by Sheela Chari
Neela had been dreading this moment. She sat on the couch and began to recount the awful story.
Before she finished, her mother interrupted. “You followed a stranger to have cocoa?” She set down the mug as if it were poison.
“Wait,” Neela said. “It gets worse.”
When she was done, Mrs. Krishnan had her hands up to her mouth in disbelief.
“I should have known,” she said. “I should have known.” Neela wondered how her mother could have known, unless she was a mind reader. But she kept quiet because then her mother said, “It’s bad luck. I should have known.”
Like strep throat or the chicken pox, or the Great Plague, which Neela had read about in social studies, bad luck was one of those things her mother tried at great lengths to avoid. She was training to be a pharmacist, and it was her belief that all human experience was the result of chemistry and luck, good and bad. But mostly bad. Neela’s father, who worked in a research lab at MIT, would always exclaim, That’s so unscientific. But there was no changing her mother’s opinion. Bad luck was an impenetrable force working against them all. Worse, it was contagious.
Just then the back door jiggled as Mr. Krishnan came in. “Hello, mateys,” he called, using his standard greeting. He bit into a muffin he picked up from the kitchen.
“You’re home early,” Mrs. Krishnan said.
“Meeting got cancelled,” he said, chewing. He looked at her curiously. “Why the clown outfit?”
“Can’t a person do laundry here? And we’ve got bigger things to worry about.”
When he heard Neela’s story, Mr. Krishnan stopped chewing. She wondered what happened to the piece of muffin in his mouth, whether he had swallowed it or it had spontaneously disappeared. “I don’t believe it,” he said. “In a church?”
“She shouldn’t have done it,” Mrs. Krishnan said.
“She didn’t have a choice,” he said.
“But she did.”
“I’m sorry,” Neela said miserably. It was so much worse when her parents were talking about her in the third person, as if she wasn’t there.
“Are you going to tell your mother, then?” Neela’s mother asked.
Mr. Krishnan shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Neela stared at the floor, wishing it would open up and swallow her. But the floor did no such thing. She was on her own.
Dinner consisted of dosas, thin crepes made from rice and lentils, accompanied by sambar, a thick, spicy soup. Over their dosas and sambar, Neela and her parents discussed the missing veena.
Mr. Krishnan tried to be hopeful. “Maybe it’s still there at the church.”
“Or maybe it vanished,” Mrs. Krishnan said pointedly.
Mr. Krishnan gave her a look. “Who would steal a veena in a church?” he continued. “No one would even know what it is.”
“Wait a minute.” Neela thought of something. “When Hal showed me the closet where I could store the veena, he said, ‘Your veena will be safe. You have my word.’”
“So?” Mrs. Krishnan said, dipping a piece of dosa in sambar.
“Don’t you see? He said veena. But that was before we started talking about it in the kitchen. How could he know what was inside the case when it was closed?”
“Maybe he’s seen one before,” Mrs. Krishnan said.
“No—it’s a custom-made case. Nobody would know what was inside.”
“Where is Neela’s veena?” asked four-year-old Sree.
“It’s taking a nap,” their mother said. “Just like you did before dinner.” She pushed back a lock of his lanky, black hair that had fallen over his eyes. He was perpetually in need of a haircut because he was scared of the barber, and it was impossible for Mrs. Krishnan to cut his hair unless she had a whole bag of lollipops to bribe him with.
“Veenas don’t sleep,” he said.
Neela remembered something else. “And there was that teakettle.”
“What teakettle?” Mr. Krishnan asked.
“The teakettle with a dragon on it. Hal used it to make my cocoa.”
Sree stared at his plate and bowl. “There’s a fly in my sambar.”
Their mother sighed. “No there isn’t, Sree.”
“Don’t you see?” Neela said impatiently. “The teakettle had a dragon on it…My veena has a dragon, too.”
“Somebody stepped on the veena,” Sree tried again.
“But maybe Hal didn’t take your veena,” Mr. Krishnan countered. “Maybe the janitor stored it somewhere.”
