Around the corner the Tiwari brothers had installed a high-speed, cost-efficient telephone system that anyone could use without spending thousands of rupees per call to the United States. I went in, touched my hand to my heart in greeting, and stepped into the glass booth to dial my home phone number.
“Hello?” It was Emily.
“Em! It’s Raim. What’s up?” I asked.
“Raim! How are you? What are you doing?”
“I just had chai with Mae and Jegga—they send their regards,” I said. “I am so excited to come home! I can’t believe I leave India in a matter of days.” I was leaving to go to Delhi in two days. The flight from Delhi would put me in transit for at least twenty-nine hours with a layover in Amsterdam.
Silence.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
“Well, there’s something that I need to tell you.” She hesitated. “We were talking about you coming back home and Pap sat the family down on the couch. ‘I think Raimie is gay,’ he said. Mom looked at me and I looked at Emile who got up from the living room and went into the kitchen.” Emile was never good at lying. “I asked Pap, ‘What makes you say that?’” Emily continued. “‘It’s just a feeling I get. Raimie said that he used to believe that prayer worked, and I think that he prayed not to be gay and when that didn’t work, he decided not to believe in God.’
“‘And if he is?’ Mom asked.
“And then he said, ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.’”
Silence. I watched the red numbers counting my time on the phone flicker.
“Well, at least no one admitted knowing, even though you all did. Pap can just go on pretending like he doesn’t know.” We both laughed.
“Oh, rass,” I ended our phone call. At least now I knew that Pap knew. I walked around the corner and up the steps into the house where I rented a room. It was time for me to rejoin my family. There was something that I needed to do for them, to connect me fully to the people I came from. I showered and changed my clothes.
The next morning I put on a white kurta and dhoti, both newly bought. I walked down from the third floor of the Yadav’s house and into the gully where the neighbors kept their water buffalo. I passed the temple on my left and climbed down the stairs. I turned onto the walk and headed toward Tulsi Ghat—the peaceful ghat where the poet Tulsidas was said to have written the Awadhi version of the Sri Ramcharitmanas that my Nana and Aji both cherished. I had collected a different version of this story through songs, and this felt right to me, too.
I waded in the water. The mud was hot on the river floor and it grabbed my feet as I walked into the brown water up to my chest. I took three handfuls of the Ganga and prayed over it and offered it to the sun.
I offered water for all of the ancestors that I knew, calling them each by name. I offered water for the ancestors whose names my family had forgotten. I offered water for my family, for Mom, Pap, Emily, Emile, and Emile’s first child. I offered water for all those my brother and sister would bring into the world and for their offspring, too.
They say that bathing in the Ganga washes your sins away. I had many. Maybe it also helped to lessen the damage of our destitution through colonization, too, on some otherworldly level.
Varanasi was the home of the poets Tulsidas, Kabir, and Ravidas, among others. People were warned never to go and live in Varanasi because the city would infect you with poetry and God-fever.
Now I was ready to leave.
Prayer
The water winds pink with grit
where the Varuna stream
meets the Assi, the City of Light,
the city of Vishwanath and Ganga,
of silks, weavers, and paan,
on the ghats flower garlands,
clay chai cups, women in saris sing
with a dholak, at dawn the adhan calls
the city to prayer while downriver,
a man bathes his buffaloes’ black skin
while bodies smolder on pyres,
pilgrims gather here to disappear
into eternity, a boatman says,
Live here long enough
and you will lose your mind
to God, look at Ravidas
and Tulsidas—look at Kabir,
bathing here removes sin;
once King Bhagirath performed
tapasya the waters crashed down
from heaven, through Shiva’s dreads
to free his ancestors, but he performed a yagna
and I do not know any mantras—
as the first of my family to wade into the silt
for one hundred twenty-five years,
I hold each name
I remember as a prayer,
I cup my palms to the sun.
