Party Time

On the day of her flight, Sarlaben set out on the same morning walk to the Radha Krishna temple she’d taken for the past 43 years. Her driver, Santosh, could have been called to the bungalow early in order to drive her there. But no, Sarlaben relished the feeling of freedom as she unlatched the gate of the family compound and allowed her feet to chose their path through the streets of her Mumbai suburb. Shall I take the winding Dixit Road or the more direct Station Road? Did she have time to stop and admire the orchids growing in the arms of the giant banyan tree in the alleyway? Should she detour a bit to see which movies were playing in Queen’s Cinema? It was all hers and hers alone to decide. Not that Santosh would have ever denied a request from Madam. It was just that Sarlaben craved a level of agency that sitting in the back seat did not afford. 

Crows feasted atop heaps of trash along the roadside, a fragrant brew of breakfast smells– toast, idli sambhaar, egg bhurji, coffee and chai wafted out from flats and commingled with the heady stench emitted from the roadside trash. Her heart danced to the clatter of Mumbai waking: sweeping floors, filling water buckets for the day’s washing chores, mothers shouting “Chalo! Chalo! Let’s go!” to their sleepy school-uniformed children, rickshaws sputtering to a start for their first customers for the day. The cries of street hawkers rose up from streets beyond, each seemingly taking their turn to pitch their wares, resulting in a syncopated, rhythmic loop.

As she passed the khokha cardboard hut ghetto, she recollected how much it had grown from just the handful that had sprouted up when she was still a young bride.

“Namsate Sarlaben! Going today to Amrika, eh? God bless you,” called out Parvati, one of the original slum dwellers. Some twenty or so years ago, Sarlaben had heard her crying in pain and had gone into the darkness of the khokha hut to find a pregnant woman cowering in a corner. Her drunkard husband had beaten her, she sobbed. Sarlaben had taken her to a dispensary for treatment and then directed her driver Santosh to find the husband and let him know if he ever set foot in the hut again, there would be consequences. Santosh had an intimidating, goonda or bad-guy like physique and demeanor. Indeed, he’d worked for less scrupulous employers in the past and so his visit to Parvati’s husband was effective. Sarlaben stopped to offer a last namaste to Parvati. 

“Ha, yes, tonight I fly to Houston. What to do? I don’t want to go, but my son has been insisting since my small stroke. I told him, beta, son, it’s good you want me to come live with your family, your father would have been proud. But let me remain here, there is no need. Here I have my life. What to do Parvati? He won’t allow it. He has even arranged for the sale of my bungalow, he says it is all too much to manage from Houston.” 

Sarlaben’s eyes pooled with tears, as did Parvati’s. The women stood silently gazing into one another’s eyes and at last issued one another a final silent namaste before Sarlaben carried on. 

Outside the temple, Sarlaben stopped at the tables of flower garland vendors. She typically tried to sprinkle her business around to the assortment of ladies who sat in the glaring morning sun, their babies baking on their bosoms as they tied jasmines, roses, marigolds, and spider lilies in strings of splendor that defied the squalor of their existence. For her final visit to the temple, Sarlaben visited all five vendors and purchased a lavish garland from all of them, adding an extra 500 rupee note for each. As she approached the inner sanctum of the marbled temple, a line had formed for receiving aarti and prasad, the holy flame and little rock sugar crystals blessed by the deities. The head Brahmin priest spotted Sarlaben and motioned her to the front of the queue. 

“Namaste Sarlaben! Jai Radha Krishna! Today only you are going to Hooshton no? Come, come, let us perform a special pooja for your new life.” The buck-toothed priest didn’t wait for Sarlben’s response as he took the flower garlands from her arms, deftly hooked them around the temple deities, and immediately launched loudly into mantras and simultaneously vigorous bell ringing. This same priest had performed countless poojas for the many milestones of Sarlaben’s life, all of course at her request and payment of rupees. Every birth, family portfolio investment, new Ambassador car purchase, illness, university entrance exam, marriage engagement, wish for a green card, and mourning of those deceased had been drawn to the attention of these deities by this very Brahmin.

