Balance of Fragile Things

by Olivia Chadha

  “That, potrá, is a good question. The one country was divided into two: one for Muslims, the other for Hindus and Sikhs and whoever else. The politicians, you know. So, everyone was instructed that there was a date when this change of the border would be made. Some left long before to avoid any difficulty. Your grandmother. The rest were left to fend for themselves. One can’t imagine the poison in people, until such a thing...”

  Papaji’s mind wandered as he struggled to find the words. In the winter of 1946, he’d packed up his wife, Anjana, and son Kamal, and sent them with one bullock and as much wheat flour as it could carry along with a few other Sikh families heading south toward Amritsar. He’d watched Anjana walk over the hill with Kamal in her arms until he couldn’t see them anymore. From there, he’d expected them to continue onto a Punjab village outside of Jullundur, their ancestral land. There was no telling what trouble they would encounter along the way. He had to trust the men of the other families, who were like brothers and uncles to him, to protect his wife and son in his absence. He had to have faith that they would be allowed back into their family’s village. Papaji’s father’s family had moved from Punjab to the rural village north of Rawalpindi when they had received the land at a good price from the British. The land, it turned out, was more difficult to cultivate than promised. But in the end, it was a fine village with strong and intelligent people, and the wheat, with a little encouragement, sprouted from the ground every year. His father and mother had both passed away from typhoid fever, and his other relatives remained in Southern Punjab. That had left Papaji as the sole inheritor of the land on which he was standing. But what good was this land without his wife and son? His gaze had followed the horizon as far as the next mountain.

  And now, a dark cloud covered Papaji, and he became quiet.

  “What was it like?” Vic’s voice brought him into the present.

  “At first, calm. Many left, so we thought it wouldn’t be so bad. Then came the riots, and in the middle of the night the window shattered. Big sound. My shotgun—I kept it under the bed—was next to me. I took up the gun and went to search the house. Someone had thrown a brick through the window. Then I heard the screams. A pack of thieves was running through the city, burning wherever they heard a non-Muslim lived.”

  Papaji paused and used his cloth handkerchief to wipe his eyes and upper lip. He replaced his glasses and then twirled both sides of his moustache simultaneously toward the sky with his thumbs.

  “What happened with your friend?”

  Papaji frowned.

  “Did you ever see him again?”

  “That’s another story altogether. Another time.”

  “How did you find Bebbeji?”

  “It took months. I walked at night only. The darkness kept us safe. Many others were also going to the new border. So we walked in a large group; the more the better, in case we ran into—”

  “You walked for months? How many miles?”

  “I don’t know. Do you have a map, or a globe?”

  Vic left the room and returned with an atlas of the world, which he spread over the coffee table. He flipped to the page with India and the surrounding countries. Papaji leaned over the map, squinted his eyes, and pointed a finger at the lower portion of Pakistan.

  “There is where we started.” He pushed his finger down about five hundred miles into India. “There is where I ended.”

  “You must have been very tired. What did you do for food? It seems impossible to be able to travel that far, on foot!”

  “Yes, but I survived. Vic, there is much to say, too much for now.” He laughed and shook his head. “I am tired. Please, I will sleep.” He pulled the throw blanket over his legs and closed his eyes. Within moments, he was snoring and dreaming.

  Papaji dreamt of the rough roads, the regional checkpoints, and those who would try to benefit from the movement of refugees. There were many thieves, and their traveling group had to stand guard day and night. He’d taken comfort in the fact that not many dared to cause trouble with his people; the Sikhs were strong and known as fierce fighters. The travelers had taken shotguns and their kirpans. Their strength could also make them a target, for if they were defeated and word spread, it would surely destroy the morale of other groups also en route. At least his cousin, Maddan Singh, also accompanied the group. He was a learned man who had a legal background and relations with the Temple Committee in Amritsar that protected the gurdwárá and oversaw land ownership in the Punjab. He would know what to do if they encountered difficulty. Papaji now regretted staying as long as he did to guard their land and animals from thieves and squatters. He’d originally thought it would be only a year at most and had hoped to send for Anjana and Kamal as soon as the political heat disseminated. But he never set foot in that home again.

