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Mr. Jain placed the burka underneath a pile of heavy bedspreads at the very back of his closet. He pushed at the door. The wheels of the closet door groaned over the fifteen- year-old guide rails before closing.
The snow had stopped, and slanted rays of the winter sun poured through the window of the bedroom. They fell weakly on Mr. Jain’s face. He felt as though the entire world was shining a spotlight on him. He pulled down the blinds.
He sat down cross-legged on the floor. He closed his eyes and focused his attention on the stream of air leaving his nostrils and hitting his upper lip. More than derivative calculus or organic chemistry, the art of Vipassana meditation was the best skill that Mr. Jain had acquired in his life. It had kept him in perfect equanimity during his most stressful days as a parent and as a head of one of the world’s largest research labs. It had helped him come to terms with the horrible events that had played out on 9/11. Now, as he realized at a physical level that all things must pass, he found that the technique helped him calm down and disengage from the encounter with the deli owner.
After an hour, he felt relaxed. Mr. Jain gave a deep sigh of satisfaction. He was able to think in a clear and articulate manner. The first thought that came to his mind was that he wanted to eat the goat. His mouth filled with saliva as he thought about its chewy softness.
The plastic bag opened with the rustling sound of candy wrappers. Mr. Jain opened the container and stabbed the plastic fork into the goat. This time around, the decision to eat the animal was premeditated. As a result, Mr. Jain was able to enjoy the meal without any accompanying guilt. The evidence, too, was disposed of in a calm and thorough manner. By the time Mrs. Jain got home from her knitting session, the apartment was spotless and unblemished, as though it had never borne witness to a non-vegetarian meal.
The exertions of the day had worn out Mr. Jain. He went to bed earlier than Larry King. He slept through the show and through Mrs. Jain’s asking him if he wanted dinner. When he woke up in the morning, he had no recollection of even walking from the couch to the bedroom. He realized that he had slept deeply. He felt satisfied.
“Are you OK?” Mrs. Jain asked.
“I have never been better. I feel completely rested.”
“You do look better than you have lately,” his wife observed.
“And I feel better,” said Mr. Jain. “Today, I think I will take a long, long walk.”
“I was worried,” said Mrs. Jain. “You didn’t even eat dinner yesterday. There’s a lot of leftover food in the fridge. I would have made you something fresh, but I don’t like to waste food, especially now that we are retired.”
Mr. Jain had already begun to raise his hand. “You know how I feel about leftovers,” he said.
“It’s not really leftovers if you haven’t eaten it the previous night,” Mrs. Jain replied.
“Don’t worry,” said Mr. Jain. “I will manage.”
“‘Manage”? It’s a miracle that you ‘manage’ to get wet in the shower. How will you ‘manage’? And what will you do for lunch if you won’t eat the dinner you didn’t eat last night? Come to think of it, what did you do for lunch yesterday? I asked that Singh boy to stop by again, but he said that nobody responded when he buzzed the apartment. Where were you?”
Mr. Jain stopped brushing his teeth. He became watchful. He looked carefully at a sliver of white foam that dribbled out of his mouth and fell onto his forearm. He gurgled water in his mouth exaggeratedly. By the time he was done, he had thought of an alibi. He felt great pride in just how adept he was becoming at living a life of crime.
“I forgot to tell you,” he said. “You remember my friend Matt from the research lab? He’s visiting New York for two days. We had lunch together in the city yesterday. We will be lunching again today.”
“Ah, yes, I remember Matt,” his wife said. “Why don’t you have him over for dinner?”
“If a man is visiting New York for two days, let him stay in the city. Why drag him all the way to Queens? If you are out on a safari, wouldn’t you much rather see the lion? Would you be content to merely see rabbits?”
“I didn’t know you had that opinion about Queens,” his wife said.
“There are a lot of opinions I have that you don’t know about,” said Mr. Jain. “For example, I think using hot water to wash whites is highly wasteful, and—”
Mrs. Jain said a hasty good-bye and went off to Mrs. Chang’s.
The apartment was once again empty.
Mr. Jain put on the cassette of the great Pandit. He nodded in approval as the wise man began to speak. The Pandit emphasized how important it was to remain extremely watchful so as not to fall into evil and violent ways.
