A California Story, page 8
*
Balaji has cooked saag paneer and a spicy aloo dum with tortillas and rice. The food tastes even better in their drunken state. After dinner, Ved pulls out a marijuana joint that Sasha left him weeks ago. Sunil cheers but Vikram and Balaji resist and have to be cajoled into joining by invoking fond memories from college. They spread out sleeping bags on the carpet, dim the lights, smoke, and reminisce nostalgically over coconut and cashew burfis. They recall the night when they got stoned and jumped the walls of their college pool for a swim, only to be caught pants-down by the watchman; the night when their uptight hostel warden busted their blue film screening. Sunil breaks into a pot-induced giggle and is soon joined by others. It is well after midnight when they call it a night. Ved slips into a sleeping bag and quickly falls asleep into a dream.
He arrives at work to find a yellow note stuck on his computer screen. It is from his divisional VP, ‘Please see me at once’. He rushes across a bustling street thronged with people, cycle-rickshaws, hawkers, stray dogs, garishly painted auto-rickshaws, and climbs three flights of stairs to reach the VP’s office. It overlooks the lush green lawns of a British era bungalow. Peacocks caw now and again. The VP’s sexpot secretary receives him with a smile, ‘There you are, Vade! We’ve been waiting for you.’
‘Hell-low Ved!’ the VP greets him, ‘Come in, come in. Take a seat!’
Ved is taken aback by his enthusiasm. From behind his desk in the middle of the room, the VP points to the only chair across him. Above the desk hangs a bulb with a conical lampshade. There are no other lights. But this is not a private meeting. Many of Ved’s colleagues are seated in the low light along three walls. They look at him intently as he scans the room. What occasion might warrant this assembly?
‘I will get to the point right away,’ the VP says in a businesslike tone. ‘We are all adults here, aren’t we?’ He leans forward, stares into Ved’s eyes, and says, ‘I know you’re a terribly smart guy. Nobody here disagrees with that. But there is another fact nobody here disagrees with, that you don’t care about this stuff at all, about what we do here at Omnicon, do you?’
Ved is taken aback. The VP continues, ‘I’ve watched you for months, and listened to the feedback from your peers. I’m persuaded that you do this like an ordinary bloody job, don’t you? It’s as if you are biding your time. You would much rather be elsewhere, wouldn’t you?’
Ved listens carefully to every word the VP speaks. Ved has long prepared for this moment but words elude him now. He mumbles defensively, ‘Wait, that’s not true, you know that’s not true. I am responsible and trustworthy, more than most of your employees. I keep my promises. I care about my word to my colleagues. I …’
‘Enough! I see it – it is evident on your face every day. Nothing at work motivates you. You seem to be in it only for the paycheck. You’re totally burned out, not engaged enough, not ambitious enough.’
‘But that’s not true. In fact, you gave me a promotion and a raise last year.’
‘That means nothing. You’re smart enough to know that raises have become an entitlement around here. I tell you, this corporate socialism is killing us, destroying our competitiveness. But all along, I could see through your sham, your facade. No wonder you function far below your potential.’
‘That’s not true. I do what is expected of me. I pay attention …’
‘Maybe you do, but you’re not dedicated, like these men and women here. I need dedicated people.’ With fingers taut, as if clutching an imaginary cricket ball, he slowly shakes his fist at him, ‘You, in contrast, are without passion, without fire. That really is the bottom-line.’
Ved looks around. His own manager, Roger, is curiously missing. Amid the stony faces are Steve and Elysia, and a smirking colleague whom he sparred with recently on Middle-Eastern politics. But deep down Ved knows the VP is correct. Ved’s longstanding fear has come true – he has landed a VP who is totally committed to the corporate enterprise, who sees clearly, and who, like a mind reader, has now seen through him.
Ved tries to appear calm, ‘Listen, I think there might be a bit of a … a perception gap … I don’t promote myself well enough. I was never good at self-promotion. Give me time, I will work on filling this perception gap.’ He hears low titters from the gallery.
