by Paul Theroux
"This is like a scene in one of those great movies when the characters have this painful farewell on a railway platform."
"No, it's not," Alice said. "In the movies it's always lovers. We weren't even roommates."
"It's like a farewell, though."
"It's not painful."
"It's painful for me," Stella said.
She's going to cry, Alice thought, seeing Stella's pretty mouth crumple, so she said, "You're the one who's bailing. So why is it painful for you?"
Stella started to cry, but managed to say, "You're being really harsh."
"If you cared so much, you'd be coming along. And what I don't get at all is why you're deciding to stay in Bombay alone."
As soon as she said the word "alone," Alice knew why. Stella would never travel alone, never stay alone; she had met someone else—she was with that person. The fact that Alice had only just realized this made her feel foolish—obtuse, anyway. But who was it? Where had they met?
"You're staying with that hippie chick from Bennington we met at the bazaar."
"God, no. She was so gross, like she flossed her teeth in that restaurant," Stella said, in such an outburst Alice was sure she was telling the truth.
But she knew that Stella had teamed up with someone else. She said, "Don't be enigmatic, Stell. We're supposed to be friends. Who's the guy?"
It was a shot in the dark, but from the way Stella reacted, grimacing—the tears were gone—Alice knew she'd guessed right.
"Nobody special." She touched her right eye again. "But that kid Zack, um..."
When she uttered the name, Alice knew everything. Zack with his baseball cap on backward. Zack from the ticket line at the Regal Cinema and the Bollywood movie, who had gone to NYU film school and wanted to make a Bollywood movie himself with big-name American actors. Zack in the T-shirt that said Choose Death, whose father was (so he said) a connected Hollywood lawyer, who was staying at the Taj Mahal Hotel. Zack with his cell phone that worked in India for U.S. calls—Stella had called her mother on it. Zack whose father knew Bill Clinton.
"You said he was a brat."
"That was a first impression. He's got a spiritual side, plus he's really funny."
"He just wants to nail you."
Stella looked appalled and on the verge of crying again.
"He already has!" Alice said. "You're screwing him. That's what you were doing the other night when we were at that club and you said you had a headache and went back to that fancy suite his father got for us."
Hearing the raised voices, and especially You're screwing him, some Indian men paused and drew closer to listen to the two women, whose faces were flushed.
When one pressed close to her, Alice turned on him and said, "Do you mind?" and the man stepped away but remained within earshot.
"I told you it's a long story."
"It's not! It's a short story. You met a guy. He said his father was in India to go to that luxury spa near Jaipur."
She saw it all. Zack had gotten his father to pay for them to spend one night at the Elephanta Suite, and afterward Zack had invited Stella to travel with him and his father to the spa where Bill Clinton had stayed. Stella was as interested in the father as she was in Zack—perhaps more so, since spoiled children were always looking for protectors, who would let them have their own way. Now Alice was glad that Stella—shallow, selfish Stella—was not coming. She began to laugh.
Hearing her laughter, the Indian men stepped closer, as though to inquire, What is so funny?
Alice said, "I think you're right. This is like one of those partings on a railway platform in a movie."
And Stella looked happier.
Right at the beginning of the trip they had agreed: no boys, or if there had to be boys, no relationships. Also, no expensive hotels, no patronage, no accepting drinks from strangers. We'll pay our own way, even if it hurts.
And of all people, Zack. Now Alice remembered with scorn how Zack had passed an image of Ganesh, the elephant deity, fat and cheerful and beneficent, bringing luck to any new enterprise, seated on his big bottom, with jewels on his domed head and his floppy trunk and his thick legs.
"He looks like a penis," Zack had said.
"I guess you haven't seen too many penises," Alice said.
Stella had looked alarmed and glanced with concern at Zack, who said, "More dicks than you have, girl."
