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Authors: Katherine Russell Rich
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Western head had been painted to look obscenely simian.
Harold had sighed then. He sighed again now. "I always get all worked up, and then nothing ever happens," he said in a calm, instructive voice. He'd had it with this whole belabored business. The Whisperer winched her face in commiseration:
What did he think? So had she.
Kumbhalgarh was tony in the extreme: silver chandeliers in the great room, where women offered rose-scented goblets; a gray stone staircase threading up a hill through greenery so wild, it concealed all but squares of the cottages. On a late-afternoon jeep tour of a wildlife preserve that Aditya had arranged, we cut through swarms of butterflies the color of morning glories, rocked past lavender and pussy willow under a sky streaked with violet. "What's the word for 'sky,' d'ya know?" I asked Harold on the seat beside me.
"
Aakaash,
" he said with a bored sigh;
who doesn't?
"
Aakaash,
" I repeated.
Aakaash
âfrom the Sanskrit, I could tell. Already, bloodlines were showing. Elegant or jawbreaker, the word was Sanskrit. Gravelly or plangent like a sarod, Persian. The ability to distinguish had developed so fast, was so sure, I mistook it for a portent of mastery. But in fact, rats have exhibited a similar talent in the lab, are able to demonstrate, by pressing levers for pellets, that they can tell the difference between Dutch and Japanese in just weeks.
Aakaash
âas he said the word, we were bumping through high grass at sundown, a time when cooling breezes would have made me lightheaded anyway, even if the driver hadn't just said that at this hour, leopards could appear; even if I hadn't been tipping my head back to examine every passing branch. Forever after, "sky" for me in Hindi is less a color than a charged sense of devouring revelations about to come. Or that word for sky is; the language has a dozen.
Soon after, back in town, the other students reached a tacit agreement: what we'd seen on TV at the palace had been sci-fi. Some FX movie like
Escape from New York,
probably on the Murdoch channel. Among ourselves, if someone, me, mentioned this thing, conversation would falter, then we'd return to the subject at hand: Hindi. Days went by without discussion in English, till sometimes when the e-mails from home came in, it was like I was learning about it all over. But that was also the effect of ripple shock.
One afternoon on the street, I heard unholy screams and saw that two men outside a house had a pig lassoed by the neck. The animal was crying frantically and choking itself as it raced circles against the rope, while other pigs squealed and fled. I knew I shouldn't watch, but I did, as one man grabbed the doomed pig's legs and flipped it on its back, and the other, flashing metal, leaned down, and the cries grew more terrified, as I raced from it, too, my fingers pressed into my ears. When I stopped at the corner and turned around, the pig was no longer struggling. In my room, I couldn't stop crying.
You're a spoiled American,
I thought.
What do you think you've been eating all these years? Lovingly culled meat "products"? Happy cows? Happy pigs?
"I've never seen anything be killed before. Never," I said out loud, which brought the next thought. "Oh, God, those people," I said, and cried harder.
Â
" AMONG THE MAITHILS , time is like a spider's web," an Indian anthropologist named Baidyanath Saraswati writes; the Maithils are a subcaste of Brahmins. "Like a tree with branches spread out; like a river with tributaries progressing relatively in relation to the surface of the earth; or like a lamp flickering; but
not
an arrow like movement."
In the center of time's web, in the sly tugging present, I watch a fat woman standing in front of a Birla Cement sign. Her sari is the same birthday-party yellow as the Birla adâand the Oasis mobile ad, and the Rupa Macro Man Briefs ad, and the "straight-dial" phone booth signs. Apparently, there's only one loud yellow paint available
Harold had sighed then. He sighed again now. "I always get all worked up, and then nothing ever happens," he said in a calm, instructive voice. He'd had it with this whole belabored business. The Whisperer winched her face in commiseration:
What did he think? So had she.
Kumbhalgarh was tony in the extreme: silver chandeliers in the great room, where women offered rose-scented goblets; a gray stone staircase threading up a hill through greenery so wild, it concealed all but squares of the cottages. On a late-afternoon jeep tour of a wildlife preserve that Aditya had arranged, we cut through swarms of butterflies the color of morning glories, rocked past lavender and pussy willow under a sky streaked with violet. "What's the word for 'sky,' d'ya know?" I asked Harold on the seat beside me.
"
Aakaash,
" he said with a bored sigh;
who doesn't?
"
Aakaash,
" I repeated.
Aakaash
âfrom the Sanskrit, I could tell. Already, bloodlines were showing. Elegant or jawbreaker, the word was Sanskrit. Gravelly or plangent like a sarod, Persian. The ability to distinguish had developed so fast, was so sure, I mistook it for a portent of mastery. But in fact, rats have exhibited a similar talent in the lab, are able to demonstrate, by pressing levers for pellets, that they can tell the difference between Dutch and Japanese in just weeks.
Aakaash
âas he said the word, we were bumping through high grass at sundown, a time when cooling breezes would have made me lightheaded anyway, even if the driver hadn't just said that at this hour, leopards could appear; even if I hadn't been tipping my head back to examine every passing branch. Forever after, "sky" for me in Hindi is less a color than a charged sense of devouring revelations about to come. Or that word for sky is; the language has a dozen.
Soon after, back in town, the other students reached a tacit agreement: what we'd seen on TV at the palace had been sci-fi. Some FX movie like
Escape from New York,
probably on the Murdoch channel. Among ourselves, if someone, me, mentioned this thing, conversation would falter, then we'd return to the subject at hand: Hindi. Days went by without discussion in English, till sometimes when the e-mails from home came in, it was like I was learning about it all over. But that was also the effect of ripple shock.
One afternoon on the street, I heard unholy screams and saw that two men outside a house had a pig lassoed by the neck. The animal was crying frantically and choking itself as it raced circles against the rope, while other pigs squealed and fled. I knew I shouldn't watch, but I did, as one man grabbed the doomed pig's legs and flipped it on its back, and the other, flashing metal, leaned down, and the cries grew more terrified, as I raced from it, too, my fingers pressed into my ears. When I stopped at the corner and turned around, the pig was no longer struggling. In my room, I couldn't stop crying.
You're a spoiled American,
I thought.
What do you think you've been eating all these years? Lovingly culled meat "products"? Happy cows? Happy pigs?
"I've never seen anything be killed before. Never," I said out loud, which brought the next thought. "Oh, God, those people," I said, and cried harder.
Â
" AMONG THE MAITHILS , time is like a spider's web," an Indian anthropologist named Baidyanath Saraswati writes; the Maithils are a subcaste of Brahmins. "Like a tree with branches spread out; like a river with tributaries progressing relatively in relation to the surface of the earth; or like a lamp flickering; but
not
an arrow like movement."
In the center of time's web, in the sly tugging present, I watch a fat woman standing in front of a Birla Cement sign. Her sari is the same birthday-party yellow as the Birla adâand the Oasis mobile ad, and the Rupa Macro Man Briefs ad, and the "straight-dial" phone booth signs. Apparently, there's only one loud yellow paint available
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