Blue Boy Read online

  Today, the pundit’s wife is wearing an ill-fitting, peach-colored sari, the dough-like protrusion of her bare stomach like a big uncooked cinnamon roll.

  “My children, vas today’s temple to your likink?” she asks in her thick accent, and I am terrified to hear words of affirmation from the kids around me, as if they actually understood what the pundit was saying this morning.

  “Are there any particular qvestions you hef?” she asks, and I feel a little better when no one asks any.

  “Come on, children, some qvestions, pleece.”

  Silence.

  Silence is maddening to me. I can’t deal with hearing nothing, especially in a classroom setting—and especially in a classroom setting where disembodied Barbie smiles aren’t distorting my view. And so, even though I feel a pang of No, Kiran, you shouldn’t talk, I venture a question.

  “Can you tell us about reincarnation?”

  I ask this even though I already know what it is. Reincarnation is when someone has several lives. When they die, they are reborn as another person. And if they did something bad in their past life, they come back as something terrible, like an ant or a retarded person or someone really, really fat. Like Neelam and Arun. But I ask this particular question because I want her to talk about my new Krishna theory.

  “Beta, that has nothink to do vith today’s temple.”

  Dammit. I knew she was going to say that.

  Thus commences today’s derision:

  I hear Shruti mutter to Neha, “Neha, what happens when you kill someone?”

  Neha says, “I don’t know. What?”

  “You come back as Kiran in your next life.”

  Ashish, managing to stop playing games on his Texas Instruments calculator for one second, says to Ajay, “Yo, Ajay, what’s the difference between Ganesh and Kiran?”

  “I don’t know, man. What?”

  “Ganeshji has an elephant’s head, and Kiran is retarded.”

  Truly witty repartee, let me tell you, yet biting wit is not necessary to break my heart. My ears burn, and I focus on my sock-clad feet for the next several minutes. I hold back my tears, so instead of the salty stuff dripping out of my eyes, I feel a well of snot build up in my throat. I swallow it in one lump. The only thing that pulls me out of my depression is hearing the word Krishna.

  “So Krishnaji vas varrior, too, children. Even gods sometimes hef to deal vith var. But notice that Krishnaji does not just atteck. He says that ve should seek inner peace, and then ve’ll make others vant peace. So vhat Punditji is saying is not to be scared about Iraq. Sometimes var is necessary, but from it comes peace.”

  They are obviously talking about the Persian Gulf, even though the war ended a year ago now. But the neon lime explosions on TV, a stunning shower of green fireballs over nighttime Baghdad, cannot be forgotten. It was all well and good until I realized what I was looking at wasn’t a new Nintendo game. Here in the pundit’s living room, venturing to look away from my feet, I see that the other kids all have a look of true unrest on their faces, proof that they have the same scary thought I do: bombs were dropped in the world, and people died. Which, when you’re a kid, means Someone is going to drop a bomb on us.

  “Why is Krishnaji blue?” I blurt out. Not entirely relevant, but at least it’s on the right subject. The other kids laugh, then stop, wondering, “Wait—why is he blue?”

  “He vas born blue, beta,” the pundit’s wife says, dismissively. She opens her mouth to speak again, but I’m already shooting more words at her.

  “But why was he born blue?” I ask.

  “Vat do you mean, beta? He vas born blue.”

  “But what does that mean?”

  “It means he vas born blue. He vas born god. He vas different.”

  “But didn’t the other kids make fun of him for being blue?”

  “Kids making fun of Krishnaji? Beta, enough. Nobody made fun of Krishnaji! He vas God!”

  “But let’s say that, uh, Ashok had blue skin,” I say, motioning to Ashok gently and smiling in a friendly way. He sits back in surprise, a grin curling into his mouth. Sweat pricks at my skin; I am not dumb enough to interpret his smile as affirmative. “Even though everyone likes Ashok, he’d still be made fun of if his skin were blue!” The boys chuckle; they wonder what the word “like” means coming from me.

  “Beta, Ashok is not a god,” she says, then adds, “Even though we all love you, Ashok Beta.” Ashok beams.

