Pia Padukone - Where Earth Meets Water

His entire family. All together. On one beach.

Karom listened to the message once again before he wrote the number down shakily. Then he opened the covers on his tightly made bed and got in. It was three days before he got out again. On the third day, he reached for his cell phone and dialed Kishan’s number.

“Uncle? It’s Karom.”

“Thank God, child. You’re okay. Where have you been?”

“College. My flight was canceled. Any news?”

“It’s not looking good. They’re reporting that phone and power lines have been restored at this point, as well as cell networks. If we—if we haven’t heard from them by now...”

“Look, you never know. What can I do? Should I come?”

“There’s nothing anyone can do at this point.” Karom heard Kishan slowly breaking down. A tear traveled down the bridge of Karom’s nose and plopped onto the worn wooden floorboard. The room was freezing—the heat had been turned off for the break, though Karom didn’t notice it at all. “And your parents were there,” Kishan wailed.

“They are there,” Karom said, wiping his face on the back of his hand. “Listen, I’ve got to go. Call me if you hear anything. On my cell. My mobile.”

Karom sat up in bed, staring at the wall as if in a trance. Suddenly, he broke off and opened his roommate’s closet. In here Lloyd kept a small pantry alongside his perfectly pressed cardigans and corduroy jackets. Karom wasn’t sure why Lloyd hid the snacks, as Karom had never deigned to take anything of Lloyd’s without asking—until now. There were saltines, granola bars, a large package of chocolate-covered mints and a fresh jar of peanut butter. Karom twisted the top off the peanut butter and pulled a gob of it onto his finger. He closed his lips over it, the sweetness making his mouth water and jerking tears to his eyes. He blinked the tears back and stuck his finger in again and again. His mouth was sticky and he ran his tongue over his teeth. What was that word? The word that when he heard it pulled gently on his stomach, in his throat, at the tips of his fingernails, making him think that it would never be him. It couldn’t be him.

It would be six hours before Karom logged on to his computer, searching for answers, looking up death tolls on the Indian Red Cross website, manning live streams for four different news sites at once, cross-referencing emails and then seeing his parents’ names in ghostly letters upon a list of those found fatally wounded or dead. And then his grandparents. All four of them. And then a whole column, a page of his surname over and over:

Rana Seth.

Mohan Seth.

Akansha Seth.

Preeti Seth.

Madhu Seth.

Shankar Seth.

Seth.

Seth.

Seth.

Seth.

It was another two hours before he remembered the word: orphan. Thereafter, until Lloyd and the other students returned to campus, everything was broken up into increments of time: sixteen hours before Kishan called to confirm that everyone at the reunion was reported officially missing. Dead. Twenty-two hours before Karom dry-heaved repeatedly from hunger. Thirty-six hours before his contact lenses automatically peeled themselves away from his pupils—raw from the dry, airless room—and curled up on the desk where he sat staring at his laptop, his only beacon and companion, which rang in the New Year in front of him. Ninety-six hours before he methodically and carefully deleted all the emails from friends inquiring if his family was okay and saying that they were praying for them and was there anything anyone could do and please don’t hesitate to ask. Three months before a courier rapped on his door with a delivery from Kishan wrapped in brown paper and padded with cotton wads.

A gold Rolex with a black alligator band sat nestled within the padding. The face was weathered and scratched just to the right of the crown and there were a few bits of sand wedged between the glass face and the golden hinges. A small note accompanied it.

Karom—

This was among the belongings in the safe in Naana and Naani’s room. There wasn’t much else—their passports and some bundles of rupees. Your parents’ room held their passports and some money, as well. The passports and money are being held for administrative and tracking purposes. I’ll make sure to have them sent to you as soon as possible. I wanted you to have something of meaning, and as you know, this was the watch that your naani gave your naana on their wedding night. I hope it serves as something—a memory, a wish, a light.

All my best,

Kishan Uncle

Together we learn there’s nothing like time. Karom was sure that it was the first of Naani’s many gestures to her new husband that everything would be okay, that even if nothing made sense in their early days as strangers to one another, the years would prove themselves stronger than unfamiliarity, that they would take this journey together, learning about one another and stumbling and catching one another and learning every step of the way. Naani was always the reassuring one; her husband would flurry about worrying if the plane would lose their luggage, or whether they would run out of vegetarian meals, or if they hadn’t packed enough warm clothing for the beach.

Karom had put the watch on immediately, and unless he was bathing or sleeping or going through the security line at the airport, he never took it off. He would wear it as a constant reminder of all that he had lost, his whole family all at once, wham bam, in an instant, like the second hand that ticked on his wrist.

* * *

On the morning of their departure from Delhi, Ammama tiptoes into the sitting room, where Karom is holding his watch between his fingers, studying its slightly scarred face. Ammama stops and smiles shyly, looking down at the tray as if to show Karom what she has brought him. He motions to her to sit down next to him.

“Come,” he whispers. She sits awkwardly on the bed next to him, pulling her tiny feet underneath her and adjusting her sari. The tray of bananas and cold coffee sits between them, but on this morning, there is also a thick book. Karom peels a banana and hands it to her. She shakes her head shyly. Karom urges, “Please.” She nibbles at the tiny fruit and Karom peels another for himself. So much sweeter than the huge bland ones we get back home, Karom thinks.

“What do you say to me?” he asks. “Are you praying?” Ammama colors and looks down at the floor.

“I thought you were asleep,” she says.

“I’m an early riser,” Karom says. “Please tell me.”

“It’s nothing, really. Just an old lady’s superstitions.”

“Please.” He takes her banana peel and places it with his alongside the book on the tray. He turns to face her. Ammama looks at him and purses her mouth.

“You mustn’t be cross with Gita for telling me. She tells me that you like to tempt fate. That you call it your game. Is that right?” Karom looks down, embarrassed. “Fate isn’t an easy thing to play with. Once it decides to shift in one direction, the gusts keep on blowing, and it’s out of your hands. You have to take care of one another, don’t you?” He nods. “But I know there is something over you. An omen.”

“An omen?”

Ammama nods solemnly.

“What kind of omen? Because I’ve been pretty lucky.” He tells her about Acadia and the tidal wave that he and Gita narrowly missed. He tells her about 9/11, how he’d feigned illness on the morning that his class was to visit a news studio in Tower 1 because he hadn’t finished a paper on Howards End, how instead he’d stayed home watching the news, stricken, while the first tower came crumbling down like a stale cracker.

“Do you think so? Then what is this game nonsense?”

It’s Karom’s turn to color. “It’s just my way of feeling alive. I can’t— I don’t have an explanation. It’s how I’ve conditioned myself, I suppose. To understand why I’m still...why I don’t...why I can’t...what’s keeping me from...” He trails off and looks down at his hands sitting uselessly in his lap. “But what do you see? How can you tell?”