The Hindi-Bindi Club (30 page)

Just what Rani needs.

I always wanted to show Rani the city, country of my birth.
Really
show her, not the emotionally wrenching IN/OUT we did when
Baba
died, but full-blown adventures on par with our travels in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Bali, and Singapore, like my Indian friends in America who traveled to India with their children.

“India is as much a part of Rani’s heritage as Italy and Ireland,” I said to Patrick after we returned from two glorious weeks at a rented ten-bedroom villa in Tuscany with my in-laws (before Patrick’s parents passed away, we were fortunate enough to go on two McGuiness family vacations to Ireland and Italy). “She has every right to experience the land, to know the people, the culture.”

“She does,” Patrick said. “So do you.” That’s my husband, always hearing unspoken words, even more perceptive at reading people than I am. “We could go to other parts of the country.”

I thought of the spectacular palaces of the Hindu maharajas. The cave paintings and sculptures, wrinkles in time to ancient civilizations. The Himalayas. Hill stations. Beaches and bazaars. Tea plantations. Temples, mosques, churches, and monasteries.

I thought of all these places and so many more I longed to see with Patrick and Rani, but how could I bypass the one city that dwelled in my heart, my memories? How could I go to India and
not
to Kolkata? I couldn’t. For me, India began and ended in Kolkata.

“Do you want to go to Kolkata with me?” I tentatively ask Rani and hold my breath, waiting for her answer. Waiting to see if the coin I tossed into the air lands head or tail up. If she says no, I won’t try to change her mind, I decided. I’ll take it as a sign. A sign of what exactly I’m not sure. Something bad.

She says yes; I book our tickets.

I
t’s been a long time since Rani and I bunked together. Since Anandita snores, Rani and I will share the guestroom’s king-sized bed. As Patrick hauls our two largest suitcases upstairs from the basement to Rani’s bedroom for me to begin packing, we reminisce about our Boo’s old bedtime rituals.

Until Rani was twelve, either Patrick or I had to lie with her in her narrow twin bed until she fell asleep. If we didn’t, she would have dark circles under her eyes the next morning from staying up late, unable to sleep. So one of us kept her company for an hour each night, and Rani would ask a myriad of questions, as if downloading her brain to free up necessary space for sleep. Afterward, Patrick and I would share highlights of that night’s Boo-Boo Hour, as we called it, marveling over the little wonder we created.

Did the dinosaurs go to heaven? Are people safe—does God brainwash the dinosaurs not to hurt us? If God made everything, who made God? Did Jesus really say no one goes to heaven except through Him, or did somebody mess up/make up His message? When Ganesh was little, did people make fun of his elephant head, or did elephants make fun of his human body like Dumbo’s big ears? Did people who aren’t/weren’t nice to the Untouchables (Dalits) come back as poop-eating flies in their next lives?
(This after watching Bimal Roy’s touching masterpiece
Sujata
about an orphan untouchable girl raised by a high-caste family.)

I wonder what questions await me in Kolkata….

“Report back,” Patrick says.

I promise I will. “I’m going to miss you terribly.” Since marriage, we’ve never been separated more than a week at a time.

“Me, too, hon, but this is important. You need this trip.”

“I wish you were going.”

“We’ll talk every day.”

“I know,” I say. “But I don’t like being away from you…”

He chuckles and kisses my brow. “I’d be in trouble if you did.”

R
ani and I fly out of Dulles. Connect at Heathrow. Arrive at Dum Dum—Lollypop Airport, Rani called it on our last trip—around one in the morning on a Saturday night. This trip, she keeps reminding me the airport was renamed, but it’s hopeless. It will always be Dum Dum to me.

Five of my sisters meet us. Anandita, Shukla, Moitreyee, Tapasi, and Bharati—everyone but Oindrilla. They have their husbands, drivers, various children, and grandchildren in tow. All of my
taant
-clad sisters are sobbing—the same picture as when I left—and soon, I am, too.

“So skinny, this one,” says Tapasi as she hugs Rani, who shoots a look at me.

“
Sejdi,
you are not feeding her?” says Shukla.

I smile at Rani, a mother’s patented I-told-you-so smile. Nothing like a trip to India to put my hovering in perspective.

“Does she speak Bengali?” asks a wide-eyed little girl in Bengali.

