UMA HERSELF WAS GOING TO INDIA BECAUSE OF HER PARENTS’ folly. They had come to the United States some twenty years back as young professionals, when Uma was a child. They had loved their jobs, plunging enthusiastically into their workdays. They had celebrated weekends with similar gusto, getting together (in between soccer games and Girl Scout meetings and Bharatanatyam classes for Uma) with other suburbanite Indian families. They had orchestrated elaborate, schizophrenic meals (mustard fish and fried bitter gourd for the parents; spaghetti with meatballs and peach pie for the children) and bemoaned the corruption of Indian politicians. In recent years, they had spoken of moving to San Diego to spend their golden years by the ocean (such nice weather, perfect for our old bones). Then, in a dizzying volte-face that Uma considered most imprudent, her mother had chosen early retirement and her father had quit his position as a senior administrator for a computer company to accept a consultant’s job in India. Together, heartlessly, they had rented out their house (the house where Uma was born!) and returned to their hometown of Kolkata.
“But all these years you complained about how terrible Kolkata was,” Uma had cried, aghast, when they called to inform her of their decision. Apart from her concern for their well-being, she was vexed at not having been consulted. “The heat, the dirt, the noise, the crowded buses, the beggars, the bribes, the diarrhea, the bootlicking, the streets littered with garbage that never got picked up. How are you going to handle it?”
To which her mother had replied, with maddening good humor, “But sweetie, all that has changed. It’s a different India now, India Shining!”
And perhaps it was, for hadn’t her parents glided effortlessly into their new life, renting an air-conditioned terrace-top flat and hiring a retinue of servants to take care of every possible chore? (“I haven’t washed a single dish since I moved here!” her mother rhapsodized on the phone.) A chauffeured car whisked her father to his office each morning. (“I work only from ten to four,” he added proudly from the other phone.) It returned to take her mother shopping, or to see childhood friends, or to get a pedicure, or (before Uma could chide her for being totally frivolous) to volunteer with an agency that educated slum children. In the evenings her parents attended Rabindra Sangeet concerts together, or watched movies on gigantic screens in theaters that resembled palaces, or walked hand in hand (such things were accepted in India Shining) by the same lake where they had met secretly as college students, or went to the club for drinks and a game of bridge. They were invited out every weekend and sometimes on weeknights as well. They vacationed in Kulu Manali in the summer and Goa in the winter.
Uma was happy for her parents, though secretly she disapproved of their newly hedonistic lifestyle. (Yet how could she object when it was so much better than what she often saw around her: couples losing interest in each other, living in wooden togetherness or even breaking up?) Was it partly that she felt excluded? Or was it that by contrast her university life, which she had been so proud of, with its angst-filled film festivals, its cafes where heated intellectual discussions raged late into the night, its cavernous libraries where one might, at any moment, bump into a Nobel laureate, suddenly appeared lackluster? She said nothing, waiting in a stew of anxiety and anticipation for this honeymoon with India to be over, for disillusion and dyspepsia to set in. A year passed. Her mother continued as blithe as ever, though surely she must have faced problems. Who doesn’t? (Why then did she conceal them from Uma?) Now and then she urged Uma to visit. “We’ll go to Agra and see the Taj Mahal together-we’re saving it for you,” she would say. Or “I know the best ayurvedic spa. They give sesame oil massages like you wouldn’t believe.” In a recent conversation, she’d said, twice, “We miss you. Why don’t you come visit? We’ll send you a ticket.”
There had been something plaintive about her voice that struck Uma in the space just below her breastbone. She had missed her parents, too. Though she had always decried touristic amusements, she felt a sudden desire to see the Taj Mahal. “I’ll come for winter break,” she promised rashly.
“How long is that?”
“Six weeks.”
“Six weeks! Lovely!” her mother said, restored to buoyancy. “That should give us enough time. Don’t forget, you’ll need a new visa-you haven’t been to India in ages. Don’t mail them your passport-that takes forever. Go to the office yourself. You’ll have to wait a bit, but you’ll get it the same day.”
