Nothing Like Love by Sabrina Ramnanan Read Free Book Online Page A

skin again as Gloria flew from the window in search of an ear to tell the tragedy. Heopened one eye and then the other and then filled his hungry lungs with air. Anand thought about running after Gloria to explain that he had only been meditating, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. It was cruel, he knew, to let people think he was dead, but fate had been cruel to him, too, and this morning Anand’s heart was tired and cold.
    He sat up and slipped his mala back over his head. He had to leave the mandir. It wouldn’t be long before the closest neighbours were swarming the place in search of him. “Gloria Ramnath already hear about Krishna and Vimla,” he muttered, rubbing his hand over his face and tousled hair. “Ma”—he turned to Mother Lakshmi, his voice strained—“what answer you have for me? How to fix this?”
    Mother Lakshmi stared vacantly back at him, but the orange immortelle balancing between her fingers tumbled to the floor.
    A ghost of a smile played at the corners of Anand’s lips. He nodded. “So Vimla must fall, too.” Anand smoothed his kurtha and blinked his tired eyes at the altar. He nodded. “Of course, of course, Ma. Is only fair. Is only just. And I know the right person to help me—Headmaster Roop G. Kapil.” He clapped his hands and bowed hurriedly. “Sita-Ram. We go talk later!”
    Anand stalked past the altar and swung his arms with purpose. In the
whoosh
of his movements the diya sputtered and died.

The Immoral
    Monday August 5, 1974

    CHANCE, TRINIDAD
    “W e didn’t raise you so, Krishna.” Maya sniffled into a paisley handkerchief. “With no morals. Without a ounce of shame.” She shut her eyes and shuddered as if his very presence on the veranda repulsed her. And yet he couldn’t leave her alone. She needed someone to absorb the grief spilling out of her, and his father—Krishna dropped his head in his hands—hadn’t the patience for Maya’s laments this morning. He’d left early in a temper of his own, muttering about Krishna’s ingratitude and boldfaced stupidity as he’d slammed the gates shut behind him. And so Krishna sat in quiet shame and watched the pink paisleys on Maya’s handkerchief turn deep rose with tears.
    Maya looked off into the distance. “What you see in that girl? What she have so special to make you throw away everything me and your father work to give you?”
    Krishna thought back to the first time he’d seen Vimla. It had been at the Gopalsinghs’ annual Ramayana and Vimla had sat among the dozens of guests under a yawning white tent listening—or pretending to listen—to his father’s
katha
on Shri Ram’s fourteen-year exile from his beloved city. He noticed that while the other devotees watched Pundit Anand’s face animate with devotion as he told this ancient story, Vimla’s eyes remained downcast as if she were watching something fascinating on her lap. And when the devotees joined in song with his father, Vimla’s sweet lips mouthed the wrong words without the slightest inclination of shame. Krishna spent the course of the night observing her peculiar behaviour, and admiring, much to his surprise, the way the careless waves of Vimla’s hair danced around her face in the humid night. It was only later, when the Ramayana was finished, and rice and karhi and spicy curries were being spooned onto sohari leaves for dinner, did Krishna walk casually by Vimla and discover that she had nestled a miniature periodic table into her sari pleats and that all night long she had been committing the elements to memory and, quite cleverly, reciting them aloud.
    “Krypton,” Krishna murmured, handing her a bag of warm
prasad
.
    Vimla glanced up at him. A conspiratorial smile bloomed on her face. “Kr 36,” she replied without hesitation. Her fingers brushed his as she accepted the prasad and in that touch sprang the unforgettable pulse of her liveliness.
    Krishna looked up at his mother’s drawn face. He couldn’t tell her this