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THINGS HAD BECOME more stable with Amaya, and they regularly met at least two or three times a month. Gradually, Amaya let Naina massage her hair the way she did when she was a child, though not with the coconut oil of the past. Now, she only wanted a dry massage. Still, Naina behaved cautiously and tentatively around Amaya, like someone treading new waters. Always upright and keeping her head above the water. Anything could change. At any time. At a moment’s notice. If there was a moment’s notice.
Amaya was pleased Naina was renewing her relationships with her old friends, describing it as a “mature move.” Karan, as to be expected, was thrilled as well, and the edges in his voice smoothed out, the bewilderment mitigated, and some affection started to trickle out of him again. Naina surmised that he probably saw her return to New Jersey as a return to sanity, as the restoration of the natural order of things.
Also, Soma and Amaya became close with Soma assuming the ostensible role of an aunt. Soma did not resist being called “aunty” and Amaya treated her with the kind of deference that one would accord someone older and more experienced. A mutual recognition of boundaries not to be crossed. The bond between two people who are friendly but not friends. An unspoken agreement about who had greater authority. With Soma eliciting the sort of respect from Amaya that Naina no longer did. Amaya and Soma both shared an interest in Broadway musicals, hot stone massages, and were especially passionate about Ethiopian food, and made it a point to explore Ethiopian restaurants together, with or without Naina.
Amaya was still dating Nevin, a Chinese-American man who designed interiors for restaurants, but there was never enough enthusiasm when she spoke about him. Amaya had asked Naina to meet Nevin numerous times, but Naina kept emphatically refusing.
“Why won’t you meet Nevin?” Amaya had demanded one time after they were driving back after a leisurely afternoon at the New Jersey Botanical Gardens, her tone fierce. “What are you afraid of?”
Naina had not responded, looking down, as guilt, that chronic disease, had appeared again. Chewing into her like an army of ants ripping into a piece of bread.
“What? What?” Amaya said, thrusting her face closer to Naina’s as they stalled in traffic near a toll booth.
You know the reason why, Naina had wanted to say. You know. Then why do you keep asking me? But instead she replied, “I just want to hold off until you’re really serious about him. I mean . . . I mean . . . there’s really no reason for me to meet him right now.”
“I don’t know that I can trust anyone again,” Amaya said slowly and softly, cupping her forehead with her right hand.
Naina gingerly held Amaya’s hand, a touch her daughter did not resist. “You will, Amaya. You will.”
Amaya seemed impressed when Naina told her she was practicing yoga and reading more about Buddhism. “So do you believe the Buddhist idea that there is no self at all?” Amaya asked one day as they were having a drink at a wine bar.
“I’ve thought about it and don’t think I can really believe that,” Naina said. “I prefer the Hindu idea of the atman, the eternal soul. Somehow, the idea of no self sounds too nihilistic to me. Maybe I’m too Western in my way of thinking. I just can’t negate the self.”
“Neither can I,” Amaya said. “I think therefore I am, then?”
“I am, therefore, I am, is what I prefer.”
“Oh, that’s a good one.”
And then they softly laughed, holding onto their respective selves, as an old ceiling fan noisily creaked overhead. Each of its blades moving slowly and deliberately. Never whirring like one of those speedy, modern fans where the blades disappeared into one giant kinetic blur.
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AT THE END of summer, Naina and Amaya went to Oaxaca, a colonial Mexican town nestled in a valley and renowned for its arts and crafts. It was lush, bohemian, and a tad bit eccentric. Naina loved it. Amaya did too, but not with the same fawning passion as Naina. Beautiful colonial homes and small hotels and bed and breakfasts, owned mainly by foreigners, dotted the cobblestone streets of the city, as did several baroque cathedrals and small first-rate museums and galleries.
Everywhere there was a profusion of color—vivid pinks of the bougainvillea flower sang songs of joy; rich blues like peacock feathers sat in the cradle of ornate beeswax candles; bright oranges like the rays of the sun exhorted Naina to forget her troubles; and the maroon color of the houses was so resplendent that they looked as if they had been painted with sindoor, the powder worn in the parting of the hair by married Hindu women.
