Ashok sat on the park bench, playing with the empty coffee cup. It was still early, just after seven-thirty, and he had twenty minutes before he had to be in at work. Moments ago, he’d stepped out of the train station and crossed the street to the park. Amir had his daily special ready—a small coffee, with milk and no sugar. “Friday at last! And it’s going to be a warm one!” the man said.
Amir stood tall behind his silver cart, which was covered in logos and banners and even had its own name. He wiped a spot on the window counter. Then wet his finger and rubbed hard at it.
He was there first thing in the morning, at six sharp, before the rush of morning workers arrived, and he packed up at exactly noon, when the kebab vendors set up and there was no more need for his coffee and stale donuts.
Ashok hadn’t always known him but he couldn’t remember exactly when Amir had first appeared outside the library. It was as if he’d always been there, along with the green park benches and the Elms that lined the drive. He always looked the same—with his tall, broad frame, the short bristles of silver on his chin, the same faded black cap. Time did not change him. He had stood still in his little cart and the years went by and forgot him. He will never change, Ashok thought. He is resistant to time and yet, the day he finally stops coming with his cart, bright and early when the streets are barely stirring, will be the day when something on that block appears profoundly changed.
Ashok had grown to enjoy these mornings, sitting on the bench, watching the world come and go. He felt more relaxed here than on his own bed. He worried about his upcoming bike race and whether Rishi, whose birthday it was next week, would like Cirque Du Soleil. He didn’t know what interested Rishi these days, the boy was growing up so fast. With every year came the end of one phase and the start of something new—like slippery stepping-stones that promised to lead someplace else.
Where did time go? It was hard to imagine that almost fifteen years ago Kavita and he had moved to New York. She hadn’t protested then, just as she never said a word now and it was the silence surrounding her that he was left to interpret. She knew that going to graduate school would be the best thing for him, even though it meant leaving behind their home in Calcutta and all her family. He’d asked her then, “Will you be able to do it?”
She’d looked at him straight in the eye and replied, “We’ll work it out together.”
It was those little things that made Ashok fall in love with her many years ago, when they were both in college. She had, then, planned out an entire decade—she would work while he finished his studies. They’d have two children by the age of thirty-five when she would take time off. When they were a little older, she could hopefully move on to a non-profit.
Ashok liked to listen to her condense their lives into bullet points. It made everything seem so simple and therefore, possible. They were so young then. They knew so little and thought so much. They thought they could do anything. They thought time was on their side. That it could never be lost, like snow in sunlight.
Where did it all go? It was only yesterday that he’d stayed up all night, working on his dissertation with Kavita by his side. Only yesterday when she’d put his hands on her stomach to tell him of their son. When Rishi was younger, he used to be particularly difficult, refusing to sleep alone. The only way Ashok could make him stay in his own bed was to get in with him and read out stories. His feet would stick out at the end and Rishi would snuggle under the warmth of his armpits, just as he, Ashok, had once done with his own father. Only now, the sounds of fireflies had been replaced by the rattling of the train tracks next to their window.
“Tell me a story of when you were in school, Papa,” Rishihad begged last night. Ashok couldn’t refuse.
“Which one?”
“The one where you touched the bald head of your teacher.”
“Oh! That one huh? Why, is Ms. Doris bald? He ruffled his son’s hair.
Rishi giggled, his small, brown face swelling in amusement. Near the door, by the side of the radiator, shone a pale blue nightlight. Rishi was scared of the dark, of the sounds made by the train grating against the tracks. In his mind, the night drew out all the things that remained hidden during the day. Ashok soothed him to sleep, comforted by the warmth of his son’s body, his gentle breathing. The sound kept away all the stray thoughts that crept in with darkness and nightfall.
He’d woken, eventually, when the sun threatened to break in through the windows and carefully tiptoed to the bedroom where Kavita was sleeping. She always slept in the fetal position, with her left arm bracing her head beneath the pillow. Ashok used to enjoy rising before her, watch her smile in her sleep and sometimes mumble odd words. He imagined them to be the words she withheld during the day. The night made her free and unrestrained and allowed her to say the things that had become unspeakable between them. Soon, she would rise, turn towards him, to be greeted by the other, unruffled, side of the bed. The emptiness bearing evidence of yet another night she had spent on her own.
