Margaret and I set out on the narrow dirt path to explore. Once we got down to it, we could see that the riverbank was an expanse of black slime-covered trash. Every morning the locals took their plastic bag of trash tied up with bunny ears and threw it in the river; she cleanses all. The seasonal tide lines were lines of trash.
We walked ghat-to-ghat as young girls in thin cotton dresses with faded patterns, like my grandmother’s, danced their bare feet and smiling white teeth at our sides. I didn’t remember Amber ever smiling like that. They sold fragile boats handmade from large leaves. Each boat had a tiny wick and a marigold. We were supposed to light one and set it afloat in the river out of respect for the goddess.
There was something different going on at each of the closely spaced ghats. In one people were washing their water buffalo, the next they were washing their hair. The women bathed modestly in saris, all except some of the very old women, who bathed with sagging bare breasts. People were brushing their teeth and rinsing off almost on top of each other. The next ghat was for laundry, women had cotton garments in saturated colors spread out on the steps to dry. The next ghat was for religious puja, rituals for the god or goddess who was looking over you. People dunked and smiled in the thick brown water. Monkeys ran along the narrow building ledges and watched. Holy men sat along the bank with their hands out. Chahel dropped a coin in one man’s hand. I wondered how he chose. There were unholy holy men who looked like wild cannibals covered in human ash from the burning ghats. One carried a human skull like a purse.
I was fascinated by the idea of the burning ghats, the ceremonial cremation area. Indians dreamt of being burned at the ghats and of having their ashes given over to Ma Ganga, as one of the crew called her. People even shipped their ashes to her if they could afford it. But the ideal is to be burned on a pile of wood watched over by your loved ones. We didn’t have time to walk that far, but we would go there.
The ritual is expensive by Indian standards. Some families couldn’t afford enough wood, so partially burned bodies were dumped in the river. The government-bred snapping turtles could eat a pound of human flesh a day. They batted clean up, without biting the thousands of living who were in the river at any given moment.
We walked on as bands of young children trailed behind us then dropped away. Our body language was much less foreign after months of working. We moved with sureness and swept our foreheads in respectful acknowledgment of all the souls around us. We stopped on the way back and set a lit wick leaf boat adrift in the water.
I should have started reading up ten years ago. I knew I would be leaving without ever understanding much of it. I rarely study a place before I go, except as it relates to work. I let it wash over me. I’m sure I miss a lot, like not renting the audio tour in a museum. But my mind isn’t busy with being busy with facts either; it’s more impressionistic than that. It was fine. There are all kinds of ways to approach the world. Apparently I like to do it by feel. Eyes half open, like a meditating Buddha. Though I hate meditating. Jon had been reading. He referred to us as Radha Krishna, the divine lovers. What a romantic.
India is everything all the time. I usually dream a lot but I hadn’t dreamt once since I’d been there. As Phyllis the Physicist had said, being awake in India was enough for one Western brain.
We had a few days to rest and wander as the company shook off the earthquake and made their way to the new location. People were scattered around town, we were the only ones at the temple; just the way we like it.
Dilip drove us across town to a restaurant to meet Dede, the Director, and other department heads. It was an Indian feast. I fell in love with butter masala. Dede had a message from Ed that he had arrived safely and had the kids under his wing with help from Karin. Their daughter was in bad shape; she was going to need extensive plastic surgery. Her husband would be able to leave the hospital in a few days, wrist-to-neck in a cast with pins. Ed planned to drive him to work each day and handle the household.
Margaret went straight to bed and I got a cup of chai from the kitchen and went up to the roof. I could see the flames of an evening Ganga Aarti at the Dashashwamedh ghat. We’d considered shooting it, but I’d checked it out a few nights before with Chahel. Millions of hard-shelled insects, attracted by the fire ceremony, rained down like rockets and bounced off our heads. I had to cover my mouth and put on sunglasses to keep from eating them or getting an eye gouged out. Chahel seemed impervious to the onslaught. I don’t know what the bugs were, but I couldn’t control them. We weren’t going to grab any shots of their world without a firefight. I told the Director we couldn’t shoot it. She nodded at her assistant. He’d slashed a red line through the scene in the script and went off in search of the writer. I was waiting for a replacement scene.
