The Braid

by Laetitia Colombani

  Smita pulls Lalita back and fights her way through the crowd, like a salmon swimming upriver.

  After several journeys back and forth across the station, a wealth of contradictory information and one—vain—attempt to ask a station official, Smita and Lalita find the train to Chennai, at last. They climb into the blue sleeper-class railcar. The dilapidated interior has no air-conditioning; cockroaches scuttle on the floor. Mother and daughter squirm their way into the packed railcar and find a tiny space on a bench seat. Twenty people have already piled into the space that measures barely a few square feet. Overhead, more men and women occupy the narrow upper bunks. Their legs dangle in midair. It will be a long journey: over 1,200 miles, crammed in like this. Theirs is a local service, cheaper than the express. It trundles along slowly and stops everywhere. A journey across India—what madness, thinks Smita. The whole of humanity is on the move, piled one on top of the other, suffocating, exhausted, in these third-class railcars. Everywhere there are families, babies, old people sitting on the floor or standing, packed so tight they can barely move.

  The first hours of the journey pass without difficulty. Lalita is asleep; Smita dozes in a half-conscious, dreamlike state. Suddenly the little girl wakes, desperate to use the toilet. Smita tries to make her way through with her daughter to the end of the railcar. It’s a dangerous business, difficult not to trample the many passengers sitting on the floor. She takes care but treads on someone by accident and earns a furious, shouted tirade.

  They reach the toilet door, to find it double locked. Smita tries to open it, bangs on it repeatedly with her fist. There is no point in trying, says an elderly, toothless woman with leathery, parchment-dry skin sitting on the floor nearby. They’ve been shut in there for hours. A whole family, looking for somewhere they could sleep and sit down. They won’t open up until the end of the line, everyone tells Smita. She hammers on the door, ordering then begging the family to come out. No point in shouting, says the old lady, others have tried before you. There is nothing to be done. My daughter really needs to go, whispers Smita. The old, toothless lady points to a corner of the railcar: just tell her to go there. Or wait for the next stop. Lalita looks paralyzed; she does not want to relieve herself in front of all the other passengers; she is only six years old, but already she has an acute sense of personal dignity. Smita makes it clear that she has no choice. They cannot risk getting off at the next stop, there will be too little time. At the previous station, one family was caught out—the platform was packed with people and they had been unable to get back on board the train. It had left without them, abandoning them in the middle of nowhere, in an unfamiliar station with no luggage and no money.

  Lalita shakes her head. She would rather wait. There will be a longer stop in an hour or two, in Jabalpur. She will hold on until then.

  A foul smell fills the railcar as they make their way back to their bench. The mixed stench of urine and excrement. It is the same at every stop. For many of the townspeople, the edges of the railway lines are their toilet. Smita knows that smell all too well: it’s the same anywhere, it knows no frontier, it ignores rank, caste, and wealth. She is used to it, but she holds her breath nonetheless, just as she did when making her rounds. She places a scarf over her nose, and does the same for Lalita. Never again. This is her promise to herself. Never again to have to hold her breath. To breathe freely, with dignity, at last.

  The train pulls away. The vile smell subsides, leaving the suffocating but less nauseating reek of cramped, sweaty bodies. Soon it will be midday. The heat is unbearable in the packed compartments, with a single fan to stir the fetid air. Smita makes Lalita take some water and gulps a few mouthfuls herself.

  The journey stretches out, dank and torpid. Some people are polishing their shoes. Others gaze out at the landscape through the half-open door or press against the barred windows, hoping for some fresh air, when all that pours in is the hot breath of the tropics. A man makes his way through the train reciting prayers and sprinkling water over the travelers’ heads, as a sign of blessing. A beggar sweeps the railcar floor and asks for a few rupees for its upkeep. He tells his miserable tale to anyone who will listen. He was working in the fields with his family in the north when the rich farmers came looking for his father, who owed them money. They had beaten him, broken his limbs, and torn out his eyes, then dragged him away by the feet, in front of his entire family. Lalita shudders at the horrific story. Smita scolds the beggar: he should go and sweep and tell his story somewhere else, there are children here.

