Antiman

by Rajiv Mohabir

  The gentle lake skin kept irregular time on the shore and licked the dock’s wooden legs. “It’s about a girl who doesn’t want to leave her home but has to,” Mae said. “What about you? Why do you want to go to India and learn Hindi?”

  I had rehearsed the answer to this question many times. In my application letter I wrote something about wanting to learn my familial language—but this was a lie. Hindi was the closest thing to Aji’s Bhojpuri, which she called Hindustani, that I could find taught in study abroad programs. But there was more.

  I confided in Mae, “I want to connect with my Indianness. I want the things that my Aji taught me, the things that everyone said were worthless, to be remembered. That’s all. I want to tell her stories and sing with her voice, adding my own. Like how folk songs are passed down. Instead of planting rice and singing, I would sing from where I am.” I looked into the sky. Venus was close to the moon. The planets and stars looked down. It devastated me to think that these songs and stories would be lost for good.

  “Sing one,” Mae insisted.

  With my back against the wooden boards I sang:

  akhiya hamar badal rukhi

  kahi naahi sukhi sukhi

  tinhu lok me hamesa

  tohar birha se hi bhigal

  My eyes are clouds,

  nowhere is dry.

  The three worlds are forever

  soaked in grief.

  That night, after I sobered up and walked back to the co-op, I opened my email and saw that Jake had written to me. It said something like this:

  I dreamt of you last night. We were on a ship en route to Florida. I was dropping you back home but in the middle of the ocean I wanted to turn back. But we were far out to sea. You wanted to stay on course, so I jumped out and swam to the beach back to New York. You stayed on the vessel and I guess you made it. I’m not really sure.

  I have this dream a lot but typically I’m alone and make it to wherever it is that I’m going. But this one was strange. You were there. I feel like we are similar and are doing similar things in life.

  I think you should tell your dad about your—you know. It’s only a matter of time. What are you going to do about it in India?

  As I left the computer lab, I saw movement in the dark hallway. The bathroom light flipped on and Ken’s door was open. He was awake. I waited for him and when he came out of the bathroom and smiled at me. He wore a purple and brown lungi cloth around his waist.

  “You’re home already?” he asked. He raised one eyebrow in a delicate arc.

  “Oh yeah, I met a friend and we sang songs,” I said rubbing my head. “I want to come next time,” he smiled, looking directly into my eyes. My stomach lurched.

  “That can be arranged,” I said.

  “Well, I don’t really get to be myself at home. You know, things are different where I’m from.” Ken looked down and rubbed his upper arm.

  “I was going to get some food I left in the fridge downstairs. Want to come with me?” I asked. Downstairs I took out yogurt and mixed it into the daal that I had made earlier that day. We sat at a table lit only by the light from the kitchen. Shadows painted his face half dark, half lit.

  “Want some?” I asked.

  Ken grabbed my hand. “Only if you feed it to me,” he said.

  I placed a spoon of yogurt in his mouth and he licked it clean. I put the spoon in my mouth and placed it on the table. I got up from the table and kissed him. Ken opened his mouth and I picked him up as he wrapped his legs around my waist.

  “Let’s go upstairs,” I said, pulling away after a minute.

  “My room,” he replied.

  In Ken’s room I traced his abs. I pulled loose his lungi. It fell to the floor. He reached for me in the dark. In the morning I left while he was still sleeping to get ready for the day’s Hindi class.

  The summer language intensive programs culminated in an annual student talent show. Mae and Jegga both insisted that I sing one of my Aji’s songs for the evening’s performances. They were also excited to meet Emily, who would be arriving soon—she had agreed to come up and drive back down to Florida with me at the end of the program, with a stop in Toronto. I wanted to sing a song that felt important, one that Emily would recognize. I thought of Auntie Sonia’s house just a few months earlier. I remembered the dock with Mae and how held I felt by the songs that she and I had sung. I put my name on the list.