That meant, You're plain. When she was heavy at Brown, she heard fat jokes, and now that she had lost weight, she heard ugly jokes. And the amazing thing was that people actually said them to your face, as though there was some subtlety in them, rather than: You're fat, you're plain, you can't get a date. And they also said them because, if you were plain or heavy, you were supposed to be strong and have a sense of humor.
Now she remembered Zack saying, "Want to text-message your folks?" And she smiled angrily at Stella and said, "Aren't you the clever one."
Meaning, You're not clever at all. But Stella, with the pretty girl's deafness to irony, took it as a compliment.
"Maybe we can hook up somewhere," Stella said.
"You're on your own now, girlfriend," Alice said.
She had to summon all her strength to say it, because she knew that Stella was taken care of. As soon as she spoke, she was breathless.
Seeing that the foreign women had become more conversational, with lowered voices, the Indian men lost interest and wandered away, down the platform where people were pushing to enter the train. Suitcases were being hoisted through the windows of the coaches, families were hurrying to board, red-shirted porters carried boxes in wheelbarrows.
Now a man approached with a clipboard and sized them up. He said, "Boarding time."
Alice showed her ticket and said, "She's not coming. She found another friend."
Stella began again to cry. She hugged Alice and said, "I love you, Allie. I have to do this. I can't explain."
"This is a bad movie," Alice said, and broke away.
After she boarded and found her seat, she saw Stella outside, gaping, looking cow-like. Stella leaned and waved and remained watching until the train pulled away. She was still tearful, but she was meeting Zack and staying at Zack's fancy hotel, and it was Alice who was on her own.
But no sooner had the train pulled out of the station and was rumbling past the tenements and traffic of the Mumbai outskirts than an unexpected feeling came over Alice, glowing on her whole body: she was alone and liked it. Free of Stella, she felt stronger and more decisive. She could do whatever she wanted without consulting her fickle friend. Just fifteen minutes into the twenty-four-hour trip, she realized that Stella had been a much bigger burden than she'd imagined. Now Stella was at risk and it was she who was happy in the swaying train, like being in the body of a bulgy creature that protected her while plodding forward in the heat.
With the whole day ahead of her, she sat by the window and watched India slip by in a stream of simple images—women threshing grain on mats, men plowing with placid oxen, children jumping into muddy streams, clusters of houses baking in the sun, here and there a level crossing where a blue bus or a man on a bike was stopped by a passing train. These human sights became rarer, for after Poona there were only fields or stunted trees or great dusty plains to the horizon, an India Alice had not seen or read about before, and because she was not sharing it with Stella it was all hers, a secret disclosed to her, a discovery too that India was also a land of empty corners.
And so all that hot day in the hinterland of Maharashtra Alice marveled at this revelation of big, yawning India. It was the antithesis of crowded, damp, and noisy Mumbai, the words "critical mass" as a visible image. She liked what she saw now for being unfinished and unpeopled. Stella knew nothing about it—might never know, for Zack harped on about being a city person, talked importantly about setting up a movie, and you could do that only in a big, stinking city.
"You can have him," Alice said clearly, still at the hot window.
She was s
tartled when a voice said, "Pardon?"
The seat where an elderly Indian woman had been sleeping wrapped in a thin sheet just a moment ago—or so it seemed—was now occupied by a young Indian man. He was fat-faced and bulky, with big brown eyes, a lovely smile, and wore a clean, neatly pressed shirt. He was sitting cross-legged, barefoot, where the old woman had been, and both his posture and his face conveyed the assurance that he was harmless, even if a bit innocent and fearful. He sat with his chubby fingers locked together in a patient posture of restraint.
"I was just thinking out loud," Alice said.
"Talking out loud," the young man said.
"Not exactly," Alice said. "The thought was in my head but it somehow got turned into some words."
"Something worse?"
"No. Some words. The thought became a statement."
"Thought in head becoming utterance."
