Part 24 (2/2)

Kianga tilted her head at him inquisitively.

”For example, I could study societies from the perspective of an outsider. I could be a professor.” He was surprised at his own words. In Portland, Rasika had mentioned that he should be a professor.

”Hm.” She wrapped both hands around her tea mug. ”If that's what you want.”

”I don't know if it's what I want. In some ways, it's exactly not what I want. I don't want to end up a stuffy professor at some low-ranked state university, trying to impress students by mentioning the few obscure papers I've managed to publish.” He brushed the shredded leaves off the table.

She took his hand in hers. ”Listen, Abhay.” She seemed to be searching for words. ”Would it help if I taught you a very simple meditation technique? This is something that can help ground you and also help you be open to G.o.d's guidance. Maybe you just need to relax and forget about yourself.”

The hotness of her skin irritated him. He pulled his hands away and stood up. His metal chair tipped over with a crash. He picked it back up and set it carefully back on its feet. ”I don't think so, Kianga. I just need to be alone.”

She gathered up her mug and his. They walked out of the circle of lantern light and down the sidewalk to the dining hall door. It was locked. Kianga placed the cups on the flagstone floor outside the door and then kissed Abhay lightly on the cheek. He watched her walk away, toward her bike, adjusting the strap of a headlamp around her head. A sudden flash of light appeared as she switched on the lamp, and then she turned away, the light disappeared, and the squeak of her pedals faded as she left.

The next morning, Abhay opened his eyes and tried to sit up in bed. Pain shot from the side of his neck through his right shoulder and upper arm. He eased himself up and ma.s.saged his shoulder with his left hand. He must have slept funny. Carefully, he inched off the bed, gathered his towel and soap, and made his way to the bathroom. A warm bath should help. Yet by the time he was standing in line for breakfast, he could still hardly move his right arm. He slid his plate along the counter, clumsily serving himself tea and scrambled eggs with his left hand.

Last night, after his conversation with Kianga, he'd had a strange dream. He was standing at a doorway, and he could see the white door frame-a square frame, luminescent in the darkness around him-but he couldn't make out anything through the door. It was black outside. He had the sense that he was supposed to walk through the door. But he wanted to be able to see where he was going. He strained his eyes. Nothing materialized out of the gloom.

”What happened to you?” Paloma was at his elbow, watching as he tried awkwardly to spread b.u.t.ter on his bread with the knife in his left hand.

”My shoulder hurts. I think I slept on it wrong.”

”Why don't you get a ma.s.sage?” Paloma pointed to a flyer on the wall near the telephone, which advertised ”Thai Yoga Ma.s.sage with Jerome.” ”You sign up here.” Paloma tapped a chart at the bottom of the flyer. ”I get this ma.s.sage every week. You keep your clothes on. It is like someone else is doing the yoga for you, and you just relax.”

The price was eight hundred rupees. About twenty dollars. He didn't have much else to do that morning, before taking a taxi to Pondicherry in the late afternoon. He planned to catch the night bus to Bangalore. With his left hand, he grasped the pen hanging on a string near the flyer and printed his name in block letters in the 10:00 A.M. slot.

The ma.s.sage took place in a small, empty white room in the guesthouse complex. The windows let in the suns.h.i.+ne, yet the place was shaded by high trees, so the room was bright but not stuffy.

Jerome was a short, athletic Frenchman who gently stretched and twisted Abhay's limbs as Abhay lay on a thin futon mattress. Abhay was tense at first, fearing his arm would be hurt with the stretches. As the minutes pa.s.sed and he experienced no pain, he began to relax into the mattress. A light, spicy floral scent wafted throughout the room. Outside everything was silent, except for the wind rustling in the leaves, and sometimes m.u.f.fled voices in the distance.

Abhay had the sensation that his body was dissolving. It was not a frightening feeling-it was somewhat comforting. Jerome gently lifted and stretched his limbs. Abhay's body felt almost transparent. Its parts were starting to fade into the atmosphere. He knew, intellectually, that matter is made up mostly of empty s.p.a.ce, since atoms are over 99 percent empty. So logically it followed that his own body was also mostly empty. He'd never before experienced it as such. Now he saw himself as though he were a constellation in a dark night sky, a random collection of p.r.i.c.ks of light, with arbitrary lines drawn to suggest a human. The lines delineating his form were fading, and his atoms of empty s.p.a.ce were dispersing through the emptiness of the universe.

As Jerome supported and pushed Abhay's right shoulder and arm into a stretch, Abhay felt no pain, yet he started to cry. It wasn't a wrenching kind of sobbing, just a gentle release of tears. He was embarra.s.sed. He couldn't wipe away his tears without changing the position of his body, so he let them come. Jerome continued to work on his arms, then his hips, lifting and bending and leaning on his legs. The crying subsided and was replaced by a feeling of calm. Abhay heard the words: ”It doesn't matter.”

”What?” he said.

Jerome was silently working on Abhay's feet. The voice had come from near his shoulder-the painful one-so it couldn't have been Jerome's voice. Abhay heard it again. This time the voice seemed to say: ”It isn't matter.” The voice was clear and soft-he couldn't tell if it was a woman's or a man's. Abhay realized these words were answers to the questions that had been hammering away in his mind.

