Inheritance

by Indira Ganesan

  “What will you do, Jani?” I asked finally, scared.

  “I am going into the convent.”

  “Convent!”

  “I’m devoting myself to God.”

  Eight

  My grandmother took Jani’s news badly.

  “What do you mean?” she screamed.

  “I’m better suited for a convent. I’m not made for this world,” said Jani.

  “Is it because you don’t like C.P.? You don’t have to marry him; we can look elsewhere.”

  “I don’t want to look anywhere. I’m becoming a nun.”

  “And what about our gods? Are they not enough for you?”

  “I’ve thought it over, and my mind and heart are clear,” said Jani.

  “Why do I have such strange girls around me?” moaned my grandmother, glaring at all of us, including my mother.

  When Jani said she wasn’t meant for this world, I was reminded of something else. A long time ago, something terrible had happened to Jani. A baby she was watching died. Little Jou-Jou was a cousin’s baby, and Jani at ten was asked to keep an eye on her while the mother was gone. Jani sat in a chair and for five minutes watched the baby’s face; Jou-Jou looked like an old woman with red eyes. Then Jani turned away and settled more comfortably in the chair, waiting for the mother’s return. How unimaginable it was that when the mother did come back, her smile of thanks to Jani turned into a shriek; the baby’s face was purple, its body still. It was one of those things that have no explanation. The mother, mad with grief and shock, grabbed Jani and shook her violently, screaming, “What have you done to my baby?”

  Grandmother had first told me the story while combing my hair, shaking her head with the sadness of the world. Jani had never mentioned it, but I vaguely knew she was uneasy about babies.

  Once, when an aunt unthinkingly offered Jani her baby to hold, Jani ran from the room. My grandmother had said that Jani was a delicate soul, a little different from the rest of us, having witnessed tragedy so young.

  But to become a nun! I never imagined that Jani would leave us. Up to the very moment of her departure, I kept on thinking that something would prevent it. I watched, desolate, while she packed a suitcase. Her closet was full of brightly colored saris and blouses she no longer had any use for, gauzy scarves that she bequeathed to me.

  “You’re not taking your shawl?” I asked, fingering the violet and pink cashmere I loved.

  “God will keep me warm,” she said, surveying her sandals.

  “But Grandmother gave it to you.”

  “I know.”

  “But she’ll be offended. You can’t leave it,” I said, packing it into her bag.

  She took it out, whereupon I fiercely put it back.

  “You’re being a pig,” I said, ready to cry.

  “No one asked you,” she said, pleading.

  We looked at each other.

  “So you don’t want to marry C.P. So what? You can be an unmarried teacher. You can take a job,” I said.

  “It wouldn’t work. I want to get away from everyone.”

  “Grandmother’s heart will give out—bang!”

  “I’m trying to pack peacefully,” Jani told me, exasperated.

  “Sure. You think you’re running away to sanctuary, but it’s all a big lie. You’ll be surrounded by a lot of fat old cows who’ll make you scrub the steps and wash the pots and pans,” I said.

  “You’re smarter than that.”

  “Well, C.P.’s going to get hurt. He’ll probably shoot himself, like Heathcliff,” I said, finally.

  “Heathcliff never shot himself.”

  “Don’t go, Jani,” I whined.

  “I have to.”

  “But I’ll be so unhappy.”

  “You’ll survive. It’s not like in your books—life is not romantic. Grandmother will survive, C.P. will survive, and I will, too,” she said.

  That was the way Jani left us. That day the world looked bleak and awful, and I thought I would go mad. But she was right, of course. We would survive this crisis, only I didn’t know it then. How hard it was for my young heart to hear it, I who believed that life was full of climaxes and conclusions, dramatic excess that could shatter or build like Shiva’s terrible eye. According to Jani, few were burned by the eye; the world was made up of those who lived, those who picked themselves up after the crossfire, who got on with it.

  Jani was declaring her lot with the common man, but I’d have none of it. I was fifteen and still wanted to believe that things were more exciting, that life was a brilliant and gorgeous jewel.

  Grandmother and I consoled each other. We were both in tears.

  “It’s those nuns who put such foolish ideas in her head,” she said to me. “If only she would get married, see that there is more to life than sadness and sighs to waste and while away the hours with.”

  “But Jani explained once to me that religion is beautiful. That there is no difference between many gods and one god,” I said.

  “Of course there isn’t. But to waste time with such philosophical notions instead of just tending to life itself. If you have a schedule, and my girl, you can learn from this too, if you have a schedule for your days to get up and receive the milk from the milkman, to make coffee for the household, to watch the servants who come to clean house …”

  “What if you don’t have servants?” I asked, remembering Jani had once told me that having servants was immoral.

  “Okay, no servants, then you do the work yourself. You go to the market and buy vegetables and make a meal or two or three at once. You sweep the house, you cut some flowers to bring in, you wash the clothes.”

  “But all that is work,” I said.

  “Work is what will get you through the days.”

  “I’m going to college,” I said. “I’m going to hire many servants or live in a fancy hotel when I’m grown.”

  “And what about me?”

  “You can live with me.”

  “We were talking of Jani.”

