Looking For Bapu

by Anjali Banerjee

  I make a bowl of granola and consider my options. I haven't seen Izzy since she came over. I have to go back to school tomorrow. The thought makes my stomach flip upside down, but I still have a day to find Bapu.

  I dress in my bird-watching gear and slip outside. I'm afraid to get lost in the woods, so I drop seed and keep the house in view. I'm wearing my yellow poncho. The forest whispers, and I'm sure I hear Bapu's voice, the crunch of his boots in the dirt. When I stop to listen, there's nothing but branches sighing in the wind.

  I find a clearing and sit. I try not to move, but I fidget, tapping my foot. My mind drifts up into the treetops. I look for the inner light. I picture a flickering bulb inside my chest. I can't help picking up rocks, tracing the lines in the moss. I think of the sadhus in India not moving, barely breathing for twelve years. How do they do that?

  I close my eyes and pray to Garuda, but nothing happens. The lonely wind cries around me, telling me to go home. I try to picture Bapu. His face grows fuzzy, and then as I'm hiking home, following my trail of seed, Bapu moves along beside me. I know he's there—a hint of his yellow poncho flashes in my vision. I can't hear his footsteps. He's silent this time and seethrough, like Jell-O. “You're still here. I knew it!” I shout. I know not to hug him. I thought I'd be happier to see him. I thought all my worries would go away.

  “Don't get cold, Shona,” Bapu says. “Next time you come into the woods, bring a friend. Don't go off alone like this.”

  “You don't have to worry about me. Worry about Dad. He's sleeping too much.”

  “He'll be okay. Give him time.”

  “I have to stay with Izzy Mumu in the afternoons, and I don't want to go back to school.”

  “Why not? All your friends are at school. What about Unger?”

  “He's really cool, but …” I bite my lip. My hands are clammy.

  “The children have been calling you names. Osama, Bin Laden …”

  “Just a couple of kids.”

  “This is something new. You always enjoyed school.”

  “Things are different since …” I kick a clod of dirt, kick and kick.

  “This too shall pass, Shona. You must talk to your father about all these things.”

  “I need you, Bapu. What do I do?” I want to hug him. A lump grows in my throat. I want him to cook, but his hand will go right through the spatula. I want him to read to me, but his hand will go right through the book.

  I snap open the umbrella above our heads. He can't even hold the umbrella anymore.

  “Only the gods know what you must do, Shona. I'll tell you a story that may help you decide.”

  I walk closer to him. My teeth chatter, and the sideways rain sneaks under the umbrella, soaking my shoes and socks. I want to feel Bapu's warmth, but he's not warm and he's made only of air.

  “Umbrellas were invented in India,” Bapu says. “You come from a sophisticated country. Complicated and very old, like the story of Jamadagni. He was skilled at the use of the bow. His wife, Renuka, was so devoted that she ran after every arrow he shot and picked it up.”

  “Like a golf caddy or the ball boy in tennis?”

  “Yes, like that. One day, she ran after an arrow and did not return until nightfall. She blamed the heat of the sun for the delay.”

  I know the sun is very hot in India, so hot you could fry your toes into chicken nuggets.

  “Jamadagni grew furious and shot an arrow at the sun.”

  “But the sun is so far away. Ninety-three million miles, Dad says.”

  “Indeed, the arrow traveled ninety-three million miles. The sun begged for mercy and offered another solution.”

  Oh. I know. I'm brilliant. “The umbrella.”

  “Exactly. He gave Renuka an umbrella to protect her from the heat the next time she ran after an arrow.” Bapu gives me a long look. His eyes grow bright.

  “That's the end of the story?” My heart sinks even farther into my boots.

  “What ending would you prefer?”

  “I don't get it, and I don't see what umbrellas and arrows and the sun have to do with anything at all!”

  I break into a run. The rain slices in under the umbrella and washes Bapu away.

  Essay, Home and Family

  by Anu Ganguli

  Sarasvati is the Hindu goddess of learning and the arts. She loves trees. She inspired the guy who built our two-story home out of Douglas fir timbers. The floors are wood. The outside walls are cedar shingles. It has tall glass windows and built-in (inner) lights.