It was Kavita who had found their first apartment—a tiny studio out in Flushing. It was she who had done the necessary dealings with the landlord. “What would you do without me?” she had asked as she led him into their very own place that first day.
“Nothing! I couldn’t do anything without you by my side,” he’d said, kissing her creamy forehand.
But over time, their marriage, like aging skin, had wrinkled and roughened. The softness in her voice turned course. When did things change? How do things change? So many years had come and gone—weddings; diapers; degrees; jobs. The thrill of a new future together had now dragged into an endless journey. Gone were the days when youth promised everything. And worse, they didn’t even argue anymore. Years had passed and Ashok hadn’t noticed. He was too wrapped up in his world in the library— in the New American Program to help build a large Foreign Language section; in Rishi’s karate and soccer practice and day cares and dentists.
He had only noticed when he met her— Anjali.
It was quite by accident, one October, almost three years ago. The park still green from the leftovers of summer. He’d taken his coffee through the high stone arches of the library. The street noises instantly silenced by the deeper calm that hung from its high ceilings—like churches or temples that give respite from the city. Nathan was sitting primly on top of his desk. “There’s a staff meeting this afternoon,” he said, and Ashok couldn’t help but look at the piles of folders clambering up his desk.
She was in the Foreign Languages section—his section. A petite, dark haired woman wearing tights and a sweater. She was tipping out books from a shelf and then putting them back like a child might do. A Desi, he thought. It could only be a Desi.
He went over to confront her, to initiate her to the rules and etiquettes of the library and explain to her his painstaking efforts in keeping the shelves in their pristine order.
“It doesn’t seem like you’re having much luck finding what you’re looking for,” he said, trying to muster irritability in his voice. Yet, as the words came out of his mouth, he realized with dismay, how benign his threat sounded. Now, closer, he could see the woman’s large eyes, her dark, smooth hair. He couldn’t decipher her age—her face untouched by time.
“Oh,” she said and quickly stood up, pushing all the books in.
At once all his annoyance dissipated and Ashok was left feeling awkward, wondering why he had come in the first place. “What are you looking for?” he asked, not knowing what else to say.
“A book.” Her lips curled over the syllable.
He waited for her to say something else, wishing now that he hadn’t said anything at all and tried to think of a way to make a quick exit before he behaved like a fool.
“I mean…that is to say…I was looking for a book called Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra. A particular edition, actually, which is out of print and the bookshops no longer carry it. I was told I might be able to find it here.”
“I’ve just started yoga classes,” she went on.
He wanted to say that yoga was only for foreign fools and not for people like him and her. He led the way to where the book might be found and showed her how to use the library’s cataloguing system. As she leaned forwards to sift through the titles, her hair fell across her face, curling inwards at the bottom of her chin, cupping it.
At last she found the book. “Can I go somewhere and read around here?” she asked. Her thin pink mouth parted like a flower.
Ashok showed her to the reading room on the mezzanine floor. It had little nooks overlooking the treetops of the park through tall windows, a few chairs, a simple desk here and there, sometimes accompanied by a floor lamp. “This is the most beautiful library I’ve ever seen. I could come here every day!” She said.
Few days later, she was back. Ashok spotted her reading in the same nook. She was sitting on a wicker chair all the way by the far left window with her head curled down like a reading lamp. The petals of her mouth pressed tight. She glanced up from her book as he approached and smiled at him—like a brief glimpse of the sun on a cool day that falls on the arm of a park bench and warms the hand that rests on it.
How quickly an expression changes a face.
“Well, yes. Let me know if you need anything else,” he muttered and hurried away.
Towards the end of the day he had quite forgotten about her until it was time to go home. As he put on his jacket, collected his backpack and was about to head out, she appeared as though from nowhere. “Are you heading out? Wait, I’m on my way out as well.”