I offer water for Taylor, for Emile, for Emily,
for Surjnarine, Anjani Devi,
for Bhagwati Gangadai, Sewdass, Mahabir,
for Lachman, Phulkumari, Janghbahadur, Anupiya,
for Lakpat Singh, Tukrayan, Jakti Singh, Rampur-Nani Nandrani,
for Hari Prashad, Emma Louisa Vera,
for Sant Ram Mahraj, Etwariya, Arthur Vera, Maude Janaki Watson,
for Kisnasamy.
Pap
WHEN I RETURNED to the United States, thirty pounds lighter than when I left from being infected with three parasites—ascaris lumbricoides, paratyphoid, and giardia—I was greeted by my family and friends holding signs that said, Welcome Home Raimie. India had changed me. But not in the spiritual sense that I had been expecting. Yes, I wore the kurta pajamas, the dhotis, the prayer beads made from amethyst to help my third eye open. And open it did. I saw that the ways that I used to think of India had been Orientalist. India was not any more spiritually advanced than the West—it was marketed to be so by The Beatles. It was a place of beauty, yes, and also dire poverty. I couldn’t wait to tell Aji in person what I had done when I was there.
Old calypso blared from the tape deck. It was like I was eight years old again, taking a road trip from Orlando to Toronto to see Aji. Pap and I drove the 190 to the Queen Elizabeth Highway from Buffalo to Brampton. I couldn’t understand all of the words—it was as though they were submerged in water and tinny. He sang the lyrics with relish, savoring their brine, a salt wind that once held the promise of crossing the sea to London where he would study with his older brother and wine the women with his faux British accent and penchant for American country music.
Pap sang:
Dove and Pigeon were two good companions
I say, Dove and Pigeon were two good companions
But because of jealousy they both start to disagree
So Pigeon call a contest to prove to Dove that he is best.
His singing Lord Nelson betrayed this mask made of tinned fish cans—everything foreign was somehow better than what was in the jungle. As a youth he must have turned up the radio every chance he got. Somehow the music would make him more American. Maybe I would do the same with Bollywood music? He wanted us to call him Papa but with British accents. Paa-pa for poppa—like the A in apple. The white flesh so alluring, he surely wanted it as his own.
Eventually as his beard grayed and he filled out from medium to large to extra-large, we shortened it to Pap. Pappy. Southern. Emily, Emile, and I grew into our skins in Florida after all. And now, the radio played his childhood in Guyana from its ribbons and magnetism.
He smiled as though there was a life we could never know, just beyond the strip of highway where we were headed, someplace where his kin waited for him with rum and his mother’s pepper sauce. The tar of the road was Kalapani, black water, leading him home. Or maybe home was a moving target. He would whisper on the phone to his sisters and change his tone when I walked into the room. He’d smile, thinking he was holding a secret. I looked at him, back down to a medium, his skin blowing like white hair in the wind of the opened window. I had never known this man, this Pap.
Pap hated himself. Where he was from. The gods that sang him into life.
After we came to the United States, he did his best to keep us from knowing our Indianness.
He would rather have silence than Sanskrit, hell than Hindi. To him everything Coolie was backwardness in motion. Our food. Our language. Our customs. Even our names. He started going by Glenn instead of his Surjnarine. These were the unspoken rules in the house until, at fifteen, I read the Ramayana for myself—a gift from a friend’s mother.
Pap was furious about this self-acculturation and my interest in Hindi language—at least until he was with friends from “back home,” and my hard-won knowledge was something he could leverage for social cachet. Like the lyrics to the songs from his childhood films.
“What does mera jivan kora kagaz mean?” Auntie Sonia asked to test me once. “My life is a blank page.”
I turned up the volume and looked out of the window as upstate New York parted its green hills.
I didn’t have to figure; I knew Dove was smarter
Pigeon sure he had Dove covered
So he decide they would eat some pepper
He say, “One thing you must remember.
Eat all you want, don’t ask for water.”
Dove smile and said, “Agree.”