Now "utterance" was one of those words, like "miscreants," "audacious," "thrice," "ample," and "jocundity," that some Indians used in casual conversation and Indian writers used in sentences, in the same way that out the window the Indian farmers were using antique sharp-nosed hand plows pulled by yoked oxen and women carried water jars on their heads. India was a country of usable antiques.
Alice kept a list of these Indian English words in her notebook. Comparative linguistics was a subject she had thought of pursuing in grad school—what else could an English major do?—but first she wanted to take this year off after graduation, the trip with Stella—who had slipped into thin air, just bailed, selfish bitch. But Alice smiled to think that here she was, enjoying herself in this adventure to Bangalore, while Stella and Zack were sneering at Mumbai and discovering how shallow each other was. It gives me no pleasure to think that you're unhappy, Alice thought, and smiled, because it did.
"You are ruminative," the young man said.
"Ruminative," Alice said, thinking, Write that down. "That's me."
"Cudgeling your mind."
"The expression is 'cudgeling your brains,' only I'm not."
"You are indeed thinking out loud."
"You learn fast," Alice said. "Where are you going?"
"Bangalore," he said.
He was going the whole way in this sleeping compartment?
"Job interview," he said. "Eye Tee. Bee Pee Oh."
"A call center?"
"Can be call center or tech-support center. Voice based or computer driven. Wish me luck."
Alice was touched by the fat young man's saying that. She said, "I really do wish you luck. I hope you get the job. Maybe I'll call the tech support line someday and you can help me fix my computer."
"It would be my pleasure. You are smiling."
"Because we're in this train. India out there, rolling along. It's so Merchant-Ivory."
When Alice glanced out the window, she saw that dusk had fallen and they were pulling into a station. It was Gurgaon. Many people got on, and just as the train started again, a woman entered the compartment with two suitcases. She did not offer a greeting but instead concentrated on chaining her luggage to a stanchion by the door. Then, muttering, she claimed the lower berth and sent the young man to the upper berth and out of sight. It was as though a chaperone had intervened, for he was at once both obedient and less familiar. While he appeared to read—Alice heard the rattling of magazine pages—the woman made her bed and lay down to sleep. Alice was reassured by the woman, whom she saw as not an intrusion at all but a typically bossy Indian woman who would keep order.
A man came by with a tray of food—dhal, rice, two puris, a pot of yogurt, the sort of meal that Stella had begun to call "the slimy special," but Alice found delicious. And after she ate it and the tray was collected, she lay down and read a Sai Baba pamphlet, "The Meaning of Love," in preparation for the ashram, but had hardly turned a page when she fell asleep, rocked by the train.
In the morning a coffee seller came by. She bought a paper cup of coffee, and some bananas from a woman with bunches of them in a basket, and she sat in the sunshine, feeling on this lovely morning that a new phase of her life was beginning.
"Can you please inform me, what is your good name, madam?"
She looked up and saw the tubby young man smiling at her, sitting in a lotus posture. She had forgotten him.
"Sure thing. Alice—Alice Durand."
He was now leaning over, his arm extended. "My card. May I obtain yours?"
"I don't actually have a business card," Alice said. "But I'm sure I'll see you around. We're both getting off at Bangalore."
"No. You must be getting off at Cantonment, for Whitefield."
"How do you know that?"
"Sai Baba Center. You have been perusing pamphlet."
Anyone's watchfulness slightly unnerved her, but she also admired this man's. He was a fast learner. He would get the job.
"We are sitting on eight o'clock. Cantonment is coming up."
"And what is your good name?"
"Amitabh. On the card. Also mobile number and Hotmail account. Also pager. You will find me accessible."
He was still sitting, wide in his solid posture, when Alice hoisted her topheavy rucksack and struggled off the train to face the squawking, reaching auto-rickshaw drivers, who seemed to know exactly where she was going.
2
The passage of time was not easily calculable in the ashram. You didn't count hours or days, but rather months, maybe years. A month had gone by, though time meant nothing here, even with the routine: up at four or so to queue for a place at the hall for the darshan and a chance to hear Swami at six-thirty; then bhajans until eight or so, and breakfast; then chores and food prep and more queuing until more of Swami at two and more bhajans, of which Alice's favorite began,
Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey Gajaanana
Gajaanana Hey Gajavadana...
