Read The Weight of Heaven Online
Authors: Thrity Umrigar
Tags: #Americans - India, #Murder, #Psychological Fiction, #Married People, #India, #Family Life, #Crime, #Psychological, #Family & Relationships, #General, #Americans, #Bereavement, #Death; Grief; Bereavement, #Adoption, #Fiction
procession of humanity in motion. You enter the city from the suburbs, which have none of the green tranquillity of the American
’burbs, and pass street after street of small restaurants and shops
selling everything from jeans to gold jewelry to the ubiquitous betel
leaf concoction known as
paan
, which every Indian male of a certain
class background seems to chew. Occasionally, there is a shop with a
name you recognize—Sony, Wrangler, Nokia—and it is impossible
not to notice the billboards that say Coke or Pepsi, part of the Cola
Wars being fought across the country. But mostly, nothing registers
because your attention is pulled in multiple directions—here is a taxi
coming up to your right and about to hit your Camry and you try
to control your reaction, bite down on your tongue, but at the last
minute yell to Satish to watch out and feel the quiet press of embarrassment when the taxi misses your car by inches—as they always
seem to—and Satish flashes you a grin in the rearview mirror. And
here you are stopped at a traffic light and your car is surrounded
by scores of tired-looking young women with children on their
hips, beating on the windows with their open hands as they beg for
money, and you feel hot and flushed and don’t know where to look,
know it is dangerous to make eye contact but staring straight ahead
feels pretty untenable, also, and on top of this Satish is admonishing you not to weaken, not to toss out a few coins because there are
always more beggars than coins. So you sit in your air-conditioned
car, ignoring the sound of hands beating on the window, feeling like
a chimp in a zoo, remembering that other time a couple of months
ago when other, angrier hands had beaten on your car, feeling that
lethal combination of pity and aggravation that India always seems
to arouse in you. And then, at the last minute, you sense that your
wife can’t take this anymore and she reaches into her purse for a few
one-rupee coins and, watching this, the crowd outside your car gets
frantic, you can feel it even though you’re safely inside, and suddenly
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their numbers seem to double, just like that, like ants at a picnic. And
Ellie lowers the window just as Satish starts moving, and now the
outstretched hands are in the car, grasping at the money that Ellie
is tossing out, and some of them are running after the moving car,
in and out of the heavy traffic, fixated on the single coin, with no
thought to the safety of life or limb. “Put the window up, madam,”
Satish yells, even as he handles the control of the automatic window
himself. And not a moment too soon, because the lowered window
has let in more than the dark, desperate faces of the women and
children, it had let in the stench of the city, a peculiar eye-stinging,
nose-filling, throat-gagging combination of urine and exhaust and
sweat and black smoke. This burning, rubbery smell is everywhere,
though it dissipates a bit as you make your way from the inner rings
of hell—Parel, Lalbaug, Bhendi Bazaar—into the outer rings—
Crawford Market, Flora Fountain, Colaba.
It was while the car was stopped at yet another traffic light at
Parel that Ramesh burst into tears. “I want to go home,” he sobbed.
“I hate Bombay. Too much poor people.”
Ellie put her arm around the boy. “I know, baby,” she said. “But
it will be okay. We’ll be at our hotel soon. There’s a swimming pool
there. We’re going to have a good time, okay?”
Ramesh looked at her tearfully, as if he couldn’t imagine having
a good time in this city. “But Ellie, that boy is having no hands,” he
said, as if that explained everything. The clamor of the beggars surrounding them grew as they witnessed the scene inside the car. Even
with their windows rolled up, Frank could sense the excitement outside. They were jockeying for some advantage, looking for a loophole through which a few coins would slip out and make their way
toward them. He felt a grudging admiration. The entrepreneurial
spirit at work, he thought.
But the truth was, he was happy at the sight of his wife sitting
with her arm around Ramesh. As far as he knew, this was the first
time Ellie had done this. He found himself opening his wallet and
Th e We i g h t o f H e av e n 1 2 5
removing a ten-rupee note. “Tell you what,” he told Ramesh. “You
can give this to that boy’s mom. How’s that?”
