Chapter Thirty-Four
I wait as Krish jabs away at the tape binding my hands with the sharp protrusion of the ring. Finally something gives, and he’s able to rip it off. Blood rushes to my fingers. I turn around and shake out my arms.
I’m still feeling an odd awkwardness, and it makes it hard to face him. I remind myself to keep my focus on getting us out of here. He hands the ring back to me, and I push it back into my bra because that’s still the safest place for it. Then I free Krish’s arms before getting the tape off my ankles.
He makes quick work of his own and helps me. He doesn’t avoid my eyes, and that makes the awkwardness melt away. We help each other stand, then use the wall for support as circulation returns to our limbs.
“Let’s get out of here,” he says and grabs the door handle and tugs it. The door rattles but doesn’t open, so he gives it a few more yanks.
There seems to be a single slide bolt at the top on the outside. It’s barely holding the door shut. I grab the handle, too, wrapping my hands around his, and we put every bit of our joint strength into pulling it open.
After a few hefty tugs, it swings inward, and we’re thrown back. We find our balance and step gingerly out into the sunshine.
I tiptoe to one side, and he goes to the other, scanning the area for our captors. There’s not a soul in sight. We make our way to the dirt road. To our right is the station where we got off the train, and to our left only fields.
“I don’t think we should go back to the station,” I say, still nervous. “Maybe if we keep walking in the other direction, we’ll get to a major road where we can find a ride.”
“That’s as good a plan as any,” he says, and we start walking.
Without GPS, we have to get somewhere where we can ask for directions.
The dirt road leads us through a field. It looks like sugarcane. I know because we used to sell sugarcane at the store when stock came in from Hawaii. After Baba bought the store, he installed a juicer, and for a while fresh sugarcane juice was one of our most popular items.
This is my first time in a sugarcane field, and I’m glad to discover that the cane grows tall and tight enough to hide adult-size humans. I press close to the sugarcane.
“If they planned to follow us, I don’t think they would have left us alone,” Krish says, picking up on my discomfort, but he also sticks close.
After a good mile of walking, there’s still no road in sight, and I’m thirsty.
“Have you ever tried sugarcane?” I ask and grab a stalk to test if I can break it. “It might be the most delicious thing in the world.”
“More delicious than hot sauce?” Krish says.
I try not to smile and attempt bending the inch-thick stalk. After some heavy-duty bending, it cracks, but the fibers still hold on, keeping it attached to the plant. Krish takes one end of it and I hold the other, and we twist and pull until it breaks free.
I whoop and high-five Krish. Then I bite into the broken end, grip the thick green-brown peel with my teeth, and pull it off in strips until I’ve exposed the fleshy fibrous inner stalk.
Krish looks impressed.
Wait until you’ve tasted it, buddy.
I bite off a piece of the exposed meat and start chewing to release the sugarcane juice, which tastes like liquid sweetness, nectar made by angels for the dying. The sugary high fills me, and I try not to, but I moan.
Once I’ve sucked out all the juice, I spit out the husk, bite off another chunk, and hand the cane to Krish. He mirrors me and bites off a chunk and starts chewing. Surprise widens his eyes.
“Damn,” he says sucking the juice out of the husk in his mouth.
We start walking again and hand the stalk back and forth until the entire thing is gone—not a quick activity, since sugarcane makes you pay in effort to taste its magic. Just as we finish, we hear a car approaching.
We run to the middle of the road and start waving our arms about. A fluorescent-green vehicle, which can’t technically be described as any form of the automobile, sputters past us and bounces to a stop in a cloud of dust. It looks like a cross between a rickshaw and a stunted minivan, in a state so decrepit it has to be a hazard on a public road.
“What’s happening?” the grizzled white-turbaned driver asks in a thick rural dialect of Marathi I barely understand.
“Where are you off to?” I ask in my more urban dialect.
“How is that your business?” he says.
I’m not sure if it’s rude to smile, but a smile escapes me. “Our car broke down back there. We need a ride into the closest town so we can get a mechanic.”
“Do I look like your uncle?”
“No.” I turn around and pull a thousand-rupee bill from my bra and turn back to him. “But if you were my uncle, I wouldn’t have to pay you, now, would I?”
The guy leans over and pushes the passenger door open. “Consider this your uncle’s Tempo.”
Krish and I squeeze in next to him on the cracked vinyl seats and ask where he’s going. He tells us he’s headed to Pune, but our deal was to get to the next town, which is Vadgaon.
“The deal can be adjusted if you take us to Pune,” I shout over the metallic racket of the motor as we start driving.
“What about your car?” he shouts back with a wink.
“We’ll get it later,” I say.
“I’ll bet,” he says. “Just make sure your family doesn’t come after me for helping you run away with your lover.” He throws a look at Krish, who smiles politely.
The driver goes off into the story of how he ran away with the village beauty when they were fifteen as the Tempo makes sure every bone in our bodies vibrates at a different frequency.
“Are you still together?” I ask.
“I’m not lucky enough to be rid of her,” he says. “Even though all you women turn from roses into cauliflowers once you have us. Good thing your man doesn’t understand Marathi, so I can’t warn him.”
“There is a God,” I mumble.
The man talks without stopping the entire way. He even talks in the background when Krish and I discuss how we’re going to find Ashatai Athavale without GPS.
Krish, naturally, remembers her address because I forwarded it to him when Reva sent it to me.
“Ask him if he has a cell phone,” Krish says over the rattling motor and the man’s relentless monologue. “And if we can use his maps.”
“I used to be a rickshaw driver in Pune for thirty years,” the man says when I ask. “I don’t need maps.” He taps a finger to his temple. “The GPS is here.”