  Beside her, a plump woman soaked in sweat talks about her journey to the temple in Tirupati to make an offering. Smita is roused from her torpor. The woman’s son had fallen ill, the doctors said there was no hope. A healer had advised her to make a temple sacrifice, and her son had been healed! Today, she was on her way to give thanks to Vishnu for the miracle by placing food and wreaths of flowers at the foot of his statue. To do so, she has undertaken a journey of several thousand miles. She complains about the conditions of travel, but that’s how it is, she says, adding: the god himself decides whether the path that leads to him is hard or painless.

  Night falls. In the railcar, people organize themselves to try to get some semblance of rest. The bench seats fold out into couchettes, but sleep is difficult nonetheless. Smita dozes off at last, hugging Lalita’s tiny body tight, beside the voluptuous woman. She thinks again about the promise she made to Vishnu before beginning her journey. She must keep her word.

  And so she makes a decision, there on the couchette, in the black of night, somewhere between the states of Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh: tomorrow, she and Lalita will not continue their journey to Chennai, as she had planned. When the train stops at the station in Tirupati, they will get down and climb the holy mountain to pay homage to their god. With that thought, Smita feels suddenly at peace and falls deeply asleep.

  Yes, Vishnu is waiting for them.

  Her god is here, at their side.

  Giulia

  Palermo, Sicily

  Giulia joined Kamal in the street, outside her house. She stood facing him and felt suddenly feverish. What was he going to say? That he loved her? That he didn’t want her to leave? Perhaps he was going to try to stop her, to prevent the senseless marriage. Giulia imagined a passionate embrace, long and sad goodbyes, like characters in the soaps Mamma watched all day long. But part they must.

  Kamal was not in the least bit tearful. Rather, he seemed excited, impatient. There was a curious light in his eyes. He spoke in a low voice, quickly, as if confiding a secret.

  I might have a solution, he told her, for the workshop.

  Without another word of explanation, he took her by the hand and led her to the sea, to their cave. Giulia could barely make out his features in the darkness. He had read her letter: the workshop didn’t have to close, he told her. He had a solution that could save them. She stared at him in disbelief—what was this strange energy that gripped him? Kamal was usually so calm, but now he seemed exultant, inspired. He carried on talking: the Sikhs’ code of conduct forbade them from cutting their hair, but there was no such rule for the Hindus in his country. Thousands of them cut their hair in the temples, he explained, as an offering to the gods. The act of shaving one’s head was sacred, but the hair itself was not: it was collected and sold on the open market. Some people had even built businesses around the practice. If the raw material for the workshop was in short supply here, he concluded, they must fetch it from India.

  Import. It was the only way to save the workshop.

  Giulia was at a loss for words. She felt amazement and disbelief all at once. Kamal’s idea seemed absurd. Indian hair. What a strange idea. Of course, she knew how to treat it. She knew her father’s chemical formula, how to discolor the hair until it turned milky white, ready to be dyed. She knew the formula, and the process. But the idea scared her. There was something barbaric about the idea of “importing”; the word had a foreign ring to it. It was not the lang
uage of here, of the little workshops. The hair that was treated and re-dyed by the Lanfredi came from Sicily, and always had. It was local hair, island hair.

  When a source runs dry, another must be found, said Kamal. If Italians were no longer selling their hair, the Indians were giving it away! People visited the temples in their thousands, every year. The hair was sold by the ton. A rich, virtually inexhaustible supply.

  Giulia didn’t know what to think. The idea seemed appealing one minute and totally beyond her grasp the next. Kamal was sure he could help her. He spoke the language, he knew the country. He could be the link between India and Italy. What a wonderful man this is, she thought. Anything seems possible to him. She felt cross at her own despair and skepticism.

