Nothing Like Love (6 page)

A
nand sat on the
mandir
floor by the concrete lattice window with his legs folded beneath him. A diamond patchwork of sunlight and shadow fell across his back and sagging shoulders; a mellow breeze drifted through the open spaces, ruffling the fine silver hairs on the back of his neck.

Anand hadn’t worn his elaborate priestly attire this morning. Instead he had dressed in grey slacks and a simple cotton kurtha, with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He’d tucked his
mala
, a string of 108 prayer beads, inside his collar and kept his gaze fixed on the ground as he’d hurried up the main road, slipped through the mandir’s back door and sat. Now that the doors were locked and he was alone, Anand could have this conversation aloud.

He turned his bloodshot gaze to Mother Lakshmi, goddess of health, wealth and prosperity. “Karma?” His sleepless night
hung in pouches under his eyes. His lids drooped with the weight of them.

The marble goddess, swathed in fuchsia, pink and gold, sat in her expansive lotus throne with her right palm turned toward Anand, proffering blessings. Sunlight dazzled off the gems sewn into her silk sari, lending her marble expression a celestial glow. She smiled at him the way she always had, but for Anand something had changed.

He took a deep breath before he continued. The place smelled of yesterday’s prayers: sandalwood and smoke, cotton wicks burning in pools of rich yellow ghee. “I dedicate my life to your service and this is my reward?” He leaned forward and squinted at the murti as if to make sure she was listening. “This mandir is my second home. I does come here and clean your altar and chant your mantras. I does come here and perform pujas with such devotion. How many
diyas
, clay pots, you think I light at your feet?” He frowned as if he were remembering. “Plenty—and that ain’t counting my past lives!” He stared directly into Mother Lakshmi’s marble eyes, daring her to disagree. “And see how lovely you look in that pink sari! Who does adorn you in such nice-nice clothes?” He arched a silver dishevelled eyebrow at Mother Lakshmi. “Is me self who does do it. Me self!”

Anand sat blinking at the murti for some time. Silence loomed like a concrete wall between them. He sighed, letting the exhale whistle between puckered lips, and then, grumbling, unfolded his legs and hauled himself to his feet. When he took a deliberate step forward, a prickly sensation surged through his toes and shot across his sole. Anand swallowed a curse and shifted his weight into the other foot. He glowered at Mother
Lakshmi as blood rushed back into his smarting toes. Was She toying with him? He was in no mood.

Anand marched to the altar and poured ghee from a jar into a freshly washed diya. Between thumb and forefinger, he twirled a cotton ball into a wick and drowned it in the clarified butter. When he set the wick ablaze with a match, the orange flame flickered in the small diya, elongating as it stretched toward heaven and then settling into a plump, upside-down teardrop. Anand gestured to the diya and then looked into Mother Lakshmi’s eyes. “You see? A next one. You paying attention?”

He stooped and gathered a handful of flowers in his left hand from a taria he had filled from the small garden behind the mandir. “What you think people saying about me, Ma?” He placed a burgundy dahlia at her feet. “Them probably wondering how a devout pundit like me could raise a son to do such
nastiness
.” He hissed this last word as he tucked a delicate jasmine into the fold of a sari pleat. “I feel so shame.” He shook his head. “Shame, shame, shame. How Krishna could disgrace me so?” He threaded a few daisies into her gold crown with a practised hand. “How I could show my face to the people when my son do what he do with
she
?” He groaned as he slid an orange immortelle blossom between the marble fingers of Mother Lakshmi’s raised hand. Then he stopped and cocked his head thoughtfully. “How
you
could allow this to happen to me?”

When the goddess was decorated with fresh flowers, Anand plucked three incense sticks out of their box and held them into the diya’s flame. As they caught fire, he waved the flame out with his other hand so that the orange glow dissolved into ribbons of fragrant grey smoke. He inhaled deeply and then
deposited the incense sticks in their brass holder at Mother Lakshmi’s feet to purify the air around her. He opened his arms, palms facing upward. “So what can I do? My reputation as a pundit, as a leading man in this district, is in jeopardy. My earnings is in jeopardy.” He pressed his right hand to his chest as if to soothe a sudden spasm of pain there. “And Krishna and this girl, they responsible. Tell me what to do.”

