Heavenly Hirani's School of Laughing Yoga

  Perhaps if you plant yourself anywhere in the ground for long enough you start to take root, she thought, as she looked around the vast glossy space for the last time.

  But how would you ever know that if you stayed your whole life in the same patch?

  She tried to find Valren to thank him and say goodbye, but he’d gone back to Goa for a wedding, she was told. She fervently hoped his auntie wasn’t talking him back into the priesthood, bade farewell to Mahendra and the rest of the smiling Taj staff, then stepped through the revolving door and out to the burning forecourt where Pinto was waiting.

  ‘I take your bag, ma’am,’ he said, and put it in the boot of his taxi next to his barbells.

  A string of red chillies and a fresh lime hung from the rear bumper in a little posy that matched one at the front of the taxi. In fact, Annie had seen the same combination in many places; hanging from rear-vision mirrors, strung up in shop doorways, at the entrance to some of the houses in the village.

  ‘What are the chillies for?’ she asked as she climbed into the car, keen to talk about anything that would keep her mind off that fat envelope sitting on Hugh’s pillow up in Room 1802.

  ‘Is maybe seem old-fashion to you, ma’am,’ Pinto said, ‘but this is what we call nazar battu. We use this to protect from bad spirits, from evil eye. My boss with this taxi, he believe very much in evil eye, so he believe very much also in nazar battu.’

  ‘What sort of bad spirits? You mean madam drivers?’

  ‘No, no!’ Pinto laughed, as if the idea of being able to ward off a madam driver was the silliest thing he’d ever heard. ‘No, you know, ma’am, I tell you that Mumbai is all about the moneys, and that some people have a lot and some people have not much, and the ones that have not much can be very jealous of the people that have more, even not much more.’

  He spoke with such feeling. Annie remembered how he had talked about the people in his own village up in Jammu being jealous of his hard-won earnings.

  ‘So the nazar battu wards off those jealous people?’

  ‘Those bad feelings from those jealous people, ma’am. It takes those bad feelings and stops them coming into my taxi. This is what my boss he says.’

  ‘And you agree with him.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. It is good to agree with the boss.’

  ‘Is he a good boss? Better than the banana-truck man?’

  ‘Every boss is better than this banana-truck man. My taxi boss he takes five hundred rupees every day for me to drive his car, but he is my good friend.’

  ‘What about on the days you don’t make five hundred rupees?’

  ‘Then I don’t give to him and he is still my friend, just not so good.’

  Beneath the nazar battu, glued to the dashboard, was the elephant-faced god, Ganesh.

  ‘OK, so what does Ganesh do for you?’ Annie asked.

  ‘Ma’am, you know in Mumbai there are one hundred thousand taxis?’

  ‘Yes, I do know that,’ Annie agreed. ‘I think we’ve been in a traffic jam with just about every one of them.’

  Pinto laughed. He particularly liked her Mumbai traffic jokes. ‘We have a saying here that to be a taxi driver, you need six things: good honk, good brakes, good eyes, good luck, patience and Ganesh.’ He patted Ganesh on his elephant head.

  ‘And passengers,’ Annie added.

  ‘Ma’am, you are still a taxi driver, even if you have no passengers. You are just empty.’

  Annie turned and looked out the window. There was something about the way Pinto spoke — Heavenly, too — that made ordinary conversations take a turn for the enlightened.

  Before, she’d thought she was a lost banana-picker. Now she was an empty taxi. ‘Pinto, you’re amazing, do you know that?’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ Pinto said. ‘Another madam tells me this one time also.’

  Madams of the world unite, Annie thought. Madams of the world unite.

  ‘You are coming back to Mumbai this time after your plane, ma’am?’

  ‘I don’t think so, Pinto.’ She’d rung the airline and changed her flight to go home from Delhi instead.

  ‘And the sir, he is not going with you?’

  ‘No, Pinto, the sir is not.’

  Pinto looked at her in the rear-vision mirror. ‘You have liked Mumbai?’

  ‘I have loved it, Pinto. Thank you for being such a good taxi driver.’

