“It’s a bit of a departure. I assume you haven’t read any of my books?” He hadn’t. They were not widely distributed, and I didn’t think him the type to Google a guy, though I have been surprised by others. I cleared my throat. “I’m doing the study because … for one thing, this tragedy was not owned”—I cringed at this word, but when speaking to people you must make yourself understood on their terms—“by Canadians at large. Emotionally, they did not feel themselves to be assaulted.”
“It wasn’t owned by the government either,” said Suresh.
“No. That’s one question, the isolation of the victim’s families, though I don’t know yet if it’s the central one. The term I used in my letter, I hope you don’t find it insulting, was a ‘study of comparative grief.’ I want to know how have the families coped up? How have their lives progressed?”
“Surely that information must be out there, no? All the newspaper articles, pieces on TV?”
He had an intentness I didn’t remember. He truly wanted to understand.
“There’s media coverage, true, but no scholarship that I could find. Has anyone else talked to you?”
His expression suggested no one would want to. “I keep a low profile.”
“So you see.” I tried to sound convincing, but the more I talked, the less assured I felt.
“I don’t see, Ashwin.” He put his hand on my knee. “I’m happy to talk to you, if it’s important, but why dredge this up? Let it lie.”
It was only now that I realized: not only had I said nothing to my colleagues about my bereavement, I had said nothing about it in my letters to the victim families.
Okay
, I thought,
that was wrong
. But I did nothing to correct it.
It wasn’t only the need for scholarship that was motivating me. It wasn’t only the desire to give the victims a voice. (As one grieving man had said to Mukherjee and Blaise, “ ‘We are so wanting to talk! That wanting to talk is in all of us … we who have lost our entire families. We have nothing left except talk.’ ” That was eighteen years ago, but so many were still wanting to talk.)
It was, as much as anything, my desire to understand what had happened to me. I had not recovered. Did anyone, from so severe a blow? Perhaps not, but I had, in some way, stopped my life. This, I suspected, might be less true for the others. It didn’t seem to be true of Suresh, or he didn’t feel it to be. How or why did some absorb loss into life’s flood-plains, while others erected a dam?
19 June, 2004
Lohikarma, B.C. Fourth town, seventh family.
I AROSE WITH THE DAWN, MY HABIT . Canada was terrible for me that way: despite many years here, I never managed to wake long before first light in winter, long after in summer. I cracked a window to fan out the fug of night gas and snore breath. That smell, akin to stale popcorn, can linger, even in a large room. A faint priapism deflated as my pyjama and kurta cooled in the morning air. Twelve degrees Celsius perhaps? Like October in Delhi. I inspected my face in the bathroom mirror, the double-bagged eyes, the beginnings of jowls to rival the cat’s. My cat. Had anyone—my widow, perhaps—taken over his feeding? I cranked the shower, pulled my kurta over my head, and was enveloped for a moment in the smell from my own pores, something dark and leafy, with the tang of iron. Cooked spinach? Lovely. I gagged a little, stepped into the coursing water, coated myself with strong soap, then antiperspirant, then aftershave. Sandalwood, bergamot, lime. By night the spinach would chew its way to the surface again, but then I would quell it with Scotch. The pleasures of a day fully lived.
I was accommodated in a self-contained suite at the top of a house. The owner rented it to holidayers, along with two suites on the ground floor; the middle was occupied by a dentist. At the back, where one entered my flat, off the fire escape, were two large windows. I took in the view before
“It wasn’t owned by the government either,” said Suresh.
“No. That’s one question, the isolation of the victim’s families, though I don’t know yet if it’s the central one. The term I used in my letter, I hope you don’t find it insulting, was a ‘study of comparative grief.’ I want to know how have the families coped up? How have their lives progressed?”
“Surely that information must be out there, no? All the newspaper articles, pieces on TV?”
He had an intentness I didn’t remember. He truly wanted to understand.
“There’s media coverage, true, but no scholarship that I could find. Has anyone else talked to you?”
His expression suggested no one would want to. “I keep a low profile.”
“So you see.” I tried to sound convincing, but the more I talked, the less assured I felt.
“I don’t see, Ashwin.” He put his hand on my knee. “I’m happy to talk to you, if it’s important, but why dredge this up? Let it lie.”
It was only now that I realized: not only had I said nothing to my colleagues about my bereavement, I had said nothing about it in my letters to the victim families.
Okay
, I thought,
that was wrong
. But I did nothing to correct it.
It wasn’t only the need for scholarship that was motivating me. It wasn’t only the desire to give the victims a voice. (As one grieving man had said to Mukherjee and Blaise, “ ‘We are so wanting to talk! That wanting to talk is in all of us … we who have lost our entire families. We have nothing left except talk.’ ” That was eighteen years ago, but so many were still wanting to talk.)
It was, as much as anything, my desire to understand what had happened to me. I had not recovered. Did anyone, from so severe a blow? Perhaps not, but I had, in some way, stopped my life. This, I suspected, might be less true for the others. It didn’t seem to be true of Suresh, or he didn’t feel it to be. How or why did some absorb loss into life’s flood-plains, while others erected a dam?
19 June, 2004
Lohikarma, B.C. Fourth town, seventh family.
I AROSE WITH THE DAWN, MY HABIT . Canada was terrible for me that way: despite many years here, I never managed to wake long before first light in winter, long after in summer. I cracked a window to fan out the fug of night gas and snore breath. That smell, akin to stale popcorn, can linger, even in a large room. A faint priapism deflated as my pyjama and kurta cooled in the morning air. Twelve degrees Celsius perhaps? Like October in Delhi. I inspected my face in the bathroom mirror, the double-bagged eyes, the beginnings of jowls to rival the cat’s. My cat. Had anyone—my widow, perhaps—taken over his feeding? I cranked the shower, pulled my kurta over my head, and was enveloped for a moment in the smell from my own pores, something dark and leafy, with the tang of iron. Cooked spinach? Lovely. I gagged a little, stepped into the coursing water, coated myself with strong soap, then antiperspirant, then aftershave. Sandalwood, bergamot, lime. By night the spinach would chew its way to the surface again, but then I would quell it with Scotch. The pleasures of a day fully lived.
I was accommodated in a self-contained suite at the top of a house. The owner rented it to holidayers, along with two suites on the ground floor; the middle was occupied by a dentist. At the back, where one entered my flat, off the fire escape, were two large windows. I took in the view before
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