Part 25 (1/2)

Traffic started moving again. Mahesh veered into the oncoming lane to pa.s.s a slow truck, and then veered back just before encountering a bus barreling toward them.

”I hear you have beggars in your country, too,” Mahesh said. ”Does that prevent you from living where you want to live?”

Mahesh was right. Abhay didn't sleep on the sidewalk with the homeless people in Portland.

Mahesh waved his hand. ”That is the way it is. Will our worry feed all these beggars? Of course not. So why worry?”

Traffic had stalled again. Cars sat like glowering animals, honking and growling at one another. A truck just behind them began its yodeling horn. After several minutes, they began inching forward, and the honking subsided.

Abhay didn't know how to help the beggar boy, but he also realized that he did not blame himself for not knowing.

Later that day, to escape the commotion at home, Abhay wandered around the back streets near his grandmother's house. His euphoria was starting to dissipate. Instead, he felt a deep satisfaction. He was reminded of Nandan's words. He did feel as if he had found a glowing pearl within himself. He pa.s.sed a tiny motorcycle dealers.h.i.+p with s.h.i.+ny vehicles displayed on the sidewalk. He walked past new three-story apartment buildings, and past a cow shed tucked between the houses. He nodded and smiled at everyone he saw.

On almost every block were piles of sand or dirt, and stacks of brick, for new construction. On one street Abhay saw a boy worker-perhaps ten or eleven years old-standing outside the compound wall of a half-finished house. He was wearing shorts, a colorful b.u.t.ton-down s.h.i.+rt, and sandals. Abhay watched from across the street as the boy used a small scoop to shovel from a pile of red earth and pour the soil through a large screen, set on the ground and tilted at an angle, so the sieved earth fell into a shallow pan below. The boy looked up and caught Abhay's eyes, and Abhay had an odd sense that the boy was himself, that he was that boy worker who perhaps did not get a chance to go to school.

In a second the boy's eyes traveled past Abhay, and he pointed and smiled silently. Abhay turned his head, and on the compound wall behind him, partly hidden by the trunk of a tree, was a large gray-furred monkey sitting on its haunches. Its body and face were perfect, beautiful. Its black eyes looked at Abhay, and Abhay, holding as still as he could, looked back at the monkey. In a moment, the monkey pulled its body onto the branch overhanging the compound wall and glided silently up into the leafy canopy until it was invisible.

The boy worker, still smiling, began gesturing and letting out a stream of words at Abhay. ”Hanuman” was the only word Abhay caught. Maybe the boy thought the monkey was a representation of the divine monkey who had helped Rama in his quest to save his wife Sita. Perhaps the boy believed that Hanuman watched over him as he worked.

The boy turned once more to his scooping and pouring, and Abhay was flooded with grat.i.tude. G.o.d had given him the life he had. He had been educated. He had been blessed with shelter and food, and caring parents.

Abhay continued on his walk and came across an Internet browsing place next to what looked like an open-air workingmen's cafe of sorts, with men in pants or dhotis drinking tea and eating idlis while standing at high tables. He ducked into the low doorway of the Internet place and settled into a plastic chair. The computer whirred. He scanned his messages, deleting the junk: several messages from Chris about the latest eBay items for sale, notices about home-based business opportunities, and movie offers from Netflix.

His breath caught in his throat. There was something from Rasika. He clicked on her name with a trembling hand. She wrote: Can you meet us in Lalbagh? My cousin Mayuri wants me to meet her boyfriend, and Mayuri thought it would be better if there was another man with us, so it wouldn't look like we were there only with Khaleel. I don't want to get Yuvan involved. He might not understand.

Abhay took a deep breath and let it flow out. Although he realized Rasika was inviting him as a sort of decoy, he didn't care. At least she didn't seem to be married yet, and he would be seeing her again the next day. He wrote down Rasika's cell phone number. He'd call her as soon as he got back to his grandmother's house.

He had the nagging feeling there was something else he ought to be doing here at the computer. Abhay remembered how, in Portland, Rasika had praised his intelligence and advised him to make an impact on the world. She'd said, ”If you don't pick something, you'll never get anywhere.” A line of pain burned down from his neck to his fingertips, and almost as if they had intelligence of their own, his fingers clicked open a new message and typed in the address of his old mentor at Kent State-the professor who had gotten him interested in utopian communities in the first place.

