There was a house, and it was the right house, but it was also wrong. It was dark, and it was empty. And there were her sister’s neighbors, and there were words, but they were the wrong words. Impossible words, yet they’d been spoken. And then there was anger, so much anger, and it was the one thing that was right in all this, the one thing that was maybe strong enough to overcome Nayana’s grief. She harnessed it. She brought it with her to the police station in Trivandrum, where she was told it wasn’t necessary, the anger, and to the orphanage, where a man told her he was sorry, but it wouldn’t change the facts. The anger. And they all told her there was nothing to be done, with eyes that spoke a yet more pressing truth: she was an outsider there and a woman. What had she expected them to do for her? England, India—would this ever not be the case? And there were tears, some of which she shared with the neighbor woman but most of which she saved for Aditi’s pillow, her mother’s sarees, her father’s tie, all of whose absorbent company she welcomed, until the tears were gone, the anger was gone. Nayana, too, all but gone.
Lions roar in the morning, sweet sister. I’m told they were marooned on an island at the center of the man-made lake that hugs this sanctuary in which I find no peace. They were brought here at some point from some other land, made a spectacle of. Each morning they roar at the water, at the new day, at their hunger, at their lost kingdom. Do they persist out of anger, I wonder, or desperation? Could it be boredom after so many years? And why do I carry on speaking to someone who is no longer here?
The bell rang throughout the ashram, as it did every morning at five forty. Nayana, as she had been the day before and the one before that, was awake for it. The mosquito netting that framed the unyielding single mattress on which she lay glowed softly in the moonlit darkness of predawn. She would have been content to remain in this temporary bed, quiet with her thoughts, but she was not alone, and she could not do as she wished. There was no privacy in the ashram, where even those in mourning had to abide by the rules.
The German Swiss woman with whom she shared this room slept only three feet from her. If they each reached a hand out while lying on their respective beds, they would be able to touch fingers through their nets. They shared, as well, the single desk, beside the door, and the single window above that desk. Judith rose promptly at the bell, with Swiss precision, and immediately left the room to take her shower. When she returned, she quietly asked if it was okay to turn on the light, though they followed this same routine every day. Nayana, with the sheet pulled over her face, mumbled her assent and listened to the sounds of Judith preparing for the day: hands moisturizing skin, the gentle scratch of the brush passing along her scalp, the snap of a band securing her ponytail, the pull of fabric against skin. Above them the whir of an overhead fan and the growing buzz of the fluorescent light.
Satsang began at six, and attendance was not optional. The path to the main hall was dark when she left her room. She disregarded the rows of matting that lined the hall and found a spot against one of the supporting beams to the side. In the darkness, she would merely be a shadow to those entering the room until satsang was over. Both sides of Nayana’s midspine ached from the effort of so much sitting with a straight back. The pain prevented her from concentrating. The clarity of mind promised by the director shimmered in the distance like a mirage in her desert of hopelessness. Using the surface of the column, she massaged either side of her spine, pressing each ache into the wood. Then she tried to do as they told her, to shift her inner gaze to her third-eye center. When she finally succeeded in this, she felt a pulling sensation there and noticed a red light, like a backlit tornado, spiraling away from her, promising an escape. She wanted to be sucked into it, leaving her body behind, every part of it. But she could never hold the gaze. The funnel just as quickly fell from view. And Nayana remained anchored in her flesh.
There they were, on cue. The lions roared at a high hollow pitch that traveled across the lake’s surface and through the gates of the ashram. She pictured three anxious lionesses pacing a tiny island at feeding time. Were they caged as well as stranded? Insult on top of injury. She imagined herself swimming to their shore, exciting their hunger on the other side of the iron bars, then lowering herself into their captivity and assuming this same cross-legged pose before them, eyes closed, no longer in pain, finally at peace. She would give herself to these beasts, leave her body for them—an offering—to be torn limb from limb, devoured entirely. Violently set free.
She opened her eyes and was crying again. Guilty after this vision, in which she held no regard for the future life she carried. There was more daylight outside the hall, and she could see their numbers had grown within. New guests had arrived, yet Nayana was still the only Indian in the room who wasn’t working there. A man alone, not far from her, with hair as long as hers had once been and perfect posture was among the new arrivals, yet he was clearly a veteran of these places with posture like that, his hands in mudra. She tried to prevent the slouch in her own back. And then an extended guttural “om,” repeated twice more, announced the conclusion of morning meditation.
“Turn to page three,” the Italian director said with an accent that could have sounded Indian if she hadn’t been looking at him.