“Neela stepped on it,” Sree persisted.
“Nobody stepped on the veena,” Mr. Krishnan said. “Eat your sambar, Sree.”
“I’m done,” Neela announced. Why didn’t she see the connection before? She jumped from the table.
“You didn’t finish your plate,” her mother called after her.
But Neela was already halfway to the study, her thoughts leaping ahead. A dragon teakettle. A dragon veena. Maybe she could find something that connected the teakettle with the veena if she searched the Internet. And what had Hal called the dragon? A why-something.
Twenty minutes went by, and while she found pictures of veenas with dragons and dragons on teakettles, nowhere could she find anything that linked the two together. She stared at the computer screen. She had reached a dead end.
Her mother called her from the kitchen. When Neela got there, her mother held a small brass plate with a tiny piece of camphor on it. Sree was standing next to her, watching. Neela groaned. “Oh, Mom. Not that.”
Sree widened his eyes. “What? What?”
“It won’t hurt anyone,” Mrs. Krishnan said. She said it lightly, but there was a frown on her face as if there was something else on her mind.
Sree jumped up and down. “What?”
Mrs. Krishnan lit the camphor and it burst immediately into bright bluish-orange flames. A sweet, acrid smell filled the room. “Drishti,” she said.
In front of Neela, Mrs. Krishnan moved the plate with the dancing camphor flames in two circles, one clockwise and one counterclockwise.
“What’s drishti?” Sree asked.
“When you drop dead because somebody wishes it,” Neela said.
“Who’s dead?” he wailed.
Neela’s mother glared at her. “No one, Sree. Drishti is a word for bad luck. I just performed an aarti on Neela, in case someone wished her bad luck today.”
Neela watched her mother. “How is that supposed to bring my veena back?” she asked skeptically.
By now the camphor had burned out, leaving a black, sooty residue on the plate. With an index finger, Mrs. Krishnan smeared a dot of the inky soot on Neela’s forehead, and then Sree’s. “When I was growing up, we always did this if we needed to ward off the evil eye.”
“Why does somebody wish bad luck on Neela?” Sree asked.
Good question, Neela thought. Because it felt like a ton of bad luck had been dumped on her.
Mrs. Krishnan pushed the hair out of his eyes. “Sometimes we want what others have. We want them not to succeed. But I do think you can change bad luck and hope for the best.”
Sree still didn’t understand. “Why?”
“Maybe you can ask Lalitha Patti if we visit her in December.”
“Are we going to India?” he asked.
“Are we?” Neela asked. She felt a glimmer of hope despite herself. Her best friend, Pavi, also had family in Chennai and always went there in December. Maybe Neela would get to see her if they went at the same time. Which would be good since Neela wasn’t sure how Lalitha Patti would react to being around the grandchild who had lost her veena.
“I’d rather go in June,” Mrs. Krishnan said, “but I may need to finish up my classes in the summer.”
“So you can help people take their medicine?” Sree asked. This was his rough understanding of what pharmacy was all about.
“Yes, Sree.”
As Mrs. Krishnan cleaned off the brass plate, Neela thought of all the people who could
wish her bad luck. Amanda? Hal? Or was it someone else she didn’t know?
That night, Neela had a hard time falling asleep. She kept thinking of Hal and the missing veena, and what her grandmother would say when she found out the awful truth. She remembered that on her visits to India, Lalitha Patti would take the veena out only on certain days, as if it was too special to use daily. And when she did, she would practice on it for hours and talk to no one. Why her grandmother would then send such a special instrument to Neela, it was hard to say. But she had, and now Neela felt that in the biggest and most terrible way, she had let her grandmother down. Was it bad luck, as her mother said? Neela wasn’t sure. But her only hope was to find the veena before her grandmother heard what happened.
Neela got up from bed. The floor was cold under her feet as she made her way quietly down the hall. She would ask her mother if they could go back to the stone church tomorrow after school. They could have another look around. Maybe Neela had missed something the first time.
