Zinnia Gupte

2009-11-03T11:02:00.000-08:00

My name is Zinnia Gupte. I'm a fiction writer, poet and traveller living in San Francisco.

Currently, my two fiction projects are a collection of short stories entitled Magicians and Travelers, and a novel in progress called Girl With A Red Oleander. I've been working on these two manuscripts since my MA in Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University as well as the Tomales Bay Workshops and at various artist colonies like Byrdcliffe Artist Colony and Santa Fe Art Institute.

I hope you enjoy some of the stories I've posted on my site!

ZINNIA'S PUBLISHED WORK

BBC
The Last Girl In Egypt

The Bromley House Library

Lanterns Set To Illuminate the World

Poetry
Nostalgia

More About Me
Born in Calcutta, India and raised near Washington D.C. I spent my post college years working on some very large projects during the internet boom in New York City, London and New Delhi. I started craving new experiences and took a year long trip to New Zealand and Australia expanding myself with news landscapes, new adventures, horeseback riding, painting and music. Through that magical process I discovered the artistic side of myself.

Then I traveled even more throughout India, China, Egypt, West Africa, South Africa, Europe and finally England, where I began studying writing and workshopping my pieces. The workshopping process felt rewarding, but I knew something was missing. I felt inspired to contribute to fiction and poetry in more exciting ways, through deeply spiritual methods, while keeping the focus on process more than product. And then I discovered creativity coaching. It was the perfect mix of creativity, sacredness and self-expression. I found what I was meant to do.

I learned writing in university environments and that's certainly been valuable. But I believe my mostly self taught body of knowledge allows me to think creatively, fluidly, be in touch with the deeper and Divine part my creative mind. It allows me to become more and more creative with the way I access images, the way I compose words, the way inspiration unfolds moment to moment, and the way a story is told.

My background in creative workshop training makes me especially excited to create workshops, classes and one-on-one coaching with my writing clients. My writing and healing background allows me to work with writers and artists to help shape their creative vision, overcome creative blocks, and heal self-esteem. Finally, my business background allows me to create personal project plans for artists, help them set goals and accomplish them.

Education
University of Michigan (1994-1999)
BS in Creative Human Computer Interaction

Nottingham Trent University (2004-2005)
MA in Creative Writing (fiction & poetry)

Stanford University
Writer's Studio fiction classes

Self proclaimed creative catalyst
Reading and absorbing as much creative and spiritual wisdom as humanly possible
Trained through:
Diane Frank Poetry School
Eric Maisel Creativity Coaching
Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way
Brenda Ueland
Natalie Golderberg's Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within
Integral Yoga Institute
Spirit of Truth Foundation
Shakti Gawain's Creative Visualization
Seena Frosts Soul Collage

Worldly Experience
Australia : Sydney, Cairnes, Melbourne, Hobart (Tasmania)
New Zealand : Practically everywhere
India : Practically everywhere
Europe: France (Paris), England (London), Spain (Bilbao, San Sebastian), Netherlands (Amsterdam), Germany (Munich), Czech Republic (Prague), Switzerland (Interlocken), Italy (milan)
Africa : South Africa (Capetown, Johannesburg)
Americas : Mexico (Cancun), Brazil (Sao Paulo, Rio De Janeiro)
Other : Puerto Rico (San Juan), Bahamas, Virgin Islands, Cooke Islands

Zinnia as an International Young Leader at the World Peace Festival

Hobbies
Yoga
Dance
Poetry
Traveling
Photography
Mythology, fairy tales and folklore
Coastal walking and hiking
Design

Artist Resume

Prior Professional Resume

2008-09-22T23:07:00.000-07:00

Trial

From Small Packages: An Anthology of Poetry from Australia

2008-09-22T23:00:00.000-07:00

The River Inside

From Lanterns: An Anthology of New Writers

2008-09-22T19:57:00.000-07:00

I'm reading at Litquake! Come listen to stories in an enchanting alley that comes alive with art!

The Litcrawl Clarion Alley Reading
Saturday, October 11 6:30 pm

Where: Clarion Alley
Just off Valencia between 17th & 18th
San Francisco, CA 94110

2008-09-21T22:05:00.000-07:00

The Last Girl in Egypt
BBC Nottingham by Zinnia Bhattacharyya (maiden name)

Lanterns set to illuminate the world
BBC Nottingham by Zinnia Bhattacharyya

Bromley House Library
BBC Nottingham by Zinnia Bhattacharyya

2008-09-21T21:56:00.000-07:00

*

zinnia gupte

355 berry street #330 sf, ca 94158
voice 415 217 9037
mixedbyroots@yahoo.com

OBJECTIVE

To bring digital storytelling to communities and develop storytelling programs for oral history projects, adult education, social activism organizations, community arts programs, organizational staff development, and corporate marketing and branding projects.

EDUCATION & RESIDENCIES

Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, England
MA Creative Writing, Nov 2005

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Bachelor of Science in Digital Storytelling & New Media, May 1999

Stanford Writer’s Studio, Palo Alto, CA
Making Your Writing Three Dimensional, Katherine Noel, 2007-2008

San Francisco Writing Salon, San Francisco, CA
Fiction Workshop, David Booth 2008

Arts Council Toowoomba Residency, Toowoomba, Australia.
Created a collection of poems for “Toowoomba Poetry Project.”
Fall 2001.

Subverse: Queensland Poetry Festival Residency,
Brisbane, Australia. Collaborated with Aboriginal poets, showcased new work, gave public readings, networked with other poets and attended workshops”. Received mentorship from poets Felix Cheong, Bronwyn Lea, Terry Jaensch and Jayne Fenton-Keane.
Fall 2001.

