Smoky Joe’s.
"Beef?"
"Honey," said the lady, "Ah don’t mean to ahffend you, but Ah’m a steak eater and Ah AAHM beef."
Marilyn. Blown-up photographs of Marilyn Monroe on the wall, Indian owner at the desk!
The owner was on the speakerphone.
"Rajnibhai, Kem chho?"
"What?"
"Rajnibhai?"
"Who aez thees?" Very Indian-trying-to-be-American accent.
"Kem chho? Saaru chho? Teme samjo chho?"
"WHAAT?"
"Don’t speak Gujerati, sir?"
"No."
"You are Gujerati, no?"
"No."
"But your name is Gujerati??"
"Who are you??!!"
"You are not Gujerati?"
"Who are you??!!"
"AT amp;T, sir, offering special rates to India."
"Don’t know anyone in India."
"Don’t know anyone???? You must have some relative?"
"Yeah," American accent growing more pronounced, "but I don’ taaalk to my relateev…"
Shocked silence.
"Don’t talk to your relative?"
Then, "We are offering forty-seven cents per minute."
"Vhaat deeference does that make? I haeve aalready taaald you," he spoke s 1 o w as if to an idiot, "no taleephone caalls to Eeendya."
"But you are from Gujerat?" Anxious voice.
"Veea Kampala, Uganda, Teepton, England, and Roanoke state of Vaergeenia! One time I went to Eeendya and, laet me tell you, you canaat pay me to go to that caantreey agaen!"
Slipping out and back on the street. It was horrible what happened to Indians abroad and nobody knew but other Indians abroad. It was a dirty little rodent secret. But, no, Biju wasn’t done. His country called him again. He smelled his fate. Drawn, despite himself, by his nose, around a corner, he saw the first letter of the sign, G, then an AN. His soul anticipated the rest: DHI. As he approached the Gandhi Café, the air gradually grew solid. It was always unbudgeable here, with the smell of a thousand and one meals accumulated, no matter the winter storms that howled around the corner, the rain, the melting heat. Though the restaurant was dark, when Biju tested the door, it swung open.
There in the dim space, at the back, amid lentils splattered about and spreading grease transparencies on the cloths of abandoned tables yet uncleared, sat Harish-Harry, who, with his brothers Gaurish-Gary and Dhansukh-Danny, ran a triplet of Gandhi Cafés in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. He didn’t look up as Biju entered. He had his pen hovering over a request for a donation sent by a cow shelter outside Edison, New Jersey.
If you gave a hundred dollars, in addition to such bonus miles as would be totted up to your balance sheet for lives to come, "We will send you a free gift; please check the box to indicate your preference":
1. A preframed decorative painting of Krishna-Lila: "She longs for her lord and laments."
2. A copy of the Bhagavad Gita accompanied by commentary by Pandit so-and-so (B.A., MPhil., Ph.D., President of the Hindu Heritage Center), who has just completed a lecture tour in sixty-six countries.
3. A CD of devotional music beloved by Mahatma Gandhi.
4. A gift-coupon to the Indiagiftmart: "Surprise the special lady in your life with our special choli in the colors of onion and tender pink, coupled with a butter lehnga. For the woman who makes your house a home, a set of twenty-five spice jars with vacuum lids. Stock up on Haldiram’s Premium Nagpur Chana Nuts that you must have been missing…"
His pen hovered. Pounced.
To Biju he said: "Beef? Are you crazy? We are an all-Hindu establishment. No Pakistanis, no Bangladeshis, those people don’t know how to cook, have you been to those restaurants on Sixth Street? Bilkul bekaar. …"
One week later, Biju was in the kitchen and Gandhi’s favorite tunes were being sung over the sound system.
Twenty-three
Gyan and Sai’s romance was flourishing and the political trouble continued to remain in the background for them.
Eating momos dipped in chutney, Gyan said: "You’re my momo."
Sai said: "No you’re mine."
Ah, dumpling stage of love – it had set them off on a tumble of endearments and nicknames. They thought of them in quiet moments and placed them before each other like gifts. The momo, mutton in dough, one thing plump and cozy within the other – it connoted protection, affection.
But during the time they ate together at Gompu’s, Gyan had used his hands without a thought and Sai ate with the only implement on the table – a tablespoon, rolling up her roti on the side and nudging the food onto the spoon with it. Noticing this difference, they had become embarrassed and put the observation aside.
"Kishmish," he called her to cover it up, and "Kaju" she called him, raisin and cashew, sweet, nutty, and expensive. Because new love makes sightseers out of couples even in their own town, they went on excursions to the Mong Pong Nature Reserve, to Delo Lake; they picnicked by the Teesta and the Relli. They went to the sericulture institute from which came a smell of boiling worms. The manager gave them a tour of the piles of yellowy cocoons moving subtly in a corner, machines that tested waterproofing, flexibility; and he shared his dream of the future, of the waterproof and drip-dry sari, stain-proof, prepleated, zippable, reversible, super duper new millennium sari, named for timeless Bollywood hits like Disco Dancer. They took the toy train and went to the Darjeeling zoo and viewed in their free, self-righteous, modern love, the unfree and ancient bars, behind which lived a red panda, ridiculously solemn for being such a madly beautiful thing, chewing his bamboo leaves as carefully as a bank clerk doing numbers. They visited the Zang Dog Palri Fo Brang Monastery on Durpin Dara, where little monks were being entertained by the gray-haired ones, running up and down pulling the children on rice sacks, sailing them over the polished monastery floor, before the murals of demons and Guru Padmasambhava with his wrathful smile ensconced in a curly mustache, his carmine cloak, diamond scepter, lotus hat with a vulture feather; before a ghost riding a snow lion and a green Tara on a yak; sailing the children before the doors that opened like bird wings onto the scene of mountains all around.
From Durpin Dara, where you could see so far and high, the world resembled a map from a divine perspective. One could see the landscape stretching below and beyond, rivers and plateaus. Gyan asked Sai about her family, but she felt uncertain about what she should say, because she thought if she told him about the space program, he might feel inferior and ashamed. "My parents eloped and nobody spoke to them again. They died in Russia where my father was a scientist."
But his own family story also led overseas, he told Sai, quite proudly. They had more in common than they thought.
The story went like this:
In the 1800s his ancestors had left their village in Nepal and arrived in Darjeeling, lured by promises of work on a tea plantation. There, in a small hamlet bordering one of the remoter tea estates, they had owned a buffalo renowned for its astonishingly creamy milk. By and by along came the Imperial Army, measuring potential soldiers in villages all over the hills with a measuring tape and ruler, and they had happened upon the impressive shoulders of Gyan’s great-grandfather, who had grown so strong on the milk of their buffalo that he had beaten the village sweet-seller’s son in a wrestling match, an exceptionally glossy and healthy boy. An earlier recruit from their village reported soldiers were kept in ladylike comfort – warm and dry with blankets and socks, butter and ghee, mutton twice a week, an egg each day, water always in the taps, medicine for every ailment, every whim and scuff. You could solicit help for an itch on the bottom or a bee sting without shame, all for no more work than to march up and down the Grand Trunk Road. The army offered far more money to this boy grown strong on buffalo milk than his father had ever earned, for his father labored as a runner for the plantation; left before dawn with a big conical basket divided into sections on his back and strove to return by sundown, struggling uphill. The basket would now be filled with a vegetable layer and a live chicken pecking at the weave; eggs, toilet paper, soap, hairpins, and letter paper on top for the memsahib to write: "My darling daughter, it is wildly beautiful here and the beauty almost, almost makes up for the loneliness…"