Buddha's Orphans, page 12
His eyes fell on the St. Augustine’s emblem on the documents in her hand. She placed them behind her. “Oh, nothing. What about you?”
“What are you hiding?”
“What? This? Just some papers.”
But he’d already seen the school’s name and its distinct symbol, a book with an arrow slicing it, and he asked, “You went to St. Augustine’s?”
She cursed herself for her carelessness. “Yes.”
“And now you go here?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” His tone was challenging, nearly hostile.
A wave of irritation passed through her, but there was something endearing about his forthright questions. “I am living with my aunt now,” she said. She stopped herself from reaching to run her fingers over his sideburn.
Singh Sir’s door opened, and he called Nilu in. She handed the papers to Singh Sir, who smiled at her and asked her how her classes were going. She said they were fine. “Let me know if everything is all right,” Singh Sir said. “Just come to me.” Singh Sir had been very warm toward her since he’d accepted the three hundred rupees in that envelope.
When she came out, Raja was still sitting on the bench. His eyes followed her as she walked past, then he said, to her back, “When you’re a St. Augustine’s product, you get treated like a V.I.P. I was here before you, wasn’t I? Maybe you come from the raja-maharaja stock.”
She turned to face him. “But how sad that you’re the one who’s named Raja, the king.” Reciprocating his confrontational tone, she hadn’t smiled, and she wondered if what she said sounded condescending, a convent-educated girl making fun of a locally schooled boy. But to her relief a smile flickered on his face: he liked it that she knew his name.
“I’m the type of king who has to wait for an audience with his subjects,” he said, tilting his head toward Singh Sir’s door.
He didn’t ask Nilu’s name in return, as she’d hoped he would, but that afternoon at Birey Dai’s shop he glanced toward her frequently and spoke in a more animated way than he had thus far. The next afternoon, when she told him her name, he showed no sign of recognition, and although she was disappointed, she also felt relieved. Gradually, over the next few days, he addressed her more than he did Birey Dai, and soon it was Raja and Nilu seated on stools next to each other, sometimes with their knees colliding, as they talked, while Birey Dai chimed in, like an outsider, from behind his counter.
One day Raja shyly showed Nilu the poems he had attempted in English. They were filled with melancholy. His language was stilted, the expressions at times ordinary, but a presence hovered over them, a feminine one, which she took to be his missing mother. This woman moved between the lines, weaving herself through the words. Nilu found herself shivering as she read the poems. “They’re moving,” she said.
“I’m trying to improve my English.”
“Your English is already good,” she said.
“English is like international currency,” Birey Dai said. “You know English, you’ll make money.”
“Is that why you want to improve your English?” Nilu asked Raja.
“No,” he said. “I just don’t want you boarding school types looking down on me.”
“When did I look down on you?”
He gazed into her eyes, then looked away.
“No, tell me, Raja, when did I look down upon you? What have I said that has given you that impression?”
When he didn’t meet her eyes, she grabbed his arm and said, “Raja, look at me and tell me, please.”
When he did look at her, she was slightly taken aback by how cloudy his eyes had become, swirling with some new influence, how suddenly his face had acquired lines of sadness. “Maybe not you,” he finally said.
“Then who?”
He waved his hand at the lane outside the shop, at the sky beyond the telephone wires. “The world.” Then he straightened himself. “But I’m not the type to be cowed by anyone. Let anyone even try. I’ll . . .”
She understood that he was merely venting an argument that went on in his head.
The shop was silent; then Birey Dai coughed dramatically and said, “Before anyone can even speak, you know what our Raja will do?” Birey Dai rose from his seat, adopted an aggressive stance like a kung fu warrior, and spoke in an exaggerated American accent: “Fwat are u tahking abhout, machhikney? Me Rajah! Me big man. Me speak Angrezi!”
“Don’t use such words in front of a girl, Birey Dai,” Raja said.
“But you don’t need to prove anything to anyone,” Nilu said to Raja.
“Who said I’m trying to prove anything?”
“You’re good the way you are.”
