is just like this. The seat belts are usually attached at the door frame.”

  Sudha is laughing.

  Shankar shakes his head.

  “Welcome to India, where young men cut the seat belts from their cars,” Sudha explains. “A matter of pride.”

  “And stupidity: do you know how many car accidents we get at the hospital?”

  He interrupts. “Don’t worry, you are in the back seat. No problem.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Monica says.

  “No accidents,” he says confidently. “First class service. I have never had an accident.”

  She sighs and fusses with the pillow feeling irritated and embarrassed. Well, they all have Father Freitas’ blessing and continuing prayers. All of them.

*****

  “Breakfast at Narkhanda,” Shankar announces the next morning as they leave the Shimla hotel. “You will like. Ladies always like pretty views.”

  She and Sudha fall silent, enjoying the orchards of cherries and apples.

  Monica is startled by the intense green of the nimbly terraced farms as they climb from 2,205 meters to 2,608 meters. She’s imagined journeying into Himalayan whiteness, pictures Minnesota in January with more contours. Near the equator, she’s slowly learning, people cultivate at high elevations.

  “This truly is the Hindustan-Tibet Road.” Sudha leans over. “Can you imagine the centuries of trekkers and traders who’ve preceded us? I’m beyond excited. This trip is too generous of you.”

  Suddenly their jeep jolts to the right.

  “Durga Temple,” Shankar explains. “I shall make a small offering for safety.”

  Monica assents. Durga, Shiva, Krishna, he can stop at any shrine he likes. They’re going to need all the help they can get on this steep, twisting road. “God speed,” Father Freitas said. They’re not alone.
Hasta luego
means, “See you later.”

  Shankar resumes his cautious, almost balletic steering, weaving them seamlessly from paved to unpaved road. He maneuvers around crowded coaches and brightly painted lorries. An hour into the trip, Monica sees a truck tipped over in a muddy ditch.

  Shankar slows, chats with the driver. He resumes guardedly.

  “Bengalis on pilgrimage,” he turns half-way to address them.

  Monica wishes he wouldn’t swivel around so often. They can hear perfectly well.

  “Help is on the way. Crazy driver though. He took the turn fast. No worries with Shankar at the wheel.”

  “Good to know,” she says encouragingly to him, to Sudha. To herself.

  Narkanda is all he promised: a lush respite steeped in sunlight. Outside in the crisp air, they devour a breakfast of chapattis, fruit and yogurt.

  Monica stretches back, drinking in the fresh air. “Ah, lovely. This
is
a holiday.”

  “Such an intense time for you. New country. New hospital and colleagues.”

  “New friends!” she toasts Sudha with her tea cup.

  Sudha raises her cup. “I haven’t felt this free in years. The sense of possibility, adventure. It reminds me of when I set off for Saint Andrews.”

“That must have been a huge shift—much bigger than my coming to India. You were so young—seventeen or eighteen.” Monica finishes the last
chapatti
and wants another. No, her stomach is quite full. Her appetite for everything swells now as they set out. She needs to slow down, to concentrate, to be more mindful.

     “Who knows! The other choice was J.N.U. in Delhi. That, too, is a world away from Bombay. Besides I had Scottish teachers in school. I understood that soupy accept when I got to St. Andrews. And, perhaps this is perverse—I sometimes consider Oxbridge and St. Andrews as a cultural outpost of India. So many of us go there.”

  “Nice post-colonial twist.”

  “Ladies, Ladies.” An aggrieved voice. Shankar approaches politely,

determinedly. “We were scheduled to meet at the jeep a quarter hour ago. At this rate, we’ll be late to Rampur.”

  “Indeed,” grins Sudha. “Rampur has been on the Silk Route for thousands of years. I suspect it will be there, Shankar, whenever we arrive. Still, I thank you for the courteous reminder about time.”

  They travel East and North, deeper into the ancient Himalayan Kingdome of which Rampur was once the capital. Impossible to continue chatting now. Just as well, for Shankar has been listening avidly, eager to join their conversation and opine on matters from politics to film. Besides, Monica is absorbed by dramatic scenery and shards of remembered history: Some caravans took twelve months to complete the 4,000 mile Silk Route. They traded for wool, glass and ox hide as well as silk. Religion, too, was spread along this trail: Buddhism, Islam, Nestorian Christianity.

