The Hindi-Bindi Club (33 page)

Chappatis are best served hot, right off the skillet, but can also be enjoyed warm or at room temperature.

Rani McGuiness Tomashot: Reincarnation

H
ave you ever had one of those How-the-Hell-Did-I End-Up-Here moments? And when you look back, you see that it started innocuously enough, as most life-altering courses tend to, one baby step after another? That’s what happened to Bryan and me this year.

It all began when I agreed to accompany my mother on her research trip to Kolkata….

There I was, playing tourist, and doing a bang-up job, if I do say so myself. No jet lag. No diarrhea. No communication problems. What more could a Third-World tourist want? Then, a weird thing happened. My asthma—wait, more precisely,
all the symptoms of my childhood asthma
—came back.

That’s not the weird part. I’m getting there. Hold your horses. First, the symptoms. Basic stuff. Should be all-too-familiar to my fellow asthma sufferers: I woke up gasping in the dead of night. Couldn’t breathe. Felt like someone was sitting on my chest and strangling me.

I woke my mom, who woke Anandita-
mashi,
who woke her doctor, who came right over. The doctor happens to live in the building, but house calls aren’t uncommon, I’m told. Afterward, I was loaded up with the usual paraphernalia, including my old best friend I’d hoped never to lay eyes on again: the dreaded inhaler. So there I was, rapidly sucking my inhaler bone-dry, like in the not-so-good old days, when my mother decided she wanted a second opinion and carted my wheezing butt to another doctor.

This doctor, a stooped old woman with a reedy silver braid hanging down to her butt who appeared to be about a hundred, give or take ten years, didn’t instruct me to say “ah,” didn’t look in my mouth or my ears, didn’t instruct me to take a deep breath or listen to my lungs with a stethoscope. She didn’t even feel the glands at the sides of my throat. She just sat me down in front of her on a low string-bed and put her wrinkly hand on my head—her fleshy heel against my forehead, bony fingers on my crown.

“This is not asthma,” she said.

“Allergies?” Mom asked.

“No.”

“I had a feeling…” Mom said.

“What?” I asked.

Neither of them replied. The doc instructed me to lie down, close my eyes, relax. She whispered something to Mom in Bengali, something I couldn’t hear and had the distinct impression, from her tone, she didn’t
want
me to hear.

I cracked open my eyelids just enough to peep through my lashes and saw the Ancient One gesture for Mom to follow her. Slipping from the room through a curtained doorway, my mother looked back over her shoulder at me. Quickly, I shut my eyes. Minutes later, she retrieved me, and we left. Outside on the footpath, she asked if I wanted to go to a nearby café. I was pooped, but it sounded like she wanted to go, so I said sure.

Navigating through the traffic—animal, vegetable,
and
mineral—I surmised she wasn’t planning to clue me in on the Ancient One’s diagnosis until we sat down, but I was curious.

“If it isn’t asthma or allergies, what is it?” I asked.

“You’re adjusting,” she replied. “To being here. Some people are more susceptible than others to…the elements.”

B.F.D.,
I thought. “So, where’s the big deal in that? Why’d you have to leave the room?”

Her gaze shot to mine, then darted away. She stopped, squinted into the distance, appeared to look down the road. “We…uh…were settling the bill.”

Oh. That made sense. “So, did you haggle with her?”

“No—”

“
What
? Mom! The one time you
should
have, you didn’t—!”

“No
need,
I was going to say, silly goose. She works pro bono.”

“Well, seeing as she doesn’t actually
do
anything. Nothing for nothing. Hey, what a bargain!”

Mom gave a short laugh. “I’d gladly pay
any
amount for her services.”

“What services—?” A rickshaw whipped around the corner where we were standing, waiting to cross. In the nick of time, Mom yanked me out of the way before the wheel ran over my foot, then made me hold her hand like a five-year-old.

She tugged me out to the middle of the road, stopped in the midst of traffic, put her hand out in front of a slow-moving taxi and halted the driver, so we could cross in front of him—in the fine art of Kolkata Jaywalking, my mother is a master.

“What services?” I asked again.

“Spiritual healing. Watch out!”

I sidestepped a big ol’ cow patty. “Eeewwwww.”

“Someone will be along to collect that shortly.”