  “What about her?”

  “How it is necessary that she not throw her life away. Well, maybe this is a good thing. Maybe she will learn something from the convent.”

  “Maybe,” I said, doubtful.

  My mother’s sari rustled ominously nearby. I wondered why she hadn’t chosen a convent.

  Nine

  Jani’s departure left me with almost no one to talk to, so I began to go to the market frequently. Often, I saw Richard there. We would talk lazily about our childhoods and mutual interests. He told me how he had once longed to be a space explorer, and I told him how I had wanted to scuba dive. One day, when I was especially feeling Jani’s absence, he took me to visit his friend Maria. “She’ll cheer you up,” he promised.

  We set off for the northern part of town, which was just encroaching on the suburbs. The lawns had a very manufactured look: short and clipped identically.

  “Maria rents from an old dance instructor,” Richard told me. We passed through the gates of a handsome house, and went down to a side path edged messily with rose bushes. We came to a small bungalow with green shutters and a door framed in jasmine. The plaster was peeling, making large splotches on the walls. A stone Buddha was placed near a potted banana plant near the door.

  A woman with dark hair streaked with grey answered the door, her smile widening when she saw Richard and me. She greeted us warmly; evidently, Richard had spoken of me to her, a fact that gave me a curious thrill.

  She led us to a room that was cluttered with things: little curios of dancing Shiva, images of Laxshmi, smiling Buddhas, plants that trailed, three or four fishbowls, shawls tossed over chairs, pillows studded with mirror work, everything speaking of a woman who had traveled quite a bit. There was too much furniture: armchairs and sofas crowding one another, coffee tables that were piled with large books and trinkets. There was a clash of color permeating her home, chintz righting with plaid, stripes overlapping flowered fabric. I was used to a more streamlined
look from my family’s houses, but I supposed Maria’s place was very cozy to her, warm, with red and orange colors. One table held a typewriter and paper, an oasis amid the mess.

  She fetched us a tray loaded with sweets and savories and a tall pot of tea. She urged us to eat and helped herself as well. I couldn’t stop staring at her. She had an air about her that seemed to encompass freedom, and this wasn’t just because she didn’t wear a bra. She seemed more comfortable with herself than the women I knew. Only my mother had her air of carelessness, but while in my mother there was an undertone of defiance, in Maria there was only generosity. She had lived on Pi for four years and had known Richard for three. She and her daughter had traveled all over the map before setting off for Asia. Now her daughter was in London with her father, while she continued to write “silly romances” on the island.

  I felt privileged to meet her, I liked her because to me she seemed at once like someone you could trust. She told stories of meeting Richard when he looked bedraggled and carried a backpack.

  “And look at you now, terribly respectable.”

  Richard blushed, and I felt happy.

  Richard told Maria that I wanted to go to Radcliffe.

  “You want to leave the island? And India itself! How can you?”

  “I want to try someplace new,” I said, realizing after the words were out that I sounded like Jani.

  Maria seemed to think it was like running away. She told me that America might not hold such a sweet life.

  “Do not put your life on hold, or wait until you escape to another world to start living your life as you want. While it is true you might start another stage, another phase, you cannot ignore the life you are in. I say this because I used to put my life on hold constantly. I used to say, when I get a car, I can enjoy the museum in the next town. This instead of merely taking a bus to the museum. After I lose weight, I’ll buy the red dress. It’s a Western notion, this idea of punishment and reward. Guru-ji tells us what the hippies used to say: Be here now. But enough lecture,” she said, sitting back.

  “No, go on,” I urged, wanting to hear more.

  “People always think they can start anew in some new town. But every time you move, you are either running toward something or running away from something.”

  Then she stopped and began to laugh.

  “I should talk, look at me here.”

  “Were you running from something?”

  “My husband, yes, my old life, my old friends. I thought Pi could answer my need to launch a new life.”

  “Has it done so, do you think?”

  “It is different, yes, and I don’t tire of it. At least, not yet.”

  “Maria is the most contented woman I know,” said Richard.

  We ate more snacks and drank more tea. Maria described her books, fairy tales retold as romances set all over the world. Essentially girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl and boy find each other in the end. The same theme as found in the Tamil and Hindi popular films. She showed us the galleys for her latest, called Last Hope, Last Time. It was scribbled over in blue pencil, accompanying her editor’s notations.

  “I’m wildly successful. It’s so odd because I came to Pi to simplify my life, and yet I’ve had fortune beyond my expectations.”

  She told me that she had begun writing in the eighth grade, that she had tried her hand at protest plays in Oklahoma and then New York, but the audiences were small and there were always squabbles among the actors. She taught drama for a while in a community college but gave that up when her daughter was born. She was writing romances when her husband asked for a divorce, and two years later, she moved to Pi. Friends of hers had recommended it to her as a restful tropical island and had told her also about Guru-ji, a meditation leader and a follower of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. At first I thought it was the same guru that Richard had spoken of, but I soon realized my mistake. This guru just led Yoga and classes on breathing and also performed some religious functions.

