by Jenny Feldon
***
Jay and I drove home from dinner in silence, locked in trains of thought that traveled in two different directions. It reminded me of that old math problem: If Train A was traveling east at a speed of forty-five miles per hour, and Train B was traveling west at a speed of sixty miles per hour, how long would it take for them to pass each other? He was east, rooted here in this foreign world, filling his days with purpose and intention that moved ever forward, never looking back at the life we left behind. And I was west, yearning for a home I could no longer define, wishing I could run back to where I came from and stop trying to fit into a life I’d never asked for. We were supposed to be taking this journey together. I watched his profile, shadowy in the darkened car, and wondered if he’d ever turn my way again.
The sun had set hours ago, but the air still broiled with violent heat. We turned onto Izzat Nagar road, where dozens of people were sleeping on the concrete median. On nights like this, when it was too hot to sleep in the tents, the men from the camps would pile next to each other in a long line of slumber, blankets over their heads to shield them from the noise and the headlights of oncoming traffic.
Venkat took the corner fast, as usual, in a rush to get home now that his long day’s work was done. Suddenly he whipped the steering wheel hard to the left, avoiding something bulky that blocked the road. I flew into Jay’s lap, banging my head against the window. We never bothered wearing seat belts in the Scorpio; there were so many other hazards on the road that staying strapped into the car seemed like the least of our worries.
“Venkat, what was that?” Jay asked, annoyed. “A cow or something?”
“Guy. Dead,” Venkat answered, steadying the car and accelerating like nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
“Dead? Like, a person?” I asked, craning around to look behind us.
“Yes. Guy dead. Man. Killed. No living,” Venkat said. His tone was the same one he used to tell me the climate would be hot today or that we needed to stop for petrol.
“Venkat, Jesus! Turn around! We can’t just drive by!” Jay leaned forward into the front of the car, shaking Venkat’s shoulder. Venkat shrugged him off.
“No, Sir. No turning around.”
“What? Why? How do you know he’s dead? What if he’s still alive and just hurt? We can call the ambulance. What’s the number for 911?” I grabbed my mobile, realizing I had no idea who or where to call for an emergency.
“Dead, Ma’am. Police coming later, four, five hours. No now. Now nothing.”
“Turn around, Venkat,” Jay said angrily.
Venkat hunched down, chastened but clearly opposed to the demand. He made an awkward U-turn, oblivious to oncoming traffic. A flurry of infuriated horns sounded in protest. Venkat pulled back out onto the main road, then made the same right turn back onto Izzat Nagar. This time, there was no need for a violent swerve. He knew exactly what he was trying to avoid.
Sure enough, it was a body, lifeless and splayed awkwardly on the pavement, still wrapped in a purple blanket that revealed only thin, scarred ankles and filthy bare feet. There was no indication of what happened or who was responsible for leaving him there, denied even the dignity of being rolled away from the onslaught of cars and livestock that still threatened to trample him. His spot along the crowded wall was empty. On either side, his companions slept on, either unaware or unconcerned that while they lay dreaming, one of their own met his demise on the unforgiving road.
Venkat stalled the car across from the body, still sulking behind the wheel.
“Venkat, I want to call the police. Is there a number?”
“No number. No calling. They coming, later.”
We stayed there, staring at the body in the road. Jay tried a bunch of different numbers but nothing went through. Finally, he called Anish and explained the situation. I couldn’t make out what Anish was saying, but Jay’s responses were mostly grunted affirmations, accompanied by a couple of shrugs and a furrowed brow that told me he wasn’t satisfied with whatever Anish was telling him.
At the sound of Anish’s voice through the phone, Venkat looked even more alarmed. Anish and his Brahmin family were powerful in Hyderabad, members of the highest caste. He commanded more respect from Venkat than Jay and I put together. It was Anish who had negotiated Venkat’s salary and given him basic instructions for his position. It might have been me who handed Venkat an envelope of rupees at the end of each week, but as far as Venkat was concerned, Anish held all the power.
