The Red Carpet Read online

  At some point in her college career, Priya had done some reading about India’s caste history, and decided that she would really have preferred to be a “Dalit,” a member of the lowest castes, who, in the past fifty years, had gone through a major regenerative process of empowerment, finding their political voice, their cultural voice, and deep inner strength. It was the kind of story that inspired her, and made her want to claim it as her own. Instead she was stuck with an ancestry of oppression.

  She asked Mr. Iyer: “So brahmins were at the top of the caste rankings, right? Even above kings?”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Iyer. “No other culture in the world has placed respect for intellectual and spiritual prowess over military and money. Is it not wonderful? It is a glorious tradition.”

  Priya remembered the conversation with Anu. “What, exactly, are madi rules?”

  “Madi. Ah, yes. You see,” said Mr. Iyer, “traditionally, the brahmin lifestyle was very simple and austere. Brahmins felt that spiritual and intellectual growth could not be achieved without personal discipline and austerity. . . . Stress was laid on ahimsa, or nonviolence, sensual control, cleanliness. So, of course, no meat, and no foods that stimulate the senses, such as garlic, onion, and heavy spices. Time was spent in academic and intellectual pursuits and daily study of the Vedanta scriptures and sutras. And also in the practice of yoga, and meditation. Within the house, this led to the rigorous cleanliness practices known as madi. One could not do anything, no cooking, no morning worship, no eating, without first bathing. And after that, to promote hygiene, one could not have any physical contact with germ-ridden unbathed persons, or an unwashed cloth. That was why, in daytime, we rested on wooden pillows. In the kitchen, food had to be prepared fresh for each meal, and only in near-sterilized cooking conditions. Very strict kitchen . . .” he searched his mind “. . . protocol. Extremely scientific, is it not?”

  “Right,” said Priya. Why had Lonely Planet made no mention of this? “So none of these practices are followed today?”

  “No, no. Only a few. And in Anasuya’s generation, sorry to say, even less. Clean practices they are, holistic, and very important to a spiritual life, but impractical to maintain nowadays, one travels so much, eats out in restaurants and what-not. Of course, when my mother was alive, we could not deviate at all. She was very strict. Just as your grandmother used to be.”

  Priya had seen photographs of her grandmother, a plump, smiling woman with her well-oiled hair smoothed into a bun and dressed with jasmine flowers. For the first time, Priya wondered how this woman had accepted her children’s transition from an environment like this to a turkey-basting, pig-part-eating, cow-rump-grilling country that equated success with material and sensual excess.

  “So the brahmins, like, had all the other castes waiting on them hand and foot?”

  “No, no,” said Mr. Iyer, genuinely shocked. “Of course not. What is this rubbish.”

  “They didn’t?”

  “Oh no,” said Mr. Iyer. “In fact, to maintain their austere and disciplined lifestyle, it was considered important to limit contact with other castes and communities. At least, physical contact.”

  “Why?” said Priya. “Why was it so exclusionary?”

  “You are curious about your cultural roots,” Mr. Iyer beamed. “That is a good thing. Your mother has raised you well. Despite the fact,” he said, “that many other castes also practiced high levels of cleanliness, it was considered best to keep contact with them to the minimal level, to prevent contamination and risk of bad social influences. Later, of course, this notion became ritualized, is it not, the scientific basis was forgotten, and only the stigma of pollution remained, and eventually, the social laws forbade any physical contact between brahmin and non-brahmin whatsoever.”

  But that’s terrible, she said.

  Mr. Iyer twinkled at her. “You are not the only one to think so,” he said.

  In the car, Anasuya had played Scott Joplin on the music system, telling Priya that the ragtime piano recording was by a friend. “You’ll meet him now,” she said. Priya had listened to the music, staring at the cotton skirt that covered her legs voluminously, clumsily. “I think you’ll like them,” said Anu, as though sensing her need for reassurance. “They’re nice people.”

  Later, Priya had written a few e-mails.

