The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai [70]
“Hallo Hallo,” he said to a pink satin child smearing food all over the chair legs, “Ya givin your mom too much trouble, ha ha? But one day ya make her feel proud, right? Gointa be a beeeg man, reech man, vhat you say? Ya vanna nice cheekan karry?” He smiled and genuflected.
Harish-Harry—the two names, Biju was learning, indicated a deep rift that he hadn’t suspected when he first walked in and found him, a manifestation of that clarity of principle which Biju was seeking. That support for a cow shelter was in case the Hindu version of the afterlife turned out to be true and that, when he died, he was put through the Hindu machinations of the beyond. What, though, if other gods sat upon the throne? He tried to keep on the right side of power, tried to be loyal to so many things that he himself couldn’t tell which one of his selves was the authentic, if any.
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It wasn’t just Harish-Harry. Confusion was rampant among the “haalf ‘n’ haf” c rowd, the Indian students coming in with American friends, one accent one side of the mouth, another the other side; muddling it up, wobbling then, downgrading sometimes all the way to Hindi to show one another: Who? No, no, it was not they pretending to be other than who and what they were. They weren’t the ones turning their back on the greatest culture the world has ever seen….
And the romances—the Indian-White combination, in particular, was a special problem.
The desis entered feeling very ill at ease and the waiters began to smirk and sneer, raising their eyebrows to show them what they thought.
“Hot, medium, or mild?” they asked. “Hot,” the patrons said invariably, showing off, informing their date they were the unadulterated exotic product, and in the kitchen they laughed, “Ha ha,” then suddenly the unadulterated anger came out, “sala!”
The evildoers bit into the vindaloo—
And that vindaloo—it bit them back.
Faces smarting, ears and eyes burning, tongues becoming numb, they whimpered for yogurt, explaining to the table, “That is what we do in India, we always eat yogurt for the balance….”
The balance, you know….
You know, you know—
Hot cool, sweet sour, bitter pungent, the ancient wisdom of the Ayurveda that can grant a person complete poise….
“Too hot?” Biju would ask, grinning.
Weeping, “No, no.”
There was no purity in this venture. And no pride. He had come home to no clarity of vision.
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Harish-Harry blamed his daughter for rattling his commitment. The girl was becoming American. Nose ring she found compatible with combat boots and clothes in camouflage print from the army-navy surplus.
His wife said, “All this nonsense, what is this, give her two tight slaps, that’s what….”
“Good you did like that,” he had said, but slaps had not worked. “You go, girl!” he said, trying to rise, instead, to the occasion of his daughter being American. “You GO, gurllll!!!” But that didn’t work either. “I didn’t ask to be born,” she said. “You had me for your own selfish reasons, wanted a servant, didn’t you? But in this country, Dad, nobody’s going to wipe your ass for free.”
Not even bottom! Wipe your ass! Dad! Not even Papaji. No wipe your bottom, Papaji. Dad and ass. Harish-Harry got drunk in an episode that would become familiar and tedious; he sat at the cash register and wouldn’t go home, though the kitchen staff were anxiously waiting so they could get up on the tables and sleep wrapped in the tablecloths. “And they think we admire them!” He began to laugh. “Every time one enters my shop I smile”—he showed his skeleton grin—”’Hi, how ya doin,’ but all I want is to break their necks. I can’t, but maybe my son will, and that is my great hope. One day Jayant-Jay will smile and get his hands about their sons’ necks and he will choke them dead.”
“See, Biju, see what this world is,” he said and began to weep with his arm on Biju’s shoulder.
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It was only the recollection of the money he was making that calmed him. Within this thought