He knew the reason for all her poojas, except one. That one was a pact she had made with the temple deities after nearly dying when Santosh fell asleep at the wheel and drove the Ambassador into a ditch. They were on a day-long ride through the desert to see her family, and while she could have taken a train, the comfort of her own car was preferable. Once Santosh managed to push the Ambassador out of the ditch, Sarlaben insisted he allow her to try driving. It was 1980, though Indira Gandhi was Prime Minister and Mother Theresa had won the Nobel Prize, even these women did not hold a driver’s license. 

“Madamji, for you to drive is not theek, it’s not proper,” he’d protested. Let her try, she had implored. It was a straight road with nary any traffic, she argued. And only if he felt she could do it, she would drive fifteen or twenty minutes at most so he could rest. She promised to never tell anybody of the indiscretion. 

Santosh agreed reluctantly and showed her the brake pedal, accelerator, and how to shift the gear to drive. He’d watched anxiously for the first five minutes before dozing off again. Sarlaben’s sweaty palms clung to the steering wheel as she prayed to her temple gods to keep them safe. As she learned to moderate her speed by trial and error, lurching the Ambassador forward abruptly while trying to follow the subtle curves of the road, she took a baadha, a solemn oath, that she would perform a special pooja if she should survive this ordeal. The very next morning after safely returning to Mumbai, she had the Brahmin perform the pooja.  

Now the Brahmin was completing one final pooja. At long last, he concluded the prayers and offered the special sweet prasad for Sarlaben he had asked his wife to make for the occasion. 

“So much trouble you have taken for me Brahminji! Why a whole box! It is too much!”, Sarlaben smiled as she reluctantly took the box of sweets. 

“Haaaa, yes, of course, for our dear Sarlaben, of course,” he clucked. “You’re flying on British Airways, no? What bland, tasteless food those people will serve! Take the sweets on the plane, at least you’ll have something worth eating.”

Sarlaben grinned widely. Indeed, she had taken her British Airways flight ticket to the temple a few weeks earlier in order for her journey to be blessed. The nosy old Brahmin had taken note. Sarlaben was a noteworthy individual in this world, a fact she had taken for granted. 

“Come, come, Ba, we are running late! You have not changed your sari yet!,” Sarlaben’s daughter-in-law poked her head into her boxy little bedroom and interrupted her reverie. Here in Houston, she was Ba, not Sarlaben. A Ba is an old woman, any old woman, regardless of likes, tastes, hobbies, struggles, triumphs, desires, talents, heartbreaks, or dreams. In this world, she was not Sarlaben, she was just another Ba being carted off to another Saturday evening party put on by her son’s and daughter-in-law’s friends under the ruse of welcoming Ba. 

“How are you Ba? Kem cho? Keeping well? Health all good?”, the hostess chuckled and bowed down as if to touch Sarlaben’s feet, a show of respect and good upbringing. Despite the gesture of regard, the hostess didn’t wait for a response, and so Sarlaben took the cue to follow her son and daughter-in-law into the living room where the eager hostess began rearranging guests so as to create a comfortable spot for the old woman. The living room was full, every chair in the house had been dragged out and arranged into a large circle to seat the guests. The men sat on one side and the women on the other, until of course Sarlaben took her seat. Then one by one each of the women came to bow to her and offer a quick, painless namaste and greeting. 

“How are youuuuuuu Ba? Keeping well? Health all gooooood?”, sang the fancy one who always wore sleeveless sari blouses. 

“Kem cho Ba? Keeping well? Health? No troubles na?”, asked the fair skinned one with the chin mole. 

