New Suns

by Nisi Shawl

  With Padma gone for so long, I’d had to look for a nurse for Amma. It quickly became clear that I could forget about Enhanced nurses, since all such nurses were employed everywhere except in India. Fortunately, Rajan, a shop-floor supervisor at Modern Textiles, approached me saying his daughter Velli had a diploma in home care, he’d heard I was looking for a home-nurse, and that he was looking for someone he could trust.

  Trust enabled all relations. As a banker, I’d learned this lesson over and over. I was enveloped in a subtle happiness, a kind of sadness infused with a delicate mix of fragrances: the car’s sunburnt leather, Amma’s coconut-oil loving white head, Padma’s vétiver, Velli’s jasmine, and Bittu’s pulsing animal scent. The sensory mix wasn’t something my Brain had composed. It must have arisen from the flower of the moment. I savored the essence before it could melt under introspection, but melt it did, leaving in its place the residue of a happiness without reasons.

  Somewhat dazed, I leaned forward between the front seats and asked the ladies what they were talking about.

  “Amma was saying she wanted to come for my wedding in Boston,” said Padma. “I want her there too. I’ll make all the arrangements. My happiness would be complete if she were there.”

  “Then I will be there,” announced Amma. “Just book the plane ticket.”

  “Amma, you can barely navigate to the bathroom by yourself, let alone Boston.”

  “See Padma, see? This is his attitude.” Amma employed the old-beggar-woman voice she reserved for pathos. “Ever since you left, I’ve become the butt of his bad jokes.” Then Amma surprised me by turning and patting my cheek. “But it’s okay. He’s just trying to cheer me up, poor fellow.”

  “That’s one of the hazards of living with him,” said Padma, smiling. “Amma, seriously, I’ll book your ticket. If he wants, your son can also come and crack his bad jokes there.”

  “Yes, the more the merrier,” said Amma, good sport that she was. She then stoutly defended Padma’s choice, pooh-poohing moral issues no one had raised about Turkish-Tamil children, and saying things like what mattered was a person’s heart, not their origins, and that love multiplied under division, and wasn’t it telling that he loved red rice and avial. “I always thought Mammooty looks very Turkish,” said Amma, her intransigent tone indicating that Sollozzo, whom she had yet to meet, could draw at will from the affection she’d deposited over a lifetime for her favorite south-Indian actor. That’s how much she liked Turks, yes.

  I liked him too. Sollozzo wasn’t anything like the gangster namesake from the classic movie. For one thing, he had a thin pencil moustache. I could have grown a similar moustache, but I couldn’t compete with his gaunt height or that ruined look of a cricket bat which had seen one too many innings. He came across as a decent fellow, very sharp, and his slow smile and thoughtful mien gave his words an extra weight.

  He had brought me a gift. A signed copy of Pamuk’s Museum Of Innocence. It was strange to think this volume been touched by the great one, physically touched, and the thought sent an involuntary shiver down my spine. A lovely, Unenhanced feeling. Two gifts in one. The volume was very expensive, no doubt. I touched the signature.

  “My friend,” said Orhan Pamuk in my head, from across the bridge of time, “I hope you get as much joy reading this story as I had writing it.”

  I touched the signature again, replaying its message. I looked up and saw Padma and Sollozzo watching me. It was touching to think they’d worried about finding me the right gift.

  “I will cherish it.” I was totally sincere. “Thank you.”

  “Mention not,” said Sollozzo, with that slow smile of his. “You owe me nothing. I did take your wife.”

  We all laughed. We chatted all through lunch. I ordered the lamb; the others opted to share a vat of biryani. As I watched Bittu putting her little fingers to her mouth, I realized with a start that I’d quite missed her. Sollozzo ate with the gusto of a man on death row. Padma shook her head and I stopped staring. My habit of introspection sometimes interfered with my happiness, but I felt it also gave my happiness a more poignant quality. It is one thing to be happy but to know that one is happy because a beloved is happy makes happiness all the more sweet. Else, how would we be any different from animals? My head buzzing with that sweet feeling, I desired to make a genuine connection. I turned to Sollozzo.

  “Are you working on a new novel? Your fans must be getting very impatient.”