  Vic

  Vic was feeling bold. He asked Papaji about the old house, the war, the lifestyle they’d all had before the Partition, and then the farm they bought with the reparations after. As Vic watched the old man stroke the edges of his beard, hesitate with his finger at the tip of his nose, and search his thoughts before answering, he saw something that gave him pause. At that moment, Vic realized that he looked just like his grandfather except for the long, white beard and the deep creases around his eyes and mouth. He had the nose. He had the bushy eyebrows. He wore the glasses. Papaji was a glimpse into Vic’s future. Learning about his family’s past quenched more than Vic’s bookish need for information; Vic began to feel less like a single star in the sky and more like a part of a constellation.

  Perhaps this was the reason for the changes he’d experienced lately. Regardless, Vic felt mighty. He’d challenged his science teacher on his answer to last week’s extra credit equation. He complimented his mother’s cooking by telling her that she “should have been a chef” and that “we are lucky to eat such excellent meals.” A well of strength was growing inside Vic. He was collecting information; knowledge was his spinach. Secrets made him feel powerful, and Vic relished his secret world. When he passed his reflection in the hallway mirror, he realized that he had grown at least an inch. All week, he had been starting his days with thirty pushups and a jog around the block.

  Vic put on his rain poncho and backpack and went into the dreary early morning without his sister. She would take the bus to school later; he said he needed the walk, and no one questioned him. The construction on Main Street had come to a screeching halt because of the rain. The great sinkhole from which they were removing debris was flooded and, like a geyser, spewed dirty water back onto the earth’s surface. As Vic passed, a few men were busy setting up pipes to drain the hole.

  The morning was silent and heavy. The oppressive weather insulated the town as Vic’s sneakers splashed along Main Street. He crossed Glenwood then made his way through the thick forest, up one hill, then another. The bog was quicksand under his sneakers, and he grew irritated each time he had to shake his foot free of the earth’s suction. At the forest line ahead, the brilliant white bark of a series of birches stood out against the gloom. Vic saw a glimmer of blue on a slick tree’s bark—a butterfly like the one he’d found earlier, but this one was even more mutated. One of its wings was a stump, and the other was wrinkled though open. Its body had not fully metamorphosed during the chrysalis stage, and the thorax still looked like a caterpillar’s, green and wormlike. The proboscis was missing, too. He watched it try to move, but he knew it wouldn’t survive, not like this. He extracted his tweezers and gently lifted the insect into a tin. It fell against the metal, and Vic watched as it died. He would have to give it a good inspection when he returned home later. What a tragedy, he thought. A life not given a chance to live.

  When he lifted the collection of branches, skillfully twisted into a covering at the base of the birch, he felt a chill of air on his face. The edges of the hole were damp, but the inside walls were not. He lowered himself slowly into the square shaft, rung by rung.

  Vic had grown bolder each time he’d desc
ended the ladder into the hole. Once he’d overcome the anxiety of having twenty feet of earth above his head, he was amazed by his secret presence within the hill of his village. The area directly below the surface entry was quite comfortable, nest-like. The lantern, hanging on a hook, was bright enough. Vic had brought a few more things: a can opener, small camping torch, some Band-Aids, a change of clothes, and a bottle of rubbing alcohol.

  He had ventured quite far through the tunnel. Holding his lantern, Vic yelled his full name, Varunesh Dzintar Singh, down the shaft, and listened for the echo’s reply. It took a long time, and the names fumbled over one another. But he had not walked the entire length. Time was of the essence now, as Vic knew he’d have to end his underground adventure if he saw signs of the rain seeping into the mine.

  He put on his backpack and proceeded to move slowly through the tunnel. It went downward at a slight angle for quite some time, and his sneakers lacked adequate traction, which made for a slippery journey. Vic thought he heard something; he swore it was a bat, but then he remembered he’d just finished reading Batman: Year One by Frank Miller, and he told himself the noise was probably a beam creaking or water dripping.

