We Are Not in Pakistan (27 page)

He stops, rereads the e-mail.

“In case you care …” An implicit accusation. Indignation raises its head, offers a mute bark. Minni, Gagan, his mother — when she was alive. Always accusing him of not caring, forgetting how much he remitted each year. And this from a woman who might not even be his daughter, who doesn't even know him.

So maybe he had hurt Rita, but Rita could survive. If nothing else, he'd given her reason to tell her anti-male jokes for a few more years. And now this child born of Rita's maternal longing, like Ganesh to Parvati.

At some point, he must have stepped over the threshold that permitted him to be guilt-free about that marriage, so American is he. It made him a legal resident. Which is more than many in California can say.

American enough to go on TV and tell all about it? American enough to meet his long-lost daughter on Oprah? Not
that
American. Contrary to textbook economic models, all transactions are not equal. Suppose it were drugs — Rita would be forgiven for buying, but a brown man would never be forgiven for selling. And similarly, she'd be forgiven for selling herself in marriage, but a brown man would never be forgiven for buying himself a green card.

What to do? His brain clicks into high gear, throbs against his skull. At least the girl has given him a few days notice. Hai Rabba! — what if she'd just waltzed in, asking anyone to direct her to his office?

They say when a tsunami hits, you either disappear, survive or die. Can he disappear? As of last December, one can't even apply for asylum in Canada anymore.

What is he thinking! Walking out of his well-built life because a girl of twenty-three wants to visit?

It's taken twenty-five years of withstanding ignorance and prejudice, starting from long before it was cool to be Indian in Silicon Valley, to gain this office in North Hall with this window, this computer, these shelves groaning with books, this inbox full of scholarly papers and assignments. He isn't the next Amartya Sen, but it is possible he's changed some perspectives in the US-centric West by working within the English-speaking educational establishment.

And he has commitments here, assumed like an elephant takes on lading. Classes, committees, upcoming conferences, research papers, a new home. A mortgage. And he is beholden to moneylenders, just as he could be in India. And at the same interest rate, twenty-seven percent, from charging two weddings and associated dowries on credit cards. Expensive Delhi weddings, first for Gagan, then for Minni. Almost paid down after fifteen years, but still — commitments.

A wife might demand and deserve explanations, but uncles, aunts and cousins in Delhi gave up introducing Karan to eligible “girls” on his annual trips once his mother passed away, the tacit assumption that he would now dedicate his life to supporting them. Gagan said apologetically once that his divorce had lowered his value on the marriage market, and couldn't he have just kept quiet about it? Might be different now. Many school friends in Delhi have divorced and some have remarried.

But something in him turned away after the two-year marriage, became irretrievable. An empty space that scarcely bothers him, except when his mind collides with it and retreats. Other men may be curious about interior unknowns, but one person is
too small a sample size. Ergo, he does not use himself as fodder for analysis.

In lieu of a wife, Karan has Adela, his bi-weekly housekeeper. And he has had women friends over the years, the kind who cannot resist cooking and caring for a single man and expect a professor to be absent-minded. He's slept with a few — maybe twenty-two — but he's not counting. Sex is much like healthy exercise in California. His only rule: no students. No career complications.

Outside his window lies an emerald lawn, an unwrinkled sky, students rollerblading down palm-shaded walks, each carrying a backpack. Summer flowers, leaves turning mirror faces to the sun. And out of sight, though resident in consciousness, the graceful curve of Goleta Beach, the silver glint of the infinite Pacific.

Santa Barbara, his American Riviera city.

The publication of his first un-co-authored textbook earned him the offer of a three-year contract here, and he leapt at it like a migrant farm worker at the gates of a corporate plantation. Each year he must write and publish articles with titles like “Non-Parametric Efficiency Analysis under Uncertainty” and fill them with windy prose and formulas to justify his existence to the dean.

Dean Bradnock. Seated behind a very wide desk, light flashing off reading glasses. Bradnock, who counselled Karan to call in and register with Homeland Security, “since
you're
not an illegal.” Bradnock saying, “You don't have anything to worry about — right?”

