The Red Carpet by Lavanya Sankaran

Author:Lavanya Sankaran
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307423368
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-17T16:00:00+00:00

O supreme brahman, earth, universe, and heavens,

O sun, supreme brahman, source of all creation manifested,

Supreme enlightened of all celestial energies,

Let my intellect be ignited

“My uncle taught it to me,” Anasuya said. “A very long time ago.

“Mr. Iyer,” she explained, in response to Priyamvada’s look of inquiry.

“Oh,” said Priya.

She waved good-bye and walked to the car, the sonorous Sanskrit verse still singing in her ears with the sweetness of a stolen secret.

Priyamvada returned from the poonal ceremony and sat before the computer. Her hand halted on the keys.

His last e-mail said: We are missing you. When do you plan to return?

The night before her departure, he had wandered into her room and said: Look, why don’t you just go and see the Taj Mahal and have a good time?

His tone was conciliatory, but Priya had been insulted.

She had lectured him, and then swore that if things didn’t go as she’d anticipated she would eat her hat, or rather, seriously consider any career choices he might suggest. Even if this meant her suiting up and going to work in a corporation that worshipped greed and destroyed the environment and spread American pop culture like a disease through the world.

Now, with hands poised on the keyboard, what she wanted to say to her father was an inchoate jumble of thoughts, all bumping into each other: Do you know the Gayatri Mantra? she could ask. It is so beautiful, so powerful. I heard it from Anu—right after she told me the problems that she and Farhan would face with their respective families. And that is India, she could say, segueing into a lecture—divisive, a maddening mixture of ancient values and modern pop culture, of great wisdoms and blank ignorance.

Or she could simply shut up, say nothing, go quietly to see the Taj Mahal, have a drunken good time and then, heading home, offer to report for work in a corporation of his choice. Though, with sudden insight, she knew that he would not really ask it of her. He would continue, as he had always done, to let her find her own path.

Or she could just spit it out, say-it-loud say-it-proud, put the words on the screen in bold black on white and send them off to him: I can see why you made the choices you did, and I thank you for allowing me to make my own.

Her hands remained still and silent. She switched off the computer and covered it carefully with the plastic sheets. She glanced at her watch. In a very short while it would be evening in India and morning in America, and her father would reach for the telephone. And she would discover whether she had the courage to say to him, in person, what she couldn’t bring herself to write.

On the verandah, Mr. Iyer was poring through a reference book. “We are,” he said, “in a very modern city.” He handed the book to her.

The Limca Book of Records, it said on the cover. It had all sorts of rankings inside.

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