‘Ah-ha-hah, listen to that!’ The VP casts a smile around the room. ‘Our friend here says he will work on promoting himself, on filling “a perception gap”. Pray tell me, why just the perception gap? Why not the enthusiasm gap, the dedication gap, the ambition gap?’
‘At least the perception gap,’ Ved mumbles. ‘First perception, then the rest.’ He immediately regrets saying that. He is digging a hole for himself. He resents the power he confers upon the VP with his weak, fudging ways. He is disgusted by his inability to fight like a man, to protest this public humiliation, to cast away his fear, boldly resign, and walk out with his head held high, donning the Buddha smile. Isn’t that precisely what a self-respecting person should do? All his fond ideals and principles seem worthless in light of this moment.
‘OK, out!’ the VP gestures at the people along the walls. ‘We are done. Now I need a private word with my friend here.’ His tone is mocking, his smile sinister. Ved watches the room clear in seconds. Now it’s only the two of them. Ved prepares for the hammer to fall.
Suddenly, Ved wakes up, sweating, breathing hard, with two snoring bodies next to him. He is still in his sleeping bag at Balaji’s place. ‘Phew,’ he sighs with relief, falling back on the pillow. He rarely has anxiety dreams about his job. It stays with him the entire morning, as he drives home, bathes, and sets out to spend the day with Liz.
Eight
‘My mom called yesterday. She wants me to go see her in Santa Cruz,’ Liz reveals soon after they set out on a five-mile hiking trail amid old-growth redwood and sequoia trees.
‘Great, next weekend hop in your car and go.’ Ved takes in the soft, damp earth and the thick undergrowth that carpets the forest floor. Wildflowers and bright red berries abound. A mild breeze conveys the musky scent of the ocean.
‘Well, this may come as a shock to you but I’m not too fond of my mother. She was horrible to me and my sister – absent, selfish, neurotic. She is the kind who shouldn’t have kids. Now she’s turned even more caustic and bitchy in old age. No wonder she has no friends. You know this is hard for me to say but if I were my father, I would’ve left her too.’
Liz sighs, ‘But all said and done, I still love her. She is my mother and there is no one else to care for her. She is even starting to forget things – I feel sorry for her. My sister got off easy. She married a Canadian and escaped to Toronto years ago.’ A look of annoyed resignation crosses her face. ‘Now I’m stuck with my mother. And, tenacious as she is, she might live to a hundred.’ She pauses, then adds, ‘She doesn’t even have a fortune to leave behind.’
Her father is much nicer, Liz says. Once an Adjunct Professor at a college in Santa Cruz, he now lives a retired life in southern California. But eight years ago, just before his retirement, he was disgraced in a plagiarism scandal and fired from the college. He never quite recovered from it, nor found another job. He moved south and now lives like a mole with his bickering bitch of a wife who doesn’t like Liz. He drinks too much, and they barely make ends meet.
‘Sorry to hear that,’ he says, ‘what a difficult situation.’ A short silence ensues.
‘You Indians are so lucky,’ she says somberly. ‘Loving parents, focus on family and education, respect for tradition.’ It strikes him that she has a rather sanitized view of Indian family life, probably owing to some sort of New Age sensibility that makes India seem nobler from afar.
She pauses to stare at a family of redwoods, ‘Gosh, so tall, one can skydive from the top!’ They spot a centipede and a scorpion scuttle across the path. She walks ahead of him on a narrow part of the trail. He watches her gait, rolling hips, the billowing black skirt, the chunky calves. He has never fondled a buttock that large.
The trail turns steeper. They climb in silence for a few minutes. She is adept at identifying trees. A tan oak here, and that’s a madrone. Over there, by the big-leaf maple, is a Douglas fir. This scent is probably vanilla grass. He admits his ignorance of even the most common plants and trees.
‘Did you know,’ she asks, ‘that Sequoia was a Cherokee chief who created the first Native American alphabet? That enabled the Cherokee people to read and write and soon led to a literacy rate higher than that of the surrounding white settlers.’
‘Huh, I didn’t know that.’
