Kalyana Read online

  The day after my hospital visit, my mother told Roni what the doctor had said. They both turned and looked at me as I slept on the living-room sofa. Exhaustion was written across my slumbering face.

  “Doctor said nothing wrong,” said my mother. “What to do, Sister? What to do?”

  The friendship between my mother and the Fijian woman was unusual enough for the time. Certainly, regardless of race, a hired woman did not give advice to the people for whom she worked. Yet this time, Roni looked at my pallid face with transparent care and said, “Sister, problem is spiritual, I think.”

  “Meaning?” My mother looked confused.

  “Kalyana need prayer. I know a good healer, Sister. Take to him. What harm?”

  That night, as my mother rinsed dishes in the sink full of soapy water, she asked my father for permission to take me to a spiritual healer. My father protested as fiercely as he had contested Manjula’s Christian wedding.

  “Sumi, why are you now taking advice from a Fijian woman—and a housekeeper?”

  My mother sighed as she watched the soap suds slide off the clean plates. Her back was still turned away from my father, but her shoulders slumped in defeat.

  My father, after a long moment of silence, spoke quietly, declaring his wish. He knew he had exhausted all medical avenues. What other choice was left?

  “I have heard of an Indian healer that cures all ailments,” he said, in his usual soft, quiet voice. “Why don’t we go and see him instead?” He sat down at the edge of the dining table and watched my mother as she rinsed the evening dishes. His eyes were full of worry.

  The ride to the healer’s house was a bumpy one, as the road was poorly maintained and full of potholes. I lay under a blanket in the back seat, with my mother sitting nervously beside me. Raju sat in the front. I noticed my father’s tense shoulders as he drove up the steep hill, clutching the steering wheel. My breathing was slow and ragged.

  The healer’s house seemed in dire need of a fresh coat of pale blue paint. My father would never approve of our home looking like this one, with age and hard use marking the outer walls. The healer himself stood on his front porch, smiling as we started to make our way to his doorstep.

  I raised my eyes and stared at the healer. He was an old, long-haired Indian man, who spoke both Fijian and Hindi fluently. My first thought was that he must be an ancient sage, a yogi who had spent decades meditating on divine revelation. I had heard about such wise men, who in their meditative state kept their bodies alive with neither breath nor food, merely with thought and dew. They sat on the top of a mountain or in the middle of a desolate forest, thinking only of the divine.

  But with his long hair and shabby clothes, he more resembled the city beggars who sat at the side of the dusty roads and streets, their legs tucked beneath them and a large hanky spread in front of them. Whenever women out shopping paused with pitying eyes and dropped coins in their laps, they raised both their hands and mumbled a quiet prayer: “May God be good to you and your family! May God make your husband prosperous and see that your children are mindful!” Then they would quickly reach out, grab the money, and put it in the locked tin can that they kept hidden beneath their thin, bony legs.

  The healer did not shake our hands or put his palms together and say, “Namaste.” He threw me a quick glance, and his eyes widened. Then, as if the world must be about to end, he hastily turned around and began striding towards the temple behind his house, silently motioning for us to follow. Father and Raju kept up with his brisk pace, as my mother and I struggled behind them. Mother kept glancing at me with concern. What if I were to stop breathing here, on the top of the hill?

  As the temple came into view, I clutched my mother’s hand. The sight of its yellow curtains reminded me of the long-robed and sandalwood-scented Hare Krishna devotees who had come to our home so many years before. I wanted to go back down the hill and bury myself in the safety of my own bed.

  The healer had not spoken, but his sudden movement cut through my thoughts as we stopped at the entrance of the temple. The smile on his face lit up the space between us. When we got closer, he motioned for us to take off our shoes and wash our feet before entering.

  The temple was small and cluttered with statuary: numerous Indian gods and goddesses, seated or standing on red velvet thrones. The walls were hung with paintings and images of divine symbols, forces, and wise words. Incense sticks smoked in all four corners, filling the room with an earthy aroma. I liked that the smell of sandalwood seemed to permeate my fragile lungs.

