Girl in Shades

by Allison Baggio

  “Oh, sorry,” I say to him. His face is hidden inside the dark cab.

  “Don’t be sorry to me. You want a ride?”

  “Oh, yes. Yes, please.” I walk towards the car, which is dirty, old, no bumper, paint chipping. I sit in the back seat; the cracks in the upholstery cut at my legs. I can see the man’s face in the rearview window: shiny skin, dark eyebrows, white teeth under brown lips. A strong face. A calm face. “I’m going to this address.” I hand the piece of paper over the seat and the man looks at it and nods. Then he revs the engine and we jerk to a start. He plows the car through the crowd of people, who scatter like ants on a sidewalk.

  “Where you from?” the driver asks without turning his head. His words are thick and even.

  “Canada,” I say.

  “Ahh, Canada. I have a brother living in Brampton. Canada took him and I haven’t seen him for over ten years.”

  “Too bad,” I say, my hand still covering my nose. The man nods again and turns up the radio. A hectic melody of sitars and flutes scratches out of the speaker. That’s all I hear until we arrive.

  “It’s that one there,” he says pointing and I hand him the money. “Welcome to the mystical land of India.” He laughs again and is still laughing when I shut the door and step out onto the street.

  The house spreads out flat in front of me, beige and red brick, all one level and surrounded by a black gate that I push in and walk through. A path leads me to the front door. For once, I can’t even hear my own thoughts. I have been dropped into India, into a moment with no end and no beginning. I knock on the door. It seems to open instantly.

  What I notice first is the colour around his body, clean and bright, yellows and purples. Then, it’s his white beard, long and fluffed up into a smile over his neck. He’s mostly bald on top and his wrinkled forehead creates arrows that point down to his wide nose. He wears rectangular-framed glasses and his eyes are dark like deep Ontario lakes. His body, draped in white, hunches over a cane that he clutches with bony knuckles.

  “Maya, I presume.” His voice wraps round me like a blanket and before I can say anything I start to cry, then sob, then moan, my hands rubbing my eyes, tears streaming down my cheeks. He stands in front of me on the doorstep, watching me and smiling, and reaches one hand up and places it on my shoulder. “Come in, my dear.” He points into the house and I follow him.

  Though the rooms inside are quite large, there is not much furniture. Only a table when it might be needed and a chair for resting by a window. I think, what a large house for one old man, if indeed he does live alone. There is no kitchen like I’m used to, just an open area in the centre of the house with no roof and a small area for cooking. By the time he has seated me in a wooden armchair in a sitting room, I have not seen evidence of anyone else in the house.

  “It is only the stress of your long journey that is making this reaction in you.” He coughs into his hand. “Once you sleep through the night you will feel much better.” He hands me a green cup filled with water, which I take and sip down.

  “It was a long time flying.” He nods and smiles, lowering himself to a pillow on the floor. “Do you live here all alone?”

  “Yes, all alone, just me.”

  “No wife?”

  “No, no, my wife and I were divorced many, many years ago.”

  “Oh, yeah. I forgot. And she died from a brain aneurism.”

  “That’s right.” The old man coughs again and rubs his thin fingers on his chest. “I guess she had nothing to live for once we were not together.” I look at him. He smiles, with teeth this time, and laughs so that the phlegm dances around in his lungs, creating crackles. “I’m kidding with you,” he says, and I’m glad for it.

  “And is it true that you are my grandfather?”

  “You tell me that. Are you my granddaughter?”

  “I think so.”

  “Then yes, let’s make it so. You are my long-lost granddaughter, Maya Devine, and I am your grandfather, Raj.” He pulls an orange from a hidden pocket and digs his thumb into its skin, pulling pieces and piling them beside him on the floor. When the orange is naked he holds it up to offer it to me.

  “No, thank you. I am not hungry yet.”

  “Suit yourself.” He breaks the orange apart and feeds the slices between his lips, swallowing them down with only a few chomps of his wrinkled jaw.

