Yoga Hotel by Maura Moynihan

Author:Maura Moynihan [Moynihan, Maura]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: India, Short Stories (single author), Fiction, Americans, Asia, India & South Asia, Short Stories, History
ISBN: 9780060559328
Publisher: ReganBooks
Published: 2003-08-20T23:00:00+00:00

1 4 6 f YO G A H O T E L

“Yes, that old fraud. We have to go to the Taj Palace, they’re having a fashion fitting.”

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As Amrit and Mithun pulled Mithun’s bike into the Taj Palace, they saw Basu Lal pacing in front of the door, to the evident amusement of the four chowkidars.

“Amrit!” Basu Lal paused, flustered, it seemed. “Why are you not at home at your studies?”

“Where’s Ana?”

“She is taking tea with some fellow musical artists.

Then we are scheduled to attend a cello concert at the Max Mueller Bhavan. She is very busy—you must not disrupt her concentration.”

“Me?” Amrit seized Basu Lal’s beige shawl and pinned him to the glass doorway. “You’re the one who’s disrupted everything, for all of us! You were supposed to be my teacher! I was afraid and wanted someone to help me, to teach me to paint, to develop what I could do. But what did you ever teach me, except how to pretend to look busy and order around my mother’s servants?”

“Amrit, you must not address a guru with so much disrespect, it is creating a negative karmic accumulation.” Basu Lal peered reproachfully at Amrit over the rims of his glasses Pay i n g G u e s t a 1 4 7

and smoothed an unsightly wrinkle in his beige shawl. “The student must come to the teacher. Like Ana—she knows how to submit to the guru, she is a genuine disciple.”

“So what kind of art lessons are you giving Ana?”

Basu Lal traced his sinuous fingers through the air, thick though it was with exhaust fumes from passing taxis.

“Ana is learning the essence of rasa and bhava, the essentials of our Vedic aesthetics . . .”

“Like posing for those pictures you drew?”

Basu Lal scowled and repositioned his shawl over his left shoulder. “What pictures?”

“The pictures of Ana naked, which my mother showed me this afternoon.”

Suddenly, and for the first time in Amrit’s experience, Basu Lal stood aghast and speechless—no longer an exalted, numinous presence, just an old man, stripped of all conjuration, exposed and foolish. “Mrs. Mehta has seen those . . . the private . . . the Kama Sutra collection!”

“Yes, that nice Punjabi lady who fed and housed you all these months, when you were supposed to be teaching her son about art. What do you mean, Kama Sutra collection?”

“Where—how—how did she find them?”

“Gurumukh found them. Once the servants have something, everyone knows about it. The whole neighborhood knows about it!”

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