Darshan (25 page)

Junker Singh nodded, impressed, but not surprised at his friend’s knowledge. “The engine needs replacing,” he said. “But she’s loud once she is running.”

“Yes,” Manmohan murmured, patting the seat. “Why would you ever want to sell her?”

Junker Singh pointed to his bad knee. “I am too old and fat to keep her,” he said with no trace of self-consciousness.

Manmohan chuckled.

“You bought that 1937 last year if I remember,” Junker Singh said, “which you allowed to rust beyond repair in your backyard. You hardly rode her. You would not dream of letting the same thing happen to this one?”

“Dairy farming has kept me too busy to ride her.”

“Beginnings are always like that,” Junker Singh agreed. “They empty you out.”

Manmohan stared listlessly at the bike. “There is more time now,” he said. “Things are better.” He missed the air piercing through his beard, and although he preferred the flatlands of the Punjab, he nonetheless also missed the green and gray blur of jungle and road streaming by like splashed paint as he flew around the island toward the openness of the sugarcane fields on the northwest side near Ba.

Junker Singh rested his rough hands over the top of his stomach, the buttons on his shirt straining against his belly. He inclined his head toward the motorcycle. “She is yours if you promise not to let her rust. My heart would not receive it well if you allowed that again.”

Manmohan remained quiet for a moment, thoughtfully tapping his lips with two of his fingers.
So ja Rajkumari
came to an end, followed by a commercial announcement on the radio:
Buy two salwaar kameez, get one tailored suit for husband at discount price. Only at Suni Ganesh Saris and Spices!
When he finally spoke, he found that he had trouble looking his friend in the eye. “It is not for me. It is for Mohan. I am worried about him.”

The laugh lines around Junker Singh’s eyes softened.

Pulling a piece of paper from his shirt pocket, Manmohan unfolded it. It was his son’s latest grade report. He handed it to the mechanic. “I thought a bike might be good for him. He seems to like them. Something to encourage him to work harder.”

Looking at the report, the mechanic whistled softly and shook his head. “Ji, I know how much you like books. You are a reading man. But this is not a big problem. Not everyone is meant for school.”

Manmohan winced, like he had been roughly jabbed. “My wife said the same thing.” He walked around the bike and grasped the throttle, thinking of the conversation he had with Jai the other day. She had never been formally educated. Neither had Junker Singh. They did not understand the growing necessity for education in this new age of the world. His wife had been so dismissive, and, irritated, he had tried to explain to her. “Knowledge is an important advantage. The world is changing, and a man can do as much now with his mind as he can with his hands.”

Jai had regarded him carefully then, with that same resolute manner that always characterized her loyalty to him. Brow furrowed thoughtfully, taking him more seriously, she had replied, “Perhaps he needs some motivation.”

Picking at a hole in the bike’s saddle, exposing the foam, Manmohan glanced at Junker Singh. “I have seen Mohan look at my motorcycle, like he is trying to sort out what is wrong with it. He sometimes takes a rag to it, trying to polish away the rust. He does not realize that rust changes the metal, that it cannot simply be wiped away. You have to change it to fix it, to repair the damage.”

Junker Singh witheringly raised an eyebrow. “Now, you see, that is what is so tragic about rust.”

Manmohan smiled faintly. “He is eleven this year. I remember when I was eleven. At his age I sometimes saw the British drive cars through Amarpur, and I imagined myself behind the wheel, racing through the country.” They had finally found common ground, something they both loved.

“Yes, I was the same,” the mechanic replied. “And when I was eleven, I did not do my schoolwork either. It is normal.”

Manmohan shook his head. “Mohan does not have to love it like I did. Why is it not enough that I ask him to improve? I am his father. Shouldn’t that be the most important thing a son can offer, to always do his best?”

Junker Singh’s expression changed, his mouth tipping downward in sympathy. He stuck his hands in his pockets, which made his paunch seem even larger and rounder. “He is a boy, ji. It is what boys do. I was sometimes disobedient. Remember that and do not be so hard on him.”