  “He’s also not a fag,” Ashish whispers to the boys, putting away his calculator in sudden interest.

  I press on now, having nothing to lose.

  “I still don’t understand why he is blue. And why blue? Why not red or green or orange?” I imagine a red Krishna, his skin the color of roses.

  “Vell, beta, he just vas. Now, as I vas saying, var…”

  The only thing that keeps me going as the class ends is the realization that I am even more like Krishna than I thought. He was blue and different but had no real explanation of why. I am so different from everyone, and yet there doesn’t seem to be an explanation of my oddity, either. Krishna was different but had the fortune of being a god. He was destined for great things—war-defying, cosmic things.

  Again, the thought comes into my head: what if I were simply a reincarnation of Krishna? If so, what those kids don’t know—what those derisive posses can’t get their thickly black-haired heads around—is that I am destined for great things, too. I am blue, too. You just can’t see it yet.

  After our Sunday School, we kids wend our way back on the stepping-stones and into the bustling hives of our respective parents. Since I am avoiding all contact with my fellow kids after my embarrassment, I observe their parents as I always do, trying to situate my own mom and dad somewhere in the group.

  There are five core aunties in our circle of friends. They are as follows:

  1) Nisha Singh, brace-teethed Neha’s mother—a stunning beauty with a collection of saris so blinding in their brightness that her closet must look like a sunrise made of cloth.

  2) Ratika Aggarwal, hook-nosed Shelley’s mother—a business-savvy woman who runs a financial-planning office with her husband. She has bushy eyebrows and a manner of speaking so dry that it seems as if she once knew perfect English but was so insouciant about life that her accent relapsed.

  3) Anita Gupta, brainy Shruti and chubby Arun’s mother—a woman as tiny as my mother but very thin, with a high-pitched voice that sounds like a bird’s squawk.

  4) Kavita Gupta, dreamy Ashok’s mother—the most traditional of the Indian women. I have never seen her wide forehead not adorned with a large red bindi. She speaks only Hindi, except when she’s feeling especially conservative and speaks Punjabi.

  5) Rashmi Govind, fat Neelam and fro-bearing Ashish’s mother—the really large, jolly one. There’s one in every group.

  My mother occupies a very interesting place in this bevy. She is, by far, the most Americanized of these mothers. Whereas most of the Indian mothers speak mainly in Hindi, inserting an English word here and there when they can’t remember the Hindi word, my mother does the opposite. She speaks in English, and it is only the occasional slang phrase that she says in Hindi. She is always the one who introduces new American fads into the group. It was only a matter of time after my mom got her Gap card that each of these women had one, with the exception of Kavita Gupta.

  My mother is a plump woman, but she falls in the middle of the spectrum, somewhere between Anita Gupta’s rail of a frame and Rashmi Govind’s centripetal force.

  Here, then, is the counterpart quintet of husbands:

  1) Harsh Singh, husband of Nisha and father of Neha—It’s really pronounced “Hersh,” but, in its English phonetic version, it is the most fitting name I can imagine for him. 5'5", with a fuzzy mustache and a crescent of hair on an otherwise bald head, he is one hundred and fifty pounds of sheer strictness, a heart surgeon who ironically seems to be living without a heart.

  2) Naveen Aggarwal, h
usband of Ratika and father of Shelley—a stuttering, stumbling man who wears oversize glasses that make his eyes look like eight balls. He needs them because he’s spent his entire life looking at fine print on all the investment documents he and his dry-humored wife peruse.

  3) Amish Gupta, husband of Anita, father of Shruti and Arun—He is a pleasant foil to the scratchy-voiced Anita in that he is mild-mannered and soft-spoken. This is probably why he is an internist.

  4) Sachin Gupta, husband of Kavita, father of Ashok—I have never understood a word this man says. The greatest bafflement is that he’s an ear, nose, and throat doctor. How on earth do his patients understand his instructions? Somewhere out there, dozens of men and women with sinus problems are backing up with mucus because of Sachin Gupta’s mystery tongue.

  5) Sanjay Govind, husband of Rashmi, father of Neelam and Ashish—It never fails: the really fat Indian wife will have a really thin husband. Another internist. Now if he could only prevent his wife from filling her innards with more curry.