Nothing to worry about but scandal. What a Victorian word.

If Bradnock senses the smallest shadow of illegality, he will “err on the side of safety” again. He'll “suggest” a leave of absence. And there'll be no guarantee he'll renew Karan's contract — or health insurance.

Perhaps this Uma girl doesn't know there was a green card deal.

She must know. Rita never let Karan forget it for a single day of that marriage.

The real question: is Uma a benign or retributive being? And if she is some vengeful churail, can she be propitiated? At what price?

Karan worries all of Tuesday, even as he draws demand and supply curves showing summer students that billion-dollar-a-day farm subsidies in developed countries enforce the poverty of millions elsewhere, even while watching Dr. Sanjay Gupta reporting on CNN, even while listening to an hour-long public radio program about successful Indo-Americans.

On Wednesday, Karan hears himself explaining to students that, by “invisible hand,” Adam Smith meant to describe the outcome of buyer and seller relationships. The term, he tells them, wasn't a coded reference to some god-like hand meddling in human affairs. But he's not convincing them — or himself, really.

Worry expands in all directions till evening, when Karan loses his weekly squash game with Nadir.

On Thursday, Karan wanders into the faculty lounge where the foul smell of popcorn lingers. And there is Thayne with Dean Bradnock, paging through a pocket brag-book of photos. He waves Karan over to see: here he is marching down State Street in the Fourth of July parade last weekend, carrying the black POW-MIA flag before the Vietnam Veterans banner.

And here's a photo of Thayne's long-unknown half-Vietnamese son, now thirty-five years old. Karan gazes at the photo, taken in Ho Chi Minh City last year — the young man poses astride a scooter. The woman in long white opera gloves riding pillion is the prof's daughter-in-law. Thayne found out he has two grandchildren — see, here are their photos.

Dean Bradnock is admiring.

“If we never met,” says Thayne, “I'd still be wondering what he's like, you know?”

Karan returns to his desk. What is this Uma like? Who is she like? He fires up his e-mail and hits Reply. He replies contrary to all his drafts. A reply that introduces himself and becomes an invitation.

On the climb between the university and his home, Karan's white Toyota groans beneath the weight of its rust. He'll buy a Jeep Cherokee when he's more settled. Solidly American, somewhat reminiscent of a Mahindra Jeep in Punjab, and it won't outshine the dean's Volvo.

Alongside the road, the ocean extends and recoils along the shore. Per MapQuest, the ocean is south, even though he feels as if it should be west. Or something like that — directions are not his strong suit, and he hasn't lived in this neighbourhood long enough to auto-pilot home.

Joggers. A cyclist. Each with the sun-drenched insouciance of the native Californian; they seem to know exactly where they are going.

Friday evening, now. The girl is arriving tomorrow. He turns on the radio, finds KCLU. Lakshmi Singh reports, “Bombs exploded yesterday in three subway stations and on a bus in London.” Casualties … the death toll so far stands at thirty-four. Suicide bombers are suspected. Terrible. “Barbaric,” says a politician. “The civilized world will not stand for this,” says another.

Thank you Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld, Bible-waving evangelists waiting for the Rapture, and car-makers whose SUVs guzzle Middle Eastern oil. And, it must be admitted, even people like himself — anyone who drives at all. Will Prime Minister Blair
bomb some other country or treat it as a crime? The British have a few centuries of experience in putting down dissent — Indian freedom fighters, the IRA. They'll deal with it more sensibly than Bush dealt with 9/11.

Karan turns the radio off.

Receipts, Twix wrappers, unpaid parking tickets. Punjabi, Hindi and Urdu audiocassettes, napkins, travel mugs without lids — he really should clean up his car and pay his tickets before the girl — Uma — arrives. If she does. He'd bought her Amtrak ticket online rather than send her money. He couldn't bring himself to ask for a photo, either. She'd seen his picture posted on the university web site — hard to miss. Only faculty member with turban and beard.

