Darshan

by Amrit Chima

  “He never asked you,” Darshan told her.

  She smiled slightly, then told him resolutely, “Nothing religious. I don’t want people watching. We don’t have to prove anything. I want it to be real.”

  “I understand,” he said. “Are you ready?”

  “Now?”

  He took her bag and held out his hand.

  The New Delhi courthouse was muggy, its once colonial halls shabby and unkempt, crowded with plaintiffs and petty criminals, all sweating profusely, their shirts stained at the collars and armpits. An official called out Darshan’s name. He rose from his plastic chair and took Elizabeth’s hand. She pinched a piece of lint from his trimmed beard and smiled. Her hair was pulled back, making the sharp angles of her face appear more elegant, accentuated by the blush she had dabbed on her cheeks and the brown eye shadow she had painted on her eyelids. People stared at her as she passed through the waiting area, her arm in the crook of Darshan’s elbow.

  The official pointed toward two chairs at a large desk, then seated himself opposite. Dabbing his forehead with a handkerchief, he began busying himself with arranging papers. A floor-fan whirred. Darshan cleared his throat into his fist. The official suspiciously glanced up, then returned his attention to his work.

  Elizabeth did not move. Her hands were cupped together, resting lightly in her lap. Her posture was immaculately straight, her chin slightly elevated, her ankles crossed as her grandmother had taught her. Darshan reached for her pinky finger and her sitting etiquette began to crumble as she pursed her lips to hold back a smile, then fully dissolved as she slouched and rolled her eyes. He looked at her in amusement.

  The official finally set down his pen. He briskly clasped his palms together, then stacked several papers in front of them for their review. “It is good for you?” he asked.

  “It’s written in Hindi,” Elizabeth said.

  The official regarded her with annoyance. “You like him?” he asked, nodding at Darshan.

  “Yes.”

  He tapped the bottom of one of the documents. “Then please, sign here.”

  She scribbled her signature, a faint smile on her lips, and passed the pen to Darshan.

  The official appraised their signatures before violently stamping the certificate. “Congratulations,” he said briskly, bowing as he presented it to them. Without wasting any time, he then walked out of the room.

  Elizabeth began to laugh. Hot, she used the marriage license to fan her face.

  Grinning, Darshan loosened his tie. “I want to take you somewhere,” he said. “I want you to meet some people.”

  “Who?”

  “Family,” he replied. “They are waiting.”

  And as they dined with Shamsher, Neena, and the villagers of Barapind in a makeshift reception, feasting on fresh foods, chai, and sweets, absorbing the wonders of the earth and accepting the unguarded affection of the Toor family that still existed here, listening to their stories, Darshan was wholly prepared for the flight back home to San Francisco, where Manmohan sat in his hard wooden chair, an inimical expression darkening his face.

  ~ ~ ~

  Victoria Quinn fondly embraced Darshan. After a moment she released him, holding him at arm’s length, a hint of sorrow behind the horn-rimmed glasses she wore on a chain around her neck. Her white hair glowed in the light of the dining room’s antique chandelier. “I am very happy you are here,” she told her new son-in-law. She took Elizabeth’s hand, patted it affectionately before retreating to the kitchen and returning with a decanter of tomato juice.

  “Tell us about your trip,” she said, putting the juice on the table and taking out some glasses from the china cabinet. Adjusting her polyester dress before sitting, she gestured that they join her.

  Colleen frowned at Elizabeth. “You said there was nothing left to say to him.”

  “Colleen—”

  “I have never been to India,” Victoria interrupted, pouring the tomato juice. “I expect it was beautiful.” She looked pointedly at Colleen. “I expect it was exactly what they needed.”

  “Yes,” Darshan said, opening a pouch of recently developed photos and setting them next to the tomato juice.

  “I would like to meet your family, Darshan,” Victoria said.

  He nodded apologetically. “I will tell them you said so.”

