It hadn’t even been a question before he left. Of course, if you could go, you went. And if you went, of course, if you could, you stayed…
The park lamps had come on by the time Biju climbed the urine-stinking stone steps to the street, and the lights were dissolving in the gloaming – to look at them made everyone feel like they were crying. In front of the stage-set night-light of the city, he saw the homeless man walking stiffly, as if on artificial legs, crossing with his grocery cart of rubbish to his plastic igloo where he would wait out the storm.
Biju walked back to the Gandhi Café, thinking he was emptying out. Year by year, his life wasn’t amounting to anything at all; in a space that should have included family, friends, he was the only one displacing the air. And yet, another part of him had expanded: his self-consciousness, his self-pity – oh the tediousness of it. Clumsy in America, a giant-sized midget, a bigfat-sized helping of small… Shouldn’t he return to a life where he might slice his own importance, to where he might relinquish this overrated control over his own destiny and perhaps be subtracted from its determination altogether? He might even experience that greatest luxury of not noticing himself at all.
And if he continued on here? What would happen? Would he, like Harish-Harry, manufacture a fake version of himself and using what he had created as clues, understand himself backward? Life was not about life for him anymore, and death – what would even that mean to him? It would have nothing to do with death.
The proprietor of the newly opened Shangri-la Travel in the same block as the Gandhi Café ordered a "nonveg" lunch special each day: lamb curry, dal, vegetable pilau, and kheer. Mr. Kakkar was his name.
"Arre, Biju," he greeted him, for Biju had just been given the task of delivering his food. "Again you saved me from my wife’s cooking, ha ha. We will throw her food down the toilet!"
"Why don’t you give it to that dirty bum," said Biju trying to help the homeless man and insult him at the same time.
"Oh no," he said, "bitch-witch, she is the type, she will coming walking down the road on a surprise visit and catch him eating it, that kind of coincidence is always happening to her, and that will be the end of yours truly."
A minute later, "You are sure you want to go back??" he said alarmed, eyes popping. "You’re making a big mistake. Thirty years in this country, hassle-free except for the bitch-witch, of course, and I have never gone back. Just even see the plumbing," he indicated the sound of the gurgling toilet behind him. "They should put their plumbing on their flag, just like we have the spinning wheel – top-class facility in this country.
"Going back?" he continued, "don’t be completely crazy – all those relatives asking for money! Even strangers are asking for money – maybe they just try, you know, maybe you shit and dollars come out. I’m telling you, my friend, they will get you; if they won’t, the robbers will; if the robbers won’t, some disease will; if not some disease, the heat will; if not the heat, those mad Sardarjis will bring down your plane before you even arrive."
While Biju had been away, Indira Gandhi had been assassinated by the Sikhs in the name of their homeland; Rajiv Gandhi had taken over -
"Only a matter of time. Someone will get him, too," said Mr. Kakkar.
But Biju said: "I have to go. My father…"
"Ah, soft feelings, they will get you nowhere. My father, so long as he was alive, he always told me, ‘Good, stay away, don’t come back to this shitty place.’"
Mr. Kakkar gnashed ice cubes with his teeth, lifting them from his Diet Coke with the help of his ballpoint pen, which had a plane modeled at its rear end.
Nevertheless, he sold Biju a ticket on Gulf Air: New York-London-Frankfurt-Abu Dhabi-Dubai-Bahrain-Karachi-Delhi-Calcutta. The cheapest they could find. It was like a bus in the sky.
"Don’t say I didn’t warn you."
Then he grew more thoughtful. "You know," he said, "America is in the process of buying up the world. Go back, you’ll find they own the businesses. One day, you’ll be working for an American company there or here. Think of your children. If you stay here, your son will earn a hundred thousand dollars for the same company he could be working for in India but making one thousand dollars. How, then, can you send your children to the best international college? You are making a big mistake. Still a world, my friend, where one side travels to be a servant, and the other side travels to be treated like a king. You want your son to be on this side or that side?
"Ah," he said, waggling his pen, "the minute you arrive, Biju, you will start to think of how to get the bloody hell out."
But Biju went to Jackson Heights, and from a store like a hangar he bought: a TV and VCR, a camera, sunglasses, baseball caps that said "NYC" and "Yankees" and "I Like My Beer Cold and My Women Hot," a digital two-time clock and radio and cassette player, waterproof watches, calculators, an electric razor, a toaster oven, a winter coat, nylon sweaters, polyester-cotton-blend shirts, a polyurethane quilt, a rain jacket, a folding umbrella, suede shoes, a leather wallet, a Japanese-made heater, a set of sharp knives, a hot water bottle, Fixodent, saffron, cashews and raisins, aftershave, T-shirts with "I love NY" and "Born in the USA" picked out in shiny stones, whiskey, and, after a moment of hesitation, a bottle of perfume called Windsong… who was that for? He didn’t yet know her face.
While he shopped, he remembered that as a child he’d been part of a pack of boys who played so hard they’d come home exhausted. They’d thrown stones and slippers into trees to bring down ber and jamun; chased lizards until their tails fell off and tossed the leaping bits on little girls; they’d stolen chooran pellets from the shop, that looked like goat droppings but were so, so tasty with a bit of sandy crunch. He remembered bathing in the river, feeling his body against the cool firm river muscle, and sitting on a rock with his feet in the water, gnawing on sugarcane, working out the sweetness no matter how his jaw hurt, completely absorbed. He had played cricket cricket cricket. Biju found himself smiling at the memory of the time the whole village had watched India win a test match against Australia on a television running off a car battery because the transformer in the village had burned out. All over India the crops had been rotting in the fields, the nation’s prostitutes complaining about lack of business because every male in the country had his eyes glued to the screen. He thought of samosas adjoining a spill of chutney coming by on a leaf plate. A place where he could never be the only one in a photograph.
Of course, he didn’t go over his memories of the village school, of the schoolmaster who failed the children unless paid off by the parents. He didn’t think of the roof that flew off each monsoon season or of the fact that not only his mother, but now also his grandmother, were dead. He didn’t think of any of the things that had made him leave in the first place.
Forty-two
Despite her sweet succumb to bribery, the minute Gyan left the house, his little sister who had witnessed the fight between her brother and Sai switched allegiance to an unbearable urge to gossip, and when he returned, he found the whole household was aware of what had happened, expanded to theatrical dimensions. The talk of guns had the astonishing effect of waking his grandmother up out of a stupor (in fact, the savor of battles renewed was giving new life to the aged all over the hillside), and she crept over slowly with a rolled-up newspaper. Gyan saw her coming and wondered what she was doing. Then she reached him and smacked him hard on the head. "Take control of yourself. Running around like a fool, paying no attention to your studies! Where is this going to get you? In jail, that’s where." She smacked him on his bottom as he tried to rush past. "Keep out of trouble, you understand," whacking again for good measure, "like a baby you will be crying."