Mr. Jain touched his ears in contrition and begged for forgiveness. “Never again, never again,” he said. He smiled with satisfaction as he realized that he believed himself. He was now a vegetarian again. When he walked the streets, the chickens, the goats, the pigs, and the cows could walk beside him, for they would believe that he would do them no harm.
He decided to give the burka back to the Muslim gentleman at the store. He wasn’t sure whether it was a religious object and if it could be disposed of in the trash. Mr. Jain was a God-fearing man, and his voyage into the world of sin had made him even more so. He didn’t want to take the risk of offending a particular god, even if that god belonged to a religion different from his own. He folded the burka neatly and packed it into a khaki backpack that he had preserved from his engineering days.
Outside, the sun shone so brightly that an old man’s skin appeared to be whiter than his hair. The ice and snow had become a thing of the past. The gutters were filled with the merry sound of bubbling water.
“What a day,” Mr. Jain said to the superintendent. “In New York, the weather fluctuates more rapidly than the stock exchange.”
The superintendent was a kind man. He smiled and nodded his agreement as though hearing this comparison from Mr. Jain for the first time.
The leaves on a nearby tree were still green and sparkled with good health. An apple bobbed heavily on a branch. It was a wonderful day to be vegetarian. The sky was a heartbreaking blue. A white cloud advanced and frothed like a wave on a beach. Mr. Jain felt alive. He wanted to dive into the sky and keep swimming forever.
A chickadee hopped onto a nearby branch and chirped melodiously. Mr. Jain inhaled deeply. He felt better about himself. He was once again a person who was not capable of doing harm to a single other being in the world. The Mahavira was right. Nonviolence and kindness to living beings was not an act of charity; it was kindness to oneself.
“Excuse me,” said someone nearby.
Mr. Jain stopped breathing. Why was a police officer talking to him?
“You are Mr. Jain, aren’t you?”
Mr. Jain decided to choose his words cautiously.
“Yes,” he said simply.
“I thought so,” said Officer O’Hare. “You are Mrs. Jain’s husband. The Mrs. Jain who teaches math at Joseph Pulitzer.”
“She has retired,” said Mr. Jain. “And, yes, I am her husband.”
He felt ashamed of the self-centered view he was taking of the situation.
“Is she all right?” he asked. His was not a vengeful God, but there was just no telling. Everyone seemed to be so angry nowadays.
“Oh yes, yes.” The officer smiled. “I’m sorry, I should have been clearer. I was just walking down the street, and I thought I recognized you.”
“Me?” Mr. Jain felt damp. There was no snow or ice, but it suddenly felt as cold as yesterday.
“Yes, you visited our class when I was young. Mrs. Jain was my math teacher.”
The bird began to sing once again. It belted out a verse from Al Green’s “Love and Happiness.”
It was a happy coincidence, for it was Mr. Jain’s favorite song. He started to laugh. He made conversation with th
e officer. They exchanged pleasantries about the weather and remarked how much the neighborhood had changed. Mr. Jain made a dark joke about the Mets. Officer O’Hare nodded sadly and laughed. Because Mr. Jain was of Indian descent, and because the officer was young, Mr. Jain asked him if he was married. Mr. Jain shook his head censoriously on learning that the officer was still single and offered to speak to the “relative of someone I know.”
It hadn’t seemed possible, but Mr. Jain found that his heart was capable of holding even more happiness than it had only a few minutes ago. It swelled his chest to dangerous proportions. He released the pressure by letting out a melodious whistle.
The sun was nice. The policeman was nice. The golden retriever that walked by Mr. Jain was nice. The Reverend Al Green was right. Love was all about walking together, talking together.
His mood darkened as he thought about having to go back to the Muslim man’s store and return the burka. The universe seemed so vast and full of possibilities that Mr. Jain wasn’t entirely sure that he wanted to listen to a man with a strident, narrow worldview. However, he decided to go to the store right away and get this unpleasant errand off his list. In a post 9/11 America, it wasn’t safe for him to walk around with a burka. And for that matter, it was definitely not safe to be seen by a young policeman (nice as he might be) walking with a burka to an Islamic store.
Mr. Jain decided to approach the store by a circuitous route. He would go up to the more crowded Northern Boulevard, where a man could be anonymous. After a few blocks, he could turn left and head back toward his destination.