“How are you Ba? Everything theek-thock, all good? Health? All fine?”, quizzed another and then another and still more of her daughter-in-law’s friends, as if they expected anything might’ve changed since the previous weekend when they’d met at another party, or the weekend before that one. As if they didn’t all know from their daily phone relay marathons that no malady had struck Sarlaben. Had Sarlaben not been well, surely it would have filled their conversational docket with tales of woe and hardship for at least a week. But of course, what else was anyone to say to this widowed elder from Mumbai? What could the old woman intruding from the world they’d left behind possibly discuss with them that would be of interest now that they’d lived abroad long enough to know better about most things?

This Ba, like all Ba’s, stank of the past, of arranged marriages at age 15, of rolling and roasting chapatis the entire livelong day, of living in an extended family where brothers-in-laws and sisters-in-laws jostled in one shared home for the supreme treasures of privacy and inheritance, of poverty at every corner and social scrutiny at every breath. How could she possibly participate in their world where women were free to drive cars, cut their hair, have careers, wear shorts, and buy frozen chapatis? 

With the formalities of namastes, faux touching the feet, and asking after health completed, they could resume their banter, leaving Sarlaben to sit quietly for the remainder of the evening until it was time to leave and heartily thank the hostess for the meal, microwaved frozen chapatis and all. Once home, she would return to the little square room they called the guest room. Despite her son insisting the house was her house also, she knew her place.

Her place was limited. There was no going anywhere besides the Saturday parties or occasionally the grocery store. She had tried walking outside, but learned she must stay on the sidewalk. The sidewalk was an autocrat allowing no free will as it dictated where you may and may not go and what you may and may not see. They only went around in circles, as if a tour of green lawns and mailboxes were sufficient to fill one’s heart with joy and intrigue. There weren’t any rickshaws or municipal buses she could board and get off in order to allow her heart to navigate its path around the city. There were only back-seat passenger trips to the grocery store and the Saturday parties, straight-lined paths with a starting point, a destination, and no deviations. 

“Amita has invited us for dinner this Saturday, Ba. She said definitely bring Ba,” the daughter-in-law’s phrasing was different from all the times before when she had announced a party invitation. Sarlaben considered the statement for a moment.

“I have been to Amita’s house, no? She had already had me over two months ago when I just arrived. No, no, let me stay home,” Sarlaben appealed. It was likely just what the daughter-in-law had wanted, but still she made a show of protesting for a minute before acquiescing. 

“Ok then, I’ll let her know you needed rest. Anyway, we won’t be gone too long,” the daughter-in-law smiled as she turned away.  

Saturday evening arrived, the family left, and with nowhere to go, Sarlaben wandered from room to room in the silent house. She mindlessly walked toward the kitchen, where her daughter-in-law had dutifully left rice, daal, and some vegetable sabji for her to microwave. But no, when she arrived at the kitchen she realized she wasn’t hungry for food. Out of the corner of her eye, she spied the keys to the second car, the one parked at the curb because her son was too precious about his Lexus getting scratched to allow the daughter-in-law to park beside it in the garage. Without thinking, she changed course, walking to the shoe closet for her leather chappals, and then back to the kitchen and the key. 

She pressed the garage door opener and as the door lifted, so too did her determination. Without allowing herself to reconsider, she lifted the pleats of her widow's sari, strode to the parked Honda and sat in the driver’s seat. Her hands trembled as she struggled to recall the instructions Santosh had given her so long ago. She looked down to find the two pedals and took a guess at which one was the brake pedal as she turned the key in the ignition. As the car made a subtle lurch forward, she thought she had had another stroke, but no. The car remained obediently parked, it was only her heart leaping forward in anticipation. She drew a breath in and deduced that the other pedal was the accelerator. 

“Jai Radha Krisnha,” Sarlaben prayed under her breath as she slowly pressed down on the accelerator and felt the car rolling forward. A bead of sweat trickled down her brow. She steered away from the curb and onto the road–the beautiful, wide, open road that suddenly shimmered with possibility.