He studied her intently, as though trying to understand her. “How do you know that? How do you know I’m good?”
“He’s good,” Birey Dai said.
“Keep quiet, Birey Dai. How do you know I’m good?”
Her heart beat wildly. She hoped she was not about to be discovered. “I just know. I am good at knowing people.”
“She’s good,” Birey Dai said. “And her English is very good.”
“This Birey Dai,” Raja said, but he had begun to smile, and she was struck by how much even that tiny smile lit up his face. In that moment she saw him as he was when they were children together in Nilu Nikunj. She remembered that smile from when the two had sat on the floor of her room and gone over the alphabet, when he rode her pink tricycle in the yard, pedaling furiously to gain as much speed as he could.
He was watching her, and she wondered if he could read her thoughts, see the pictures of earlier times that ran through her head. But he was obviously thinking of something else, for he said, “I bet you my Nepali is better than yours.”
“It probably is.”
“Probably?” he questioned. “It is. It is. Here, look at my poems in Nepali.”
She read them. His writing in Nepali didn’t display the awkwardness of his English. Still, to chide him, she suggested some improvements. He observed her carefully, then asked her why, for someone who’d studied at an English-medium school, her Nepali was as good as her English. “I am a Nepali girl, am I not?” she replied. Birey Dai laughed and told Raja that he was no match for this girl, who, if he didn’t watch out, would sell him at the market for two paisa.
Raja kept his eyes on her, but she, suddenly guilty about concealing their shared history at Nilu Nikunj, couldn’t meet them.
The gate to Ganga Da’s house opened, and there stood Jamuna Mummy, staring at them. Nilu became self-conscious and, bidding goodbye to Raja and Birey Dai, went down the lane. She passed Jamuna Mummy on the way, and the woman said, “Are you an avatar of the goddess Kali? Have you come here to suck our blood?”
Nilu kept her identity hidden from Raja for weeks as they spent more time together. At first Birey Dai’s shop was their meeting place. At her insistence Raja showed her some short English essays that he’d composed during his free time, for himself. These pieces were a mishmash of slapdash humor, long soliloquies on the meaning of life, and short skits featuring a man in the official daura suruwal uniform, often a bureaucrat in a government office, arguing vehemently with a young boy. The official and the boy mocked each other, often in scatological terms, and they inevitably exploded into vociferous accusations and counter-accusations. Raja watched Nilu expectantly as she read, and it dawned on her that, despite his bravado, she was most likely the first person with whom he had opened up enough to share his writing. He had problems with grammar and punctuation and syntax, but what did it matter? She hesitated to tell him about any flaws in them, but he wouldn’t let her off so easily; he told her that as a friend she had to be honest with him. So she was.
“And you are my friend, aren’t you?” he said, half in jest, and she clasped his hand and assured him that yes, of course she was his friend.
“Are you my mitini?” he asked.
“Yes, I am your mitini.” Friend for life.
She wondered if he remembered the strict, schoolmarmish ways of the Nilu whom he knew in Nilu Nikunj, and she marveled at the fact that here they were, thrust together again in a situation where she was, in a sense, giving him English lessons. At moments she became anxious that he was beginning to suspect who she was, and that any day now he was going to accost her, ask her to confess her real identity, demand to know why she hadn’t revealed herself. But apparently her name hadn’t jogged any memories. She felt sad, and foolish, when she contemplated the possibility that he might not remember her at all.
Birey Dai also offered his opinions as Nilu commented on Raja’s English, although, he admitted laughingly, he didn’t know English from a monkey’s ass. After a few weeks, Birey Dai’s presence interfered with their chats, and they stopped meeting at the shop. “It’s all right,” Birey Dai told them with a sigh when they stopped by after several days’ absence. “I’ll have to entertain myself by thinking about my own romantic teenage years, when my heart used to flutter so badly at the sight of beautiful girls that I thought I’d collapse. And look what has happened to me: I’m stuck with a woman I can’t stand.” Everyone knew of Birey Dai’s domestic troubles; Nilu and Raja smiled.