They stop and rest on a high ridge with a view of the Pacific Ocean. She pulls out oranges, granola bars, water, and napkins from her daypack. They rest and eat.
‘I love being out in nature,’ she says. ‘Lucky we still have this left. But at the rate we’re going, can you imagine the earth in fifty years?’ She shudders. ‘If we could learn only one thing from the Native Americans, it’d have to be their view of nature’s sacred balance, don’t you think? They saw how everything is interconnected and lived in quiet harmony with nature. They didn’t see it as a resource to be endlessly plundered for their own gain.’
‘Nature’s sacred balance? Can anything be sacred in the absence of God?’
‘Not if one clings to a simple, anthropomorphic notion of God. But one can also understand God, as I do, to be more of a process, a design in which we participate. Eastern religions got it right: God pervades everything and is infinite. Sometimes I feel nature beckons me, as if … as if it were a divine oceanic womb. Have you ever felt that way?’
‘Beckoned by a womb? Nope. Wombs strike me as clammy, uncomfortable places.’
‘I should have guessed,’ she laughs with him. ‘There’s not much hope for you. Have you no reverence for nature, for the life force that unites the world, makes it hum?’
‘I have tremendous wonder for it, but not quite reverence. Nothing in nature cares about me, so why should I waste my reverence on it? Besides, why is there so much evil in nature? So much unfairness? So much suffering?’
‘That’s so Judeo-Christian, this talk of good and evil. Humans are parts of nature too; don’t we care about each other? Aren’t there other ways of understanding our existence? Life and nature are so much more mystical. We are still so clueless about the big questions: why is there something rather than nothing? Why do space, time, and matter exist? Why did life and evolution come into being? Why is everything in nature so intricately connected? We know practically nothing, though we like to pretend otherwise.’
‘Sure, we’re clueless as you say, but being clueless need not lead to reverence. I’d rather figure out how to be less clueless, rather than retreat into reverence. How does that help?’
‘It helps protect nature, no? Also keeps us humble and grounded.’
‘Perhaps, but I prefer other, more rational and existential reasons for protecting nature, and for staying humble and grounded.’
A raven caws raucously. Leaves rustle in a gentle breeze. They drink water and watch the landscape in silence. An Indian couple appears on the trail. The man is wearing an ICC Cricket World Cup sweatshirt.
‘Ah, cricket. Was there a cricket world cup recently?’ she asks.
‘Yeah. In South Africa.’
‘My father loved cricket. He played it growing up in England. Aren’t Indians quite good at it?’
‘They are. That’s about the only sport they are good at.’
‘That’s right,’ she laughs, ‘Indians are dreadful at sports. They hardly ever win anything at the Olympics. Why do you think that is?’
‘Partly because India hasn’t prioritized spending money on modern, high-tech training.’
‘Many other countries haven’t either, like the Kenyans. How come a few in a billion people can’t …’
‘That’s true. Indians debate this publicly every four years during the Olympics – when they feel ashamed and humiliated – but outside this window, they forget about it and return to actively discouraging their kids from pursuing careers in sports. In this debate, the reasons offered for India’s dismal performance cover the whole gamut: economics, culture, diet, genetics, climate, politics, the dominance of cricket – like soccer in Brazil. A well-known social psychologist has argued that physical competition was never big in India, as it was in Greece and Rome; that the pursuit of sports has been held back due to a very different way of thinking about the self, the individual, and the body. Indians privileged mystical-spiritual pursuits, rather than modern individualism and everything that flows from it – ambition, innovation, competition – helpful for excelling in sports.’
‘But Indians are ambitious and creative. Look at their magnificent temples and monuments, the sublime art and music, textiles and costumes, cuisines, and on and on.’
‘Yes, that requires ambition and creativity. For the most part though, it wasn’t the kind of ambition or creativity that broke away from tradition or community but operated within it, in the service of the social collective – rather than the self, for personal fame and glory, or as physical acts of individual will, which fuel success in modern sports.’ He pauses to reflect on his words and soon a debate comes alive in his head. India has counterexamples for nearly everything.