  At parties, my father fits in with this group so well because he is assertive. From the moment he walks into a room, he finishes his movements exactly. He reaches over and shakes everyone’s hand, nodding his head slightly each time as if striking a perfect balance between the Indian Namaste and the American How’s it goin’, pardner; he sits down on the couch solidly, then lifts his leg to cross it over the other as soon as he is settled. When Harsh Gupta pours him a whiskey, my father takes it with another tough nod of his head, then sits back and listens to the conversation at hand, which is usually about George Bush—and soon, even Bill Clinton—and if he is helping or hurting Indians. The discussion is never about anything that does not relate to Indians. These men miss their homeland terribly. There is a longing, a sadness in their eyes that is difficult to miss.

  Perhaps as a result of this homeland-missing wistfulness, my family’s drive home from the temple is always quiet, except for the bhajans my father plays on the car stereo. While Lata Mangeshkar shivers up scales of notes, my mom, my dad, and I greet our newfound religious loyalty with silence. As I mentioned, silence is my least favorite state of being, and being in a closed space with my father gives me even more jitters than usual. But the one comforting thing is knowing that my mother will be the one to break the silence. She usually does this half an hour into our forty-five-minute return drive. A whole ride home without speaking would be abnormal, but a ride home capped with fifteen minutes of conversation redeems the trip from abnormality. Until my mother speaks, we have before us a drive full of truly Ohioan sights: the compact downtown of Cincinnati, defined by the majestic rind of Riverfront Stadium, where the Reds don their shiny crimson helmets again and again, and the tall mass of the Carew Tower, a lopsided rectangle of tan-colored brick that looks like a half-eaten bar of Kit Kat; past row upon row of maroon-colored apartment buildings, some of their windows smashed, some of their windows open with children peering out; then past nothing but highway, bordered by steakhouses and supermarkets and fast-food restaurants, a billboard here and there advertising the latest Ford pickup on sale at one of the numerous used-car dealerships in these suburbs; past nothing but fields dotted with Queen Anne’s lace and weeds bearing pale purple bulbs; then curving off an exit into a compact collage of small office buildings—all earth-toned and evoking the fifties or seventies; past convenience stores, gas stations, and more fast-food restaurants. Finally, as our car rounds past a new Burger King, my mother breaks the silence.

  “I talked to Sushil Gupta today.” She pulls down the car’s sun visor and looks at herself in the mirror. She wipes her eyes, as if to take off the age that has crept over them. She opens them wide, then relaxes, wrinkles seizing them again. “You know, Sushil is still living here, but her husband has his medical practice in Detroit, so she flies there every veekend to see him.”

  Since my mother has spoken, I can now speak freely. “What? Don’t they have a daughter now?”

  “Vell, she takes the daughter vith her.”

  “What kind of arrangement is that? Why doesn’t Sushil Auntie just move to Detroit?”

  “Vell, all her family is here.”

  “But her husband is there!”

  “Vell, he’s not going to be there for that long. He vants to take care of his patients instead of just leaving them. So he’s getting everything in order before he goes.”

  “Oh, that makes sense, I guess. When does he plan on moving here?”

  “In about two, three years.”

  Indian logic. It’s an oxymoron.

  “Wait—if she’s here and he’s there, how did they meet in the first place?” I ask.

  “Her parents put out an ad. In India Abroad.”

  “That’s the most revolting thing I’ve ever heard.” I love saying the word “revolting.” Roald Dahl uses it all the time in his books, and it’s such a catty, British word. Catty, British words are the best kind of words.

  “Beta, it’s not such a bad idea these days,” my mom says. “You know, the more complicated things get over here, the more important it is to find someone vith good Indian morals.” She says this with a jab of her finger in the air, and I think back to the master bathroom, when she flailed her flour-dusted arms about. Arre?

  “Yeah, and I’m sure their lunches in Detroit are some real quality time,” I say.

  “It’s not a bad idea,” my father echoes from the wheel, taking a breather from his cat-and-mouse game of weaving through lanes on the highway and tailgating people. “Besides, ve might do that vhen finding your vife!” The silence on my mother’s side of the car means she’s considered it, too.