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

• Streetside Stories Young Authors Mentor, San Francisco, CA. Led after-school workshops in fiction and poetry for middle school students. Spring 2008.

• Everett Middle School, San Francisco, CA. Tutored Spanish speaking immigrant students in creative writing. Spring 2008.

• Beyond the Global Divide Adult Arts Workshop, Palenque, Mexico. Writing Instructor. Taught seminar in dance narratives from India. Spring 2006.

• Beyond the Global Divide Adult Arts Workshop, Washington D.C. Spring 2004. Writing Instructor. Taught seminar in poetry.

• Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK. Teaching Assistant (for Graham Joyce). Taught discussion section for undergraduate English course “Elements of Fiction.” Fall 2004.

• Peace Corps, Benin, West Africa. Taught high school students entrepreneurial skills and helped them create a small business, in which they created a product, sold stock, marketed the product and made profit. 2002 – 2003

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

• Independent editorial consultant for Hot Studio. Nov 2007 - Current.
• Writer/Editor for Nokia, Apple, Shutterfly and corporate clients. 2001-2007
• Contributing Writer, BBC 2004 – Current.
• Contributing Writer, Everybody’s Magazine. 2004
• Assistant editor Dilip Cherian, columnist for the Economic Times. 2003.
• Storytelling consultant, Sapient. 1999-2001

NON-PROFIT EXPERIENCE

• Streetside Stories, Mentor for Young Authors program. 2008

• 826 Valencia. Brainstormed storytelling project ideas for national programming. 2008

• Once Upon A School.com Designed website for author, literacy activist and TED Prize winner, Dave Eggers. Spring 2008.

• El Museo del barrio. Created brand language for national programming. 2008

• PBS Art21. Brainstormed storytelling project ideas for national programming. 2007

• UCSF Memory & Ageing Center. Designed storytelling program to heal patients suffering from rare and fatal diseases by telling their stories. 200- 2008.

• Hot Studio. Conducted studio tours for inner-city high school students and youth. 2008.

PUBLICATIONS: FICTION

• “The River Inside.” Lanterns: An Anthology of New Writing. Spring 2005.

• “Twilight Street.” Inkblot. Spring 2001.

PUBLICATIONS: POETRY

• “Nostalgia.” Eclectica. No. 4. Fall 2002.

• “Angel.” Small Packages. No 3. Fall 2002.

• “Calcutta 300.” Spark Anthology.

PUBLICATIONS: NON-FICTION

• “The Last Girl.” BBC. Fall 2005.

• “Bromley House.” BBC. Fall 2005.

• “Lanterns Set to Illuminate.” BBC. Fall 2005.

READINGS & EXHIBITIONS

• Art Span Exhibition, “Lands of Exile” Installation Poetry,
San Francisco, CA. Upcoming Summer 2008.

• Nottingham Trent University Anthology City Reading Series, Nottingham, UK. Spring 2005.

• Bowery Poetry Club, New York City, NY. Spring 2004.

• Goddess Poetry Series, Washington D.C., Summer 2004.

AWARDS

• Nottingham Trent University Distinction Award for Emerging Fiction, Nottingham, UK. Fall 2005.

• Daily Mirror National Student Journalism Awards, London, UK. Finalist for “Best Fashion Journalist.” Spring 2005.

INDEPENDENT TRAVEL PROJECTS

• India 2001-2004. Researched my collection of short stories "The House That Wept By The River" and collected local tales.

• Australia 2002. Researched and collected Aboriginal Dreamtime stories.

• New Zealand 2002. Researched and collected Maori mythology and creation stories.

• West Africa 2001-2002. Served in the Peace Corps collected local folklore for student project.

• China 2004. Traveled to Beijing, Wuhan, Sichuan and Xian to learn about Chinese culture.

• Tibet 2004. Embarked on a pilgrimage to Lhasa.

• England 2004-2005. Studies MA in Creative Writing. Traveled in Wales, Isle of Man and Cornwall to collect mermaid stories.

