The Lost Girls

by Jennifer Baggett

  Curiosity now got the best of me, and I asked Sunil about his own upcoming wedding. Sunil was twenty-eight, the same age as us, and his bride was twenty-five. He’d invited the three of us to the wedding happening that spring in the Himalayas, but by then we’d already be in Southeast Asia.

  As he explained that his wedding celebration would last four days and would have two dozen costume changes, Jen’s eyes widened in fascination. Jen loves dressing up and going to black-tie affairs and weddings, so the idea of extending festivities for days rather than merely hours must have sent her brain into fantasy overload. However, it was much harder for the three of us to stomach the idea that Sunil would have to wait for the wedding to see his bride-to-be in person for the first time. That gave a whole new meaning to “saving it for marriage.”

  “So do you think arranged or love marriages are better?” I asked.

  “Both are good, but an arranged marriage is much more successful.” He said he’d had a love relationship once in college, but his parents had made him break it off.

  “If I defied my parents and married her for love, I would inherit nothing.” Sunil thought love marriages were more apt to fall apart because there’s too much pressure that comes with being estranged from your family and cut off from your inheritance.

  “What do women do who don’t want to get married?” Amanda asked, and I laughed. Generally the one of us with the most spunk, Amanda never thought you had to do something just because everyone else was doing it. Sunil gave us yet another glance in the rearview mirror that suggested he thought we were uncivilized—or maybe just plain crazy.

  When we’d arrived in Delhi a few days earlier, it had been like landing on another planet. Nothing was ordinary to us, and we were thrilled to be in a place that felt so, well, foreign. Venturing outside our dingy, $12-a-night hotel, we’d stepped right into a chaotic side alley clogged with rickshaws, women frying cumin-laced rice in pans near the roadside, and half-naked children scrubbing themselves down with soap in the gutter. Packs of kids grabbed at our skirts, trying to sell us everything from postcards to bracelets to gum. The air smelled like curry, car exhaust, and jasmine from the garlands women sold on the streets, and tinny, warbled lyrics sung by invisible Bollywood stars ricocheted down from radios perched in open windows. It was both awesome and disorienting.

  We quickly learned that three white women wandering around without male escorts attracted much more attention in India than anywhere we had visited so far. We’d been in Delhi barely a day, and already numerous men had “accidentally” bumped into our breasts as we strolled along the congested sidewalks. And soon we’d traded in one type of adventure for another.

  We’d walked into a tourist office to grab a few maps to help us get our bearings and walked out with Sunil, who had strong-armed us into an all-inclusive tour. Though this was not our usual traveling style, we were all bewildered by our newest surroundings. It was a relief to let a guide choose which temples to visit and hotels to book.

  With Sunil in the driver’s seat, our first destination was arguably one of the greatest monuments to love of all time: the Taj Mahal. None of us had been to the Taj before, and, like a lot of tourists, we didn’t want to leave India without seeing the legendary site. Besides, with Elan on the other side of the world, it’d been a while since I’d experienced any romance, and I was eager to witness that famous testament of one man’s undying devotion to his beloved.

  The story goes that Shah Jahan had the marble tomb built after his favorite wife died (apparently he had others) so that a symbol of their love would last forever. He supposedly fell for her at first sight, and she gave him fourteen children. (If that’s not a reason to love your wife, I don’t know what is.) Set on the banks of the Yamuna River, the Taj took some twenty thousand workers more than seventeen years to finish.

  Driving through Agra on the way to the Taj was like sifting through dirt to get to the buried treasure—the city was filthy and poverty-ridden. The air was filled with both burning brush and body odor. Monkeys and dogs marked their territory atop piles of trash, and men shat on the roadside. The Taj was the diamond in the rough, and to help protect its delicate marble from pollution such as car exhaust, vehicles had to park far away from the site.