She’d caught him by surprise. Not knowing how to respond they just kept walking. “You live near-by?’ he asked, painfully aware of his own shyness yet aware too at how normal they must , walking side by side like two friends. The restraint he felt with Kavita, who always walked somberly, felt ordinary and old. But here, here was a new kind of discomfort.
She shook her head. “On the Lower East Side. I usually ride my bicycle here but today I have to go elsewhere. I’m Anjali by the way.” She held out her hand. “I’m from Calcutta.”
He took it hesitantly. No one he knew shook hands. No one he knew rode bicycles either. She didn’t look like a Bengali. She didn’t dress like the Bengalis he mixed with. They were both from Calcutta yet both brought with them very different memories. If they were at home right now, they would never have met. This is what made America so great, he thought.
The two of them walked across Lexington to the downtown train and waited on the platform, along with what felt like all of the Upper East Side. The compartment, when the train finally did arrive, was so crowded that Anjali was pushed against him and he felt the cotton of her sleeves brush against his wrist; the warmth off her soft breath struck against the thin skin of his neck. He could smell the faint trails of her floral perfume and see distinctly, every tiny hair on the perfectly round, light brown mole on the side of her chin. He tried several times to step back but beyond a point there was nowhere to go.
They stood like that till 59th St. Anjali spoke as fast as the train moved and Ashok felt as though the journey would never end. It did, after ten minutes which felt like an eternity and he was coughed out along with dozens of others, relieved that he had to exit and switch to the Q bound for Astoria.
Days pased. November came and with it winter’s weight hung heavily in the air. “Are you always here?” a voice said and he looked up from his work. A strange, warm sensation passed through him.
“Always,” he said, with pride. For almost thirteen years now he had been at this desk. It was where he drank his coffee and ate his lunch; it was where his drawer was full of crumpled papers, his notebook filled with thoughts and phrases— his other life, away from Kavita.
Anjali said she took yoga classes on 75th Street. Her body lean and athletic, almost like a schoolgirl’s. Somewhere along the way she let slip that she was thirty-five. Far younger than his fifty.
She picked up a photograph of Rishi that was sitting on his table. Kavita had taken the photograph. It was at the Bronx Zoo and Ashok was swinging him in the air.
Kavita loved taking pictures. She had boxes of them which she had labeled and categorized by the year and month. She used to make father and son hold their pose till Ashoks’s cheeks hurt from smiling.
“Your son?”
“My son.” He smiled.
“Your son…” she said and her voiced trailed off.
Like life.
“And you? Are you married?” Ashok blurted out.
He hadn’t mean to ask that. That’s not what he meant at all.
“Yes, I am,” she said although there was a hint of reluctance in her voice.
“He’s Bengali too?”
“No,” she said. She was still studying Rishi’s photograph. “He’s from here.”
“An American? Why?”
“Why not?”
“It doesn't matter to you? This difference?” He tried to imagine what it must be like—to hear the hum of strange music in the shower, to get angry or speak of intimate things in a language that was not one’s own.
Anjali just shrugged. She muttered she was late and left—He noticed the urgency in her gait. He noticed every little thing about her and he hated himself for it.
But she came back. Anjali came back. She came back almost every week from then on.
“Does your son speak Bengali? she asked one day.
It was a sore subject. How often Kavita and he had clashed over the issue. She was always speaking to Rishi in English—ever since the first day of kindergarten when his teacher had informed them that he spoke to the other classmates in Bengali. It took months to get him to switch languages and it saddened Ashok now to think that his son would never know his mother tongue.
Kavita was good at adjusting. She’d adjusted all her life—to his studies, their moving to a new country, and now, to the fact that they had nothing to say to each other anymore. Perhaps it was because she never held on to old ways. She just changed in whichever direction the wind blew.
She was obsessed with going to the gym. She had a green tote bag with her workout clothes and it was always prepared and hanging by the door. Ashok never questioned this, never asked her why she needed to every day. Questions only led to complications.
With Anjali however, he couldn’t contain himself. As though all the holding-back he did with Kavita came gushing out like rain.
