Blue Boy Read online

  The mere mention of the show has potential acts running through my mind, acts that are several stories and worlds above that talentless circle of lip-synching. I know that my act will involve dancing and singing. Singing for real. I will dance and sing so well that I will forget splinters and swings and gravel and the whispers, whispers, whispers.

  “Maybe you can sing us some Whitney Houston at the talent show!” Sarah whispers from behind me as I scrape one more Barbie smile from the desktop.

  I think of Whitney and how beautiful she is, how poised, how revered, and I worry that I will never be any of those things. And if Whitney is just a pop star, a mere mortal, then what does it take to be Krishna, the most beautiful of gods? I dig a thumbnail deep into the dirt-collecting stickiness, and I wonder what I can do to ensure that I’m never whispered about again. When even sweet-looking, tiny girls can deceive me, how will I know when I’m ready to reign?

  How will I know, Whitney? How will I know?

  My Band of One

  I know only a few phrases in Hindi. So you tell me how the hell I’m supposed to understand Sanskrit.

  Sanskrit. That’s what the pundit speaks most of the time. My friend Cody, whose parents make him attend church every Sunday, once said to me, “Stop complainin’, ya sissy. Our priest says a lot of our prayers in Latin, and ya don’t see me complainin’. Just take a nap.”

  But Cody is wrong on two counts. First of all, Sanskrit is nothing like Latin. Latin was spoken by Romans; Sanskrit was spoken by really ancient Indians. After all, even though Ancient Rome was forever ago, do we not remember that before there was a Rome, there had already been an India for a thousand years or more? And at least English shares several words with Latin. Unless you’re a yoga instructor, when was the last time you used a Sanskrit word? When was the last time you even used a Hindi word outside of an Indian restaurant?

  Second of all, you can’t take a nap in temple. It’s physically impossible. In church, you have pews, and although there are all these families arranged like Easter Island monoliths on them, smelling of musky perfume and sweat and the woodiness of Bible pages, at least you have those seat backs to support you and your sleep-bobbing head. And when you do have to be awake, at least you get cues, like the first chord of each hymn heaved out of an organ, or a bellowing incantation from the priest.

  Not so in temple. I sit on the floor in that manner called Indian-style, men on the left, women on the right, struggling to keep my composure while screaming inside about how God could put me in such an uncomfortable position—made all the more uncomfortable due to the soreness the splinter has left in my cheek. (Nurse Gifford Band-Aided it for me with an unspoken understanding between us that notifying my parents was out of the question.) I know that if I shut my eyes for one instant, I’ll pitch backward into the lap of the man behind me. And the pundit continues chanting, his syllables sometimes purring like a tiger, sometimes slippery like ghee, the melted butter that coats the scented wood chips he throws into an open flame after each verse.

  The one true redemption of temple is that it is full of colors, fragrances, and flames. In short, theater. Which Christians have, yes, with their rosaries and wine and candles and Nativities. But we Indians whip even Catholics in terms of mystery. Their incense is sweet and subtle. Ours is spicier, tangier, like a masala versus a marsala. Their icons are stately, polite, gilding sometimes their only brash embellishment. Our icons are veritable statues, marble, five and a half feet high, wreathed in flashy carnation garlands and smoke.

  Okay, so maybe the priests at Cody’s church are dressed a little better than our pundit, who wears a too-loose white kurtha pajama, the soles of his feet as cracked as dry earth. He has an obsidian comb-over. And he transitions from Hindi to Sanskrit to English so quickly that I often don’t know which he is trying to speak. It’s Hinglishskrit.

  But what Punditji lacks in physical appearance he makes up for in gusto. He smiles cheerily, pulls his cracked feet closer toward him like a little child listening to his own story. And although I can’t understand a word of the story, I can understand that the raconteur is jubilant.