  As soon as the three of us left the safety of Sunil’s car (well, safe now that it wasn’t in motion), we were surrounded by more suffering than I’d seen even in the line of sick patients waiting outside Sister Freda’s clinic. On our walk to the Taj, barefoot toddlers with rags falling off their bony bodies put fingers to their mouths, gesturing for food. A guy dragged himself down the dusty path, carrying what appeared to be his own leg in his hands. Children grabbed at our clothes and bags, begging us to buy their postcards.

  My first instinct was to move closer to Amanda and Jen and to block out the suffering, because I was scared and uncomfortable. But Esther and Sister Freda’s faces were with me now. Having had the chance to talk to them, to get to know them a little, had blotted out my instinct to run away, and I wished I knew how to do it again here, even as a tourist. Was it possible to move beyond seeing those in front of me as beggars before I saw them as people just like myself?

  I forced myself to slow down, to make eye contact with a girl, probably about five years old, clutching a handful of postcards. When she held them out to me hopefully, I stopped and asked her for her name. “Padma,” she said. I crouched down to sift through her collection of images of that famous mausoleum at different times of the day, pretending to consider each one carefully. Then I selected three and handed her some rupees. She yelled, “Thank you!” as she laced her fingers around mine to shake my hand. I smiled at her as I stood, and suddenly there was a frenzied mass of kids pressing up against me from every side and thrusting postcards and gum into my face. This time I pushed past, jogging to catch up with Jen and Amanda. I looked back to see the kids all circling around Padma.

  Falling into step beside Jen and Amanda, we joined the long line of pilgrims—Indians, Europeans, and Asians—that radiated out from the sandstone gateway. Both barefooted children and men dressed in crisp white shirts grabbed at those in line, offering tour-guide services.

  We crossed the threshold of the gates inscribed with words from the Koran, a legacy left by the Muslim rulers known as Mughals. Once inside, we were greeted by immaculate open space, acres of manicured lawn, and gardens exploding in full bloom; the sandstone mausoleum that housed the queen’s body was reflected serenely in a rectangular pool. Each building looked symmetrical, a mirror image of the other.

  We continually snapped our cameras to capture the play of light caused by the setting sun as the sandstone shifted from lotus white to buttercup yellow to marigold orange. Then a shadow fell over my lens, and I looked up to see a group of Indian tourists standing in front of us.

  “Can we have a picture, madam?” asked an Indian Ashton Kutcher in aviator sunglasses.

  “Of course,” I replied, reaching for his camera. But he pulled the camera away, handed it to his friend, and gestured for Jen and Amanda to come closer.

  “I think he wants a picture of us,” said Amanda, surprised. We stood awkwardly next to the guy, who casually threw his arm around my shoulders. His friend clicked the shutter and thanked us. Not knowing what to say, we flashed him a smile before walking away.

  “That was strange,” said Jen.

  The same thing happened at least half a dozen more times. Parents wanted a shot of us holding their charcoal-eyelined infant, groups of teenage girls with bindis fanned around us to pose with the reflecting pool in the backdrop, a family of six arranged themselves next to us according to height.

  “Now I know what it feels like to be a D-list celebrity,” Amanda joked. When we asked Sunil why so many Indians wanted pictures with us, he gave a vague explanation that getting shots with Westerners at famous landmarks was a prized souvenir they could show their friends, sort of like a status symbol. Funny, we felt the same way about having our pictures t
aken next to them.

  Sunil eventually played the role of bodyguard, denying any more photo requests. “We will never finish this tour if you keep stopping for pictures!” he scolded, as if we were his kids instead of clients.

  The woman in a red sari bent over to remove her shoes, and the part in her hair was a matching shade of blood red. Much like Westerners wearing wedding rings, some Indian women apply a vermilion paste to symbolize that they’re married. I smiled shyly at her and glanced down at my own $2 rubber sandals, slipping them off my feet, as was customary before entering a temple.

  Jen and Amanda slid out of their black flip-flops. They were both dressed in ankle-length skirts purchased in the labyrinth of shops lining the streets of Delhi. The three of us stood on the threshold of the lotus-flower-shaped sanctuary called the Baha’i House of Worship, adjusting our shawls to make sure our shoulders were covered.