“Why do you spend so much time here?” He asked her one day.
She didn’t say anything at first. Then, “It’s a nice place to get away.”
“And are you trying to get away from something?” he said.
“You ever read this?” She replied quickly.
Ashok shook his head.
“Ever tried yoga?”
Again he shook his head. “I’m not very good at physical exercise. I don’t even know how to ride a bicycle.”
Anjali sat up, unfolding from her Buddha-like position and Ashok could see her pink toenails, like little droplets of colored water.
“Who doesn’t know how to ride a bicycle?’ She said.
He tried to laugh but it ended up sounding like a snort.
“Would you like to try? Would you like to learn how to ride one? Mine’s just outside. We can take it to the park and I can show you how. It won’t take you long. I promise. It’s very easy. May be during your lunch break one day…”
“Yes,” he blurted out. “Yes, I’d love to try.” The last new thing he had tried was eating beef. But suddenly an inexplicable urge overtook him.
The day of the lesson, as he left the library, a strange sensation fell over Ashok. A lightness—the sort of lightness that comes with the prospect of something unknown. The treetops in Central park were bare, exposing their arched shapes like sculpted, naked bodies. The air carried in it the excitement and buzz of endless possibilities, any possibility, even the possibility of nothing. But it was marred with the heaviness of a mystifying guilt of daring to feel that way.
Anjali was waiting for him at the corner of 75th. She was dressed in leggings that formed a second skin around her angular contours.
“So this is where you do your yoga stuff,” he said.
“Yoga is all about the fundamentals,” she corrected him. It’s not about complicated twisted poses you see in photographs,” she answered. “Take the mountain-pose for instance.” Her face was long and somber. “It’s the fundamental of all the poses. You can learn all about life from just this one pose, you know?”
Ashok was beginning to regret having come but he let her continue. Right there on the sidewalk, for the whole world to see, Anjali taught him how to stand with his feet firm on the ground, heels pressed, chest rising up.
“My guru says, that if you can learn to stand strongly and correctly, you can withstand any challenge that comes your way.” Something about her unsmiling face wiped away all hints of amusement from his.
They finally made it to the park and Anjali told him to wheel the bicycle along so that he could get a sense of its balance. They walked a little ways into the Rambles, where the crowd had thinned and space was ample.
He felt extremely foolish as he got on—the seat was too small for him and his knees practically touched his chest. He fell a few times. But, soon, he managed to wobble several yards at a stretch and then longer, riding unsteadily along the pathway.
“See, once you get the hang of it it’s so easy,” she said.
He had learned to do something he’d never achieved before and it felt like an epiphany. “I’m riding a bicycle!” he shouted. In his ecstasy, he felt as though he could do anything. He wanted to pick Anjali up in his arms and swing her around in joy; to hold close to him this moment.
When he got home that evening, Kavita was in the kitchen. He slipped into the bedroom to change quickly before she came in. Although, she wouldn’t ask too many questions. It wasn’t her way. She would just stand there with her lips pressed firmly together and allow her reticence to speak of the great suffering she silently bore. Then she’d be off for another class with the girls—pilates, spinning, something call ‘pump’. She walked out with that green tote and didn't return till late, by which time he was usually in bed. She never spoke of her classes or the ‘girls’, or anything she did outside the house but it seemed to him only natural that women everywhere—be it in gyms or coffeeshops or department stores or the telephone— huddled together in alliance. By now, his elation had somewhat subsided but even as he perfunctorily changed and washed his hands, something inside him was secretly and quietly alive and beating.
“What would you do if you met the most beautiful girl in the whole world and you were married?”
“The whole world is married. Do you think that’s ever stopped anyone?” Nathan said. They were sitting together on the front steps of the library where Nathan took his cigarette break.
“Have you?” Ashok asked.
Nathan didn’t say anything but let out some sort of an ambiguous sound.
“Really? Did Beth ever find out?”
“See, it’s like this,” Nathan said. I know she knows; she knows that I know she knows. But we’ll never actually verbalize it. That would be an insult.”