Anand sat by the window again, folded his legs beneath him, interlaced his fingers in his lap and waited for an answer. He closed his eyes to meditate, but instead he drifted in and out of a restless sleep, waking sporadically to find his chin resting on his chest or his head lolling to one side. In those cruel intervals of wakefulness, Anand thought of the promise he had made to his own father: that he would be known as a well-respected, much-sought-after pundit and honour the Govind legacy born from six generations of learned Hindu priests. That memory was always followed by Krishna’s handsome face, sunny with the carelessness of youth. Anand rubbed the throbbing at his temples. Krishna was failing him, and by extension, he, Pundit Anand Govind, was failing.

Anand gave up trying to sit and meditate. As he lay back in the dappled sunlight beneath the lattice window, his mala fell across his throat like a noose and pinned itself beneath his left shoulder. He raised his head, slipped the mala off and began moving his fingers deftly over the rough beads, his gaze trained on the ceiling. But the prayers wouldn’t come. They got lost, or discouraged somewhere between his soul and his mouth, so he fiddled with his prayer beads thinking of things other than God.

Anand didn’t fret about his mortality the way most other men his age in the district did. He had always led a virtuous
life, beginning and ending his day with prayers and facilitating pujas for other people in between. He saw himself as a holy middleman, a liaison to the Lord, and naturally received a bountiful cut of the common man’s blessings. His body, a vessel for his pure soul, was equally immaculate. Never had a drop of alcohol or morsel of meat touched his tongue. He was devoted to his wife, Maya; he had passed everything he knew of Hinduism on to Krishna. He had done good karma in the physical world, and when
Bhagwan
, God, decided to take him, he was ready. That’s how he had thought of death. Up until last night.

Anand had even been willing to leave the matter of Krishna’s marriage to Maya should he pass before that time came. He never doubted there would be an abundance of eligible young ladies from good Hindu families, eager to marry his son; never imagined that Krishna would do anything to befoul the Govinds’ good name. But Anand had been wrong. Now there was no room for complacency in his life. He could not afford to slip quietly into his golden years. He had to ensure Krishna married well and that his family’s good name was restored. Hadn’t this been his life purpose?

“Hello?”

Anand heard a rap at the door. He stiffened.

“Baba? You there? Is me, Gloria. I come to do my morning prayers!”

Anand lay still and continued to stare at the ceiling. It was black with smoke and the old fan was coated with a film so thick he could mark his initials in it. And he should. That fan was as much his as this temple was. He was Pundit Anand Govind of Chance, after all. He chewed his lip. Had he asked Krishna to wipe down that smutty fan? He couldn’t remember now.

Gloria jiggled the door handle. She rapped on the door again. “Well, this is real strange.” Her voice glided in through the window. “Since when the pundit does lock up the mandir in the morning?” The door rattled in its frame and Anand grimaced; she was throwing her weight against the old wood.

“Ba-baaaa!” Gloria sang as she walked around the side of the building.

Anand held his breath. He wished she would go away and leave him to his thoughts. He would never hear Bhagwan’s answer with all the racket Gloria was making.

Suddenly the pool of sunlight in which Anand was lying was eclipsed by a long shadow. “Baba?” Anand shut his eyes. Gloria was kneeling on the ground, peering through the diamond latticework at Anand’s prostrate body.

Anand knew he should sit up and greet her, but for the first time in his life he did not feel like fulfilling his duty as village pundit. He couldn’t when his own life wanted mending, when he was in as much need of Bhagwan’s grace and guidance as Gloria or anyone else in Chance. Anand remained still.

“Oh gosh!” Gloria shrieked. “Pundit Anand sleeping in the mandir.” Gloria fitted her mouth into a diamond cut in the concrete wall. “Ba-ba! Ba-baaaa! Wake up!”

