by Jenny Feldon
A trio of saleswomen appeared, their elaborate salwar kameez ensembles—calf-length tunics over matching pencil-legged pants—making them look as though they were gliding instead of walking.
“Can we help you, Madam?” They spoke in unison.
I ran my hand over my yoga pants, self-conscious. I probably should have gone home to shower and change first.
“I’m looking for Indian clothes. Maybe some long skirts or those…” I gestured to their salwar suits. Really, they looked like costumes to me, something that should be worn onstage for an International Day pageant, not as day wear. “Do you have something in black?”
One of the women clicked her tongue. They exchanged a meaningful glance.
“Black is an inauspicious color in India, Madam. You won’t be finding many clothings available in that color here.” She looked me up and down, estimating my measurements with a practiced eye. “We can allow you some options to try. But in truth, Madam, you are too large for Indian fashions. We are suggesting you might have better circumstances finding your clothings custom-made.”
I was a size six. Too big to be a celebrity, but perfectly acceptable in normal life in a healthy, yoga-toned, mid-range BMI kind of way. Despite struggling with the same ten pounds my whole life, I’d never, ever been described as “large” before. It felt terrible. Face flushed and heart racing, I accepted a small pile of clothing and ducked behind the dressing room curtain, grateful for the privacy. The first thing I pulled on, a fuchsia ghagra skirt that reached the floor in accordion pleats, was atrocious. The fabric strained over my hips and thighs and bunched at my ankles, clinging in exactly the wrong spots. It was marked XL, but the elastic waistband was stretched to capacity over my stomach. I couldn’t breathe.
Three more outfits, three more misses. I’d always been comfortable identifying as “curvy,” but now my chest and hips seemed grotesque, fun-house-mirror distorted beneath the fluorescent lights. Worse, I looked like a parody of myself—a child playing dress-up on Halloween. I tossed the rest of the clothes into a clumsy pile and fled the dressing room, my expression of defeat as transparent as the smug looks of I told you so on the triumvirate of saleswomen waiting for me outside.
“Perhaps some jewelries, Madam?” they called after me. “Or a handbag?” I stopped at a display of bangles just before the exit. They were turquoise and orange and yellow, studded with tiny gems. I picked one up and tried it on. I couldn’t get it past my thumb.
***
There was a cow sleeping in the road. Horns painted pink, orange marigold garlands strung across its emaciated body. We were three cars behind the cow, listening to the angry cacophony of horns from in back of us that protested the delay. Impervious to the anger of hundreds of commuters, the cow dozed on, a peaceful expression on its bovine face. I was jealous. I also felt like screaming. Why was this allowed to happen? How, in a country that had existed for centuries, were farm animals still allowed to call all the shots?
Venkat put the car in park and reclined his seat, stretching his legs. He combed his hair in the rearview mirror. From his pocket, he took the photograph of the girl, taking a quick peek before stashing it away again.
“Who is she?” I asked, officially too curious not to pry.
Venkat looked embarrassed. I could see the tips of his ears turn red all the way from the backseat, reminding me just how much of a bashful teenager he still was behind his swaggering, village-boy-turned-city-man bravado.
“She is Swapna, Madam. Mine cousin. From my village.” He paused, deciding how much to tell me. “She has thirteen years. When she has fifteen, I am marrying her. For two years I am waiting.”
“Can I see the picture?”
Swapna was lovely, serious and small, with high cheekbones and skin the color of caramel. As if he could read my mind, Venkat pointed to the picture. “Much white, mine Swapna. Mine childrens will be Reddy and much white, both.”
On television, there were commercials for whitening creams and powders, elixirs you could drink that promised to “pale your complexion.” The ads showed men slumped over desks, being ignored and insulted at work, and then, post-whitening cream, winning the promotion and the cutest girl in the office in one fell swoop. Women stood on the sidelines, glum, watching wedding after wedding, and then, voila! A magic complexion powder would lead to a red sari, hennaed hands, and a groom on a white elephant. It made sense that Venkat was so proud of his betrothed’s good complexion. My white skin was making me miserable in India, but for everyone else, it was the holy grail.