“It’s not an insult already that you’re sleeping with someone else?”
“Things happen Ashok. And we allow them. Because we are humans.”
Ashok couldn’t imagine how such a crucial moment in life simply happened without thought or preparation. That first step towards infidelity was more than the breaking of trust. All these years with Kavita—he’d never imagined someone else on his bed, another woman’s hand pleasuring him. This new desire burning inside him, this desire to want more than what his life contained, made him afraid. Perhaps the most important situations in life always snuck up without warning.
Ashok could hardly wait to see Anjali again; to go on another bike ride; to see her face swell with laughter as he’d spin orbits around her. They could practice on Fridays, a slow day at work. Or perhaps a Tuesday might do as well.
Anjali stopped coming to the library.
Ashok waited for her every day. An entire week passed by. There was still no sign of her. Determined not to feel defeated, he rented a bicycle from a shop on Lexington Avenue. He took it to the Rambles during his lunch break—when the morning joggers had long gone and the evening dog walkers had yet to arrive. Sometimes, Nathan went, making fun of him, which flustered him even more. But he never gave up. He only got better.
Eventually a time arrived when he realized he needed a bicycle of his own. He went to the shop several times and each time came out feeling dizzy with all the options. He set aside a budget of three hundred dollars, reasoning that all he required was a decent, beginners’ bicycle. Unfortunately, the model he finally set heart on was much more than that—a metallic blue Cannondale.
The salesman asked if he wanted to add mudguards.
“Oh no, no, I don’t need all that,” Ashok said, shaking his head. “Then again, if I just get them now, I won’t have to worry when it rains.” He paused, biting his lip. “Okay, let’s do it!”
“And the wheels?”
“What about the wheels”
“We can put in a great pair of street tires and give you a ten per-cent discount if you get them done now.”
“Oh no, no. I don’t need special tires,” Ashok replied. But the blue Cannondale stood there glaring at him in disapproval. “Fine!” he said, throwing his arms up, “Let’s just do the whole works!”
In the end, Ashok spent almost fifteen hundred dollars.
Kavita was clearly upset.
“Did that come out of our savings?” She demanded.
He couldn’t respond. He used to hate upsetting her. Hate seeing her cry. Now she just irritated him. After all these years of carefully rationing groceries, movie nights and taxi-rides, he felt he deserved this—this one indulgence he’d ever allowed himself—his shining blue Cannondale.
He rode by the water in Queens and sometimes he took it on the train to Riverside Park—with the wind running into him and the water passing by and the expanse of a wide, empty path ahead. Then, riding through the city smog, without Rishi or Kavita, he was simply a careless grown man, wobbling on his own, making a fool of himself for the whole world to see. And even though it had been weeks now since he’d seen Anjali, every time he was on the bike, he could hear her voice telling him to press his knees together.
To his relief, Kavita didn’t question his new habits. The further he rode, the more gym classes she seemed to sign up for.
One month grew into three and Anjali’s chair still stood empty, as though silently mocking him. Sometimes, he’d scroll down his phone to search for her name. So often he’d want to press that button but his fingers wouldn’t allow it. Sometimes, on an overcrowded train ride back home, he’d plant his feet firmly on the floor and stand as straight as he could. Often, in the crowd, he wouldn’t be able to reach for a pole, but realized if he stood strong on his feet, he wouldn’t fall. “Think of your feet as roots of a tree,” Anjali had told him. Then, for just that instance, in the buzz of the train, he felt she was next to him.
Spring arrived. The squirrels were out. The once shining Cannondale now stood in their back yard, rusted and grey. He thought perhaps it was time to sell it. Anjali wasn’t real. She had only been an obstacle in his life. Some sort of a test of his commitment to Kavita.
Then one day, she came back. She stood before him like an apparition, a flake of a wispy idea that vanishes just as suddenly as it comes.
“Hi Stranger,” she said. Her hair had grown longer and she had gained some weight which made her look even younger and in turn made Ashok feel older.