Lying there in the warm suns.h.i.+ne, Abhay felt his mind about to bristle with more questions: Who, or what, was providing these answers? How could it not matter? Or if he had misheard the first time, what did the voice mean by the words ”it isn't matter”?

Almost as soon as these questions began forming, he was flooded with the realization: G.o.d. Existence. His guardian angels. And himself. It wasn't matter. It didn't matter. And he knew.

Chapter 16.

The next morning, Mahesh, Abhay's cousin, picked him up from the bus station. ”The house is a mess,” Mahesh explained as he stowed Abhay's backpack in the trunk of the car. ”The bore well drilling was supposed to be finished by the time you returned, but unfortunately it started only this morning.” Mahesh removed his gla.s.ses, rubbed the lenses with the bottom of his polo s.h.i.+rt, and set them back on. ”I think the dust has entered the car, too.”

Abhay didn't care about the dust in the car, or the noisiness of the city. He was glowing, calm, and blissful from his experience during the ma.s.sage. He still didn't know what to do with his life, but strangely, he felt almost thrilled with his uncertainty.

”Looks like you had a good time,” Mahesh remarked. ”You have been smiling since I picked you up.”

”It was beautiful,” Abhay said.

As they approached the house, Abhay saw that the gate was wide open, with a truck parked in the driveway. A sea of mud escaped from the yard and into the roadway. Mahesh parked the car outside the compound wall. In the yard, they stepped over the mud and past the rumbling truck, which had a long cranelike attachment at its back-probably the drilling apparatus. The noise, the machinery, the mess-none of it bothered Abhay. He looked at it with interested detachment. He wondered how far down the bore well would have to be drilled.

The noise was loud even inside the house. Abhay deposited his backpack in the room he was sharing with Mahesh.

”Let's go out somewhere!” Mahesh shouted. They got back into the car. ”I'll take you to see Electronics City,” Mahesh yelled. ”You'll see office buildings just like in America, and houses just like in America.”

Abhay had heard about this, a new section of town called Electronics City. Could it possibly be just like America?

They drove for about an hour through traffic, to the outskirts of Bangalore. Despite the ma.s.sage, Abhay's neck, shoulder, and right arm still hurt, although his range of motion was much wider. During the drive he kept tilting his head to the left to stretch his neck. Even the pain seemed delicious to him now.

”Here it is,” Mahesh said.

From the roadway, Abhay saw giant gla.s.sy office buildings proclaiming ”Hewlett-Packard” and ”Wipro” and ”3M India.” The buildings themselves looked very Western, it was true-just like innumerable office buildings to be seen from any freeway in the United States. Abhay was amused to see that next to and in between the flas.h.i.+ng buildings were browsing cows and corrugated-roof shacks.

”This is one of the largest industrial parks in India,” Mahesh said. ”Over a hundred companies on one-point-three square kilometers of land.”

”What was here before?” Abhay asked.

”A couple of villages.” Mahesh waved his hand in dismissal.

Abhay was surprised that he felt no anger at the idea of villages being destroyed for the sake of this industrial complex. It was the cosmic cycle-the destruction of s.h.i.+va, the creation of Brahma, the protection of Vishnu.

”Each of these buildings you see is like a campus. If you go inside the gates, it is so clean and beautiful, with gardens, fountains, places to eat, bookstores. Everything you will find there.”

”Can we look at one of them?” Abhay asked.

”No. You must have a security pa.s.s. One of my friends took me in once. I am interviewing for jobs at several of the places here, so next time you come to India, I may be able to show you. Let's go see some houses.”

They drove toward a high-walled complex and stopped inside the gate at the guard stand. As his cousin spoke with the black-uniformed guard, Abhay gazed down either side of the clean, empty roadway at two-story Indian-style houses, with the typical flat roofs and rectangular shapes. However, unlike other Indian neighborhoods, these houses were not walled off from each other but were placed on green lawns, with cement sidewalks running along the street.

”One of my friend's bosses lives there,” Mahesh said. ”These houses go for the equivalent of a million dollars. A lot of the residents are ex-pats-people who've come from the U.S. to work in Electronics City for a few years. Inside the complex they have a swimming pool, tennis courts, a clubhouse. Everything just like in America.”

”Would you like to live there?” Abhay asked.

”Of course! Who wouldn't like to live there?”

They were not allowed to enter the complex-the guards turned them back, since they didn't have an invitation from any resident-and so they had to reenter the dusty, noisy traffic of the main road.

Just as they turned onto the main road, they were stopped in traffic. A boy in drab shorts and s.h.i.+rt, holding a bucket and a squeegee, approached the car, offering to wash the winds.h.i.+eld. Mahesh shouted and waved his hand, and the boy wove his way through the traffic to another car. Abhay looked back to find him, and could see only a sea of cars, their roofs glinting in the sunlight.

”Doesn't it bother you that millionaires from abroad live in that complex, while these boys in rags try to make money by was.h.i.+ng winds.h.i.+elds?” Abhay asked this not with anger, but with curiosity.

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