The cow stirred and stretched.
“Cow nap over,” Venkat announced. “We going.”
At the next intersection, we pulled up beside a tent city. In the early evening glow, it was alive with activity—men returning from a day’s labor at the construction site, women stirring fragrant lentils and thick rice over cooking fires. There were community clotheslines strung between the rows of blue tarp–covered huts. Children were everywhere, hanging laundry, chasing each other in gleeful games of tag, lying on their stomachs alongside the roads, waving at the cars as they passed.
The Scorpio inched forward and now my window was directly outside one of the tents closest to the road. I stared inside, transfixed, my face pressed up against the glass. The entire space was half the size of my tiny New York kitchen. A man lay curled on a blanket in the corner, sleeping. A child, no more than five, sat cross-legged, rinsing rice over a pot. His sister drew lines in the dirt with a stick while their mother scrubbed at a length of fabric submerged in a tin bucket full of soapy water. In the corner, there was one cooking pot. Three more blankets were neatly rolled and stacked. Four pairs of plastic sandals waited just outside the entrance. There were four plates, four cups for water, and a worn wooden spoon. One worn sari and a pair of brown dhoti pants swayed on a clothesline. The boy spilled a few grains of rice on the ground and looked up at his mother, anxious. She smiled at him and rumpled his tangled black hair.
It was beautiful. So beautiful and immediate and real it made my stomach hurt. I was staring at some of the most visceral examples of poverty in India—a tent camp full of transients, a family of four living underneath a plastic tarp and working like slaves for less than a living wage—and instead of feeling pity or confusion or rage, I felt envy.
Everything was so clear. Their places in the world, their lives laid out before them like so many stepping stones on a predestined path. They had exactly what they needed to survive. There was no room for indecision or clutter or waste. There was no narcissistic hand-wringing of what should I do, what should I be? There was just food, shelter, family, survival. A pair of shoes was a blessing. A day’s wage was a prayer answered. They had themselves, and each other, and a place to sleep under the wide open sky. Trapped behind the tinted glass, homesick and lonely, I watched that family and longed for what they had.
Was this what karma really meant? To travel halfway around the world only to find out I was nothing, and no one, in the face of people who knew real struggle and real sorrow and real joy? My whole life folded out in front of me, as silly and insubstantial as a game of Candyland. Sugary sweet, all lip gloss and handbags and self-important dreams, with obstacles as imaginary as the Lollipop Woods and Gum Drop Mountain. In the face of the tent city’s true reality, my whole existence felt meaningless.
Chapter 14
“You’re going to crash and burn here, ya know,” observed the man behind me, snickering.
I was in line at Coffee Day. Being homesick and miserable was one thing; being homesick and miserable without Starbucks was quite another. Tetley English Breakfast and roadside chai just weren’t cutting it. Desperate, I’d decided to brave the Indian espresso experience yet again. Rashmi, once again, was having trouble understanding my order.
“Latte, please. With nonfat milk. Fat-free? Skim?” Another snicker from behind me. I turned and looked at him, unused to being ad
dressed directly without a “Madam” or a “Ma’am” and a head bobble attached. “What do you mean?”
The man was tall, six feet at least, wearing battered green cargo shorts, untied hiking boots, and a black, logoless baseball cap. Good-looking in a rugged, unshowered kind of way. His accent was thick and hard to place—English? Scottish? Australian? I’d had a friend from London once who did a Munch-face of horror every time I confused her accent with someone’s from, say, New Zealand. Apparently there was a world of difference between them. To me, they all sounded the same.