And they both flew on the pepper tree.
I asked, “Do you think that Aji will be buried like a Christian or cremated like a Hindu?”
Pap looked over from the steering wheel. “What do you mean? She’s a Christian.”
“No, she certainly is not.” I did not make eye contact, just stared out of the window at the gray sky. This would be my first time seeing Aji since coming back from India. We were on our way to Toronto to celebrate the nikkah of one of Pap’s friend’s daughters but would stay with Aji. The bride’s father and Pap were friends in Guyana. Though it would be a dry wedding, as both the bride and groom were Muslim, it was to be a big affair.
“You think you know my own mother better than I do—than the rest of her children do?” He puffed up his chest. Pap pointed a finger at my face. “She’s my mother.”
I wanted to break his hand. Instead I sang:
Coo coo coo-coo bansimande
Necky yecky bansimande, wayo wayo bansimande
You mustn’t say, suuuu-haaa, you mustn’t say, suuuu-haaa
And nobody shouldn’t say, suu-haa, suu-haa, suu-haa.
I knew this song pretty well. When Pap was happy, he was all grace notes and melodies. When he was angry, he was a storm of fists and riding crops against child legs and arms. I sang along under my breath. These songs were different from Aji’s, the songs I studied in India, but still they were home, Creole and ballad-like.
We drove a little farther. I knew that when my aunts would see me they would say, “Oh, look how dark you’ve become,” or “My, Raimie, you’ve really put on some weight,” even though I was parasite-thin. The road was a hum of asphalt and rubber that father and son knew well. Silence between us grew. I had secrets, too—like how I wished then that I could have a father as a friend.
What did he see when he looked at me? I said out of nowhere, “Do you know the story of Ardhnarishwar?”
“No. Who’s da?” He thought he was being funny, speaking in Creole—it was his language of joking.
“It’s a deity that’s half Shiva and half Parvati. Part male and part female.”
“Na na na na na na na. I don’t want to hear about anything like that,” he snapped.
“But it’s interesting and important,” I insisted. He was committed to ignoring me and my faggotry until one of us died.
“Why don’t you ever want to talk about the weather or cars?” he asked. I looked at him. The car’s interior was a dull gray plush. The lining of the windows, gray. The dashboard, gray. The carpets, gray. Colorless and bland—like my relationship with my father. He didn’t actually want to know anything about me. It was easy for him—he wanted an uncomplicated relationship that required minimal effort. He wanted me to worship him as the paragon of masculinity. I wondered if he knew the story about Raja Hiranyakashipu.
Pap pulled up at the nearest rest area and slammed the door as he got out of the car. I went to the field on the side of the rest area and picked a few wildflowers. When I got back to the car, I put the dandelion and Queen Anne’s lace in the air conditioning vents. As soon as Pap returned, he pulled the flowers out and threw them out the window.
Coming with Pap was the only way that I could afford to visit Aji. She said that she had been dreaming of Aja. I never knew Aja except by stories. He was a strapping man with a barrel chest. Aji said that I resembled him, though she also said that to my other cousins. Aja was a merchant, studied in school, and was capable in rudimentary reading—so the stories go—but I was left wondering what was true and what was familial exaggeration. If I believed everything my father said about his father, then my Aja was a giant with the power of ten oxen, multilingual, and American before being American was cool.
Aja was born in Berbice and lived in Crabwood Creek—I heard from Auntie Pini, my father’s cousin, that he was an alcoholic, drunk and swinging in his hammock in the bottom house by eight in the morning. Aja wanted a different life for his children and forced them to attend the Lutheran missionary school that set up shop on the north part of his property—a deal struck for land: your children could be educated for free.
The pastors required their parishioners to forget the perfume of sandalwood, the sohar songs that the aunties and mothers sang during the first nine days of a baby’s birth.
They had to turn away from Phagwa’s explosion of spring colors, to the clay, ghee, and warmth of Diwali flame. They had to change their names from Hindu ones to Christian names.
