The Leaving of Things (8 page)

Just then, the rickshaw wallah sped up hard, wanting to pull ahead of the bus that had now stopped to let off
passengers. We swerved past them before I felt the rickshaw jerk violently to a halt, and I saw a woman—small, a plastic bag in one arm, under a black umbrella—stutter-step backward to avoid us, saw her collide then with a milkman on his bicycle. Next thing, all three—the woman, the milkman, and his bicycle—went clattering in a whirl of panic and shouting into the water. The woman was sunk up to her elbows, her umbrella rumpled and smashed-in, and her bag’s contents of leafy greens, bananas, onions, and something wrapped in newspaper all thrown from her hands and scattered in the water. The milkman’s bicycle had tin pots attached to the rear of the frame. Their lids had been knocked loose, and milk poured from them into rain puddles.

The rickshaw wallah cut the motor and got out. We both got out. Sloshing through the water, I went over to the woman and helped her to her feet. The milkman berated the woman for not watching where she was going, and the woman turned around and did the same to the rickshaw wallah.

I shoved the onions, bananas, and the newspapered package back into the bag—everything miserably wet—and handed it back to the woman. The rickshaw wallah got the bicycle upright on its kickstand while confused passersby all gathered to watch.

“Are you okay?” I asked the woman.

She turned from her berating and told me in a voice suddenly calm and collected, “I am fine.”

The milkman and the rickshaw wallah were in a full-blown argument now, slinging names at each other. The milkman was complaining about all the milk he’d lost, gesturing madly at the pale-white nebula of milk and rainwater at their feet.

The woman checked her bag and then picked her way, soaked, from the uproar. That’s when the milkman shoved the rickshaw wallah and the rickshaw wallah shoved the milkman. This wouldn’t have much mattered were I not standing directly between the milkman and his bicycle. The bicycle and I went down together like clumsy dance partners. Gulps of water went down my throat, and I panicked, sputtering, coughing. I felt my back, my pants, my head, everything soaked through, and my arms caught between bicycle spokes. I tried to pry myself loose.

Immediately, others rushed up and pulled the men apart. I felt hands grab me by the armpits and haul me up. I shook water from my eyes and spat several times. The rickshaw wallah put his hand on my shoulder, called me “boss,” asked me if I was all right. I felt woozy, nodded, and we sloshed back through the ankle-deep water to the rickshaw. The rickshaw wallah complained about the audacity of the milkman, whom I could still hear hollering as a couple of locals tried to calm him down and lead him away with his bicycle. One of the pots was missing its lid.

After that, nothing but silence. The confusion of the rain-crazed world became strangely muted as if I’d lowered the volume on everything with a remote control. I heard only the hornet-like buzzing of the rickshaw motor, and the washing-over of the rain. From inside my shirt, I pulled out the folder with my transcripts and grade reports—all drenched now.

The driver kept his gaze fixed on the road, hands gripping the handlebars tightly, revving the engine as we tore through the final stretch back to the guesthouse. Maybe he was pissed off, maybe he was ashamed by what had happened. Maybe both.

My mother, Anand, and Anjali were seated on the couch, and Hemant Uncle was at the dining table when I got in. The laugh track of a Gujarati sitcom blared from the TV.
Dal
and incense wafted in from the kitchen. I sloshed into the living room, feeling every bit like I was invading this quaint domesticity.

“I need cash for the rickshaw,” I blubbered.

My mother got up from the couch, looked me up and down, and asked what had happened. I told the story, and that got Hemant Uncle chuckling as he sipped from a cup of chai. My mother tsked and shook her head before asking if I was all right.

I nodded and jerked my head toward the door. “Rickshaw’s waiting downstairs.”

“After what happened, he still expects to get paid?” my mother said, putting on her slippers and grabbing the umbrella leaning next to the door. “Anand, get him a towel.” But before he even got to his feet, Anjali had darted off the couch and, in seconds, had a towel in my hands.

“It’s okay, bhabhi, I will go,” Hemant Uncle said. He took the umbrella from my mother and went down the steps to speak with the rickshaw wallah.

“Go, Vikram,” my mother said, her tone calming down. “Go upstairs, change your clothes.”