  In the middle of the floor lay a red velvet mat. As the healer took his place there, another man entered the room. This man was short and plump, wearing a printed blue shirt and gray slacks.

  “Interpreter.” The healer spoke for the first time. His voice was extraordinarily low, but gentle. He motioned for us to take a seat on the floor, directly opposite him. Unlike the doctor in our village, he rarely spoke, and he never looked at my mother or my father once.

  Interpreter? If the healer spoke both Fijian and Hindi, what was the use of the interpreter? Even my father squinted with confusion, but out of respect we did as we were told and asked for no explanations or justifications.

  After we were all seated, the healer closed his eyes and bowed his head in prayer. The interpreter lowered himself gently onto a stool close to the healer’s feet. I stared at a large conch shell that faced the sun streaming across the small windowsill in the far corner. When light flooded its creases, the shell sparkled like a jewel.

  The healer opened his eyes and focused all his attention on my ravaged face. His eyes were dark and piercing. He pulled me close to him by my hair and sniffed the top of my head. I clutched onto my mother’s sari with one hand and my father’s hand with the other. I was twelve years old, but I closed my eyes and shivered.

  After a few sniffs, the healer roughly pushed me back to my mother and father. Then I thought that the man must be possessed, for he took a deep, long breath and began loudly babbling in a frightening tongue that was neither Fijian nor Hindi. Yet it seemed as though this was a language that the interpreter could understand. The healer did not speak to us, but directly to the interpreter, who nodded his head fearlessly and listened with care to every detail he conveyed.

  Finally he finished speaking, but the healer had one more thing to do. Shifting on his mat, he reached over and placed a small charm in the middle of my open palm. A chill went up my spine when I saw that he had given me a tiny gold snake. But the healer, perceiving my pain, took my hand in both of his and closed my palm over the small metal creature that sat harmlessly in its center. Bowing his head and looking meditatively to the floor, he indicated that his brief interaction with me was finished.

  It was only then that the interpreter turned to my parents and spoke. “Mr. and Mrs. Seth, the healer could not smell the presence of any evil spirits. Your daughter is clean of their influence. That is not the problem.” He spoke like an ordinary person, in the quiet and polite voice of a gentle messenger. He did not interpret the anger that the healer had placed into the strange words he had spoken. “Mr. and Mrs. Seth, the healer did say that your child sat under a jasmine tree in a wooden shack. The night was still and the air calm. Cobras shed tears of blood and soaked the ground: that is the problem.”

  My father squinted again, but remained silent.

  The interpreter continued in his gentle voice: “The healer said not to worry, Mr. and Mrs. Seth. Wipe away all your fear. No harm can touch your child when she’s holding the charm in the center of her hands.”

  The healer, smiling, reached over and touched the top of my head.

  “He blesses you,” said the interpreter enthusiastically. He nodded his head and rose from the stool to go.

  “That’s it?” said my father, throwing a quick glance to my mother. He still looked confused.

  “That’s it. As long as she ke
eps this charm close to her heart, she will get better. She’ll no longer have anything to fear. It will ease the silent suffering.” The interpreter looked deep into my eyes with sincerity and gentleness. “The healer has blessed it.”

  Doubt clouded my father’s eyes, but he paid the healer for his services and his gold charm. The interpreter silently left the room in the same manner that he had come in. I leaned on my mother as we walked back to the car, my father and Raju walking slowly a few steps ahead of us. We drove home in silence and did not discuss what we had heard or seen.

  But my health did start improving after that day. Every time panic threatened to tighten its grip around my throat, I would squeeze the gold snake charm and pray intently, envisioning the healer’s glowing face. The breathlessness would pass and I would no longer tumble to the living-room floor, losing all consciousness. Gradually, I stopped taking the green pills, and soon I was even able to eat full meals again.