  “I haven’t written anything new for a decade,” said Sollozzo, with a smile. He stroked Padma’s cheek. “She’s worried.”

  “I’m not!” Padma did look very unworried. “I’m not just your wife. I’m also a reader. If I feel a writer is cutting corners, that’s it, I close the book. You’re a perfectionist; I love that. Remember how you tortured me over the translation?”

  Sollozzo nodded fondly. “She’s equally mad. She’ll happily spend a week over a comma.”

  “How we fought over footnotes! He doesn’t like footnotes. But how can a translator clarify without footnotes? Nothing doing, I said. I put my foot down.”

  I felt good watching them nuzzle. I admired their passion. I must have been deficient in passion. Still, if I’d been deficient, why hadn’t Padma told me? Marriages needed work. The American labor theory of love. That worked for me; I liked work. Work, work. If she’d wanted me to work at our relationship, I would have. Then, just so, I lost interest in the subject.

  “I don’t read much fiction anymore,” I confessed. “I used to be a huge reader. Then I got Enhanced in my twenties. There was the adjustment phase and then somehow I lost touch, what with career and all. Same story with my friends. They mostly read what their children read. But even kids, it’s not much. Makes me wonder. Maybe we are outgrowing the need for fiction. I mean, children outgrow their imaginary friends. Do you think we posthumans are outgrowing the need for fiction?”

  I waited for Sollozzo to respond. But he’d filled his mouth with biryani and was masticating with the placid dedication of a temple cow. Padma filled the silence with happy chatter. Sollozzo was working on a collection of his short stories. He was doing this, he was doing that. I sensed reproach in her cheer, which was, of course, ridiculous. Then she changed the topic: “Are you, are you, are you, finally done with Modern Textiles?”

  “I am, I am, I am not,” I replied, and we both laughed. “The usual usual, Padma. I’m trying to make the workers see that control is possible without ownership. Tough, though. The Enhanced ones are easy; they get it immediately. But the ones who aren’t, especially the Marxist types. Sheesh.”

  “Sounds super-challenging!”

  On the contrary. Her interested expression said: Super-tedious. I hadn’t intended to elaborate. As a merchant banker, I’d learned early on that most artists, especially the writer-types, were put off by money talk.

  It didn’t bother me. I just found it odd. Why weren’t they interested in capital, which had the power to transform the world more than any other force? But I was willing to bet Sollozzo’s novel wouldn’t spend a comma, let alone a footnote, on business. Even Padma, for all the time she spent with me, had never accepted that the strong poets she so admired were poets of action, not verbiage.

  “I hate the word posthuman!” exclaimed Sollozzo, startling us. “It’s an excuse to claim we’re innocent of humanity’s sins. It’s a rejection of history. Are you so eager to return to Zion? If so, you are lost, my brother.”

  Silence.

  “I know the way to Sion,” I said finally, and when Padma burst out laughing, I explained to the puzzled Sollozzo that Sahyun, where I lived with my mother, had originally been called Sion and that it had been a cosmopolitan North-Indian intersection between two South-Indian enclaves, Chembur and Kingcircle. Then Sahyun had become a Muslim enclave. Now it was simply a wealthy enclave.

  “Sahyun! That’s Zion in Arabic. You are living in Zion!”

  “Exactly. I even have one of the rivers of Paradise not too far from my h
ouse. Imagine. And Padma still left.”

  “There’s no keeping women in Zion.” Sollozzo gifted me one of his slow smiles.

  “Of course,” said Padma, smiling. “The river Jihran is recent. There wasn’t any river anywhere near Sion. The place was a traffic nightmare. Everything’s changed in the last sixty years. Completely, utterly changed.”

  “On the contrary—” I began, leaning forward to help myself to a second helping of lamb.

  “My dear children,” interrupted my mother, in Tamil, “I understand you don’t want to, but you mustn’t postpone it any longer. You have to tell Bittu.”

  “Yes, Bittu. Break her heart, then mend it.” Sollozzo didn’t understand Tamil very well, not yet, but he had recognized the key word: Bittu. This meeting was really about Bittu.

