The Inheritance of Loss

Twenty-one

"They have a point," said Noni, "maybe not their whole point, but I’d say half to three-quarters of their point."

"Nonsense." Lola waved her sister’s opinion away. "Those Neps will be after all outsiders now, but especially us Bongs. They’ve been plotting this a long while. Dream come true. All kinds of atrocities will go on – then they can skip merrily over the border to hide in Nepal. Very convenient."

In her mind she pictured their watchman, Budhoo, with her BBC radio and her silver cake knife, living it up in Kathmandu along with various other Kanchas and Kanchis with their respective loot.

They were sitting in the Mon Ami drawing room having tea after Sai’s lesson.

An opaque scene through the window resembled something from folk art: flat gray mountain and sky, flat white row of Father Booty’s cows on the crest of the hill, sky showing through their legs in squarish shapes. Indoors, the lamp was on, and a plate of cream horns lay in the tawny light and there were tuberoses in a vase. Mustafa climbed onto Sai’s lap and she thought of how, since her romance with Gyan, she had a new understanding of cats. Uncaring of the troubles in the market, Mustafa was wringing forth ecstasies, pushing against her ribs to find a bone to ribble his chin against.

"This state-making," Lola continued, "biggest mistake that fool Nehru made. Under his rules any group of idiots can stand up demanding a new state and get it, too. How many new ones keep appearing? From fifteen we went to sixteen, sixteen to seventeen, seventeen to twenty-two…" Lola made a line with a finger from above her ear and drew noodles in the air to demonstrate her opinion of such madness.

"And here, if you ask me," she said, "it all started with Sikkim. The Neps played such a dirty trick and began to get grand ideas – now they think they can do the same thing again – you know, Sai?"

Mustafa’s bones seemed to be dissolving under Sai’s stroking, and he twirled on her knees in a trance, eyes closed, a mystic knowing neither one religion nor another, neither one country nor another, just this feeling.

"Yes," she said absentmindedly, she had heard the story so many times before: Indira Gandhi had maneuvered a plebiscite and all the Nepalis who had flooded Sikkim voted against the king. India had swallowed the jewel-colored kingdom, whose blue hills they could see in the distance, where the wonderful oranges came from and the Black Cat rum that was smuggled to them by Major Aloo. Where monasteries dangled like spiders before Kanchenjunga, so close you’d think the monks could reach out and touch the snow. The country had seemed unreal – so full of fairy tales, of travelers seeking Shangri-la – it had proved all the easier to destroy, therefore.

"But you have to take it from their point of view," said Noni. "First the Neps were thrown out of Assam and then Meghalaya, then there’s the king of Bhutan growling against – "

"Illegal immigration," said Lola. She reached for a cream horn. "Naughty girl," she said to herself, her voice replete with gloating.

"Obviously the Nepalis are worried," said Noni. "They’ve been here, most of them, several generations. Why shouldn’t Nepali be taught in schools?"

"Because on that basis they can start statehood demands. Separatist movement here, separatist movement there, terrorists, guerillas, insurgents, rebels, agitators, instigators, and they all learn from one another, of course – the Neps have been encouraged by the Sikhs and their Khalistan, by ULFA, NEFA, PLA; Jharkhand, Bodoland, Gorkhaland; Tripura, Mizoram, Manipur, Kashmir, Punjab, Assam…"

Sai thought of how she turned to water under Gyan’s hands, her skin catching the movement of his fingers up her and down, until finally she couldn’t tell the difference between her skin and his touch.

The nasal whine of the gate:

"Hello, hello," said Mrs. Sen, hooking her beaky nose around the open door. "Hope I’m not disturbing – was just going by, heard your voices – oh look, pastries and all – " In her happiness she made small bird and mouse sounds.

Lola: "You saw that letter they sent to the queen of England? Gorbachev and Reagan? Apartheid, genocide, looking after Pakistan, forgetting us, colonial subjugation, vivisected Nepal… When did Darjeeling and Kalimpong belong to Nepal? Darjeeling, in fact, was annexed from Sikkim and Kalimpong from Bhutan."

Noni: "Very unskilled at drawing borders, those bloody Brits."

Mrs. Sen, diving right into the conversation: "No practice, na, water all around them, ha ha."

When they would finally attempt to rise from those indolent afternoons they spent together, Gyan and Sai would have melted into each other like pats of butter – how difficult it was to cool and compose themselves back into their individual beings.

"Pakistan! There is the problem," said Mrs. Sen, jumping to one of her favorite topics, her thoughts and opinions ready-made, polished over the years, rolled out wherever they might be stuffed somehow into a conversation. "First heart attack to our country, no, that has never been healed – "

Lola: "It’s an issue of a porous border is what. You can’t tell one from the other, Indian Nepali from Nepali Nepali. And then, baba, the way these Neps multiply."

Mrs. Sen: "Like Muslims."

Lola: "Not the Muslims here"

Mrs. Sen: "No self-control, those people. Disgusting."

Noni: "Everyone is multiplying. Everywhere. You cannot blame one group over another."