  She walked home with her thoughts on fire. Her mind was jumping like a monkey in a cage. She found it impossible to calm down. She couldn’t sleep, it was pointless to try. She turned on her computer and spent the rest of the night searching feverishly.

  What Kamal had said was true. Online, she found pictures of Indian men and women in the temples. In hopes of a good harvest, a happy marriage, or better health, men and women would offer their hair to the gods. Mostly, they were “untouchable,” the poorest in society. Their hair was all they had to give.

  She read an article about an English businessman who had made a fortune importing hair. Now he was well-known all over the world and traveled in a private helicopter. Strands of Indian hair were delivered by the ton to his factory near Rome. The merchandise was flown to the airport at Fiumicino, then taken to an industrial estate on the north side of the city, where it was treated in vast workshops. Indian hair was the best in the world, declared the businessman. Reclining poolside at his villa near Rome, he explained how the hair was disinfected and disentangled, plunged into vats to be discolored, then dyed blond, chestnut, red, or auburn, made to resemble European hair exactly. We turn the black gold to blond, he said, with some satisfaction. Then the strands were sorted by length, collected into packets, and dispatched all around the world, to be made into extensions or wigs. Fifty-three countries, twenty-five thousand hair salons—the figures were dizzying! His company had become a multinational. People had joked about his strange idea at first, he said. But the business had prospered. Today, he employed five hundred people at production sites on three continents, he concluded proudly: 80 percent of the global market for hair.

  Giulia was doubtful. Everything seemed so simple to the English businessman. Could she do the same? How could she accomplish anything of the kind? Who did she think she was? Turning a family business into an industrial enterprise was a hopeless dream. And yet the Englishman had done it. And if he had succeeded, why not her?

  One question bothered her more than anything else: What would her father say? Would he support her plan? He always said you should think big, be bold and enterprising. But he was fiercely devoted to his island roots, his identity. Sicilian hair! he would say proudly, pointing to the strands. Would change mean betrayal?

  Giulia thought of his photograph in the office, beside those of his father and grandfather. Three generations of Lanfredi, succeeding one another at the head of the workshop. And she decided that to give up now would be treachery indeed. The destruction of everything they had worked for, all their lives: Wouldn’t that be the ultimate betrayal?

  Suddenly she wanted more than anything to believe in Kamal’s plan. The workshop would not go under. She would not marry Gino Battagliola. Kamal’s idea was a gift from heaven, a piece of luck, an act of providence. It’s the Costa Concordia, she had thought, staring at the contents of her father’s desk drawer, but it seemed to her now that a ship was advancing through the darkness to save them and throw them a life preserver.

  Suddenly she understood that she had not met this man by chance, on the Feast of Santa Rosalia. He had been sent to her. Heaven had heard her prayers and answered them.

  There it was, the miracle she had been waiting for.

  Smita

  Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh, India

  Tirupati! Tirupati!

  A man in the railcar is calling out the next stop. Soon, the train will reach the station in Tirupati. The brakes screech on the rails. Immediately, pilgrims pour out onto the platform, laden with blankets, luggage, tin pots, provisions, flowers, offerings, children in their arms, old people on their backs. Everyone presses toward the exit leading to the sacred mountain. Caught in the tide, unable to resist the flow, Smita clutches Lalita’s hand. Terrified that her daughter might be swept away, she takes her in her arms. The station seethes like an anthill. There are tens of thousands of people here. People say the sanctuary receives fifty thousand pilgrims every day, and ten times that on feast days. Everyone comes to honor Venkateswara, Lord of the Seven Hills, one of the forms of Vishnu. It is said he has the power to grant any request that is made in his presence. His huge statue lies within the temple sanctuary of Tirumala, at the top of the sacred hill, overlooking the town that spreads out at its foot.

