Heavenly Hirani's School of Laughing Yoga

  She would email the kids instead, she decided, so ventured downstairs to find the business centre. They’d be wondering, she was sure, just how old Mrs Goody Two-Shoes was doing in India.

  When Hugh got home and asked if she felt like leaving the hotel, she was quick to say not tonight, maybe tomorrow, that she was happy with the Chinese restaurant again, but it was closed, so they ended up, reluctantly on her part, going to the smart Indian restaurant next to it: the hotel’s flagship, Masala Bay.

  She had white rice and a naan bread, while Hugh ate an enormous meaty curry and picked at a smorgasbord of chutneys she couldn’t begin to describe.

  It was a pleasant evening. They both started with a Kingfisher beer, and then Annie had a glass of Californian chardonnay, which cost more than a thousand rupees.

  ‘How much is a rupee worth?’

  ‘Well, wine’s expensive here: you could probably get a taxi to and from the airport for the cost of what you are currently drinking. Not a private car like Ali’s, but one of those battered old Fiats without air-conditioning.’

  Annie was horrified, and savoured every sip.

  If Hugh seemed distracted, she put it down to tiredness. She’d given up years before asking him about his work, because the answers that agricultural engineers came up with were not easily digested. But he worked hard, put in long hours, took it seriously, as he did everything, and gave it one hundred per cent.

  ‘Everything going well?’ she asked, just to be polite.

  ‘It’s not the easiest place to do business,’ Hugh said. ‘A lot of promises have been made to the powers-that-be at home that can’t exactly be delivered on when you’re actually here. I won’t bore you with the details. You like the hotel?’

  ‘I do,’ she said, passing on dessert. ‘How could you not?’

  They were in bed early, Hugh asleep almost straight away, Annie a few hours later, her mind restless, trying to come to grips with the time zone.

  THE NEXT DAY SHE WENT TO THE GYM, then the pool, then to check her emails. Neither Ben nor Daisy had answered her, and so she sent another chatty message to each of them, not mentioning that she had yet to leave the hotel or talk to anyone other than the man who tidied the room every day and the man who brought her lunch.

  When she rang up to order another club sandwich, no salad, she realised she wasn’t actually hungry for anything other than conversation.

  Again, Valren brought it to her, setting up her table with a white cloth so that she could eat and look out at the sea at the same time.

  ‘You are having a nice time here at the Taj, Mrs Hugh?’

  ‘You can call me Annie, you know.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Hugh. Anything you would like.’

  She started to say that she would like to be called Annie, but something about the way he was looking at her kept her from doing so. He seemed worried.

  ‘Can I please ask, is everything to your satisfaction?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she answered, curious.

  ‘Are you certain?’

  ‘Yes, I’m certain. Is something wrong?’

  ‘With me? Oh, no, ma’am. Not with me. I thought it was with you.’

  ‘You thought what was with me?’

  ‘The something wrong, Mrs Hugh.’ He re-arranged her salt and pepper shakers and twisted off the lid of her bottled water (she trusted it now, and she had clarifying pills, plus he was wearing gloves).

  ‘You think there’s something wrong with me?’

  ‘Oh, I do not mean for it to sound this way, ma’am. Please, forgive me. I should not say something. Please.’

  Now he looked as though he was about to cry, and all of a sudden Annie wanted nothing more than to see that handsome face split once more by his beautiful smile. ‘There’s nothing to forgive, Valren.’

  ‘Oh, thank you, ma’am.’ There it was. ‘In which case, I hope you do not mind me saying, but you do not seem as though nothing is wrong.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said, embarrassed, because of course she did mind him saying.

  ‘But it is I who should be sorry,’ he said. ‘It is my job to see that you are happy while you are here and you are not happy so I have not done my job.’

  Annie would have laughed — an Indian waiter thought he was in charge of her happiness? Except that it wasn’t funny.

  She was not happy. She was sad. However hard she tried not to be, or didn’t want to talk about it, with Rhona, with Hugh, with anyone — she was still desperately sad.

  ‘Oh Valren, it’s nothing to do with … lunch,’ she said.