  She crossed her nyloned, varicose-veined legs, drank her juice. “By the looks on your faces, you seem to have made a very good decision.” She gathered up the pictures and began to slowly flip through them, taking her time with each one before passing them to Colleen, a sentimental and mysterious smile on her lips. “Are they your family in India?” she asked Darshan, pointing to a picture of Shamsher and Neena posing in front of the blacksmith shop.

  “A distant aunt and uncle.”

  “You look so much like this woman.”

  “I thought the same thing,” Elizabeth said, taking the photo.

  “And this house?” Colleen asked.

  “It was my family’s.”

  “It seems that you both had such a lovely time,” Victoria told them wistfully.

  “Victoria,” Darshan said, “I’m sorry—”

  “Don’t be. It wasn’t about me.”

  Elizabeth began to collect the dirty glasses. “Mom, we don’t mean to rush off, but we’d better go before it gets late.”

  Darshan nodded. “My parents will have a lot to say.”

  “Yes,” Victoria said, pushing back her chair. “From what I understand, it has been a while. They should know that you are home and safe.”

  In the driveway, before getting in the car, Darshan removed the picture of the house, looking at the balcony split in half and toppled inward, at the front columns ravaged by the might of monsoon seasons. Victoria was watching from the house, waving to them through the window. He waved back, and then he slipped the print into his blazer, separate from all the others, before gathering his courage to go home.

  The apartment on 24th Street was strangely without scent; Jai had not cooked, had not put on tea. The girls had just come home from buying groceries, and Manmohan sat in his chair, which had been moved to the window, eyes flat as he gazed outside.

  Elizabeth greeted everyone warmly. “I met your relatives,” she said, holding out the photos. “They were very nice people.” No one took them. She put them on the coffee table.

  Navpreet scowled at her. “My first semester of medical school was wasted on cleaning up the mess Darshan left us with at Howard and the restaurant. My professors don’t take me seriously.”

  “I don’t think that’s what he intended,” Elizabeth replied. She still had not sat, and no one asked her to.

  Darshan kneeled beside his father, who would not look at him. “Bapu? Shouldn’t we try to be happy?”

  “We have never lived for happiness,” Manmohan replied.

  “What will people say?” Jai asked. “How can we tell them that our family and hers are now joined and they were not asked to be a part of it?”

  Darshan sighed heavily. “I am certain people will understand the unusual circumstances.”

  “How can they understand when I do not?”

  “Thank you for the braces,” Livleen said, her front teeth lined with metal brackets.

  With relief, Darshan smiled at her.

  She did not return his smile. “I tried to find you.”

  “I was tired. I had to do something for myself.”

  “We all need that,” his sister said. “But we never ran away.”

  Looking at their faces, the resentment in each of their expressions, he understood that his choice would be with him always, that they would never recall the efforts he had made for them, how readily and sincerely he had always loved them, but this one thing they would never forget.

  ~ ~ ~

  Darshan could not remember the pundit’s face, only the red stains of some sort of powder on his hairless, muscular chest, the terrifying might of his arms as he had offered his tray of turm
eric paste. There is an opportunity for you, the priest whispered in his mind, nudging him to speak to the fat stranger with dark sunglasses now sitting in the living room across from him. He knows everything, the voice said, and as Darshan regarded the man who was his only brother, flanked by a toothless woman and two meek and terrified children, he shrank away, certain that it was not possible.

  “You did not tell me he was coming,” Manmohan said grimly to Darshan.

  “I did not know,” Darshan replied.

  Mohan stared at Elizabeth, a mocking twitch at the corners of his mouth. He sat loosely, his legs carelessly spread, stroking the end of his long beard, tugging at it, wrapping the tip of it around his finger. Darshan saw his wife force a courteous smile.

  Shifting his gaze from Elizabeth to Mohan, Darshan asked his brother, “How did you know where to find us?”

  “I inquired, here and there,” Mohan replied, relaxing into his chair, releasing his beard. “You are doing very well here, I see.” He regarded Manmohan and Jai, the reflected streaks of light in his sunglasses like admonitions.

  “Yes,” murmured Lehna.

  Smiling now, Mohan opened his arms expansively. “It is good to see everyone after so much time apart.”