  Our temple is a pretty ramshackle affair. It is not even a temple, really; it is an old two-story house with gray wood paneling on the outside. It sits on a heavily trafficked road near downtown Cincinnati, squeezed among so many other old, wood-paneled houses that it is almost lost in the shuffle. The main floor of the house is not even used for the temple; it is where the pundit and his wife live, amid numerous framed pictures of Hindu gods, countless incense holders, and so many religious tomes that, aside from one orange couch bursting fluff at the seams and a TV so old it could have contained the first episode of The Honeymooners within its walls, the furniture is formed solely out of stacks of books—a Ramayana desk, a Mahabharata coffee table.

  But I shouldn’t badmouth my temple today. I am having fun. I am sitting just a few paces away from the pundit, who, just before this service, gifted to me a pair of hand cymbals. I eagerly await the end of his speech, when he cues Mrs. Jindal—a squat woman who always wears the same brown salwaar kameez and a pair of tinted eyeglasses—to play her harmonium, which she keeps at her side like a pet pooch. Cued, she moves the instrument in front of her and tickles the tiny ivories of her half-accordion, mini-organ of an instrument.

  It is to match the verve of the pundit-Jindal duo that, once their musical interlude begins, I start to use those hand cymbals as deftly as I can. The more Mrs. Jindal pumps out breathy chords from the harmonium, the more I jing jing jing, the peals bouncing off the peeling paint of the walls and into the ears of the men and women. The blessed thing about temple-going, immigrant Indian adults is that they appreciate the nuances of the ceremony, and it doesn’t take much for them to acknowledge the virtuosic nature of my playing. Between slides of my hands, I look up to see smiling affirmation from the men, most of whom are dressed in a white dress shirt buttoned over a V-neck undershirt. Or I look to the ladies’ side and see women just as plump as Mrs. Jindal lightly tapping one palm against the other in their laps.

  After the musical interlude, it’s back to the pundit’s droning, back to my confusion. I sit looking at the hand cymbals, enthralled by their gold. I hear a psssst from the women’s side: it’s my mother motioning for me to pay attention. She has perfected the skill of being able to hiss at me across the temple without disturbing anyone else. It is up there with talents like being able to touch her fingers to a hot pan without flinching; being able to tell, by how I say good night, whether or not I’ve brushed my teeth; and being able to remember random American celebrity names like Mary Stuart Masterson and Tony Goldwyn. In response to my multitalented mother’s admonition, I roll my eyes and try to focus on the pundit again. I know that I should be listening to his words, heeding whatever advice I can glean from his garbled Hinglishskrit, but it is not my nature to listen that way. Listening for me concerns very little actual listening and more the attention my eyes can pay. Nothing the pundit says sticks with me more than the trellis made by the cracks on his feet.

  A wave of guilt flows through me as I begin to space out again, and in that moment I feel even more Catholic than an altar boy.

  Soon it is time for aarti, which marks the end of temple. Everyone stands up, eager to sing “Om Jai Jagdish Hare”—that is, to stretch their legs. It is time for us all to walk to the altar, take one of the small gold trays that bear candles, and move it in a circle a few times before dropping a dollar bill onto the tray in a dual offering—one to lotus-borne Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity and wealth, the other to the bevy of plump women who cook the after-temple prasad, an assortment of marzipan treats, sweet rice, and oil-glistening puri.

  Two lines form along the aisle—a plastic throw rug, one that digs into the carpet with myriad pointy teeth. Parents push their children to the front of the lines. I dawdle, trying to avoid being at the front of the line, mainly because I suddenly can’t remember which way we are supposed to circle the tray. Cloc
kwise? Counterclockwise? And wait—which way is clockwise anyway? And how many circles to make? Two? Three? Ten?

  There is another reason I dawdle. I look up at the ceiling, from which hang, at different corners of the room, steel bells the size of heads. At three of the four bells, the tallest of the Indian men—correction: the anomalous Indian men who happen to be anything over 5'9"—are reaching up and clanging the clappers against the sides of the bell, complementing the pundit, who leads the singing at the front of the room from an old but effective silver microphone. I look up at the bell in my corner, the only one left alone. How I wish I could reach up there and ring the bell, how I wish I could translate my acuity at the hand cymbals to that louder instrument. And just when I am at the height of my wishing, I feel someone rush behind me and grab my legs. I squeal, terrified, but my squeal is unheard due to the peals filling the room. I nearly topple due to the force moving below me, but suddenly I am hoisted within inches of the bell, and when I look down I see my dad’s head.