As she got closer to her parents’ bedroom, she heard voices inside. She was about to knock on the door, when she heard her father speaking in Tamil. From the way he kept starting and stopping, she could tell he was on the phone.
He’s talking to Lalitha Patti. Neela’s stomach dropped in dismay. She had thought he would wait at least until tomorrow.
“Please don’t worry, Amma,” Mr. Krishnan said, using the name for mother in Tamil. He repeated this many times. At last he said, “We’ll find the veena. I’m sure of it.”
How he could be sure, Neela didn’t know. He was just trying to make her grandmother feel better. Maybe she was really upset on the other side. Even crying. Neela felt tears rise in her own throat.
Mr. Krishnan gave a sigh that was so loud, even Neela could hear it through the door. “That’s just a story, Amma. It couldn’t possibly be true.”
Neela swallowed her tears. What was he talking about? She heard her mother murmur something, but Neela couldn’t make it out.
Then, as if he’d heard enough, Mr. Krishnan said, “All right, all right. Let me call you tomorrow. Maybe we’ll find the veena by then, and you can forget about all of that.”
All of what? Neela waited for her father to hang up. Maybe he and her mother would say something more afterward.
She was right. When the phone call was over, her mother was the one who started.
“I still can’t believe she would send that veena to Neela,” she said.
“She got spooked.”
“Then she should have sold it, that’s what.”
“You can’t sell a veena like that,” Mr. Krishnan said. “It’s too lovely. It’s the kind of veena you hand down in the family.”
“She has four other veenas!”
“But this one has the loveliest sound. You’ve heard my mother play on it. Maybe it’s the wood, or the way it was carved. There’s something special about that veena.”
“There’s something special, all right,” Mrs. Krishnan said. “It’s cursed.”
Neela stood stock-still. Did she hear right? Did her mother say “cursed”?
“Now you’re sounding like my mother,” Mr. Krishnan said.
“Well, the veena did disappear. Isn’t that what the curse says?”
Neela’s heart started beating. She strained harder to hear them.
“There has to be some other explanation,” Mr. Krishnan said.
“Even so,” Mrs. Krishnan said. “Maybe it’s better the veena is gone.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just think. Do you really want Neela playing on a veena with a history like that?” she asked. “It’s…bad luck. Maybe we shouldn’t look for the veena anymore.”
Neela panicked. What kind of history? Would her parents stop looking for the veena because of this curse? She almost opened the door on them, but then she heard her father.
“Lakshmi, you can’t mean that. Think how much Neela loves the instrument, too.”
Her mother was silent. “All right,” she said at last. “We’ll search the church tomorrow. After that…I can’t promise anything.”
As Neela heard her parents turn off their lights to sleep, she tiptoed quietly back to bed. Her ears were ringing with what she had just heard. The veena had a curse. And that’s why it was gone. Neela remembered the looks her parents exchanged over dinner, the conversation between them when her father first found out: She shouldn’t have done it ... She didn’t have a choice.
They weren’t talking about her! They were talking about Lalitha Patti, about whether she should have sent the veena or not. All of a sudden, everything that had happened in the past twelve hours took on a new meaning. Was it Hal, or was it a mysterious curse that had made her grandmother’s veena disappear from the church? Either way, would Neela ever find the veena again? She lay on her back, staring up at the ceiling. So many things to figure out, so many things to remember. It would be harder than ever to get to sleep.
The next morning, Neela slept through her alarm and woke up groggy. And late.
Of course, this was nothing new. She was always late. Time was something mysterious and unstoppable in the Krishnan household. It was as if her whole family were in a crazy race, all of them trying to catch up, but always just missing the finish line.
“Remember, I’m picking you up after school so we can go to the church,” Mrs. Krishnan called out from the car window as Neela raced inside the school yard. Neela was running so fast, all she could do was nod.
In class, she slid into her seat exactly three minutes late, her hair still tangled at the ends of her ponytail. Everyone else was already at their desks, except for Matt. He was always late, too, usually later than she was, though sometimes they both pulled up to the curb at the same time in their respective minivans.