  I took out my journal, wrote down the words, and translated them, as people would inevitably ask me for the chords and the meaning. Emily would want to know exactly what the song meant. I wrote down the words for her.

  kekahi chaho to mango

  rani tu hamar jaan bachaiyal

  ajodhya tohar hoijai

  je mango to mango rani

  je mango to mango rani

  ham mange ram banbas jaye

  aur bharat raja chalaye ho

  je mango to mango rani

  Kekahi, wish what you will

  Rani, you saved my life that day—

  Ayodhya is yours,

  What you wish is yours.

  Whatever you want, ask.

  I want Ram in exile,

  For Bharat to rule the throne.

  Whatever I want is mine.

  I wondered how I would explain this to Aji—that people in a university where white people go to learn Hindi would be interested in her songs, when her own children didn’t think them worth learning. The grandchildren of the same white people who told her generation that they were backward and broken now wanted to claim her knowledge systems as artifacts for study. These people would take our songs and stories and make careers out of interpreting them for other white people. I had seen it before: white scholars who tried to out-Indian me by adopting the study of India as their entire personality. My own interest was deeper than academia. Wading into the sea of this music and trying to understand it was like struggling to see myself.

  When Emily arrived, she stayed with me in my room at International Co-op. This meant that she would see my interactions with Ken. Emily saw me living my queer life.

  “Ken’s real cute, isn’t he?” she ribbed. “He’s everywhere you are—he’s like totally following you around.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, he’s sweet.”

  “Are you going to keep in touch?” she asked.

  “Nah,” I said.

  I had told her about my queerness two years prior underneath a pecan tree outside of my apartment in Gainesville. She was not surprised. “The constant Broadway duets and your obsession with black-and-white Hindi movies kind of gave it away,” she said.

  Emily and I got ready. I wore red corduroy pants and a gingham button-down. She wore a cotton summer dress with an Indian pattern.

  At the auditorium we sat in the back and watched the SASLI students show off their newly acquired language skills. Mae and Jegga sat next to us. People performed skits in Tamil, sang songs in Malayalam, and recited poems in Urdu. When it was time for me to go up, I borrowed someone’s guitar and started to strum Aji’s song. As I sang, I could feel someone else’s voice come up through my throat.

  After I was done, I went back to sit down with Emily. A white graduate student at Wisconsin, about five years older than me, approached.

  “Hey, Raimie. That was great. I was wondering, could you write down the words to the song you sang. It looked like it was really easy to play the chords.” He looked at my sister and me with a crooked smile.

  “Oh, sure,” I said. “I will give it to you tomorrow.” I smiled. Emily, Jegga, Mae, and I walked out of the hall. The International Co-op was having a party that night.

  As Emily and I walked down State Street, she asked, “Are you really going to give that guy Aji’s song so that he can sing it to people?”

  “I would if he were Coolie,” I laughed. “I just said that to get rid of him. I’m going to forget to give it to him tomorrow.” We smiled in the dark as we headed back.

  “I have this for you.” I pulled out the tra
nslation that I had written down in my journal and gave it to Emily. “You’re the one who should have it.”

  The next morning it was time to leave the rose quartz of Madison behind. My heart chakra felt purified. Ken came out to my car and gave me a long hug. He was leaving the US soon to return home to Indonesia and would most likely never be back. He’d be long gone by the time I returned from India.

  “It was good to get to know you,” I said.

  “I will think of you,” he said.

  “I won’t forget you or the day by the lake,” I said as Ken kissed my cheek. He handed me the purple and brown lungi he’d worn all summer.

  The road to Toronto through Ohio and Niagara Falls was easy driving. The forests skirting the highways and through roads were deep in their summer green. Wildflowers beckoned all manner of flying insects to their petals, many of them interrupted by my windshield, now streaked in guts. The early morning fog made this journey feel like a pilgrimage, a return to the source, to Aji, after I had studied a year’s worth of Hindi in six weeks.

  “It was so good to see you living your life without worrying about anyone seeing you and telling Pap,” Emily said, looking at me.

  “It’s freeing to be in a place where no one knows you—like I can be anything I want to be,” I said, wishing the same for her.

  Once we arrived at Aji’s Brampton flat we fell at her feet, placing our foreheads firmly on her toes.

  “You come?” she asked. “Me lovin’ son, a come.” After bringing our bags in we sat on her sofa and Emily went to put the kettle on for tea.