Anand began singing Bhagwan’s praises in his head to distract himself from breathing.

“Baba? Pundit Anand?” Her voice grew small. “Oh shames! This pundit gone and dead in the mandir!” She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “All that sexy-news about Vimla and Krishna must be kill the man.”

Anand felt sunlight flood over his skin again as Gloria flew from the window in search of an ear to tell the tragedy. He
opened one eye and then the other and then filled his hungry lungs with air. Anand thought about running after Gloria to explain that he had only been meditating, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. It was cruel, he knew, to let people think he was dead, but fate had been cruel to him, too, and this morning Anand’s heart was tired and cold.

He sat up and slipped his mala back over his head. He had to leave the mandir. It wouldn’t be long before the closest neighbours were swarming the place in search of him. “Gloria Ramnath already hear about Krishna and Vimla,” he muttered, rubbing his hand over his face and tousled hair. “Ma”—he turned to Mother Lakshmi, his voice strained—“what answer you have for me? How to fix this?”

Mother Lakshmi stared vacantly back at him, but the orange immortelle balancing between her fingers tumbled to the floor.

A ghost of a smile played at the corners of Anand’s lips. He nodded. “So Vimla must fall, too.” Anand smoothed his kurtha and blinked his tired eyes at the altar. He nodded. “Of course, of course, Ma. Is only fair. Is only just. And I know the right person to help me—Headmaster Roop G. Kapil.” He clapped his hands and bowed hurriedly. “Sita-Ram. We go talk later!”

Anand stalked past the altar and swung his arms with purpose. In the
whoosh
of his movements the diya sputtered and died.

“W
e didn’t raise you so, Krishna.” Maya sniffled into a paisley handkerchief. “With no morals. Without a ounce of shame.” She shut her eyes and shuddered as if his very presence on the veranda repulsed her. And yet he couldn’t leave her alone. She needed someone to absorb the grief spilling out of her, and his father—Krishna dropped his head in his hands—hadn’t the patience for Maya’s laments this morning. He’d left early in a temper of his own, muttering about Krishna’s ingratitude and boldfaced stupidity as he’d slammed the gates shut behind him. And so Krishna sat in quiet shame and watched the pink paisleys on Maya’s handkerchief turn deep rose with tears.

Maya looked off into the distance. “What you see in that girl? What she have so special to make you throw away everything me and your father work to give you?”

Krishna thought back to the first time he’d seen Vimla. It had been at the Gopalsinghs’ annual Ramayana and Vimla had sat among the dozens of guests under a yawning white tent listening—or pretending to listen—to his father’s
katha
on Shri Ram’s fourteen-year exile from his beloved city. He noticed that while the other devotees watched Pundit Anand’s face animate with devotion as he told this ancient story, Vimla’s eyes remained downcast as if she were watching something fascinating on her lap. And when the devotees joined in song with his father, Vimla’s sweet lips mouthed the wrong words without the slightest inclination of shame. Krishna spent the course of the night observing her peculiar behaviour, and admiring, much to his surprise, the way the careless waves of Vimla’s hair danced around her face in the humid night. It was only later, when the Ramayana was finished, and rice and karhi and spicy curries were being spooned onto sohari leaves for dinner, did Krishna walk casually by Vimla and discover that she had nestled a miniature periodic table into her sari pleats and that all night long she had been committing the elements to memory and, quite cleverly, reciting them aloud.

“Krypton,” Krishna murmured, handing her a bag of warm
prasad
.

Vimla glanced up at him. A conspiratorial smile bloomed on her face. “Kr 36,” she replied without hesitation. Her fingers brushed his as she accepted the prasad and in that touch sprang the unforgettable pulse of her liveliness.

Krishna looked up at his mother’s drawn face. He couldn’t tell her this now. No explanation, no apology, could undo the fact that he’d covertly pursued a romance and blackened the Govind name.