“No. You must be getting off at Cantonment, for Whitefield.”
“How do you know that?”
“Sai Baba Center. You have been perusing pamphlet.”
Anyone’s watchfulness slightly unnerved her, but she also admired this man’s. He was a fast learner. He would get the job.
“We are sitting on eight o’clock. Cantonment is coming up.”
“And what is your good name?”
“Amitabh. On the card. Also mobile number and Hotmail account. Also pager. You will find me accessible.”
He was still sitting, wide in his solid posture, when Alice hoisted her topheavy rucksack and struggled off the train to face the squawking, reaching auto-rickshaw drivers, who seemed to know exactly where she was going.
2
The passage of time was not easily calculable in the ashram. You didn’t count hours or days, but rather months, maybe years. A month had gone by, though time meant nothing here, even with the routine: up at four or so to queue for a place at the hall for the darshan and a chance to hear Swami at six-thirty; then bhajans until eight or so, and breakfast; then chores and food prep and more queuing until more of Swami at two and more bhajans, of which Alice’s favorite began,
Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey Gajaanana
Gajaanana Hey Gajavadana …
(Victory to Gajaanana,
The elephant-faced God …)
“Work is worship,” Swami said, and “Hands that help are better than lips that pray,” and “Start the day with love, spend the day with love, fill the day with love, end the day with love. That is the way to God.”
Alice’s days spilled one into the other, full and fluid, guided by Swami. And the passage of time was a consoling liquefaction of weeks in which she was gently turned, as though tumbled downstream, without any effort, feeling the buoyancy of happiness chanted into her ears.
Swami was smaller, slighter, older than his photographs suggested, the hair a less symmetrical frizz-ball, his smile more fatigued than impish. But he was eighty. His direct confrontation, his practical advice, his refusal to preach—the essential Swami appealed to her. He seemed to single her out at the daily darshan and to hold her gaze, and while seeming to preach, said, “I am not here to preach. Only to listen. Only to make suggestions. I tell you”—and here Alice felt the warmth of his attention—“if you are Christian, be the best Christian you can be.”
“He will leave his body at ninety-six,” Alice’s roommate Priyanka said. “And after some eight years, the third and last incarnation will be born. Prema Sai. I wish to observe this.”
Priyanka and her friend Prithi had gotten robes for Alice and allowed her to share their room, claiming they were spiritual sisters, since single women were discouraged from applying for rooms. The room was spartan and clean—well, Alice cleaned it, after bhajans. She was glad that Stella was not here to distract her. Stella would have hated the food, made a fuss about the flies or the heat, or else said, as she had at the temple at Muttra, “I don’t see why I should take off my shoes here, since the floor is a heck of a lot dirtier than my feet.”
Alice loved the simplicity of the place, the strict routine, the plain food, the safety of the perimeter wall, the knowledge that Swami was right next door, beyond the gate in his funky yellow house. It was like a nunnery, and yet there were no vows. She could leave any time she wanted. But the routine suited her, and the city—what she had seen of it—seemed pleasant enough. Too much traffic, though; too many people; honks, shouts, the crackle of music, new stinks.
Against Priyanka’s advice—“Swami doesn’t like us dibble-dabbling in the town”—Alice took a bus to Lalbagh Gardens and lost herself among the giant trees, the first real trees she’d seen in India, big old ones that spoke of space and order, that provided damp shade and coolness. Indian families roamed in the gardens, lapping at ice creams, and Alice regarded these people wandering among the great trees as worshipers of the most devout sort, without dogma, lovers of the natural world, as Swami was.
Some of the Bangalore streets were lined with flowering trees, like any good street in Providence, and the same sort of solid, smug-fronted houses and bungalows. Stella would have shopped—there were silks and pashminas and bangles—but Alice only looked. The Christian churches, an inexplicably large number of them, helped calm her, because all those Christians were a link with a world she knew and the faith itself had Swami’s approval.
But the dust-laden and echoey churches were not enough. She was drawn to another place of worship, the Ganesh temple in the heart of the city, the elephant image smiling at her from the inner sanctum. That was how it seemed: another big soft gaze in her life. The other deities sat glowering, with horror teeth like Kali’s, or else solemnly dancing like Shiva; with half-closed eyes like Saraswati playing the sitar, or goofy-faced with pouchy cheeks like Hanuman. But only the elephant god smiled, always the kindly eyes directed straight at her, and the full satisfied mouth chomping on the tusks like a tycoon with two cigars. The way the fat thing sat on the rounded cushion of his bottom, his center of gravity in his broad bum, was also a pleasure to see, but most of all his eyes reassured her with a What can I do for you? look and a guarantee: I can help you.
The afterlife was not intimated in any of the elephant god’s intercessions. He was worldly and efficient, not granting grace or forgiving sins, but promising to bring his heavy foot down to flatten a problem.
Alice’s problems were small, but they were problems nonetheless. One was the memory of Stella’s dropping out. Alice wanted to forgive her, but she could not rid her mind of the betrayal, and she remembered Zack trying to impress Stella, saying that his favorite line in How to Marry a Millionaire was the Marilyn Monroe one about maharajahs: “Think of all the diamonds and rubies. And all those crazy elephants.” Stella had laughed, and now she had what she wanted.
One afternoon, having ducked out of the ashram to be soothed by a visit to the Ganesh shrine, she decided to walk back to Whitefield. A taxi always meant bantering with the driver and having to answer too many questions. In an area of narrow lanes she passed the courtyard of an old house and saw what looked like a stable. The air was rich with sweet decay here. What she sniffed as a relief from the sourness of traffic fumes she realized was manure that had the density of compost, the powerful suggestion of a healthy animal and also of the fertile earth. She took a few steps into the passageway and saw a large dusty elephant.
The smiling creature with the swaying trunk seemed linked to the deity she’d just prayed to, as if it were his living embodiment. She could not separate the two, but, having prayed, she saw this animal as the privileged answer to those prayers. His big staring eyes held her and seemed to fix her as an image, as though photographing her—certainly remembering her. As he stared, he danced from side to side, swinging his rubbery trunk. He reached toward her with the big hose-like thing and then lowered it, wrapped a broken stalk of sugar cane and clenched the pink edges of its nose holes, delicately plucking the fragment, and with one upward bend of the trunk popped it into his mouth and crunched it. He had teeth too.
The elephant still swayed, holding Alice’s attention like a promise fulfilled. And for the first time in India she did not feel lonely.
She saw with sadness the collar of metal around the lower part of his left rear leg; the heavy chain was fastened with an iron spike. The elephant was male, yet he appeared to Alice like an enormous plain woman, chained to a post, overwhelmingly frustrated, murmuring to herself to get attention.