  “You mus’ go to India now? Who go mine yuh papa?” Aji asked me, blinking through her cataract lenses.

  “Yes, Aji, me go gan. Me been a ’Skansin fe study Hindi an’ me wan’ go til a India jus’ now.” I said. Then I slipped into Hindi with Bhojpuri words and phrases—our own new lingua franca. “India mein jaike hamke kya kya dekhna hai?”

  Aji looked at me. “Me na know wha’ you mus’ see. You mus’ go til a Ganga-Mata and adar kare ’am.”

  She wanted me to bathe in the Ganga river. “Aji, you know meh Ganga ke kinare ke shaher—pavitra Varanasi ja raha hun?” You know I am going to the city of the Ganga—the holy city of Varanasi?

  Aji clapped her hands together. “Well, yes! You go see sadhu an’ pujari an’ pandit an’ cow an’ all kine ting!”

  “How do you know? You ever been?” I asked, laughing.

  “Me see ’am on TV,” she replied. “Dem get one real nice station wha’ play all de t’ing.”

  I got up and opened Aji’s entertainment system decorated with pictures of her children and grandchildren. Underneath were some records that I used to like to play. Aji loved them, too. I pulled out the LP with a picture of a monkey in flight. Against a rainbowed background the monkey wore a crown and carried a golden club. In his left hand he held what looked like a mountain. Hanuman Chalisa was printed on the front.

  “Aji, you does pray dis?” I asked, knowing full well the Hanuman Chalisa prayer—forty verses to Lord Hanuman.

  “Yes, de Hanuman Chalisa is very good. You seh ’am an’ wha’ you wan’ go come true.” Aji began to sing the prayer and took her tea from Emily, who came with a tray. She placed a cup by me on a coaster on the entertainment system and sat down next to Aji.

  “You see how he does carry de mountain deh? He a bring de medicine fe help Lachman who fall doung pan de ground. India get all kine t’ing like a dah.” Aji’s story was ready to unfurl. This time I didn’t have my tape recorder. She told us of how when Hanuman came back with the medicine, Ram was so happy that he hugged Hanuman and that Hanuman’s other name was Mahabir—like our name.

  “But we spell it with an O and not an A,” I said.

  “Na mattah—monkey is a monkey,” she joked. We all laughed as I continued to look through the albums, pulling out records like Let’s Dance with the Champ and old Bollywood records like Sangam and Humraaz.

  “Play some Babla and Kanchan,” Emily asked. I put on “Raat Ke Sapna” and Emily and I danced in Aji’s living room while she clapped along. I tried to pull her up and she danced for a few beats and then sat back down, exhausted.

  The next morning Aji got up to pound some mango and ball-of-fiyah peppers into chutney for us to take back home to our father and mother. She also packed some frozen hassa, saltfish and bake, barah, and phulauri for us to eat on our drive. When we left Aji stood in the road crying. She didn’t know when we would see each other again.

  The night before I left for India, Emily came into my room.

  “I have a gift for you,” she said and handed me a spiral-bound journal. There was an inscription that read I figured a sketch pad might work for you. I love you!

  “Thanks, Em,” I said and gave her a big hug. Her eyes shone through tears. I looked through the blank pages. I lit some incense and Emily hopped on the bed.

  “It’s going to be like you’re in Gainesville and you won’t come home for a year.” I hadn’t lived in Chuluota since I was eighteen, five years earlier.

  There was a knock on the door and Mom walked in. Her wavy hair was down to her shoulders. She’d just dyed it jet-black and it curled around her face. She stood up to my shoulders and was as dark as I. Emily and I got our shoulders from Mom and our round faces from Pap. Mom held something in her hands.

  “Is that sandalwood you’re burning? It’s my favorite.” She held out a black-and-white photo of a family of eight in the water. “That’s my father and mother—your Nana and Nani—when they moved to Allahabad. They’re bathing in the Ganges here. Your uncle sent it to me from London.”

  I took the photo from her. I could recognize some of her siblings. Auntie Chandra looked just like my mother did when she was younger. “Where are you?” I asked.

  “I was conceived on the boat when they came back from India,” she said.