Lola: "Lepchas are not multiplying, they are disappearing. In fact, they have the first right to this land and nobody is even mentioning them." Then, reconsidering her support for Lepchas, she said, "Not that they are so wonderful either, of course. Look at those government loans to Lepchas to start piggeries – "Traditional Occupation Resurrection Plan" – and not a single piggery to be seen, although, of course, they all handed in beautifully written petitions, showing trough measurements and the cost of pig feed and antibiotics – collected the money all right, smart and prompt…"

Mrs. Sen: "More Muslims in India than in Pakistan. They prefer to multiply over here. You know, that Jinnah, he ate bacon and eggs for breakfast every morning and drank whiskey every evening. What sort of Muslim nation they have? And five times a day bums up to God. Mind you," she put her sticky finger in her mouth and then pulled it out with a pop, "With that Koran, who can be surprised? They have no option but to be two-faced."

The reasoning, they all knew from having heard this before, formed a central pillar of Hindu belief and it went like this: so strict was the Koran that its teachings were beyond human capability. Therefore Muslims were forced to pretend one thing, do another; they drank, smoked, ate pork, visited prostitutes, and then denied it.

Unlike Hindus, who needn’t deny.

Lola was uneasy and drank her tea too hot. This complaining about Muslim birth rates was vulgar and incorrect among the class that reads Jane Austen, and she sensed Mrs. Sen’s talk revealed her own position on Nepalis, where there was not so easy a stereotype, to be not so very different a prejudice.

"It’s quite another matter with Muslims," she said stiffly. "They were already here. The Nepalis have come and taken over and it’s not a religious issue."

Mrs. Sen: "Same thing with the Muslim cultural issue… They also came from somewhere else, Babar and all… And stayed here to breed. Not that it’s the fault of the women – poor things – it’s the men – marrying three, four wives – no shame." She began to giggle. "They have nothing better to do, you know. Without TV and electricity, there will always be this problem – "

Lola: "Oh, Mrs. Sen, again you are derailing the conversation. We aren’t talking about that!"

Mrs. Sen: "Ah-hah-ha," she sang airily, putting another cream horn on her plate with a flourish.

Noni: "How is Mun Mun?" But as soon as she said it, she wished she hadn’t, for this would rile Lola and she would have to spend all evening undoing the harm.

Mrs. Sen: "Oh, they keep begging her and begging her to take a green card. She says, ‘No, no.’ I told her, ‘Don’t be silly, take it, what harm is there? If they’re offering it, pushing it on you…’ How many people would kill for one… Silly goose, isn’t it so? What a bee-oo-tee-ful country and so well organized."

The sisters had always looked down on Mrs. Sen as a low-caliber person. Her inferiority was clear to them long before her daughter settled in a country where the jam said Smuckers instead of "By appointment to Her Majesty the queen," and before she got a job with CNN placing her in direct opposition to Pixie at BBC. This was because Mrs. Sen pronounced potato "POEtatto," and tomato "TOEmatto" and because of the rumor that she had once made a living going door to door in a scooter selling confiscated items from the customs at Dum Dum Airport, peddling the goods to mothers collecting dowries of black-market items, the better to increase their daughters’ chances.

Lola: "But don’t you find them very simple people?"

Mrs. Sen: "No hang-ups, na, very friendly."

"But a fake friendliness I’ve heard, hi-bye and no meaning to it."

"Better than England, ji, where they laugh at you behind your back – "

Perhaps England and America didn’t know they were in a fight to the death, but it was being fought on their behalf, anyway, by these two spirited widows of Kalimpong.

"Mun Mun has no hassles in America, nobody cares where you’re from – "

"Well, if you’re going to call ignorance freedom! And don’t tell me that nobody cares. Everybody knows," Lola said bitterly as if it actually mattered to her, "how they treat the Negroes."

"At least they believe you can be happy, baba."

"And the kind of patriotism they go in for turns monkey into donkey phata-phat – just give them a hot dog on a stick, they begin to wave it at the flag and – "

"So, what’s wrong with enjoying yourself – "

"Tell us your news, Sai," pleaded Noni, desperate to change the topic again. "Come on, cheer us up, that much you young people should be good for."

"No news," Sai lied and went red thinking of herself and Gyan. Companionship had increased the sensation of fluidity she’d felt before the mirror, that reduction to malleable form, the endless possibility for reinvention.

The three ladies gave her a hard look. She seemed out of focus, they couldn’t read her expression clearly, and she was squirming oddly in her chair.

"So," said Lola, redirecting her frustration with Mrs. Sen, "no boyfriends yet? Why not, why not? We used to be so adventurous in the old days. Always giving Mummy-Daddy the slip."

"Let her be. She’s a good girl," said Noni.

"Better do it now," said Mrs. Sen, making a mysterious expression. "Wait too long and the craze will go. That’s what I told Mun Mun."

"Perhaps you have worms," said Lola.

Noni rummaged in a jumble-filled bowl and came up with a strip of medicine. "Here – take a deworming pill. We got some for Mustafa. Caught him rubbing his bottom on the floor. Sure sign."

Mrs. Sen looked at the tuberoses on the table. "You know," she said, "just put a few drops of food coloring and you can make your flowers any color you like, red, blue, orange. Years ago we used to have fun in parties like that."

Sai stopped petting Mustafa and that spiteful cat bit her.

"Mustafa!" Lola warned, "if you don’t behave yourself, we’ll turn you into katty kebabs!"