  The thought that the entire structure could crumble on him hadn’t crossed Vic’s mind until now. Suddenly he regretted not leaving a note at the surface in case he went missing. But he was here now, and everything seemed stable so far.

  The farther he went, the thicker the air became. Vic’s eyes watered, but he didn’t wipe them because he didn’t want to slip. As he continued slowly into the darkness, lit only by his lantern, Vic paused and turned to look how far he had come, but darkness consumed his wake.

  He thought about Hansel and Gretel and their trail of crumbs through the forest, and he felt he should mark his path for the return journey. His mother’s folktales had made quite an impression on him—when he was very young, she had told him her own version of Hansel and Gretel, and her Latvian adaptation was more gruesome than the one the Brothers Grimm had recorded. In his mother’s version, the two children were lost forever in the forest, even after they escaped the witch’s oven. The cloying smell increased the farther he went.

  The tunnel continued downward, leveled out, then continued downward some more. It turned slightly to the left, then to the right. At times Vic felt as though the walls were closing in around him. Time seemed different in the mine. Without the marker of the sun or a clock to tell him exactly how many minutes were passing, Vic felt as though he’d been in the mine for hours, maybe even days. His senses were heightened as well. Sounds were louder in the tunnel: The dripping and creaking noises stood out against the silence. His feet became more sensitive to the type of ground on which he was walking. His sense of smell sharpened with the sweet air, and he felt the air’s damp heaviness build.

  Then Vic saw something shiny in the distance. The lamp offered only enough light to illuminate a few feet in front of him, so he continued forward carefully with his arm extended. The ground became slick, and he grabbed at the wall to support his sliding sneakers—but he slipped and fell into a large pool of icy water. His scream filled the tunnel. Once he realized the pool was only a few feet deep, he stood up.

  Vic looked ahead to see how far the pool of water went. He picked up the lantern, thankful that it was waterproof, and swung it forward. A brick wall up ahead, haphazardly constructed, ran from below the water to the ceiling.

  He knew he needed to dry off if he was ever going to make it to school, and he was thankful he had a change of clothes back at the entryway with the rest of his new stash in case he got stuck in the mine or caught in the rain. He would have to change into his PE sneakers when he reached school.

  Vic hoisted himself out of the water and made his way back to the mine’s entrance. Once there, he changed into a dry pair of pants and a clean sweatshirt. When he ascended the ladder and entered the peculiar morning light, he realized there wasn’t a great contrast between the underground and the aboveground worlds. The eerie sky was uncannily oppressive and claustrophobic, too, not a liberating reentry into the land of fresh air. Vic took off running, his shoes making a sloppy sound as he flew down the hills and into Cobalt.

  The second late bell rang just as Vic entered his science classroom, breathless from the jog. Mr. Drew smirked and pointed at the clock. “Singh, you are a lucky man. One second later, and you’d end up in detention lockout.”

  Mr. Drew closed the door to the classroom, and it automatically locked. Just at that moment, Joe Balestrieri arrived and kicked the door. Vic was glad to see him locked out of the classroom like an animal. Joe did this almost every day, as he’d rather sit in detention than learn anything. Mr. Drew ignored Joe and said, “Okay, people, turn to page one hundred in your textbooks. Today we are going to begin to memorize the periodic table of elements.”

  Vic’s feet were still wet, as he hadn’t had a chance to trade his soggy sneakers for the dry ones in his gym locker. His frozen feet were beginning to smell; he tried to ignore the stench of his pre-ripened, sweat-upon shoes as Mr. Drew began his lecture. He just hoped that Katie, sitting at the desk to his right, couldn’t smell him. When she smiled at him, he forgot his chilly feet but couldn’t manage to return the expression. He burped instead. It was a strange reflex over which he had no control.

  Katie laughed and turned to her friend. This type of embarrassment was not unfamiliar to Vic. His neurological system understood chemical compounds, physical pain, and differential equations. It did not, however, behave properly around girls. In the past, he’d drooled, burped, and almost farted once (thankfully the gas bubble was thwarted) while interacting with a female. He’d even stuttered while talking to Nurse McClasky, whose pockmarked face and broad shoulders made her look manly.

