Hirsh Sawhney - South Haven

When they got to the mall, the lot was crammed with cars. Ms. Farber parked near the rear exit, beside a lingering bank of blackened snow. They first went to Filene’s, where she bought Marc a pair of baggy Guess jeans and then picked out a striped designer button-down for Siddharth. He had never heard of the brand, which was displayed on the shirt’s abdomen. Marc said it was cool, so he tried it on.

“Very handsome,” said Ms. Faber. “Your eyes — they have little flecks of green in them.”

Siddharth couldn’t stifle his smile.

“Handsome or not,” said Mohan Lal, “take it off.”

“Mohan, I’d like to buy it for him,” said Ms. Farber.

“Don’t waste your money, Rachel. These things will be too small by summer.”

“It’s my money.” She was smiling, but her voice was firm. “If I feel like being generous, then that’s what I’m gonna do.”

She paid for their things, and the group left the store. Siddharth felt contented as he clutched his shopping bag and stared at the throngs of weekend shoppers. A hunched-over, wrinkled white man stood behind his walker and picked out a watch strap. Two black couples giggled as they struggled to fit inside a single photo booth. Bands of familiar-looking teenagers squabbled and flirted.

Normally, if Siddharth had been there alone with his father, these kids would have made him nervous. But today he was able to gawk at them with confidence. He fell behind his companions, and when he looked up, they were fifteen or twenty feet ahead. Ms. Farber was standing between his friend and his father. She was gripping Marc’s wrist, and her other hand was clasping Mohan Lal’s elbow. They looked right together, almost natural. With these people by his side, Mohan Lal could have been a Jew, or even an Italian.

* * *

They went from the mall to Pasta Palace, Mohan Lal’s favorite South Haven restaurant. The Aroras had been dining there for years. The portions they served were huge, and each meal came with a free salad. The restaurant was packed today, but Mustafa, the place’s Pakistani manager, still took the time to personally greet them. He clapped Mohan Lal on the back, then patted Siddharth on the head. He said, “Look at him. This one’s gonna be shaving soon.” Siddharth’s face got hot, and he peered down. But he didn’t mind Mustafa. Even though the man was Pakistani — even though he referred to Mohan Lal as Chacha-ji —Siddharth thought he was funny. Mustafa spoke English with a perfect guido accent, like the Mafia goons from the movies. He said things like, “The spinach raviolis? Fugget about it — best raviolis this side a da Bronx.”

For lunch, Marc and Siddharth ordered meatball subs. Mohan Lal got veal parmigiana, and Ms. Farber asked for a Caesar salad with the dressing on the side. When both adults ordered wine, Marc said, “Rachel, boozing in the daytime? What are the lawyers gonna say about that one?”

Ms. Farber smiled, but her nostrils were flaring. She said, “Marc, put your napkin on your lap. And watch it, or no Coke.”

Marc craned his neck toward the bar to catch a basketball game. Siddharth couldn’t care less about sports again, now that Michigan’s Fab Five had lost in the finals. He half-listened to Ms. Farber blabbing about the art therapy class she was taking a local community college. Her professor was also a hypnotherapist, and he performed something called past-life regressive hypnosis. She wondered if Mohan Lal might be interested in a consultation.

“I’m interested, yes,” said Mohan Lal. “But I wouldn’t trust some amateur — some Western quack.”

“Oh, Mohan, you’re all bark,” Ms. Farber responded. “I know you don’t really think like that.”

Marc buttered a roll and bit into it. “What’s regressive hypnocrap?”

“Don’t be crude, Marc,” said Ms. Farber. “And don’t talk with your mouth full.” She paused to sip some wine. “Honey, I’m sorry. Do you really wanna know?”

“Totally,” said Marc. “I’m always interested in your thoughts and ideas, Rachel.”

Ms. Farber sat up straight and explained how according to the Hindus, a person’s soul lived multiple lives in multiple bodies. “What a person experiences in his past lives affects him in his present one. But the thing is, we don’t have any conscious memories of these past lives, and that’s where hypnosis comes in. With regressive hypnosis, a person can reconnect with the people they were in previous lifetimes. And once you unlock all those experiences, they say you feel a deep sense of freedom. Your soul is finally unburdened from centuries’ worth of guilt — from centuries’ worth of suffering.”

“Well put, Rachel,” said Mohan Lal.

She raised her glass, then gulped more wine.

“Wait, Dad,” said Siddharth. “I know you don’t really believe this stuff.” He liked Ms. Farber, but why did she have to encourage all this Hindu bullshit?

“What’s so strange, son? Half the world thinks there’s a red man with little horns at the center of the earth.” As Mohan Lal was speaking, Mustafa came with their appetizers. “Even Mustafa here believes in reincarnation. Don’t you, chief?”

Siddharth stared at the manager. He was wearing a white collared shirt with too many buttons open, so that you could see his black chest hairs and gold chain. Mustafa may have been Pakistani, but he looked just like an Indian. The most Indian thing about him was his ugly mustache. It was so thick, as if black rope was spilling from his nostrils.

Mustafa smiled, and his mustache turned into an ugly upside-down V. “Reincarnation? When I was growing up in Pakistan, we believed in it all.” He said Pakistan the way Americans do, so that it rhymed with can— not the way Mohan Lal pronounced the word. “We believed in everything, and we celebrated everything — Christmas, Holi, Eid. Anyway, buon appetito, folks.” He then nodded at them and walked over to another table.

Mohan Lal said, “Boys, wouldn’t you like to know who you were in a past life? Marc, wouldn’t you like to know if you were an officer in Napoleon’s army? What if you were Roman senators, or Julius Caesar himself?”

Siddharth sucked down some Sprite. “I’d only wanna know if I was, like, Cornelius Vanderbilt or J.D. Rockefeller or something.”

“I’d be Michael Jordan,” said Marc. “Or maybe Donald Trump.”

“Dude, they’re not dead,” said Siddharth.

Marc smirked.

“What now?” asked Ms. Farber.

“Nothing,” said Marc. “But last time around, I musta been some sort of serial killer or something.”

Siddharth laughed, but tensed upon noticing his father staring out the window.

Mohan Lal was grinning to himself. “Siddharth,” he said after a moment, “tell me — what happens to a caterpillar as it grows?”

“What? Dad, I have no idea what you’re saying.”

“A caterpillar,” said Mohan Lal. “How does it grow?”

Marc grabbed a second roll. “It becomes a butterfly. What’s going on with the food? It’s like they’re flying in the subs from Italy or something.”

Mohan Lal’s eyes were gleaming. “Kids, answer me this: Do you think a butterfly can remember his life as a caterpillar? Does it have any recollection of what things were like before it could fly?”

Siddharth began to answer the question, but Ms. Farber cut him off: “Oh, I see what you’re saying. That’s quite an analogy.”

Marc said, “I have no freaking clue what any of you are talking about.”

“Honey, think of the caterpillar as our soul,” said Ms. Farber. “Its metamorphosis is like our rebirth into a new body.”

Siddharth glanced up at the ceiling. He had never noticed how high it was, but today it seemed a hundred feet tall. The ceiling was lined with wooden beams and heavy, tubular piping. He wondered what would happen if one of these ventilation pipes were to fall. Would it kill somebody? Or just wound them?