  I imagine a headline in India Abroad, all right:

  OHIOAN INDIAN CHILD JUMPS TO DEATH FROM PARENTS’ CAR

  Two miles from our house, we stop at a gas station to fill up the car. Stopping at a gas station is an epic event for my father. He watches gas prices as avidly as he watches cricket scores—that is to say, insanely. At any given point in time, he knows every gas price in town to the hundredth of a cent. Ever since the bombs fell in Iraq, the prices have been quavering madly. Which has made my father even more intent in his efforts.

  When he gets back into the car from filling the gas, the air is filled with the delicious scent of unleaded. I try hard not to breathe it in; when I was four, I remember him leaning in the front window, pump in hand, and saying, “Beta, make sure you never inhale this gas. It vill kill you.” Now, several years and countless trips to gas stations later, I sit in the backseat with tension holding my torso hostage, as if invisible marionette strings are attached from my shoulders to the top of my head. As my father starts the car, I think, “This is ridiculous. Breathe, Kiran,” and I take one deep breath. But it’s useless; the tension returns, stronger than before, and not until we reach home five minutes later and I hop out of the backseat and onto the cement of our serpentine driveway do I breathe freely.

  My parents get out of the car, my mother taking a little longer than my father. She has tiny legs and feet and is plump, so every one of her moves has a certain waddle to it. This is particularly endearing when she is shopping; she passes through malls with a waddle-sweep that is both graceful and determined.

  There they are, Shashi and Ramesh Sharma: solidly side by side like a salt and pepper shaker set. My mother’s hair, which has remained the same length for as long as I can remember, is pulled back in a ponytail and cinched in a white scrunchie to match her white salwaar kameez. Her hands are still clasped in front of her, like prayer residue. It resembles the way she stands when greeting guests at our house, just before she tells them to take their shoes off.

  My father is wearing his trusty old jacket. It’s tan, vinyl, almost Members Only but no cigar. His hair is cut in the most traditional way possible, the way gents have their hair on the Just For Men boxes that my father stashes below the master bathroom sink. His eyes are very round and have maintained their intensity after his forty years on Earth. They suddenly disappear behin
d a Sony camera. Before I can even register comprehension on my face, my father has taken a picture of me.

  If I gathered every picture he has ever taken of me and stacked the lot in one pile, I’d have a flipbook of my life. Just thumb through the stack and see me coming out of the womb, then riding a bigwheel in my OshKosh B’Gosh overalls, then doing ballet in the kitchen. He doesn’t need any particular reason to take a picture. The other day, he took a picture of me spreading peanut butter on a piece of bread.

  My parents head into the house, but I linger outside for a moment. We live in front of Crestview’s token park. Like The Clearing, it’s an abnormally large piece of land, mainly because it’s really just a forest. But one day someone slapped some tennis courts, an elaborate swing set, some Druid-like stone shelters, and a steel gate bearing a PARK CLOSES AT DUSK sign onto the land and called it a park. Here, at our house, where only the trees—and not the playground accoutrements—are visible, the park looks primitive, untouched. As I eye it now, it seems to have lost none of its mystery after all the times I have stared into it. Sometimes, when I feel grumpy, I try to naysay my entire Ohioan experience and insist that there is no Ohioan beauty that I couldn’t find in New York or Paris or Russia or Madagascar or any of the other places I gaze at in travel books. But my grumpiness is futile. There is an implacable intrigue in the gray-brown quilt that the trees make, and above all, the dark recesses far beyond. In moments like this one, I realize that what I have been attempting to do with those travel books is re-create the marvels that have always been in my own backyard.

  What is more, in Central Park you might come across derelicts playing with Campbell’s Soup cans and thinking they’re dogs; you may come across old crones feeding the birds tuppence a bag before shoving a fistful of seeds in their own mouths, crazier birds than the pigeons they feed; you may come across suicidal lovers or homeless men finding feasts in trash cans; but you most certainly would never find a middle-aged Indian recording crude-oil prices on graph paper as if his life depended on it.