2008-09-21T21:49:00.000-07:00

The Last Nomads

Chapter 1

The river was tense when she arrived. Deep green, fat and muddy from everything it had swallowed the night before. She stood on the riverbank as the mist rose and the sun’s rays parted overnight clouds to anoint a new day. The Hooghly was littered with corpses. Laundry and trash passed by while sages and devotees purified themselves by the ghat. Bathers washed away grime and dust and chanting worshippers shed their sins. Vendors sold ice cream and streetfood along the river. Nila’s family had arrived at Babu ghat by the Strand, Calcutta's main cremation ghat where neither curiosity nor cameras were welcome. This was a place for ceremonies of birth and death.
Nila bought garlands strung with red oleanders from a flower vendor who sat outside the eroding colonnade. She saw from the top of the steps, fishermen sewing large nets, their dark backs turned away from the sun. She lifted her skirt and walked barefoot towards the embankment, down the steps leading to the river. Just above the steps stood a large tree with outspread limbs, casting a huge shadow. A man sat at a distance, vigorously rubbing mud all over his body, believing, as most of the people living near the banks of the Hooghly believed, that bathing after scrubbing mud serves a therapeutic purpose. That the river had an undercurrent, which reacted well with the body and kept it fit, free from infection and disease.
On the floors of the stone room beside the tree, the moisture collected quickly. Lanky boys in torn undershirts brought slabs of mud for the priests to scroll Sanskrit symbols with their lean fingers. Her grandfather sat on a wooden bench and stared at the ceiling, which had been painted white once, but now it was grey and the paint was cracked and peeling. The crumbling wall overlooked the river, the gaps between the stones allowed light and sprays of water to enter the room. There were cobwebs in the corner of the room, too, but her grandfather did not see these things because he was tired and happy and devastated, all at the same time.
Nila was watching him when she heard her family call her, “Nilanjana! Stop daydreaming. Come here for your grandmother’s rituals!” They sat in one corner of the large room where she witnessed other families going through motions of similar ceremonies. Barbers were shaving sons and grandsons of the dead. Shreds of raven hair lay strewn across the floor. Bald men and shiny scalped boys poured jars of river water over their foreheads. Immersed themselves in the river. She watched the other families bickering over mantras and offerings.
It was her family’s turn to release Didan’s ashes into the river. Nila’s uncle hailed a small tugboat and the fisherman helped board both her and her mother, Bella. Her uncle jumped on the boat last while her mother held the clay urn tightly. Nila looked up at the great blue sky. It was a cloudless morning and as they faced the waves of air in the boat, the green river turned gin clear. The waters were translucent and reflected birds passing above. The fisherman stopped the boat once they reached the middle of the river. He told Nila’s mother to release the urn.
“I can’t do this.”
“Ma, let her go,” she said impatiently.
Her mother closed her eyes for several minutes, almost as if she was meditating. She inhaled deeply and released a sigh. “Before Didan lost her speech, she had one final request.”
“What was that?”
“She asked that you be responsible for her ashes. She said you would know what to do.”
“Me?”
“I was surprised too. I always thought she wanted to be here, with the river. But she said you would know what to do. Do you?”
She nodded. “I have no idea.”
“I thought so. That’s why I was ready to release her here, but I can’t.”
Bella kissed the urn and handed it to her daughter. “Honour her last wish. I trust you.”

The day Nila discovered the news of her grandmother’s passing, she had returned to an empty house. The others were at the cremation ceremony, where she should have been but instead stood still in the doorway. A key in one hand and red oleanders in the other, trembling. She put her backpack down and looked around. The doors and windows were closed. The front verandah was bare. The house exuded a sad silence that Nila caught in her throat. The patchwork slip cover stitched by Didan’s hands. The room for Bella that gathered cobwebs over the years. The half singed song book. Shattered pieces of cassette tapes.
Nila wandered into the bedroom where she had spent most of her childhood. She leaned over the mirror. The drawer rattled open. She held Didan’s hair bun. Her frosted bottle of perfume. A powder compact. And a torn board of Ludo. Her hands shook with each smell.
She had run away from Didan and runaway from Bella, women she knew she could not help and secretly who she did not want to become. And now she was back inside the house where she had hidden her nightmares away. In the shadowlands of dust and cloud, where light poured in just as quickly as dark rain clouds destroyed.
But here in this city Nila knew it was a more complicated life of survival. It was a city of extremes, where exquisite refinement rubbed shoulders with the coarseness of the streets. This was the mythical land of Kali, where destruction and birth met every day; where streets chewed and spat out people with pleasure, and the grandmother she once knew, wholesome and strong was now reduced to ashes.

Nila looked to the stony shore where her family was waving. Then to her mother. Making their way back to the ghats, she glided her hand in and out of the water, its seductive coolness calmed her.
She thought to herself, “How am I going to do this?”
The boat bumped into the mudbank. Nila’s grandfather reached out his hand as she stepped out of the boat. The family walked towards the parked car, but Nila fell back. She watched the rush of the river’s current grow stronger as it carried memories of lives and secret histories, ferrying stories that had once begun but were left unfinished.
Years earlier, that very river, passing through a small delta town witnessed a little boat being rowed across. Red oleanders spilling into the water. Night after night. And the whistle of a train calling in the far distance

*

When they returned to the apartment, Nila did not have the courage to enter a room fresh with death. Instead, she stood alone on the veranda and watched the amber lit street, listened to the crackle of corn from roadside fires. The apartment was empty. Night had fallen and it was raining slightly. The smell of wet earth rose in the air. A dilapidated lamppost arched over a few stray dogs rummaging through trash. She watched the wet yellow light fall over a dark corner of the city while woodsmoke from a nearby vendor permeated the streets like perfume.