Naina and Amaya stayed at a charming bed and breakfast owned by a Mexican woman and her American husband. Rosa had long black hair that swung down to her hips, and an intense, piercing face with too much makeup; she was a lover of the folksy and sorcerous, particularly the wood carvings of fantastical creatures called Alebrijes. All over the bed and breakfast were brightly colored, bizarrely shaped dragons, peacocks, porcupines, and a mélange of hybrid animal figures. In their room was the sky-blue partial body of a bird with a gigantic parrot-green beak. The beak was wide open and it looked like it could swallow an entire animal.
Flowers bloomed everywhere in the hundred-year-old home. In the mornings, after a leisurely breakfast of tamales, Naina and Amaya would sit on the terrace and read. Naina was reading a romance set in seventeenth-century Mexico, and Amaya a book on Buddhist psychology. During this time, they were typically quiet with Naina drawing comfort from Amaya’s presence. And then they would venture out during lunchtime, toward the zocalo, the town square, and indulge in the flavorful cuisine of the region. Oaxaca was known for its seven moles or sauces, and Amaya and Naina had distinct preferences. Amaya liked mole negro, a brown sauce with chocolate, cinnamon, chilies, and other spices while Naina liked mole verde, a green sauce with vegetables, pumpkin, sesame seeds, and herbs. There was no overlap in their tastes and, as a result, no sharing of food.
With all its color and arts and crafts, Oaxaca, for Naina, felt a bit like India and was a heady affirmation of life itself. Somewhere deep in her body, she felt intensely that color was pleasure, color was life, color was love. She couldn’t get enough of it.
One evening in a nearby village, she saw a woman weaving a rug, her hands shrunken yet nimble, and Naina was struck by her resemblance to her grandmother. Except that her grandmother would have been dressed in a white sari, lots and lots of neat folds of white without any adornment—the archetypal Hindu widow. As the Oaxacan clouds gathered above Naina, she pictured her grandmother by her two most distinctive traits: an absence of color, and sharp, birdlike eyes—like those of the weaver in front of her. And every memory of her grandmother came with, attached like a permanent tag, her didactic words about how people should live their lives in accordance with their age, repeated again and again. Naina felt a surge of fury go through her.
Even after they left the village, the image of her grandmother continued to follow Naina around like a spirit, a hot and haughty moral superiority shooting out of her straight back, her tiny, sharp eyes inspecting her granddaughter. That night, Naina dreamed of her grandmother and, in that dream, everything about her grandmother was white. She looked like a ghost and Naina woke up in the middle of the night with a scream. Amaya quickly jumped up from her bed and held Naina, stroking her hair in the way that Naina used to stroke Amaya’s.
“What’s the matter, Mom?” Amaya asked softly as Naina rested her head on her chest.
“I . . . don’t know,” she said, straining to breathe, the darkness in the room contrasting sharply with the white in her head.
“Did you have a bad dream?”
“I . . . I . . . dreamed of my dadi . . . she was all white . . . all white . . . like a ghost.”
“Don’t worry, don’t worry, she’s not here to judge you,” Amaya said, her voice both assured and soothing. “You’ve just had a bad dream. It’s okay, it’s okay . . . You can wear whatever color you want.”
Naina clutched Amaya tighter, her chest pounding. Amaya was still stroking her hair.
“She’s dead . . . why is she in Mexico?” Naina said, almost hysterical. She was frightened by her own voice. “Why? Why?”
“She’s in your head. Shh . . . go to sleep, Mom. Shh . . . It’s just a bad dream.”
“It is?”
“Just a bad dream. That’s it. All right, Mom?”
Naina kept holding on to Amaya, inhaling the smell of her aloe vera and seaweed-scented hair until they fell asleep, their bodies intertwined.
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THEY WERE EATING lunch one afternoon at an open-air restaurant near the zocalo, and a woman, who could not have been more than twenty-two or twenty-three years old, walked into the restaurant, trying to pacify a crying child.
