The Ever After of Ashwin Rao (19 page)

Did death interrupt some banality?
When on
earth
is the bathroom going to free up …
then nothing. Or was it gradual—an explosion—
what the hell
?—and the plane opening in parts to the sea, the sun, the thin, thin air?

Seth began praying, in the old, familiar way of his childhood, praying for Sita’s and Sundar’s souls to be sped on their journey, praying that they had no fear nor pain, even as part of him thought
as if
. He realized, with a prick of self-hatred, that he was praying to comfort himself.

Seth dozed on the family room couch and rose to broad daylight at six thirty. He went to get the paper: the crash was all over the front page but the headlines only repeated what they had heard on the late news. When he turned on the CBC morning show, though, he learned that people were starting to say this was the work of Khalistani nationalists: radical Sikhs, terrorists. Ah. He cast back in his mind, the
gurudhwara
politics, the celebrations after Indira Gandhi’s assassination. The assassination itself. Savages. Hypocrites.

On TV, they were interviewing a reporter who said she had been following this movement’s Canadian adherents for years, and that she and many others, including police, had suspected that the separatists
would try something this summer, on the first anniversary of Indira Gandhi’s assault on the Golden Temple. Rumours, she said, had been afloat for months that Air India was not safe. Obviously the rumours weren’t that widespread or the plane wouldn’t have been full. But what would the Sikh community—which was, the talking heads hastened to say, predominantly peaceful—say now that their self-appointed representatives had taken their ire out on 329 innocent bystanders?

Professor and Mrs. Arora, the only observant Sikhs in Venkat and Seth’s immediate social circle, had come to the house last night. Amandeep Arora was six-foot-three, but stooped humbly under his royal purple turban. He liked to say that his passions were physics and metaphysics. His wife, whose eyes lined up with his solar plexus, would giggle. They were devout, private people. Unassuming. Vegetarian. Seth couldn’t recall Amandeep ever having expressed a political view. It would be awkward when next they met.

At eight o’clock, the Shivashakti devotees returned. Venkat still had not risen. One of the men offered to help Seth check on him, but Seth waved him off, knocking and entering the bedroom to find Venkat just as he had left him, on his back, eyes open. Seth pictured, for an instant, closing them with a hand, as one would those of a corpse. Venkat’s chest rose, then sank in a long shudder and he got up and went into the bathroom. Five minutes later, he emerged, dressed, from the bedroom. He sat again in front of the kitchen shrine and his fellow devotees took up their song.

Seth made a percolator of coffee and put bananas, boxes of cereal and a carton of milk on the table. He tapped on the back of a fortyish white man who seemed like a leader. When the man stopped singing, Seth whispered, “I have breakfast for all of you. Perhaps you could get Venkat to eat something?” The man rose and put a gentle hand on Venkat’s shoulder, another on one of his companions, and urged the group toward the food.

Seth was about to check on Lakshmi when she called to say she would be over shortly. By the time she arrived, the devotees had resumed their singing. After taking in the scene for a few moments, she
went to the living room to sit with a Tamil Brahmin family who had arrived a few minutes earlier.

When friends were present, Seth would always sit with them, away from the singing. Mere manners, yes, but it was also that he would have felt embarrassed to have witnesses beyond the circle itself, whose members seemed reassuringly indifferent to whether he stayed or went.

When the family left, Seth gestured toward the singers with his head and asked Lakshmi, “Do you want to sit with them?”

She shook her head quickly, and he didn’t press. She could be so obnoxiously non-traditional, he felt, and yet when he asked her later why she wouldn’t consider singing, she said it felt contrary to their tradition. “I know what you mean now, what you said yesterday. I was expecting, you know, to sit around and talk, talk about Sundar and Sita, and console Venkat. The singing, by these people, who—how well do they even know him? Or Sundar and Sita?”

Seth shrugged. “It seems to calm him down.”

She nodded. “I am not saying it’s wrong, but it—it’s not what we are used to.”

She asked him to go home for lunch, check on the girls. He went but returned in early afternoon. By then, all the Shivashakti devotees were gone. Lakshmi said most of them had jobs or families they had to get to, but that they had said they would return each evening until Venkat was up to coming to the ashram.

Seth asked, “Do you still think I should go to Ireland with him?” There had been no call from Air India and he had done nothing about booking a flight.

“I don’t know,” she said, frowning.

He watched her eyes, which were large and a little bloodshot, beautiful the way courtesans’ eyes were in poems. She still lined her inner lower lids with kohl; at least she hadn’t given that up. She looked around Seth, as though checking for Venkat.

“I think you should go if he does, but if there was reason for him to go, they would have called, wouldn’t they?”

Seth nodded.

Venkat’s packed suitcase still stood by the door. And when Seth walked back into the kitchen after saying goodbye to his wife, Venkat asked him, “When are we going?” Venkat’s jaw was set and his eyes narrowed.

“I think we have to wait to hear from them, Venkat. They’re not going to let us anywhere near the site unless they have asked us to come.”

“My son was on that plane! My wife!” Venkat came close to Seth, gesticulating, his breath smelling of yogourt, coffee, plaque, his teeth betel-rusted, his pores large. He was not beautiful, but he had loved, and Seth saw himself in the other man as he never had before.

“I know it,” Seth said. “But there are procedures.”

Venkat narrowed his eyes and walked to the kitchen. “I’m going to book the tickets. What kind of a man sits at home like this? I don’t need your help.”

