Dreaming in Hindi by Katherine Russell Rich Read Free Book Online

ocularly.
    Orientation proceeded, through several turns of the karmic wheel, till it threatened to become a fifth
yuga,
a fifth mythological epoch. Till it became its own world in which even I understood that if you were female, you were asked to keep a distance from host family males; that at departure, clearance from the Indian income tax authorities would be necessary. That traffic sense here was poor.
    It continued, through tangles of contingencies, two discussions of Indian language groups, a visit to Foreigners Registration, till the student with the whispery voice said that she would not fill out bank papers one more time and the year lurched forward. We began.

3. "The new house is big"
    Orientation finally wrapped up. Immediately after, we were moved in with host families, the three of us who didn't have one. Helaena, the student with the southern accent, already did, or she did in a way: the maharana.
    Helaena had made an impression on me in those first days with her easy knowledge of India. One morning, on tea break, I expressed puzzlement as to why, when I'd gone to investigate the Shaping Sense gym across from the school, the slope-browed proprietor had scowled when I'd asked about the yoga he advertised. Mr. Ahmad, I related, had been too busy overseeing the hammering of huge holes in the wall to answer questions about the StairMaster, of which there was none anyway. "Because he's a gangster," Helaena explained from the couch where she was stretched out. In Hindi and English, she had a drawl. She also had wide green eyes, a fine, straight nose, and a mouth that at rest naturally pouted, all of which combined to drive the Indians to distraction. To them, she looked exactly like the Lord God Krishna, who, though male, is considered the embodiment of female beauty.
    In the States, Helaena was pretty, in a milk-drinking way. In India, she was an avatar—the cause of stampedes in the streets and, before she dyed her blond hair brown, frequent deliveries of gifts from unwanted suitors. Kings fell at her feet. The local one, the maharana, had taken one look when she'd arrived several weeks in advance of classes and moved her into the palace. Personal assistance might be needed at receptions, he'd hinted. She'd wasted no time dressing for the possible job. Already American Express was compounding interest on the fifty entry-level saris she'd purchased at the snooty Mansai Plaza boutique. They were tacking on late fees for the biweekly arm waxes she'd been getting in order to look
pakka,
proper, an aesthetic that for women also called for a headscarf, neatly gathered hair, a gaze kept modestly on the floor. "I like being pakka," she'd said earlier. "Back home they assume I'm a flirt just because I'm a little outgoing. Here they assume I'm good." Other than grooming and stopping by the school, she spent her days watching
Friends
on palace cable, being driven around in curtained palace cars, and analyzing the mystical effect the subcontinent had on her looks and vice versa. "Ramu, my teacher last year, said, 'No, you
are
a god'," she'd said. This was her third Hindi language program.
    "They should call that place Shaping You Senseless," she said now, gingerly tapping her newly pierced nose. "Gyms in India are hangouts for gangsters. Muslim gangsters go to one, Hindus go to another.
    "Hey!" she said, introducing a change in topic. "When we get our place, we could rent you a StairMaster from Ahmedabad." She'd been campaigning for everyone to get a collective, off-the-record apartment, "so you could have privacy from those Jains," she offered, referring to my clamorous new host family. And so she could be shielded from prying eyes, for she was in the middle of an astonishing subcontinental Daisy Miller maneuver. Two weeks after the maharana moved her in, she'd begun enacting plans, matrimonially speaking, to nail his nephew.
    "I'm fine at the Jains'," I said. I was. The only trouble I'd had so far was calculating how many