Грег Иган - The Year's Best Science Fiction, Volume 1

“What’s wrong, Velli?” I asked, quite concerned.

She just shook her head. The idiot was very sentimental, practically a Hindi movie in a frock, and it was with some trepidation that I introduced her to Padma. They seemed to get along. Padma was gracious, quite the empathic high-caste lady, and Velli declared enthusiastically that Padma-madam was exactly how Velli had imagined she would be.

Eventually, with Padma guiding the car’s autopilot, all of us, including Velli, set off from Sahyun. At first we kept the windows down but it was a windy day and the clear, cool air from Jihran’s waters tugged and pulled at our clothes. Amma had taken the front seat, since Bittu wanted to sit in the back, between Velli and me. We would be gone for most of the day, and so Velli had asked us to drop her off at Dharavi so that she could visit her parents. We stopped at the busy intersection just after the old location of the MDMS sewage treatment plant and Velli got out.

“Velli, you’ll return in the—” I began, in Tamil.

“Yes, elder brother, of course I’ll be there in the evening, you can trust.” Velli kissed her fingers, transplanted the kiss onto Amma’s cheek, and then said in her broken English: “I see you in evening soon, okay, Ammachi? Bye bye.”

The signal had changed and the car wanted to move. Velli somehow forgot to include Padma in her final set of goodbyes. She ran across the intersection.

“She’s an innocent,” said Amma. “The girl’s heart is pure gold. Pure gold.”

“Yes, she is adorable,” said Padma, smiling.

“She was sad,” observed Bittu. “Is it because she is black?”

Amma laughed but when we looked at her, she said: “What? If Velli were here, she would’ve been the first to laugh.”

Maybe so. But two wrongs still didn’t make a right. Amma was setting a bad example for Bittu. It was all very well to laugh and be happy but the Enhanced had a responsibility to be happy about the right things.

Padma explained to me that Bittu actually had been asking if Velli was sad because she wasn’t Enhanced. In their US visit, Bittu had noticed that most African-Americans weren’t Enhanced, and she’d concluded it was for the fair. Velli was dark, so…

I met Padma’s glance in the rearview mirror and her wry smile said: Did you really think I’d taught her to be a racist?

“No, Bittu.” I put an arm around my daughter. “Velli is just sad to leave us. But now she can look forward to seeing us again.”

I too was looking forward, not backward. Reclining in the back seat, listening to the happy chatter of the women in front, savouring the reality of my daughter in the crook of my arm, meeting the glances of my wife—I was still unused to thinking of Padma as my ex-wife—I realized, almost in the manner of a last wave at the railway station, that this could be the last time we were all physically together.

When she’d left for Boston with Bittu, I had hoped the six months would be enough to flush Sollozzo out of her system. But life with him must have been exciting in more ways than one. The Turk had given her the literary life Padma had always craved, a craving it seemed no amount of rationalization on her part or mine could fix.

With Padma gone for so long, I’d had to look for a nurse for Amma. It quickly became clear that I could forget about Enhanced nurses since all such nurses were employed everywhere except in India. Fortunately, Rajan, a shop-floor supervisor at Modern Textiles, approached me saying his daughter Velli had a diploma in home care, he’d heard I was looking for a home-nurse, and he was looking for someone he could trust.

Trust enabled all relations. As a banker, I’d learned this lesson over and over. I was enveloped in a subtle happiness, a kind of sadness infused with a delicate mix of fragrances: the car’s sunburnt leather, Amma’s coconut-oil-loving white head, Padma’s vétiver, Velli’s jasmine, and Bittu’s pulsing animal scent. The sensory mix wasn’t something my Brain had composed. It must have arisen from the flower of the moment. I savoured the essence before it could melt under introspection, but melt it did, leaving in its place the residue of a happiness without reasons.

Somewhat dazed, I leaned forward between the front seats and asked the ladies what they were talking about.

“Amma was saying she wanted to come for my wedding in Boston,” said Padma. “I want her there too. I’ll make all the arrangements. My happiness would be complete if she were there.”

“Then I will be there,” announced Amma, “just book the plane ticket.”

“Amma, you can barely navigate to the bathroom by yourself, let alone Boston.”

“See, Padma, see? This is his attitude.” Amma employed the old-beggar-woman voice she reserved for pathos. “Ever since you left, I’ve become the butt of his bad jokes.” Then Amma surprised me by turning and patting my cheek. “But it’s okay. He’s just trying to cheer me up, poor fellow.”

“That’s one of the hazards of living with him,” said Padma, smiling. “Amma, seriously, I’ll book your ticket. If he wants, your son can also come and crack his bad jokes there.”

“Yes, more the merrier,” said Amma, good sport that she was. She then stoutly defended Padma’s choice, pooh-poohing moral issues no one had raised about Turkish-Tamil children, and saying things like what mattered was a person’s heart, not their origins, and that love multiplied under division, and wasn’t it telling that he loved red rice and avial .

“I always thought Mammootty looks very Turkish,” said Amma, her intransigent tone indicating that Sollozzo, whom she had yet to meet, could draw at will from the affection she’d deposited over a lifetime for her favourite south-Indian actor. That’s how much she liked Turks, yes.

I liked him too. Sollozzo wasn’t anything like the gangster namesake from the classic movie. For one thing, he had a thin pencil moustache. I could have grown a similar moustache, but I couldn’t compete with his gaunt height or that ruined look of a cricket bat which had seen one too many innings. He came across as a decent fellow, very sharp, and his slow smile and thoughtful mien gave his words an extra weight.

He had brought me a gift. A signed copy of Pamuk’s The Museum Of Innocence . It was strange to think this volume been touched by the great one, physically touched, and the thought sent an involuntary shiver down my spine. A lovely Unenhanced feeling. Two gifts in one. The volume was very expensive, no doubt. I touched the signature again, replaying its embedded message.

“My friend,” said Orhan Pamuk in my head, from across the bridge of time, “I hope you get as much joy reading this story as I had writing it.”

I played it again. I looked up and saw Padma and Sollozzo watching me. It was touching to think they’d worried about finding me the right gift.

“I will cherish it.” I was totally sincere. “Thank you.”

“Mention not,” said Sollozzo, with that slow smile of his. “You owe me nothing. I did take your wife.”

We all laughed. We chatted all through lunch. I ordered the lamb; the others opted to share a vat of biryani. As I watched Bittu putting her little fingers to her mouth, I realized with a start that I’d quite missed her. Sollozzo ate with the gusto of a man on death row. Padma shook her head and I stopped staring. My habit of introspection sometimes interfered with my happiness, but I felt it also gave my happiness a more poignant quality. It is one thing to be happy but to know that one is happy because a beloved is happy makes happiness all the more sweet. Else, how would we be any different from animals? My head buzzing with that sweet feeling, I desired to make a genuine connection. I turned to Sollozzo.