Karma

PUFFIN CANADA

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

(a division of Pearson Canada Inc.)

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India

Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand

(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank,

Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Published in Puffin Canada hardcover by Penguin Group (Canada), a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 2011. Simultaneously published by Razorbill, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Copyright © Cathy Ostlere, 2011

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Publisher's note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Ostlere, Cathy

Karma / Cathy Ostlere.

ISBN 978-0-670-06452-6

I.Title.

PS8629.S57K37 201    jC813'.6    C2010-907880-2

 

American Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data available

Visit the Penguin Group (Canada) website at
www.penguin.ca

Special and corporate bulk purchase rates available; please see

www.penguin.ca/corporatesales
or call 1-800-810-3104, ext. 2477 or 2474

for John Pearce

If I die today, every drop of my blood

will invigorate the nation.

Indira Gandhi

Do not be deceived by the illusion

of the world, of Azad,

The whole realm of experience is but

a loop in the net of thy thought.

Azad, Urdu mystic poet

Maya's Diary

October 28, 1984

A brand-new diary

How to begin.

Click.

How. To. Begin.

Click. Click. Click.

I like the sound of a ballpoint pen.

Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.

I'll start with the date:

October 28, 1984.

Now the place:

Floating in air over ice.

Thirty-seven thousand feet, the pilot said.

But where exactly?

What latitude and longitude?

Is it Canada or Greenland that fell away like a great sinking heart?

Is that a rising sun or a setting one?

The golden rays cut loose from India's plains.

Where am I really?

Nowhere, I guess.

Somewhere between an old life and a new.

Salutation

Every diary needs one.

A word of greeting to begin it all the gentle endearment—

Dear

(My
D
bulges into the margin like a soft balloon.)

Now, a name.

For the one who will listen.

Anne Frank used
Kitty
. The cat left behind, I once believed. I was wrong. It was just a name. I could use
Smoke
, my real cat left behind, but his eyes are too pale. You can't confide to yellow irises and patchy fur. Besides, the cat likes to carry the dead in his mouth.

Just a month ago I might have used
Helen.
My only friend.
Helen of Elsinore,
we used to joke
. The face that launched a thousand tractors.
But even in the country, the beautiful never understand the lonely.

I think of
Michael.

(I can't stop myself.)

Backrow Michael, sitting behind me in homeroom.

Blue eyes. Blond hair. Perfect white teeth gnawing on his lower lip. Angelic. I imagine the entry:

Dear Michael,

I am flying and thinking of you. This is what I remember: You took my braid and wrapped it around your neck like a black satin ribbon. You pulled my face to your cheek. You breathed on me, whispering,
Who are you?
When you bit my hair, I thought I'd die. Pleasure. Shame. Your lips. On me.

But you can't address a boy in a diary, even if you like him.

There's a black snake around my neck
, Michael shouted.
It's choking me!
Everyone in the hallway looked. Laughed. Michael pretended to wrestle with my braid until I slipped and fell. On top of him. My sari unraveling like I was coming apart.

No, you can't address a boy, even if you think you love him.

And especially, if he loves someone else.

Dear Diary

This remains the simple choice.

The anonymous confidante.

Clear and to the point.

But then what's the point of private words lingering on the page, undirected? There must be a listener.
The truest friend
, Anne had insisted.

Yes. A friend. And now I know.

I write the letter
M
.

Four strokes with the pen,
two peaks, a mountain of a letter.

The letter
a
follows—lowercase, the necessary vowel.

And then I mean to write a
t
and then a second
a
— a perfectly balanced word for my longing:

Mata

The name I call my mother.

But my hand slips or is it my mind? The pen dips on the page, ink fading with the sudden upturned sweep of a
y
. A second
a
appears:

Maya

The name that only my mother calls me.

The pen continues to move across the empty page.

Remember.

Remember that I love you.

Ghost

Can the dead really speak?

Through the hand and pen of the living?

A mother's voice floats in from the edge of the world. A daughter hears the whispers.

Or is it loneliness that conjures the loved one from the ash?

No one wants to be forgotten.

Not the dead or the living.

I loved you too, Mata.

But why did you do what you did?

Northern lights

The pilot steers along ribbons of light. Green polar flames rippling in the dark. Long silken scarves floating on the air. It's like watching the wind on fire. Pulsing.

Bapu sleeps beside me. His face is peaceful for the first time in weeks. Perhaps he's dreaming this aurora borealis into being
—
streams of wedding garlands waving like underwater weeds. Guests dancing.

My father's yellow turban rests on his knee.

A closed lotus blossom
, my mother had once described it, her hands tracing the folds, looking for its beginning and its end.

I don't often see my father's hair uncovered.

Only on Saturday mornings when Mata washed his belief in the bathroom sink. The long black river flowing from his head. As long as his faith.

I caught glimpses of the tender ritual when I passed down the hall. Bapu, in a chair, leaning back against the white porcelain. My mother's hands pouring water over the brow, the crown, and behind the ears. He smiles with the anointment. He laughs when the water trickles down his neck.

And then she combs. Pulling the wide teeth against the scalp. Pouring oil until the strands are thick and iridescent. Over and over Mata draws a wooden comb through my father's hair. His measured self.