Mehendi Tides

by Siobhan Malany

  “Okay, now! Go! Go! Go!” Sameer pointed to an open break in the crowd.

  The car lurched forward, and Krishna’s uncle began to weave through traffic before swerving sharply down a side street.

  Sameer swung himself around to face the girls.

  “Kate, you stopped traffic!” Sameer bantered.

  “All I wanted was to get a picture of the temple,” Kate blurted. “It was your idea to sit in the rickshaw.” She looked accusingly at Krishna and then back at Sameer.

  Krishna’s bewildered uncle peered annoyingly at Sameer then Krishna through the rearview mirror.

  “No word about policeman to chaachii!” her uncle warned and sped off in the direction of the museum.

  THE SALAR JUNG Museum stood a brown geometric building, adjacent to the State Library on the south bank of the Musi River.

  Inside the galleries, eyes shifted from the worldly treasures of wealthy Salar Jung III to Kate if she hovered too long in one area. In the silent open light of the furniture gallery, she felt raw, uncloaked, especially after the scene on the street.

  “I’m enjoying the coolness in here.” Nasreen lightly brushed a few strands of hair from her brow.

  “The clock room should be just down there,” Krishna reported, her head hidden behind a museum map.

  “Gosh, put that away,” Nasreen scorned.

  Krishna, unsuccessful at folding the map correctly, crumpled it into a wad.

  The girls descended the staircase that opened into the magnificent clock room. Tones struck the air from a variety of deep heavy bongs from the grandfather clocks, clicks from swaying pendulums, and light whistles and tinny chimes from miniature, ancient timepieces.

  “It’s quite a crowd,” Kate said, pausing to marvel at the array of clocks from her vantage point on the stairs.

  “Look at the clock over there on the wall.” Krishna pointed across to an ornate small square piece set on a high shelf, a tiny palace fit for a Lilliputian prince.

  Four miniature gold columns supported an arch and framed the golden face of the clock. Atop the columns perched glorious tiny birds with their wings outstretched.

  “Wow,” Kate remarked in awe.

  “I believe the crowd is now staring at us,” Nasreen noticed.

  Kate descended the last several steps and ducked into the crowd in a futile attempt to blend in. She felt a gentle tug on her hair. A bewildered child, his pudgy chin nestled on his mother’s shoulder, stared with high intensity at Kate. In his tiny hand he firmly clasped a lock of her red hair. A thick line of kohl outlined his dark wide eyes, making the whites of his eyes almost haunting. The baby seemed on the verge of howling, his kohl-rimmed eyes widened in reverence. Kate sucked in her breath and slowly tried to back away, but she felt the painful pull of his grasp. Her hair looked like copper coils wrapped around his clenched fist.

  The palace clock suddenly played a wondrous tune. Out popped the princely timekeeper.

  “Awe,” murmured the crowd in unison.

  The startled baby stirred in his mother’s arms. With one quick yank, Kate was free, leaving a few strands behind, twisted around the baby’s chubby knuckles.

  “Ping. Ping,” went the clock as the toy man struck a bell twice with his tiny mallet, signaling two o’clock. Then the figure retreated. The hinges snapped shut and the clock stood silent. Children clapped and women giggled softly, covering their mouths with the end of their dupattas.

  Kate spied Nasreen, reached wide through a gap in the crowd, and grabbed the corner of her shirt as the crowd started to move.

  “I’m ready to go.”

  “Yes, Sameer is waiting for us. Chelo.”

  ON THE STREET in front of the museum, they found Sameer buying roasted nuts wrapped in paper from a street vendor with a rusted cart. The nuts sizzled on the grill. Sameer juggled a hot nut in his hand before popping it into his mouth and munched happily on the partially blackened mixture smelling of honey, cloves, and hazelnut.

  The girls followed Sameer along the street from the stately columns of the Salar Jung Museum to the white stone minarets of Mecca Masjid. Kate was enthralled by the city. From the gray and dust of the streets arose something so pure white, an architectural marvel. She paused and allowed her eyes to adjust to the sun reflecting against the albescent granite of the mosque.