Dede came up on the roof and sat down. She nodded toward the fire ceremony. It looked like a huge luau at that distance.
“I’m glad you caught that early. We’re switching to a sunset procession and burning effigy; apparently the bugs don’t care about those. You’ll have new pages tomorrow.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll get with my people. Does she want to sign off on the deity?”
“No, the writer is going to give you some options, you can decide. Just let her know. Salvage what you can from the aarti plan. How’s she doing?”
We’d all noticed that Margaret was really not well. Ed had been covering for her, but with him gone, it was more obvious.
“The doctor says she has parasites. She’s on her second round of drugs. She hasn’t had a fever or aches, it doesn’t sound like Dengue,” I said. “If it doesn’t clear up soon, I think you should insist she go to a city, maybe home.”
“That was my thought too,” she said. “Ed agrees. He said he’ll talk to her if it comes to that.”
I emailed Jon to update him on the situation. He must have been reading email on his phone.
He messaged right back: 2 much work for u H
I answered in short form: GG Spring. miss u jt
J: dress worn out
H: 1 month
J: mike coming for xmas
H: fun
J: ?
H: ? what?
J: u know
H: history
J: not funny
H: nothing
There was a long pause; I thought maybe we had lost our connection.
J: regret?
H: no, just naked just u
J: me 2
H: I hope chana doesn’t read this
J: ditto
H: so hula?
J: hell no
I was laughing when the electricity switched off so I didn’t get to respond. The electricity was always going off; sometimes it took all day to get off a few lines between blackouts. He was used to me disappearing by now.
Margaret was barely working half days. With the fatigue of an eight-month push, Varanasi felt like a huge amount of work. Chahel and Dilip were doing triple duty. Dede told her assistant to find me some help.
The work went on. Our storybook couple was there, learning to accommodate each other after a rocky 16th century start. We hired traditional musicians and created a banquet in their music studio in the back of a falling down building. Half of Varanasi looks like rubble. It’s a very old city, maybe the oldest on the planet. Our lovers ate their meal off huge leaves, sitting on silk floor cushions. We moved on to work in a weaving studio with low ceilings and a dirt floor. It needed almost no treatment except to cover a lone electrical wire and to mock up lanterns around the bare bulbs. Chahel boosted me up while I rewired a fabric canopy over the walkway.
We took over a lush guesthouse where the wife had assignations free from the prying eyes of her Indian household, or so she thought. It would be where she died. I worked extra hard to make her room beautiful for both activities. I arranged for her to have more than cookies to offer the man of her sexual awakening and ultimate downfall. Too bad I hadn’t met Jon before I dressed the set for Vampire Chick; I would have d
one better by her.
Margaret battled on. She had an upset stomach, but only a little pain. It wasn’t the bone achy stuff; we weren’t worried about Dengue. She was hoarse; she said it was from the drugs to kill off the parasites. I had stopped buying it, but she wouldn’t tell me the name of her doctor. Dilip was driving her; he’d been sworn to secrecy. It was very frustrating. We met on the roof every morning for breakfast and planning. She managed to get in a walk with me on afternoons when we weren’t shooting.
Dilip and Chahel drove us down to the end so she could see the burning ghats without the hike. It’s a quiet area. Attendants build pyres on platforms right at the water’s edge. Shrouded beloveds are carried to the pyre while the men in the family watch with looks of pure joy and peace. A son walks around the pyre before lighting the fire, another important reason to have male children. I was trying to follow Chahel’s whispered explanation.