Nila had lived the life of a gypsy her entire life. Her father started his career in Nairobi as a photojournalist. ‘A lucky break,’ he always said. After Bella became pregnant, she returned to Calcutta to stay with Didan and have the baby there, while her husband continued his work. After Nila was born, her father was barraged with assignments and Bella did not want to raise her daughter alone. They both decided to leave her with her grandparents and there she stayed for ten years, inseparable from Didan.
Luck struck again and her parent’s migrated to New York. But when Nila arrived, their relationship had begun to deteriorate. Bella craved his presence but he was always off on an assignment, traveling for weeks on end. She still remembered the fights. Nila would clap her hands over her ears. He would slam the door behind him and wander for days. No one knew if he was okay. Nila knew her mother would stay up nights worrying about him but she put up with it year after year until his luck started running out and the assignments became less and less. He drank on the road and he drank when he didn’t have work. Shortly afterwards he decided to photograph coal miners in India. He took off again. Nila hardly saw her father. When she did, he would bring back toys, candy and beautiful dresses for her. Her favorite dress was a red with white polkadots from Paris, a soft, wet red stain of red wine.
She completed her degree at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, India. She boasted to the other students how great a photographer her father was. She had saved copies of Time, Life, Newsweek and Esquire, in which her father’s magic was stamped. She was determined to not make the same mistakes he had made and brand herself a name in the international market. This, she was determined to do.
After graduation, she moved to New York, where she studied with photographer Susan Meiselas and took courses at the International Center for Photography.
After returning to India, Nila worked as a photojournalist for Time on stories ranging from AIDS in Bombay to trainspotting across the Asian continent. She soon became a workaholic, committing herself to personal projects about disappearing nomadic tribes and her most recent project, which had brought her here to Calcutta. She invested little in her personal life except for the occasional fling and there was that affair with her editor in Delhi. Since the beginning, she could not separate her life from her photography.
She was the field photographer’s assistant in China, Mongolia and Tibet, where they were covering Asia’s love affair with the railroad. She adapted the local food. Buttermilk tea made with yak’s milk and yak’s butter had made her sick but she never refused the hospitality of the villagers, instead she had learned to find a private place and throw up there.
Beside her was a postcard sized photo album she always carried with her. She flipped to a black and white photograph of an Indian coal miner, holding an axe to a wooden post, setting temporary supports in place. Caught between two wooden pillars, this man, his face tattered and smeared with coal dust, light being thrown from his helmet into the dim, and etched in the raw lines of his sooty skin, of his broken teeth, was a desire. A desire for self-respect and dignity.
It was her father who had taken this photograph in the 1970s. No one had cared to buy it or the other pictures he had taken to raise the issue of health and safety of coal miners in India. No one cared if these workers had brown-lung disease, no one thought about the women and children they left behind when trapped underground. After a certain point in his career, he had tired of selling commercial images to magazines. He traveled around India capturing the unheard cries and tears of underdogs. He always said, “Pictures aren’t good enough unless you get close.” Often he would have dinner with a miner’s family to understand who the miner was, what was the family that surrounded him, what kind of father he was. Sometimes he became too close and that’s what broke him. Nila believed that his emotional attachments to the workers he photographed and his eventual isolation led to his frustration. He took to drinking and his liver collapsed when she was eighteen. The leaves were falling in the school courtyard that day. Rust and copper leaves castaneted onto crisp piles. The wind swept swiftly through the branches, whispering of change. Her mother arrived, a paisley scarf wrapped around her head, round black sunglasses covered her eyes. She removed the glasses to reveal puffed red eyes. Nila knew right then. She ran from her mother into the woods, passing ghostly white trees in her rush. The scent of eucalyptus sent cold chills through her body, until she tripped and fell to her knees, out of breath and shaking. “Nila! Nila!,” her mother called from behind. When she dropped to the ground beside Nila she wiped the tears from her daughter’s eyes, “He’s gone.”
The next week Nila left for India to study photography.
And from that day on when she started to run, she decided never to stop.

The doorbell rang and Nila looked down to see who it was. Dadabhai. The car was supposed to have dropped him off at the house in Ballygunge. It was already 10 o’clock, late in the night for him to return by himself. “I’m coming down to get you Dadabhai.”
She ran downstairs with the key and unlocked the narrow doors. His eyes were vacant and a smile stretched across his face but there was no sweetness in it. She hugged him when he entered and locked the doors behind her. As they walked up to the flat Pratima peeked her head from the door to see who had arrived this late.
“Kuku, I wanted to see the room once more before I slept.”
“Oh, it’s so late. Why don’t you spend the night here?”
Dadabhai brushed past her to go inside the room. Nila looked on but did not enter as she gave them their privacy. She sat on the red oxide floor. It was cool and felt calming to the skin. Lying there in the dark with the shutters open, she felt the chill of her own fear. It was colder than night’s breeze over the city.

She started remembering her childhood days with her grandparents in Calcutta. He understood the heart and pulse of the city. But what was once the Crown of British India, had now become dilapidated, decadent and decrepit memory. Covered by dust and inhabited by desperate people on desperate streets. “Magic works here”, he would say while walking through the chariot festival. Nila watched children and adults alike racing miniature chariots hand-made from scraps of wood, bright tissue paper, string and tinsel. They would pass Lake Market and trifle through baskets of jackfruit, chicory, pumpkin and vegetables that remained nameless in the English language. “Homegrown food,” he would say, “Fresh.” At sundown, street wanderers gathered around the pavement for a game of poker. The elderly retired to evening walks by the lake hemmed in by cottonsilk trees, the young filled their mouths with spicy street food and played football in the park. Gariahat, the main shopping market, bustled by late evening with the ladies of the house marketing for blouses, saris and jewelry.
On the weekends she discovered the whitewashed buildings of Esplanade, lined along streets of British architecture. Dalhousie was a whirlwind, spinning out of control with bankers and lawyers traveling in rush hour through dust. The smell of old books and organic paper wafted in the air. Rickety city buses rattled out of the banking district and headed downtown to Park Street, made famous by its cabarets and gentlemen’s lounges, now filled with ice cream parlors and restaurants for the nouveau rich. When she reached her twenties, he took Nila to see the intellectual fanfare of College Street's book fairs and the coffee house. High ceilings and Portuguese style wrought iron balcony gave the place its antique air. The waiters still wore elegant, navy blue uniforms and their service was impeccable when serving tea and coffee. “Revolutions were created here.” he winked, “Perhaps in the seat you are sitting in”.