  The girls strolled through the long passageway leading to the high arches of the glorious Mecca Masjid. The covered stone offered coolness and a haven from the intense afternoon sun. Light from the reflection pond poured in through the many temple windows, creating a row of hands-in-prayer shadows along the opposite wall.

  “Ten thousand persons can offer prayer at a time,” Nasreen read from a plaque on the side of the central archway. “Wow. Our mosque at home holds about fifty,” she joked.

  “That is twenty thousand shoes!” exclaimed Kate, staring at the pile of sandals marking the entrance. “I will pray that I will find my shoes.”

  Nasreen flashed her a look of disapproval.

  Kate removed her white and pink canvas shoes and placed them to the side of the mountain of brown worn chappals.

  “I don’t think you will have a problem finding yours among the thousands,” Nasreen said. “There are not so many pink ones.”

  “Hopefully this place is welcoming to Hindus,” Krishna added, kicking off her sandals.

  “Just be a tourist, Krishna,” Nasreen remarked. “Are we ready to go in now?”

  Inside the vast open area, tapestries depicting Islamic art from the times of the Deccan Kings hung from the high walls. Rows of men prayed in one section and a large group of women stood near the back. Kate meandered through the group of women while admiring the awesomeness of the mosque. The mosque was silent except for the simple shifting sounds of the women’s saris, so different sounding from the rugged whisper Kate’s jeans made as she moved.

  The girls passed through the open archway and stepped into the sunken courtyard. Hundreds of double-fluted minarets lined the top of the mosque, and at each corner stood giant columns elevating enormous cupolas that rounded to a point extending into sky-piercing spires. A man handed flower petals to Krishna, who refused to take them. He motioned to throw the petals inside the ring of a stone block.

  “It’s a grave,” explained Nasreen. “Throw them in,” she said as she accepted the soft leaves and sprinkled them into the ring.

  Kate accepted the petals and let them fall from her fingers, thinking of her mother and roses raining down on her.

  “You will have good karma.”

  The flower man lightly touched Kate’s head and shoulders with a small brush, and repeated the same ritual to Nasreen. Krishna flinched and scooted away from the man’s brush.

  “No good karma for you,” Kate joked to Krishna.

  “Well, you know. I’m Hindu,” Krishna said.

  “Come look at this stone,” Sameer said, leading the girls to the western wall.

  “There,” he said, pointing to a small whitewashed stone. “It’s the only one of its size in the whole building. The plaque reads that this particular stone was carried here all the way from Mecca during the Qutb Shahi dynasty in the late 1600s. Amazing.”

  Kate sat on a large black stone in the courtyard feeling exhausted but enthralled. The girls joined her, and the three friends sat on the black stone bench, framed by the arches of Mecca Masjid, their bare feet dangling.

  “Tourists who sit on the stone will return to Hyderabad once again,” Kate recited from an inscription in the stone.

  Nasreen grinned and placed her arms around Kate and Krishna as Sameer snapped a photo.

  “We mustn’t break the ritual.”

  Chapter 10

  Are You Listening, Lord GaNesha?

  Chicago 1998

  The entrance to the science building at the university resembled the Salar Jung Museum in Hyderabad. It was Sunday, two weeks since Kate ran from Nasreen’s house the day after Eid. Two weeks since she had met Tariq for breakfast.


  Regret had hardened around Kate’s heart, making each step feel weighted as she trudged along the wide-open barren walkway, the daffodil bulbs still dormant underground, toward the front door to the building and the lab.

  Like the museum, the science building had hard, long lines and an overpowering dominance with two concrete wings that expanded out from the block entrance. Three rows of equally spaced windows, too small to filter more than minimal light, lined each side. But unlike the museum in India, the science building lacked a central dome atop the front entrance, and smaller domes perched at each end of the two wings like the Salar Jung’s Persian architectural influence.

  Kate was not enlightened within the concrete wing of the science building, dimly illuminated by flickering fluorescent bulbs, as she walked the quiet halls. The corridors were empty except for freezers, centrifuges, and liquid nitrogen tanks, pushed out in the hall as lab space became scarce. The objects cast eerie shadows in the low light, their motors intermittingly hissing and moaning as Kate shuffled from one lab to the next.