  Sarasvati is also the goddess of drawing and music. She lugs around sitars and drums and brought our piano. Ma plays, but mostly she fixes stomachs.

  Indian kids pray to Sarasvati when they want to become rock stars or artists like van Gogh. He cut off his own ear. She can be felt in our home, but especially in museums, or sometimes in picture books.

  But she's not helping me make sense of Bapu's umbrella tale. I'm sitting on the bouncy bus next to Unger, trying to finish my homework while we head out on an exciting field trip to the natural history museum.

  The bus hits a bump, and my pen jolts across the page. Curtis keeps kicking the back of my seat. Unger presses his nose to the window, where someone pasted a sticker of the American flag.

  “Hey, Anus, got any more of those humungous cookies?” Curtis shouts behind my head.

  I roll my eyes. He has the vocabulary of a worm. I think anus is the only part of the body he knows.

  “His name is Anu. Ah-new,” Unger says, punching the seat.

  “Don't even listen to him,” I say, but my fingers curl into a fist. A few kids snicker; others ignore Curtis. If he weren't a human worm, he'd be the ten-headed Hindu demon, Ravana. He'd need ten heads just to make a single brain.

  “Why don't you go back to Afghanistan?” Curtis says.

  “Why don't you learn geography?” I say. I want to punch him in the nose.

  “Anu's Indian,” Unger says.

  “Whatever,” Curtis says. “Go back to your own country.”

  “I am in my own country!” My throat goes dry. I never know what to say. Last week he called me a terrorist. I don't look like a terrorist. At least, I don't think so. What does a terrorist look like? Do they all have black hair and brown eyes? Curtis was at the school assembly. He must have heard the principal say not to pick on people who look different. Bad people attacked the Twin Towers, but I am not one of them.

  Now Curtis is bullying a skinny blond girl who wears homemade clothes. He takes a break from harassing her when we get to the museum. We see an exhibit that shows the West Coast millions of years ago, when volcanoes sprouted from the sea, but I can't help thinking that Izzy's Mystery Museum must be more exciting.

  After school, I nearly walk all the way home before remembering that I have to go to the Mumus' house. My heart pounds. I'm afraid it will push through my ribs. I close my fingers around the house key on a string around my neck. For emergencies, Ma said. The metal is warm from being under my shirt.

  Ms. Mumu answers the door in her flowing dress. The crystals gleam on her necklace.

  “Come to the kitchen,” she says. “You and Izzy can get acquainted.” She wraps a big doughy arm around my shoulders. The house smells like burnt cookies and cat food. A few cats wander around. They're white with black patches. “I call them Holstein cats,” Ms. Mumu says. “After Holstein cows, you know.” We pass a room full of books and papers and a computer on a desk. “I'm a writer, and that's my study.”

  We end up in the kitchen. It's brown with green countertops, like a jungle. I sit across from Izzy and try to think about learning short division. When do I get to see the shrunken heads? When do I get to eat? The numbers on the page turn into slices of strawberry cheesecake. My mouth waters and I'm afraid I will drool. I'm in the kitchen, where the food is supposed to be. Ms. Mumu is making something. For Izzy and me, I hope, not for the cats. They wander in and out to crunch food from bowls on the floor. Ms. Mumu brings a plate of the enormous co
okies.

  “Made with Splenda,” she says. “I'm trying to lose weight.”

  I devour the cookies, which are too sweet and salty. When we finish our homework, Izzy looks up at me through her silvergray eyes. “Come and see my collection.” Her lisp is strong today. She says see like thee.

  On her desk next to a computer are packages of blood-red soap that stains your hands red, fish-tasting candy, plastic snot that you can stick up your nose, dirt soap that makes you dirtier the more you use it.

  “These are cool!” I say. “Can we go to the Mystery Museum?”

  “My mom took me once. You have to take two buses and then a ferry to Divine Island. I'm not allowed to go by myself.”

  “Ma and Dad would never let me go by myself either.”

  Izzy shows me key chains, magnets and pressed-penny souvenirs, tiny totem poles and a piece of petrified coral fifty million years old. She has a box full of stones in all colors.

  “The museum has a two-headed pig in a jar and the real shrunken heads in the back,” she says, and shivers. “And two mummies and a magician named Karnak who can make anything happen. But my mom won't take me into that back room. She's afraid the mummies will scare me.”

