Read Online Naming Maya by Uma Krishnaswami - Free Book Online Page B

sticks them in a box for us.
    Dad, I say to him in my head, do you like them? And he answers, Like them? Of course I like them .
    Thank you , Dad, I say. He doesn’t reply so I say it again. Thank you.

    â€œYou’re welcome,” says my mother, and I jump. I’ve spoken out loud without realizing it.
    â€œHope Joanie likes her elephant,” says Mom.
    â€œHuh? Oh, yeah, I hope so too.”
    We manage to get an auto rickshaw going in the right direction and head for our next stop, the bookstore at the other end of Mount Road. Every once in a while, as the auto rickshaw swerves through traffic or loops around a cow chewing cud in the middle of the road, I can feel Mom looking at me. I stare straight ahead at the smiling movie stars who dance in flimsy neon robes on giant billboards, in between looming ads for cheese and chocolate, cell phones and CD players.
    The bookstore turns out to be much more eventful than I have expected. Mom picks up a newspaper and a book for Joanie’s mother, Fabric Arts of India. Susan is an artist. Her prints and silkscreens sell in galleries and on the Internet.
    I pick out some postcards. I think perhaps I will send Joanie one, since, like the Two-Gifts, postcards are a vacation tradition.
    We pay, and a doorman ushers us out of Bookmarks, Etc.: The Place for Books and More. “May I see your receipt, madam? Thank you. Please come again.” The bookstore is a polite world.

    All of a sudden pandemonium erupts on the landing outside. A woman has gotten the hem of her sari caught between two of the metal plates on the down escalator, the ones that mesh together to make a step when the thing rolls you along. She falls heavily, as if falling has made her dense, so that she lands with the crash you’d expect from someone twice her size. The escalator keeps carrying her down, chewing up her sari as it goes. She screams. People scramble, run, jump off, as if the escalator were the sinking Titanic.
    A little crowd gathers.
    The woman shrieks, “Ayyo, ayyo, yen podavvai, yen podavvai.” Well, we can all see it’s her sari, her sari!
    People shout instructions to no one, or at least it doesn’t look like anyone is listening. “Be still!” “Shut it off!” “Jump off!” “Call security!” And this one: “No panic, please!”
    Someone gets the escalator to choke to a halt. The woman yanks herself loose from the folds of her sari, all six yards of its bright pink length. She stands there shaking in her underskirt and blouse, her bright red pottu running sweatily down her forehead.
    A huddle of people watch as one of the doormen from the bookstore pulls out half-digested bits of pink sari, oil-stained from the escalator’s innards. As if the machine is spitting it out because it doesn’t taste good.
The woman’s face is tight with anger and embarrassment. I stare at her.
    A policewoman appears from nowhere, all shinybright in stiffly starched khaki pants and tight leather belt and braided hair. She escorts the sariless woman and the rescued remains of her clothing off behind a door marked “Authorized Personnel Only.”
    We take the stairs down to the street level. Mom waves a passing auto rickshaw to a stop, and we ride home. I wonder what it is like to have an escalator rip your clothes off in public, so you have to pretend dozens of people aren’t staring at you.

One Full and One Toned Milk, Please
    Sumati shows up the next morning. “Amma sent lime pickles for you,” she says, and hands my mother a little jar.
    But we are in a crisis. The milk deliveryman hasn’t shown up for some reason. Mami is in the kitchen, shaking her head and muttering to herself. There is no milk for coffee, she says, and how can we expect her to cook breakfast until after she’s had her coffee? Mom offers her a can of condensed milk. Mami waves it away contemptuously. “Bad enough we have to buy milk