Sister India by Peggy Payne

Author:Peggy Payne [Payne, Peggy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101659960
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2002-02-05T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

FROM HER bench at the edge of the trees, Marie could see swarms of monkeys playing and screeching. This temple, a little distance from the galis, and surrounded by gardens, was so much nicer. In front of her on the brick path, people in their church finery were coming and going.

She fanned herself with her folded city map, watching an odd creature that looked like a small llama grazing at the edge of the crowd. She’d left Jagdish shaking his head at her coming to another neighborhood with only an hour until curfew. But she wasn’t going to waste this time, no matter how many more years she had.

It was so pleasant to sit out under the trees. She hadn’t seen so much as a bush since the taxi ride from the Varanasi airport. These banyans looked 500 years old, with their shaggy hanging vines, which, she’d been interested to read, were actually an above-ground root system.

Across the way Dilip stood, talking to the man at the booth selling sweets and garlands for offerings. A young couple—the woman carrying a sleeping two-year-old—came past on the brick walk. Sitting outdoors again in the midst of so much life and activity, with the chanting drifting out the open doorway, she felt as content as that baby. The August they’d spent at the Maine shore, she’d gone to sleep every night to the sound of waves breaking, the deep uneven beat, and a light rushing that washed over: men’s voices, and women’s.

A break in the chant—oddly abrupt, but she knew so little about Indian music. She waited for it to resume.

Perhaps the ceremony was over.

A tight cluster of family and a straggle of others hurried from the temple doorway. She looked for Dilip. The man in the sweet shop was reaching to shut down his awning.

Something seemed amiss. She reached for her bag and cane, spotting Dilip across the way. But there were people still arriving: here was a man coming up the path by himself. He looked oddly familiar. He stopped short of her bench, watching from under the canopy of trees as more people emerged.

The temple was certainly emptying. She should go.

The man near her held a white package tucked under his arm—a box of sweets, no doubt, that he’d brought for an offering. She could see the red print on the lid; it looked exactly like the sweet boxes Natraja left piled in the trash.

Yet she could not stop the sudden thought: bomb. He has come here to leave that bomb. Rajiv Gandhi only months ago had been killed by a woman stepping forward to greet him with a bomb hidden under her clothes. At home, through a long night, she’d watched the funeral on CNN, the lighting of the pyre. But that had been a different part of the country, with different factions, and he was the head of state, the son of Indira Gandhi.

Getting to her feet, she noticed how her heart was beating.

Perhaps she was more nervous about the violence than she’d thought.

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