* *

As I pulled my suitcase out from under the bed and began picking out clothes, I thought over the events of the past few hours, beginning with my trip to St. Xavier’s up to now in those drenched clothes in rain-sodden Ghatlodiya. And I realized that I didn’t feel depressed or resentful or
angry or ashamed or anything—none of the feelings I’d gotten so used to over these past many months. In that moment I felt like the man I wanted to be for Shannon, for Nate, for Karl—a man on an adventure thousands of miles from home—and here was something I could share with them,
wanted
to share. An adventure I’d had.

I felt oddly energized, at peace with and proud of myself. Maybe it was just my ego or maybe it was my truest self calling out to me. A man of action! What a rare feeling. I knew it wouldn’t last—what does?—but I was happy to know I could be that man, if I wanted to be.

6

“V
ikram, good morning,” Hemant Uncle boomed as I shambled down the steps the following morning. “There’s chai and food waiting.”

A Hindi jingle played on the radio sitting next to the TV.

Everybody had gathered around snacks and cups of chai at the table. At the center of the table were opened wrappers seeped in grease and piled with savory bhajiyas—battered and crispy fritters topped with cilantro, chilies, and diced onions. Judging from the Hindi-language newspapers the bhajiyas came wrapped in, they had to be from one of the snack stalls up the road. Next to the bhajiyas, I saw an opened wrapper of
fafadas
—savory fritters shaped like flutes and accompanied with the same condiments.

“College food,” Hemant Uncle joked, chewing, wiping his hands. “You’re in college, now, no? So sit down.”

The radio advertisement switched to the deadpan monotone of a sports announcer calling the play-by-play at a cricket match.

“You’re not looking so much wet this morning.” Hemant Uncle laughed, sipping his chai.

“Luckily, you didn’t get hurt,” my father said. “Stay away from street fights.”

“Did you get cut on anything?” Anand asked, looking up from a book in his hands, its covers freshly bound with laminated brown paper. “Because you could get tetanus.”

“No one has tetanus,” my mother said, irritably, then to me, “Did you take your malaria pill?”

“No cuts,” I said and went into the kitchen where we kept a bottle of malaria pills in the cabinet. These were gargantuan pills—horse pills—pink, the size of nickels. I choked one down with a swig from the water bottle on the dining table.

“Thanks, Vikram,” my mother said. “Now if I could just get your father and brother to take.”

“I took mine!” Anand snapped.

“Easy, easy,” my father said. “After breakfast, I’ll take the pill. It gives me nausea. After I eat, I’ll take.”

“You’re going to cause problem by not taking those pills.”

My father discarded the matter with a fan-like flip of his hand as he savored a bhajiya.

“Not so many, watch it,” my mother warned.

“Don’t worry, bhabhi. We were the first customers at that stand this morning. This is good oil, it’s fresh,” Hemant Uncle assured her.

“Not just that,” my mother replied, a note of tenderness in her voice. “He has a weak stomach.”

“I’ve been eating this all my life,” my father boasted, picking up another bhajiya. “Since I was a child.”

“You’re not a child now, are you?” my mother countered steadily, quietly.

I glanced at the book that Anand was flipping through. “What is that?” I leaned over him to take a look. “Holy crap, is that Sanskrit?”

“I have Gujarati, Hindi and Sanskrit,” my brother said glumly.

“Don’t worry,” my father said to Anand, “we’ll get you a tutor.”

“You will learn,” Kamala Auntie said with a snap of her fingers, “very fast.”

Anand groaned and picked through the book.

I examined the fafada, turning it over in my hands, sniffed it.

“What’re you sniffing it for?” my mother scolded.

I took a bite. Like the bhajiyas, the fafada was redolent of corn flour, masala, and oil. Not bad, I thought, and finished it. I took another.

“When does your school start?” I asked Anand.

“Monday,” he muttered, putting aside his book.

“Me too,” I said. “Don’t worry,” and, in a lower tone, I added, “you’ll be okay.”

From the radio came the eruption of cheering crowds, and the announcer’s voice lit up with enthusiasm—a jubilant tumbling of Hindi words poured from the radio, filling the room.

“This is Indian national team,” Hemant Uncle said, glancing first at me then at Anand. “They’re playing match against England.”

“You’ll like this, Anand,” my father urged. “Similar to baseball.”

“Doubt it,” Anand muttered and sipped from the cup of milk.

“How did everything at Xavier’s go?” Kamala Auntie asked my parents hopefully.