  After Rampur, they proceed up, up, up. She gazes at the Sutlej River coursing brown foam from its Tibetan font toward Govind Sagar in Western Himachel Pradesh. They pass waterfalls, cedars, lofty pines.

  The Sarahan hotel is modest. Their turquoise and yellow room has two decent beds and a deck overlooking the mountains. After unpacking, Monica suggests tea on the balcony.

  “Veranda,” Sudha teases. ‘We call it a veranda.”

  Draped with shawls in the crisp mountain air, they settle down to tea and biscuits. “Imagine, being surrounded by the Himalayas with my good friend.”

  Clouds float over distant peaks, one lifting enough to reveal a snowy ridge.

  Monica grins. Sarahan is one of the most beautiful places on earth. Why not spend the rest of their holiday here. “Tell me more about St. Andrews.”

  Sudha sips her tea slowly. “When I went to Scotland, I felt I was an international citizen. Bombay is a huge port and very cosmopolitan. We have large populations of Muslims, Christians, Jews, Parsees, people from Africa, China, Europe. And of course the Britishers. Or the half-British. And from the Commonwealth.”

  Monica waits.

  “St. Andrews felt provincial compared to Bombay. I became more aware of my difference. Oh, I had Scottish friends, dear friends. Yet I came to know in some deep way that I would always be Indian. Maybe part of it was the Scottish Nationalist Movement. If they were separating from the English, why did I hold on to my Anglophilia? By the second year, I knew I’d return to India. I became more certain of my identity.”

  “And less certain?”

  “Less certain that being Indian was an identifiable identity. I belonged to Bombay, but it was the differences in India that appealed most to me.”

  “That’s why you left Bombay?”

  “Bingo! If I returned from university to Bandra, I would always be a Bombayite. Also, there are some aspects Indian families—even liberal ones like mine—that shape and narrow your destiny. If I wanted to understand India as a whole country—as a nation of distinct ethnicities and traditions, I needed to leave home.”

  “You were so much farther thinking,” Monica shrugs. “I went from the Minnesota biological sciences to the U’s med school to Lake Clinic.” She studies the now cloud-shrouded mountains, realizing Minnesota is so much smaller than she has ever imagined.

  Sudha shakes her head fondly. “My parents are well-traveled intellectuals. Your mother was a secretary and your father a bus driver. You ventured further—across classes.”

  She half smiles. “And you forget, Dad is now a cowboy.”

  “How could I forget?”

  In the early evening, they amble over to the Bhimakali Temple with its six silver-coated gates and red carved, slanting roofs.

  “Both Hindus and Buddhists pray here,” Sudha explains.

  Monica knew they would encounter more Buddhists in the north and east. The pagoda-like roofs remind her that they’re getting close to Tibet and China.

  They slip off sandals and enter the temple.

  Abruptly, a bayonet. The young army guard asks them for their watches.

  Monica complies, quickly, noting how she’s grown accustomed to following incomprehensible directions these last seventeen months. She hopes he returns the watch. Despite the bayonet, the guy doesn’t seem menacing. “Why the watches?” she whispers.

  “I’ll explain later,” Sudha says.

  They stand outside a locked door. Soon they’re joined by six young Himachali men in green, red and yellow woolen caps as well as by three women in green head scarves.

  “Wait,” says one of the visitors in English.

  A small man appears. He leads them up the winding stairs to a small sanctuary where people are praying.

  Monica feels one of the women handing her something. Slices of coconut. Once again, she’s forgotten an offering. She bows her head in thanks. Praying silently, she calls on Jesus, Durga and Buddha to stay with them on their journey. The jeep is big enough for all of them.

*****

  Day three. Hairpin turns, loose gravel. Sheer drops. Shankar points out two golden eagles—huge, magnificent animals overlooking their precarious path from high perches. The crows, who own these skies, exude a different dignity as they sail sleekly across the horizon.

  In midmorning, Shankar stops at a roadside temple dedicated to Ganesh.

  Sudha wanders around the jeep, peers down over the edge of the highway.

  Monica stays seated, praying. She adds an invocation to the elephant god.

  Late in the afternoon, they reach Bajara Camp, near Sangla. 8,500 feel in the air. No, she thinks, 8,500 feet on earth. Their earth is rising.

  She and Sudha drop their bags in a luxurious tent and head out for a stroll in the afternoon sun. Shankar has recommended nearby Basteri Village.