  Raju started punching my arm again, calling me “Kali,” and I did not complain. Roni, smiling brightly, frequently raised her hands over her head and praised the gods above. My father breathed a sigh of relief and stopped coming home with balloons. My mother did not comment on what the interpreter had said, although I knew she had understood better than any of us had. Instead, she bundled me into a brand new yellow uniform and took me back to school.

  At first I carried the golden charm with me everywhere I went, for I never knew when my throat might constrict. I kept it hidden in my pocket, and sometimes I placed it for safekeeping in my pencil case or my new school bag or rolled up in a hanky or in the middle of a book. At nights, I kept it under my pillow or in my hand. I touched it frequently and obsessively. But with time, as my strength increased, I started forgetting the charm at home. I would come home to find that I had left it on the dresser, in the drawer, or on my bed. Eventually I placed it under my mattress and forgot about it completely.

  My father, elated over my recovery yet still doubtful of the healer’s powers, shrugged away the cure as nothing more than a placebo. I overheard him say to Mother that I had been cured because of my unyielding belief in a charm that had the potential to keep away fear and the power to give me limitless and uninterrupted breath. “Blind faith,” he had said. “Blind faith.”

  After a while I began to bond with my father’s logic, though occasionally my mind would wander, and I would begin to question the healer’s knowledge of my dream. For that, I still had no explanation.

  24

  Time passed swiftly.

  I retired my hideous yellow uniform as I entered secondary school, instead choosing a purple one with a light-pink belt. My mother had to hire a professional seamstress to sew me my new dress. Of course, she complained; Manjula would have instinctively known the correct measurements, the correct patterns. Manjula’s fingers would have moved swiftly among fabrics, wielding scissors and slicing fearlessly. Manjula would not, of course, have charged such a fee.

  Raju was no longer rumored to be seen coming in and out of the older Fijian woman’s house. For this my mother was thankful, but now she had something new to worry about. Three sisters, who had no father or brothers to protect them, had boldly moved to an empty house at the end of our street. To survive, these women openly exchanged sexual favors for money. Several men, young and old, had been seen leaving their shack at strange hours of the night or day, looking joyful and happy. Women like my mother worried about losing their sons and their husbands to these three wild-spirited sisters.

  But I knew that Raju was not among those men who came in and out of the sisters’ shack. Raju spent his weekends and nights dancing at the clubs. He would come home late with traces of lipstick on his clothes, and during the day he might secretly frolic with a particular Indian girl. She was a rather large young woman of a similar age. My mother and father remained blissfully—or, in the case of my mother, fearfully—unaware.

  Raju would leave the house, his black hair gelled close to his scalp, wearing snug blue jeans and smelling of strong cologne. In those days it seemed as though the scent of Raju entered a room before he himself did. I would have to seal my nose shut whenever my brother strode in and out through the living-room doors.

  If I ever commented on his fascination with large women, alluding to his secret new love interest, he quickly and swiftly would retort, smiling. “Curves, Kali, curves. I am a lover of curves.” But he would never be careless, as he had been with the Fijian woman, and openly flaunt his new interest or admit his affair. She was, after all, an Indian woman, and even a boy who sowed his wild oats knew that he must protect her honor.

  In those days I, too, would be subject to the worried, watchful gaze of my mother. She knew I had begun reading Manjula’s collection of romance novels, which she had left behind. Manjula had, of course, replenished her library after she had traded the original stack for driving lessons so long ago, but she had not taken them with her after her marriage.

  My mother knew that I had started noticing boys, and, perhaps worse in her mind, was losing interest in school. Some days she even worried aloud about a boy impregnating me; then she would have to sweep away my shame, bundling me up and shipping me to a distant island. She would have to insist to all the relatives that I had been sent abroad for further studies, but on that distant island, behind secluded concrete walls, my baby would be born and left. This, it was rumored, was what had happened to our loud-mouthed cousin Nisha, who lived in the town of Lautoka.

  For this reason my mother and father forbade me to see Kirtan any more. Mother said that I was a growing girl. That it would not appear proper. Neighbors, relatives, oh, even the frogs and lizards, would all talk. Mother wanted me to put all my energies into attaining higher learning.

