Amriika by M. G. Vassanji Read Free Book Online Page A

childhood. Tall and dark, with a slight stoop forward, he could be seen returning from school or the library, his books clutched under one arm; and more often alone than with a casual companion. Gradually he was also drawn out by his classmates, who found out that beneath the surface calm and tranquillity was a person who could laugh, if somewhat sardonically, and become excited and passionate, if not habitually. He would play cricket and football with them, but as the years passed, sports became less important and weightier matters occupied their minds, such as their futures, and the grades that could help secure them.
    For Ramji, adolescence was a time of excitement and fear. What he had were books, knowledge in its abstract form, but the keys to the universe lay outside his world. Even as he lay in his bed in the dark night, the buttons that could end his existence were somewhere far from him, where two powerful adversaries stood poised with their weapons of destruction. These weapons held a morbid fascination for him — from the rockets of Peenemundeaimed at London in the Second World War to the mighty Saturn and Soyuz rockets waiting silently in their silos with their payloads of nuclear and hydrogen bombs.
    In contrast to that distant world which threatened dazzling death, glorious destruction followed by an endless doomsday of radiation tortures, his small world offered inner peace, a tranquillity that ultimately encompassed all existence. All the attractions and terrors of modern science were an illusion. This was what he had been brought up to believe.
    One day, in his last year at school, he went and heard an American politician, and the charm and mystery of that world outside finally won over his resistance to leave. With his classmate Sona from down the road he applied to go to the United States, and within months they were ready to leave. On the eve of his departure, all the African women who lived in a community behind their house brought delicacies for him, whom they had always loved as a “noble soul” for his quietness and his success in school. Of course the food could not be taken with him, but the women presented him with another gift, which he put in his bag; a khanga, which had a message printed on it: “Wayfarer, keep looking back.”

4

    C
hristmas was when I committed evil, he thought, yet I cannot make myself regret it. In such a case the ritual of asking forgiveness is meaningless — or is it?
    “The disciple has sinned, may those present forgive, may the Lord forgive …”
    Kneeling, leaning forward in urgent supplication, hands joined before him, the sinner repeated the formula three times; the mukhi, his friend Sona, met his look eye to solemn eye, heard him out, said three times, “The Lord forgives,” then dipped two fingers in a bowl of water and sprinkled it on the sinner.
    Everybody underwent this monthly purification, stepping up to and kneeling before the mukhi, one by one; finally Sona too knelt, before a member of the congregation designated as deputy for the occasion, and asked forgiveness. This was the last ceremony of the Friday closest to the new moon. The prerequisite for forgiveness was repentance.
    “For a moment there, you actually looked sinful, Ramji,” Sona said with humour when it was over.
    “Yeah, and I thought you were going to pour a bowlful of that water on me.”
    Why do we need these ancient rituals in the first place, asked someone, more for the sake of argument than anything, and sure enough a passionate one began, everyone joining in. A question like that, well timed with mischievous intent, never failed to kindle fireworks of endless argument, which was so much a part of the fun of these Friday nights.
    But the last word on the subject was Sona’s, and everyone stopped to listen. He gave a calm disquisition on ritual as poetry and the need to retain mystery, and Ramji looked at him admiringly.
    “So, what sins did you commit during Christmas?” Sona