An Extraordinary Destiny

by Shekhar Paleja

  A train squealed into the station. As it came to a stop and opened its doors, she paused, and instead of boarding right away, she surreptitiously scanned the dense platform, but amid the crowd she couldn’t see him, and boarded before the doors closed, reprimanding herself for looking for a man like some floozy. A respectable girl would never do such a thing, she heard her mother’s voice in her head as the train departed. The compartment was packed and she had to wedge herself between two hefty American tourists. She couldn’t wait to reach Westminster Station, three stops away, where the annoying tourists would exit eagerly to take pictures of Big Ben and the houses of Parliament. As they approached the station, one of the Americans asked Jyoti in a southern drawl, “Excuse me, miss, is Westminister Station next?”

  Jyoti took a breath before replying, “Yes, Westminster Station is the next stop.” The Americans happily got off, thanking Jyoti, not realizing she was correcting their pronunciation.

  As most of the train emptied, Jyoti found a seat. She saw the young man with the sinewy hands and striking green eyes come towards her from the other end of the compartment. He took a seat directly across from her, and she pretended to lose herself in a textbook. It was a chapter the class had yet to cover. Jyoti was trying to stay ahead. Her courses this semester were becoming more difficult to keep up with. The chapter was titled “Pricing Asset Derivatives, Options: how Theta (time) and Vega & Rho values change intrinsic values boldly.” With her peripheral vision, she could see he was wearing a navy peacoat and flipping through a book himself. She looked out the window and saw that they were already at the next station, Embankment. Her stop was next. She wondered if he went to school somewhere in East London or if he worked in the financial district. From the few quick glances she stole of him she guessed he was about her age. She looked out the window again, considering whether to look at him directly. She was no longer in India; looking at a boy couldn’t possibly carry all the implications it would back home. But every time she screwed up enough courage to lift her gaze from her textbook, she peered out the window instead at the last moment, as if looking at something in particular. The train was beginning to slow down, the recording of the tube lady’s voice began. The next stop is Temple, this is a Circle Line train . . . She closed her textbook and as she gathered her things, she finally mustered up the courage to look at him. They held eye contact for a second, maybe two. It was filled with energy, licentiousness, the possibility of anything.

  “That’s a lovely scarf,” he said with an Irish lilt.

  “Thank you” was all she could manage. She said it so softly that she barely heard it herself.

  After exiting the train, she gathered herself on the platform and brazenly glimpsed at him again through the window. As the train began to pull away, he gave her a small smile and she returned it.

  Walking past Embankment Gardens and up Arundel Street towards the LSE, Jyoti felt exhilarated. She barely noticed the sting of the cool, wet air from the Thames.

  - 19 -

  1997

  AFTER DELIBERATING FOR THREE DAYS over what to wear on her date, Jyoti went shopping on Oxford Street for a new top. Even though she’d never gone on a date, she was aware that a delicate balance had to be struck: not too promiscuous, not too prudish. After trying on over a dozen sweaters and tops (a dress was out of the question—too suggestive), she chose a smart black turtleneck sweater that clung to her petite frame.

  Standing at the top of the front steps of the National Gallery she felt unlike herself with her hair down, no ponytail. Tucking a few strands of hair behind one ear, Jyoti scanned the square for Gavin. She checked her watch again. He was only a few minutes late. She thought about going for a walk around Trafalgar Square but the hundreds of pigeons and tourists were off-putting. Perhaps she could go around back, take a stroll through Leicester Square, and return shortly. She didn’t want to be the one waiting, appearing desperate.

  She inched her way from the top steps of the gallery facade to the bottom step, reconsidering this whole thing. With the hundreds of people milling about the square, she had a lingering sense of anxiety that someone would spot her with Gavin and inform her mother thousands of miles away. It was ridiculous, and she hated herself for being so irrational, but nevertheless she couldn’t shake the idea of her mother’s disapproval.

  It wasn’t too late to just go home. Sure, she would see him again on the tube next week, but it’d be easy to come up with an excuse. I’m so sorry, I wasn’t feeling well, or I totally forgot I had a group assignment with classmates. He’d get the hint.

  What was she thinking? Going on a date?! In Bombay, no self-respecting single girl would ever think of going out alone with a boy; it just wasn’t done. She’d been out with girlfriends several times, meeting up with boys they knew from college, but nothing ever happened during those evenings apart from a walk in the gardens on Malabar Hill, followed by a coffee at the rooftop cafeteria with the view of Marine Drive below. If things got really rowdy, the boys would order cold Kingfisher beers and sometimes an adventurous girl or two would allow the boys to pour her a small glass (Jyoti never did). If her friends could see her now they’d be astonished that Jyoti Patik was on a date! With a boy she just met on the train! She heard her mother’s voice again. How scandalous! What would people say?