  “I do need to use the washroom though.” My grandfather’s face lights up.

  “Ahh, you will be happy to know that when I retired from the university ten years ago, I did myself the privilege of installing a flush toilet in my home. This will make it much more comfortable for you.” He grasps my arm and walks me down a hall. I stop to look into a small room decorated with shiny paintings of Hindu gods; they sit on lotus flowers and have trunks for noses and many arms reaching out to the side. Around the room are unlit candles and plants clinging to the walls.

  “C’mon, Maya,” Grandfather says from further down the hall. “I’m an old man. I don’t have all day.” He chuckles in his throat and I follow him to the toilet.

  After the sun sets we eat dinner together at a wooden table. I help him cook rice and curried chickpeas on the stove, even though he told me to relax and recuperate from the jet lag.

  “So you lived in Canada then?” I ask him when we are eating.

  “Yes, in Toronto, for twenty years. I taught courses in Indian History and Sanskrit at the University of Toronto.”

  “Have you ever read the Bhagavad Gita?” His eyes widen at my question and his cheeks puff up in glee.

  “My dear, I do not mean to be immodest, but I studied the Gita when I went to university in Calcutta and taught on the subject later on at Jawaharlal Nehru University. I think you will find me to be one of Delhi’s premier experts on the study of the Bhagavad Gita and the Mahabharata in general. In my younger days, before being invited to Canada, I even wrote a book on the subject. A collection of essays on the Gita.”

  “What about?”

  “Oh, fascinating topics like whether Mahatma Gandhi was correct in his view that the Gita was an allegorical demonstration of the conflict between knowledge and ignorance.” I stick out my lip and nod my head like I know what he’s talking about. “And the idea that an individual life is part of a grander reality which lies beyond human perception.”

  “So you’ve read it then.”

  “Many times.”

  “My mother used to read it too.”

  He puts his fork down on his empty plate, weaves his fingers like he is praying and settles his dark eyes on mine. “From what your aunt told me on the phone, your mother had much strength, strength to live with secrets, to deal with a serious illness.”

  “I guess. Will you tell me about my father?” I correct myself: “About the man that I have heard is my father?”

  “Ah, yes — my son, Amar, a sweet gift from his mother. He has a soul unattached to the mundane expectations of earthly life.”

  “What is he like?”

  “The day my son was born, everything else stopped in my world. It was only about him from then on. I was extremely lucky, you know, because even though his mother had graduated from the University of Toronto with an English degree, she still agreed to stay home and raise my son. Even though this was a big deal, for a woman in the thirties to graduate with a degree, she gave it all up to be a mother to Amar, and I am thankful for that.”

  “Did you have other children?” I say. Grandfather Raj takes off his glasses and places them on the table.

  “No other children, no. We tried though. Ivy wanted them desperately, but Amar was our one and only miracle. She never really accepted that, however. I think she resented me for it, to her death even.”

  “Her name was Ivy?”

  “Yes, Ivy — like the veins that covered the brick of the building where we met. I was much older tha
n she — ten years — so that started out as a bit of an issue.”

  “And what was my real father like when he was growing up?” My long-lost grandfather stands and walks to a cabinet, where he removes a stack of photos, square and in colour. He lays them out in front of me on the table.

  “This is Amar.” He points to a crying baby with dark hair, naked in a bathtub. “And this was his mother.” A woman, long hair and wide eyes, leans over the baby, scrubbing him with a white washcloth. She smiles in a tired sort of way. I pick up the photo and look closer, amazed.

  “She has my eyes! I mean, I have her eyes.”

  “I noticed as soon as you walked in. In fact, I said to myself, ‘What do you know, there are my dead wife’s eyes.’”

  The rest of the photos show the same dark-haired boy at various points in his childhood and young adulthood: climbing a tree in the backyard, holding a cricket stick in a park, graduating from high school with one of those flat hats, alone on a bed in an empty apartment with red, blurry eyes.