  Manmohan rose slowly and with great effort, and then he left the room. Jai stood to follow him, as did Livleen and Elizabeth.

  “Wait,” Mohan said weakly, the scorn in his expression faltering, but they were already gone. His eyes lingered on the hallway down which they had disappeared, becoming thoughtful. “A wife like that will only ever make you sandwiches,” he told Darshan.

  Navpreet snickered.

  “Lehna will do whatever I ask,” he said, placing a meaty hand over his wife’s knee.

  Lehna lowered her eyes, and Navpreet’s smile faded.

  “Why did you come?” Darshan asked. “You must have known that Bapu and Bebe would not want to see you?”

  “I thought time might have erased some things.”

  “What did you do to make them hate you so much?”

  “I was not what they expected me to be,” Mohan said, taking off his glasses, flinching at the word hate, his eyes more tired than disdainful.

  “I met a man in India,” Darshan told him. “A pundit. I ran away. I was unhappy.”

  His brother’s eyebrows lifted with interest, and he again glanced down the hallway. “Bapu is not easy to please.”

  Darshan hesitated, ashamed, then said, “The pundit told me that you could help me with something.”

  Mohan polished his glasses on the hem of his shirt. Tucking them in his front pocket, he took his wife by the elbow and forced her to stand. “You should not believe him,” he replied, signaling to his children that he was ready to go. “He was a charlatan.”

  A Baptism & a Kirtan

  1976–1978

  Family Tree

  An atlas was open on the kitchen table to a map of what was now India. Two northern divisions were shaded a darker brown, illustrating what had been lost. The detached segments. Pakistan and Bangladesh. A mug of tea with too much milk and not enough ginger was getting cold beside the map. Another pot was brewing on the stove, this time to get it right, to make it taste like Jai’s.

  “She will be back soon,” Darshan told his father, grating more ginger.

  The tea simmered. Manmohan hunched over the map, his reading glasses pinching the tip of his wide nose. He traced his finger along the border of Pakistan and India, stopping at Amritsar where Jai and the girls were now. “Your mother has never traveled without me,” he said tersely.

  “Only a few weeks more.”

  “Add a little pepper. I cannot smell enough pepper.”

  Darshan seasoned the water with more pepper, then returned the grinder to the cupboard where Jai kept her spices.

  His mother had taken the girls to meet a young man named Sarabjit Dindral. Sarabjit was from a well-established family of North Indian politicians and lawyers on intimate terms with Manmohan and Jai’s Berkeley acquaintances, the Attwals. By the tone and tenor of Sarabjit’s letters it was clear that he was expressive, poetic, and courteous. Also well connected, of appropriate birth, and wealthy Manmohan had therefore begun negotiations with the Dindral family. Terms and conditions set, Sarabjit had then offered a proposal, and—based on such an abundance of considerably excellent criteria—Navpreet had consented to marry him.

  “Why are you doing this?” Darshan had asked her, thinking it an odd and unsuitable choice for his sister, disposed to spend her life with a man she had never met, at the mercy of the unknown, prey to the conservative sentiments of Indian culture that so often held women inferior. “I know you have met others.”

  “Yes, they were fun,” she admitted wistfully, forcing the zipper closed on her suitcase. “But all of them were American. That was your mistake. No one likes you anymore, Darshan. They speak unkindly about you.”

  “That is not a reason to get married.”

  Filling another suitcase with gifts for her betrothed’s family—American cookies, sticks of deodorant, and packets of Big Red chewing gum—she had laughed at him. “Maybe Bebe taught Elizabeth how to prepare curries and roll out perfectly circular rotis. Maybe your American wife goes to temple dressed like us. But what you did will always be an insult.”

  Navpreet’s words, even after a year of marriage, rang with a very unpleasant truth. Since their wedding, Elizabeth had made generous attempts to assimilate. She helped Jai in the Lion of India’s kitchen where she could interact with family friends and relations. She drove Manmohan to his doctor’s appointments. She initiated the paperwork for the family’s United States citizenship, sharing her research on the complex bureaucratic process with others who needed assistance. In every way available to her, she had tried to learn and adopt the gradations of Sikh culture, but the caustic murmurs and contemptuous looks of disapproval were unrelenting.

