Dressed in dry slacks and a shirt, she brings in her morning tray from outside the door. Today’s flower is a tall white aster in a thin red vase. She eats her lentils and drinks her barley tea at the desk, watches the forest bow to the onslaught.
Meditating three times a week with Ela and Camille, in the group whose membership frequently changes, has staved off the weight of her earliest days here, the strangling embrace of pain, the surprise she experienced daily about Daniel’s failure to beg her forgiveness. But if the rains have arrived, and sightseeing will be a waterlogged experience, perhaps she should do what Ela and Camille say she needs to do: meditate every single day of the week.
The meditation has been helping. She has actually learned the Moola mantra by heart, and a second one as well, the Hanuman mantra, just four words in all—Om Shri Hanuamte Namaha—which translates easily as “Om and Salutations to Lord Hanuman.” And although Joan does not know who Lord Hanuman is, Ela has explained that Hanuman invokes unbounded love, gives strength, grants success in devotional activities, and reveals the soul’s power to triumph over adversities blocking the attainment of one’s highest realizations. And sometimes it works; there are spans of two or three days when Joan is simply living this new Dharamshalan life. But the truth, never far away, can suddenly narrow her vision, reduce the world she’s inhabiting to a dot, force her to question Daniel’s reasons for shredding the fabric of her life, those answers still so elusive, and when she can see clearly again, she knows her recovery is like some sweet little newborn creature finding its legs.
In the last month, she and Eric have spent tranquil hours talking in his lovely backyard under the Himalayas, or exploring the archives, hearing lectures by the Dalai Lama’s disciples. With Camille, she has visited shops and art museums, and taken trips to other sacred lakes farther afield, sometimes Ela joins them, sometimes not. On her own, Joan has met global travelers of every ilk: those who have left behind their grown children, disinclined to experience a new generational iteration of family life; those most interested in seeking out the newest thrill, the most exotic places; and those who spin her head when they speak of finding silence, opening their minds, connecting themselves to the great and the good on the pilgrimages they make to the shrines and temples in the mountains. Whenever she is in one of the local temples, she wonders what the great and the good means to her.
But she has been in this colorful setting long enough that her bearings are mostly gathered, and despite the brutality of the atrocious act that has given her what she wants, she has used her new laptop for nothing substantial.
If the rainy season is upon Dharamshala, and solitary hikes and walks and wandering through the sights can no longer hide what is coiled in the shadows, isn’t this the time to start writing again, to hope that by returning to work she will puzzle through the disaster, figure out the future she wants?
The rain is solidly thrumming and Joan feels enveloped in the sacred space Eric talks about. She feels safe here in her pine room, her barley tea within reach, her laptop on her desk, now open, a clean screen before her, her fingers lingering over the keys. Where should she start? She is not a writer of nonfiction, or of autobiography, but should she write her own recent story to remove it from her mind, to shovel out the hurt still in her heart that manifests in her dreams? Or should she leave all of it behind: son, theft, the title Words of New Beginnings, and move on, move forward?
Before she can answer a single one of her questions, a golden light streams through the windows and blinds her. The sun has lit up her pine suite. The rain has stopped. The heavy fog has lifted. The sky is freshly washed. The peaks in the distance are bright and sharply defined in the sudden blue. The forest is soaked through, branches left askew, pulled back, a shy invitation to enter that clandestine place. Birds dart from treetops to branches, down to the forest floor, and back up again. She has no idea what kinds of birds these are, but they are nothing like the birds at home. At home, she can’t identify any birds either, except for the blue jays and robins that alight in the gardens.
No morning bath today, the time without rain could be very brief. Face and teeth and lipstick and Joan is out the door, walking the hallway from her pine suite. In the lobby, she sees rain is falling again, but lightly, and here is Kartar handing her a bright-red umbrella.
“Thank you, Kartar.”
“Of course, Ashby. Your first time experiencing the true miracle of water. It is the beginning of a whole new season.”
*
The umbrella stem is long and solid as a walking stick, the unexpected words Lucky Star show through the material when she steps outside and opens the umbrella over her head. The clouds are high now, and finely wrought, and if she walks very fast down the steep hill to the marketplace, she might reach the dry environs of a bookstore before the next deluge drops from the sky. If the rain is here to stay, she would like some new books to read. She’s not made much headway in those she brought from home. Since she learned to read, this might be the longest she has ever gone without being sucked up into other lives and worlds.
The ground, cracked and parched yesterday, is already a sea of mud. Her tennis shoes sink and slurp with each step she takes.
*
The exterior of the bookstore on Bhagsu Road is a faded lilac. A wooden board hanging at an angle must once have spelled out the name, the letters long bleached away. A chime tinkles gently when Joan walks into the quiet.
A young man is on a stool at the register, the spine of an open paperback crushed in his fine-boned hands. He is hunched over the book, his brown T-shirt caught in the vertical hollow of his slender chest. When he stands, the shirt spreads opens and Joan reads the green words emblazoned across it. BE THE BUDDHA. Serious directive or plea, who can tell? In her time here, she has seen that Dharamshala offers much, both to the trained and untrained questing for spiritual renewal and harmony, but very little deliberate irony. He releases his hold on the book and the tortured pages slowly relax, return to their home position, the front and back covers no longer perfectly aligned. He has cat eyes, irises like yellow quartz gemstones, and she is aware he is studying her. Then he smiles.
“Welcome. I’m Darpan. You can leave your umbrella in that corner. What can I do for you?”
“I’m just going to browse for a while and see what catches my eye.”