  “So you’re like the essence of a Jahaji!” I laughed. I gazed into the picture. My Nana was old-looking. His children looked sweet. My Nani’s eyes looked tired.

  “There’s another thing,” Mom said. She handed me a book with a black-and-white photo on the cover. It was a man delivering a speech from what looked like a pulpit. The title read Lil Lil Dutty Build Dam (Little Pieces of Earth Build a Dam): An Autobiography by Hari Prashad.

  “Your father’s book?” My voice crescendoed. I had a copy when I was young but had misplaced it a long time ago.

  “Yes, your Mamu sent me some copies and I thought you should have one.”

  My Nana wrote this autobiography about his travails in life and how he came to terms with his own Indian identity in Guyana, India, and eventually England. He left Guyana in the 1960s before independence and was a British citizen for his entire life, though second-class.

  “It’s funny how you and Pap come from such different places—Aji is unlettered, Aja may have had a second-grade education. And your mom didn’t have much schooling, but Nana knew enough to write an entire book.”

  “Yes, he was also a pandit—people would come to listen to him give Ramayan katha,” she said almost proudly.

  “Was he happy that you married someone named Mohabir? With both of your names in the Hanuman Chalisa?” I laughed.

  Mom sang a couplet from the prayer:

  Ramdut atulit bal dhama

  Anjani putra pavansut nama

  Mahabir bikram bajarangi

  kumati nivar sumati ke sangi

  Emily and I looked at each other. “Does Pap know that you know this?” I asked.

  “Yes—it’s where I’m from. It’s where he’s from, too, though he doesn’t like to admit it. Somewhere inside him he is proud of you for who you are, though you can’t see it.” Mom was signaling something to me. Don’t tell Pap. My secret was okay as long as it stayed stuffed in my throat.

  “You know that Anjani is the mother of Hanuman?” I said.

  “That must make you a monkey,” she laughed.

  “Well, I am about to leap across the Kalapani.” We
were all silent for a moment.

  “Don’t go off by yourself, wandering all about. Walk good, and come back home,” Mom said as we all erupted into tears.

  Aji Recording: Dunce

  HINDUSTANI BHASHA BARDI accha hai sikhe ke. But jab sikhe tab bidya bhi pardh le. Den you go know. You go learn to read de book.

  Dem seh:

  Utho bahino pardho bidya

  yahi sikhsha tumhari hai

  bina bidya ke pardhne se

  burdi halat tumhari hai

  So if you na know fe read, you punish an’ knack from da pillah to da pos’. But if you know fe read you go stan’ up right hiyan an’ all wha’ knack about go come back ti you.

  Da one sang de mek. Get up sistah, sistah a sleep an’ all bady gan a school. ’E brudah com an’ seh, “Git up, wake up. Go an’ tek you education. Go an’ read.”

  An’ if you know fe read people go hana you. If you na know fe read people go kick you. Me brudah been tell me “Git up an’ read dis a you one.” If you na know fe read you go punish.

  Utho bahino pardho bidya

  yahi sikhsha tumhari hai

  bina bidya ke pardhne se

  burdi halat tumhari hai

  Git up. Na sleep. An’ go read. An’ when you read you get education an’ you brain go function. You can talk anyt’ing an’ deh between anybady. An’ people go hana you. But if you continue sleep people go call you lazy kordhin. Who go do wha’ fe you? Tell me? All bady go scahn you an’ walk out. You a no good, man. You is no good.

  Bidya mean fe read. ’E sistah so lazy. People go hana you if you git up an’ read. An’ da true. Me see am wid me own eye from now. If you na read you na good. How me deh now—me na know fe read. All bady siddung an’ dem talk deh story an’ me got a siddung in de cana cuz me na know wha’ dem a do an’ wha’ dem a talk an’ wha’ dem a read. Me na know nut’in’.

  Beta, dis t’ing a mek me shame da t’ing a fail me. Me na wan’ go anywhere like party an’ t’ing deh me na wan’ go—me go shame. Dem a get book, dem a get t’ing fe read an’ me go siddung like a statue an’ watch. Me can tell you wha’ dem sing, but me jus’ watch. Wha’ me go do? Me na dunce? Me dunce. Da is me own.