‘Interesting theory,’ she says thoughtfully. ‘Yeah, when it comes down to it, they’re such different approaches to life, aren’t they? I find India enchanting. Personally, I couldn’t care less for modern sports,’ she declares. ‘I think the West has so much to learn from India. Look where our vain individualism has brought us – colonialism, world wars, WMDs, a culture of violence, drugs, and extreme inequality, environmental and ecological disasters, climate change, factory farming, extinction of species, and on and on. And there is no light at the end of the tunnel, is there?’
He considers standing up for individualism, to cast it in a more balanced light. She is singling out its toxic byproducts – inevitable in a system that inflates egoistic aspirations in men. Doesn’t the fiction of individualism also vest certain dignities and rights in individuals that help protect them from the whims of the collective, making room for greater personal development, freedom, and justice? But this is a whole different conversation and he postpones it for another time.
Soon they’re back on their feet. Their conversation turns to Bay Area hiking spots, packaged food bars, her old car that’s falling apart, gossip about friends and colleagues. The lush, fern-lined forest opens into a meadow. The trail continues along a little creek, and across small canyons. They spot black-tailed deer, chipmunks, and lizards. By early evening, three hours after starting, they’re back in the parking lot. They rest on a stone bench and drink water.
‘You know,’ she says, ‘I love the range of things we can talk about.’
‘Me too,’ he says. Their eyes meet, they smile. He feels a moment of connection. A surge of affection rises within him. He feels closer to her, more at ease. He wonders what the rest of the evening has in store for them.
*
They reach his place before sundown. He showers before her and starts working on dinner. When she joins him and offers to help, he says, ‘Thanks, but it’ll be easier if I do the whole thing myself. Perhaps you can pick out a wine and play some music.’
She browses his CDs and picks an album of Romany music that he bought in Budapest years ago. Its vocals have always seemed oddly familiar to him, like echoes from a distant past. She selects an Australian Chablis, pours a glass each, sits at the dining table next to the kitchen, and watches him chop bell peppers and onions, and then fry them with ginger, garlic, mustard, turmeric, coriander, and tej patta. ‘Umm, smells delicious,’ she says.
She regales him by imitating the accent of a South Indian colleague at work – a sweet man but a total geek, with zero social skills and a seemingly identical roll of the head to indicate both yes and no. But he is such a whiz with databases and networking that their entire office depends on him.
She wanders over to Ved’s bookshelves. ‘Cute!’ she says, picking up the stone figurine of Chac Mool, the Mayan rain god, and comments on some of his other travel souvenirs: the replica of a Sumerian clay tablet; the panpipe from Machu Picchu. He occasionally glances at her from the kitchen, especially when she speaks: ‘I never quite figured out Borges’; ‘Hemingway is too macho for my taste’; ‘Baldwin! I still have a rubbing from his grave. Sorry if this sounds too morbid, but I was really into graves at one time.’
‘Can I ask you a question?’ she perks up suddenly. ‘What would you like to be done to your body after you die? You can take a few minutes to answer it. I’ll tell you my answer after yours, okay?’
Ved nods and starts thinking about it. He hears Liz say, ‘Gosh, I’m so ignorant about Indian history.’ While the curry simmers, he makes rice and a tomato-cucumber raita, and then joins her in the living room.
‘You have very few women authors,’ her tone carries the whiff of a reprimand.
‘Well, women began writing more recently,’ he says. ‘Men have written more books over time. My collection probably reflects that ratio, especially if you look at older classics.’ Even as he says it, it sounds like a flimsy excuse. Really, why hasn’t he read more women authors?
‘Perhaps men speak to your experiences more than women?’
‘That’s true to some extent … as much as the reverse is true for you, I guess. But here, let me point out a few women authors from just the top two shelves … Zora Neale Hurston, Sappho, Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, Nadine Gordimer, Karen Armstrong.’
‘Let’s see, that’s about ten percent. Alright, you get a passing grade. Keep at it though, there’s no better way to unlock the feminine mystique.’ She looks pleased with her remark.