No, she was real. That smile, those eyes, the very notion of her exquisiteness—it’s as though he had seen her just the day before. While she was gone he’d grown accustomed to her absence, stroking his unhappiness as though it were a beloved pet.
“Can’t keep away from the library, can you?” he said.
She had been traveling, she said. She looked even darker. After all this time, she still managed to make him feel like a fawning young boy by the way she said her name in her thick voice—A-showk—more like an American than an Indian.
“Where did you go on your travels?” he asked.
“To Sri Lanka, surfing.”
“Sri Lanka,” he repeated. What would Kavita say if he told her he wanted to go on a surfing trip? He blushed at the thought of Kavita wearing a bathing suit.
Once, he had attempted to take the family to Yellow Stone National Park. “If we’re going that far, we might as well go back to Calcutta,” she had said. It was this dependability that he had once admired, many years ago.
But these days, it was the improbability of life that lifted his spirits. He wanted to explore whereas Kavita refused to change. She would always remain this way—his strong, practical, predictable wife.
“And your husband? Does he go with you?” Ashok couldn’t imagine what this man might look like. Probably broad, robust and athletic—something he could never be.
“Oh, no! Never.
“He doesn’t mind that you go away alone?” What would Kavita say if he wanted to go somewhere without her? She’d say everyone needs a holiday but one had to suffice with finding paradise in Queens.
“Yes. Yes, he does,” Anjali said.
“But you have to do whatever makes you happy, yes?” he said—wistful, almost jealous, for he’d never know that sort of freedom.
Anjali smiled but it was different from her others. “And you? Do you do what makes you happy?”
“It doesn't take much for me to be happy,” he said and he truly meant it. Up until he’d met her, he’d never known happiness to be anything other than Rishi’s cherub face, his eyes—full of adoration for his father––his tiny arms that grabbed around Ashok’s knees.
The following morning Ashok woke up especially early. To sleep longer was to waste time. He took extra care in wearing his favorite black shirt, which he hung at the end of the closet, and a black leather belt which made him feel trimmer. He went to the hairdressers and cut his hair razor short, the way he saw many men wear their hair these days.
It was nearing May and the weather had started to turn. Ashok took out his bicycle more frequently. He decided to ride in a charity race that summer. He even invested in an iPod. He hadn’t listened to music since his college days and even then it was either Bengali classics or Hindi film songs. He had no idea what people in this country listened to. Anjali introduced him to Portuguese music, to Bossa Nova and someone named Cesaria something. He listened to them on his commute, never daring to do so at home.
“Buddy, you’re a changed man,” Nathan said. “You must have lost twenty pounds. How did you do it?”
“It’s easy to do something you really want to,” Ashok said. But he felt guilty for lying to his friend. This change hadn’t come out of strength of character but rather, to impress someone else. In a way he was cheating—without Anjali he was no one.
He hadn’t seen the signs at first. Not until Anjali came to the library with a swollen face and eyes that had no life in them. Everything she said, usually with a tone of liveliness, seemed forced.
“Something has happened…”Ashok said.
“Yes.”
She looked down. “Yes, it’s been a difficult day.”
Her honesty alarmed it. He hadn’t expected it.
At lunch time, she re-appeared from the reading room and asked if he would like to go for a walk to the park.
Central Park shone in its summer jewels. Anjali pointed to the Cherry Blossom behind the Met Museum, the grass covered in its shredded flowers. “A week ago, those trees were covered in pink. There was a Cherry Blossom festival in the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens.”
She was wheeling her bicycle along. “Let me show you what I can do,” Ashok said. He got on the bike. It made her laugh. She clapped her hands together.
“I’m planning on riding for Leukemia in the summer.”
‘Look at you now how far you've come,” she said.
What he really wanted to say was that this was a lie, all of it. That he had forged this other self and without her he was nothing. Completely useless.
“You’ve inspired me,” he said and for the first time looked her directly in the face.
She held his gaze for a moment and looked down towards the clumps of fresh seedlings on the worn out lawns. “I’ve made a decision today,” she said, prodding the clumps with her feet. “I’ve left him.”
Ashok’s throat felt very tight. All he could do was nod.