To whom does this girl belong? I don’t know.

“She understands better than she speaks Bengali,” Rani replies in tongue, eliciting cries of
Oh! Wah! Her accent!

Quickly overwhelmed by the commotion, Rani’s eyes glaze over. I’ll need to whisk my baby out of the limelight soon.

Moitreyee cups Rani’s cheek. “Sho shweet…”

Bharati: “You must be feeling hungry,
nuh
?”

Shukla: “Poor
shonu,
such a long trip.”

Tapasi: “We’ve brought snacks for you.”

Anandita: “Everything homemade and bottled water only. No stomach upsets on this trip.”

Last trip, Rani suffered a terrible bout of diarrhea. She never divulged the culprit, but I suspected it was street food or drink I’d expressly forbidden her, and she chose to learn her lesson the hard way. The sole Western toilet in our old family home happened to go out of order at the same time. I don’t know which was worse, Rani’s physical or emotional misery, constantly having to crouch over Straddle-n-Squats, as Patrick calls Indian toilets—oblong-shaped, recessed, ceramic floor basins—
S&S
for short. Both sufficiently traumatized her. Especially when the toilet paper ran out.

Sensing Rani has exceeded maximum capacity, I link my arm with hers and say to our throng of relatives, “We’ll ride with
Choto didi
.”

Anandita averts her gaze in modesty, but I know my blatant favoritism, especially in front of the others, thrills her. It thrills me, too, to flaunt that the pup everyone else treats as the runt of the litter is my most cherished.

As our motorcade drives to Ballygunge, I’m glad we arrived at night. Nighttime is the best time to view Kolkata, her grime cloaked in darkness, her lights sparkling like jewels. Rani rides shotgun next to the driver to have a better view, while Anandita and I sit in back, holding hands and gabbing 90 M.P.H. Rani laughs at us because we talk on the phone all the time and still never run out of things to say.

“You know Mrs. Chaudhury on the tenth floor?” Anandita says. “The one whose cousin-sister slipped on the wet granite and broke her hip two weeks back? Her doctor’s niece’s friend’s brother, Dr. Ghosh, teaches at Presidency College…chemistry, I think. Anyway, his colleague’s neighbors, good people, I hear, they live half-year here, half-year in America with their kids.”

I nod, certain she’s leading up to something. She always is. Even if she takes a circuitous route, the scenic road, to her destination.

“Well, they know a boy there…thirty-nine, American-born, good family, surgeon, divorced long time back, no kids. He’s interested in Meenal’s daughter, the divorced family doctor.”

“Sounds interesting. What’s the family’s name?”

“Hmmm…DasGupta or SenGupta, were they?” She frowns, trying to recall.

“Not plain Gupta?” I tease.

“No, no. They’re Bengali,” Anandita says. “
That
much I remember. Oh! Before I forget again, I must share Rohit’s good news!” She tells of a favorite nephew’s engagement with a South Indian girl he met in college. “Today’s boys and girls go to coed colleges and mix with people from all over. It’s good. Opens their eyes.”

“Very good,” I say. “We need more world citizens.”

Though everyone doesn’t share this viewpoint, I, of course, am ecstatic that caste and culture prejudices and exclusivity continue to erode daily, and intercaste, intercultural, and love marriages are on the rise.

“That surgeon?” I ask. “Do you remember his good name?”

She bites her tongue in chagrin. “I wrote everything down when Mrs. Chaudhury rang me up. I’ll give you my notes at home.”

“Great. I’ll find a cyber café where I can email Meenal.”

Rani glances over her shoulder. “Better get on the stick, huh, Mom? Saroj Auntie’s scoped
how
many prospects now? Team Basu’s lagging.”

I laugh. “Is that a fair comparison? Saroj Auntie’s far more networked than I am.”

“Sorry, we don’t grade on a curve here. Results, results. It’s all about results.”

I shake my head. “Silly girl.”

“Silly girl-
ji,
” she emphasizes the Hindi suffix of respect, a family joke, Patrick’s “Hinglish” spin on the American jest. “That’s
Mister
Lazy Bum to you” becomes “That’s Lazy Bum-
ji
to you.” That’s my husband, who by his own admission, knows just enough to cause an international incident in any given country.