  It was only now, after having lived in London for six months, that Jyoti realized how entirely consumed her mother and her mother’s friends were with gossip. She’d always rolled her eyes at them when they gathered for tea in the afternoons, clucking like hens. Did you see the Shah’s daughter talking with the Patels’ driver from the seventh floor on the street? The fellow looks like a mawali. So shameful! But now that she lived in London—where no one had that kind of idle time for chit-chat, at least not the people she knew—that kind of gossip seemed even more ridiculous, a remnant of the Victorian era. Exactly how or why it was still rampant in India in the post-colonial age was a mystery Jyoti found herself trying to unravel. And it nettled her even more whenever she caught herself thinking like her mother, silently judging other girls in class for flirting with boys, for wearing short skirts. She despised herself, or at least her instincts, for being so old-fashioned. Was she just jealous of the other girls? No, there was something definitely vulgar about some of them. Of course not all of them were so forward; some of them were focused on their studies, and those were the ones whom Jyoti kept near.

  On Friday afternoons, many of her classmates went for drinks. Despite turning down several invitations from the girls, Jyoti had joined them last week. She couldn’t help but feel a little out of place, sipping her ginger-ale as the other girls had glasses of wine or shandies. When the topic of pop music came up she chimed in. A debate was sparked over who was the better singer: Mariah Carey or Whitney Houston. Jyoti spoke in Whitney’s defence, the less popular camp, and she enjoyed being part of the conversation until it took a tangential turn—probably from all the alcohol—to sex. She sipped her ginger-ale quietly while the other girls giggled over who was the cutest boy in their class. Allusions were made about a Welsh boy who had large hands, which made the girls cackle. Jyoti was sure she was the only virgin at the table and wondered if her silence gave her away. Feeling uncomfortable, she excused herself. “Sorry, I’m looking after the neighbour’s cat and he needs to be fed,” she said, slinking out of the large booth.

  Checking her watch again on the gallery steps now, Jyoti thought about how in college a couple of boys had had crushes on her but she’d failed to see it. It was her best friends, Chaya and Kiran, who had to point out that the boys who were asking her to tutor them in maths weren’t interested in algebra. Maybe she was naive, or maybe she just didn’t want to disappoint her parents, who always insisted that she focus on her studies. She’d been perfect since she was a child—always at the top of her class. At eight years old, her parents had had her take an IQ test. When it turned out she was as brilliant as they’d claimed, the option of being skipped a year ahead at scho
ol was presented, and before Jyoti could even think about it her parents decided for her. “Our Jyoti baby isn’t being challenged enough,” they said. So in the middle of the school year she was advanced from the third standard to the fourth. Looking back, she couldn’t say that she had to leave all her old friends behind as she didn’t really have many, but making friends in her new class was even more difficult. They viewed Jyoti from afar, as though she were a strange animal behind a cage in the zoo. As it was, she was small for her age, but as an eight-year-old in the new class of nine-year-olds she was even shorter. This hindered her self-confidence and when she realized she was smarter than all of them, it made her feel even more of an outcast.

  Her new teacher thought to remedy the situation by making Jyoti his aide. He asked her to help some of the other children in the class who were behind, thinking she would benefit from the social interaction, but it only made matters worse. The nine-year-olds thought of her as the teacher’s pet. She was never publicly ostracized, just ignored, and even though she brought home perfect grades, which her parents celebrated, she felt like an outsider at school. It wasn’t until college, when she befriended Kiran and Chaya, that she felt somewhat normal. But by then the die had already been cast. Jyoti lacked the confidence and social proficiency that seemed to come naturally to girls like Chaya and Kiran, and she was never able to fully shake that feeling of being a little peculiar. She wondered if she was missing out on something and considered if her life would’ve been different if she hadn’t been pulled ahead that year in school. Would she have more confidence? Instead of immersing herself in homework and textbooks after school every day, would she have had more friends? Had more fun? Felt less anxious? Would she be a little more social now? More normal? Or at least not hear her mother’s nagging voice in her head all the time?

  As beautiful and clean as London was, compared to Bombay it was a lonely place. She walked past hundreds of people every day on the tube and on the street who all looked right through her as though she was invisible. After crying herself to sleep during her first few days in London, she stopped. She hated feeling sorry for herself, unlike her mother, who was fond of playing the martyr. Whenever Jyoti’s younger brother, Rahul, got into trouble at school, her mother would bawl, and before the tears had a chance to streak down her cheeks and onto the floor she would shake her fists skyward and plead, God, why have you forsaken me so?

  Deciding to give Gavin one more minute, Jyoti continued waiting on the bottom step of the gallery and thought back to her first two weeks in London. She’d picked up the phone several times in the middle of the night to tell her parents how miserable the food was, how the people in the building always said hello to each other but barely looked at her, how school wasn’t much better. She wanted desperately to return home but she wouldn’t have been able to live with herself for disappointing them. They were so proud of their Jyoti baby for gaining admission to the LSE, and she knew that tuition for international students was a small fortune. Apart from the school being one of the best for Jyoti to receive her graduate degree from, both her parents had long planned for the eventuality of being daughter-less for an entire year. Since Jyoti had never been away from home alone—not even for a single night—her parents fortified themselves for it, her mother repeating, “It’s a sacrifice we have to make in order for Jyoti to fulfill her destiny,” before sobbing for her future-self who would be daughter-less for twelve months. Both parents assuaged themselves by telling each other that the LSE was only borrowing their daughter for a year before it made her into a great prize-winning economist, like one of the many world leaders who’d walked its famed halls. On the night before Jyoti left, the Patiks had some family friends over and her father, after having a few whiskies, said, “Jyoti already has something in common with one of the school’s founders, the prodigious and eminent George Bernard Shaw. Any guesses as to why?” His guests were all stumped. “They’re both vegetarians!” he finally revealed. It was a jump in logic and a joke that only a slightly drunk and very adoring parent could make. It was memories like this that kept her from dialling the last digit of her parents’ telephone number in the middle of the night during those first weeks.