  Surrounded by thousands of ardent worshippers, Smita feels a kind of exaltation mingled with terror. She feels tiny, an insignificant speck in this crowd, like nothing she has ever experienced before. And at the same time, she shares their excitement. Everyone has come here in the hope of a better life, or to give thanks for some favor, a piece of good fortune: the birth of a son, the healing of a loved one, a happy marriage.

  To reach the temple, some cram into the buses that, for a fare of forty-four rupees, take pilgrims to the top of the hill. But everyone knows that a true pilgrim climbs the hill on foot. Smita has not come this far to take the easy path now. She removes her sandals, and Lalita’s, too, in accordance with tradition. Many are doing the same, removing their shoes as a sign of humility before climbing the steps that lead to the sanctuary gates.

  Three thousand six hundred steps, about ten miles, three hours of effort! says a fruit seller sitting on the side of the path. Smita is worried about Lalita. The little girl is tired; they have barely slept on the uncomfortable, overcrowded train. But there is no turning back now. They will go at their own pace, if it takes them all day. Vishnu is watching over them, he has brought them here, they cannot fail him, now that they are so close. Smita spends a few rupees on some coconut, which Lalita devours hungrily. She keeps a whole nut to break on the first step as an offering to the god—as is the custom. Some light small candles, which they place on each step, others anoint the steps with bright ocher and purple pigment mixed with water. The most pious, determined pilgrims climb on their knees. Smita sees an entire family advancing slowly in this way, wincing with pain at each step climbed. Such self-denial, she thinks. She envies and admires them.

  A quarter of the way up, Lalita is showing signs of fatigue. They stop to drink and catch their breath. After an hour of walking, the little girl can take no more. Smita hoists her daughter’s tiny body onto her back for the rest of the climb. She is small and thin herself, and close to exhaustion, but she is determined to achieve her aim. She focuses her mind on the image of the beloved god, before whom she will soon be standing. Vishnu has given her extraordinary strength today, it seems, in order that she, Smita, might get to the top and prostrate herself before him.

  Lalita has been sleeping for a while when Smita completes her climb. She sits down in front of the temple gates, breathing hard. The holy space is enclosed by high walls. A gigantic white tower, in the Dravidian style, rises up into the sky. Smita has never seen anything like it. Tirumala is a world all of its own, more densely populated than a city. In accordance with tradition, no alcohol, meat, or cigarettes are sold here. Admission to the temple complex is by ticket—the cheapest is twelve rupees, an elderly pilgrim tells Smita. A crowd of people press forward to the ticket booths, at which a face appears from time to time. Smita understands now that the arduous climb was just a taster of what lies ahead. They will have to wait for hours before they can hope to enter the sanctuary.

  It is late, night is falling. Smita needs
to rest. She must sleep a little, at least try. A man approaches through the crowd of flower and souvenir sellers around the temple gates. He has seen her looking lost and utterly exhausted. There are free dormitories for the pilgrims, he tells her. He can show her the way. He peers into her face, and his gaze lingers over Lalita. He can take them there, in exchange for one or two favors. Smita grips her daughter’s hand and pulls her sharply away from the predator. And yet he had such a kind, friendly look, like an angel . . . She shudders at the thought of a night sleeping rough. Two females traveling alone are easy prey. They must find shelter, it is a matter of survival. A sadhu sitting at the side of the road, dressed in a yellow longhi—the Vishnuites’ color—points out which way she should go.

  The first dormitory is closed, the second is full. At the entrance to the third, an elderly woman announces that she has just one bed left. That doesn’t matter. Smita and Lalita have shared so much that they feel they are one and the same. They enter a run-down hall furnished with rows of simple beds placed one against the other. And despite the loud murmur filling the room, they sink into a deep sleep.

  Sarah

  Montreal, Canada

  Sarah had taken to her bed and stayed there for three days.

  Yesterday, she had called the doctor and asked him to sign her off work—for the first time in her career. She did not want to go back to the office. She couldn’t stand the hypocrisy, the unfair sidelining to which she had been subjected.