Nights of Beautiful Women

(Started in my notebook on the plane between Mumbai and Delhi three weeks ago.)

Mumbai, Maharastra
Deepti, Sapna and I are the only ones left here in Building 7 of the Sewa Samiti Cooperative Housing Society in King's Circle, Sion. We said goodbye to Manu this morning, with hearty back-slapping hugs and plans to meet again soon in the States. I was the only one in the apartment when Jenny left later this afternoon, our conversation not yet ended as she stepped into the taxi that took her away. The apartment was strangely quiet when I went back upstairs, and I stared blankly out the window at the gold dome of the gurudwara down the street until the cawing of a crow on the laundry line snapped me out of my reverie.

But now it's night here and the three of us have been together for the evening: Deepti catching up on email, and Sapna creating intricate mehndi (henna) designs onto my splayed hands. Her head is bent in concentration and I am trying very hard to keep my hand still on the orange satin pillow that has become her workspace. From the computer, Deepti is asking questions about love and boys and life and Sapna keeps yanking my hand when I start to speak. "Stop talking," she admonishes. "You move your hands when you talk." I look at her incredulously and she laughs aloud when I tell her I can't stop talking. At the computer, Deepti snorts. "Seriously, Sap, stop talking? For Rashmi?"

Later the three of us are in bed in their room (mine and Jenny's and Manu's has been stripped and cleaned in preparation for the new volunteers). The ceiling fan is humming above and the night is cooler than it has been in a while, blessedly deviod of rain. The smell of fresh mehndi rises from my hands and in the dark, I keep bringing my palms to my face to inhale the pungent aroma, oddly familiar from my childhood. We are talking in low tones, and Deepti's voice is velvety when she asks, "Do you remember the first time your parents thought of America as home?"

My hands, near my face, freeze and I feel my breath on my palms, even and slow. "Yeah," I reply quietly into the darkness. "It's kind of a big deal when that happens."

I know Deep is nodding and her voice continues, soft and sure. "I always used to feel like I was taking my mom away from her family when we left. You know?" Now Sapna and I are nodding into the darkness. "And I always was so guilty because I wanted to go back to America so badly. And this one time, we were on the plane leaving from New Delhi and I asked my mom if she was happy to be leaving. She smiled and said, 'Yes, let's go home,' and her voice was relieved and happy. It was the first time I didn't feel guilty for wanting to go home."

In my mind, I can see a smaller version of Deepti on the plane next to her mother, feel her childlike relief at going back to her bedroom, devoid of cousins and containing the notes from friends and Babysitters' Club books and clothes that are hers and hers alone. I know the overwhelming desire for American life that two months in a village in India causes within her, a life that is clean and ordered and in the other country, a desire that causes so much guilt. I see the question braced on her lips, waiting until after the plane rises high above the Deccan Plateau bound for Europe and then America, waiting to see if her mother's light smile and easy grip on her hand is a shared happiness. I know it because her story is mine as well as hers: it belongs to all of us in that room, three sisters of two separate worlds. In the dark, slow silent tears are moving down my face and my mehndi-scented fingers gently brush them away. The ceiling fan continues humming and we talk and laugh quietly, finally drifting off into a peaceful slumber.

New Delhi
In the Indian way, my cousin's daughter refers to me as "aunt." Knowing nothing of confusing western nomenclature of second cousins and once-removed, Nirupama simply calls me bua (pronounced "boo-ah"), the Hindi word for "aunt," and has grown into a little beauty in the five years since I've seen her last. She is now 11 years old and my height, with fair skin and brown hair, slim with an athletic grace that she owes to the hours of tennis and field hockey that occupy her afternoons. She is affectionate and sweet, speaking to me quietly in beautifully accented British English learned at her English medium school; she speaks softly if front of her parents as she is embarrassed to speak English in front of them. She has insisted on sleeping in my room with me and now she is laying on her side, playing with my hands and my hair, chatting with me in Hindi and asking me to tell her a story in English. I decide to tell her the story of "Ek rajkumari aur ek matar (The Princess and the Pea)." She laughs at the title in Hindi and then listens intently as I tell her the story of the honest princess with the ludicriously sensitive skin. At the end, she breaths out a happy sigh and says in English, "That was such a good story."

I laugh out loud and ask her if what types of stories she likes, and she responds immediately, "Animal stories." She excitedly tells me about her favorite snakes, about elephants and camels and cows that she sees in the village every summer, and reveals she wants to be an animal scientist when she gets older. I tell her I will send her animal books from America and she tells me she will show me pictures of her favorite animals tomorrow. Her voice is sweet and soothing and I feel my eyes start to close. Nirupama snuggles up to me so she is draped along the length of the right side of my body. "Rashmi bua?" she asks.

"Yes?" I ask sleepily in English.

She hugs me. "I am so happy right now," she says in English. I am overwhelmed by her unquestioning love and her simple acceptance of my intermittent role in her life. I have never had the easy smothering presense of extended family and I feel its loss so strongly that I turn to give her a tight hug. My words are spare and inadequate against hers, against the full weight of love that is my extended family and I respond quietly, "I am happy, too." Holding her hand, we fall silently into sleep.

Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh
I have now learned that I will not be sleeping alone in my time with my family and tonight my cousin Sandhya and I are talking about marriage, as her older sister, my cousin Priyanka, has recently gotten married. Our conversation is all in Hindi and safe inside the protective mosquito net around our bed, I ask Sandhya if she is going to have an arranged or a "love marriage." She laughs quietly and tells me in her rapid Hindi that love marriages aren't very accepted in Gorakhpur, a mid-size city on the far side of U.P. She knows that it is silly and she will let her kids choose who they want but this side of India, where cows and elephants are all over the streets, is slower to change than cities like Bombay and Delhi. Her voice is soft and content, with none of the angst that a life that she has not chosen would arise in me, and now it is conspirational, "Do you have a boyfriend?" she asks into the darkness.

I laugh. "No. Not right now."

I can see her face in the moonlight and she nods. "Did you have one before?" She then names my ex-boyfriend from college, the one I was dating the last time I saw her five years ago, a memory so distant now that I giggle again.

"No! Not him!" I exclaim. In Hindi, I tell her he was long ago "old boyfriend." She asks who the recent one was and I shrug into the darkness and tell her. In Hindi, I tell her that we broke up in February and that I didn't feel like dating after because-my voice slows as unfamiliar Hindi words rise to my lips-my heart was hurt. She clutches my hand and asks if its okay now and I laugh again, "Yeah," I say in English. "It's fine," I finish in Hindi, and she tells me it seems easier to pick for yourself. I tell her it seems easier to me to have everything picked out for you because then you never feel heartache and she agrees and then laughs a little. "I can't believe we are having this conversation! I will be so sad when you leave."

We are quiet then, me and my beautiful older cousin, and I remember my favorite picture of us from childhood. We are seven and eight and we are laughing hard into the camera, our arms around each other on the roof of our grandfather's village house. She is wearing a blue dress and mine is light green and my smile is gap-toothed and as wide as hers is pretty and mischevious; my left hand has mehndi on it and I am holding it delicately in front of me. At the age of 27, I raise my hand to my face and smell the faint scent of the mehndi that Sapna carefully applied five nights ago. Under the hum of the ceiling fan, I reach for Sandhya's hand and hold it tightly, grasping the memories of our childhood and the different countries we call home and the sisterhood that draws us toward one another again and again, holding our two separate lives together in my mehndi-decorated hand on a hot summer night in India.