As the beggars saw the white man reach for his wallet, the beating on the car window grew more frenzied. Satish raised his voice.
“Don’t open the window, sir. Please to wait until the car is moving.
Then you can throw money out. Otherwise, no peace while we’re at
this traffic signal.” He lowered his window a fraction.
“Chalo. Jao,”
he yelled threateningly at the crowd, and the ones closest to him
moved away a few inches, his voice creating a ripple in the crowd,
and then, the next second, the ripple died and they closed in again.
Ramesh sat clenching the note in his hand. “How will I make
sure he only gets the money?” he asked. “What if someone else take
it away?”
“You want me to do it?” Frank asked, wishing the goddamn
light would change already, but Ramesh shook his head vigorously.
“No. I want to give him.”
They lowered the window a fraction when they were finally
moving again, and Frank hoisted Ramesh onto his lap so that he
could hand the money to the sad-eyed woman. Scores of hands tried
to push their way into the opening, but although he was scared,
Ramesh held on to the note until he could shove it into the hand of
the mother. And then they were gone, leaving behind a swarm of
squabbling, jostling beggars to descend onto the next car.
Inside the car, with Ramesh still in his lap, Frank touched the
boy’s sweaty forehead and then put his right hand over the boy’s
heart. As he had thought, Ramesh’s heart was racing, beating fast.
Frank let his hand remain until he felt the boy’s heart slow down its
frantic jabbering. It was a trick he had discovered with Benny, how
simply laying his hand on his son’s small chest could calm the boy
down. Out of the corner of his eye he caught Ellie staring at him and
knew that she, too, had remembered the times he’d tried this with
Benny, suspected that she resented this easy (in her mind) substitution of one boy for another. But at this moment, he didn’t care. They
1 2 6 Th r i t y U m r i g a r
hadn’t even reached their hotel yet, and already he was experiencing
a feeling of liberation at being in Bombay with Ramesh and Ellie.
He hoped that Ramesh would come to see this also—how, despite
the fact that the city felt like a trap and caught its citizens in a deathlike vise, its sheer size, its mindless momentum, conferred upon you
a kind of anonymity and freedom. It occurred to him that he wanted
Ramesh to return to Girbaug a citified boy, realizing his hometown’s
limitations, chafing at its smallness, feeling its squeeze, like a pair of
shoes one has outgrown. Someday, the boy would see New York,
London, and lose himself in the paradoxical freedom that big cities
conferred upon their residents.
But he was getting carried away. The first task was to console
Ramesh, prep him for the wonders of the old colonial buildings of
South Bombay, prepare him for the opulence of the hotel room that
they would occupy in less than an hour. And also, to draw Ellie into
the fold again, make her a part of this adventure, so that for a few
precious days they could pretend to be a family. He gave Ramesh a
light shove. “You’re getting heavy,” he grunted. “All muscle.”
As he had predicted, the boy beamed. “Yes,” he said. “That’s
why only I’m beating you at basketball.” He moved off Frank’s lap
onto the seat. “I beat him six games in a row, Ellie,” he added.
Ellie smiled. “That’s good,” she said, but her voice was absentminded, distant.
“Whatcha thinking, hon?” Frank said.
“Nothing, really. Just about all this.” She swept her hands to
indicate the sprawl of humanity all around them and then leaned
forward. “You have family in Bombay, right, Satish?”
“Correct, madam. My sister’s family live in Mumbai. Close by to
where we are now, actually.” He lowered his voice. “She married to
a Muslim man, madam.”
“Muslims eat cows,” Ramesh declared.
They ignored him. “Your parents okay with that?” Frank asked.
He stretched his arm so that he was cradling Ramesh as well as pull-Th e We i g h t o f H e av e n 1 2 7
ing Ellie close to him. She rested her head on his arm and he smiled
at the familiarity of the gesture. He remembered a winter’s night in
Shaker Heights, on a double date with Ellie’s sister Anne and her
husband, Bob. They had gone to Nighttown to listen to jazz and on
the way home, he and Ellie had sat in the backseat, Ellie leaning her
head on his arm.