Only after she had hung up did Uma realize that she had failed to ask her mother,
She might have let it pass-tickets to India, were, after all, expensive-but there was that other conversation, when Uma had said, “It’s a good thing you haven’t sold the house. This way, if things don’t work out, you’ll have a place to come back to.”
“Oh no, sweetie,” her mother had replied. “We love it in India -we knew we would. The house is there for you, in case-”
Then her mother had caught herself deftly in midsentence and changed the subject, leaving Uma with the sense that she had been about to divulge something she knew Uma was not ready to hear.
MINUTES BEFORE THE SECOND RUMBLE, UMA FELT A CRAVING TO see the sun. Had the gossamer fog that draped the tops of the downtown buildings when she arrived that morning lifted by now? If so, the sky would be bright as a Niles lily; if not, it would glimmer like fish scales. Suddenly she needed to know which it was. Later she would wonder at the urgency that had pulled her out of her chair and to her feet. Was it an instinct like the one that made zoo animals moan and whine for hours before natural disasters struck? She shouldered her bag and stepped toward the door. A few more seconds and she would have pushed it open, run down the corridor, and taken the stairs up to the first floor two at a time, rushing to satisfy the desire that ballooned inside her. She would have been outside, lifting her face to the gray drizzle that was beginning to fall, and this would have been a different story.
But as she turned to go, the door to Mr. Mangalam’s office opened. A man hurried out, clutching his passport with an air of victory, and brushed past Uma. The woman in the blue sari picked up the stack of applications and disappeared into Mr. Mangalam’s office through the side door. She had been doing that every hour or so. For what? Uma thought, scowling. All the woman needed to do was call out the next name in the pile. Uma had little hope that that name would be hers, but she paused, just in case.
It was a good time to phone Ramon. If she was lucky, she would catch him as he walked across the Student Union plaza from the class he taught to his laboratory, wending his way between drummers and dim sum vendors and doomsday orators. Once in the laboratory, he would turn the phone off, not wanting to be distracted. He was passionate about his work, Ramon. Sometimes at night when he went to the lab to check on an experiment, she would accompany him just so she could watch the stillness that took over his body as he tested and measured and took notes. Sometimes he forgot she was there. That was when she loved him most. If she got him on the phone now, she would tell him this.
But the phone would not cooperate. no service, the small, lighted square declared.
The man with the ear studs looked over and offered her a sympathetic grimace. “My phone has the same problem,” he said. “That’s the trouble with these downtown buildings. Maybe if you walk around the room, you’ll find a spot where it works.”
Phone to her ear, Uma took a few steps forward. It felt good to stretch her legs. She watched the woman emerge from Mr. Mangalam’s office, shaking out the creases of her sari, looking like she had bitten into something sour. Uncharitably, Uma hoped that Mr. Mangalam had rebuked her for making so many people wait for so many unnecessary hours. The phone gave a small burp against her ear, but before she could check if it was working, the rumble rose through the floor. This time there was no mistaking its intention. It was as though a giant had placed his mouth against the building’s foundation and roared. The floor buckled, throwing Uma to the ground. The giant took the building in both his hands and shook it. A chair flew across the room toward Uma. She raised her left arm to shield herself. The chair crashed into her wrist and a pain worse than anything she had known surged through her arm. People were screaming. Feet ran by her, then ran back again. She tried to wedge herself beneath one of the chairs, as she had been taught long ago in grade school, but only her head and shoulders would fit. The cell phone was still in her other hand, pressed against her ear. Was that Ramon’s voice asking her to leave a message, or was it just her need to hear him?
Above her, the ceiling collapsed in an explosion of plaster. Beams broke apart with the sound of gigantic bones snapping. A light fixture shattered. For a moment, before the electricity failed, she saw the glowing filaments of