Manmohan looked away, into the bright sun of the courtyard beyond the garage, the rope used to pull down the sectional door dangling in his periphery. It was hard to admit to his friend that he had never been that sort of free-spirited boy, rebellious or badly behaved, and that he could not understand or condone such behavior. He had always done as he had promised, had always done exactly what he believed would make Baba Singh proud.

~   ~   ~

Mohan gaped at the motorcycle as Manmohan wheeled it into the backyard, positioning it near his old bike where weeds had started to grow around the base of the flattened tires. Resting it on the kickstand, he stepped back to admire it. His son rushed over, touching the steel frame and the torn saddle, gliding his hand over the bike’s surface, over the bumps of rust, the rough, unpolished metal, the glass of the speedometer, the broken side mirror that hung limply.

“Come over here, Mohan,” Manmohan said, going to the patio and lowering himself into one of the chairs.

“It is bigger than the other. Is it faster?” Mohan asked, following his father.

Manmohan wordlessly pulled out the grade report and handed it to his son.

Mohan’s face fell.

“I believe you are a smart boy,” Manmohan told him. “I have no doubt about what you can accomplish. That is how I know you are not trying.”

“But Bapu, I am working so hard. Nothing I do makes any difference.”

“I am sure that is not true,” Manmohan said gently. “But you have to study. That is what I tell you all the time. It is wrong to disobey your parents, to tell them one thing and do another.”

“I really
am
trying,” Mohan said, near tears. “But nothing comes out the way it is supposed to.”

Manmohan put an arm around his son’s waist and pulled him close. “I think you are saying that just to make me happy. You think it is what I want to hear. I even believe you mean it when you say the words. But what would please me most is to see results, to see action follow your words.”

“But, Bapu, I don’t know why—”

Manmohan put up a firm hand, finished with excuses. “I understand that school may not be your favorite thing, so I have decided to balance what you do not like with something that you do.” Pointing at the motorcycle, he smiled. “We can work on this bike together, and one day, when you are old enough, perhaps if you deserve it, you can have it.”

Mohan glanced at the bike, but he did not seem excited. Perhaps he was sorry. That was good.

“But you have to promise me that you will make real improvements,” Manmohan continued. “Do not just say the words.”

Mohan hesitated for a moment, still regarding the motorcycle. “Bapu,” he began, turning hesitantly back to his father. Then he took a deep breath and spoke with more confidence. “I promise.”

“I will hold you to your words,” Manmohan said. He kissed Mohan’s cheek. “Go. Help your mother with dinner. We will start tomorrow.”

Mohan loosened himself from his father’s arm and ran inside the house. Manmohan watched him go. After a moment, feeling satisfied, he stood to clear a space opposite the cucumber garden where they would work on the bike.

With Mohan’s help the next day, after the larger rocks had been moved and a small square of land prepped, Manmohan staked a gray tarpaulin to the ground and nailed another over tall four-by-four pillars of lumber that he pounded into the dirt. During the following days, once the pillars had been reinforced with concrete, they built a row of shelves for parts and tools and set it as a wall in the back of the tarpaulin shed, the finalizing touch on their makeshift auto repair shop.

Over the next several months, Manmohan rolled out the cabinet radio from the living room so they could listen to the Hindustani station while they worked. He took great pleasure in restoring the analog gauge and barrels, the carburetor, and the leather bench seat while humming along with the music and sipping an occasional cold beer. During his few years in the army, the Amritsar barracks were often quieted by the voice of one of his bunkmates who sang beautiful love songs while polishing his boots. The music from the radio reminded Manmohan of the harmony and simplicity of those days, when he had been pulled away from all that made him restless and insecure at home.

And on some days, when the air was dry and not humid and it seemed to fit the mood, he wound up his gramophone and played the Duke Ellington LP he had run across in a shop on Victoria Parade. His favorite recordings were “Sepia Panorama” and “Bojangles.” When he listened to them he was young again, but having never heard jazz when he was in India, the songs made him feel young without the ache of nostalgia.

Though Mohan was not particularly skilled with tools—holding them awkwardly—he engaged in each task with absolute focus and a clear desire to accomplish it well. Watching Mohan strip the paint off the bike’s metal frame in order to coat it with an oxide layer before repainting, Manmohan could not fathom how one so capable of hard work and dedication could have ever done so poorly in school.