“Pollo en mole negro, por favor, pollo en mole negro rapido,” the harried mother said to the waiter, adding that it would be the only thing that would mollify the child.
“He’s just like me,” Amaya said, who was watching the child with great interest. “A lover of mole negro.”
“She looks so young,” Amaya said later, referring to the mother. “Maybe I would have had an arranged marriage and been a mother by now if you had stayed in India.”
Naina said nothing as she tried to digest Amaya’s words. “And you think you would have liked that?”
“Who knows?” Amaya said, her face resting on one hand. “Maybe. I wouldn’t have had to go through all this hassle of dating then . . . I think you already know that things aren’t probably going to go anywhere between Nevin and me.”
Naina nodded and then squeezed her eyes shut in bewilderment. “Do you really find dating a hassle?”
Amaya laughed. “I know, it’s hard for you to believe, right? But it can be draining and exhausting, the constant testing, the constant uncertainty, the limited pool of people who are interested in you that you are interested in.”
“I see, I see,” Naina said even though she really couldn’t see. “You know Alannah went online and met someone wonderful. She says there’s a whole pool of people out there you can meet.”
“Oh no,” Amaya said in that inflexible, too-sure voice of hers that Naina hated. A stone-solid voice that rebuffed so many new possibilities. So much like her father. “Too many psychos online. So many people I know have wasted their time on pointless emails only to discover that the other person was nothing like what they imagined. I’ll try and meet people the old-fashioned way.”
Amaya was still staring at the child who looked satisfied now that he had got his mole negro. A rush of tenderness made its way into Naina. Her daughter wanted to be a mother.
“But if you’re not happy with the pool of men you’re meeting, maybe going online might not be such a bad idea,” Naina said. Even in Oaxaca City, a city where ancient Zapotec and Mixtec cultures mingled with those of colonial Spain and contemporary Mexico, a city where the recent past, distant past, and the present become like one long, vast present (in that way it was also like India), she heard people would go online to find love.
“Maybe, but it’s not for me,” Amaya said, tying her hair up tightly into a high ponytail. “So what about you?” She looked at Naina. “Have you thought about seeing someone? Soma Aunty has someone.”
Naina was taken aback. She had not expected this question. She gazed at the embroidered flower-patterned tablecloth as she fiddled with the stem of her wine glass. “No I have not thought about it. It’s not . . . not important to me . . . the most important thing is for you and Karan to be well-settled.”
“Oh, come on,” Amaya said. “You try to steal my boyfriend from beneath my feet and now you pretend you don’t need a man.”
Without saying a word, Naina immediately got up and went to the bathroom where she sat burrowing her face in her hands as sounds of hand washing, flushing, and chatter raced against the thoughts in her head.
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AT BREAKFAST, TWO days later, a young man appeared at their table. Aviv was from Israel and though he said he was twenty-seven, he didn’t look more than twenty-one or twenty-two. He had a boyish face, puppy-dog eyes, and a smile that seemed to say that his soul contained only pure, unadulterated spring water.
“Your eyes shine like black fish in the water,” Aviv said to Amaya in his Israeli accent as he sat opposite her at the big breakfast table. “I’ve seen black fish in Indonesia. Have you ever been to Indonesia?”
“No,” Amaya said, laughing and playing with her bangs. “But I’d like to.”
“I can show you my photographs of Indonesia if you like after breakfast,” Aviv said. “And I have many of the black fish that look like your eyes.”
And, as soon as breakfast was over, the two of them bounded off to the computer area where Naina could hear peals of laughter from her balcony.