Jay hung up and slipped his BlackBerry back in his pocket. “Anish says he’ll make some calls to the people he knows on the police force, but he doesn’t think they’re likely to do anything about it. And he says we need to get out of here because they won’t like it if we start poking around asking questions.”
“So we’re just going to leave him here? Who won’t like it, his friends on the wall? They’re not doing anything; it’s like they don’t even care or something. This would never happen at home. Death means something there. How can they just leave him like this? He had a name, a family.”
My voice broke, cracking beneath a landslide of emotion I barely understood. I felt useless and angry, so utterly foreign. It was like there was a missing piece to a puzzle that was forever buried beyond my reach. Everything I’d ever understood about the sanctity of life and death was suddenly blurry and out of focus. Did life mean more here, as I’d imagined when I envied the tent people their focused, contented lives? Or did it mean less because death was everywhere, imminent and unbiased, choosing as casually as a blackjack dealer with a deck of cards?
We were so out of our league, so poorly equipped to navigate an emotional and moral landscape that let us think we were superior for reasons that meant nothing at all. We had industry and innovation, airplanes and skyscrapers and supermarkets, but at the end of the day, at the end of a life, the only difference between the West and the East is that we would never stop spinning with the centrifugal force of our own self-importance. Here, there was life—celebration and love, joy and fear and sorrow—and there was death. It was only our perception that made the moment it all ended any different from the moment before it or the one that followed.
We pulled away and we left him there, lifeless in his purple blanket. I turned around and watched the body get smaller and smaller as we drove back past the tent camp to our gated development, our marble mansion, our protected lives that were equally as pointless as the one we’d just left behind. Jay put his arm around me. I hadn’t realized I was shivering.
“You’re letting this mean more than it should,” Jay said, watching me as I lay in bed, eyes wide open, unable to sleep. “This happens all the time, every day. Maybe he was old or sick. Maybe he rolled off the wall on purpose. You just don’t know. Things are different here. Life doesn’t mean the same thing.”
But that couldn’t be true. Somewhere in all this poverty and filth, beneath the confusion and the chaos and the stares, there was truth like nothing I’d ever known. It glimmered on the edges of my consciousness, demanding my attention but refusing to show me a way inside. I was losing myself, watching my marriage crumble, forgetting what it ever felt like to be home. And the only moment that held any meaning, that let me glimpse the answers I was desperate to find, was seeing a dead guy in the road and driving away without doing anything at all.
Chapter 15
“Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our Air India nonstop flight to Singapore International Airport. Please remain in your seats with seat belts fixed until the captain has signaled. Thank you for choosing Air India. We hope your journey with us was pleasant. Namaste.”
So far, our flight had been light years away from “pleasant.” The cramped, narrow cabin was full of coughing adults and wailing children. There were bugs. Germs. Sticky leftover food from previous flights clung to the seats and left a sour stench in the recirculated air. Periodically, fligh
t attendants came down the aisle spraying clouds of noxious fumes out of rusted metal canisters, killing mosquitoes. And perhaps us too, had we been foolish enough to inhale during the flight.
The loudspeaker clicked off. There was an instant flurry of activity: seat belts unbuckling, overhead compartments being opened, suitcases being heaved into the aisles. I was in the middle seat. Jay was in the aisle. The woman next to me, wrapped in a beige sari with a stripe of crimson powder painted along the center part in her dark long hair, had been slumped against the window, snoring loudly, for most of the flight, one arm flung across my right thigh. But suddenly she sprang into action, gesturing impatiently for me to get out of her way.
“Excuse me, please,” she said haughtily, clearly inconvenienced by the fact that I was still sitting with my seat belt securely fastened. Because the fasten seat belt sign was still turned on. Because the plane was still moving.
I smiled and pointed up at the little lit-up picture of a buckle above us. “I think we’re supposed to stay in our seats,” I said. Around us, it was chaos. People were jostling each other out of the way for a better position in a line that had formed in the aisle. The flight attendants looked unperturbed. The woman looked like she was going to hit me.
“Please move aside and let me pass,” she said, raising her voice. I looked at Jay. He shrugged and moved like he was going to unbuckle himself and let her by.