Mohan had taken a greater effort with his schoolwork since their motorcycle project had begun. Each evening, before they opened up the tarpaulin bike shop, Mohan was required to complete his school assignments, solve mathematical equations and write essays on the history of India and Indians in Fiji. Manmohan offered to help once, but Mohan did not want it, adamant about doing it on his own.

So Manmohan would read one of the books from his great collection while he waited, Duke Ellington wound up and sweetly melodic in the background. He loved the musty smell of his books’ yellowing pages. He drank in the paragraphs. He wanted to know everything about the world. They were perfect evenings, both of them learning, embarking on journeys of the mind, together. Sometimes Mohan studied for so long there was not time for the bike. He would eat dinner and slump off to bed, looking utterly drained. For Manmohan, these evenings were great successes.

Nonetheless, many of the evenings during those last months of 1949 ended with the clank of tools being returned to the shelf of the tarpaulin shed, the silencing of the radio or the scratch of the needle as it was pulled off the LP, and a twist of the knob on the Coleman lantern by which they had been working after the sun set. As Mohan would head inside, smiling and wiping the grime from his hands, Manmohan would stare out into the darkness of the backyard, listening to the crickets and feeling the hint of ocean breeze on the back of his sweaty neck, Duke Ellington still playing in his head. Jai and Darshan were usually already asleep by the time the two of them trod heavily to the washroom to rinse the grease from their bodies. They would eat the meal left for them on the kitchen table and then drop onto their beds, the day feeling like a series of accomplishments worthy of their exhaustion.

~   ~   ~

It is always good, Manmohan thought, clinging to the happy evenings with his son, the two of them out in the backyard, the pleasant music and the sweet, agreeable smell of grease. That was exactly what he needed now. An evening with Mohan and the bike to remind him what sort of man he was, and what sort of father. Standing outside his house, he took a slow shaky breath. Jai was likely in the living room playing quietly on the floor with Darshan, the house smelling of freshly prepared roti and bean curry. And Mohan had no doubt been working diligently on his homework, was now finished and had seen him pull up in the truck. He had probably run to his room to change out of his school shorts and button-down shirt, putting on the clothes he had designated as his mechanic’s gear: a raggedy black pullover shirt and an old pair of trousers that he said made him feel like he was allowed to get dirty. This last thought made Manmohan brighten, a momentary elevation from the bitter mood he was steeped in, relieving some of the pressure in his chest.

Taking another breath, this time slower until his lungs tingled with the pressure, he then released it like he was exhaling a steady stream of cigar smoke. He had just left the dairy farm, and though he tried his best not to think of it, not to let it consume him, the memory of Satnam standing around all day doing nothing made him sick.

Sinking to the ground, Manmohan rested his back against the house by the front door.

Satnam and Priya had spent the entire day on the dairy farm for the first time since its opening because Priya had said they wanted to learn about what she called “the family trade.”

“We’ve got to know what it’s about,” she said. “We cannot just sit around at home and expect to make a profit if we do not know our own business. What if something happens to any of you?”

Manmohan stared at her for a long moment. He wanted to laugh hatefully at her, but she gave him that infuriatingly wide-eyed stare that, for her, meant sincerity.

“Well,” she said, “show me what it is you do around here.”

“It has been three years,” he finally replied, the weight of the two bucketfuls of milk he was holding straining his shoulders.

“Well, yes. I was talking it over with the ladies. Our friend’s husband simply collapsed while milking a cow. Now she’s got nothing.”

“You want to learn to milk a cow?”

She laughed. “I wouldn’t do that
this minute
. Observation is eighty percent of learning, isn’t it?”

Not pausing long enough to wonder where she had heard that, he turned and walked away toward the pasteurizing shed where Satnam was talking quietly with Baba Singh.

“I’ll just see what you do next,” Priya said in a cheerful, singsong voice. “To the shed, is it?”

“What kind of game are you playing?” Manmohan asked her, setting the buckets down by the shed door near Baba Singh.