Satish turned to give Frank a quick glance. “Better now, sir. At
first, lots of fightum-fighting. My mother say she will never see
Usha again. But after first baby born, my mother ask me to take her
to Mumbai to see baby.”
Frank sighed. While in college, he and Pete had once rented a
Bollywood movie, curious to know what all the fuss was about.
They had hooted with laughter at the sappy dialogue, the exaggerated gestures, the caricature of a villain, the melodramatic reconciliation between mother and son, and of course, the interminable
musical numbers. But after living in India, none of this seemed as
exaggerated or unrealistic as before. Every family, every home, in
India seemed to have its own saga of melodrama and heartache. For
the second time, he opened his wallet. This time, he took out two
hundred-rupee bills. “Buy some chocolates for your sister’s children
from us,” he said, leaning forward to hand the money to Satish.
“No need for this, sir,” Satish protested, but Frank noticed
that when he looked at him in the rearview mirror, the driver was
smiling.
“I want some chocolates too,” Ramesh said, and Frank smacked
him lightly on his hand.
“How’re you going to be a world-class basketball player if you
get all fat?”
“I’m not fat,” the boy said indignantly, and they all laughed.
“No, you’re
doobla-sukla
,
yaar
,” Satish said.
“What does that mean?” Ellie asked.
“Like this, like this,” Ramesh explained, holding up his little
finger. “Thin-thin.”
1 2 8 Th r i t y U m r i g a r
“I see,” Frank smiled. “Tin-tin.” He was always teasing Ramesh
about his inability to make the
th
sound.
“No, not tin,
thin
.” Ramesh caught the smile on Frank’s face and
punched him on his shoulder. “Stop making fun of me.” He turned
to Ellie. “Make him stop.”
“Stop,” Ellie deadpanned, and they grinned at each other over
Ramesh’s head.
The car pulled into the arched driveway of the Taj Hotel. Getting
out of the car, Ramesh pulled his head all the way back to take in the
tall tower of the Intercontinental, nestled against the original domed
building. “Frank,” the boy breathed. “We’re living in a palace?”
Frank laughed. “Yeah, I guess we are, kiddo.” He tried to pick
up a suitcase from the open trunk, but Satish came racing back and
looked affronted. “Leave it, sir,” he said, nodding his head to where
a skinny bellboy was standing dressed in a heavy red uniform. “He
will take.” The driver lingered long enough to make sure that the
bellboy had all their belongings and to make final arrangements with
Frank as to where and when to pick them up for tomorrow’s picnic.
Handing the keys of the Camry to the valet, Satish walked briskly
away to catch the bus that would take him to his sister’s home.
Striding into the Taj’s opulent lobby, Frank kept a protective
hand on Ramesh’s shoulder. The boy was subdued, though his eyes
were wide with awe as he took in the enormous chandeliers, the
clusters of white-skinned businessmen and tourists, the soft-spoken,
dazzlingly beautiful women receptionists, the unmistakable scent of
luxury and opulence that the place exuded. He waited on one of the
leather couches with Ellie while Frank got them checked in. He was
quiet even as they rode the gilded elevator that led to their room.
Once they were in their large room, he silently toured the carpeted
bedroom with the large, comfortable bed, the red-and-gold mahagony chaise longue near the large window that overlooked the
Arabian Sea, the marble-tiled bathroom with the tub and a vanity
Th e We i g h t o f H e av e n 1 2 9
dresser in one corner. Then the boy sat down heavily on one of the
antique chairs and, for the second time that day, burst into tears.
“What’s wrong?” Frank asked. “Ramesh, are you sick?”
The sobbing boy shook his head. “Not sick.” He tried to say
more, but he couldn’t. Frank made a move toward him, but Ellie
stopped him. “Let him cry,” she whispered. “He’s just overwhelmed.
He needs to get it out.”
While Frank looked at her uncertainly, Ramesh dug into the
pockets of his pants. He fished around and finally came up with a