The house isn't new, but it's freshly painted, tangible evidence of the advance for
Economics: Basic Relationships in the Twenty-First Century,
by Karanbir Singh. Better than his old studio apartment. And, thanks to Vaheguruji, a good word from the dean, and a preferential mortgage rate for faculty, the monthly auto-deduction from his account is only sixty cents more than his former rent check.

Can't do much about the mailbox — some prankster cracked its supporting post last week. Probably the sandy-haired freckled kid next door or someone in his gang. The kid looks fifteen or so. Just a few years younger than Karan's students. Has nothing better to do till September but slouch around smoking weed with his pimply friends and make a nuisance of himself.

But the car …

He won't clean up. Let the girl see him as he is. Decide if she wants any more to do with him. She's probably like his first-year students — bored, sullen and given to quoting themselves with a prefatory “I'm like.”

But it is a good thing he had the windshield replaced. Someone — probably the kid, but he can't accuse anyone — hit a baseball
that splintered it the day he moved in. He waited two days for a parent to come over, apologize, insist on paying for replacement, but no one showed up. Even after the insurance, it was still $218 out of his pocket.

He slides a tape in. The car fills with Rabbi Shergill's voice: “… Bulla ki jana mein kaun?”

Who knows who I am?

Twenty-three and she hasn't been to college. His daughter — if she is his daughter — isn't a college grad. For this Uma can thank her mother. If Rita had called Karan once, wouldn't he have found a way for Uma to go to college? One of his cousin-nieces in Amritsar is writing a PhD on racism in Joseph Conrad's novels at his expense. He's helped pay for another in Ludhiana to study chemical engineering and encouraged at least three in Delhi who are now working in multinationals. Two generations ago … well, everyone in the family was village-schooled and muddy from the fields back then.

Karan parks, enters his home, opens one of the moving boxes and takes out a backpack. Returning to the car, he begins filling it with junk from the back seat. When he's finished, he opens the hatch, leans into the boot, pushes the black bag all the way in so there will be space for the girl's luggage.

No question of a hotel, Uma must stay with him. Maybe she'll want to study here in Santa Barbara — it's a beautiful city.

The Santa Barbara Train Station has, Karan is proud to note, been remodelled lately. On this Saturday it's full of people who will never make it to Karan's classes without Pell grants. Flyers hanging over the red, white and blue bunting warn of a Yellow Alert. He takes a seat and waits for the train from LA, hands clasped around a rolled up page from a legal pad on which he's written her name.

Smell of onions. A tanned tattooed arm appears beside Karan's. Impression of leather and polished rivets. The hair at the base of his turban is rising. The man leans closer, digs his elbow into Karan's side.

“Go home, Bin Laden!” Karan turns. Two inches away, a single-browed glare radiates from a stubbled face.

Karan's skin tightens. Fear hits in a galvanic rush, then anger.

Ignorance — just ignorance! Don't allow yourself to react to Philistines.

He swallows. One, two, three, four, five.

A flush is rising beneath his beard. “I am home, mister.” His voice is as even as if he is lecturing in class.

And he smiles.

Then hates himself for smiling.

He gets up, moves to another seat a few feet away. Sits down. Presses his palm on his knee to steady its tremor.

This id iot could n't pass his SAT even if there were a GI Bill for bikers. But surely a basic education should have taught him something. In the absence of better schooling, one of Karan's much-rejected papers argued, the US will need more immigrants.

The man hauls himself off the bench, slings his backpack over his shoulder and swaggers off to catch his train; Karan pretends he doesn't notice.

A mute television above his head repeats the clip of bodies being carried out of the subway. The death toll is now fifty-two, maybe more. Sad! And now mug shots of suspected Muslim men.

A few minutes later, the same images again.

In 2001, one of his colleagues said the scene of the planes and the twin towers was replayed so often that her five-year-old thought all the planes were falling from the skies and crashing into buildings.

At least this time it isn't New York or Washington.

Now a close up of Osama Bin Laden. Karan is much better looking — plenty of women would agree.

Eleven o'clock. The train has arrived. He stands up, unfurls his paper.

Uma will never be able to read it from a distance.

He sits down again, takes out his pen. Darkens his handwriting.