  “Does she know you have the shrunken head?”

  “Yeah, it's a toy. It was only two dollars and fifty cents. I sent in my allowance, and they sent me the head.” She bounces on the bed. “There's a fortune-teller, Stella. She's this lady in a glass case with a big crystal ball. You put fifty cents in and she moves—her eyes even move—and she gives you your fortune.” Izzy hands me a piece of cardboard inscribed with STELLA'S PROPHECIES in big letters. Below, in smaller letters, are the words “You're in luck, my friend. Fortune will soon be thine….”

  “Wow, cool.” I desperately want Stella to tell my fortune.

  Then I spot a picture of a skinny man holding a baby on his knee. He looks a lot like Izzy.

  “That's my dad,” she says. “He died when I was a baby. I don't remember him.”

  “My Bapu's—my grandfather's ghost comes back—”

  “He's wandering through the ether?” Her eyes go wide.

  “I don't know where Bapu goes when I don't see him.”

  “Bapu—what kind of name is that?”

  “His real name is Siddhartha.”

  “Oh!” Izzy presses her hand to her mouth. “Siddhartha? He was born a Hindu but he became the supreme Buddha, the Enlightened One.”

  “How do you know?” Izzy's a talking encyclopedia. I wonder if she'll tell me more if I press a button in her back.

  “I learn about world religions right after lunch. Your grandfather is the Buddha. If his name is Siddhartha, that is. The Buddha wandered around India until he got bored and started a new religion. Here, I'll show you.” She boots up the computer and clicks onto a Web site, www.siddhartha-the-buddha.com. The serene statue of the supreme, enlightened Buddha looks like Bapu without the beard! Could it be true?

  “There, that's him,” Izzy says. “Siddhartha became the Buddha and reached, um, Nirvana, the supreme state … of …”

  “That's why Bapu's kind of see-through?”

  “Yeah! And it means he isn't really gone.”

  My fingers tremble. Bapu never said he was the Buddha, the Enlightened One. Maybe I was supposed to know by looking at him. Bapu is still here, everywhere, fuzzy. He's in Nirvana! I just have to get him back.

  fter work, Ma changes from her white coat into baggy sweats and cooks to NPR on the radio. Sometimes the hospital smell stays on her for a while—rubbing alcohol and sickness. Dad goes to his study and shuts the door.

  “Set the table, please, Anu.” Ma plunks plates and forks and knives on the counter.

  I take Dad's books off Bapu's chair and dump them on the floor. Then I drag the chair to the table. In his supreme state of fuzziness, Bapu needs a place to sit.

  At supper, the three of us clink our dishes without a word. Ma glances at Bapu's chair, but she doesn't push it away. I work up my nerve.

  “Why didn't you tell me?” I ask.

  Dad glances up at me. His eyebrows rise. “Tell you what?”

  “That Bapu was the Buddha.”

  “What gave you that idea?”

  Ma's face freezes.

  “Siddhartha,” I say. “The Buddha was Siddhartha, the Enlightened One. He started a whole new religion. You didn't tell me.”

  “Who told you all this, Unger?” Ma's face is stiff.

  “Izzy told me, and I saw it on the Internet. He's still here. The Buddha never dies. He's one with everything.”

  “Don't believe all you read on the Internet,” Ma says.

  “Anu, many people are named Siddhartha,” Dad says gently.

  “What do you mean, ‘many people'? I don't know of anyone—”

  “Not here. In India,” Dad says. “Names are different there. Some have many syllables, like Krishnaswami, for example. Some names are difficult to pronounce. Your name, Anu, is easy. Many people have that name in India.”

  “I know—you told me, Dad. But I bet kids don't get called Anus in India.”

  “The kids call you Anus?” Ma's voice tightens. She glances at Dad, and he shakes his head slightly.

  “Probably not,” Dad says. “It's not right for kids to call you Anus. Their name-calling comes from ignorance.”

  “Curtis has a miniature brain,” I say.

  Ma presses a hand to her mouth, as if she's trying not to laugh.

  “In India, they're used to the name Anu,” Dad says. “Like John or Joe here.”