He spoke from his seat on the wooden stage at the front of the hall, between two Indian swamis cast in bronze. His call: Jaya ganesha jaya ganesha jaya ganesha pahimaam sri ganesha sri ganesha sri ganesha rakshamaam. The room, a chorus, echoed its response. Even after days of repetition, it was the only line Nayana could recite without the aid of the pamphlet they provided, from which the director also chose supplementary mantras. “Jaya Ganesha,” however, was a staple. It started and ended each day. In the morning, it loosened stiff bodies, and some began to sway now and pat their knees. A man at the front incorporated the beat of a tabla. There were tambourines being passed around. The woman to Nayana’s right offered her one. She smiled and shook her head, then watched the woman tap it gently against her palm, her thigh, then alternate between the two, her head following along. It was still incredible to witness the mounting joyous abandon in the room as the chanting and beating picked up their paces. What were all these people looking for, so far from home, all the way in Kerala? What had they found that Nayana had not? None of it seemed real. Not that the others were faking anything; not that she believed this was an experience reserved only for certain spiritual Indians. It was unreal because she would never be able to tell Aditi about any of it. Then she noticed a woman who, like Nayana, was watching it all take place. Still observing, still reserving judgment. Perhaps it was being discovered that encouraged this woman to relinquish her role as spectator. She shrugged at Nayana, as if to say, Why not, right? and she looked down at her pamphlet and began to sing along.
After chanting, the director made the day’s announcements, as he had each day since her arrival: there would be yoga after morning tea. Breakfast at ten thirty. New arrivals who hadn’t been assigned karma yoga duty were directed to meet by the big tree at eleven to learn how they could contribute during their stay from Dario, who waved a hand above his wild curls. Everyone pitches in, said the director, as a daily reminder. At twelve thirty, there would be an optional yoga coaching class. Then tea again at one thirty, followed by the daily lecture at two. Today’s lecture would be on Bhagavad Gita. How strange, she thought: all these Westerners learning the obscure scriptures she hardly knew herself. After the lecture, a second yoga class, then dinner at six. Evening satsang would be at eight, with lights-out at ten thirty. The strangeness of the ashram schedule made her time there a little more agreeable.
When this retreat had been suggested, Nayana had not objected. By that point, she’d all but given up. And she trusted Mrs. Nair’s nephew. Benji had always been kind to her family. He was their translator, too, so they depended on him. She remembered him from Srikant’s funeral. He might have suggested a madhouse and Nayana might not have objected. She simply wanted to disappear and didn’t care where. If they’d left her at Aditi’s, she might have spent the rest of her life in her sister’s bed. He told Nayana she would feel like she’d left India, and that’s what she wanted. He was right, too. Whatever was familiar was outweighed by all that was foreign. She was grateful for the structure provided by the ashram schedule in any case and even more for the silence. Meals were eaten in silence, and yoga was a mostly silent affair. One could even choose to take a vow of silence, wearing a sign around one’s neck. If that would have silenced her thoughts, Nayana would have done it. Still, she spoke little to the others. Even with her roommate, Judith, conversation was kept to a minimum, and this seemed to suit them both. That Nayana was Indian and there among so many Europeans was a kind of sign she wore in and of itself, and she was mostly left alone. She avoided the social areas, such as the big tree where everyone gathered for tea and the communal tables in the Health Hut, where people went during the intervals of free time in the early afternoon and again after dinner. The only silence that she couldn’t bear was her sister’s.
For three days she hadn’t been sure if the routine was keeping her together or simply delaying an inevitable collapse. She watched the whole procession each day, waiting to learn. Mostly she marveled as the white men and women before her worshipped two dead swamis, learned about Hindu gods, practiced yoga, ate vegetarian meals, and chanted in a language even she didn’t know, finding their bliss.
During the lecture that afternoon, Nayana studied the paintings of gods that lined the hall while the others listened to their tales. She’d heard the stories growing up, and she knew them well, even if she rarely thought of them since leaving India. She tried to see them now as if through foreign eyes. Siva, a beautiful aquamarine, with his many arms, wielding a trident high in the air, dancing—a Hindu Poseidon; blue Krishna playing his flute, with his crown and peacock feathers; half-breed Ganesh’s elephant head and trunk hanging around his big belly; golden Hanuman with his strong form and simian face; Lakshmi posed on her lotus offering abundance from her four arms; a raging purple Kali with a severed head in one hand and bloody sword in the other, wearing a necklace of shrunken heads; behind them all trailed eight-armed Parvati, riding her tiger. These were just a few of the gods and goddesses, and they appeared more fantastic to her than ever before in the context of these halls, where foreigners found refuge in a borrowed religion. What could they possibly hope to discover in these garish, often gruesome icons? For her, growing up Hindu meant being taught to understand these gods as symbols to be admired and feared; they were stories to teach lessons. Humans were not made in their image—Hindus didn’t see themselves as anything like gods. Was this world of colorful deities simply an easier fantasy to escape into? These were characters in a grand tale meant to guide people to goodness, like all religious tales—full of beings that would never materialize to embrace her, or love her, or save her from herself. If she prayed, it was only to her sister, and, like the gods, Aditi was now silent.