  To her friends at the Tree Hugger’s Café, she wrote: I met some people our age in a social setting, and it was such a pleasure to see that they spanned the spectrum of India: punjabi, keralite, bengali, christian, muslim, brahmin, sitting together in a spirit of great communal accord and brotherhood.

  She did not mention that this meeting had taken place in a coffeehouse that looked like an upmarket Starbucks, and that the women were dressed in tank tops and in skirts that ended mid-thigh; that the men had argued over the relative aesthetics of Jennifer Lopez and Britney Spears, and everybody seemed to be recovering from a hangover. That would be unnecessary local color and would simply muddy the issue.

  She sent the same message to Eric, along with a paragraph on how much she missed him and his muscular body (A Lot).

  To her father, she was even more circumspect. She wrote: The weather here is lovely. Cool, but with blue skies. I went out today with Mrs. Iyer’s niece, Anasuya, and some of her friends. I met a young man who works in Bangalore, but in the same firm that you do.

  “From that fact alone,” her father wrote back, “I can tell he must be a very nice person.”

  He was. They had all been very pleasant and welcoming.

  “Enjoying your holiday?” asked the young man, who’d been introduced to her as Farhan and also as the piano player.

  “Oh yes,” she said. “It’s all very interesting.”

  He nodded. “Lots of ABCDs like you wandering around these days. It’s the changing economic climate.”

  She’d heard that phrase before: ABCD—American Born Confused Desi. Desi, countryman. Her parents, despite having lived in America for over three decades, were FOB—Fresh off the Boat. There were jokes about ABCDs, which Priya did not find amusing: Have you heard of the ABCDEFGHI? American Born Confused Desi Emigrated From Gujarat Hall-the-vay-frum India.

  “I may pretend to be an accountant,” Farhan confided, when she asked. “But actually I’m a world-famous jazz musician, living incognito.” He did an impromptu drumroll on the table with the coffee stirrers.

  “You work in the same firm as my father,” Priya told him, strangely unsettled.

  “Oh yeah?” he said. “Well, me and half the world.”

  Now, two days later, Priyamvada nudged the floor with one foot to set the swing swaying gently on the Iyers’ verandah. Just so must her grandmother have sat on a warm evening. Across the road, construction workers dug up a section of the pavement to lay broadband Internet cabling, their bare backs darkened by the sun and corded with ropy muscles, almost, it seemed, as if they spent their lives sunning on beaches and working out in health clubs.

  Fatigue built within her. She longed, for an instant, to be back home, to be in environments familiar and well structured, where her accent would not make people gawk or say, excuse me? Where she was understood, and where she understood the world she lived in. She felt, right now, like learning nothing more than the ancient Indian art of Leisure; to sit down and let the world drift by, to let knowledge arrive when it was good and ready rather than rushing out in search of it. The whole enlightenment-buddha thing. Instead, Mr. Iyer wanted her to attend this poonal, this thread ceremony function.

  Priya felt herself fidget. “Are you sure,” she asked again, “that none of this caste system stuff is applicable today? Really?”

  Mr. Iyer clicked his tongue, much as his wife did before the television. “Why do you concern yourself needlessly with all this? Once upon a time, it influenced our entire society, it is true. It divided, it excluded, is it not? But now, it has lost its sting. So in actual fact, it is now nothing more than a simple cultural practice, retained in a few homes.�
�� He quoted from his latest letter to the newspaper editor: “ ‘Theneed of the hour is more jobs, education, and drinking water.’ Caste is a dead issue.” He smiled reflectively. “In fact, some people argue that, nowadays, it is the brahmins who are being discriminated against, but that’s another story.”

  “You should come,” said Mrs. Iyer suddenly. She had joined them halfway through her dinner preparations. A large flat tray rested on her lap with uncooked rice mounded on one side. As she conversed, her eyes remained on the rice tray, inspecting it rigorously for stones and insects as her fingers lightly brushed the rice, a few grains at a time, from one side of the tray to the other. After cleaning the rice, she would wash it three times in water before steaming it in the pressure cooker. “You can meet many people, many relations and friends of your parents. And besides, of course, our niece Anasuya will be there too. You had a good time with her, no?”