  ‘But now you are sad.’

  ‘Not sad. A lot has happened here. To do with me. To do with my family. And then Preeti — have you been reading about her? The young woman at Bandra Terminus who had acid thrown at her?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am, I am very ashamed about this.’

  ‘She died, did you know that?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am, this is very bad and I am very sorry you know this.’

  ‘I am sorry I know it, too. But it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.’

  ‘Bad things happen, but good things happen, too, ma’am. Sometimes you must make yourself know about the good things. Especially in India. This Preeti is very bad thing, but happy yoga and the Gandhi house and the dabbawallahs is very good thing.’

  There he was again, coming at her with his Indian-taxi-driver wisdom.

  When Annie paid him at the airport, standing at the kerb, he looked so crestfallen she almost gave him a hug.

  ‘It’s been a pleasure to know you, Pinto,’ she said. ‘You are a good man. You take care of your family and take care of yourself.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said, looking at his feet. ‘You have been good for me and you have helped me and I will not forget you.’

  ‘So that’s the good thing we need to know about, right?’

  He nodded, but kept looking at his feet as the taxis honked, the planes took off overhead, the crowds swarmed around them.

  ‘Goodbye, my friend,’ she said and, clutching her suitcase, turned to swarm with them.

  When she got to the door into the departure hall she turned to see Pinto still in the same spot, head bowed.

  ‘Jack, come back!’ Annie called over the growing cloud of black heads between them.

  He lifted his head and managed a smile.

  ‘Jack, come back!’ he said. ‘Jack, come back!’

  Even inside the terminal, she could still hear him.

  ‘Jack, come back! Jack, come back!’

  Chapter Twenty-four

  A smooth-skinned Michael Jackson-lookalike in wraparound shades was waiting for Annie at New Delhi Airport: the sign bearing her name festooned with smiley-faced emoticons.

  ‘Welcome to the beautiful city of New Delhi, most respected madam,’ he said, grabbing her bags and pulling them through the crowd. ‘My name is Sanjay. New Delhi is the capital of India with a population of twenty-two million people, and some say a reputation for corruption and dirty politics but also many parks and trees.’

  His enthusiastic non-stop chit-chat was exactly what Annie needed to keep her own troubled thoughts at bay. The bravado that had enveloped her as she departed Mumbai had disappeared into the clouds as she flew to Delhi, leaving her aghast at the reality of what she was doing and, worse, uncertain of what that even was. She had felt so clear when she wrote the letter to Hugh.

  She needed space from him and their marriage and her life — she needed to find out who she was and what she wanted — but, at twenty thousand feet above who-knew-where in India, being a misunderstood wife and a taken-for-granted mother suddenly didn’t seem so bad.

  She felt as though she was doing something that only another sort of woman would do. Yet, she wanted to be another sort of woman, which was why she was doing it. She had just expected to feel better about it.

  ‘I noticed from the air how much green there was,’ she said to Sanjay as they headed across the parking lot, although in truth she had only noticed the large pockets of parkland because the rest of the sprawling city was so brown.

  ‘This is Deepak, our driver for the next two days,’ Sanjay said as they approached t
he inevitable white 4WD.

  Deepak came up to about Annie’s elbow and had a cheeky grin that he flashed at her before opening the door so she could climb inside.

  ‘Respected madam,’ Sanjay said, twisting in the front seat to face her once they got going, ‘the trip to Agra is two hours on the most beautiful freeway, but the trip to the freeway is two hours in the most horrendous traffic. Given that we will be stuck in it, should you like to see some pleasant sights on the way?’

  ‘That’s lovely, thank you, Sanjay, but I would rather just get to Agra.’

  ‘Of course, respected madam, whatever you would wish. So you will not be wanting to stop and perhaps buy a finest pashmina? Top quality? Handmade in India?’

  ‘That’s right, thank you, Sanjay. I would not.’

  But he hadn’t really been asking her, as it turned out, because on the way to the horrendous traffic they managed to drive past the India Gate (‘Much taller than Mumbai’s small Gateway of India, respected madam’), and took a detour up the grand Champs-Élysees-like avenue to the gracious government buildings (‘full of crooked politicians and thieves and vagabonds, respected madam’).

