35053668-Empire-of-the-Soul-Paul-William-Roberts

EPILOGUE
‘Yes . . . she loved it very much.’
When she was dying of cancer, his mother’s last wish had been to
arrange marriages for him and his brother to Indian girls who’d
never even been to the US before.
‘How did that work out?’
‘I wasn’t sure at first,’ he confessed. ‘I’d been involved with a
couple of American girls. I didn’t know if I could relate to an Indian,
understand? But it’s great! She treats me like a king. Hey,’ he leaned
over, ‘she even massages my feet when I get home from work.’
‘Didn’t the American girls do that?’
He laughed. Born in the USA, he wasn’t as American as he
thought. But he was still American enough. Discovering that Air
India boarded its first-class passengers last, he complained to the
official: ‘In America we board them first, man . . .’
‘We like them to feel comfortable, sir,’ he was told.
‘You have to be patient here. You must have noticed that.’ I said.
‘Jeez!’ He shook his head. ‘What a place! The drive in from the
airport took twenty minutes; coming out this morning – with no
traffic – it took ninety!’
‘Didn’t you find something you liked?’
‘You know,’ he replied, after we’d spoken for nearly half an hour,
‘it’s funny, you, a Westerner, telling me, an Indian, why I should
love my own country, no? Don’t you think that’s funny?’
As the plane left the ground, rising up over the central plains of
India, heading out over Rajasthan, I gazed down at the fastdisappearing
features of the land. The thousands of tiny villages;
the mountains; the rivers; the jungles; the deserts; the temples; the
great holy cities; and all those people – I was leaving them all yet
again. On the headphones an Urdu ghazal singer was wailing out that
Oriental version of country music: whatever he sang about, it had to
involve broken hearts, broken dreams. I felt the bittersweet ache of
love inside, too; felt the heart swelling up as if wanting to embrace
the whole world. India: I couldn’t live with her, and I couldn’t live
without her.
And I have presumed, from love and casual regard,
called you Krishna, Yadava, and friend,
thinking you a friend, forgetting who you are.
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