“Don’t you dare,” I hissed under my breath. This was a matter of principle. I turned to our aisle-mate. “Sorry. We need to wait until they turn the sign off.”
My fake-friendly smile did nothing to placate her. She grunted and tapped her fingernails loudly on the back of the seat in front of her, standing so close that the bottom hem of her sari draped across my lap. She shoved a worn plaid suitcase into my shin, trying to physically bludgeon me out of her path to freedom.
The scene on the plane was exactly why I was categorically unfit for life in India. I was a born rule-follower, a lover of structure and boundaries. I colored inside the lines. My free-spirited mother’s staunch refusal to ever park her minivan within the confines of one parking space caused me much teenaged angst. Jay affectionately dubbed me “hall monitor” from our very first date, when I refused to choose our own table at the restaurant because we were standing in front of a gold-framed placard that clearly stated “Please Wait to Be Seated.”
India had no rules. Or, if there were any, everyone gave themselves carte blanche to blatantly disregard them whenever they felt like it. At a traffic signal—of which Hyderabad had precious few—a red light only meant “stop” if the drivers nearby felt inclined to obey. We passed alongside the DO NOT PASS URINE HERE wall every day; I’d yet to count less than five men relieving themselves there, using the giant painted letters as targets for their streams. If New York had been organized, purposeful chaos, then India was just chaos—loud, frenetic, unrepentant.
And then there was me. An ill-placed comma in a book I was reading plagued me for days. I glared at people who tried to sneak more than ten items through the express checkout lane at the grocery store. The clothes in my closet all hung facing left. Was it surprising, really, that I—a rule-following hall monitor practically since birth, who still kept my sixty-four-box of Crayolas organized by color, who had never jay-walked or double-parked or cheated at Scrabble in my entire life—was ill-suited to a world where rules simply didn’t apply? Perhaps not.
This last-minute weekend in Singapore was a work trip for Jay. I was tagging along for a mini-vacation. It was the first time we’d left Hyderabad since the day we arrived six months ago. I was mildly concerned about the canings-for-chewing-gum rumors about Singaporean culture, but everything else about it sounded heavenly. Crosswalks and sidewalks and French restaurants with white tablecloths. I wanted to drown myself in filet mignon and sauvignon blanc. I wanted to crank the air conditioning high and sit around in a thick fluffy bathrobe, sipping cappuccino on the thirty-second floor of a fancy hotel with skyline views. I wanted to ride in a real taxi cab, with four wheels and actual doors, and stop at every traffic light. Just breathing non-Indian air sounded too good to be true.
We’d begged Venkat to stay in the house with Tucker, to which he agreed, reluctantly, only after I promised to listen to his pitch on why we should buy him a Yamaha motorcycle as soon as we returned. He wanted that motorcycle desperately. I hated to resort to bribery, but it was the only way I could leave the city and not spend the entire time worrying about my dog. I trusted Venkat. He and Tucker might not be the best of friends, but at least Tucker would be safe.
Outside, the humid air smelled amazing, like frangipani or maybe tuberose. The outside of the airport was even cleaner than the inside. There were no rickshaws, no smoking piles of garbage, no cows or buffalo wandering the roads. There were only palm trees, smooth white pavement, and expensive imported cars.
We grabbed our luggage and got into a cab. Just as the doors closed behind us, a tropical downpour burst over the city. I watched the city flash by as the rain spattered across the windshield and drummed against the roof, making me feel safe and cozy inside. It was light, easy rain—a far cry from the violent onslaught of the South Indian monsoons.
“There is much beauty here,” said the cab driver. Jay and I nodded in agreement, transfixed by the scene outside our windows. “No trash. No filth. We are proud of our city.”
Civic pride, I thought with a flash of bitter spite. Could we figure out a way to import that concept back to India, where, out on the street, you had to duck to avoid being hit with garbage people tossed out their car windows?
