The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (26 page)

The Biro ran dry. She had bought it only that afternoon in the bazaar but Indian pens, like so much else, had a short life expectancy. Theresa put away the book. There was no need to write. For whom was she writing her journal anyway? One by one, by choice or circumstance, her possessions had disappeared. She should feel lightened, of course.

She had to admit it: this visit was turning out to be something of a disappointment. Last time she had returned from India on a high, but this time the drug didn’t seem to be working. There had been some moments of heart-stopping beauty. She remembered a dawn outside Allahabad, piles of refuse, smoking fires and the beggars rising from the ashes … an ineffable grace in the midst of squalor. Such epiphanies could be found everywhere, for those with eyes to see them. But somehow the connection she sought so keenly hadn’t been made. This time, somehow, she hadn’t managed to rise above the delays and frustrations, the general hopelessness of everything. On several occasions she had lost her temper, a humiliating experience in a country whose people, however cruelly they were treated, seemed to possess no rancor. One didn’t take things personally here; there was simply no point.

Maybe she was becoming too old for this sort of thing. But age shouldn’t be relevant; after all, many of the swamis were no longer in their bodies but their presence was as powerfully felt as if they sat there twinkling at their devotees; death was an irrelevance. Why then did she feel so mortal, with her thickening waist and churning bowels? Shivabalayogi sat in a cave for eight years, meditating twenty-three hours a day and only returning to ordinary circumstances to bathe and drink a glass of milk. His body was gnawed by rodents, yet he emanated a spiritual bliss so intense that thousands of people came to sit in his presence.

The longer you stay in India, the less you know
.

Actually, Theresa did know the reason. It was the fault of her upbringing. She had come to India to be made whole, but this wasn’t possible when she herself was a cracked vessel. No amount of spiritual glue could mend her until she had learned to love herself, and feel loved. She saw this all the time with her clients; that was why she had gone into counseling in the first place. So many of them, like herself, had been given no sense of validation, of self-worth. In every case she had enabled them to trace it back to their parents. This had made it possible, with a great deal of work, to move on.

Darkness had fallen. Theresa got up and hobbled to the window; her foot had started to throb. Outside, in the bus station, was a mass of humanity—people carrying bundles and suitcases, people carrying children, people disgorging from the buses or queuing to embark. Traffic was at a standstill. Horns hooted in that passionless Indian way—nothing personal, just a reflex action. Tomorrow, Theresa herself would be moving on. There was one more place she had to go, before she traveled to Bangalore. All her hopes now resided in a remote Keralana village. Here, surely, she would find the love that had so far eluded her.

For in that village, Vallikavu, lived the Hugging Mother.

Real faith does not live merely in words. It lives in actions, the actions of everyday life. So that everything is done with great devotion and contemplation.

D
R
. S
VAMI
R. A
NAND
G
IRI
P
URNA
,
Discourses

M
adge and Evelyn stood looking at the lingam.

“Nobody we know, darling,” said Madge.

Evelyn laughed. Stella fiddled with her hearing aid. “What did she say, dear?”

The lingam certainly was an impressive sight—four feet high, at least, and made of stone polished smooth by the hands of devotees. Evelyn felt a curious melting sensation.

“Is that what I think it is?” asked Stella.

“I used to see them when I was little,” said Eithne. “My parents used to hurry me past. Of course I had no idea why.”

Eithne Pomeroy, the cat lover, had spent her early years in Calcutta but had left when her father was posted back to Britain. She had volunteered the occasional memory of that time but was in general somewhat vague.
“Away with the fairies,”
said Norman with a snort.

The four women were visiting a temple, whose name Evelyn hadn’t caught, somewhere on the outskirts of Bangalore. Madge had organized the outing.
“You must come, Evelyn, or else your daughter will think you’re a fuddy-duddy.”
News of Theresa’s imminent arrival and her interest in things Indian had gone around the hotel.

Evelyn, however, was none the wiser. The temple was a dark little room where Indian families chattered away as if it wasn’t sacred at all. For them, of course, God was everywhere, so maybe this place wasn’t holier than anywhere else. The elephant one, spattered with paste and strewn with flowers, sat in a niche. He looked like the sort of thing you won at a fairground and then wished you didn’t have to take home. It was all rather charming but their guide, as guides so often did, had reeled off a list of dates and measurements that had simply gone in one ear and out the other. Why did guides always tell you the things you didn’t want to know?

The four women went outside. The temple was on top of a hill; it had nearly killed them, climbing the steps. The light was blinding; in the distance they could see the modern skyscrapers of the city shimmering in the heat, a mirage of commerce. Evelyn sat down, creakingly, and pulled on her sandals.

“At least you can tell your daughter you’ve been,” said Madge. “And that’s the main thing.”

A monkey, suckling its baby, watched them. The baby removed its mouth from a long dry nipple and glared at Evelyn with malevolence. She thought how once she had suckled the two grownups who were slowly but surely converging on her from the other sides of the world. This gave her as odd a sensation as the lingam.

Eithne leaned toward Evelyn. She indicated Madge, who had unclicked her compact and was reapplying her lipstick. “Do you know,” she whispered, “I’ve forgotten her name.”

“It’s Madge,” whispered Evelyn.

“Silly me!”

“Don’t worry,” said Evelyn. “I forget names all the time.”

“I’ll be forgetting the name of my daughter next,” said Eithne with a small laugh. Eithne’s daughter, Lucy, was married to a test pilot and lived in Australia. Lucy had promised she would come and visit soon. They all said that, of course; it was a question of finding the time.

They walked down the steps, between the rows of stalls. “Whose daughter are you talking about?” asked Stella.

“Get a grip, Stella!” said Madge. “Eithne’s. She’s called Lucy and lives in Sydney.”

“Sidney who?” asked Stella.

