Chrissy Kolaya: Charmed Particles

ABHIJAT MITAL ACCEPTED THE POSITION AT THE NATIONAL Accelerator Research Lab with great pride. The offer itself was the realization of his greatest dream, now made concrete by the desk he would sit behind, the nameplate on his door, the drive every morning through the gates, where he would present his pass to the security guard who would, after a matter of weeks, begin to wave him through, recognizing Abhijat as one among the parade of scientists he’d been waving through those gates for years, and on that day, Abhijat would feel, at last, like he belonged.

He had written Sarala with the news that he’d accepted a position at the premier particle accelerator and research facility in the U.S., some argued in the world. The job would begin at the end of the semester, after he had fulfilled his academic commitments to the university.

In the evenings, he took the short, quiet walk from his office on campus to the small set of rooms he rented in the house of an emeritus professor of philosophy, with whom he sometimes enjoyed an evening game of chess before returning to his desk to pore over his work. As he walked, snow falling quietly around him as was common on those dark midwinter nights, he often caught himself peering into the lit-up windows of the houses he passed, imagining the life he and Sarala would make for themselves.

Sarala had pointed out that he neglected to respond to the questions in her letters, and so, in the next letter he posted, he included the following chart:

Letter Number

Question

Answer

3

Are you making progress with your research?

Yes.

4

Are the Americans friendly?

Not overmuch.

5

Do you think I will like it there, in the United States with you?

I am unable to answer this. Any response would be pure speculation, an area I prefer to avoid.

To which Sarala replied:

Yes, but if I understand your work, you are doing precisely this — speculating — in making predictions about the possible existence of new particles before they have been detected .

To which Abhijat responded (keeping to himself his delight at Sarala’s pluck, as well as her surprisingly accurate grasp of his research project):

You are correct. I will here attempt a prediction. I believe it is likely that you will be happy here and with me, but that you will at times experience some degree of homesickness, as I have .

Abhijat had been working at a university in the U.S. since leaving Cambridge, where he had done his training and emerged from the group of young theoretical physicists as a quiet, serious student, one his professors had decided possessed a great deal of promise. And all that time, back in Bombay, his mother had been on the hunt for a suitable wife. Sarala had emerged as the foremost contender. The wedding had taken place on his last trip home, and soon Sarala would join him in the States to begin their new life together.

After the wedding, Sarala had gone to Abhijat’s mother’s home, a custom they kept despite Abhijat’s absence. He had needed to return to the university to finish the academic year, and so the months between Sarala’s wedding and her arrival in the U.S. were spent in close companionship with her new mother-in-law, who, she was surprised to find, she liked a great deal.

“You must help Abhijat find some happiness in the world,” her new mother-in-law said to Sarala one night as they shared their evening meal. “Since he was a boy, he has always grasped for something just out of reach, never happy with what he has accomplished.

“You will be good for him,” she added. “As for a wife, he gave no thought to it. ‘Abhijat,’ I told him, ‘now is the time.’ ‘Yes, Ma,’ he said, but I wonder, had I not spoken, how long he would have remained with eyes only for his articles and equations.”

Sarala had studied business administration at university. The majority of her knowledge of American history had been gleaned from a castoff sixth-grade textbook entitled Our Colonial Forefathers , which Abhijat’s mother had found in an English-language bookstore in Bombay, and which she had bought and presented to Sarala, hoping to help smooth the way for her new daughter-in-law in this land of foreigners.

Though Sarala had not yet realized it, her own mother had slipped a gift for her daughter’s new life in with the things that were to be shipped to her new home: a small wooden box of recipes written in her own hand on square pieces of blue paper — what she imagined Sarala would need to know for a happy union and a marriage that would grow into love.

For After an Argument:

Below that, her mother’s recipe for pav bhaji.

On the Days When You Have Been Short-Tempered:

Followed by her careful instruction on how to prepare aloo gobi.

When You Wish to Call into Your Life a Child:

Here, the steps for making rajma chawal, one of Sarala’s favorites.

And so on.

Sarala occupied herself on the long series of plane rides by immersing herself in her copy of Our Colonial Forefathers . In it, she found a map illustrating the thirteen colonies and the westward expansion of settlers during the period. The land where she and Abhijat would live — Illinois — was marked out on the map as a vast, unexplored territory, wilderness — unknown, untamed, and uncharted terrain.

When, near the end of her last flight, the pilot came over the loudspeaker to announce that they would now begin their descent into Chicago, Sarala peered out the window through the clouds, watching for her new home to materialize. The plane circled over a wide blue body of water — Lake Michigan, she guessed — and made its way inland down a tiny grid of geometrically arranged streets, the roofs of small houses, outlines of yards, and then tiny cars becoming visible as they descended. When the wheels touched down, Sarala felt herself pulled forward in her seat, then back as the plane strained to a stop.

They rolled slowly toward the gate where Abhijat would meet her. As they approached, she looked out toward the large-paned window of the terminal, wondering if she could make him out, if he could find her face framed in the tiny round window of the plane.

Abhijat greeted her with a bright, warm smile as she stepped into the waiting area of the terminal, and she was reminded of their wedding ceremony months earlier. Their embrace was again like their first, and Sarala hoped they would soon grow to feel comfortable and at ease with one another.

Abhijat carried her bags and led her out to the parking garage to the beige sedan he had recently purchased. Though tired from her long hours of travel, Sarala peered out the windows as they drove, here and there Abhijat pointing out places of interest, Sarala taking in her new home — first the bright, busy maze of highways and billboards near the airport, and off in the distance the skyscrapers of the city.