  “Amar put off university a little too long. He got mixed up with the wrong group of friends, I’m afraid, and although the strong light of his soul never dimmed, he never stayed in one place or one job for any length of time.”

  “I’m putting off university right now too.”

  “But you’ll attend, I hope?”

  “We’ll see what life throws at me.”

  “Anyway, enough of this talk about your father. I thought you came here to find out for yourself?” I nod several times fast. “Tomorrow we will board a bus and travel to Varanasi. There, I will introduce you to your father.”

  In the morning we walk to the bus station. I know Grandfather Raj must be tired because I heard him pacing all night long. Up and down the halls, in and out of the toilet, back and forth from room to room of the empty house. When we woke up and I asked him about it, he said he was restless. “At eighty-three years old, I have not much left to sleep for” were his exact words.

  Colour coats the street, red and orange powder sprinkled on the ground we walk over.

  “Festival last night,” Grandfather Raj tells me. “This powder was used as a way to honour the gods.” I walk slow to keep in line with his hunched-over limp. Simple sandals are strapped onto his dry feet, his skin already coated in red dust. Dirt settles on our legs as we walk, and the smell seems a bit better in this part of town. That, or I have gotten used to it already.

  He pays for my ticket and allows me to sit by the window in the rickety old bus. When the men turn around in their seats to stare at me, he shoos them away with his hand, saying words in Hindi that I imagine mean something like, “That’s my granddaughter you’re ogling.”

  The journey to Varanasi is slow. The packed bus hits every bump in the road. Speakers at the front blare out high-pitched voices that remind me of chipmunks crying out in pain. I have only my backpack with me, with an extra sweatshirt and underwear, my money, and some things that belonged to my mother.

  “When we get there, don’t tell him you are his daughter right away, it will be too much of a shock,” Grandfather Raj says. “I will tell him you are a student at the university interested in learning more about his lifestyle.”

  “And what kind of lifestyle is that?”

  “We’re almost there now.”

  Soon, the bus stops and the men push their way out onto the streets of Varanasi. Narrow passageways are filled with bicycles and rickshaws coming from all directions. Young women balance fruit on their head while boys push carts piled with vegetables. Stray dogs brush their prickly fur against my bare legs as they pass. I follow Grandfather Raj to a river, where men and women bathe and dry their clothes on dusty steps.

  “The river Ganges,” he tells me and then points ahead of us and to the left. “And on that small hill, we will find your father.”

  We hike another ten minutes to the top. A man with a yellow turban and long black hair greets us outside what looks like a makeshift house made out of old logs, tree branches and mud. He’s not wearing a shirt and his eyes are only half open.

  “Bom Shiva!” The man says to Grandfather Raj as he reaches down and sucks smoke from a clay pipe. Grandfather Raj scrunches his lips and looks to the sky in annoyance.

  “Amar Ghosh?” he says, and the man lifts his thin arm to direct us behind him.

  “Stay close to me,” Grandfather Raj instructs as we maneuver our way around fire pits and rusty cooking pots.

  There are two old logs holding up a piece of striped fabric like a lean-to, and underneath this teepee sits a man. Grandfather Raj moves towards him in recognition. The man lifts his grey beard, looks up at Grandfather Raj, and says with composure, “Ah, Father, what an old man you have become.”

  Also shirtless, he is wearing ochre-coloured pants and his thin knees press into his chest. He supports himself by bare feet in the dirt and I can see the shape of every muscle holding his skeleton together. Beads hang around his neck, his hair white and frizzy on top of his head. He has two white lines drawn on his forehead, leading between his eyes. Oily skin and lighter eyes than the other men I have seen. Eyes that shine in the midday sun.

  “Have you been keeping well?” Grandfather Raj has tears growing under his thick eyelashes. He strokes his hand through his beard.

