At dawn, Joan carries in the Hotel Gandhi’s Paradise breakfast tray from outside her door. The flower is an orange lily in an orange vase. She sits at the desk and eats the delicious hot lentils, drinks the hot barley tea, considers Camille Nagy’s instructions about educating herself.
She should find a bookstore down in the marketplace, spend some hours reading about where she is. Instead, she stretches out on the bed and thumbs through Kartar’s guidebook. The entry about Bhagsu Falls intrigues. There is a temple nearby and a pool of natural spring water where one can take a “holy dip,” before climbing to the top.
She did not bring a bathing suit or hiking boots, but in the pine closet are the sneakers she wears on the pressure walks Martin researches, when they drive to a starting point, sometimes an hour away, and take strenuous, speedy walks Joan finds bullet-pointed in a way she finds hard to interpret. The soles are thickly ribbed and should be sufficient for her to climb half a mountain.
By nine, she is outside the hotel on the dirt path, checking the hand-drawn map Kartar drew for her. Fields of flowers span both sides of the road that leads to the mountain she will climb to the falls. She climbs and climbs, passing a few cafés, shops selling tea and snacks and trinkets, and then, at the base of the mountain, a Shiva temple appears, caught in shade. Beyond, a lemon sun beckons.
She expected to find a lot of people preparing to ascend, but Joan is on her own. The trail is well marked, a gradual rise that grows steeper the farther she walks. There are straightaways and hairpin turns, and then the trail hugs the edge of the cliff. Far below, in the valley, there are black boulders and white boulders, huge as sun-drenched whales. The valley must be a riverbed, filling up when the rains come and the winter snow melts.
Unearthly silence, except for the quiet thresh of small insects she can’t see at all and leave her alone. Her hair is damp from sweat, her legs sore, despite all her years of yoga. The air smells of crushed flowers.
A murmuring, then a thundering roar, and the Bhagsu Falls appear, powerful, picturesque, water gnashing against rocks, arching from its high point into a gorgeous aerial display. The sun folding into geysers sparks rainbows that remind her of the old lady in the blue sari on the chhotey who was still smiling when Joan disembarked.
She sits cross-legged on the ground for an hour, until her body is beating in time to the crashing falls. Then a second hour, fighting the jet lag she feels, amidst the deafening noise. Then a third hour, when the pounding reverberations of water against rock are humming through her, as if she, too, is a natural wonder, awake in a way that is wholly different and new.
Her muscles are tight from sitting on the ground for so long. She pushes herself up from the dirt, stretches her arms high, moves into the force of the sun, feels its tight grip.
She thinks that it is only her second day here, too soon to expect answers of any kind. She needs to engage in another kora or two, or ten, or twenty, perhaps give meditation a chance, sit on those red pillows and chant. Her people in Devata did not do that, but maybe she will.
She stares down the mountain, and begins the long walk back.
36
“Is this Vita Brodkey?”
“I know your voice. Such a lovely voice I thought, during our long trip together. How are you enjoying Dharamshala?”
This is Joan’s seventh day in Dharamshala, and while the jet lag is mostly gone, each night, her dreams are terrible. She is a child breaking a window in her parents’ house to escape their malevolent clutches. She is wearing a wedding gown and Martin is holding her hand, but instead of speaking her vows, black words big as ravens fly from her mouth, hang in the air, in the space between them, then start flapping their wings, sending the wedding guests running. She is newly pregnant with Daniel and taking a long knife to her belly. She is watching Eric leap into the darkness of space and does not pull him back. Horrendous dreams when she is in them, but so simplistic that no psychological interpretation is needed. She won’t tell Vita her dreams, but Vita’s advice, when she was in the car with Abhay at the wheel about to commence the ten-hour trip to Udaipur, has stayed in Joan’s mind since that day. And it is nice to hear Vita’s springy voice again.
“Everything is well here. How is Udaipur. Is it as you recall?”
“Nothing stays the same, of course. I was once young and beautiful, and now I am old and not nearly as beautiful, but I am staying at the Taj Lake Palace in the middle of Lake Pichola and it is gorgeous.”
“The hotel is in the lake?”
“Right in the middle of the lake. It is a dream come true. I’ve taken some of the heritage walks offered by the hotel, to reacquaint myself with places from my childhood, and I have given in to my secret indulgence, sessions with the astrologer on the hotel’s staff. Isn’t that marvelous, an astrologer on staff! It seems only right to know what my future has in store for me.”
Joan laughs. “And what have you learned, Vita?”
“Well, Biju says I am far from being done with love. A handsome man will sweep me off my feet. Love is waiting for me right around the corner.”
“Love is around the corner in this life?”
“Yes, darling, in this life. Not the next. I asked Biju the same thing. What do I care about love in another realm? It’s here-and-now love I’m interested in. Biju says her name means great, powerful, and awesome, and she never fools around with predictions of the heart or the wallet, that really she has nothing to do with any of it, she is just reading my life in my stars.”
“Is the house where you grew up still there?”
“It is, darling, and someone has maintained it beautifully. I am meeting with an estate agent tomorrow who is going to take me around my wonderful old neighborhood. He says there may be an available house for me to rent, while he looks for a place I might buy. I must remember to ask Biju about that, if she can read my stars to tell me the address I should be watching for.”
“Have you started painting your watercolors yet?”
“Not yet, soon though, I have promised myself that. But enough of me, tell me how you are spending your days.”