Anjali looked up. “But it’s the beginning of the rest of my life. Now I’m free.”
“Yes, yes, you are,” Ashok said, although he wasn’t quite sure she meant. Now her eyes were more lucid and her face was lighter, as if uttering those words had helped her unload a weight, which in turn became his burden.
He shifted uncomfortably––the buffer of their private lives had been stripped away, leaving them both exposed and naked. It was time to get back to work anyway.
As he stood, ready to leave, she swung around and hugged him, leaning against his torso and wrapping her arms around his neck. He was completely taken aback. Mumbling something about not wanting to be late, he almost broke into a run as he left. But as he turned the corner, he stopped. He walked back again towards her. She was sitting on the bench, looking down at her feet, although he was sure she saw him from the corner of her eyes. It was just the way her head was half tilted. As though she were about to turn towards him too but something held her back.
Ashok stopped in his tracks. He wanted to come back, to say something, anything—that he had done it all for her, all of this. The biking, the music, the hair, the clothes. But the words refused. They remained stuck somewhere halfway down his throat and head hung low, he turned and walked away. If what Nathan had said was true, then this should have been easy, so easy.
That evening, Ashok entered his home cautiously, like the guilty. Kavita and Rishi were sitting in the living room. When he walked in, she looked up and he avoided her eyes, although he had done nothing wrong. But infidelity began in the heart.
Was it always like this? He couldn't remember anymore. Memories were dusty. The allure of a fool’s dream—irresistible.
He wished right then that he were holding Anjali, his arms around her tiny waist, inhaling her delicate floral scent which more than ever, brought back memories of Calcutta; closing his eyes he imagined her perfectly painted burgundy lips. But the redness that teased him blurred into the red vermillion on Kavita’s head, and he was left with the image of his wife’s disapproving face when he had first brought home his blue bicycle.
Rishi jumped up seeing his father enter. “Papa, Papa, what is an Indian?” he asked. His loud voice, still not having learned pitch control, tugged Ashok back to the present. His son explained he’d heard this in school. Ashok sat down on the couch with his son on his knee and a pen and paper, and drew out the map of the world. When he next looked up, Kavita had already left.
That night, he had stayed in bed with Rishi long after the last story had been read. He held the pink, restful fingers of his son. They looked so much like his. And his dark hair, the wide forehand, the patient, rhythmic breathing that rose and fell faithfully, never missing a beat. Once up, once down—it always knew its place. A day would come when Rishi would begin to correct his English, he would play baseball instead of cricket. He would always be Ashok’s flesh and blood, but the older Rishigrew, the more of a stranger he’d become.
That night, Ashok remembered a conversation he had hadwith his own father, just after he had started working at the library. He had gone home during Christmas and had gotten into another argument.
“I’ve finally figured it out father,” he’d said. “Life is about following one’s dreams and being happy.” His father had looked at him as if he’d just uttered the unspeakable.
“Life, my dear son, is about money management.”
He decided not to make the same mistake with Rishi. He did not want to teach his son to forsake everything. He would tell him to always follow his heart. There was nothing more powerful than that kind of freedom.
The next day it did not stop raining. The grey had no borders, spilling into everything. Just shortly past five as Ashok left the library, he spotted Anjali across the street by the bus stand, half-soaked, holding a lopsided umbrella. He crossed over. She was trying to catch a taxi. Ashok told her it was impossible she’d find one in such weather, but she wouldn’t listen. Finally he gave in. “I’ll wait with you,” he said.
“Please, it’s okay,” she begged. She looked unsettled, and nervously played with her fingernails and bit her lower lip.
But he insisted. He held up his own umbrella over her. Hesaid he didn’t want her to catch a cold. What he really wanted was one more chance— just a few more minutes with her, even if it meant waiting on a wet sidewalk getting drenched by every car that carelessly swerved corners where puddles had collected. In those few minutes, anything could happen.
In the endless, gushing rain they waited for what seemed like an hour. Anjali kept fidgeting and he, in-between sporadic sentences simply looked at her, the little beads of water that trickled down the side of her face, her dark hair sticking to her cheeks. And again she implored, “Ashok, please, just go home.”