Singapore was the anti-India. Everything was washed and freshly painted and neatly landscaped. There was a Starbucks on every corner. There were taxi stands and skyscrapers and the fastest, sleekest subway system I’d ever seen. And there was shopping—real, true designer shopping. My heart leapt with joy every time we passed yet another familiar and beloved name on a shiny, glass-paneled storefront: Chanel, Prada, Louis Vuitton.
Best of all, it was orderly. People were standing in lines, waiting at crosswalks, putting on seat belts. Even the rushes of people walking on the sidewalks moved with a kind of synchronized rhythm. Nothing seemed accidental. Everything had purpose. The little hall monitor inside me turned cartwheel after cartwheel in my head, beside herself with joy.
Our hotel room was a fully automated modern masterpiece, all white carpets and glistening chrome. The curtains opened and closed with the push of a button. The shower had a huge rainforest spout. There were fluffy white towels and fluffy white bathrobes and fluffy white terry-cloth slippers laid out next to the bed. There were chocolates on our pillows and fresh oranges in a bowl on the table by the door. I hung my dresses in the full-length closet and stood back for a moment, admiring them. This was the way things were supposed to be.
Jay only had a few hours to spare before his meetings. After a lunch of sushi (sushi!), fresh-cut fruit, and handmade spring rolls hot from the fryer, we headed to the beach. A lifetime of living near oceans made living in landlocked Hyderabad feel claustrophobic. I ached for the hypnotic rhythm of the waves, to crush sand between my toes and let the ocean breezes soothe my troubled mind.
With limited time and so many beaches to choose from on the tiny island, we decided to visit Sentosa Island. Mainly because Jay was dying to travel by “cable car,” a method of transportation we’d previously only seen before at Disneyland. The tiny, brightly painted gondolas hung precariously over the city, creaking in the wind along a cable track in the sky. We paid for our tickets and stood in line, Jay gazing eagerly out over the horizon, me sipping the best vanilla latte I’d ever tasted. My entire body twitched with the unaccustomed influx of caffeine.
I stumbled a little climbing into our red gondola car. To match the blue silk sundress I was beyond thrilled to be wearing, I’d chosen a pair of high-heeled strappy sandals.
“You couldn’t have
just worn flip-flops?” Jay asked, grabbing my arm to steady me.
“And miss out on the chance to look cute for a change? No way.”
Like the cable car—and really, much of Singapore itself—Sentosa Beach had a curiously fictional feel to it, complete with rope bridges and torches right out of Tarzan’s Tree House. There was a grass hut bar playing Jimmy Buffett songs, and a weathered wooden dock that extended into the water. Cheerful rowboats were tethered on either side, bobbing in the gentle surf. Jay and I slipped off our shoes at the edge of the sand and walked toward the lapping waves.
Our relationship was so unpredictable these days, an ever-shifting cloud like the pattern of an erratic hurricane. His moods changed and my moods changed, and our ability to weather each other’s storms dwindled with each passing day. Once again, I thought back to the promise we’d made each other that very first week, that only one of us could be down at one time. Now we were just spinning our unhappiness in opposite directions, blaming each other for miseries neither of us could control.
We took a long walk around the island. My shoes became unbearable and I slipped them off, looping the straps over my wrist and walking barefoot on the immaculate sidewalks. Jay whistled while we ambled along, heading into the sun, taking our time. I’d always loved it when he whistled. It was a rare, childlike impulse he only gave in to when we were alone.
Back at the hotel, though, Jay’s distracted frown returned. He went to the business center to make some calls. I changed clothes and hurried out of the room. If Lonely Planet was correct, Singapore truly was heaven on earth. Because there was a Bikram yoga studio. In the hotel. As I raced through the hotel to make the next class, I could swear I heard harps playing and angels singing. Beach, coffee, yoga. A trifecta of the things I loved most in the world.
Despite my former devotion to yoga, I still hadn’t made it to a single class in Hyderabad. I’d craved Bikram every single day since we moved. I went from practicing yoga five days a week with religious determination…to absolutely nothing. The other day, I’d bent down to put on Tucker’s leash, and for one terrible, paralyzing moment, I thought I couldn’t reach my toes.