  But he felt different today, bold, confident, and strong. Ah, he thought, Katie really does smell like peppermint. He wondered if she had freckles all over her body or just on the apples of her cheeks. He noticed a butterfly she’d drawn in black marker on the front of her binder, and this gave him even more courage. He swallowed and said, “Hey.”

  “Yeah?” Katie turned toward him slightly.

  “I want to join yearbook.”

  “Yeah, sure.” She smiled.

  “Okay?” He smiled back.

  “Okay.” She wrote something in her notebook and tore it off, handing it to him. It was her e-mail address, and underneath she’d written: E-mail me!  He nodded coolly, though his heart skipped a beat.

  The more elements his teacher recited, the more Vic thought of his unidentified little blue. He’d requested Peterson’s Field Guide to Eastern Butterflies from the local library, but it hadn’t helped his search. Cobalt had some blue butterflies but nothing that looked as odd as the one he’d found. Blues were a sensitive group that relied on very specific vegetation for their food. The Silvery Blue and Plebejus Blue lived in the area during the spring and looked similar to his tiny find, but their markings and overall coloring were very different. He would return to the butterflies as soon as he could to listen to what they were trying to tell him.

  Paul

  Paul couldn’t believe his eyes. Adelaide had called earlier to let him know they’d printed his “excellent” letter to the editor, but she hadn’t said that they’d printed the whole thing. It took up the entire Letter to the Editor section, and they’d even given it a title: “The Voice of Reason,” by Paul Singh. It couldn’t have come at a better time. He used the largest magnet to hang it on the front of the refrigerator, then backed up a few feet to appraise it from a distance.

  He could hear his father reciting his prayers, the Japji Sahib, from his bedroom. The harmonious sound offered a sonic frequency to the air in the house. Paul remembered how his skin would tingle from the vibrations of the early morning prayers at the gurdwárá. Ik Onkar. Satnam. Karta purakh. Nirbhao. Nirvair. Akal murat. Ajuni. Saibhang. Gur prasad. Jap. Ad sach, jugad sach. Hai be sach. Nanak, hosi be sach. These lines brought Paul home. They invoked t
he idea that stayed with him regarding truth being god, being everything. Paul paused in the hall outside of his father’s door and let the nostalgia wash over him; this made the hole in the center of his being more prominent.

  Paul’s favorite lines were at the end of the prayer: Pavan guru pari pita maataa dharat mahatt. Air is guru, water the father, the earth the great mother of all. He had recited small prayers in his own mind and had bowed before the micro-altar he’d made on the dresser with his copy of the Japji Sahib and an image of Guru Nanak on a slick, well-worn card. What would his father think of how little he’d passed to his children in terms of language and meaning? As his father recited the end of the prayer, Paul went back to the kitchen and waited for him to emerge.

  “Good morning, Papaji. Did you rest well?” Paul spoke in Punjabi.

  “Sat sri akal. Yes, yes, fine.” Papaji was dressed in his white kurta pajama, and though his head had the fiftee, he hadn’t wrapped his full turban. He did however, have a piece of cotton fabric tied around his chin and head, the tatha. To an outsider it would have seemed he had a toothache, but Paul knew he was fixing his beard in place with Welldone beard-fixing solution. The long hair had been twisted along his jaw, transforming his persona to a manicured arrangement of hair with a swirling moustache twisted to curved points. Kamal had taught Paul how to do this long before he had enough facial hair to try it.

  “I came home for lunch. Are you hungry? I was going to make myself something.”

  Papaji ticked his head back and forth in an affirmative and cast his gaze out the window at the hazy sun peeking through the high clouds. He unbound his tatha.

  Though Paul was hoping to find a few leftovers in the refrigerator, something from last night’s dinner perhaps, he found a treasure instead: a stack of Tupperware containers, each labeled with the contents and the time to set in the microwave. Maija, you are wonderful, he thought. She’d made a chicken yogurt curry, basmati rice, and daal, and she’d sliced cucumbers, carrots, and onions and tossed them with cilantro. There was even a small container of pecan bars.