As Rani chats with Anandita, I look out the window at all that is familiar and all that is new, foreign to me. I’ve had butterflies in my stomach for so long, I don’t remember how it feels not to have them. I remind myself to keep my eye on the goal:
Ma
’s tablets.

I glance at a Maruti subcompact that zips by, startled by the sight of a little boy in the driver’s seat. It takes me a second to reorient:
That’s the passenger seat!
In India, as in England, they drive on the left side of the road, the driver’s seat on the right, passenger seat on the left.

The city of Kolkata never sleeps, not even the children. From the sound of it, you’d think all accelerators and brakes came attached to horns. Trucks even have signs:
Please Honk.
No designated lanes, unmarked and undivided roads the norm, drivers blast each other with friendly honks, warning honks, and angry honks often accompanied with curses. In organized chaos, an array of vehicles vie for the city’s scarcest resource: space.

Matchbox-sized subcompacts. Yellow Ambassador taxis and their miniature versions—three-wheeled, diesel-belching auto-rickshaws. Buses with arms dangling out the glassless windows. Scooters, often with a
sari
-clad woman nonchalantly sidesaddle behind a man, a baby in her arms, perhaps one more kid squeezed in there, not a helmet in sight…. I shudder to think of them taking a corner too fast.

Approaching a traffic light, dense exhaust forces us to raise the windows. Not a moment too soon. The light turns red; street urchins attack the trapped vehicles like ants to picnic baskets. They dart from one to the next, tap on windows, peddle their wares, clean windshields without asking, and hold out grubby hands for money, inspiring more irritation than pity.

On one side of us idles a sleek new high-end Mercedes. On the other side, a woman in a ratty
sari
squats on the pavement, cooking over an open flame. An old man holds his index finger against one nostril and empties the contents of the other onto the street. This oft-seen behavior, along with public urination, which I’m sure is coming up in our city tour, is
not
indicative of Indian culture but, rather, a lack thereof. You won’t see a cultured Indian blow his nose onto the sidewalk. Sorry to say, however, you may see one—deserving of a good smack on his bum with a
chappal,
or
lathi,
if I had my way—watering the plants, or a wall.

Ahead, billboards advertise the latest new Bollywood films, television serials, Nokia mobiles, Amul Butter, luxury apartment buildings, Marlboro cigarettes, Lay’s Potato Chips, Amulya Rich Marie Biscuits, Close Up toothpaste.

At the corner dumpster, a trio of cows gathers, swishing their tails like southern belles with fans gossiping about the stupid people going by. Their blasé expressions as they chomp away remind me of the
Far Side
comics.

The light turns green. Our car lurches forward, careens through the obstacle course. At the next red light, we find the same show, next act, different players. A dirt-caked young girl knocks on my window, a half-naked baby boy on her hip. I ignore her, but she persists. I look at her. Make eye contact. Force myself not to look away, despite my discomfort.

Who are you? What is your story? Do you think I’m cold-blooded, stingy for not giving you money? I want to take you home, clean you up, fill your belly with nourishment, send you to school. It pains me that I can’t give you money—I’m not immune to your suffering—but to do so would cause more harm than good. Incite a riot. Encourage more begging. I’m sorry, little one. I can’t help you here and now, but I’ll donate to a charity that works to empower you, not shackle you tighter in your chains of poverty.

“Don’t look,” Anandita says. “You’re encouraging her.”

At the iron gates of the multistory apartment building, the driver honks, rousing the dozing night watchman from his catnap in a chair beside the guard shack. Recognizing the Honda City, the watchman opens the gate. We pull in, park in a designated spot, climb out, stretch. Automatically, I reach into the flower bed, touch the soil in reverence. Bengali soil. Forbidden soil.

My soil.

“We’re in India, Mom,” Rani says with incredulity. “We’re really in India.”

The wind kicks up. Leaves whisper in the giant
neem
trees,
shhhhh,
as if telling secrets. The hot air breathes in my ears. Grazes my face, neck, shoulders. Like a warm hand skimmed over my bare skin. The tickle of fingertips. I shiver in the heat. Chilled. Sweating. Fine hairs on my nape, arms, stand on end.

“Yes, we are,” I say, a hitch in my voice.

Too late to turn back now.

I rub the earth between my fingers. Touch my forehead and my heart. Kiss my fingers. Turn to Rani. “Welcome to Kolkata.”

Welcome back
.