  “Ring the bell, Kiran,” he encourages, and I am so surprised that I do so right away, as if somewhere among the ringing there will be an explanation of where this burst of affection has come from. Literally bolstered by my father’s mirth, I give the other three ringers a run for their gold-tray-borne money. I ring and clang with a virtuosity never before heard in these parts, any of the physical and emotional pain I was feeling beforehand disappearing. The men gathered in our corner look at the tiny totem pole my father and I have made and smile the same serene smiles they aimed toward me during my hand-cymbal performance. From the corner at the other end of the room, Mrs. Jindal looks up from her Elysium Harmonium and acknowledges my music with a grin.

  At the end of aarti, everyone in the room kneels down and touches his or her forehead—a dot of red powder pushed onto it by the pundit’s middle finger—to the orange, frayed, flat carpet in a silent kowtow finale. The ring of the bells, though technically over, is somehow louder during this. The negation of their sound seems to make that sound all the more important, as if for a brief moment I’m a deaf person longing desperately for any mundane noise that used to fall on my ears.

  My father is kneeling right next to me. This has never happened before. Usually, he is back with the men while I sit with the children near the front. But now he is arched next to me in the same position as mine, and in this position he doesn’t seem all that much bigger than I am. In fact, when I dare a look over, he seems to be scrunching himself as small as he can, his knees almost touching his chin. I come close to laughing—or, I think about what I would look like laughing at him, for I would never have the courage to laugh openly in front of my father. Still, a wave of sadness rushes through me. I am smart enough to realize that this laughter, this perception of his ridiculousness, must be exactly what my father feels every time he looks at me and gives me That Stare—the one that makes me think, immediately, I am wrong. There is something wrong with me.

  Just thinking of That Stare makes anything magical that has happened to me in these past several minutes vanish, and the wound from the playground seems to throb again. I am a ball of disappointment, and as everyone stands up and releases the penitence they’ve mustered for this service, my father is once again tall.

  “Beta, vhat’s wrong,” he “asks,” although his tone gives no hint of questioning.

  “Nothing,” I say, stepping back and shrugging.

  “Beta, vhat is the matter.”

  “Nothing,” I repeat, scurrying away, reminded that there is a language even harder to master than Sanskrit.

  After we kids eat our prasad, teetering as we try to sit cross-legged and balance sectioned foam plates of food on our knees, it is time for us to have our version of Sunday school. Our mothers make us put on our shoes, which everyone has to take off before entering the temple, then push us out of the basement door, which lets onto the parking lot. From there we Hansel-and-Gretel our way along flat, round stepping-stones to the front door of the house, then enter the main floor—taking off our shoes again—and seat ourselves on the spongy brown carpet of the pundit’s main sitting room. We use his book-furniture to lean on.

  The class is taught by the pundit’s wife, a woman with an enormous nose that is augmented by her bull-worthy nose ring. She is the only balding woman I have ever seen, a saucer-sized circle of hair missing at the back of her head.

  The kids that make up the Sunday school are all celebrities from my childhood. Meaning: they are the core group of Indian friends I have in my life, even if they are more like enemies.

  There is Neha Singh, at twelve years old already a great Indian beauty, with eyes as brown as chocolate cake and hair so black you want to fill a Bic pen with it. Too bad those eyes are hidden right now behind enormous, plastic-rimmed glasses. And just two months back, Neha had braces slapped on her perfect teeth, her parents making sure that any potential misalignment was stopped before it began. Still, everyone affords her complete submission, knowing that the moment the glasses and braces come off, the beauty will be back full throttle.

  Seated with Neha are the rest of the powerful prepubescent Punjabis:

  Shelley Aggarwal, whose real name is Shalini, but her TOEFL-impaired parents are trying hard to make up for their accents by giving her an American nickname. She is a very thin girl with an equally thin, long nose, which is almost hooked at the end. (“Almost hooked” meaning that there is no actual curving under; rather, the point is so fine that it casts a shadow under the tip that gives the illusion of hooking.) She likes to wear saris as much as possible, probably because they make her look older and wiser.