In his e-mail, Abhay updated Dr. Ben-Aharon on his departure from Rising Star and his visit to Auroville, and asked about graduate school possibilities. ”I want to study different kinds of communities and societies, and find out what is satisfying to people about various ways of organizing life,” he wrote. ”Would this be anthropology? Or sociology? And could I get into a graduate program in either of those fields, given that my undergraduate degree is in general studies?” He didn't know if he really wanted to be a professor or not, but figured it couldn't hurt to explore this avenue.

After lunch the next day, a Sat.u.r.day, he took an autorickshaw to Lalbagh, where he met up with Rasika, Mayuri, and Khaleel as they stood on the gra.s.sy strip next to the small parking lot. The day was hot, and Rasika wore a pretty sleeveless white embroidered top over jeans. Her hair was gathered into a large barrette at the nape of her neck, and she wore her usual sungla.s.ses. As soon as Abhay saw her, he knew his love for her was no distraction, no mistake. She barely acknowledged his greeting, and in fact stepped away from him, to the other side of Mayuri and Khaleel.

They walked up a slanted expanse of bare rock, on top of which was one of the Kempe Gowda watchtowers, which looked from a distance like a small temple with a white carved dome on top.

”There are four such towers in Bangalore,” Khaleel said. ”They were built in the sixteenth century by Bangalore's ruler, Kempe Gowda, to mark the four corners of the city.”

Khaleel apparently thought of himself as a travel guide. Abhay knew all about the Kempe Gowda towers. Of course now Bangalore sprawled for miles beyond these watchtowers.

At the top of the rock, next to the tower, a dark man squatted on the ground, roasting corn over coals in a shallow pan. Khaleel took out his wallet and said something to the man, who began to shuck ears of corn from the pile next to him.

”I don't want one,” Rasika said.

”Come on. My treat,” Khaleel insisted. Abhay sensed that he wanted to impress Rasika.

”They're very tasty with the salt and masala.” Mayuri smacked her lips.

”Just a small one,” Khaleel suggested.

As the man rotated four ears of corn over the coals, Abhay inched closer to Rasika, who was standing with her back to the pan, gazing at the scene below. The gray rock sloped down and away from them. Layers of Lalbagh trees in various shades of green appeared below them, and past that was the busy intersection outside the park entrance. ”Those look like toy cars, don't they?” he remarked.

”What do you mean?” She gave him a small smile. He couldn't see her eyes behind the black lenses.

”You can't really hear the traffic or smell the exhaust, so it all looks really calm down on the street, like something a kid would play with.”

Khaleel handed around the hot corn, wrapped in husks and smeared with red spices. Abhay bit into his. Indian corn tended to be tough, for some reason, yet he enjoyed gnawing on the scorched, mealy kernels. The spices made his lips burn.

Mayuri and Khaleel wandered down the slope, and Abhay and Rasika were left to each other. Rasika held her corn carefully in one hand. Her forearm trembled slightly. She didn't eat any of it. At the bottom of the rock, they reached a shaded dirt path among the trees.

”How was your trip?” she asked.

”I had an amazing experience.”

She stumbled on the sandy path. He put a hand on her elbow to steady her, and she shrugged him away.

”Are you going to move there?” Her voice was low and hard.

”No, but I'm thinking of applying to graduate school. Maybe I'll even get a Ph.D.”

She turned her face to him. He smiled. He wished he could see her eyes. She looked away and sighed deeply. ”Of course you will. You're so smart. You'll be a great professor.”

He felt an outpouring of love for her. He wanted to look into her eyes, to touch the twinkling diamonds in her earlobes, the wisps of hair escaping her barrette. On her upper arm were several dime-size b.u.mps. ”Mosquito bites?” He brushed a fingertip against them.

”Don't touch me,” she murmured.

”You're way too thin,” he said. ”Your hand is trembling. You're a mess.”

”Leave me alone.”

”Why'd you invite me out here?”

”I just wanted to help Mayuri.”

”So it had nothing to do with me?”

Rasika bit her lip. They walked along a path through the gra.s.s. On their right was a strip of colorful flowers; on their left, a grove of trees. Mayuri and Khaleel were several yards ahead. As Abhay and Rasika pa.s.sed a trashcan, she calmly tipped her corn into it and brushed her palms together.

”When's the wedding?”

”Next Friday. January fourth.”

”And your birthday is, when?”

”End of January. So we'll be fine.”

”You're really going through with it?”