“My son is not there right now, there’s nothing for me to go home to,” he said.
A taxi stopped right in front of them to let someone out. Anjali hugged Ashok quickly. “Thank you,” she said, before she got in.
She was about to turn away when he caught her hand. He didn’t know what to do next; all he knew was he couldn’t to let her go. As the cars raced past them and the rain fell insistently and the pounding of his heart made his hand tremble in uncertainty, Ashok never felt more paralyzed. He kissed her lightly on the cheek, shocked by the touch of her skin on his lips. Immediately he pulled back, ashamed. “See you,” he said, managing to find a voice and walked away in a hurry, not daring to look back. It should have been so effortless. All he had to do was give her a kiss and the rest should have just followed.
There was a phone-call in the library. It was Kavita. Her father was seriously ill and she had to get back to Calcutta as soon as possible. Ashok left work immediately. When he reached home, Kavita was sitting in the living room. She looked only half a human. She ran into his arms as he walked in.
“I’m so scared,” she said.
“It’s okay Kav, I’m here for you. We’re all here.”
Her fleshy body pulsed and trembled under his hands. But holding her this way, after so long, didn’t feel alien. Somehow, it felt right. He embraced her, with the complacency and care that comes only over time and with familiarity.
As he watched her getting into the taxi to go to JFK, he realized that she had always been bound—her dreams were never her own. She’d only lived through his successes and failures. Where in life, he thought, must she too have been disappointed?
However, with her gone, he couldn’t help think of what Nathan had said. He planned on calling Anjali the following week. They could go for a movie, maybe even dinner. He could call their neighbor’s son to babysit Rishi.
But things weren’t easy in Kavita’s absence. There were lunches to pack for school and homework to help with after. There were after-school activities and re-negotiating work hours. Whenever Anjali came to mind, he was always in the middle of something and promised himself he’d call the following day.
Rishi grew impatient for his mother’s return. To keep him engaged, Ashok decided to read to him from the Mahabharata one night, explain to him the Indian mythologies, what Krishna said in the Geeta.
Rishi constantly interrupted his father with questions. “How can five brothers marry one sister?” he asked his father one night.
“It was a very special case,” Ashok said, unable to think of a more satisfactory explanation.
Life happens, Nathan had said.
“What was that thing Yudhisthira told Drona, again?”
“Ashwathama is dead but perhaps it was the elephant.”
Life doesn’t give you too many chances.
“Papa, when is Ma coming home?”
“Soon Rishi, very soon,” Ashok replied.
He would call Anjali later, when his son was asleep. But he didn’t. Freedom was the most terrifying thing in the world.
It was Anjali who finally called. She who brought up lunch. Ashok held his breath. All these months of her coming and leaving, of him waiting, of all the missed opportunities, of reasoning with himself that courage came not from resistance but from action—they all culminated to this one moment. This time he couldn’t let her go. She was so close, so attainable. He could practically taste her lips on his.
Yet all that came out was, “I’m afraid I can’t make it today.”
“That’s okay,” she said. “Maybe next week?”
“Anjali,” he took her name. He’d never taken her name before. “I want to see you but right now things are difficult.”
The silence that followed should have been writhing but Ashok felt calm.
“You must do what you need to. Family comes first.”
Anjali never came back to the library. She never called him again. She disappeared, like a conversation abruptly interrupted.
This morning, as Ashok sat in the park with his coffee, thinking about Rishi’s birthday, thinking about how Kavita was managing with her affairs in Calcutta, he realized the Race for Leukemia was coming up in a few weeks. He knew he had no shot at winning but he’d enter all the same. He imagined standing on a podium in Chelsea Piers, searching for Rishi’s face in the crowd. Later, as they rode the train back home, his son would ask him if he was sad that he lost and Ashok would tell his younger self, “What’s the point in living if you can’t dream?”
The train rattled out of the tunnel carrying them along.
You knew you were far away from everything when the train goes above ground.