  There’s Shruti Gupta. Of all the girls, she’s the biggest bitch, and if Sarah and Melissa ever wanted to make an Indian friend—not that they ever would—Shruti would fit right in with them. She speaks rarely, but when she does, it’s usually to show how superior she is. She is in the fifth grade but takes seventh grade math, which she studies at home with her doctor parents. Her parents are so conservative—they conserve so much—that Shruti, though born and raised here, has the same Anglo-accented English they do. The Guptas really do construct the perfect paradox: they practically keep their daughter locked up in a (gold-plated) cage, and yet they both practice very progressive forms of medicine, her father being an internist, her mother a cosmetic surgeon. One day I’ll have to solicit both of their services—a cure to prevent me from retching whenever I see Shruti and plastic surgery to get rid of the rock-hard frown she etches onto my face.

  Completing Neha’s sidekick trio is Neelam Govind. She is a morbidly obese girl with skin so dark she could be Aretha Franklin’s twin sister. Her big mouth doesn’t just take in food, though; the loudest voice in the world comes out of it frequently.

  There are a dozen other Indian girls in the room, ranging from two to twelve, but whether they are older or younger than the quartet, they know they are inferior. There is always one bitch posse in a group, and they reign supreme and alone.

  The only people who can match the bitch posse for intimidation are a quartet of boys. Of which, of course, I am not a member.

  There is the dreamy Ashok Gupta. He is not related to Shruti; they share the same last name, but “Gupta” is the “Smith” of Indian last names. He is the most adept tennis player of all of the boys and, even at twelve, is a total hunk. The border of his hair, where the women at Supercuts use their clippers to even out the edge, meeting the even brown skin of the back of his neck—it is a perfect thing to me, and I always make it a point to sit behind him, or as close to him as the boys will let me, so that I can stare at his neck and the one tiny beauty mark located over the small bump of his first vertebra.

  There is Ajay Govind, Neelam’s brother. Though not morbidly obese like Neelam, he still has a paunch like a flesh life-saver around his waist. He is a study in how nappy Indian hair can get. His hair has gotten long, which is to say that instead of hanging down to his shoulders as would happen to an American boy, it curves around his head into
a black cotton candy.

  There’s Ashish Aggarwal, Shelley’s younger-by-one-year brother. He is the closest thing to an Indian Albert Einstein. He has already won the state science fair twice—once in fourth grade and once in fifth grade—both times for finding the freezing point of saltwater. I have no idea what that means, but it earned him a $1,000 savings bond the first year and an invitation to a private grade school the second year (which his parents declined because they, like Shruti’s parents, felt that they could teach him better).

  And rounding out the quartet—literally—is the male version of Neelam, Arun Gupta. He belongs to Shruti’s Guptas, not Ashok’s, though he really looks unrelated to either child due to his weight. Every lesson, he is oblivious to the fact that the milk chocolate, chubby inlet of his butt crack is visible to all who sit behind him. This is because he is usually too busy eating his stolen bounty from the prasad line—a handful of jalabi, a type of neon orange funnel cake so sticky you can see fragments of your reflection when looking at it.

  There are a dozen or so other boys, also ranging from two to twelve, but yet again, they all look to this posse.

  I’ve always entertained the idea that both quartets have a hope—which, of course, they would rather die than express—that one day they will pair off as was meant to be, handsome Ashok taking the braces-freed Neha by the thin, gold-bangled wrist; Shelley affectionately burying the mirage hook of her nose into Ajay’s thick fro; Ashish and Shruti rapt in ecstasy as they review quadratic equations; and Neelam and Arun devouring a platter of syrupy desserts before devouring each other.

  And then there is Kiran.

  Here we are, gathered in the only Hindu temple for over a hundred miles—literally, the closest temple is the one in Columbus, a two-hour drive away—leaning against furniture made of paper instead of wood, while our parents pick at the crumbs of their prasad downstairs and remember the intricate open-air temples of their youth.