A word to the wise: If you can’t walk, chew gum, and carry on multiple threads of conversation at the same time, you won’t last long in Kolkata.

Focusing on my feet, I said, “I guess anyone can put up a sign and call themselves a healer these days.”

She laughed. “You think your mother can’t sniff a phony? You can take the girl out of Bengal, but you can’t take Bengal out of the girl. That healer was one of the best. You were asleep for half an hour.”

That brought my chin up. “I was not!” When she made a snoring sound, I bumped my shoulder against hers. “Moth-er! Come on! I
don’t
snore. And I closed my eyes for a minute. Two, tops.”

“
Thirty
-two, Boo, I kid you not. I clocked you. I sat there and watched the entire time.”

My gaze searched hers. She
was
serious. “No shit…”

T
he chic café looked just like a bookstore-café back home: hardwood floors, comfy furniture, air-conditioning. Sparkling clean and inviting, it was understandably packed. Mom went and struck up a conversation with a group of college students—just small talk, she said!—and another friendly group, behind them, overheard and invited us to join them as they were leaving soon.

I had to use the facilities, but I wasn’t dying, so I held it. On that count, our last trip to Kolkata scarred me for life. My cousins, expecting me to be a stereotypical stuck-up American, thought it would be funny to play a practical joke on me—via my stuck-up, foreigner bowels. That was before they got to know me, and boy, did they feel rotten. (Hey, I may be stuck-up, but I’m also smart, cute, and funny!) Not as rotten as
I
felt, however, having already consumed the street food that worked faster than Ex-Lax. And did I mention they’d deliberately “accidentally” clogged the only Western toilet in the house beforehand? That would be the flip side of “brilliant.”
Diabolical.

T.P. wasn’t in abundance, even in the big cities, back then. Paper, a costly commodity in India, is associated with books and newspapers, highly respected mediums of knowledge and wisdom—not something on which you wipe excrement. Though readily available today, T.P. still doesn’t substitute for the traditional hygiene practice of washing thoroughly with water, but adds an optional, luxury “dry cycle” after the “rinse cycle.”

Mom said unless we were in a five-star hotel, we couldn’t assume the public restrooms had T.P. Western toilets might be plentiful, but T.P. isn’t. Ditto paper towels.

“You packing?” Dad had asked before we left the house for the airport. “Make sure.” Not guns, but packs of tissues and antibacterial wipes, he meant. And yes, I was—
at all times
.

At the café, Mom joined the intellectuals intellectualizing, but my brain was too tired to keep up with that many people, all talking at the same time, over each other. I was glad when they left, and Mom and I could do our own thing.

Over tea and snacks, she explained that the body’s seven major energy centers—
chakras,
Sanskrit for
wheel
—aligned along the spinal chord can get blocked. Blockage causes imbalance, as each
chakra
correlates with specific physical, mental, emotional attributes. Apparently, my throat
chakra,
which is associated with creativity and expression, was clogged.

A healer’s hands are highly attuned to energy fields, like how blind people can sense walls, doors, and other objects in close proximity without actually coming into contact with them.
Aura
is the term coined by the ancients, still widely used today in reference to these electromagnetic/quantum fields. “Think of the negative and positive poles of a magnet, of the earth,” Mom said. By moving her ultrasensitive hands over my energy pathways, the Ancient One removed the negative energy, the cause of blockages, and infused positive energy that heals, rinsing my
chakras
and aura squeaky clean. After this energy “tune-up and oil change,” I passed my emissions test.

Now, while much of this makes sense to my scientific brain, not all of it does. But I listened over two cups of Darjeeling tea—after which I
did
use the facilities, without incident, I’m happy to report—and I gave my mother an indulgent smile because I love the woman to pieces, and whether or not she’s a fruitcake is irrelevant, though I seriously doubted I’d find any asthmatic relief while we remained in that polluted city.

Oddly enough, Mom smiled back at
me
in the exact same way.

When we got back to the flat, I was one tuckered puppy. I went to take a nap and ended up sleeping through the night, not uncommon with jet lag. The next morning, I was lying in bed, still groggy, watching dust motes dance in the sunlight when something felt “off.”