  First, the preliminaries. I took the divorce papers from Padma, signed wherever I was required to sign; a quaint anachronism in this day and age, but necessary nonetheless. With that single stroke of my pen, I gave up the right to call Padma my wife. My ex-wife’s glance met mine, a tender exchange of unsaid benedictions and I felt a profound sadness roil inside me. Then it was accompanied with a white-hot anger that I wasn’t alone with my misery. The damn Brain was watching, protecting. But there is no protection against loss. Padma—Oh god, oh god, oh god. Then, just so, I relaxed.

  “There’s a park outside,” said Padma, also smiling. “We’ll tell Bittu there.”

  It began well. Bittu, bless her heart, wasn’t exactly the brightest crayon in the box. It took her a long time to understand that her parents were divorcing. For good. She was going to live in Boston. Yes, she would lose all her friends. Yes, the uncle with the moustache was now her step-father. No, I wasn’t coming along. Yes, I would visit. Et cetera, et cetera. Then she asked all the same questions once more. Wobbling chin, high-pitched voice, but overall quite calm. We felt things were going well. Padma and I beamed at each other, Sollozzo nodded approvingly.

  Amma was far smarter. She knew her grandchild, remembered better than us what it had been like not to be fully Enhanced. So when Bittu ran screaming towards the fence separating the park from the highway, Amma, my eighty-two year-old mother, somehow sprinted after her and grabbed Bittu before she could hit the road. We caught up, smiling with panic. Hugs, more explanations. Bittu calmed. Then when we released her, she once again made a dash for it. This is just what we have pieced together after some debate, Padma, Sollozzo and I. None of us remember too much of what happened. But it must have been very stressful, because my Brain mercifully decided to bury it. I remember flashes of a nose-bleed, a frantic trip to the hospital, Bittu’s hysterical screams, Padma in Sollozzo’s arms. I remember Bittu’s Brain taking over, conferring with ours, and shutting down her reticular center. Bittu went to sleep.

  “Please do not worry.” Bittu’s Brain broadcast directly to our heads. It had an airline-stewardess, voice, and it spoke first in English, then in Hindi. “She can be easily awakened at the nearest facility.”

  I remember the doctor who handled Bittu’s case. She was very reassuring. I remember everything after the doctor took over. She was that reassuring.

  “Bittu was Enhanced only last year, wasn’t she?” said the doctor.

  She wanted to know the specifics of the unit. Did Bittu’s Brain regulate appetite? How quickly would it forget things? What was our policy on impulse control? That was especially important. How did her Brain handle uncertainty? Was it risk-averse or risk-neutral? Superfluous questions, of course. The information was all there in the medical report. I listened, marveling, a soaring happiness, as Padma answered every question, and thus answered what the doctor really needed to know: are you caring parents? Do you know what you have done to your child with this technology?

  The doctor asked if we had encouraged Bittu to give her Brain a name. Did we know that Bittu referred to it as a “boo-boo?” Newly-Enhanced children often gave names to their Brains. Padma nodded, smiling, but I could tell she was worried. Boo-boo?

  We got the It-Takes-Time-to-Adjust speech. Bittu was very young, the Brain still wasn’t an integral part of her. Her naming it was one symptom. Her Brain found it especially difficult to handle Bittu’s complex emotions. And Bittu found it difficult to deal with this thing in her head. We should have been more careful. It especially hadn’t been a good idea to mask the trial separation as a happy vacation in Boston. We hung our heads.

  Relax, smiled the doctor. These things happen. It’s especially hard to remember just how chaotic their little minds are at this age. It’s not like raising children in the old days. Don’t worry. In a few weeks, Bittu wouldn’t even remember she’d had all these worries or anxieties. She would continue to have genuine concerns, yes, but fear, self-pity and other negative emotions wouldn’t complicate things. Those untainted concerns could be easily handled with love, kindness, patience and understanding. The doctor’s finger drew a cross with those four words.

  “Yes, doctor!” said Padma, with the enthusiasm all mothers seem to have for a good medical lecture.

  We all felt much better. Our appreciation would inform our Brains to rate this particular interaction highly on the appropriate feedback boards.