  “Yeah, I did. She’ll be there?” Priyamvada said, startled.

  In the café, Anu had offered Priya a cigarette. Priya’s hand reached for it, but she stopped herself. Anu laughed. “Yeah, you better not. If she smells the smoke on you,” she said, “my aunt will die.”

  She lit up herself, being careful to blow the smoke away from Priya. Behind her, Priya could read a billboard on the street for Lovely Fairness Crème, depicting a young woman posing with her face between her hands, over the blurb: “Lovely Fairness Crème. To make your skin Softer, Fairer . . . Naturally. In two weeks, you will be mistaken for a Ghori.” Ghori, Foreigner. They of the Pale-Shades-of-Pink.

  “Is that popular?” she asked, pointing.

  “Oh, it’s quite good,” said Ashwini, one of Anu’s friends. “I use it myself.”

  Her father’s e-mails didn’t stray very far from the topics Priya herself introduced; there were no searching questions, none of the curiosity she had dreaded. But yesterday he had written: Are you going to be in this weekend? I will call on (your) Sunday evening. It will be nice to hear your voice.

  That, Priya knew, would be his morning. He would drink his first coffee of the day, and dial her number in India.

  As though on cue, Mr. Iyer now said: “You know, I can understand your reluctance. After all, you are your father’s daughter, is it not?”

  Priya looked at him in complete bewilderment. “What do you mean?”

  “After all, he is famous for rebelling against all these rituals. You must be knowing of the big argument he had with his parents? Your grandparents? Yes,” said Mr. Iyer, “of course you are. It happened,” Mr. Iyer said, “before he left for America. He liked the philosophy behind brahminism, he said, but he did not like the social rituals. He said they took certain practices beyond the realms of common sense. Your grandmother was shocked, I remember. Before he left for America, he removed his sacred thread. I believe she kept it in a box by her bed until she died. I wonder where it is now?”

  Priya sat silent. Her father had never told her this story, but she knew where the thread was. It lay in a box, buried behind his dress shirts. She’d found it when she was a teenager and snooping. She’d opened it eagerly, but, unlike other neighborhood fathers who used their cupboards to hide their collections of pornography away from their prying children, all she’d found was this yellowing thread. She’d put it back in the box, unimpressed with her father’s lack of imagination.

  “He is still not practicing any rituals now, is he? Poojas and so on?”

  “No,” said Priya.

  She was seized by a sudden, urgent curiosity.

  “Okay,” she said, “I’ll come.”

  The house where the poonal ceremony was going to be held was large and rambling and yellowed, with an enormous gaily colored shamiana tent covering most of the garden. Priyamvada was dressed in a heavy silk saree that Mrs. Iyer had loaned her (and helped her put on), and she felt like a child in fancy dress.

  She almost didn’t recognize her.

  “Anu!” Priya said in surprise. Like her, Anasuya was dressed in a silk saree, but she looked far more comfortable than Priya felt. Her long hair was neatly braided behind her head and decorated with jasmine flowers; there was no trace of the hip young woman from the café.

  “So do you know the young boy who is going to participate in the ceremony?” Priya asked. And then felt remarkably foolish when Anu laughingly explained that it was her brother Mahesh.

  Priya’s eyes were caught by someone else from the café. Farhan, dressed in a silk kurta and pajama. She stared at him, confused.

  What, he said.

  “I thought, you know, I didn’t expect to see . . . you know, Muslims . . .” said Priya, wishing she hadn’t.

  He looked irritated. “Which century are you living in?” he asked, only to answer the question himself, in a Mr. Iyer–like fashion. “Obviously the same one as my mother.”

  “Anyway,” said Anu, “he’s going to be seeing a lot more of this sort of stuff in the future.”

  Priya watched the smiles pass between them. “Oh,” she said, “you mean, you guys are . . .?”

  “Yeah,” said Anu. “We are. Except our parents don’t know yet, so keep it to yourself, okay?”

  “Why don’t they know?” asked Priya.

  “They’ll probably die of shock,” said Farhan. “We’re still trying to figure out how to tell them. . . .”

  “Write them a letter, maybe,” said Anu.