“A bit of
dada-giri
, but he’s all set now.”

“You’ll enjoy Xavier’s,” Hemant Uncle told me. “We had much fun during those days.”

“Heard you kept getting in trouble with the principal,” I said.

“Achcha,” Hemant Uncle said. “That Father Prieto, I did not like him. He did not like me.”

“That’s what Pappa told me,” I chuckled.

“Father Prieto, he was living in housing colony near Xavier’s at that time. I used to make
mushkari
with my friends, and all the time getting into trouble for that. One time, we made this, uh, enormous
jaangiyo
… how you say … underwear … from
dhoti
fabric, and we hung on his clothesline. So that all the students passing his house, they’ll see that only. So whenever someone would ask in which house is Father Prieto staying? You tell him look for the biggest jaangiyo. That’s his house.”

The thought of a humongous pair of underwear hanging outside the principal’s front yard was enough to get Anand, Anjali and me laughing pretty hard.

Hemant Uncle solemnly added, “But such mushkari got me suspended from cricket team. And also I got low marks on my exam.” He smiled, taking a sip of the chai. “So now I’m in State Bank only.”

I plucked up another piece of fafada, ate it, and started into another, laughing in fits and starts. It was reassuring to know that I still had it in me, this instinct to laugh.

The conversation at the table moved on, but by now my attention had turned to something else: I had become aware of a faint stirring in my gut. This twisting, a churning, a kind of thudding. Pretty soon, I began to feel like there was a beast stamping its hooves around my insides.

It may have been the ditchwater I’d swallowed during my back-ass spill the day before or the
paan
I’d eaten days before that. In any case, sanitation was not exactly a priority in Ghatlodiya with its pools of standing water along the road and out behind the guesthouse, where cows lingered and from where swarms of flies launched daily raids through the kitchen door. All those things might’ve had something to do with it.

All I knew was that the third fafada triggered a stampeding sensation from my chest down to my lower gut. There went the thudding, stamping hooves. My gut twisted, tightened. I backed away from the table, turned, aware only of a puzzled look from my mother and the sight of my father leaning in beside the radio so he could hear the sports announcer above Hemant Uncle’s voice. And that was all. I was aware only of retreating to the toilet, hoping dimly for mercy.

* *

All day Saturday, I shook and sweated. I was either gripped with chills or so hot that you could’ve heated rotis on my forehead. I spent the day in bed, in a moaning, gut-rotted malaise. Once my father came in and asked if I was feeling any better. I moaned for him to get out of the way as I pushed past him, clutching my gut, toward the bathroom. One bite of the rice and bland dal my mother brought up to me, and I felt my insides caving. I pushed away the plate, turned over, and went to sleep. It was an underground kind of sleep, and by that night, I didn’t care if I lived or not.

The following day wasn’t much better, but I could rise from my coffin of bedsheets long enough to see Hemant
Uncle, Kamala Auntie, and Anjali off. They had to drive back to Baroda that morning: Hemant Uncle had the State Bank to get back to on Monday, and Anjali was starting fourth standard.

Kamala Auntie and my mother insisted on a marathon of picture-taking. We felt like circus animals as they posed us individually, in pairs, and all together.

In one group picture, Hemant Uncle put an arm around me and drew me nearer on the sofa. “Come closer, Vikram. This is family picture,” he said, and he kept his arm around me. Family picture. It was strange to think of myself as belonging to a larger family, bound by blood and shared history, and there was a warmth to the belonging, a comfort that was shockingly new to me. For eleven years, “family” had meant Anand and me and our parents—that’s all. But this, I sensed, was a truer, more authentic feeling of family. Everyone in this picture belonged here, now, together. It made me even sadder about Hemant Uncle, Kamala Auntie, and Anjali having to leave. It would be lonely out here in Ghatlodiya without them.

* *

The drumbeat of thunder sounded. Another downpour was imminent. In a hurry, Hemant Uncle finished loading up the Fiat, including the TV, which he shoved into the backseat. Anjali slid in next to the TV as the first sprinkles began to fall, and the light shifted from a lighter to darker gray.

“The boys will adjust,” I heard Kamala Auntie say in Gujarati to my mother. They stood together at the bottom of the steps. “Just give it time. And they’ll be local in no
time.” She hugged my mother. “Come to Baroda. Come during Diwali.”