  ‘Speaking of this vagabonds,’ Sanjay said, ‘I know respected madam will feel sad and sorry for children tapping on her window, but these children are gypsies from other countries and are giving New Delhi a bad name which it does not deserve — for those reasons anyway. Please do not give these children money or speak to them or even look at them.’

  But at a roundabout heading away from the government buildings, Annie heard scratching at her window and turned to see a little girl of about seven dressed in a purple sari, knocking and making feeding motions with one hand.

  ‘Oh no, poor little thing,’ she said, but, before she could even fully feel the tug at her heartstrings, the little girl lost interest and ran back over to the middle of the roundabout to join the half-dozen other boys and girls playing there.

  Like the baby she had seen in Mumbai who was ultimately just a baby, these children were still just children. When it came down to it, a game of marbles trumped squeezing a white woman for a handful of rupees. It made them seem less sad, or it made her feel less sad for them. You had to make yourself know about the good things, Pinto had said. A game of marbles would be a good thing.

  Deepak put his foot down to fit in with the traffic, which, while frightening compared to home, in the wide New Delhi avenues felt slightly more civilised than Mumbai. At one stage, Annie even let go of the door handle.

  After half an hour crawling through the choked-up city, Deepak pulled up outside a finest pashmina shop.

  ‘Sanjay, I really don’t want a pashmina,’ Annie said, but, like others she’d met in recent weeks, his smile was so magnetic she could not resist giving in to it. He had an orchestrated smoothness that made Annie feel more of a rich tourist than she ever had with Pinto, but still, she liked the guy. His enthusiasm was infectious.

  ‘All right, I’ll go in, but I can’t spend money on a pashmina when you won’t let me give any to a poor little beggar girl on the street.’

  ‘The poor little beggar girl on the street will give the money to her boss for investments,’ said Sanjay. ‘She will not see a single rupee. Her destiny is set, respected madam, and the tourists find this difficult to digest, but we do not. These finest pashminas come from the hills near Kashmir where entire families make them by hand and the money goes to these families and stays with them in their village.’

  ‘How do I know they’re not made by children working in Dharavi slum?’

  Sanjay looked hurt. ‘Respected madam, you have just met me so you cannot know that I would not cheat you, but I would not cheat you.’

  ‘But your friends in the store here will take a healthy cut of my pashmina?’

  ‘So, you are going to buy a pashmina!’

  Annie laughed, shook her head, and followed him inside, where he managed to vanish almost at once, leaving her in the hands of a perky salesman who trailed her, carrying an enormous calculator and tapping out conversions every time she so much as looked at anything.

  To her great annoyance, a most beautiful cashmere shawl did take her fancy. It was very fine, almost transparent, in a pale, checked pattern of different sea-greens.

  ‘You have a very good eye for quality workmanship,’ the salesman said, adjusting the pashmina over her shoulder. ‘This suits your colouring and will be a reminder of all the beauty India holds right here in the palm of her hand.’

  Annie looked at herself in the mirror and was surprised to see the same old her there. So much had happened in this one day. It didn’t seem feasible that she hadn’t changed on the outside.

  ‘Madam, allow me,’ the salesman said, holding his hands out to receive the shawl back. ‘I would like to show you just how fine this beautiful shawl really is.’

  She slipped it off her shoulders and handed it to him.

  ‘Madam, if you please.’ He was pointing at her rings.

  She looked down at her hand. She hadn’t even thought about her rings.

  One was a single diamond in a very plain setting on a platinum band — this was the ring with which Hugh had proposed. He’d chosen it himself, and at the time she could not believe that he had known her so well, as he’d gone for the simplest, subtlest, loveliest thing she could ever have imagined.

  Later, when Ben was born, he’d suggested getting it remade with a bigger diamond, and perhaps some smaller ones set into the band, but she loved that ring so much the way it was, she would not hear of it.

  Was it then, so long ago, twenty-one years, that they’d started falling out of step — Hugh wanting something smarter; she happy with what she had? She felt so detached from the past that it was hard to believe it was even hers to begin with.