  But over the months she’d grown to like London, and now that spring was here, an optimism or at least a buoyancy had crept in, which she chalked up to her having survived in a foreign city on her own. The mere fact that she’d withstood the winter gave her strength.

  Just as she was about to abandon the gallery steps and go home, she spotted Gavin running towards her from the edge of Trafalgar Square. He smiled and waved as he ran. She felt the inklings of a new sensation in her stomach, something she couldn’t clearly identify. Was it confidence? Is this what being independent, totally on your own, without worrying about disappointing other people felt like?

  “So sorry I’m late . . .”

  While Gavin apologized, she couldn’t help notice how striking his green eyes were. He smelled like crisp mountain air. She realized the new sensation wasn’t in her stomach—there was an ardent heat between her legs she’d never experienced.

  - 20 -

  1997

  “IM’T-T-TRULY SORRY FOR BEING late,” Gavin said, blushing. Jyoti knew his stutter came out when he was nervous. Over the past couple of weeks they’d chatted on the tube in the mornings, during which he’d stuttered less each time. At first she’d found his Irish accent difficult to understand but she was soon charmed by its lilt.

  “It’s alright,” Jyoti said, feeling a little blush herself. As they walked, she tried to keep her distance from him, to keep her desire at bay. “I was just enjoying watching all the silly tourists feed the filthy pigeons.”

  “Flying rats,” he said.

  “You mean the pigeons or the tourists?” she asked with a smile. Making fun of the American tourists who disembarked at Westminster Station was a large portion of their banter. Just the other day they’d cracked each other up with impressions of overly amicable Americans who mispronounced other station names. “Beg yer pardon, miss, is Gloucesester Station the next stop?” “Do y’all know if Liechester Square’s on this line?”

  Now, as they climbed the stairs and made their way into the gallery, Jyoti still couldn’t completely shake the thought of her mother finding out that she was on a date. Taking a deep breath, she reminded herself: It’s impossible, you’re not in Bombay, stop being so anxious.

  Inside the gallery, among the grey stone walls, the high ceilings, and the subdued voices of patrons she felt a bit more at ease. This being a Saturday, the gallery was considerably busy, but as it was less than an hour until closing, the crowds were beginning to thin.

  “So, do you have a favourite painting in here?” Gavin asked when they arrived at the Central Hall. He wore his navy peacoat with a sea-green scarf that matched his eyes.

  “Not really,” she said, hoping he wasn’t an art snob type.

  They ambled through the Sunley Room and then ended up in one of the larger rooms of seventeenth-century paintings that Jyoti had been in before many times.

  “I’ll show you one of my favourites. It’s awesome,” Gavin said and smiled at Jyoti as he led her farther into the gallery. Jyoti had mentioned just the other day that one of her pet peeves was when people overused words like awesome, words they didn’t know the meaning of. He turned back to her now, winked, and said, “Seriously, it’s awe-inspiring.”

  Jyoti followed, trying not to let her smile show.

  He led her to a seventeenth-century painting where in the foreground, a naked man lay asleep on top of a bare-breasted woman. She read the plaque: “SAMSON AND DELILAH” BY PETER PAUL RUBENS 1577–1640. She’d seen most of the paintings in the gallery since she often came to use the restrooms while out on her walks through the West End and Soho. Though she made an effort to see different sections of the gallery, she rarely spent much time considering specific paintings. Usually Jyoti sat on one of the benches to give her feet a rest, briefly took in whatever p
aintings happened to be there, and then carried on. But clearly Gavin knew a thing or two, and Jyoti hoped he wasn’t going to be annoyingly clever and lecture her on the merits of great art. But for now, all she could do was make an effort to come across as amenable. Maybe the only thing they both had in common was making fun of Americans. She considered making an excuse and going home. Maybe she’d have to stop seeing him altogether. Take an earlier train to school every morning for the next five months. Perhaps he’d stalk her. Perhaps it was what she deserved for agreeing to go out with a boy she barely knew. Her mother’s voice began: What if he’s mentally unstable? A rapist? Flicking at a few strands of hair on her shoulder, Jyoti tried to dislodge her mother from her head. She took a deep breath and decided that the sooner she found whatever it was that Gavin was pointing out about the painting, the sooner the date would be over. She continued looking straight ahead at the painting, partly taking it in, and partly thinking about getting home soon, relaxing on the couch, watching Blind Date with a grilled cheese sandwich and a cup of tea, forgetting about ever having gone on this silly date.