I thought to myself:
Self, what’s wrong with this picture?
Suddenly, I realized:
I’m not choked up. I’m not hacking. I’m breathing just fine.

All my asthma symptoms vanished overnight, never to return. Cue the
Twilight Zone
music. Was it all in my head, psychosomatic? Is there a scientific basis to spiritual energy yet to be fully understood, explained? Beats me. But from then on, I started seeing things in a new light. Possibilities where none before existed….

H
ip deep in boxes, I’m in the throes of packing up Bryan’s and my recently sold Pacific Heights condo when the phone rings. I hop toward a clearing, aim for the cradle where the portable rests. Make that,
used to
rest.

Uh-oh…

Another ring. I scan the room. Clutter and more clutter. In what heap did I bury the flippin’ phone? Color me clueless.

Oh, man, tell me I didn’t pack it…

I eye the caller I.D. display.
LINDSTROM, ERIC
. Preity! And I know exactly why she’s calling. “Hang on! I’m coming!” Following the rings, I unearth the phone and answer a second before voicemail kicks in. “Preity!” I say without preamble. “Can you believe it?”

“No! Can you?”

“No!”

“You sound out of breath. Am I catching you at a bad time?”

“No, I could use a break.” I plop down onto the floor, back against the wall, feet on a box, ankles crossed, and wipe my brow with the sleeve of my T-shirt.

“I got your number from my mom, who of course got it from
your
mom. I had to call you. Who else would understand this?
Really
understand? I mean, it’s Kiran.
Our
Kiran!”

“I know! I’ve been dying to call
you
!” Though I can count on one hand the number of times Preity and I have talked on the phone—all of them when we were kids—I, too, have had a burning urge to pick up the phone. “I’ve been going on and on to Bryan, the neighbors, the cats—”

“They don’t get it,” Preity says.

“They
can’t
get it,” I say.

“And we can’t explain it to them!”

“Exactly!”

Neither of us has talked to Kiran yet. I left voicemail. Preity emailed. No replies yet. Preity doubts she’s getting one, but I predict she will.

“So what have
you
heard?” she asks.

“You first. Saroj Auntie always has her ear to the ground.”

“Yeah, but Uma Auntie’s been instrumental. She totally has Meenal Auntie’s ear.”

“Meenal Auntie isn’t the problem,” I say.

“It’s Yash Uncle.”

“Yep.”

“Is Patrick Uncle going to talk to him?” Preity asks.

“Nope, won’t get involved. How about Sandeep Uncle?”

“Same.”

“Humph. Typical,” I say. “When you actually
want
a guy to interfere, he won’t.”

Preity laughs. “Isn’t
that
the truth?”

We compare notes….

“Well, according to
The Basu Gazette,
” I report, “Kiran says she won’t get married without Yash Uncle’s blessing. Sounds like
she’s
come around.”

“Depends. Is she making a promise or a threat?
The Chawla Times
wasn’t clear on that. I mean, what’s the alternative, if Yash Uncle doesn’t give his blessing? Will she end the romance and walk away? Or will she play house without getting married?”

“That’s the million-dollar question,” I say.

“Okay, let’s cut to the chase,” Preity says. “I’m totally floored Kiran wants to marry a guy she’s never met. Or touched. Or
you know
…” She drops her voice. “
No
sample of the goods?”

“I’m sure they’ve had phone sex. Or cybersex. Probably both.”

“You think? Kiran doesn’t strike me as the kinky type.”

“Sweetheart, think romance, not porn. Erotic, not vulgar.” I give her various examples. “See the difference? The spoken word can be very seductive. So can the written word.”

“Umm-hmm. Just so you know, my office, where I’m sitting, is an open cubicle. And all those words? They happen to work for me, so show a little mercy and
quit it
.”

I make noisy kisses into the phone. “Hey, think about it. Isn’t it kind of romantic, getting to know each other from the inside out, instead of the outside in? Exploring each other’s hearts and minds before bodies?”

“Hmmm…Now that you say that…That
is
how it
should
be,” Preity says. “Society’s too damn fixated on appearances.”

“Survival of the prettiest.”

We break for half an hour. I finish packing my books from the library bookcases, leaving Bryan’s for him to sort through. Preity calls back from the privacy of a conference room, and we resume our conversation….