  “Send them a postcard,” he said.

  “Invite them to the wedding,” said Anu. “Coming!”

  She ran off towards her mother.

  A poonal, or thread ceremony (Mr. Iyer had explained), was the consecration of brahminhood, the initiation to higher learning, access granted to the ancient scriptures and texts that, by equally ancient social laws, were exclusively part of the brahmin male birthright. After the ceremony, the Iyers’ nephew, Mahesh, would wear his poonal, or holy thread, over his left shoulder and across his chest for the rest of his life.

  The thread ceremony was to be performed in the living room, which had been cleared of all furniture. The ceremonial fire took up the center of the room, surrounded by the wooden planks that would seat Mahesh, his father, and three priests. Around them was a flower altar built from jasmine and marigolds. Rugs and mattresses on the floor provided seating for everyone else, except for the three oldest grannies, who limped their way to chairs provided especially for them. Musicians with nadaswaram trumpets and tavil drums sat on a raised dais to one side.

  Priya sat down and looked around. Mrs. Iyer was engulfed by her female relatives, chatting and laughing eagerly. Mr. Iyer had joined the other menfolk. Priya didn’t mind; she was absorbed in watching the faces around her, trying to imagine her young parents as part of this setting. This was the real mccoy, an indubitable passage to india, the true esmiss-esmore.

  The poonal ceremony began, developing its own ancient rhythm to the chants of priests, who were dressed in white, richly bordered veshtis, chests bare, with their sacred threads over their left shoulders. Their heads were shaved, but not completely; Priya noticed that each priest had a small tuft of hair at the back of his head, a few inches long and knotted at the end. Their foreheads were painted with their caste mark: three horizontal lines in white. Her eyes wandered, mesmerized, from the priests, to the flower altar, to the floor, which was decorated with kolam designs, colorful and geometric, drawn by hand with rice flour. Coconuts were balanced on the narrow mouths of squat brass pots, decked with mango leaves, vermilion, and strings of jasmine flowers, next to huge silver trays laden with fruit. Every now and then the head priest would add things to the fire with his right hand: sacred reeds, ghee. Mahesh and his father, dressed in silk veshtis, sat alongside the priests around the fire. Anasuya and her mother sat close by, getting up occasionally to fetch things that the priests needed for the ceremony.

  The room became warmer, with the blazing sacred fire and the collective heat of all the people crowded into that shrinking room. Women developed heat-delineated arcs under the
ir armpits; wisps of hair escaped the fastenings of braids and top-knots, flowers and oil, to curl and frizz around their faces. The chanting seemed to get louder as the air thickened about Priya. The heat slipped under her skin: she felt the warmth rushing to her head, and descending down her brow to rest on the bridge of her nose in drops of water, thick and heavy. The cumbersome silk saree embraced her body like clingwrap.

  She felt a hand on her shoulder and looked around to see Anu smiling down at her.

  “Are you all right?” Anu asked. “Want something to drink?”

  “I’m okay,” said Priya.

  “It’ll be over soon,” Anu whispered, squeezing her arm before moving away.

  The drums and nadaswaram picked up in tempo. A white silk shawl was opened and spread over Mahesh, his father, and one of the priests. Under that protective covering, cocooned from eavesdropping ears, Priya knew, the young boy would be initiated by the priest into the ancient, secret wisdoms of brahminhood. When he emerged, he would officially be ready to practice Brahmacharya: to pursue knowledge with purity and devotion, to strictly eschew all sensual pleasures for the duration of his studies.

  The ceremony over, the noise level rose to deafening proportions as the chatter exploded from the whispers that had earlier confined it.

  Anu joined Priya. “Hi,” she said. “Did you find that interesting?”

  “Very,” said Priya. “But tell me, isn’t your brother a little too old for this? Mr. Iyer tells me it’s usually done at about eight or nine years of age.”

  “Yes, Mahesh is twelve years old,” said Anu, “and this ceremony is the result of a four-year war of attrition between him and my parents. Mahesh finally agreed, or, rather,” she said, “succumbed to the bribe of a new CD player.”