  ‘Madam, your ring?’

  Annie pulled off her wedding band. That they’d bought together, the week before the wedding with the fancy reception and the string quartet. It was the only thing the two of them were left to do on their own, and they’d made an event of it, choosing matching plain gold rings at a local jeweller and then going for a long lazy lunch at a little French bistro nearby.

  She handed the ring to the salesman, who held it aloft with one hand, then with dramatic aplomb fed the shawl through the centre of it with the other.

  It was quite a feat.

  ‘So fine, so delicate, so beautiful,’ he said, handing her back the ring.

  She looked at it, lying in the palm of her hand. A ring only really came alive when it was on a finger. This one was a symbol of union, of a marriage, of a never-ending relationship and, as hers was currently in tatters, she was not sure she should be wearing it.

  But her hand did not look hers without it, and she had no pocket to put it in, and so she slipped it back on.

  ‘I’ll take it,’ she said, nodding at the pashmina. That way the family in Kashmir would get some money, and her neck would get an adornment to remind her of this day, to remind her that she could be truthful, gentle and fearless.

  ‘If the little beggar girl was not a gypsy from another country, would I be able to give her money?’ she asked Sanjay, as they headed back into the snarl of afternoon traffic.

  ‘If the little beggar girl was not a gypsy from another country, she would not be here,’ he said, still smiling, and that was that.

  The freeway, when they reached it, was indeed beautiful, in as much as a freeway could be. But after the chaos and honking of the inner-city traffic, when they hit the six-lane toll road to find barely another vehicle on it, it seemed like road heaven.

  ‘Relax and enjoy,’ Sanjay said. ‘Relax and enjoy.’

  There was something of the guru about him, as there had been about Pinto and Heavenly. They should get together and start producing bumper stickers.

  ‘Have you ever been out of India, Sanjay?’

  He laughed. ‘No, madam. I have been to Delhi and I have been to Agra. But there is a lot to be seen in Delhi and Agra.’


  Annie turned and watched the foggy turrets of the city slide into the distance as vast fields appeared on either side of her, quaint round haystacks popping up at odd intervals like abandoned Frisbees, as tall smoke stacks — a different way of baking bricks — rose out of the land between them.

  The light was silvery and vague, dream-like. Annie found she could lean back into her headrest and just watch this world slide by without thinking of much, just taking it in, kilometre after mindless kilometre, almost like sleeping, almost numb.

  They arrived on the outskirts of Agra a couple of hours later, leaving the modern, empty freeway and entering a slightly grubby, chaotic but nonetheless charming rustic scene.

  Brightly coloured ramshackle shops crowded the sides of the narrow street down which they were driving, one selling pieces of pipe, the next bicycle parts, the next stacks of rope.

  A dusty no-colour shack seemed to be selling children, there were so many of them sitting in the dust whorls in front of it. A handful of them were plonked one behind the other in ascending order of size, like Russian dolls, the baby at the front the only one not getting the joke.

  Annie smiled as they laughed — it was impossible not to.

  Tractors motored down either side of the uneven road, many of them bearing four or five people — and one, a newborn calf — and she was just starting to warm to this more laid-back rural atmosphere when they turned a corner and everything changed.

  ‘Agra,’ Sanjay said, in a depressed tone she hadn’t heard before.

  They were approaching a bridge over a wide, murky-looking river.

  ‘Yamuna River, ma’am,’ Deepak told her as they joined the throng of traffic trying to get to the other side. ‘We cross this, too, in Delhi.’

  ‘There used to be a lot more of it,’ Sanjay said, reverting to his more jaunty self. ‘It comes all the way from the Himalayas and meets the sacred Ganges in Triveni Sangam, in Allahabad. You might have seen pictures? This is where the peoples every twelve years go for peaceful bathing. This year one hundred million peoples.’

  Deepak had something to say in Hindi about this, and he and Sanjay seemed to argue quite spiritedly, although it ended with Deepak laughing — a delightfully wicked little boy’s laugh.