  It occurred to me that foreigners latched onto gurus when they came to the island because it gave them a sense of community and some direction to their lives in a foreign place. Maria told me she was a Buddhist, a practitioner even in the United States, when the conversation veered toward religion. Foreigners liked to speak of religion more than islanders did, I thought, but maybe that wasn’t the case.

  My own beliefs were varied. Raised a Hindu, I took part in the daily prayer and ritual in my aunts’ household and in my grandmother’s home. I grew up with the images of the idols, and loved to hear the stories about them over and over. I didn’t dwell on ideas of God and religion, though; it was just a part of ordinary existence.

  I thought of Jani, and all of that Christianity, that Catholicism contained in her. Where did it spring from? My schools in Madras and hers in Delhi were either Catholic, nondenominational, or Muslim. In our books in English, the writers often wrote of Christians and heathens, and in my thirteenth year, I realized that I must be a heathen in their eyes. It was a shocking discovery and made me leery of Christianity. But Jani was befriended by one of the nuns at her college, Sister Ava, who gave her a Bible.

  The Bible was illustrated, and Jani showed me the pastel renderings of the Holy Family. I thought Mary looked a little like Jackie Kennedy, dark haired, elegant, noble. There was a story about a good Samaritan who helped a fallen man, and Jani told me about his piety in helping strangers. She made Catholicism sound attractive, but still I wanted her to believe in Hinduism, in our gods. Gently, Jani admonished me, asking, “Aren’t all gods equal?” Modern Hinduism, after all, absorbed Jesus into its fold, Buddha too, and Muhammad.

  When I had earlier spoken to Richard about it, he talked of Existentialism, of the nonbelief in God. Atheism and Agnosticism. He believed in a higher power, but not in organized religion as manifested in the twentieth century, or even in the Middle Ages. I had read of the Middle Ages in the West, and told him that I admired King Arthur and Galahad and the quest for the Holy Grail, but I still liked Hinduism best.

  “That’s equally offensive as not liking Catholicism.”

  “But I do like Catholicism.”

  “But you like Hinduism best.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But what?”

  “I don’t know, Richard. I think it’s dangerous to step away from the religion in which you were raised and embrace something new.”

  “Maybe it’s the danger that attracts Jani.”

  “But she’s scared of marriage!”

  “She wouldn’t be the first. Maybe she chose the Catholic God and the convent to safely unleash all the terror inside her. Maybe she could only express her courage by running away.”

  And then I thought of my mother and the possibility of her courage in running away from me. Maybe I represented domesticity to her, responsibility, yet how was this courageous? Running away seemed cowardly.

  “The I Ching speaks of retreat, the courage to know when to step back from battle and gather strength before reentering the fray later,” said Richard.

  Richard spoke a great deal about the I Ching, a yellow-bound book about great knowledge achieved through change. It was printed in the Bollingen series by Princeton University Press, One of my aunts had a copy; sometimes we kids used it as a fortune-telling game, opening the book randomly after posing a question, I knew that “Pi” for instance in the I Ching meant “grace.”

  “A period of grace in one’s life,” explained Richard. “That’s why this island is special.”

  I agreed, although my mind was still on Hinduism and Catholicism. We approached Maria with the argument; being Buddhist, perhaps she could be detached and neutral.

  “Religion takes different forms, and all gods are the same God,” she said, bringing us more to eat.

  “What about your daughter, what religion is she?” I asked.

  “She is not Buddhist. I don’t think she subscribes to any particular religion. She’s dating a Jewish boy, and I think they attend ser
vices together.”

  “Where would she stand on this issue?” I asked, not wanting to let it go.

  “Well, the Western notion is to choose your own religion, make up your own mind. So perhaps she would say Jani has the right to choose Catholicism. Whether she’s right or wrong to step away from Hinduism, it is her own choice,” said Maria.

  “Hinduism accepts all religions,” I repeated, wanting very much to defend my religion.

  “But it refuses to accept converts,” said Richard. “You have to be born a Hindu.”

  “At least it doesn’t have rice missionaries, bribing the poor with food for conversion.”

  “And what about the corrupt priests?”

  I don’t think we came to any big conclusion, just that we spoke of it, something that perhaps my aunts would frown on. Religion and politics are best kept to one’s own self, they felt, even though our family had taken part in the Freedom Movement in India and was vocal about its choices then. But that was a special occasion, they’d say; the matter is closed. Yet another door shut.

  I thought about fate, how it cast us into different religions, mostly inherited.

  “Of course, if one didn’t believe in fate, one could say we choose our own boxes of religion,” said Richard.

  “As a people, we stand in our boxes and shout at one another. Until one box breaks, one rule gets broken, one religion pursues another,” said Maria.

  My mother broke the rules twice at least, once to couple with a North Indian to produce Savitri, and once to couple with an American—an American something—to produce me. Such transgressions lead to bad consequences, my neighbors would say, if not in this life, then the next. I wondered if I would be held accountable for her actions. Where had I heard that daughters were born to punish mothers for past sins? Already, I was a bit of a pariah at school for being illegitimate, and I knew that when the time came for me to marry, my mother’s reputation would be an obstacle for the boy’s family. Hinduism had strict codes of conduct. Yet my mother didn’t seem to feel guilt. She just didn’t care.