“Venkat, Venkat, let me do it. I’ll call now.”

“Ha.”

“I’ll do it. Now. See, here’s the number.” Seth took it from his breast pocket. “But stay with me. I’m sure they’ll want to talk with you.”

“You’re calling Air India?”

“Sure. There could be no safer time to fly with them, you know. They would provide us with tickets. I would come with you. No other airline would do that. And it would give you a— a legitimacy.” Seth was making this up as he went. “We should co-operate with them, for now.”

He dialled. Venkat looked expectant in the way of a child waiting for a dentist, or a teacher, to administer an exam: passive but ready.

Air India asked if they could wait a few days. “Retrieval of bodies has slowed considerably, sir,” the agent told Seth. “They should be finished processing the remains by the end of the week. It would make it much easier if families would come when there is the greatest chance of taking the loved ones with them.” Seth put a hand over the receiver.

“They think we should wait another day or two, Venkat.”

Venkat leapt to his feet. “They are behind this in some way.” He
wrested the phone from Seth. “You nincompoops! What are you hiding?”

Seth couldn’t completely disagree: Air India had messed up in some serious way. If it was a bomb, as everyone was saying, they and no one else had let it on the plane. He listened to the squicks and squawks from the phone, the agent likely explaining that there was not much point in Venkat going before the coroner was ready to release the bodies.

The agent eventually said that they could pick up their tickets the morning after next at the Vancouver airport and depart the same afternoon. Air India agents would assist them in making a transfer at Heathrow, and the Irish police would meet them at the airport in Cork.

Shortly after they hung up, two RCMP officers arrived at the door. One, beefy with a pale moustache, introduced himself as McMurphy; his partner was White. They held their hats in their hands.

Venkat came from the kitchen, where he had remained to pray, straightening his shirt above his dhoti. “It’s about time,” he said, gesturing toward the living room. The men thanked him and entered, their enormous black boots leaving pale impressions on the rose-pink carpet. “So who’s responsible?” Venkat asked, as the officers took seats on the sofa. He leaned over the back of an armchair like a lawyer at a lectern. “You know, in India, the police would be paid off, simply turn a blind eye.”

“Ah, um.” McMurphy swallowed air and coughed a little.

“I’m Seth Sethuratnam, a family friend and relative.” Seth guided Venkat around and into the armchair, torn between wanting to hear how the cops would answer and wanting to ease their discomfort. “I’m staying with Dr. Venkataraman, to help. Can I get you some water, coffee?”

“Love some water, thank you,” McMurphy said, and White nodded. “Warm day out there.” He began again. “I’m very sorry for this tragedy, sir. We are, I can assure you, doing absolutely whatever we can to find the guys that did this. Interpol’s involved,” he said, seeming impressed
by this, “because of the international nature of the, the incident, but our guys here are heading up the investigation. I wanna start out by getting a few details about your loved ones, the last time you saw them, and all that.”

Seth brought water, the glasses beading in the gathering warmth.

“The last time I saw my family,” Venkat said slowly. “Last Friday. I was leaving the house to teach, they were in the kitchen. Sundar woke late, a bad habit.” Seth saw vestiges of the expression Venkat wore when he criticized his son. He’d never need that look again. “I hugged him. He’s taller than me, now, you know?” Venkat’s eyes welled, and he repeated, breathing through his nose, his voice cracking, “I hugged him. He wore a T-shirt, and pyjama.” He pronounced it “pie-jama” as per the Hindustani, but they knew what he meant. “I said, ‘Drive slowly. No rush.’ But I didn’t worry. My wife was going with him. She would never let him do anything unsafe. Then I left, to teach. I left them there—” He stood and gestured toward the kitchen and the figures shimmered there a moment: a slight woman in ivory pants and a modest blouse purpled in flowers, leaning against the counter, her waist-length braid come over her shoulder to the front, and a young man, seated at the table, warming his hands on a mug.

“They called me that evening, from our friend’s house in Vancouver. They said they would call again from India. How will I face my mother,” he asked, as though he would value the policemen’s advice, “without my son?

To lose your wife
, Seth imagined his mother saying,
is a misfortune. To lose your entire family looks like carelessness
.

“Sir, we hope you’ll bear with us while we ask,” McMurphy said, “what state of mind was your son in? Did you get along?”

“Did we get along? This is not a question we ask in Indian families.” Seth felt relief to see the old Venkat resurface, even as he marvelled at the artifice of his certainty.

“I see, sir,” the Mountie responded. “Was he unhappy in any way, though? Doing all right at school?”

“Wonderfully.”

They waited a second for him to respond to the other part of the question, but Venkat was brooding again.

“And your wife, sir? Again, I apologize for the insensitivity of the question. But were there any problems between you?”

“What the hell is this, I want to know? You think my wife blew up this plane? Because, what, because she was unhappy in marriage?”

It struck Seth that Venkat’s response made Sita’s unhappiness sound like a given.

“No, sir. No, of course not. These are routine questions. Your loved ones are—they’re missing persons right now, and we need to know as much as possible about them so we can find them for you.” McMurphy unzipped a document case and pulled from it some yellow forms. “That’s fine, anyway. We have some paperwork that we need you to fill out in as much detail as you can.” McMurphy’s sweating fingertips frilled the forms’ edges. “We’re also”—he indicated a large briefcase that White had set down beside the sofa—“going to take some fingerprints and other evidentiary, um, evidence, from their rooms, if that’s all right …”