  Outside, once Bittu had been placed—fast asleep, poor thing—into Sollozzo’s rental car, the time came to make our farewells. I embraced Padma and she swore various things. She would keep in touch. I was to do this and that. Bittu. Bittu. We smiled at each other. However, Amma was a mess, mediation or no mediation.

  “Was it to see this day, I lived so long?” she asked piteously in Tamil, forgetting herself for a second, but then recovered when Padma and I laughed at her wobbly voice.

  “That lady doctor liked the word ‘especially’, didn’t she?’ said Sollozzo, absentmindedly shaking and squeezing my hand. “I had a character like that. He liked to say: on the contrary. Even when there was nothing to be contrary about.” He encased our handshake with his other hand. “Friend, my answer to your question was stupid. Totally stupid. I failed. I’ve often thought about the same question. I will fail better. We must talk.”

  What question? The relevance of fiction? I didn’t care. So. This was it. Padma was leaving. Bittu was leaving. My wife and daughter were gone forever. I felt something click in my head and I went all woozy. The music in my head made it impossible to think. I was so happy I had to leave immediately or I would have exploded with joy.

  Amma and I had a good journey back to our apartment. We hooked our Brains, sang-along with old Tamil songs, discussed some of the entertaining ways in which our older relatives had died. She didn’t fall asleep and leave me to my devices. My mother, worn out from life, protecting me from myself, even now.

  That evening, Velli made a great deal of fuss over Amma, chattering about the day she’d had, cracking silly jokes, and discussing her never-ending domestic soap opera. Amma sat silently through it all, smiling, nodding, blinking.

  “Thank you for caring,” I told Velli, after she had put Amma to bed. “You look tired. Would you like a few days off next week?”

  “I’m not going anywhere!” she burst out in her village Tamil. She grabbed my hand, crushed it against her large breasts. “You’re an inspiration to me. All of you! How sensibly you people handle life’s problems. Not like us. When my uncle’s wife ran away, you should have seen the fireworks, whereas you all—Please don’t take this the wrong way elder brother, but sometimes at night when I can’t sleep because of worries, I think of your smiling face and then I am at peace. How I wish I too could be free of emotions!”

  It is not every day one is anointed the Buddha, and I tried to look suitably enlightened. But she had the usual misconception about mediation. Free of emotions! That was like thinking classical musicians were free of music because they’d moved beyond grunts and shrieks. We, the Enhanced, weren’t free of emotions. On the contrary! We had healthy psychological immune systems, that was all.

  I could understand Velli’s confusion, but Sollozzo left m
e baffled. We chatted aperiodically, but often. Padma told me his scribbling was going better than ever, but his midmornings must have been fallow because that’s when he usually called. I welcomed his pings; his mornings were my evenings, and in the evenings I didn’t want to think about ESOPs, equities, or factory workers. It was quite cozy. Velli cutting vegetables for dinner, Amma alternating between bossing her and playing Sudoku, and Sollozzo and I arguing about something or the other. Indeed, the topic didn’t matter as long we could argue over it. We argued about the evils of capitalism, the rise of Ghana, the least imperfect way to cook biryani, the perfect way to educate children, and whether bellies were a must for belly dancers. Our most ferocious arguments were often about topics on which we completely concurred.

  For example, fiction. I knew he knew that fiction was best suited for the Unenhanced. But would he admit it? Never! He’d kept his promise, offering me one reason after another why fiction, and by extension writers, were still relevant in this day and age. It amused me that Sollozzo needed reasons. As a storyteller he should’ve been immune to reasons.

  When I told him that, he countered with a challenge. He offered two sentences. The first: Eve died, and Adam died of a heart attack. The second: Eve died, and Adam died of grief.

  “Which of these two is more satisfying?” asked Sollozzo. “Which of these feels more meaningful? Now tell me you prefer causes over reasons.”

  “It’s not important what I prefer. If Adam had been Enhanced, he could’ve still died of a heart attack. But he wouldn’t have died of grief. In time, no one will die of heart attacks either.”

  Another time he tried the old argument that literature taught us to have empathy. This bit of early-21st century nonsense had been discredited even in those simple-minded times. For one thing, it could just as easily be argued that empathy had made literature possible.