It was in Biswojyoti Cinema, as they watched a movie starring Jitendra, that Nilu told Raja who she was. The slim, handsome Jitendra was dancing on the screen, wrapping himself around trees, the lock of hair on his forehead shaking as he shimmied his hips. Nilu leaned over and spoke in Raja’s ear. Grinning, Jitendra danced in circles around Asha Parekh. All Raja did after she stopped speaking was squeeze her hand, then rest his head on her shoulder. The song was followed by a comedy scene involving Jitendra and Mukri.
Nilu did wonder, in the days that followed, if it hadn’t mattered to him that she was a childhood friend, for he didn’t raise the topic again. At the same time, something had shifted in him. She found him gazing at her at unexpected moments, and his eyes appeared even softer. Only after a fortnight or so did he approach the subject; he teased her a bit, in that quiet manner of his, that she was a cheat for not revealing to him right away who she was. He tried to recall some events from the days in Nilu Nikunj, but he couldn’t come up with much, except that he was aware, without conjuring any specific details, that he had lived there as a servant boy.
“Kaki.” He said the name two or three times. “Ganga Da had mentioned her name.”
Nilu watched his face carefully to see if she could discern how much he knew about the woman who had once cared for him and the tactics Ganga had used against her. But clearly he was in the dark, so finally Nilu asked, “Do you remember anything about her?”
He seemed on the verge of saying something, then stopped, then started again, and finally shook his head, clearly disappointed with himself, and a bit worried that Nilu would be disappointed in him.
And to tell the truth, she was crushed, for she’d hoped—she realized how foolish it was—that something would awaken inside him when he heard Kaki’s name—perhaps a long-lost memory that would then spur others, culminating in a strong sense of connection to Kaki, and a strong desire to see her.
“She must be old by now” was all Raja said, and more as an attempt to console Nilu than as evidence of any real feeling for Kaki.
Nilu nodded, said that Kaki was in fact elderly, then changed the topic. Perhaps it was better this way, she thought. Even before she’d revealed her identity to Raja, she’d contemplated how and when to inform Kaki that she’d found her much-loved son. She’d been tormented over what that might do to Kaki. But now, since Raja appeared to have no memory of the woman who’d turned old and useless overnight because of grief over losing him, Nilu didn’t have the heart to tell Kaki anything.
One day after school Raja took Nilu to his home. “We spend so much time together. Might as well let my parents know about you,” he said. It was clear that he couldn’t be bothered with what they thought, or if they approved of her. This dismissal of the world’s opinion was an essential part of his personality. There was an air of defiance about him: the way he sometimes looked insolently at people on the street, the way he held his shoulders tight, as if he was waiting for the moment when he’d be asked to prove himself.
Over the past few weeks, Nilu had glimpsed the yard in front of Raja’s house numerous times as they sat in Birey Dai’s shop, especially when Jamuna Mummy opened the gate and asked Raja to come home. Nilu had never seen Ganga Da, and she was anxious about how he’d react to her. It was Ganga Da’s, and not Jamuna’s, approval or disapproval of her that would matter, if it mattered at all, Nilu surmised. When she expressed her anxiety about what Ganga Da might think of her, Raja looked at her in puzzlement, then pulled her to him and kissed her hard on the lips, so hard that she struggled for breath.
Nilu wondered if he was unhappy with his home life, if somehow his adoptive parents had turned neglectful. Nilu frequently compared her own home life to that of her friends. Whenever the other students at school spoke of something that had happened at home, Nilu listened intently; she imagined a family led by loving, doting parents. Even arguments or punishments seemed like evidence that those parents were at least involved in their children’s lives, whereas when she reached home after school, no one called out her name, asked her about the events of her day at school. When she trudged upstairs to her room, Muwa’s door was always shut. That the large house—with its empty hallways, its aging servants on the ground floor, and its mistress upstairs with her lover in a room reeking of alcohol and cigarette smoke—was named after Nilu felt like a terrible joke. I too am an orphan, she thought at such moments. Like Raja.