  “Too much pepper,” his father said, sniffing the air.

  Darshan inhaled the steam. “Taste it first.”

  “I do not have to.”

  Sighing, Darshan dumped the pot of tea into the sink and started again, adding fresh water and sprinkling in whole, shelled cardamom and ground clove.

  Manmohan swung the large atlas cover shut. “It is a different world now.” He removed his glasses, seeming to contemplate the simplicity of the notion. “No,” he said, after a moment’s reconsideration. “The world is the same. It is us who have changed in different directions.”

  The water slowly began to bubble. Darshan turned down the heat and added the milk.

  “Your mother has never traveled without me,” Manmohan said again, turning in his chair to watch the tea, and Darshan realized he was not worried for her. He was worried for himself. She had never once abandoned him. As the world changed, she had always gone with him. And that was everything.

  ~ ~ ~

  A flood of color whispered and rustled throughout the ballroom of the Sir Francis Drake hotel as guests arrived in saris and turbans for the reception in honor of Navpreet and Sarabjit’s arrival to San Francisco as a newly married couple. A table at the entrance was stacked high with gifts: jewelry, kitchenware, small appliances, bedding. Navpreet was at the head table, hair coifed, makeup thick like her face had been chiseled from stone. Stiffly, she looked around the hall, unforgiving, eyes finally resting with revulsion upon her husband sitting beside her.

  Sarabjit’s eyebrows were rectangular masses of thick hair, erratic and wiry wisps cased around a set of beady eyes. His shoulders were thin and weak, as was his neck, which strained to hold up both head and turban. His two front teeth were overly large, angled in opposite directions, leaving a wide gap through which he absently poked his tongue. He was grinning now, his crooked and jagged teeth adding a measure of childish joy incongruous to his currently regrettable circumstances, which were clear to everyone in the ballroom.

  People deliberately looked away, discomfited by the animosity between the couple, distractin
g themselves with a buffet of biryani, tandoori chicken, spiced yogurt, and naan. Soon the room was full of chatter, and the hired musicians began a set of Indian love songs. To forestall further embarrassment, Darshan followed his mother to the table with an expansive and congratulatory smile.

  Before he could say anything, however, Navpreet asked indignantly, “Do you see him? Look at him.”

  “Navpreet!” Jai hissed quietly.

  “He knows what he looks like, a hideous fresh-off-the-boat nobody.”

  Darshan blocked her from view. “Stop it,” he said firmly.

  “Stupid FOB.”

  Sarabjit smiled feebly. Darshan wished he would at least keep his lips closed to cover his teeth. It was a smile of humiliation, but it looked as if he were idiotically in agreement with her.

  Sarabjit politely tapped Navpreet’s shoulder. She spun around to face him. “What?”

  “Why did you bring me here?” he asked quietly, no longer smiling. “I was happy in India.”

  “Because it was too late to walk away. Because it was so obvious you needed help, and I did something for you. I brought you to America, where maybe, if someone like me helped you, you could be somebody.”

  “I already am somebody,” he replied.

  She violently pushed back her chair, lifting the hem of her lavender sari to reveal two-inch heels and newly manicured feet. Jai shoved her back down into her seat. “You will stay here,” she told her daughter resolutely. “You will finish this.”

  Darshan looked feebly at his brother-in-law.

  “She has been like this since our wedding night,” Sarabjit said. “I should not have come.”

  ~ ~ ~

  The city was a wet, gray drizzle. People huddled under bus awnings, gloom on their faces as moisture seeped under their clothes and shivered their skin. Darshan felt sorry for them all, for their lack of spirit. He smiled at them as he and Elizabeth hiked up Terra Vista toward the studio, cheerful, his thoughts full of his future, of the wonderful life that awaited him. Shifting his bag of groceries onto his hip, he took Elizabeth’s hand and kissed her fingers.