The following day, Naina and Amaya decided to go to Monte Alban, one of the first cities in Mesoamerica built in pre-Columbian times, and Aviv asked if he could join them. It was a day of thick, low-lying clouds spread like clumps of cream across the sky and they took a bus up to the mountain-top ruins of Monte Alban. Through the uphill drive, you could see panoramic views of the Oaxaca valley, all the more captivating because of the clouds that kept appearing and disappearing, as if the heavens were playing peekaboo. Naina had not slept well the previous night and would have liked some quiet, but Aviv and Amaya kept talking throughout the drive. Naina wished Aviv had not joined them, however it was clear that Amaya liked having him around. Around Aviv, Amaya took on some of his youthful buoyancy. She walked in a looser, more carefree manner, her womanly hips blithely swaying, her laughter easier and more girlish, her irises floating in her eyes instead of being firmly fixed in the center.
Founded around 500 B.C., Monte Alban was the social, political, and economic capital of the Zapotec people and, unlike Oaxaca City and its neighboring craft villages, these ruins had tall, imposing stone structures, an unrelenting geometric quality, a dearth of color and a powerful sense of order and symmetry. There were no signs of the swell and swirl of curves—the stark structures seemed inexorably male to Naina. Reminding humans of their smallness. In an odd way, like New York City.
Amaya and Aviv ran up the countless stairs leading up to the South Platform, asking Naina, who did not have enough energy to join them in their climb, to take pictures of them. It was odd watching the two of them together. Aviv, who looked so young, and Amaya, who looked younger than usual, but still a grown woman. So this was what an older woman and a younger man looked like, she thought, wondering if she and Jai had looked incongruous like that. And then she corrected herself for thinking in such a sexist way . . . and for thinking of Jai.
As Naina saw the two of them laughing on the South Platform, almost thirteen hundred feet above her, she suddenly felt a stab of loneliness. Whether it was Aviv, Nevin, or someone else, Amaya would eventually find someone to love. It might take a while; she might have to overcome issues regarding trust, but she would. It was clear that that was what she wanted, and when Amaya put her mind to something, she eventually got it. And though Amaya was thirty-one, she was hardly old by New York standards and men seemed to be attracted to her. Not only was she attractive and intelligent, she was capable. Someone who could—what was the phrase?—keep it together. Yes, keep it together. Keep a man afloat if he were in danger of sinking. Sort of like a life jacket. Or a mother. Perhaps men liked that quality in women. What was it that Alannah had said again? Men, even the most neurotic, never want to marry neurotic chicks because they are afraid the women will make the men drown with them. Damn hypocritical cowards.
And as for Karan, well that was a foregone conclusion. It was a truth universally acknowledged that a single Indian man from a good family with the right credentials and a decent job would find plenty of women to marry.
Which left her alone, at the bottom of the stairs, talking to the air and the clouds, scrambling to find the Ben Gay in her bag as she hurt her ankle.
Amaya and Aviv ran down the stairs with remarkable speed and Naina remembered that at Amaya’s age, she had patiently led her daughter down the long stairwell to the One Thousand Steps Beach in California on a vacation.
“Wow, Naina, we look like small specks on top of the steps,” Aviv said when he saw the pictures Naina had taken. Then he covered his mouth with his hand. “Oh my God, I’m supposed to call you aunty, aren’t I? I’ve known so many Indians and yet I forgot. I’m sorry.”
Aunty. Meaning the kind of woman who was never admired; meaning someone who only spoke of pleasures in the past tense. Naina stiffened. That dreaded word from her past had appeared again, all of a sudden, like an artifact coming to life in the ruins of Mexico.
“It’s okay, Aviv. Feel free to call me Naina.”
“That’s the way my mother likes it,” Amaya said. “Aunty is not her style. She likes to feel young and youthful.”
Naina cringed at the barely perceptible bite to Amaya’s words.
Later, they went to the cafe, and when Aviv went to the bathroom, Naina asked, “So do you like him?”
“Oh God, no,” Amaya said, interrupting her reapplication of lipstick. “Aviv’s just a kid. But a delightful kid. He’s filled with endless optimism and quite uncomplicated after New York. He’s fun to be around, but, no, I’m not interested. Are you? I mean, you do like younger men.”