He decided to turn left on 71st Street. This would give him an opportunity to say hello to Mrs. Salsano if she was out on her front porch on this fine day. Mr. Jain had often felt that he could look endlessly at the purple, green, and yellow bracts of the vine that traveled the entire length of her porch. Mr. Jain had first admired the bougainvillea when he had moved to New York all those years ago. It had reminded him of the Bombay of his childhood, a time when man hadn’t yet occupied every square inch that could otherwise be occupied by plant or animal.
He reached Mrs. Salsano’s porch. She was sitting outside, but Mr. Jain found that he had to gaze at the amazing plant through the window.
“You've moved it inside for the winter?” he asked.
The old lady smiled and nodded.
Mr. Jain bowed to Mrs. Salsano, just as he had been doing for the last two decades. He then paid her a familiar compliment. “What a beautiful plant, Mrs. Salsano,” he said. “What a beautiful plant.”
Mr. Jain let out another whistle and walked on down the street, marveling at the colors that the sunlight had managed to coax out of people and things. That car was so yellow. That building so orange. And that flag was so red, white, and blue.
Mr. Jain stopped to take in the words These colors don’t run. This wasn’t entirely true. The dyes that were used in making brightly colored fabrics were often unstable. They would bleed. They would run. It was necessary that the owner apply a strong dose of pre-laundering products or at the very least test the flag with a dab of water before putting it into the washer on cold. Mr. Jain knew that the owner probably meant the words metaphorically, but there was always a danger that, through continued exposure to this message, he might actually start believing in them.
In supposing that the owner of the flag had meant these words metaphorically, Mr. Jain was right. The bold assertion was the first piece of poetry that Mr. Rossi had ever indulged in in his life. Now, he stared at the flag proudly. He then stared at the gentleman on the street looking at the flag.
Mr. Jain had read in The Journal of American Science that over 55 percent of all communication was nonverbal, and much of this nonverbal communication took place through the eyes. He now thought that the authors of the article were wrong. The actual number was somewhere close to 99 percent. Mr. Jain saw two sentiments reflected as clearly in Mr. Rossi’s eyes as though the man had shouted them.
The first was that the deli owner had recognized him. The second was that the deli owner wanted to murder him.
Mr. Jain’s wife had once told him about a poem by the great Mirza Ghalib, in which there was a memorable line: Even my shadow runs away from me/Like smoke from fire.
As Mr. Jain turned around and began to run, he thought that, in this case, it was he who was running away from his shadow. And he was running so fast that he doubted if his shadow could keep up with him.
The little details that he normally enjoyed in the course of his walks—the Grecian statues on the lawns of different houses, the colors of the awnings on the stores, and the various types and hues of collars on the ambling dogs—now began to pass by in a blur.
Mr. Jain was reminded of his younger days, when he had to commute to work. In those days, he had to rush every morning to the station. On his way back home, the walk went by in a blur of tiredness. Mr. Jain used to fret about how the demands of his job were taking him away from observing the details of animals and things.
The Mahavira had stressed the importance of attention and bhavana. It was important that human beings pay attention to the details of things. They needed to observe every vibration, sensation, or event, even if that event was as insignificant as the walk of an ant. It was only through such rigorous awareness that humans could truly avoid causing harm to their fellow beings. But, faced with the demands of an all-consuming job, Mr. Jain had walked without paying attention, without practicing bhavana.
Now, he felt that familiar feeling of passing through the world in a careless way once again. Only this time, he wasn’t walking. He was running. And it wasn’t his boss who was making him hurry through the streets. His haste was provoked by a gentleman with a mad gleam in his eyes, a man who hadn’t yet made it to the headline of the New York Daily News but who was quite possibly homicidal.
Two blocks later, Mr. Jain found himself by the subway station. Roosevelt Avenue dug like a giant fork into Broadway right by the Mexican taco stands, the Chinese bakery, and the root of all sin in the world, Mr. Singh’s Nan Violence.
Mr. Jain dashed into a Dunkin’ Donuts.
Mr. Jain had often thought that the restroom at this particular branch of the donut conglomerate was similar to the Statue of Liberty in that they both seemed to have thousands of people lined up in front of them at any given moment. But now, the people had disappeared. The restroom was empty. It was a miracle. Mr. Jain felt that after all of the atrocities he had been subjected to, the gods were finally conspiring to act in his favor. He opened the door and bolted into the restroom.
Mr. Jain leaned against the door. He promised God that if he were to get out of this mess, he would make an offering of donuts to all the poor and starving people of Jackson Heights.