Land Where I Flee

by Prajwal Parajuly

  Prasanti provided her answer in a giggle.

  “If she can openly be a trannie, why can’t you?” Nicky said.

  Prasanti, covering her face with the tray, giggled again and marched back into the house.

  “Left-right, left-right,” she bellowed. “This will be the new tune I’ll march to.”

  •

  Desirous of taking full advantage of her last three days of freedom, Manasa made a call to book a spa treatment at the luxurious new Mayfair Hotel.

  She had planned the massage partly because of Ruthwa’s unflattering opinion on the way she had aged. She had noticed a new sagging above her jawline, and her hair had stopped brushing in the direction she steered it. The problem with her hair could be attributed to the water in Gangtok, but she couldn’t be too sure. The lifelessness she felt inside showed outside, she knew, but she also had an excuse—Bua couldn’t be left alone while she gallivanted from beauty parlor to beauty parlor. She rarely wore nail polish these days—that’s how far vanity had been demoted in her life.

  Bhagwati had just showered and was sunning herself in the garden. That beauty needed no spa.

  “I’ve booked some treatments at the Mayfair,” Manasa said.

  “Good—you have fun.”

  “I’ve booked the both of us in.”

  “I can’t afford such luxuries,” Bhagwati replied.

  “It’s a gift from me.”

  “I was being sarcastic,” Bhagwati said, on her face a duplicate of the disgusted look she’d had earlier when Manasa asked her if Aamaa was paying her to talk sense into Agastaya. “Do you think I can’t afford a spa trip? You seriously think I am worse off than a beggar, don’t you?”

  Manasa couldn’t think of a way to defend herself, so she kept quiet, which infuriated Bhagwati further.

  “I feel insulted by you, Manasa,” Bhagwati said, her tone uncontemptuous. “All the time, with your smug attitude. Money isn’t everything, you know. If it was, you’d have been far more blessed than any of us.”

  Manasa meant to tell her older sister that all her money-related comments had been inadvertent, but she was tired of treading on eggshells with Bhagwati. “I don’t mean to be rude, Bhagwati, but why do you become so sensitive when money comes up?”

  “Because you’re all constantly implying that I am poor. Yes, I am—so what?”

  “I never purposefully tried to do it. It’s just that every time there’s money talk, you become stiff. I don’t know what to do.”

  “So, it’s my fault now?”

  “Look, I am sorry. Can we go to the spa? We need to look nice for the party tomorrow. I feel hideous. I look so dark these days.”

  “I don’t need to go to a spa,” Bhagwati snapped. “I am whiter than a quilt cover.”

  “The quilt covers in this house have yellowed, so, yes, you are whiter than they,” Manasa replied.

  “Terrible joke.” Bhagwati started filing her nails. Even her nails were shiny. How could someone’s nails—nails!—be so pretty?

  “Okay, I know you don’t need to go to a spa—you’re gorgeous. You don’t even need to wear makeup, but can you please accompany your ugly sister?”

  “I didn’t mean that,” Bhagwati said, softening. “I didn’t mean I don’t need to go to a spa because I’m beautiful. I just don’t like spas. I feel they’re a waste.”

  “See? I misconstrued what you said,” Manasa said.

  “So?”

  “You’ve been misreading all my money-related comments. Maybe you’re sensitive about money the way I am about my looks.”

  Bhagwati smiled. Perhaps she understood.

  “Yes, everyone here is so worried about my poverty,” she said. “But now please shut up about it. Don’t come up with examples that make no sense. You’re making things worse.”

  “So, you aren’t coming?”

  “No, and I wouldn’t mind being left alone for some time.”

  Her noble intention rebuffed and her nobler attempt at drawing a connection between misinterpreted remarks trampled upon, Manasa called the spa to cancel her reservation.

  Being misunderstood for no fault of her own wasn’t amusing, but Manasa wouldn’t let her sister’s surliness affect her. She had promised herself that she’d have fun these last few days, so when she saw her brother and Nicholas involved in deep conversation, she called out to them.

  “Aamaa wants to meet Nicholas!” she shouted.

  “What will she talk to him about?” Agastaya replied.

  “About life,” Manasa said.

  “In what language?”

  “I’ll translate for them,” Manasa offered. “Or you can.”