  “Ah yes, well as Shiva,” Amar answers back with a complacent smile. Then he looks at me and reaches out his hand towards my arm. “Where did you get those bracelets, girl?”

  My hand falls on my wrist. I am wearing the bangles. The ones my mother left in the picnic basket in her closet. The ones that Amar gave to her after they spent the night together. The bangles with the butterfly charms hanging down, flying around my arm when I walk.

  “They were my mother’s,” I say to him, and a crease forms between his eyebrows.

  “Amar, this is Maya,” Grandfather Raj says. “She is a student from the university, studying the life of the Indian sadhus.”

  Amar’s eyes grow wide with surprise. He nods and points to a log beside him, where we both lean down to sit.

  “Tell me, Maya, where are you from?”

  “Canada,” I say. “Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.”

  “And you are interested in the life of the holy sadhus?” I nod. “Well, let me tell you then. The sadhus know that by letting go of all material possessions and attachments you become truly free.” Grandfather Raj studies my face, eager for some sort of reaction. I give him none.

  “We accept change as a constant in life, and through this transcend the ultimate fear, the fear of death.” Amar points around him to the other men milling about, some with matted hair, turbans, and long orange robes wrapped around their bodies. “Here, we live for the god Shiva, the destroyer and rejuvenator.” His eyes are locked onto mine like he is trying to get into my head, and at that moment, I am able to get into his. I hear his inside words like I’m listening to a Walkman. Tell me why you are really here, he says.

  “Are you one of them?” I ask.

  “Yes.”

  Grandfather Raj rocks back and forth on the log, taking deep breathes, coughing, wringing his hands in his lap.

  “How did you become like this?”

  “A calling,” Amar says with a solemn certainty. “And then, many years following my guru.”

  “Can I stay with you?” I surprise myself with this question.

  “As I tell all visitors, you are welcome.” He spreads his arms wide, running his long fingers through the warm air.

  “All right then.” I take off my backpack and put it on the ground. Grandfather Raj turns his head towards me.

  “Are you sure, Maya? Are you sure you want to stay?” I nod. “Very well then, but an empty hill is no place for an old man. You can take the bus back to my home when you are ready.” He stands up, places his warm hand on the top of my head, and shuffles away through the dirt.

&
nbsp; Amar and I speak very little throughout the afternoon. Above us, the clouds churn in the sky, threatening rain. The wind increases and blows Amar’s grey hair about his head. His eyes are closed most of the time, like he is dancing inside himself. I sit on my feet and watch boats floating in muddy water in the distance. Smoke rises from arched domes along the riverbed. When the sun begins to descend into the ground, and the air grows cool enough that I need a jacket, I open my mouth to speak.

  “I’m hungry. Is there something I can eat?”

  He opens his eyes halfway and smiles with only his lips.

  “Of course,” he says and stands up. He enters into the makeshift shelter and returns with a small plastic plate of vegetables and rice, which he places on my lap.

  “Thank you,” I say and he nods, raising a black cup to his lips. The carrots and peas are cold, but the rice seems to have retained some heat since it was cooked. I eat the food with my hands and when I’m done, place the plate on the ground beside me. “What happens in the evening here?” I ask him.

  He sighs before he speaks. “We pray to Shiva and then we sleep on the ground.” From the other side of the shelter, someone plays a guitar. Strummed notes dance from strings and through the air. “Celebrations are beginning,” he says. “Let’s go round.”

  He stands up and I follow him around to the other side of the shelter, leaving my bag on the ground where we had been sitting all afternoon. The man we met with the pipe is there, as well as some other men wearing orange robes, wooden beads, and yellow turbans. Though they are sitting around with each other, they all smile to themselves.

  “Bom Shiva!” the man with the pipe says each time he takes a puff. Then, he passes the pipe along.

  The guitar has three strings, and the man playing wears a headband to hold back his thick black hair. He sings quietly, something in Hindi. I sit near him to listen closer.