  The silence inside was thick as we followed the woman’s lead to sit on a cool marble bench. I can’t say how long we stayed there in that airy space, savoring the stillness that wrapped around us after so many days being immersed in honking horns, Bollywood beats, and vocal vendors.

  Sunil had taken us to the temple after I bombarded him with questions about the difference between the Hindu deities I’d seen the last time I was in India, such as Ganesh with his elephant head and Shiva with his necklace of snakes. I’d been drawn to the country’s hodgepodge of temples, mosques, shrines, and churches and felt like I’d stepped into an otherworldly, spiritual mecca whenever I spotted a sign of everyday devotion, such as fruit placed inside a household shrine or a street stall overflowing with flower garlands for prayer offerings.

  Seeing those connections to a higher power all throughout India had made me want to cling to it like a safety blanket the first time I’d visited. The way many Indians practice little acts of faith in the middle of, say, going to the market reminded me that just being alive is sacred in and of itself. As I experienced more of how people everywhere found comfort in faith, moments stuck in my mind like a collage: the knickknacks left by the porters on the Inca Trail as offerings to the gods; Sister Freda clutching the cross around her neck; my own grandmother, fingering the rosary she always took with her to Mass.

  Echoing the message of Gandhi, Sunil refused to be pinned down to any one religion. “I am Hindi, Muslim, and Buddhist—God is found in all beliefs,” he said. So it was fitting that he took us to the Baha’i House of Worship, which welcomes all regardless of what religion they align with. Most Indians are Hindus, and Hinduism’s umbrella of different deities struck me as one big rainbow of gods and goddesses that each represented a different wavelength of a single universal Being. Hindus believe God is everywhere and have lived next to the Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, and Jews of the subcontinent for centuries.

  Once we’d risen to our feet and tiptoed back outside, the white petal-shaped temple suddenly reminded me of Disney’s Epcot Center. We scanned the central walkway for a food cart. Beads of sweat broke out on my nose as the sun beat down on our heads. “Ice cream would be really good now!” I said, knowing we were more apt to encounter savory treats such as bhaja (vegetable fritters) and vadai (spicy doughnuts).

  “That guy is selling mangoes on sticks!” Jen pointed toward a cart stationed near the parking lot, and we practically skipped down the concrete path. Amanda handed the vendor a few rupees, which reminded me of colorful Monopoly money except that each note was stamped with Gandhi’s face. The vendor handed back three mangoes on a stick, and as we hunted for a spot to sit and enjoy them, we dodged others touting bracelets or curried cashews.

  By this point, we’d developed a highly effective strategy for escaping the clutches of aggressive vendors. After reading that guides often scored commissions for delivering tourists to shops, we weren’t shocked when Sunil pulled up to a street lined with stores so we could “meet his friends.” Knowing it was part of the tour-guide/client transaction, we politely sat through demonstrations on how to make mosaics and silk saris before being draped in fabrics and jewels in not-so-subtle sales pitches.

  That didn’t mean we had to buy anything, however. The girls and I tried many unsuccessful attempts to deter them with put-offs. Amanda’s “These shirts just aren’t my style” was met with “No problem, madam! We can sew whatever style you like!” Damn! “Unfortunately, I don’t have any more room in my backpack,” Jen said, trying another angle. “That is why we offer international shipping at cheap price for you, madam!” the expert salesman shot back. Thwarted again!

  Through trial and error, I’d finally discovered the one excuse that actually worked: “This fluorescent orange sari is, um, stunning, but I’ll have to ask my husband before I can buy anything.” That stopped the vendors’ onslaught instantly, and they responded only by pressing a business card firmly into my hand and ordering me to bring my husband back.

  But the same novelty I found so exciting also kept me feeling like a child learning how to act in the world. Even the most mundane interactions were grounds for a communication breakdown: at first I thought Indians wobbling their head from side to side were shaking it no when they actually meant yes. And sitting next to a man in a rickshaw quickly turned into a version of musical chairs as he moved to the other side to take a seat further away, then repeated the process again when Amanda hopped in beside him. Apparently, it’s too intimate for an unmarried woman to sit so close to a man.