The body burned for a few hours, after which the son used a pole to break the skull open to release the spirit to its next life. When it was all over the ashes and pieces of bone were given to the river. It sounds exotic, but when you witness it, it feels like the most natural thing in the world. There was no wailing or somber black; no heartbreaking jump rope casket trim, no clawing at the earth for more time. It was pure gratitude for the opportunity to meet in this lifetime.
As we watched them tip the ashes of a woman into the river Margaret turned to me, “This is what I want.”
“You want to be cremated?” I asked.
“We’re already being cremated. I want to be cremated like this, in the open on the edge of a river with people around. Not in some sterile oven.”
“I don’t know if there’s any way to do that at home, you might have to join a backwoods sect. Move to some place like Idaho. Do you think the kids would bring you back here?”
“Never. They’re ninnies. They don’t even like the idea of cremation.”
“I’ve never thought about it. I guess I did fill out the form; I can’t even remember what I put down.”
“You will by the time you’re our age. We’ll be cremated where we drop, then shipped home where we’ll sit listening to the traffic on the freeway from inside a marble vault at Forest Lawn.”
“I want to be scattered at sea in Hawaii.”
“I like it right here,” said Margaret.
We headed back to the temple.
“You did a great job with the effigy scene,” she said. “You sure pulled that together on the fly.”
“It worked. It was like dressing up a scarecrow; wardrobe was a big help. Chahel found a man who makes the heads.”
We arrived at the temple to word that we had a guest arriving by dinnertime, my new assistant. Dilip picked her up from the airport.
Margaret and I waited for her in the dirt yard by the cow stalls, like British colonialists greeting an arriving houseguest. A young girl in one crazy-ass outfit stumbled out of the car. She looked shell-shocked, probably from the wild drive in from the airport, but it could be she’d looked in a mirror.
She was about twenty and blonde. She’d stuck a jeweled bindi between her eyes, had glitter cream worked across her cheeks, and was wearing a tight t-shirt with a Buddha motif through which we could see a black bra with one eye shut. Her skirt only went to her knees; at least it was a full skirt. A skinny scarf was wrapped around her neck a la biker chick. It did nothing to knock down the view of the black bra. She’d topped it off with dangly earrings, jeweled sandals, and incessant patter directed at a confused Dilip. Something about us being “all one”.
“You must be Amy,” said Margaret.
“Yes,” said Amy. “Who are you?”
“I’m Margaret and this is Hannah,” she said. “Hannah is your new boss.”
I looked at Margaret with daggers. She grinned evilly. What the hell?
We showed Amy to her room. She kept gushing about India and being all one. Margaret kept asking her what she meant. I worked hard to keep my mouth shut, both literally, and in a bitch slap kinda way. This was my assistant? We headed to Margaret’s room for a pow wow.
“Who is that?” I asked.
“She’s yours, unfortunately.”
“What does she do?”
“Nothing that I know of. She’s the niece of one of the big money guys.”
“Niece niece or Hollywood niece?”
“Niece niece. It got past Dede.”
“I didn’t think anything got past Dede.”
“Even Dede lives with limits.”
“She’s going to have to put on some clothes and knock off the we-are-all-one bullshit.”
“She’s your project,” said Margaret. “I’m too old for this shit.”
Amy spent her first day trailing around behind me. She went back and forth between asking questions about the stars and her all-one babble. I introduced her to Claire, the wardrobe assistant; they were about the same age. Claire eyeballed her bra and bindi and looked at me with a big fat question mark flashing in her eyes. I just shrugged. I suggested they go sightseeing after work.
I had Chahel move her over to the same guesthouse where Claire was living. No way was she going to live with us. I was exhausted from just one day of babysitting a Malibu one-love brat. I had used up half my allotment of energy dragging her by the arm and eyeball slapping the men on the crew for ogling her Buddha and lace bound breasts. Hell, I didn’t blame them. They were kinda riveting, like Facebook poses. I could barely take my eyes off them myself, and I’m so not into women. Jon was lucky he wasn’t there. I was pretty sure he’d have felt an eyeball slap or two.
