Blue Jasmine (16 page)

I wanted to tell her it was nothing compared to the handkerchief she'd made for me. Instead I said, “I'm so glad you like it.”

Then I gave her two boxes of crayons and two packets of colorful construction paper for her sister and cousin. “I have something for you, too,” she said.

She gave me a gift wrapped in a banana leaf. As I was
opening it, I thought that it might be the handkerchiefs that she said she was going to make me. If they were the handkerchiefs. I was afraid that they'd be stained by the banana leaf and ruined. But once I opened the leaf I saw that the real gift was still hidden inside layers of newspaper. Even though she'd made the same pattern on these handkerchiefs as the one she'd sewn before, her new work was finer.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Have you used the one I gave you before?”

“I . . . I really haven't,” I said.

“Promise me that you'll use it,” she said.

“I will. But I'll put them on my dresser rather than use them as a handkerchief.”

“Why?”

“Otherwise they'll be ruined,” I said.

“Seema, I can make you more.”

“I know. Still . . .”

“Now you know why I don't want to use the pencils you gave me.”

“Yes,” I said.

Mukta walked back with me for a couple of blocks, and when we said
avaje
, “come back,” to each other, I felt calm. Even if she never came to America, I knew I was taking her back with me. As long as I remembered her, she was with me. I clutched the banana-leaf package, the most beautiful package I'd ever received.

R
aju and I had been practicing English when the two of us were alone. I taught him the phrases. “You're pulling my leg.” and “It's as easy as pie,” and my favorite. “You left the barn door open.” The last one, I was sure, Kaka wouldn't know.

The day before leaving, as we sat down to eat our meal together, Raju and I began talking in English. Kaka was so astonished that his spoonful of
dal
froze in midair.

“So you did teach him English,” he said to me.

“I didn't teach him. He knew it. All he had to do was to learn to string his words together and say them out loud.”

“She did teach you, didn't she?” he asked Raju.

“Of course she did. She's pulling your leg,” Raju said.

“What?” Kaka asked.

“Pappa, it was as easy as pie,” Raju said, his eyes twinkling.

“Do you two understand what Raju is talking about?” Kaka asked Mommy and Pappa.

“Yes, we do,” Mommy said.

“It's time for
you
to learn some English,” Dadima said to Kaka.

“You left the bam door open with that one, Pappa,” Raju teased.

Kaka shook his head and laughed.

That night when I summoned sleep, it wouldn't come. I felt very tired and very awake at the same time. I thought about our return the next day. It felt different from the first time we'd left. This time I was going back to a place where I knew the names of the trees, and patterns of their growth. I was familiar with Iowa City, its streets, grocery stores, parks, and people. Most important, I was not just leaving the people I loved, I was also going back to people I loved. With that last thought, my heart became lighter and my eyes became heavy with sleep.

Tears streamed down my cheeks as I waved to Raju. I held on to Pappa's hand tightly. Once we were on the plane, my heart thumped wildly.

It was two o'clock at night when the plane took off.
Mela was asleep, and soon Pappa and Mommy were too. Meanwhile. I felt like a bat stirring while the world slept.

I must have dozed off, because when I opened the window shade I was bombarded by sunlight. Soon, the flight attendant came around and handed me a warm towel. The smell of cologne rose from the towel as I wiped my face, and the last of the sleep disappeared from my eyes. I kept the warm towel on my face until it cooled off completely. People were chatting now and their voices filled the air. I heard the sound of their talk and caught a word here and there.

Two hours before we reached Chicago, Pappa asked, “Seema, are you glad that we took this trip?”

“Yes. At first I wanted everything to be the same,” I said, “but everyone has changed. Dadaji seemed frail. It was as if Dadima's stroke made Dadaji's limbs weak. Kaka demanded more from Raju than he ever did before.”

“Yes. You're right,” he said. “What else did you find different?”

“That I really like Mukta, and that I'm glad she can finish high school. She told me that someone had paid her tuition.”

“I know,” he said.

“You know? How did you know?”

“Kaka paid it.”

“Kaka?
My kaka
?” I was astonished.

“Yes. Seema. Do you find that hard to believe?”

“No . . .yes . . . I mean, I didn't think Kaka would ever do something like that.”

“You don't know all there is to know about your
kaka
. He's like a coconut, tough on the outside, sweet on the inside.”

I shook my head in disbelief. I couldn't believe we were talking about the same man.

“When we were young, Kaka never paid attention in school,” Pappa said. “And now he realizes that if he had, he might have had more opportunities open up to him.”

“Like you?” I asked.

“Yes. He hopes Mukta finishes high school, and maybe more,” he said.

“Is that also why he insists that Raju study so hard?”

“Yes.”

I thought about this for a while. “Do you think they think I've changed?” I asked Pappa.

“Probably,” he said.

“I think they did, and I have. I wonder how things would be if we'd never gone to America?”