  “I’d love to meet your grandmother,” Nicholas said.

  “Nicky, please, don’t,” Agastaya said to Nicholas.

  “Why not? She sounds like a lovely lady.”

  Manasa galloped to Aamaa’s bedroom, where her grandmother was changing channels.

  “The gorey wants to come up and get your blessings,” she informed the old lady.

  “What blessings will I give a beef-eater?” Aamaa replied without looking away from the TV.

  “I am a beef-eater, and you bless me. Oooh, they are here. Get up. You want him to have a nice impression of you.”

  “The most important thing in my life a day before my eighty-fourth birthday,” said Aamaa, “is to impress a gorey?”

  “And please don’t smoke in front of him.”

  Aamaa fished out from her pouch a beedi and lit it up just as Agastaya and Nicholas entered the room.

  “Aamaa, this is Nicholas,” Agastaya said in Nepali.

  Aamaa smiled shyly at Nicholas.

  “Nicky . . . Nicholas, this is Aamaa, my grandmother,” he said in English.

  “Hello,” Nicholas said.

  “Won’t he do Namaste to me?” Aamaa looked at Manasa.

  “She’s asking you why you don’t wish Namaste to her,” Manasa translated to Nicholas.

  “Oh, Namaste,” Nicholas said and in a theatrical gesture brought both his hands together.

  “He’s even fairer than those people from Belgium,” Aamaa said to Manasa.

  “She says you’re very good-looking.” Manasa stretched the truth.

  Agastaya fidgeted a bit.

  “Oh, thank you.” Nicky smiled.

  “Aamaa, aren’t you going to ask him to sit?” Manasa asked.

  “Sit? Where? Do these goreys sit on the bed? Tell him to remove his shoes if he wants to put his feet on my sheet.”

  Manasa laughed at her grandmother’s newfound concern for hygiene. Agastaya smiled.

  “Aamaa has seen on TV that some Westerners don’t take off their shoes when they go to bed,” Manasa said to Nicky. “That’s how well informed our grandma is. She says you remove your shoes if you have any intention of placing your feet on her sheet.”

  Manasa laughed harder. Agastaya’s smile narrowed as his forehead creased.

  “I’m fine,” Nicky said. “I’ll stand. What’s that cute thing she’s smoking?”

  “It’s a disgusting cigarette—favored by lowlifes,” Manasa said.

  “What’s he asking?” Aamaa asked.

  “He wants to know why you won’t give up your terrible habit of smoking,” Manasa said.

  Chitralekha smiled. “Come, come,” she said in English, and she signaled for Nicholas to walk to her.

  Nicholas hesitated but inched toward the bed. Aamaa handed the beedi she was smoking to him.

  “She wants you to smoke it,” Manasa said, looking unsurely at Agastaya but delighted by Aamaa’s generosity.

  “I’d love to.” Nicholas took a puff of the beedi. He coughed and choked but made another go.

  “These goreys can’t smoke a harmless beedi,” Aamaa said. “How could they have ruled us for all those years?”

  Everyone but Agastaya laughed. Agastaya didn’t seem very amused. Manasa found that even funnier.

  •

  Aamaa’s room was a mess when Bh
agwati walked in—a smoke-filled, people-filled, cough-filled, laughter-filled mess.

  “They are bonding,” Manasa said to Bhagwati. “Look at how strangers bond over beedi. Beedi is a universal language.”

  This was like trespassing into a Hollywood comedy in which the characters were all smoking pot. But no one here was high. Everyone was just being silly.

  “Shouldn’t we eat lunch?” Bhagwati asked. Then, in Nepali, she asked the same question to Aamaa.

  “Ask him what he likes to eat,” Aamaa said, which Manasa submissively translated.

  “Curry,” Nicholas replied.

  “I understood that,” Aamaa said. “But what curry?”

  Manasa did the two-word interpreting: “Which curry?”

  “Chicken curry.”

  “This is a vegetarian Upadhyay Baahun’s house—no chicken here,” Aamaa said. “He will be thrown out if he wants chicken.”

  Nicholas may have sensed her meaning. “Okay, vegetables, then.”

  As Aamaa got up and led her merry entourage downstairs, a confounded Bhagwati focused on the sole sullen person left behind.

