The Ever After of Ashwin Rao (57 page)
Read The Ever After of Ashwin Rao Online
Authors: Padma Viswanathan
Seth and Lakshmi heard the shouts from where they were: a quarter-mile down the shore where they sat on a big chilly boulder, watching the waves. Lakshmi saw them enter the water; Seth looked the other way.
He had been telling Lakshmi, for the first time, about Ireland. The sight of waves always cast back at him images of Bantry Bay: a woman in a pink sari, a man in a utility vest, days of staring out at the water only to see a rock, a seal.
Sundar’s body. The young mother’s roses.
“You never told me,” said his wife.
“I didn’t?” He sounded like Sita. “No, I suppose not. I couldn’t, when I first returned. I couldn’t do that to you.”
“You should have trusted me.” Undeniable accusation, if blunted by time.
He felt a violent wonder at her presence: her miraculous profile, the apple of her cheek, its profound, dusky curve. Waylaid by beauty.
She patted his knee, mocking a little,
why so serious
? Pressed her face to his shoulder.
They rose, returned. Sita was putting the kettle on. Lakshmi confessed she had no interest in the sauna. Seth confessed he did. Brinda arrived, dressed, shivering-grinning-bright, hair damp at the temples. Seth hugged her, rubbing her back as she huddled into him.
“How was it?”
“You’ll love it, Dad. Do it. You have to.”
“Go, Seth.” Lakshmi held her hands out to the fire.
“And I have to jump in the ocean after?”
Sita nodded
“Cold?”
“What do you think?” asked Brinda.
Sita sat with a sigh. “Just shout. We’ll look away.”
The stones hissed in the silence. Seth dribbled on another dipper of water just to hear it. Nothing permeated, not the incessant tree-whisper, not the women’s chat, not the roar of the surf … oh, wait. Maybe the roar was the hush? The water beat-beat-beating out all other sounds.
He settled on his towel to watch it, across the grey Canadian shore, and his mind turned not to Ireland and the terrible things thrown up or swallowed by its sea, but rather, almost idly, to spiritual progress and the contents of betrayal, and, more actively, to Shivashakti. He had recently, tentatively, started again to attend satsang at the ashram, after a break of several months. He didn’t know that he would continue, but for the moment it felt truer than isolating himself from the community.
He thought, as he had so many times, of his ashram encounter on New Year’s Eve. At first, he had been able to recall very little, but, with time, the memory had filled in and taken shape, until it seemed he wasn’t merely remembering the event, but creating it. The mystery had not lessened, though. You can only love what you cannot understand.
Om
, he began now, though only in his mind, so the silence was still unbroken.
Om
, a syllable of silence billowing out over the precipice of unknowing.
Om
.
And Seth, sweating-shouting-loving-naked, ran, his furry belly bouncing, he ran, his shrivelled jewels swinging, he ran to the salty water on his stiff old legs, he ran, by God, and he jumped.
I owe a huge debt to others’ writing on the topics of this novel. They not only enhanced my thinking, but supplied quotes and anecdotes. Any factual accuracy owes to these works, while factual errors, deliberate and otherwise, are mine alone. Foremost among them:
Christian Beels,
A Different Story: The Rise of Narrative in Psychotherapy
Kim Bolan,
Loss of Faith: How the Air India Bombers Got Away with Murder
Norman Buchignani and Doreen M. Indra, with Ram Srivastava,
Continuous Journey: A Social History of South Asians in Canada
Veena Das,
Mirrors of Violence: Communities, Riots and Survivors in South Asia
, particularly her essay, “Our Work to Cry: Your Work to Listen.”
Paul Davies,
God and the New Physics
Richard Feynman,
Six Easy Pieces
Amitav Ghosh, “The Ghosts of Mrs. Gandhi,” from
The New Yorker
, July 17 1995
Sturla Gunnarsson,
Air India 182
(DVD)
Sudhir Kakar,
The Colors of Violence: Cultural Identities, Religion and Conflict, The Analyst and the Mystic
; and others
Ali Kazimi,
Continuous Journey
(DVD) and
Undesirables
David Ludden, ed.,
Making India Hindu: Religion, Community, and the Politics of Democracy in India
Cynthia Mahmood,
Fighting for Faith and Nation: Dialogues with Sikh Militants
Manoj Mitta and H. S. Phoolka,
When a Tree Shook Delhi: The 1984 Carnage and its Aftermath
Bharati Mukherjee and Clarke Blaise,
The Sorrow and the Terror
Martha C. Nussbaum,
The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India’s Future
Alan Parry and Robert E. Doan,
Story Re-Visions: Narrative Therapy in the Postmodern World
Sumit Sarkar,
Beyond Nationalist Frames
Amartya Sen,
The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture, and Identity
Articles by Cassel Busse, Amber Dean, Angela Failler, Maya Seshia, Raja Singh Soni and Asha Varadharajan, in a Feature Section on the bombing of AI 182, edited by Chandrima Chakraborty, in
TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies
, 2012.
The writing of this book received generous support from The Canada Council for the Arts, the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts, The Arkansas Arts Council, and The Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow.
The manuscript benefited from expert readings by generous friends: Deena Aziz, Kirstin Erickson, Andy McCord, Alan Parry, Surendra Singh and Reeta Vyas. Kim Bolan talked to me about Khalistani extremism, the bombing and the trial. Colin Soskolne talked to me about epidemiology. Dhanam Kochoi, Ravi Kumar, Shoba Kumar and Thara Kumar kept my family warm and entertained when I left to do research. Bhuvana Viswanathan, S. P. Viswanathan, Van Brock and Frances Brock contributed manuscript-readings, child care, and 1,001 loving encouragements. Bruce Westwood and Carolyn Forde, agents extraordinaires, pledged enthusiasm through multiple drafts. Anne Collins, gift from the editor gods, sculpted the book with years of
assiduous notes. Mira Brock and Ravi Brock gave daily—hours of peace for writing; means of recovery from writing; a bright poetic heat that I reached for as I wrote. And Geoff Brock, believe it or not (I barely can), gave
all
of the above.
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
this page
: Robert Hass, excerpt from “Meditation at Lagunitas” from
Praise
. Copyright © 1979 by Robert Hass. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
this page
: Bharati Mukherjee and Clark Blaise, excerpt from
The Sorrow and the Terror: The Haunting Legacy of the Air India Tragedy
. Copyright © 1988 by Bharati Mukherjee and Clark Blaise. Reprinted with the permission of Penguin Group Canada.
this page
. UNDUN, words and music by Randy Bachman. © 1969 (Renewed) Shillelagh Music. All rights administered by SONY/ATV Music Publishing, 8 Music Square West, Nashville, TN 37203. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
this page
. Elizabeth Bishop, excerpt from “One Art” from
The Collected Poems 1927-1979
. Copyright © 1979, 1983 by Alice Helen Methfessel. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC. All rights reserved.
PADMA VISWANATHAN
is a Canadian fiction writer, playwright and journalist, whose debut novel,
The Toss of a Lemon
, was shortlisted for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award and the PEN Center USA Fiction Award, and published to international acclaim. Her work has received many awards, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and support from the Canada Council for the Arts, as well as residencies at the MacDowell Colony, the Banff Centre and the Sacatar Foundation. Her hometown is Edmonton, Alberta, though she is presently living with her husband, Geoffrey Brock, a poet and translator, and their two children in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