  ‘Is it the room?’ he persevered, still alarmed. ‘Or the bed? Some guests find the mattress too hard. Or maybe the A/C is too hot? Or too cold? Any of these problems, Mrs Hugh Jordan, I can get them fixed for you.’

  This time she did laugh, but it wasn’t the sort of laughter that came with being tickled, or watching someone being tickled, or with even thinking that something was amusing. It was like a little explosion.

  ‘The reason I am not happy,’ she said, before she could stop the words escaping, ‘is because my children have left home, my mother died, my dog disappeared, I don’t seem to have anything to say to my husband and I just can’t see the point in … much.’

  Valren nodded his head almost as if that was what he had expected her to say, even though she did not herself expect to say it.

  ‘But Mrs Hugh,’ he said. ‘I can fix all of that.’

  Annie laughed again, although this time a little amusement had crept in. ‘Do you really think so? How?’

  ‘That is easy,’ Valren said, his dazzling smile curving across his face, almost as wide and sweeping as the bridge over the Arabian Sea behind him. ‘You just need Heavenly Hirani’s School of Laughing Yoga.’

  Chapter Six

  Heavenly Hirani, as it turned out, was Valren’s auntie, although when pressed he revealed that every older woman he knew was considered an auntie. However, Heavenly was closer than some, he explained, because she was an old friend of his real auntie, who lived in Goa.

  ‘My auntie in Goa is a nun and for me she wants that I am a priest,’ Valren told her. He was still standing behind Annie’s portable dining table, white-gloved hands crossed in front. ‘But I don’t have the vocation,’ he continued. He seemed quite chirpy about this. ‘God has never tapped me on my shoulder, so I come to Mumbai instead and auntie sends me to Heavenly Hirani.’

  ‘For spiritual guidance?’ Annie asked, thinking he would actually make a wonderful priest. Some people had that sort of wisdom and kindness that made them excellent confessors, and he seemed to be one such person.

  ‘No, for somewhere to stay,’ Valren said. ‘Auntie in Goa is still in charge of my spiritual guidance.’

  ‘So, are we talking about being a Christian priest?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am, in my village where I come from, everyone is Catholics. The Portuguese bring this many hundreds of years ago to Goa. You should come to Goa one day, especially the south. The peoples are very kind-hearted.’

  But before she went to Goa, he said, she needed to go to Heavenly Hirani’s School of Laughing Yoga.

  Annie explained that she had a shoulder injury, which meant she couldn’t do yoga — she’d finally given up after many painful years of trying. It was a lovely suggestion and she thanked him for being so helpful and for thinking of her, but yoga was not going to solve her problems.

  ‘But Heavenly Hirani’s yoga is mostly for the laughing,’ Valren said. ‘I do not think you will need your shoulders for that.’

  ‘I just don’t have anything to laugh about at the moment,’ Annie said, sorry to disappoint him when he was so earnestly trying to help her.

  ‘But this is the whole point of laughing yoga,’ he replied, his smile firmly back in place, a friendly determination nonetheless exerting itself. ‘You do not need a reason. Going there is the reason. That is what it is for. And after, you will feel much happier. If you cannot think of any reason to laugh, why would you not
want to try it?’

  He seemed truly perplexed by this, and as Annie tossed and turned in bed that night, waiting for the dawn, she found herself wondering why, indeed, she would not try it. She had come to India in a bid to stop being miserable, after all. How could she honestly turn down a chance at laughing?

  At six she got up and quietly dressed, not quite believing that she was about to go through with it.

  Hugh woke just as she was gathering her bits and pieces to leave.

  ‘What’s happening?’ he asked. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, fine, perfectly.’ Annie smiled. ‘Go back to sleep. I’m just going to try a yoga class.’

  He looked surprised. ‘Well, good for you. Do you need anything — money or, I don’t know, does your phone work OK here?’

  She hadn’t tried it, but shrugged her shoulders, told him she had everything she needed and went downstairs to find a taxi.