The next morning Margaret and I were meeting in our rooftop aerie, sitting side-by-side conforming notes, talking over our day. I hadn’t said anything to her about day one with Amy. Shared credit or not, I knew enough to suck it up. Our breakfast order was in. Amy pounded up the stairs. We might need to post a guard.
Margaret looked over the top of her reading glasses at Amy who sat across the table from us, sobbing.
“What’s the problem?” I asked.
“Oh Margaret,” she wailed.
I winced inside; it felt unseemly for her to be calling Margaret, Margaret. It felt like it should at least be Mrs. Margaret. And why was she addressing Margaret anyway?
The story unfolded. The night before, Amy and Claire had gone to one of the endless street festivals. A whole group of people was crushing down the street incinerating some straw deity. Heady stuff. She’d jumped in like it was a big mosh pit without taking note of the fact that it was all men. She was having a great time dancing around, undoubtedly looking at all the men in a deep and meaningful we-are-all-one kinda way, which translated to them as “take me here, take me now.” She’d gotten her breasts grabbed and had experienced quite a few forays up her skirt. She felt so violated.
We sat looking at her jeweled bindi. Mascara tears eroded away streambeds of glitter cream, leaving black silt in tiny delta fans on her cheek pads. I think we drank tea in unison. Chahel came up the stairs with plates of food, but quickly backed down. A family tribunal was in session. Damn it, I was starving!
“I’m going to take you for some appropriate clothes this morning,” I said. “You need to dress in our crew uniform from now on.”
Crew uniform? What the hell was I talking about? Margaret looked at me over the top of her glasses; she knew I was throwing the ball in from far left field.
“Go back to your place, wash your face and wait for me,” I said.
She snuffled a few times and glanced at Margaret for a second opinion. Margaret was back looking at her over the tops of her glasses.
“Okay,” she said. “How long will you be?”
Seriously, girl?
“I’ll be there in an hour, we need to finish up here. Go down and get some breakfast on the way out.”
“Can I eat with you?”
“You may not. Go wash your face, leave it washed, and settle down. We’re going to start over.”
&n
bsp; The boys were poised at the bottom of the stairs; breakfast in hand. As soon as she passed they came back up.
“It’s cold,” said Chahel.
“You can blow on it, Hannah,” said Margaret. “You’re hot this morning.”
“I had a vision of her getting off the plane in L.A. with a dark saucer-eyed Indian baby in bindi and bangles. She’d be talking about one world. It wouldn’t play in Malibu. I’d never work in that town again,” I said. “And I felt sorry for the baby.”
She was smiling at me. “You do have a vivid imagination.”
“And that was just the best case scenario,” I said.
We ate cold eggs, cold rice, cold toast with cold butter washed down with lukewarm tea.
Dilip got the car. Amy got in the backseat.
“Dilip,” I said. “Let’s find a basic clothes stall.”
He wound around for a few minutes and stopped in front of a place with a curb that was so high it was hard to step up. Children came running and begging at the sight of us. I gave them the little half salute. Amy stopped to gush and be adored, and to pass out rupees.
“Keep moving, Amy.”
Her head snapped up. “But they’re so cute.”
“They’re endless. We need to get to work.”
Dilip was trying to shoo them away from her. They were trying to touch her breasts. I reached out and grabbed her arm and pulled her into the shop where a placid woman was watching the scene from the shadows.
“You’re so mean,” said Amy.
“I’m a lot of things, but mean isn’t one of them,” I said. “You need to learn how things work. Number one is no rupees to anyone, period. We’ll take care of people when we’re done here.”
“They’re so poor.”
“And you don’t have enough money to even knick the tip of the iceberg. You’ll end up with a rupee target on your back.”
Mary Ellen Courtney - Hannah Spring 01 - Wild Nights Page 27
