“I am very excited and when I’m excited I eat, eat, eat,” Darpan says. Joan thinks that can’t be true. He’s wearing a white T-shirt with DHARMA OR BUST in gold across his concave chest, and she could count his ribs beneath the thin material if she tried.
“So, this is your place, at the head of the table,” and Joan feels like Ela, at the top of the clock. She has sidestepped the conversation with Darpan, about whether the class will meet just this once, or once a week for a month, or more. She does not intend to leave Dharamshala, but there is such freedom in being again a writer at work, a woman at liberty, and she had said to him, “Let’s gauge everyone’s actual interest, see if they’re willing to do the hard work, before making specific plans,” and he had agreed.
And then the chime over the door is ringing madly, neophyte writers swarming in, calling out “Namaste, Ashby. Namaste, Darpan,” handing wrinkled rupees to Darpan, thanking him for the pads and the pens, scuffling over which seat they want, the cookies on the plate disappearing rapidly, and Joan is surprised to find that the teenager with the anemone braids who serves her the roaring lion lattes at the Namgyal Café, who asks her all about America, is among them. One of the stories she selected was written by a Lakshmi, but it’s not an uncommon name.
“Hello to you all,” Darpan says. “Welcome to the best writing class in the world. And now our illustrious teacher will take over.”
Joan smiles at each of them, the way Ela does, then says, “Let’s start with everyone giving their name and briefly explaining your reason for wanting to take this class. Lakshmi, you can lead us off.”
“I’m Lakshmi, and I want to take this class to become as smart as Ashby.” Not what Joan had in mind, but it’s a start, and when she realizes Lakshmi wrote about Rati, the girl whose father has selected a husband for her, she wonders if it’s true, if Hadi is already arranging a marriage for his daughter, with a short boy who has the body of a baboon, the eyes of an owl, if this accounts for all of Lakshmi’s questions about life in America. That she is preparing for her own escape.
“I am Hoshi,” the old man next to Lakshmi says. He is taller than most Dharamshalans, with a full head of white hair, deeply etched wrinkles over his entire face, like a glass well cracked, but the pieces still, somehow, intact. “I have always been a writer in private, and before I die I want others to read my stories.” He had written about Navin picking up his younger brother to take him out into the fresh air.
Next to Hoshi is a heavyset, middle-aged woman, in a bright-yellow sari, with a thick and pilling sweater over her shoulders, the vermilion stripe down the part in her hair.
“Edhitha,” she says. “I am a wife and a mother and I am tired of being told I make up too many stories and so I thought I might as well do it for real. Prove to them I am not a liar, but a storyteller.” Her story was about Feni, whose name means sweet, but she isn’t.
Next to Edhitha is the youngest member of the class. “I am Qadir. I am twelve. I am happiest when I am writing, considering the nature of the universe.” He wrote about Qasam wanting to storm out of the valley and get to somewhere good, the only writer who had used a swear word in his work. He reminds Joan of Daniel, the intelligent young eyes that stare without blinking, the early need to ponder the big questions in life. Joan wonders if his parents are aware of his intelligence, his command of expletives.
“My name is Onir,” says the next young man. He is handsome, with long sideburns, and a neat, well-trimmed beard. “I am only twenty-three, but I like to tell stories as if I am an old man and have already lived my entire life.” His story was about old Prasad with a story to tell his family that would alter the way they saw the world.
“I’m Taj. I was raised a strict Buddhist, but have broken away.” Joan thought he was the same age as Onir, homely where Onir was handsome, balding where Onir had an abundance of hair. Taj had written about Iti and Ibha, who were sick of praying to Buddha.
“I’m Jalaf. It is a great honor to meet you Ashby, to be sharing a table with you. I am quite overcome,” and there are tears in her wide brown eyes, and Joan says, “I’m so pleased you’re here. Would you like to say anything else?” but Jalaf can’t talk, just waves her hand at Joan, then at the woman next to her. Jalaf’s story was about the girl who sees herself in the mirror and realizes she is all grown up. Joan thinks Jalaf is in her early thirties, but she has no bindi between her eyebrows, no vermilion stripe down her part, no rings on her fingers, or in her lobes. Is she unmarried, alone, lonely? The story had struck Joan that way, that the narrator was lonely and sad, and in real life, it seems Jalaf might be indistinguishable from her narrator.
Next to Jalaf is a woman nearer in age to old Hoshi than to anyone else. Early seventies perhaps, and immaculately put together. Rouge and lipstick and brown eye shadow, the heavy coats of mascara turning her eyelashes into thick spider legs, her hair pulled up high, dressed as if she lives in New York or in Paris, structured jacket, skirt, high heels. Unusual attire for the valley. She plays with the gold earrings she wears, a nervous tic maybe, Joan thinks.
“I am Medh. Bombay-born. Brought here as a young bride. I have maintained journals my entire life, my stories a blend of fact and fiction.” Her story, about a woman who thinks her mother’s constant chants contain the father she never knew, had been evocative and touching.
“Zafar. Forty. I was a monk in my early years. Fell in love and left the temple. Now I love my wife, drink beer, watch action movies, read rip-roaring stories. Guns and mayhem, that kind of thing.” He is strapping and bald. His brown leather jacket zipped all the way up to his chin. From peaceable monk to mayhem seems like a long climb, or fall, Joan isn’t sure which. He had written about the girl hiding in the fort and knowing she was going to die. If Zafar aims to write action stories, he will need to learn the parts of a gun, like actions, stocks, and barrels, how bullets slide into chambers.
It is a teenage boy’s turn, the same age, Joan thinks, as Lakshmi. There is a stillness in his face, his eyes look sleepy, but take everything in. “I am Tanvi. I am in my final year of high school. Last year my mother died and now it’s just me and my sister and my father. I think this class will help me feel better.” Tanvi had written about boyhood friends who played games together and relied on each other’s mothers for maternal love.
Joan always took the opposite approach with her work, even in her earliest stories, never writing about her own life. But nearly all these stories, with the exception, she hopes, of Zafar, intrigued by guns and death, the work seems to mirror the writers’ realities and Joan wonders how best to help them dive in, delve more deeply, how much of her instruction will require therapeutic intervention versus the indefinable aspects of writing.