Ms. Reese, who kept track of late minutes, raised an eyebrow at Neela. It was her teacher’s rule that anyone whose late minutes added up to thirty had to stay after school to make up the “lost” minutes. By Neela’s count, she was already up to twenty-five.
As their teacher handed back yesterday’s spelling quizzes, Neela thought again about her parents’ conversation from last night. She glanced back at Penny, who sat behind her, and wondered if she should tell her friend about it. But Neela wasn’t yet sure what she thought of the whole thing herself. So she decided to wait.
At first the idea of a curse on her veena seemed thrilling. Was it one of those ancient curses that affected anyone who came in contact with the instrument? Maybe she was cursed now, too. But that’s when she began to feel annoyed. Why didn’t anyone tell her about this curse? Even after the veena was stolen?
Just then, Amanda turned around from the row in front, her auburn hair hanging gracefully down her back. Selfconsciously, Neela ran her fingers through her own hair. She could feel the knots that were still there, and hoped she’d washed out all the toothpaste that got in the ends when she was brushing her teeth this morning.
“Hey, Neela,” Amanda said, “are you bringing your instrument to school again?”
Neela wondered why Amanda cared. “It’s too heavy to carry,” she said warily.
“I wanted to tell you yesterday, but couldn’t because of Miss Photo Freak”—Amanda glanced at Lynne—“that my mom heard about your veena and wants to borrow it.”
“Borrow it?” Neela didn’t understand. Who would want to borrow a veena?
“For her job. They need to do a photo shoot with Indian instruments.” Amanda’s mother was a photographer for a magazine in Boston. “They’re doing some article about rooms from all around the world.”
So that was it. Keep your mouth shut, Neela told herself. The last thing she wanted was to talk about her missing veena with Amanda.
Ms. Reese came by. “Nice work.” She handed Neela her test, facedown. Neela turned it over to see a perfect score, and flushed with pleasure. She let herself momentarily bask in the glow of a good mark.
“So?” Amanda asked.
&nbs
p; Neela turned to her. “I’ll have to ask my mom.” Good! Hopefully that would keep Amanda from asking more about the veena.
Amanda handed something to Neela. “That’s my mom’s business card. You can talk to her yourself at her work.”
Neela looked at the card: ELIZABETH BONES, SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER, BOSTON LIVING MAGAZINE. It looked so professional, complete with a Boston address. No one had ever given her a business card before. “I’ll have to get back to you,” she said miserably, “because we kind of don’t know where the veena is right now.”
“You don’t know where your veena is?” Amanda’s voice rose an octave. But before she could say anything more, Matt, who just sat down next to Neela, had overheard the whole thing.
“Dude! You lost it?” he said.
“But it was so big, Neela!” Penny said.
“Did it break?” someone else asked.
“Did your parents bust you?”
All of a sudden, everyone around her buzzed with questions. At first she was embarrassed, but as she began to answer more questions, she found herself privately enjoying the attention.
As she described what had happened at the church, she left Hal mostly out of the story except as someone who let her inside. She couldn’t say why, but something made her keep quiet about him. And she definitely didn’t mention what her parents had said about the veena or about her grandmother. “We’re going back this afternoon to see if it’s still there,” she finished.
“That’s awful,” Penny said. “I hope you find it.”
Matt shook his orange hair back. “Filched in a church. That’s intense.”
By now, Ms. Reese had noticed the chatter around Neela’s desk. “Class, keep it down. Neela, Matt, save your conversation for recess.”
Neela reddened and turned to face the front. Most of the time Matt drew bizarre pictures of space aliens or read thick books that had creepy-sounding names in the title. Also, after bleaching his hair to a wild orange color, he had started wearing old, ratty T-shirts with the names of rock bands she’d never heard of before. So even though they sat next to each other, she rarely talked to him. Certainly they had never been shushed by Ms. Reese. And now everyone in class knew about her lost veena, thanks to her big mouth.