The pastor came from Canada. To him, Christian meant anything legible in North America. Many people in Crabwood Creek did this nominally, so I was told by Uncle Naresh. Pap didn’t. Pap changed his name from Surjnarine to Glenn and performed his holiness as a Christian man.
I smirked to myself as we drove. Whatever, Glenn. The song played its saccharine hum.
This time Dove eating and singing,
Bouncing, flapping his wing
Pigeon sure how he winning,
Eating like a champ, won’t say a thing
Then all the birds gather ‘round to see what was going on
Still Pigeon kept up the pace,
Confident he go win the race.
Pap drove on, enjoying his brief foray into the Caribbean. I knew why this kind of calypso was big—it hid the trauma of being the son of an alcoholic. It allowed some kind of respite from feeling poverty. It let listeners imagine themselves as clever and as victors. What was life in Guyana like for him? I had been to Crabwood Creek once and it was very much how I imagined a developing nation would be: there was a road surrounded by black water trenches. Houses were built on stilts. People were poor, but they seemed to respect each other. Then why did Pap have so many stories about people who were idiots, people that he fooled?
Like the story of how he, Ghost, and Madan took a white sheet and hid in the trench one night. As the dhoti-clad pandit rode his bike down the lane, Milky Way in full view, they jumped out and frightened him. The pandit lost control of his bike and landed in the mud chanting the Hanuman Chalisa as protection against the evil spirit. He should have prayed for protection against evil-spirited children.
But to Pap this was more than just a prank. It somehow showed just how stupid people in Crabwood Creek were to him and his family. Especially Hindus. Even though he was born a Hindu—to two Hindus. He must have learned in Christian school how to hate where he came from. One way for him to distance himself from his neighbors was to believe that his new American affect made him better than his neighbors. He showed up to school one day in blue jeans and an Elvis pompadour. Everyone else wore their school costumes and Coolie hair.
Did Pap have to believe that he was superior to everyone in order to survive—in order to make a life that his father would be proud of? A life far from the rain forest and hassa? Is this
why he preferred calypso to chutney songs—because with Harry Belafonte, calypso had more purchase in the Western world than Sundar Popo? For me, music was a vehicle into the deepest folds of memory. Pap had never been very forthcoming with his motivations. I looked at him. I could smell nostalgia and regret. He held countless secrets.
Pap moved to London when he was twenty-one. He admitted that he may have another son somewhere in the world, much to the shock of my mother, brother, sister, and me. His sisters sat together and said things like It’s so sad that Surj gave up his first child and now his family doesn’t even want him around.
I could imagine what life was like for him in London—he always said that he had to send money back to his mother, to Aji, for her to take care of the rest of the children. Pap was one of thirteen. Well—Aja had thirteen children and Aji had eleven. The other two, the firstborn, were the children of Multajin, a Muslim woman whom Aja “married” by common law and then hid in a chicken coop from his parents. Pap had followed Aja’s lead. Did my secret brother have Pap’s sharp nose? His rounded face and broad shoulders? Did he stand five-eleven and drink his tea with tinned milk? Did my brother smoke cigarettes and drink El Dorado? Did my brother ever beat his children until they were black-and-blue with a riding crop that he hid in his bed’s headboard? Did he call his sons fat? Had my brother ever told his faggot son never to call him father?
Friends, I know you won’t believe me
But Sparrow was there, if I lie just ask he
When the pepper start to burn Pigeon
He spin round twice, Bip! he fall down
Dove start to jump up with glee up and down the pepper tree
He said, “Now take a tip from me.
Our friendship done because of jealousy.”
And here we drove across North America to see his mother. I looked at him and I didn’t even really know him. What did he think about love? What were his life’s regrets? Did he think that he’d outsmarted us all with the little effort he invested in our family? Did he ever love my mother? Could I ever forgive this man?
Antiman Page 9