This was the last time she saw him happy, joyful even. Now he was in his seventies, his arthritis worrying him. He had written dozens of history books, children’s stories, short stories and poetry. He had written by hand for most of his life until he purchased a Royal Quiet Deluxe typewriter in his fifties. He was an elegant figure, tall and statuesque and very proud. He wore the same charcoal colored cotton trousers, crisp white shirts and black-rimmed spectacles. He lived with his history books and diaries, writing on an antique mahogany desk for hours on end. His pride was a trio of glass-encased bookshelves, locked tight to protect priceless and out-of-print books. For him now, history was all he had. Many of the books had become insect-bitten or sun-faded. He realized that we all weather away with time as determined by the elements.
Bella came out of the room while Nila was still sitting in the dark. A hush had spread throughout the house. She heard her mother rustle through cabinets and light the stove. She rose slowly, wanting to join her grandfather. She looked into the room from a window beside the slim, double doors. The canopy bed was washed with white. Dadabhai was sitting not on the bed, but on his knees holding the hem of the white sheet. Beside the bed on a small table, stood a portrait of Didan and one stick of incense. The smoke from the incense swirled in the air. He touched the sheet to his face, dabbed each cheek with great care. He rose to a standing position and tucked the sheet into the bed. He bowed to the portrait, bending deeply, his back, neck and head in one straight line and left the room.
Nila joined them both in the living room. Bella had turned on the lights as they were now drinking tea. Nila took the cups to the kitchen when they all finished and held her grandfather with a deep, melancholic embrace. Bella put on her slippers to escort him downstairs. Before she left she asked, “Can you look inside Didan’s wardrobe for me? There’s a silver jewelry box inside. I need to sort out her jewelry for all the granddaughters. Will you do that for me?”
“Of course Ma. I’ll do it right now.”
She took the clunky ring of keys and opened the almira. Burma teak that smelt of autumn. Filled with memories and secret histories. A timeslip. An error. A memory that had turned into dust.
She reached her hand deep inside to fetch it but a red towel blocked her way. It was hooked onto something inside and as she yanked it out, a bundle of envelopes tumbled onto the floor. The crumpled envelopes were wrapped in yellow-tinged leaf and a note was tucked inside the knot. She snatched the first envelope and drew out a letter. The paper was thin and had a delicate pattern of arabesques bordering the edges. But there was something still inside the envelope. She took that out as well and found a sepia photograph of Didan when she was very young, twenty-two perhaps, and she was standing with a tall man in front of date palm groves. The man was wearing a hat that cast a shadow on his face. She read the letter and was confused with the first line. She dashed back to the photograph, looked closely at the man’s face. It was not her grandfather.

2008-09-19T13:36:00.001-07:00

THE WRITING SALON & PAMELA ALMA BASS PRESENTS

The Annual Student Reading
Saturday, June 21 6:30 pm

Come listen to stories about travel adventures, humorous tales of trauma & mystical stories about overcoming difference

Readers include:
Kate Folk
Zinnia Gupte
Kelly Kelly
Jennifer Lou
Jessica Martinez
Kevin Schmidt

Where: DOG EARED BOOKS
900 Valencia St. (@ 20th)
San Francisco, CA 94110

2008-09-19T13:36:00.000-07:00

The River Inside

The bus was almost there. I had been shaking in it for eleven hours on the potholed highway and wanted nothing more than to return home. I hadn’t slept all night because I was afraid of the decrepit bus breaking down but nothing like that happened. The August heat was bearable and the mountain air was fresh. I jumped off the bus when we arrived at the town center, stretched out my arms and back to shake off sleep. The address scribbled on the scrap of paper said,