“Do you wish you hadn't?”

“Oh, no. If we hadn't gone. I wouldn't have met Jennifer, Ria, and all my other friends. I can't imagine how it would be without ever seeing snow, without smelling blue hyacinths filled with the fragrance of jasmine, without
gathering colorful leaves and walking in the warm fall sunshine. I'm glad we went to India, but I'm glad we're going back to Iowa City.”

“Next time we visit, you may find even more changes,” he said.

A quiver made a squiggle through my heart. Something could happen to Dadima or Dadaji. Mukta might have to start working, and she might have a difficult time finishing school, I thought.

“Yes, I may find other changes. But I'm ready for whatever may come along, because I've changed, and I'll keep changing,” I said, looking outside. The plane had climbed above one more layer of clouds and now the sun was bright.

“One thing is about to change,” he said.

“What's that?”

“Vacation! Your school is starting the day after tomorrow.”

“That's one change that I could have done without,” I laughed.

Shutting my eyes I imagined the next few days. We were moving from a big house with a garden into a small apartment, and I wondered how Mommy would like that. I thought about starting seventh grade and Mela starting kindergarten.

I remembered how last year when I came to Iowa City
I had no idea what I was going to see and who I was going to meet. This time, I could picture the snow Falling on my dark hair, I could hear Grandma Milan calling me “sweet pea,” and I could almost smell the jasmine-like scent of the blue hyacinths.

We'd arrived in Iowa City only a year earlier, but the new surroundings and new experiences made me feel like it had happened a long time ago. I'd seen a world I didn't know existed, and I'd learned much from it. Perhaps the more you learn about the world, I thought, the more you learn about yourself.

It had been less than a day since I left India, and' I already missed sitting with Raju on the swing and the sparkle of Dadima's eyes when I talked to her about America. I missed my angel-wing jasmine with a raindrop nestled in the middle of its seven petals.

A sharp pain swirled up from my heart. I opened my eyes and looked out the window. We were still very high in the sky, and I couldn't see any land. Now the sun was overhead, but the wing of the plane, as if it were a trampoline for sunbeams, shone and sparkled.

Like an airplane attached to two shimmering wings, I was attached to two precious homes.

badam:
almond

bandhani
sari:
bandhani
means “tie-dye.” Bandhani saris have vibrant colors and unioue patterns.

bapre
: “Oh, my goodness!”

bhal
: brother

brinjal
: eggplant

chakerdi
: small spinning ground fireworks

crore
: 100
lakhs
; the number 10 million

dadaji
: grandpa

dadima
: grandma

Diwali: the Hindu Festival of Lights; a family-oriented feast, with both religious and secular sides, which has cultural importance and feeling somewhat comparable to that of Christmas in the United States

diya
: a small clay oil lamp lit outdoors on Diwali

fafda
: spicy fried noodles

fatak
: the sound of being slapped

ghugra
: a special sweet made of cream of wheat, cardamom, and raisins that Gujaratis make at Diwali

Gujarati: the language of Gujarat, a region in northwestern India, spoken by about 44 million people worldwide

kaka
: uncle

kaki
: aunt

kem
: why

khadi
sari: a sari made from rough, homespun white cotton

lakh
: the number 100.000

mashakari
: fun, as in making fun of someone

namaste
: a greeting or farewell gesture with hands folded in front of the chest

nanajk
: grandpa

nanimar
: grandma

neem
: a majestic, fragrant tree whose oil has many medicinal uses

O, bhaisab!
: “Oh, brother!” (literally “Oh, honorable brother!”)

om
: a sacred sound, used in chanting and meditation and, in written form, considered a symbol of good luck

parijat
: a tropical shrub with fragrant white flowers and orange stems, which blooms during the monsoon

Rakshabandhan: a festival that traditionally celebrates
brotherly duty and sisterly love, during which women of all ages tie specially made threads or cloth bracelets called
rakhis
around their brothers' wrists to ensure their welfare and protection from evil

rotli
: also known as
roti
; a thin, whole-wheat bread cooked on a stove

satyagraha
: “truth force,” “soul force”; the name given by Indian nationalist leader Mahatma Gandhi to nonviolent political resistance

shiro
: a saffron-flavored pudding made from toasted semolina and milk

shloka
: a verse from a longer Hindu prayer
(stotra)
in the ancient Sanskrit language;
shlokas
are sung as prayers or sometimes as lullabies

swastika
: a symmetrical cross with bent arms; in India, the swastika is an ancient symbol of good fortune, which may originally have represented the sun. The German Nazi party adopted a form of the swastika as its symbol in the 1920s.

tal-sankali
: a candy made from sesame seeds and sugar

Uttarayan: Kite Flying Day, an Indian holiday, on January 14, that celebrates the sun's return to the Northern Hemisphere, when children engage in contests using kites whose strings are treated with powdered glass to make them strong.