But judging from the way Jamuna Mummy clanked open the gate every afternoon to call Raja from Birey Dai’s shop, and from the way Raja spoke of, and derided, Ganga Da’s concern about him, Nilu knew that Raja’s angst had nothing to do with lack of love at home.
Ganga Da didn’t appear a bit surprised to see her. “I have been hearing about you,” he told her in the living room. She and Raja sat together on the long sofa. In front of her on the wall hung a black-and-white photograph of Ganga Da, his palms together, his head bowed, in front of King M, whose palm was delicately raised in blessing. The king’s eyes were hidden behind dark glasses. Ganga Da noticed Nilu’s gaze and said, “That was not too long before King M passed away. Go near and look.”
Raja sighed.
Nilu went to the wall and scrutinized the photo. Not knowing what to say, she foolishly asked, “Did you know the king?”
Raja said something that neither of them could fully hear, but Ganga Da gave him a look before he smiled at Nilu. “How can a common citizen like me know him? But I was lucky enough to receive a commendation letter from him for my work at the National Planning Commission.” He paused. “He was a really visionary man, our King M. Looks like he has passed on his leadership skills to his son.”
“A visionary leader,” Raja muttered.
“What do you know about the real world?” Ganga Da asked him. “You weren’t even born when King M had to take over the helm of this country, save it from bickering politicians. Do you have any idea how hard it might be to bring a country out of the stone age?”
“I have no idea. My mind is blank. Nothing up here.”
Ganga Da looked at Nilu, as if to say, See?
Other photos of royalty were displayed on the wall: King M in full regalia, his small face and black glasses contrasting with the absurdly long gown flowing from his body onto the floor; the preserved head of a tiger, its jaws open as if the beast was roaring, had been placed next to the king’s feet; in his right hand he held a rajdanda with a bulbous end, resembling those carried by the gods as they clashed in heaven. Another photograph, right above Raja’s head, showed young King B and Queen A at their wedding, when the king was still the crown prince. Seated in separate chairs, they looked straight ahead. The king appeared slightly astonished in his black spectacles, his Nepali cap, with his hands clasped in his lap. Behind the queen’s elaborate gauze veil, her large, beautiful eyes were visible.
After Nilu sat down beside Raja, an awkward silence ensued. Nilu imagined that the father and the son butted heads like this frequently, and today too they’d have likely continued their standoff, had it not been for her presence. Just as Raja seemed on the verge of speaking to Ganga Da, whose jaw was clenched, they all noticed, simultaneously, what Jamuna Mummy was doing in the yard. Earlier, when Nilu and Raja had entered the gate, they’d seen her at the side of the house, her back turned. Now she was signaling with her hands toward the sky, at the sun, repetitively raising her arms, joining her hands, then separating them again. She twisted her fingers into various shapes, like the mudras in religious textbooks. Then she’d observe the ground, as though expecting to see the fruits of her actions.
The three of them watched for a few moments, the father and the son as engrossed as Nilu was; it relieved the tension that had accumulated in the room. Finally, Ganga Da sighed. “Her sun salute,” he said, then asked Raja, “How many times have I taken her to the hospital now, just this year?” Raja shrugged, as if to say he hadn’t kept track. Ganga Da watched Raja briefly, gauging his mood, then turned to Nilu. “This is my life here, Nilu. These two, my dear wife and my dear son, keep my head spinning. Whatever anyone may say about my life, no one can call it boring.”
Nilu worried that the comment was meant to irritate Raja, but Raja seemed not to have heard it, for he changed the subject. Pointing at Nilu, he asked Ganga Da, “Do you know who she is?”
Nilu and Raja hadn’t discussed beforehand whether they would reveal this information to Ganga Da. She had assumed that for this first visit, she and Ganga Da would just be introduced, exchange the common courtesies. Before the two arrived at the house, she’d asked Raja, “What are you going to tell him? That I’m your girlfriend?”
“Isn’t that a cow-eating Western term, girlfriend? Maybe I should introduce you as my premika. Lover. It’s a much more beautiful word.”