  “Then why didn't you call me John or Joe?” Suddenly I wish for the nickname Bapu gave me, Shona.

  “Don't you like your full name?” Ma says. “Anurag means—”

  “I know, Ma. It means love.” She's told me a million times. I'll never tell my friends. Anu-rag. Lovey-dovey.

  “Many people are named Siddhartha as well,” Dad says. “The Buddha lived a long time ago. Your Bapu was just your Bapu.”

  No, he isn't.

  “Eat the rest of your supper,” Ma says.

  The food thickens on my plate. “I don't want it. The potatoes are lumpy.”

  “Please, Anu. Not now,” Ma says. “I've had a long day.”

  I push my plate away. I'm being terrible. I can't help it.

  “I know it's difficult, Anu.” Dad scratches his beard.

  “Are we having payesh for dessert?” I ask.

  “Payesh takes a long time to make.” Ma taps her fingers on the table. She's been biting her nails again.

  “Bapu always made payesh.”

  Ma keeps tapping. “Bapu had time. He had all day to cook—”

  “Bapu made the best payesh on earth!”

  “Look, we'll get you payesh,” Dad says quickly, glancing at Ma. “We'll go to the Indian bakery in Bellevue this weekend.”

  “I want Bapu's payesh,” I whisper. I don't know about any Indian bakery. I don't even know where Bellevue is.

  Dad and Ma stare at each other. Dad reaches out to put a hand over Ma's shaky fingers.

  I need Bapu all the time, not just when he drops in. Now he's not the Buddha, and I don't know what to do.

  I have to talk to Izzy.

  ince the birth of the universe, the gods hang around us, in everything and on everything and under everything. So don't kill the bugs under rocks. They're the gods. The gods also live in the air we breathe and in the key I'm trying to fit into the front-door lock.

  “We can't be here too long,” Izzy says. “My mom will come looking for us. Hurry up. Here, let me try.” She jiggles the key and finally forces the door open. She glances around and blinks. “I keep forgetting that your house is as big as the school.” She tiptoes through the quiet.

  “Big, big!” I yell, waiting for the echo, but my voice rises and lodges under the skylight. Izzy yells “big, big” and we both yell until we get bored, about a minute later.

  We pass Bapu's room. The wooden floor creaks beneath our feet. His
door is closed. My heart pounds. I think of Shiva on the other side.

  We rummage through the closet where Ma keeps the pictures. We find a box marked SIDDHARTHA GANGULI and look through the pictures.

  I hope Izzy's plan works. She showed me a Web site: www.bring-back-dead-loved-ones.com. We're supposed to find the right photo and take it to the graveyard.

  “But my Bapu was cremated,” I say. “He's not buried. How will I find him?”

  “All spirits hang out in the cemetery, around the headstones. We have to find a good picture of him.”

  I'm not so sure, but I'm willing to try anything. There's a picture of Bapu riding an elephant in India, another with his foot up on a log and a pipe in his mouth. In another one, he's working in his garden in Santiniketan, Bengal, India. He's standing next to Amma. I hold the picture close to my face. Izzy pulls it away. “Your eyes will get stuck like that.”

  I hold the picture out. A mouthful of teeth crowds Amma's smile. She has big, gentle eyes and a round face. Dad looks like her.

  Izzy squints closer. “Your grandmother? She has long hair.”

  “I never knew her. She died before I was born.”

  “You could use this picture. Your grandfather had hair back then.”

  “He's been bald as long as I've known him.” In the oldest picture we have, Bapu is already a grown-up.

  She chooses a picture of Bapu and me, taken only two months before. I hold the picture to the light, and my stomach squeezes and squeezes. I can't breathe, and then I remember to suck air into my lungs. Bapu stands straight and tall with his shoulders back. His hand rests on my head. I feel his touch now, and turn around.

  Nothing there.

  “I'll take this picture,” I say.

  The forgotten graveyard is three blocks west, next to a tangled forest. The sign hanging halfway off the gate reads IOLA CEMETERY. On the rusted wire fence hangs another sign, ANGLE PARKING, where tree roots push up through cracks in the concrete. On either side of the gate, somebody planted holly and maple trees a long time ago. The trees are nearly up to the power lines.