  Yet my heart was not in my studies, to my mother’s dismay, and I wholeheartedly resented the assumption that university must be my calling. Although I finished high school, I did not earn marks good enough for entry into the prestigious University of the South Pacific, an institution that was only a twenty-minute walk from my house.

  Fijian schools used a system of class positions, where each individual’s success was compared to another person’s in the same class. I came in twenty-seventh, which meant that there were twenty-six people in a class of fifty-two who did considerably better than me. I had passed, but it wasn’t a score to boast about; anything over fifteen was considered a low ranking.

  I took this opportunity to tell Mother to her face that I was not going to university, because I wasn’t meant for it—even though at her insistence, I had attended grade thirteen, after completing grade twelve.

  My mother looked disappointed, devastated even, as though I had suffocated all her dreams. “Manjula and I cried when we got taken out of school,” she said angrily. “And here you are, with opportunities to go as far as you possibly can in your life, and you just throw it all away. Just throw it all away. Even Roni tells me a Fijian girl went to Australia to study and become a news reporter.” She shook her head and turned to the wall. Then, after a brief moment, she whipped around again and snapped, “Don’t you realize, Kalyana, education alone is the key to a woman’s freedom. Without it, you won’t have a chance in this world.”

  I looked back at her coldly, straight in the eyes, and said, “No. The key is marriage.”

  My mother was stunned that I had risen to challenge her. I folded my hands across my chest and leaned back on the kitchen wall. My mother was standing at the counter, flipping rotis on a portable kerosene stove, as Roni hovered nearby, completing dinner tasks.

  “Marriage is the key to a woman’s freedom.” My tone was fiercely assertive. “Manjula found freedom when she married Peter. Manjula flew away.”

  My mother kept stirring dhal and buttering steaming rotis. She stacked the rotis on a stainless-steel plate.

  “I will fly away too, one day, like Manjula,” I said coldly, thinking about Kirtan’s round, so
ft face. I walked away with my chin up in the air and head held high.

  As I left the kitchen, I heard her mumble to Roni, half in Hindi and half in English. “She’s gotten so spoiled!” my mother hissed. “I told Rajdev not to coddle her like he did. He didn’t listen to me. Look at her now. She walks around like she owns this bloody place.” She wrung her hands and gritted her teeth. “It makes me want to rip all the hair off my head and scream.” My mother looked expectantly at Roni.

  Roni, a red hibiscus in her hair, was sitting astride a wooden coconut grater, shredding dried coconut for rou-rou. She shrugged as she laughed at my mother’s discomfiture. “She’s a young woman, not matured yet, Sister. Still a child. She’ll come around. Don’t worry.”

  My mother worried anyway. She would furrow her eyebrows and push out her chin, her lips forming a grim line. She did not speak to anyone other than Roni about my future, after I disclosed that I had no intention of pursuing a career. Looking defeated, she moved around the house as slowly as an old woman. As passing seasons, gone were her days of standing in the middle of the living room, her bright blue dupatta flowing around her. No longer did she sing songs and tell tales. Gone were some of her ways, but it was not only due to her disappointment in my choice.

  There were other changes. Over the recent years I had noticed that she no longer wore the tiny blouses that revealed her slender waist, something that seemed unnecessary to me. Even during those turbulent days, I could recognize that she still looked stunning despite the passing of time. Her weight had stayed the same, her skin supple—perhaps the result of the creams and the exercise regimen she was always urging me to follow.

  My mother now moved around the house in long, loose dresses that hung from her neck to her toes. Perhaps she had imposed a personal restriction on herself as she got older, thinking that small blouses and low-riding petticoats were no longer suitable for a woman of her age. Neighbors surely would talk: “Look at Rajdev’s wife, parading around in garments that were made for a budding woman!” they would say. And although I knew in my heart that I was not the cause, these changes in my mother’s life formed just one more wedge among the many that had lately seemed driven between us.