  Valren had said the School of Laughing Yoga met every morning on the sand at Chowpatty Beach opposite Wilson College. Chowpatty Beach was in South Mumbai, he said, and very busy at night, but during the day it was very picturesque and empty and she would not be able to miss it or them. He would call Heavenly Hirani, he said, and tell her to expect a visitor — tourists were always welcome. Everyone was always welcome.

  Still, Annie had not left the hotel since her arrival. She was nervous even about asking the valet to get her a taxi — and he was only two steps outside the revolving doors. He nodded his head at her request, but his focus remained elsewhere and she stood, anxious, and waited.

  Exotically dressed businessmen were climbing into luxury limos wherever she looked on the hotel forecourt, even at that early hour. One of them was escorting a beautiful woman in a silver sari; her heels were high, her hair long and glossy. She looked to Annie to be around seventy, although she moved with the grace of someone half a century younger.

  Annie was hot already, her leggings and sweatshirt too heavy for the heat, which even in the early morning bordered on oppressive.

  Another limo arrived in front of her, and another. She wiped at the back of her clammy neck and considered going back inside the hotel, but then she heard a honk and up between the cluster of fancy cars hurtled a boxy little taxi cab, black with a yellow roof and a body that looked as though it had been taken to over a very long period by a hundred angry ogres wielding giant studded clubs.

  She hadn’t known it was possible for a thing made of metal to be so crumpled yet retain its original overall shape. She looked at the parking valet, who was engrossed in a conversation with a group of businessmen. He turned briefly and pointed to the taxi.

  Annie walked towards it, reached for the door, gingerly pulled it open, and slid inside.

  The car smelled of stale smoke and something sour that she couldn’t quite place — and didn’t want to. The upholstery was covered in bright-pink plastic with yellow and turquoise daisies, further decorated with what looked like cigarette burns and irregular slashes caused, perhaps, by a sharpened knife.

  The driver did not look like a bright-pink-with-yellow-and-turquoise-daisies sort of man. He was very small, dressed all in white, wearing a crocheted cap and perhaps just shy of two hundred.

  He lurched off before she could even use her sweating palms to fasten the seatbelt.

  ‘I can’t find the bit to clip this into,’ she said, but he did not seem to understand, instead suddenly braking just metres away from the hotel doors so he could indulge in a spirited coughing jag.

  ‘Chowpatty Beach, please,’ she said, her clamminess spreading, panic rising. ‘By Wilson College?’

  Again, the cab lurched, but at the bottom of the driveway the driver started hacking again. He was so small that his seat was pushed right forwards, his body pressed against the steering wheel, on which his head appeared to be leaning as his body was wracked by coughs.

  ‘The seatbelt?’ Annie asked, still scrabbling for it among the sticky daisies.

  The driver didn’t respond, but stopped coughing long enough to let a loud belch erupt. The security guards at the front gate were lowering the automatic barriers to let the car out onto the street.

  Annie, her cheeks afire, could take no more.

  She pulled a handful of rupees out of her purse, flung them at the driver, scratched at the handle until the door opened, then jumped out of the cab and scuttled back up the driveway.

  Keeping her head down to avoid eye contact with the valet, she was nearly at the revolving door when she felt a hand on her elbow. She shrieked, thinking the taxi driver had chased her, jumping away from the grasping hand, clutching her bag to her chest.

  But it wasn’t the taxi driver; it was one of the security guards.

  ‘So sorry, ma’am,’ he said, looking mortified at having frightened her. ‘So sorry. But I must have your bag for the machine.’

  ‘Is everything all right, madam?’ One of the liveried managers from inside the hotel was suddenly at her side. ‘What has happened?’

  ‘There is a problem with your taxi?’ The valet was most certainly making eye contact with her now.

  She knew how she must look: like a silly, old, hysterical foreigner, which is exactly what she was. ‘No, I’m fine, really,’ she said, biting her lip, hating the feeble sound of her voice. ‘I just changed my mind. Really, it’s fine.’ She handed her bag over to the guard, stepped into the revolving door, and rotated at glacial speed away from all those concerned eyes, all that unwanted attention.

  At least inside she was instantly cooled again, but as she collected her bag from security she realised she would have to go back to the room and Hugh would want to know what had happened.