Sant Seva Ashram Trust
108, Palahari Baba
Laxman Jhula, Rishikesh

The crumbling town was perched over the riverbanks and had not yet woken up. Pine and eucalyptus trees lined the edge of the bank where mountainous sloped into the sand. I was standing a few steps from the bus depot. A little boy with enormous eyes and scuffed skin brought a cup of cha to me in a terra cotta cup. I took it and walked towards the tea stand where the bus drivers were standing sipping their tea. One of them eyed me down. “Are you vacation by yourself?”
“No, not vacation.” I said. The boy collected our cups and deposited them into a wiry basket. He looked like my brother Saraa, when he was that age, small and lanky with large, soul-searching eyes.
I walked to the closest stall and asked where the ashram was. A woman with a crinkly face pointed to a clay building on the banks of the river. The ashram had a few workers scattered across the grounds. Two men in blue kurtas napped on cots in the courtyard and another crawled along the floor cleaning it with a crimson rag and bucket of water. An old man with wild, white hair was looking over the ledge at the river. I figured he must be the manager and so I asked about Saraa.
“Saraa?” he asked raising his eyebrow.
“Pencil-thin, in his late thirties. Probably in dirty dungarees and old t-shirts, most likely keeps to himself.”
“Oh yes, yes, I know him. He is on the banks in the mornings.” He pointed to a set of marble stairs, “Go that way.”
I climbed down and made my way through the sandy banks. I could see him sitting beside a small fire, boiling a pot of water. The air was misty and the current strong. I couldn’t remember how long it had been since I last saw him. Who knew what he looked like or what kind of trouble he was in. For all I knew he could be selling marijuana from Manali to the tourists here. I had washed my hands of him years ago, left him to his fate, but now I needed his help and I hated him for it. I squeezed my hand into a fist and as I walked nearer I could see his figure clearly. His long and narrow face was covered in shadows and a heavy beard. He was wearing a faded brown kurta. “Saraa,” I said.
He looked up, blinked for a minute when he saw me and smiled. “Siddhartha? You finally showed up.”
“I thought it was time.”
“I can see you’re dressed for the occasion”, he said as he eyed me down, “Nice loafers.”
I felt the blood rush to my head but stayed calm. He always found a way to insult me in the first few minutes of conversation and after all these years that hadn’t changed. “I was on a business trip in Delhi. I left work early to see you. Came on that rickety overnight bus, that’s eleven hours. It’ll be another eleven and a train ride to Bombay so save the jokes for later. I just got here.”
“I didn’t ask you to, big brother. You can return just as quickly.”
“We’ll both return.” I fixed my eyes on him. “This time I’ll drag you by the neck.”
He laughed and looked at me with amusement. “All right then, have a seat. I’m just boiling some water.”
I looked down at the small blaze. He had made a fairly good fire with rocks to make a U-shape, criss-crossed the tinder and laid out some coals with a grill on top. The rucksack beside him was full of tin cups, pans and pots, clear pouches of lentils, rice, and salt. The kettle and a pot of lentils were already on the grill. I studied him for a few seconds. “You look horrible. I thought you’d be a skeleton by now.”
“I eat well”, he replied. He poured the water into a cup of coffee. “You want sugar?“
“Black, no sugar.” I took the hot cup in my hands. “How long has it been since I’ve seen you?”
“Six years.”
“Saraa, what are you doing man? You don’t write. You don’t call. You left a good job, good money to travel around solitary, aimlessly, a few months here a few months there.”
“I’m fine.”
“How are you getting by?”
“I do what I have to.”
“You’re leaving this nonsense, this non-life. You’re coming home with me.”
He took out a box of Wills from his pocket and put a cigarette in between his chapped lips. “So I can be a success like you?” He struck a match and lit it, then flicked the match away to inhale a lungful of smoke. “No thanks.”
“I’m not asking you Saraa.” He smoked his cigarette leisurely as if he didn’t have a care in the world. As if he did not care that we were losing the home that Baba had planned and built with his own hands so that he could give to his family what he never received. The house where we were both born and married, where Baba died and left the care of it to me and now because the deed had been misplaced, we could not fight to keep it, while property sharks hunted it down. I clenched the coffee cup. “You’re coming.”
“Aren’t we a little too old for this? You threaten to beat me up, I shake and shiver.
He pushed a plate of dal and rice towards me and took his plate. As we ate, I watched the green river sparkle in the sunlight. Jagged boulders, small and large stood like islands in the middle of the river and lavender sand sheathed the shore. Two men lay languidly on the sand. One was a dark, skinny village dweller. He wore a short cotton dhoti around his waist that revealed his matchstick legs and slept on his travel sack. The other man who sat beside him was covered in khadi cloth, hunched over with palms open waiting for alms. He was thin and had a white beard. Both looked lazy and useless. I wondered if Saraa did this to pass his days.
“How long?”
“How long what?” Saraa asked.
“How long have you been here?” I demanded.
“Two years.”
“What have you been doing?”
He squinted at me for a second and replied “Odd jobs. People pay me with food or with money sometimes. “Don’t need much.”
“No one understands what you are doing or what you are trying to prove.”
“No one has to.”
And no one did. Not our mother, not his friends, and certainly not me. Sometimes I tried to make sense of it all. How he had become this vagabond, traveling in desert heat and cold spells, with only one bag, year after year. I couldn’t understand how he stood the hardship. I lost track after a while and I didn’t care. The last letter Ma received from him was from Rishikesh. He had taken the last of his savings and come all the way to the Himalayas from Kerala, to watch the river rise up from the mountains, he had said. To Ma he wrote: Don’t worry about me, and please don’t look for me, I’m doing fine. He was sick to death of his corporate job and after his wife, Eva, died, he stopped going to work, stopped speaking to the rest of his family. He became a stranger who had once lived in the midst of a family, a bustling city, a life. We thought he had fallen into depression and was determined to live a life of emptiness.
“Is this the life you want for yourself? A life of isolation? No family. No friends. No security.”
“It’s what she would have wanted.”
“No, I don’t think so. She would have settled down.”
“How would you know?” he snapped angrily, “You didn’t know her!”
“I did know her. I knew her very well. She wanted children. You think you can gallivant around India like this with a family?”
“No one knew her, the way I knew her.” He hung his head low so that I wouldn’t see his eyes flooding. I waited until he let the emotion pass. “This is where we spent our wedding night,” he said. “It’s my clearest memory you know. Clearer than the wedding, clearer than the funeral. We could inhale the freshness from the Himalayas. There’s nothing like the air from these mountains, nothing. She had lit sandalwood incense and was reading Rumi on the bed. I thought her beauty was endless. I’ll never figure it out. How she died all of a sudden. She was so healthy, so damn alive.”
“It’s been years Saraa. People remarry. They move on.”
Saraa narrowed his eyes and looked out at the river. Then, he turned his eyes back to the fire. The orange yolk of sun slid across the sky ready to melt the mountain in gold. Clouds passed by quickly and a flock of birds resting in a eucalyptus tree, scattered across the yellow sky.
He told me he rarely spoke with anyone back home unless he had to, except for Ma. He wrote to her. She wrote to him, begging him to come home, to remarry, that her heart broke every day thinking about him. But he did not budge. Through letters, he learned I had been promoted from engineering to operations at Tata and that my two sons had been accepted into Bombay Scottish, only after we plotted our way in with donations. And here he was, removed from any sense of civilization that could help him.
“Do you know why I came all the way out here?” He took another cigarette from his box of Wills. “To watch the river. It’s a sickness with me.”
“Sick is right. Didn’t you get Ma’s letter? The one about losing our house? The whole building Saraa! Baba broke his back building it for us and now we’re going to lose it.”
He blew a plume of smoke into the cold air. I took him by the collar of his shirt. “Don’t you care about anyone except your self?” I said as I shook him.
“What do you want me to do Siddhartha?”