  “What, exactly, is going on?” she said.

  “She wanted him to try the beedi, and since then they’ve become best friends,” Agastaya answered.

  “I assume he is staying for lunch,” Bhagwati said.

  “He doesn’t deserve to, but it’s Aamaa’s house, and she’s already asked him what he wants to eat.”

  “How do they even speak to each other?”

  “Manasa has volunteered to do the translating. She orchestrated all this.”

  “That’s what boredom does,” Bhagwati said.

  “I know. This guy is a leech. He’ll never let go of my side—or any of your sides now.”

  Downstairs, Ruthwa was already seated with the trio.

  “Have you been introduced?” Agastaya asked Ruthwa.

  “Oh, you are Roota,” Nicholas said.

  “How do you do?” Ruthwa said in a stiff manner.

  “Very nice meeting you,” Nicholas replied.

  “So, I am not the only gatecrasher around here?” Ruthwa asked no one in particular.

  “Is this the entire family, then?” Nicholas surveyed the entire table, where Prasanti was yet to serve food.

  Aamaa wanted Manasa to translate what the gorey said.

  “Everyone but the spouses,” Aamaa said.

  “I am not going to translate that,” Manasa said to Aamaa.

  Bhagwati felt a wave of anger overpower her. This easy acceptance by Aamaa of a stranger—a non-Hindu, a non-Nepali, a non-Indian, a white man—was jarring when Bhagwati had for the last year and a half been toiling to get Aamaa to approve of her children. Aamaa had remained resolute, unmoved, but here she was, best friends with a man whose last name she didn’t know. What had happened to her beef-eater/non-beef-eater nonsense? Her grandmother’s mouth had even gladly puffed on the same beedi that the beef-eater had smoked.

  “I will.” Bhagwati offered to translate. “She says all the family members are here but the spouses.”

  “Oh, yes, all but the significant others,” Nicholas said. “Why are your partners not here?”

  “Mine is an untouchable, so he couldn’t come,” Bhagwati said.

  “And you?” Nicholas directed the question at Manasa.

  “I didn’t bring mine because . . . too long a story,” Manasa said. “I didn’t bring mine because I didn’t want him around.”

  “And you, Roota?”

  “It is Ruthwa,” Ruthwa corrected the American.

  “What about you, Roota?”

  “I don’t believe in monogamy.”

  “Good for you. And what about you?” Nicholas turned his attention to Agastaya. “You’re loaded and a catch. Don’t you have anybody you could bring to the event?”

  “No one, really,” Agastaya said.

  Bhagwati seized the chance. “He berates me for asking him to get married,” she said. “He needs to find a nice girl . . .”

  “Key kuraa gardaichan?” Aaamaa asked Manasa.

  “I don’t want to be the translator anymore,” Manasa replied. “Someone, please take over.”

  “I will,” Ruthwa said.

  “Not you,” came Manasa’s reply.

  “Why not?”

  “All right, you’re more than welcome to,” Manasa deigned. “Aamaa, Ruthwa will do the translation.”

  Aamaa pursed her lips.

  “Prasanti, where’s the food?” she shouted. “We have a guest.”

  “I am a guest, too,” Ruthwa said in Nepali.

  Prasanti brought everyone’s plate—each had some rice on it. She laughed when she placed Nicholas’s plate in front of him.

  “I’ll slap you if there is any stone in my rice,” Manasa said to Prasanti.

  “Do you eat the rice by itself in Sikkim?” Nicholas asked.

  “Yes, we do,” Manasa said. “We can’t afford vegetables in India.”

  “Ignorant American—get it, get it.” Nicholas proudly looked around.

  Prasanti emerged again bearing two bowls with two ladles and placed them on the table. She portioned onto Nicholas’s plate a ladleful of daal from one and the squishiest squash Bhagwati had ever seen from another. The solid vegetable chunks had all been battered into a paste.

  “What’s that guacamole-like thing?” Nicky asked.

  “Serving done only for the guest,” Prasanti said, and she giggled.

  She repeated the process for Chitralekha and added, “And for the ghar-Aamaa. The others should serve themselves.”

  “It smells like heaven,” Nicholas said.