  She was suspended, suffocating in the vapors of organic solvents, the fuzzy pungent stench of reagents, and the sweet stale odor of molecules that she was supposed to transform into disease-fighting medicines for her PhD thesis, her life, before the wings of the university threatened to flap shut and engulf her.

  Dr. Schwitz, her graduate advisor, was half Venezuelan and half German but had not inherited the tall German genes. He was a small man with dark hair, a square jaw, and hard eyes. He never answered his students’ questions about growing up in South America, as if revealing his origins would present an inequality he could not allow.

  “Many students would love to work in my lab,” Dr. Schwitz said to Kate during a weekly one-on-one meeting. “I am very well-funded at this university and can’t jeopardize my position. You understand, Kate,” he said in a condescending tone.

  Dr. Schwitz spoke four languages, but Kate always felt lost in translation. What is he saying? she thought. He had a habit of bringing his hands together in a temple and hunching forward so that his lips pressed against his fingertips. His neck disappeared beneath his shoulders, and he stayed like that looking intently at her, one brow raised. From behind his enormous desk, piles of papers neatly stacked to the side, he gave the impression that he was shrinking into his high-back leather chair.

  The meetings were intended for her to share her progress and gain guidance; but instead, the time quickly degenerated into a schizophrenic session of manipulation and mistrust. She stared at the marble clock fountain pen stand on the corner of his desk. She wondered if the writing tablet had ever been written on or if he tore off a sheet every morning to give a pristine appearance. She had to think of anything to keep her mind from derailing.

  Their last meeting was particularly excruciating because all she could think about was Neil and the sting of their breakup. She had quit the master’s swim team to avoid him, but she desperately missed his friendship and their daily rendezvous over coffee and his entertaining stories such as the one he told her about the writer.

  “A mate of mine in the English department writes the most amazing poetry,” Neil told her one morning. “His writing is genius, but he only writes when he is high on meth. Can’t write a single word sober.”

  “What?” Kate looked at him astonished.

  “It’s true. A friend in the chemistry department made the meth out of his farmhouse. One day the feds came and took him away. He got nine years.”

  “You make this stuff up,” Kate said in disbelief.

  “As far as you know.” Neil grinned a mischievous grin and sipped his coffee.

  As absurd as his stories were at times, Neil had empowered her. He’d introduced her to rowing on Lake Michigan and taught her the basics of maneuvering a rowboat in the swirling north wind. Being with Neil eased the dimness of graduate school. But his passionate nature had suddenly turned stoic. He was focused on graduating and obtaining a university teaching position in English somewhere.

  Now all she missed were the talks over coffee.

  Kate brushed the thoughts of Neil and her advisor aside and tried to focus on her work. Except for the clinking of spinning stir bars against the sides of flasks, the lab was quiet.

  The lab phone rang. The abrupt sound startled her, and she inadvertently drew a thick line of ink across the page of her lab book.

  Who would call here on a Sunday?

  “Kate?”

  “Nasreen?”

  “I called your apartment all afternoon. Finally called your dad, and he gave me the number of the lab.”

  Kate was surprised to hear Nasreen’s voice. They had not spoken since that horrible morning after Eid. She felt guilty for not calling and longed to unload her mind about Tariq and tell her about the old letters she’d found.

  “Nasreen, look, I’m…” Kate began to apologize.

  “Krish’s mom had a…a stroke,” Nasreen blurted, distraught.

  “What?”

  “Stroke!” she shouted into the phone. “She’s in the hospital. Kate! Krishna’s mother is in a coma!” Nasreen breathed heavily into the phone as if it were exhausting to say that much. “Krishna and her dad are with her. It doesn’t look good,” she cried.

  Kate heard the fear in Nasreen’s voice.

  “Are you there? Kate?”

  “Yes.” Kate cleared her throat. “I’m here. I don’t understand. A stroke? A coma? How is that possible? Her mother is so healthy, so holistic!” she rambled, trying to make sense.

