A Time to Dance(28)

            “Don’t criticize your elders,” Paati says, but her eyes twinkle.

            “Paati, I’d never criticize you. You’ve done so much in life.”

            “Didn’t you tell me Chandra’s grandmother

            raised eight children? I only had one.”

            “You raised Pa all on your own!

            You became a schoolteacher!

            Most widows of your time didn’t dare leave home!”

            “Finish your homework.”

            “Done.” I stuff my books into my schoolbag,

            clunk over to help her.

            “Veda, you look tired. Go and rest. I enjoy cooking.”

            “I’m not tired,” I lie.

            “I’m old, not blind,” she says.


“I wish my classmates were blind.

            And the people who ride my bus, too.”

            I warm a blob of clarified butter in a pan.

            The smell of melting butter fills our kitchen.

            I toss in some black mustard seeds.

            They crackle. The sound reminds me

            of Mekha and Meghna cackling. “Everyone stares at me.

            All the time.

            Everyone looks at Chandra, too,

            except that’s because she’s pretty.

            In my case, it’s because I’m not.”

            “Chandra’s pretty,” Paati says. “And so are you.”

            “Only if I’m dancing.”

            “Veda, onstage you sparkle with confidence.

            But your body doesn’t transform

            offstage.

            Your curls are just as long,

            your back just as straight,

            your figure and face just as lovely.

            Your hands flutter whenever you talk. And you

            move so elegantly.

            As delicately as a butterfly flitting between flowers.”


“Not on crutches, I don’t.”

            “All

            the

            time,” Paati says.


She’s my grandmother.

            No wonder she believes I’m always graceful.

            Beauty, as the proverb says, I now understand,

            is, indeed, in the eye of the beholder.





WHO DANCED Ahead

OF ME





“Did you get those just because of me?”

            I motion at the rows and rows

            of books on Bharatanatyam

            stacked on Jim’s bookshelf,

            in his sunny workroom on the third floor of a redbrick building

            on the forested campus of the technology institute

            right in the middle of the tar-and-concrete maze of Chennai city.


“You bet, kiddo.”