  Ruthwa scoffed. Agastaya glanced at Ruthwa.

  “Be careful,” Ruthwa said. “They frequently find pebbles in the rice here.”

  “Can you tell him we usually eat more than one vegetable?” Aamaa asked Manasa. “What if he thinks this is what our everyday diet is like?”

  “No, I’ll not tell him that,” Manasa replied. “Are you worried about your social status with a stranger?”

  “Can I eat with my fingers, too?” Nicholas asked. “It’s always been a dream of mine.”

  “We aren’t a dictatorship, Nicholas,” Manasa said. “You do what you want.”

  “It’s not as easy as it looks,” Bhagwati said. “When I had American guests over in Boulder, they all gave up.”

  Ruthwa lifted his left hand and brought all his fingers together in demonstration. “It’s easy—this is it, right?”

  “Wait until you try it with the rice,” Bhagwati warned.

  “Tell him he can’t eat with his left hand,” Aamaa said to Bhagwati, which Bhagwati conveyed.

  “But why?” Nicholas asked.

  “We use the left hand exclusively for fun things in the bathroom,” Ruthwa explained.

  “I needed something that well described to whet my appetite for this repulsive food,” Manasa said.

  Nicholas took a few grains of rice, yellowed on contamination with the other contents of his plate, between the fingers of his right hand and made a small ball of it with the squash and daal. He then tilted his head, and, with his mouth facing the ceiling, lifted his hand up in the air, aiming for the rice to drop into his mouth in a shower. Half the grains entered their desired destination while the other half fell onto his shirt.

  “Prasanti, come look at this!” Aamaa shouted, delighted with the spectacle.

  Nicholas was a great performer. He slurped his food, made “mmm” sounds to pronounce its deliciousness, accepted a second helping before dropping on himself almost all of what was served, and continued eating, distracting and delighting Prasanti and Aamaa, who had stopped chewing because she was so engrossed in the gorey’s rice-eating skills.

  “So, is it acceptable for him to sit at your table, Aamaa?” Bhagwati quietly said. “He’s not an untouchable?”

  “He is different,” Aamaa said.

  “How, different?”

  “He’s not the husband of on
e of you,” Aamaa said. “He’ll never be married to any of you.”

  Manasa, momentarily forgetting that she had given up the role of interpreter, translated Aamaa’s commentary for Nicholas. “She says it’s okay for you, a beef-eater, to be seated at the same table as us because you will never be married to one of us.”

  “Yes, she has a point,” Nicholas said. “She has a point.”

  Bhagwati didn’t say anything to that. Aamaa continued being fascinated by Nicholas’s adventures with food. She called out to Prasanti again when some rice—the biggest fistful so far—fell to the floor.

  The piety Bhagwati felt every Lakshmi Puja was slowly and surely deserting her today.

  •

  Prasanti had secured decorations from the driver’s cousin and made a pageant of chaining the string of lights to the roof.

  “Where are all the condo men when you need them?” She was out of breath. “Why do I have to do everything here?”

  Manasa and Agastaya were immersed in deep conversation up on the balcony . . . in English. Ruthwa and Bhagwati were playing cards while occasionally talking . . . in English.

  “Come, come,” Chitralekha said to her grandson’s friend, who was touring the garden by himself. “Help, help.”

  She hadn’t given it much thought when they were growing up, but she found it odd that all her grandchildren talked to one another mostly in English. She found it even more peculiar that the children even spoke to one another. They were a fractious bunch as youngsters. As adults, they seemed to have set aside their differences, if for a few days, and that made her wonder why she couldn’t become like them. It’d make her life—and the lives of those around her—so much easier if she simply faked forgiveness for the time they were here. They’d all be gone after that. She’d maybe see them for a few days once every two years. A protean Chitralekha for her protean grandchildren—that would be an ideal world. But she wasn’t used to living in an ideal world.

  “Prasanti, those lights aren’t attractive at all,” Manasa said. “I like the marigold garlands by themselves better—the décor is more natural that way.”

  “Look which condo is talking about beauty,” Prasanti said. “A Chaurasi comes only once in a lifetime. Subba will be here. Ministers will be here. We have to make this house look like a palace.”

  “Except it’s looking like a hijra house right now,” Manasa said.