  Kate visualized Saritha in the kitchen, standing on a stool to reach inside the cabinet, spinning the lazy Susan stacked with herbs and supplements searching for the neem oil. “The special oil comes from the neem tree in India,” she explained to Kate one humid afternoon when the girls had come inside. Kate remembered that Krishna had a stomachache that day. “It is very good for the digestive system,” Saritha said. “And it makes your hair so shiny. Here it is!” She beamed. “My daughter, you will feel better with a few drops, trust me!” she had explained as she squeezed three drops into a cup of tea.

  “They say it was an embolism,” Nasreen said.

  Her voice was fading. To Kate, it sounded as though Nasreen said “symbolism,” which made her visualize the large embroidered framed picture of a Hindu symbol that hung in the foyer of the Desai home and greeted each guest.

  “The family is coming from India. They arrive the day after next,” Nasreen said, speaking to fill the void. “I pray that she will be okay, that she will come out of the coma. I can’t believe this is happening!”

  Nasreen’s tone changed from sadness to bewilderment.

  “She needs us.”

  Kate waited until after she heard the click at the other end of the line before placing the phone down. She visualized her own mother’s face, young and unscarred by disease. She tried to hang onto that image of her mother. She squeezed her eyes shut, but the image dissolved and all she could see was dark and light. Opening her eyes, Kate stared at the receiver for a long time, feeling haunted by shadows in the lab and echoes in the hall, half thinking the phone would ring again and Nasreen would say it was all a mistake. Have faith.

  A PORTRAIT OF Krishna’s mother as a young woman hung in the center of the wall. In the photo, Saritha’s head was turned to the right and she gazed off somewhere in the distance. Her long black hair cascaded across her neck and shoulder. She wore a white collared blouse. The photo appeared to be her graduation photo from nursing school, perhaps the only photo the family had of her alone. Garlands were looped on each corner of the frame, the kind of frame sold by the pack, pre-matted for framing documents and certificates. The garlands were tied together below the portrait, interwoven with pearls and prayer beads. The room was cleared of all furniture except for a cloth-covered cardboard table decorated as an altar.

  Kate sat on her knees on the floor and stared at the elephant-headed idol on the altar. Purple beads and white garlands with fluorescen
t pink bows hung under his trunk, covering his round protruding belly. She tilted her head and squinted, trying to view Lord Ganesha on his green satin altar from a different angle. Still she found his multiple hands—each grasping a golden object—a little unnerving with fingernails painted white and wrists bound with gold bands. The flamboyant plaster god of wisdom and prosperity paraded a coronation headdress made of white and pink carnations. Even his elephant eyes were pink.

  The family from India had arrived and gathered around Saritha’s hospital bedside. The nursing staff, many of whom were Saritha’s subordinates, gave the family space and grieved in the hospital corridors as the machines kept Saritha alive. Eventually, Suneel abided by his wife’s wishes and released her soul. “Never let my body be kept alive by a machine,” she had told him. “Promise me, Suneel! Let my soul float into the sea.”

  “When all the relatives were here, my father and I…” Krishna began.

  Kate looked over at Krishna kneeling beside her on the floor and waited in the shadowed silence of the room for her to continue speaking. It had been a few weeks since her mother’s death, and Krishna’s relatives had returned to India.

  “We decided to make this a prayer room. A room for meditation,” Krishna continued. “Hinduism is about connecting mind and soul to God.” Krishna’s voice cracked when she said the word “God,” as though mentioning the name of the Almighty took more strength than she could muster. “I pray every morning just as my mother and I used to do together.”

  She was saying the words, but they sounded surreal to Kate’s ears. She continued to study the altar. Small offerings sat on each side of Lord Ganesha: a bowl of fruit, silver trays of spices, japa mala beads. Wreaths of red, white, and yellow daisies lay at the base of the son of Shiva and Parvati. Among the flowers, incense burned from candleholders. The pencil-thin smoke line snaked upward and diffused below Saritha’s portrait.

  “We kept the room this way even though my relatives left. It’s just my father and me,” Krishna said, then paused. “We can come here to be with my mother. Talk to her. Just haven’t figured out what to say.”