“Your American accent is terrible. No one is going to be able to understand a word you’re saying,” he continued, resting his elbows on the counter and grinning up at me. He was cute. When was the last time Jay had grinned at me like that? Last year? Ever? The guy’s accent was cute too, but as crippling to my ear as mine was to his. I could barely understand a word he was saying. For a moment, I waffled: enjoy the unaccustomed male attention or get offended at the unsolicited criticism? I chose option #2.
“I’m doing fine so far, thank you very much.”
“I’m surprised they could even make you that drink you just asked for. LAAHTAY. Don’t you find yourself getting a lot of things you didn’t ask for around here?” He had the smug look of a backpacker, someone who rolled through town for a few hours and declared himself a local expert.
“It’s not my fault they can’t understand me. It’s not like I’m speaking Chinese or something.”
“I think what you have here is a failure to communicate, no?”
OK, fine. He had a point. No amount of pantomime seemed to get my point across to the drivers, vendors, and rickshaw operators I attempted to converse with. Even with subtitles, the Hindi programs on television were mostly incomprehensible. In a country whose national language was English, even my native tongue wasn’t getting me very far. I grimaced.
“Do you live in Hyderabad?” I asked.
“Nah, just ambling through. I’m headed down to Goa tomorrow. Melbourne is home.”
Exactly. No one who wasn’t forced to live in Hyderabad—pay the electric bill, obtain a gas tank, fight the traffic, get stared at all day long—was entitled to make fun of my poor communication skills or my “terrible” American accent.
“Yeah, well. There’s not a whole lot I can do about my accent. I’m stuck with it. Just like I’m stuck here.”
The Aussie straightened, hoisting his backpack up higher on his shoulder. “There are worse places to be stuck.”
“Somehow I doubt that. Have you tried the biryani? It almost killed me.”
“Having some troubles fitting in, then?” Rashmi reached around me to hand him a cup. I could have sworn she batted her eyelashes. Maybe the key to expat success had less to do with accents and more to do with being a cute male.
“What makes you say that?”
“Have you looked in a mirror lately? No offense, but for a pretty girl, it looks like you might have seen better days.”
I moved a self-conscious hand to my hair, which was thrown together in a messy bun on top of my head. It was still falling out in handfuls; no amount of lathering with the Ayurveda shampoo could make it look anything but lank and greasy. The water tank issues had made showering less of a luxury and more of a twice-a-week necessity. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d worn lip gloss. Or mascara. Or perfume.
Rashmi held my latte in her hand, too busy watching our conversation to hand it over. I cleared my throat, raising my eyebrows in her direction.
“Excuse me, Sir and Ma’am, but if you are wanting my opinion, I am finding it much difficult to understand either of you, especially when you are speaking so quickly.” She handed over the drink. “Has Ma’am considered Hindi lessons? You should be contacting Simrahn. She is quite good at instruction.” Rashmi pointed to the bulletin board just inside the door. “Her card is there.”
“Can I join you?” asked the Aussie, following me out. He pointed to a table on the outdoor patio next to a pack of teens in stone-wash denim blowing grape-flavored hookah smoke toward the sky. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen a friendly face.”
I wasn’t sure what he found friendly about mine, considering he’d just told me I looked like shit, except not in so many words and with an Australian accent. I sat anyway. I had nothing but time to kill. I glanced out the window, wondering if Venkat could see me, what he would think if he did. I wasn’t doing anything wrong, but my pulse raced the way it used to when I was a teenager, right before I crawled out my bedroom window two hours past curfew. I wanted so badly to have a real conversation with someone. Someone who told me I was pretty. Someone who might still think I was witty or interesting. Or sane.
“What brought you to Hyderabad?” he asked, dumping pellets of saccharin into a cup of Americano as thick as tar. His face and hands had the same weathered texture, like he’d spent hours working in the sun. Even tanned, he and I were the only white faces in the cafe.
“My husband’s job.”
“He works a lot?”
“All the time.”
“So you hang out in coffeehouses scaring people with your accent and complaining about the local cuisine?”
“Something like that. You?”