“Cut the shit. The last thing I need from you is a victim routine. You’ve pulled it off this long because your wife died. Well guess what? My wife’s sick too and we’re losing the house so you’d better come back with me and help.”
“Aparna’s sick?” he asked.
“I don’t want to talk about it right now,” and as I said that my hands began to shake.
He put his hand on my shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
“I said change the subject!” I jerked my arm away so fast my coffee spilled across his shirt. “Just come home.”
Saraa stood up and dusted sand off of his pants. “Let’s go,” he said. “I want to show you something.”
I hesitated. I didn’t want to go on a nature hike. I needed to ask him for money, but I couldn’t summon the words.
“Come.” He insisted.
We walked along the riverbank. The path rose and fell and wound around jagged brown boulders. As we climbed the rocks, the space beyond them widened and we emerged into a strong light. The bright air seemed to vibrate around us—every leaf, every vine radiated with heat—and the sound of the river rushed over us. The sound soon spread over us and as we reached the crook of the river, my gaze turned to a vast horizon beyond the silver water. The whole sky rang with the rush of waves whose echoes filled the space around me.
From east to west, the river flowed from mountain through town. Above, pilgrims walked across the jhula over the river from towards the temple. Together with the aroma of roasting coffee and cinnamon, laughing voices rose from the jhula. Then the sharp stamping of feet on wood. Farther in the distance, the eucalyptus trees rustled in the wind and above the river the silence was as vast as the sky. I leaned into the wind, speechless, unable to tear myself away from the void opening before me. Beside me, Saraa was motionless, his eyes fixed on the horizon, where the sky and river met in pure mist. Inside, I felt a knot tightened by years, habit, and worry; slowly loosen. There were black tents along the crescent shape of the riverbank, flapping in the breeze. I had not yet seen the men living in them, nothing was stirring in the tents, and yet my imagination traced them to where they could be at this moment. Homeless, cut-off from the world, they were wandering—scraping the land for food, trudging, possessing nothing and perhaps serving no one, poverty-stricken nomads of this kingdom. The thought filled me with melancholy and I closed my eyes, knowing that this kingdom had been promised to me and would never be mine again, except for this fleeting moment. When I opened my eyes again to the sky with its clouds drifting with confidence—as if they seemed to know why and where to go. The voices from the bridge fell silent and the clear brass sound of the temple bell rang through the air. The world had paused, no one would age or die or lose their home in this quiet breath of time. Everywhere life was suspended—except in my mind, where at the same moment, a mother and a wife were calling my name, wondering where I have gone.
“Don’t you want a house?” I asked him but he did not answer.
We walked for a while without talking. Saraa and I tramped a few miles it seemed, crossed long slivers of eucalyptus to where they reached their vanishing point, then we went another mile through wheatgrass and fern until the ground rounded up and formed a mound. The wind moved again and I heard the river raging down the gorge. When we sat on top of the hill I saw white foam surging through green plains. I stood completely still and listened to that lush sound, a sound I had never heard so close, a sound with a voice to it. A sound that made my chest rise and shoulders tighten with anticipation. It was a sound that made me feel separate from it and everything else, as if I were no importance in the grand plan.
“Do you hear it?” Saraa asked. He held his hand up to make me stand still and we both listened. “Do you hear its voice?”
“I do.”
“Do you know how a river starts? From a raincloud. That’s her soul. The wind pushes them from the ocean to the mountains and those rainclouds burst into a torrent of water sliding down mud paths creating what you see in front of you. And that process takes a few million years. I married the love of my life and now she’s gone. This is what I have now. ”
I crouched on the hill, pulling my knees under my chin, and ran my hands through the wheatgrass and thistle. I could hear geese, white birds in the sky, flying. They were wide and long and continuous, a white expanse of snow geese flying into the blue mountains ahead.
“Where are they going?” I said in a whisper.
“Home, for the summer.”
I could hear the geese echoing off the valley, their calls vanishing into the distance.
“So why here? This is the longest you’ve stayed in one place.”
“Because no one runs against time here. It’s as simple as waking to the light of morning and sleeping when the cold hits your bones.”
“And you’re happy with only that?”
“I sit here by the river on these rocks every day. I watch her as she spills across plains, past the fields of women who sing as they harvest. The dust frays my skin but I still sit. The river is always changing but right here, at this very spot, where she turns fat and muddy, the riverbank remains the same. I watch her as she spreads into deltas of reeds where waves are met by white caps and vanish into the night.” He stopped to light a cigarette. “Ganga’s soul rises as a billowing cloud from the ocean, white and fierce and rains hard onto these mountain paths and all the way to the sea.”
He paused at that point to give his words time to sink in. I thought about this, wondering why it was so difficult to believe that he could be happy. Loneliness follows some people their entire life, guiding and inspiring them to do courageous things. For others, it’s necessity.
I thought about our father and how much he would have loved this place. “I wish Baba was with us right now.”
“When I feel empty, I watch the river, watch life pass by. It’s a relief to know she’s going somewhere instinctively.” Saraa patted me on the arm and smiled.
“Come.”
We walked up the hill and through the forest when we reached the jhula, on the other side of the town. We scrambled down the hill to where the river was calmer but still spilling through the plains. Saraa began to roll up his pants and edge his way into the water. He crept forward and balanced himself by touching a boulder once in a while. He was much farther away from me now with his arms high in the air, his head lifted towards the sky. Then he looked at me and motioned for me to join him.
“Come on.”
I rolled up my pants, took off my shoes and socks and climbed in. The cool water swept over my shins and sucked at my calves. I held onto the large rocks to make sure I did not slip on the shoals shifting below the soles of my feet. I inched up to straighten my back and saw the great swathe of river in front of me, surrounding me, as I was knee-deep in it. I thought about Baba, in the small river at Nagpur, through which he would wade every day to get to work, sometimes with me on his shoulders. We were so poor then we couldn’t afford any other way. I wondered back then what would happen to us if he were to die crossing that river, who would work how he had worked to give us basic things like dal and rice but also during puja, the black toy train with silver rimmed-wheels that I still kept and shined every few months. I wondered even then, if he were to ever drown, who would take his place.
“You know Baba used to cross rivers?” I said to Saraa.
“I didn’t know that.”
“With me on his shoulders. He never slipped, never fell once.”
Baba had always said to me during those hard years before Saraa was born: to tighten your fists. Hold your back with pride. How to shake hands with a strong grip, how to carry your chin high, and step toward a man when he is falling so you can help him back up. And most important, to not lose hope, even when the current seemed to flow against you, because that was the secret he had said, “the secret that we all forget right before we bow down in defeat.”
The water rose and grew cold, and my fingers began numbing where I clenched the rock, and I let go and opened my fist to make the numbing stop, so I could feel the water and the wind when that moment came. The air around me hummed and I could feel the wind through my shirt, on my skin. I shuddered in the rush of air, my feet sank into river silt, and suddenly I felt myself falling straight down and landing with an awful sound. I stood up and stomped through the water, soaking wet. Saraa was still in the water, the air around him was full of white rising mist. He looked at me with a worried expression, the pitying look someone gives you when you have failed.
“Are you alright?” he yelled.
I wrung the water from my pants and put my socks and shoes back on, grumbling to myself, “Shouldn’t have come here.”
Saraa made his way over to me. “You know how many times I fell here to learn how to balance?” he laughed.
I said nothing.
“Sid?”
“I’m going back to the ashram.”