  So I was happy to take a little rest and simply sit cross-legged in some spongy grass near the temple, sucking sweet juice from the mangoes.

  “Excuse me, madam?” I squinted up through the midday sun to see the woman in the red sari standing above us, this time with a man at her side. “Could we get a photograph?”

  “Of course!” I said, holding out my hand for her camera. She quickly offered it to the man before plopping down beside us. There I went again, forgetting my social skills.

  Amanda retrieved her Olympus from the tiny fabric purse she’d haggled for earlier that day, and jumped up. “Can you get one with ours too?”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Jen

  SOUTHERN INDIA/SHRADDHA ASHRAM

  NOVEMBER

  Don’t move,” I instructed, as a band of cockroaches scurried across the train car wall, straight toward Amanda’s head. She sat rooted in place on the sticky seat cushion, squeezing her eyes shut and bracing for my attack.

  Clutching our Lonely Planet: Southern India, I moved in for the kill. In one fluid kung fu motion, I propelled the book past Amanda’s face, adding more carcasses to our growing collection. At the same time, Holly leapt up and splattered a few culprits en route to our stash of assorted snacks, while Amanda pulled a flip-flop from her own foot to pick off newcomers streaming in from the windowsill.

  By this point in the trip, the girls and I had grown fairly accustomed to third-world conditions, learning to tolerate a vast assortment of creepy crawlies and less-than-desirable accommodations. But nothing could have prepared us for this, our first overnight train ride through the sun-scorched subcontinent of India.

  We’d arrived in Bangalore a few days earlier, and, for the first time since leaving New York City, we were racing to meet a deadline. Our assignment: we had less than twenty-four hours to get Holly to Trivandrum for the first day of her monthlong yoga teacher training program.

  With nearly five hundred miles of ground to cover, we’d planned to hop a domestic flight to save time, but after hearing news reports that terrorists were targeting southern Indian airports, we’d decided that riding the rails would be safer. Not to mention an infinitely cheaper and more authentic way to travel. If only we’d known that the 6526 Bangalore-Kanyakumari Express was not only competing for the Guinness World Record as the slowest express train in the world but was also in serious need of an exterminator.

  Since we’d booked our passage at the last minute, all the first- and second-class tickets had been sold out, so we had to settle for the third-class
sleeper car. For ten bucks, we figured the compartment wouldn’t have air-conditioning, but we didn’t count on the complimentary army of cockroaches. No sooner had we slid into our assigned seats than a river of six-legged critters poured down the walls and over the benches.

  “I feel like we’re playing that game they used to have at Chuck E. Cheese’s. You know? The one where you bash the fuzzy purple moles that pop out of their holes?” I said, wildly scanning the area, ready to pounce at the first sign of movement.

  “Umm, thanks for tarnishing the image of one of my favorite childhood pastimes,” Holly joked, inspecting our coveted food bag for stowaways. “Uh, this is seriously gross.”

  “It’s our cockroach curse. They’ve followed us from Kenya, I swear,” Amanda said, shrieking and wildly shaking out her curls to eliminate the chance of hangers-on. “And yet again, it seems like we’re the only ones on this train who are concerned about sleeping with a million bugs.”

  Many times in India, Amanda, Holly, and I had felt like a three-ring circus, constantly on display to amuse and bewilder the locals. This train ride proved no different. As floods of extended families spilled on board, they’d stop dead in their tracks in front of our bench seats, mouths agape at the sight of three white women in mass hysterics over a few tiny insects.

  Unable to repress our cockroach-slaying instincts, we ignored the obvious stares—at least at first. But eventually, embarrassment and the sheer exhaustion from jumping up and down every two seconds forced us into silent submission. If we were going to survive the remainder of the claustrophobic seventeen-hour journey, we’d have to sit down, remain calm, and pretend that we hadn’t stepped into an episode of Fear Factor: India.