The Aussie laughed. “I’m on sabbatical, researching clean water efforts in Southeast Asia. India is nothing but inspiration, no? All this struggling humanity.” He waved his arm to include the whole cafe.
“This isn’t exactly a good sampling of the population. Everyone in here can afford a 250 rupee coffee drink. And flavored smoking tobacco. And blue jeans.”
“You know what I mean, aye? Anyway, I’m not meant to stay long in Hyderabad. I’m stopping through on my way to Goa for a bit of a holiday.” He sipped his coffee. The waxed paper cup was already disintegrating, crumpling into itself like a melting snowman. “Just fueling up before I go out into the field again. Taking down some notes.” He held up a leather notebook similar to mine, but worn with use. It was literally bursting with pages and pages of scribbled pencil. I thought of my own empty notebook, the emotions and ideas that had once come so easily, but now vanished into the smoky Indian air long before I could turn them into words.
“I’m a writer too. Or used to be. I haven’t felt so inspired lately.” I ripped the empty saccharin packet to shreds with my ragged fingernails.
“She might be right, you know.” The Aussie gestured over his shoulder with one thumb, where Rashmi still stood, watching our discussion with interest. I wished she’d paid such close attention when she’d been making my latte; espresso grounds floated on top of the foam like tiny insects.
“About what?”
“Learning the language. Sometimes the words only come when you teach yourself new ways to think about them. Plus, everything is easier if you find some common ground.” He reached over to the bulletin board and plucked a slip of paper from the bottom. “Here, take this with you. Doubt she’ll be able to fix that accent, but you might learn how to order a cup of coffee you’ll actually drink.” He pointed to my untouched latte. “Drink up; it’ll make you feel better.” He winked and stood up, crumpling what was left of his cup and tossing it toward the garbage can without looking. It went in.
“See you around then, beautiful.”
“Yeah, sure.” I blushed under his gaze. “Thanks.”
Jay never told me I was beautiful. I’d been wounded by the absent compliment more than once, frustrated that he seemed indifferent to my appearance no matter how much effort I put in. Don’t you think I’m pretty? I’d ask. Of course I do. I married you, didn’t I? he’d answer, as though that were good enough.
I wanted him to think I was beautiful, or at least tell me so, even when I wasn’t. Because I wasn’t, always, but I longed for him to see me that way. My desire for his acceptance and approval hadn’t disappeared the day he put a ring on my finger. Sometimes I
’d stand in front of the mirror, staring at myself, trying to see what he saw, wondering what flaw rendered me so ordinary to the person who was supposed to love me most.
But mostly, I let it go. There were other people who filled that void. Whose compliments lifted me up and made me whole. My parents, my girlfriends, my co-workers and classmates. Years before the cultural phenomenon of the Facebook “like,” we traded support like currency, banking a gorgeous here and a brilliant there, knowing that when we needed it, a whole slew of love-isms would come back to us in spades. Like standing on a giant pyramid, Jay and I balanced at the top, holding hands but facing away from each other, while everyone we knew stood below, shoulder to shoulder, forming the platform on which we stood, whispering the words that filled in all the empty places.
In Hyderabad there was no pyramid, no supporting cast of loved ones to keep us afloat in a sea of uncertainty. All those people were thousands of miles away. My face in the broken mirror was less recognizable than ever. Jay seemed to see me less and less every day. I wanted him to think I was beautiful, not a random Australian backpacker with a cute smile. I hated that Jay made me feel so insecure. I didn’t want to be some simpering hothouse flower, needing constant attention in order to bloom. But I needed him to remind me where I came from and who I used to be. In the absence of everything familiar, I was losing myself.
India made me feel like I was falling down an endless shaft, untethered and uncertain, a thousand eyes watching but not a single hand reaching out to break my fall. Deep down, I knew if I never stopped falling, by the time I reached the bottom it would be too dark and too deep to ever climb back up again.