“You don’t need to translate that,” Krish says when I open my mouth to do just that. “ Real men don’t need directions transcends language.”
I’m still smiling as Krish rattles off the address and the man navigates a network of narrow lanes and takes us there. He drops us off on the coziest tree-lined street with the most charming buildings. I thank him and the GPS in his brain and hope he hasn’t just dropped us off at some random place. He hasn’t, because a painted sign on the building gate says Laxmi Nivas , and the street we turned on did say Tenth Lane Prabhat Road.
We take the stairs up to the second floor and find the door with a polished brass A B Athavale nameplate.
“I love that the buildings have names here and people put their names on their front doors,” Krish says, which is exactly what I was just thinking. “Ready?”
I haven’t noticed until now that he doesn’t seem out of place here the way he did in Jackson Heights. Either he’s changed or the way I see him has.
“Just a minute,” I say. The bruise on his cheek has turned an angry purple. “You have some dirt on your face and a few bits of hay.” I point to his curls, which aren’t tied back today. “May I?”
He nods and makes the effort to keep his expression flat.
I wipe his cheek and make quick work of the mess in his hair.
“Thank you,” he says and points to my face.
Obviously, I’m a mess, too, and I have no idea how bad it is. I start wiping my cheeks. “Fine?”
He lifts his hand, then pulls it back.
“Just do it,” I say.
He hesitates only slightly before stroking my jaw with his thumb. Then he pulls a few leaves out of my hair, which is a full-blown hornet’s nest. I pull it out of the ponytail, smooth it back, and tie it up in a high bun.
He nods. “As presentable as we’re going to be.”
He rings the doorbell and I knock.
A woman in a white cotton sari opens the inner door and stares at us through the wrought iron bars of the outer door. The word that springs to mind is frail . Her face is covered in a network of lines so fine it’s like her skin is made of crushed chiffon. Her thinning all-gray hair is pulled back in a barely there braid. “How can I help you?” she asks, voice shaking.
“We’re looking for Ashatai Athavale,” I say in Marathi.
“She’s dead,” she says, and then watches unblinking as our faces melt into confusion. Before we can recover from that, she points at Krish’s bruise. “What happened to your face?”
Naturally he doesn’t understand a word, but before he can tell her that or I can translate for him, she does it herself.
“Who boxed your face?” she asks in perfectly clipped English.
“The guys who didn’t want us to find Ashatai,” Krish says, meeting her gaze head-on.
She laughs. “I like you. What do you want?”
“To talk to Ashatai about Vasudha Patil.”
The change in her eyes is imperceptible, but she pulls the door open. “Come on in. I guess you found Ashatai.”
Then, before our very eyes, she transforms from frail to fierce, no tremor in her hands, a hard alertness in her eyes, her spine straight, her steps quick.
We follow her in. The apartment is dimly lit and cozy in the way of an ancient library, walls lined with books, cement mosaic floors worn to smoothness. It reeks of history and buzzes with stories.
“You look hungry.” That’s the first thing she says, and she leads us into the kitchen, where huge stainless steel pots of rice, dal, and ghee and a jar of pickle are laid out on the heavy teakwood dining table.
“Go wash up before you eat,” she orders and points us to a sink.
I’ve never given soap much thought, but scrubbing my hands and face makes me grateful for all the simple things we take for granted.
When we’re done, she orders us to sit down and help ourselves.
We do as she says. Turns out being chased, bound, and robbed is great for the appetite, because we eat as though we haven’t in days. It’s possibly the most delicious dal I’ve ever eaten in my life, and there’s a lot of it.
“I live by myself, but I never got out of the habit of making enough for my music students. Now it feeds some of the children who work in the neighborhood market.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “We didn’t mean to eat their food.”
“We’re all eating each other’s food on this earth, child. Never feel guilty to eat when you’re hungry. Just remember to feed the hungry when you can. Now tell me everything.”
As we scarf down the food, we do exactly that. We tell her every single detail except the part where Krish has the second ring. We pass the story between us like a baton. She listens like a sari-clad Yoda, heavy lidded and meditative, hands folded in her lap.
When we reach the part where we knocked on her door, she sighs out a breath.
“I don’t know who Reva Smith is. But based on what you’re telling me, it sounds like she’s Sureva Bhalekar. Who was Vasu’s lover.” She says the word lover with some satisfaction, and Krish and I exchange a glance.
Her gaze slides between us. “I don’t know why people associate that word with the physical. If you’re in love, if your hearts recognize each other as a piece of themselves, you’re lovers. When will people stop using lust to devalue love?”
I look at my hands. I have no response to that. I think of my parents devaluing Rumi and Saket’s love because they can’t see anything but the physical aspect of it. Or they choose to see only that so they can call it ugly based on what feels physically natural to them. If they saw Rumi and Saket together, if they saw how they care for each other, how they glow in each other’s presence, if they let themselves see the love, that would make it impossible for them to believe the things they believe.
“Now tell me the parts you left out,” she says, breaking the silence.
Krish’s jaw tightens.
She fixes him with a look. “I never forget a face, and yours is almost exactly the same as hers.”
Krish holds out his hand to me. I remove the ring from my bra and place it in his palm. Then he tells her how the ring was left with him when he was given up for adoption.
“I remember it.” She takes the ring from him with reverence. “Vasu would never have given it up for anything.”
“Is she really dead?” Krish asks, and for the first time he lets pain escape into his voice when he talks about her.
A lump gathers in my throat.
Without answering, Ashatai leaves the room.
I want to comfort him, but I can’t get myself to reach for him.
It feels like an age before she comes back out, an envelope in her hand. “I haven’t seen Vasu in almost forty years. But some five years after I last saw her, she sent me this letter to give to Sureva, in case she ever came looking for her.”