(Victory to Gajaanana,
The elephant-faced God...)
"Work is worship," Swami said, and "Hands that help are better than lips that pray," and "Start the day with love, spend the day with love, fill the day with love, end the day with love. That is the way to God."
Alice's days spilled one into the other, full and fluid, guided by Swami. And the passage of time was a consoling liquefaction of weeks in which she was gently turned, as though tumbled downstream, without any effort, feeling the buoyancy of happiness chanted into her ears.
Swami was smaller, slighter, older than his photographs suggested, the hair a less symmetrical frizz-ball, his smile more fatigued than impish. But he was eighty. His direct confrontation, his practical advice, his refusal to preach—the essential Swami appealed to her. He seemed to single her out at the daily darshan and to hold her gaze, and while seeming to preach, said, "I am not here to preach. Only to listen. Only to make suggestions. I tell you"—and here Alice felt the warmth of his attention—"if you are Christian, be the best Christian you can be."
"He will leave his body at ninety-six," Alice's roommate Priyanka said. "And after some eight years, the third and last incarnation will be born. Prema Sai. I wish to observe this."
Priyanka and her friend Prithi had gotten robes for Alice and allowed her to share their room, claiming they were spiritual sisters, since single women were discouraged from applying for rooms. The room was spartan and clean—well, Alice cleaned it, after bhajans. She was glad that Stella was not here to distract her. Stella would have hated the food, made a fuss about the flies or the heat, or else said, as she had at the temple at Muttra, "I don't see why I should take off my shoes here, since the floor is a heck of a lot dirtier than my feet."
Alice loved the simplicity of the place, the strict routine, the plain food, the safety of the perimeter wall, the knowledge that Swami was right next door, beyond the gate in his funky yellow house. It was like a nunnery, and yet there were no vows. She could leave any time she wanted. But the routine suited her, and the city—what she had seen of it—seemed pleasant enough. Too much traffic, though; too many people; honks, shouts, the crackl
e of music, new stinks.
Against Priyanka's advice—"Swami doesn't like us dibble-dabbling in the town"—Alice took a bus to Lalbagh Gardens and lost herself among the giant trees, the first real trees she'd seen in India, big old ones that spoke of space and order, that provided damp shade and coolness. Indian families roamed in the gardens, lapping at ice creams, and Alice regarded these people wandering among the great trees as worshipers of the most devout sort, without dogma, lovers of the natural world, as Swami was.
Some of the Bangalore streets were lined with flowering trees, like any good street in Providence, and the same sort of solid, smug-fronted houses and bungalows. Stella would have shopped—there were silks and pashminas and bangles—but Alice only looked. The Christian churches, an inexplicably large number of them, helped calm her, because all those Christians were a link with a world she knew and the faith itself had Swami's approval.
But the dust-laden and echoey churches were not enough. She was drawn to another place of worship, the Ganesh temple in the heart of the city, the elephant image smiling at her from the inner sanctum. That was how it seemed: another big soft gaze in her life. The other deities sat glowering, with horror teeth like Kali's, or else solemnly dancing like Shiva; with half-closed eyes like Saraswati playing the sitar, or goofy-faced with pouchy cheeks like Hanuman. But only the elephant god smiled, always the kindly eyes directed straight at her, and the full satisfied mouth chomping on the tusks like a tycoon with two cigars. The way the fat thing sat on the rounded cushion of his bottom, his center of gravity in his broad bum, was also a pleasure to see, but most of all his eyes reassured her with a What can I do for you? look and a guarantee: I can help you.
The afterlife was not intimated in any of the elephant god's intercessions. He was worldly and efficient, not granting grace or forgiving sins, but promising to bring his heavy foot down to flatten a problem.