White-hot feelings rumbled inside Naina. She stood up and raised her voice. “Amaya, that was uncalled for. I know what I did was awful and we both know I feel terrible about it.” She let out a fistful of air as Amaya jerkily moved backward in her chair. “I . . . I . . . refuse to let you taunt me for the rest of my life about what I did . . . I refuse. There is nothing to be gained from such barbs. Enough is enough.” She was surprised that she had been able to utter what she so deeply felt.
Amaya was quiet, her face pale. Finally, squeezing her hair between her fingers, she said, “You’re right, Mom. I shouldn’t have done that. It was unnecessary. Uncalled for, as you said . . . I don’t know what got into me . . . what keeps getting into me . . .”
“It’s okay,” Naina said, her voice softer. “Let’s not talk about it anymore.”
Amaya looked out at a distant mountain through the vast open space of the valley. “You know there are times, really there are times, when I imagine that you are not my mother and I try to look at the situation objectively and . . . and . . . I can see your point of view, even feel sympathy for you . . . and then there are other times that I remember you’re my mom and I feel . . .”
“Enough,” Naina said, extending her hand, upturned palm flashing. “Enough . . . I don’t need to know any more. I don’t want to know any more. I can understand that you need to talk about it, but I’m not the right person.” She lowered her hand. “There are plenty of outlets for you to talk about this. But then I don’t need to tell you that. Can you understand that?”
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BACK IN NEW York, Alannah announced that her British boyfriend, Damien, had proposed to her. She was over the moon. Damien had proposed to Alannah, getting down on one knee, of course, as they had gazed at the clay Florentine rooftops from the sixteenth century Boboli Gardens while the sun bade a spectacular marigold-hued farewell to the day.
“It was so incredibly romantic,” Alannah said breathlessly, flashing her art deco style engagement ring at Naina and Mara. “I just know he’s the guy. I can’t believe I’m going to be a married woman in less than a year.”
While Naina was happy for Alannah, the truth was she found it hard to picture her as a married woman. She had always been such a free spirit and protective about her space, though that part of her had receded as the coupling glow of a woman in love had pushed into the foreground. But now Alannah would have a man next to her every night.
Naina also noticed something was off about Mara’s tone as she congratulated Alannah. Mara’s enthusiasm seemed forced, as if her heart were in some other place. Mara had been behaving odd lately.
For the reception, Alannah said she wanted to wear an Indian outfit, gushing about how regal and luscious they were. “I want to look memorable. Like a queen. And red is such a sexy color. Let’s plan a trip to Jackson Heights to see some of those lovely red-and-gold clothes, okay?”
“Sure,” Naina said while Mara, whose eyes darted about like restless birds, said nothing.
Later that afternoon, Naina and Alannah headed to Alannah’s studio where she promised to show Naina her new paintings. This was a big deal. After years of being a contemporary video artist, Alannah had started painting again. It was a risk for someone known for her video work and sort of like going back in time, Alannah had said. Naina had smiled, the image of the hummingbird flying backward reappearing in her mind.
Naina entered Alannah’s Lower East Side studio and was mesmerized. There were large canvases leaning against the paint-splattered walls, like proud, gargantuan creatures from a fantastical otherworld.
“Oh my God . . . wow,” she said.
Drunk with colors like fleshy pinks, bloody reds, brilliant sunset oranges, and intense cobalt blues, the abstract works flirted with figuration, glinting with a physicality that was raw, ecstatic, and sinister. When she looked closely, she saw intestines curling like ringlets, fragmented body-like forms copulating, piles of tongues with blood oozing from them, macabre cat faces ready to pounce, streaks of white daisies, all whirling and twirling together in raucous, frenzied motion. From the paintings, Naina could hear battle cries for carnival, chest-thumping invitations to a grand feast, and thunderous drumbeats urging everyone to dance. They were crazy, fearless, bacchanalian, and exuberant. And less dark than Alannah’s videos.
But above all, these were knowing paintings, thought Naina, still feeling as if they were speaking directly to her. They knew about all the dark side, knew it was a part of the messy, mixed-up business of life. Still, they refused to give darkness the starring role in the grand show called life.