“My Lucy’s going to come,” said Eithne. “She says it’ll be a surprise.”

“Don’t let her surprise you, pet,” said Madge. “It’ll give you a heart attack.”

They reached their hired car. The guide, a bespectacled man, very thin, gave each of them his card. It said
Dr. Gulvinder Gaya, BA (Failed)
. Evelyn put it into her bag to join her growing collection of business cards. Everywhere one went, people thrust them into one’s hand. They tipped him—Rs 30, they had planned this in advance—and drove off. Madge had boldly volunteered to sit next to the driver.

Evelyn sat squashed in the back, discreetly scratching her mosquito bites. They were discussing dinner. Thursdays were usually a choice of biriani or cutlets. “I’d kill for a decent piece of cheddar,” said Madge.

Fernandez, the cook, had returned to work the day after he had been sacked. Apparently this was a regular occurrence. Evelyn had told nobody, however, about Minoo’s confession. Two weeks had passed and the poor man looked even more miserable. His wife was glimpsed occasionally barking at the servants, but she hardly spoke to the residents anymore and was unavailable for pedicures. Jean Ainslie, too, seemed somewhat muted. The reason for this was not generally known, but it contributed to the odd atmosphere. It was as if they were all waiting for something to happen. Maybe it felt like this when the heat built up in the summer, before the monsoon broke.

“Look!” Stella pointed out the window.

They were crossing a river. On its banks stood a forest of washing, strung on poles. Rows of sheets hung shimmering in the heat. Tiny figures slapped clothes in the water.

“That’s a
dhobi-ghat
, dear,” said Eithne. “Our laundry is probably there.”

“Maybe I can spot my pink slacks,” said Madge.

“No!” said Stella. “I mean—look. It’s Dorothy.”

They told the driver to stop. A lorry blared its horn. It passed, belching fumes. Putting on their specs, they stared out the window.

Next to the washing was a group of huts, roofed with plastic. A black-and-yellow taxi was parked there. Even at this distance they could make out that the woman beside it was Dorothy: blue trousers, white blouse. She was talking to one of the washermen.

They sat there, gazing at her. “What on earth is she doing there?” asked Evelyn.

“Maybe she’s lost her underthings,” said Madge.

D
orothy was there at dinner. None of the four asked her what she had been doing at the
dhobi-ghat;
one simply didn’t, with Dorothy. She sat at a table with Graham and the Scottish sisters, a pleasant but dull pair of widows from Fife. Due to Madge’s efforts, seating arrangements had become more sociable: tables had been shoved together to make places for four, a number which Madge said made for better conversation. Two was too pressured; more than four and the deafer ones couldn’t hear. Madge was a veteran of many cruises and knew about such things. There was a musical-chairs aspect to this, however: those last to arrive found their choices dwindled to Norman Purse or Hermione Fox-Harding, another of the cat-lovers, who suffered from flatulence. The trick, of course, was to enter as a group and stick ruthlessly together.

Evelyn sat next to her companions of the afternoon. She eyed Dorothy with curiosity. This changed to astonishment when Dorothy ordered a bottle of wine. Nobody drank wine—it was exorbitantly expensive, as rare a treat as when they were young. People drank local beer, Indian spirits or, if feeling extravagant, imported liquor. Jimmy carried in the bottle, holding it like a firework, and had to be helped with the corkscrew.

“Not your birthday, old girl?” boomed Norman from the next table. He eyed the bottle greedily.

Dorothy shook her head. After a long interval, Jimmy reappeared with four dusty wineglasses, trembling on a tray.

Evelyn, some yards away, inspected Dorothy’s face. There was an air of suppressed excitement about her, as if she had heard some news on the radio of which the rest of them were unaware. Dorothy speared a slice of egg with mayonnaise, lifted it to her mouth and then, lost in thought, put it down again.

Until recently Evelyn had defended Dorothy against the rumor of barminess that had been circulating. Eccentricity, like good cheddar, was one of a dwindling list of things of which the British could be proud. Until they had arrived at the hotel many of the residents had been living alone for some years, a situation that fostered odd behavior. Evelyn herself frequently spoke aloud to Hugh.

Only the day before, however, she had found Dorothy in the garden, talking to the
mali
. When she drew nearer and could make out the words, she had discovered that Dorothy wasn’t speaking English at all; it was some sort of gobbledygook. No wonder the
mali
had looked bemused and shaken his head. Or done that sort of waggle.
Of course, if that’s what you want to say, you dotty old Brit
. We all have our strange little ways, thought Evelyn. It was just that some were stranger than others.

Take Muriel Donnelly. In recent days Muriel had grown more agitated. The visit to the holy man hadn’t produced the desired result: there was still no sign of her son. She had phoned his home in Essex many times: no answer. His neighbors hadn’t heard a dicky-bird. Muriel’s efforts to track down his wife and her two children, Jordan and Shannon, had failed too. Maybe the wife had run away as well. Muriel had no idea. The two of them had never got on.

Yet Muriel still persisted. Miracles could happen. After all, without hope she would probably lose the will to live.

After dinner Evelyn sat in the lounge, reading an old
Good Housekeeping
. From the TV room came the sound of
Porridge;
somebody had discovered a pirated copy at Khan’s. In the armchair opposite dozed Hermione, her exercise book on her lap. She was writing her memoirs for her grandchildren.

Muriel came up to Evelyn and whispered: “Guess what. I’m having me leaves read tomorrow.”

“Leaves?”

“It’s going to tell me the future.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea?” asked Evelyn.

“It’s got the answers written on it,” said Muriel.

“How? I thought they just made a sort of shape.”

“What does?”

“Tea leaves.”

“Not tea leaves, ducks,” said Muriel. “
I
can do
them
. This is palm leaves. They even tell you when you’re going to die.”