  She looked around the vast hotel lobby, her eyes resting briefly on the ceiling-height floral arrangement that had changed since the day before — the enormous sphere of roses was now pink, not purple. How had they done that without her noticing?

  Up on the mezzanine level, she spotted the restrooms beside the spa. She would just go and use those, perhaps check out the menu at the spa, maybe go sit by the pool for a while, then go upstairs again.

  Everything was all right. She was all right. It wasn’t a disaster. She just needed to relax and pull herself together.

  HUGH HAD INDEED LEFT FOR WORK by the time she got back to Room 1802.

  She lay on the bed, trying hard not to think about her abortive attempt to leave the hotel, exhausted by the constant awful itch inside her to not be … like this.

  Next thing she knew, housekeeping was knocking on the door and it was after ten.

  She did not order lunch in her room that day, pretending to herself that she wasn’t hungry rather than admitting that she was avoiding Valren. Instead she went to the gym, and afterwards made an afternoon appointment to have her hair done in the salon she’d only noticed while wasting time earlier in the day.

  In the meantime, she went to the pool and, because she was starving by then, ordered a sandwich and settled under an umbrella waiting for it to arrive. When it did, she turned her back for a moment to get a sarong out of her bag and a crow flew down out of a nearby coconut tree and snatched half of the sandwich away.

  The pool boy was insistent that she order another one, but Annie packed up her things and stomped back to her room.

  She felt like crying, in fact she felt like a lifetime of tears was sitting right there behind her eyes, waiting for the dam to burst so they could flood her face, but she held them back. If she started she might never stop, and she didn’t want to sit in the salon looking at her own red eyes and puffy face. That would just make her feel like the sort of woman who would cry because she got scared in a taxi and let a crow eat her lunch.

  Had she not lost her mother and her dog, these minor setbacks would not rattle her so much: she knew that. But her grief was a Venus flytrap — snapping at passing slights to feed its constant gnawing hunger.

  Surely Ben or Daisy would have answered her by now, she figured, so she stopped on the way t
o the salon to check her emails, but neither child had got back to her. She kept her Venus flytrap closed.

  The salon turned out to be a good call. The staff were sweet and friendly, talking her into a manicure while she had her hair blow-dried.

  She felt infinitely buoyed as she walked back down the hallway to 1802, but instantly deflated when she saw Valren up ahead, backing out of the room next to hers with an empty trolley.

  ‘Madam!’ It was impossible to believe that a face already so alight could light up any further, but his did. ‘You look very beautiful today. I think you must have gone to laughing yoga.’

  She considered lying, but Heavenly Hirani would know better, and anyway, lying would only make her feel more feeble and inadequate than she already did.

  ‘I tried,’ she said. ‘Valren, I tried. But the taxi driver gave me the heebies and I lost my nerve.’

  The illuminated face dimmed. ‘The heebies? Oh, ma’am, what is this?’

  ‘Don’t panic, it’s just an expression — the heebie-jeebies is what you get if your nerves play up and make you change your mind about something.’

  The smile re-appeared. ‘The heebie-jeebies? This does not sound so bad.’ He moved the trolley to the side of the hallway. ‘But what happened with the taxi?’

  ‘It was nothing, really. It’s just I always get a bit nervous in a car unless I’m driving and the driver was very old and he coughed a lot and I couldn’t get the seatbelt to work and I couldn’t tell if he knew where I wanted to go.’

  ‘Oh, this would be giving you the heebie-jeebies,’ Valren agreed, clearly taking to the idea. ‘I understand. But tomorrow I will meet you at the front of the hotel and I will make sure you get a taxi that is not full of heebie-jeebies.’

  ‘Oh, that’s lovely, Valren, thank you, but there is no need. Really.’

  ‘So how do you know you will not get the heebie-jeebies tomorrow?’

  Annie had never thought of herself as timid before, but now she wondered if that was what she had become. Once upon a time she had hammered out convoluted contracts, wrangled difficult employees — she’d even fired people, not that she’d liked that part of her job. She’d taken persnickety maths teachers to task, confronted overbearing sports coaches and fended off venomous stage mothers — all without thinking twice.