I locked the door to his room. Saraa had pitch a tent tonight and sat on the bank making a fire. I showered and settled in. The room was bare: an iron-railing made up the bedstand, two rickety teak tables flanked both sides of the bed, which was covered in a heavy layer of dust. The blue mosquito netting that hung from the ceiling was torn and smelled like mothballs. There was a pack of Wills on the window-sill sitting beside a copper ashtray. I peeled away the tin foil, plucked one out and opened the window to smoke it. The dark neck of the river at night was necklaced with temple lights. Outside it was wet, rain tambourined through the trees. Giant trees loomed over the ashram dripping slowly in a solemn, uneven chorus onto the wild eucalyptus leaves beneath. On the top floor of that ashram with dusk spreading, I felt the long tooth of loneliness beginning to bite and wondered how Saraa did this day after day. I watched his fire from the window, dwindling in the rain, and there seemed to be nothing left but the smoke and shadows, like a funeral pyre when it was done burning through the night.
From the pit of my stomach I felt a punch. I found myself remembering the day of Baba’s funeral when I lit the pyre with the ceremonial torch. Baba’s brothers and cousins, our uncles and friends stood there patiently, their white tunics flailing in the breeze as the flames consumed him. At the house, Ma was sitting on the edge of her bed, her hair was untidy and she was wearing a white sari. The house was full of people, but it was very quiet, the only sound being crows cawing on the balcony. Then I came inside the room, filled with incense and a thickness that could only come from pain and a deep sadness. The scent of sandalwood filled the air. I said to Ma, come, and she rose, and I walked with her a little. “Where’s Saraa?” she asked and I told her he was speaking with the guests but I lied. I had no idea where he was. Baba had been laid out and draped in a white sheet and people began surrounding his body. Saraa emerged from the blue door near the roof; his eyes were red and his cheeks stained with salt. He knelt next to Baba and gave out a high-pitched cry that crackled the air, then two men came forward, and they covered Baba’s face, other people lifted him up and took him through the door, through the iron gates as they clanged behind the men, and Saraa fell to his knees in front of everyone and I picked him up by the arms and held him, told him to be strong, that this would pass. To this day I could not forget the words he had uttered through tears and the pride that had surged through my veins, “You are still here, thank goodness for you Baba.”
I was eating a plate of dal and rice at the table when I heard a knock on the door. It was Saraa. He held a bottle of RC whiskey in his hand and his raincoat was drenched. He flung it on the floor.
“I brought this for you.”
“How did you get it?” I asked. “They don’t sell this stuff for miles.”
He brushed passed me and went to the mahogany dresser, rummaged through the drawers, throwing lighters, film cans and bandages over his shoulder. He wiped down the table with his sleeve and proceeded to write. With a final flick of his wrist, he finished and put down the pen.
“Here,” he handed me a check.
“What’s this?”
“I had more savings than you thought. I kept this for Ma. Just in case. I told her not to tell you.”
“Why Saraa? Why would you do that?”
“I wanted to be alone.” He sat at the table and poured whiskey into two glasses.
“You’re still coming back with me aren’t you?”
He handed the glass to me. “Yes, but I wanted you to have this first.” He clinked his glass to mine and glugged down the brown fire.
I tried handing it back to him but he pushed my hand that held the check towards my stomach and did not let me move it again. “Drink that and you’ll sleep well. You won’t even feel the mosquitoes.” He picked up his jacket and headed towards the door.
“Where are you going?”
“It’s my last night here, I‘m going to sleep in the tent. I’ll see you in the morning, it’s late.”
“You’re right,” I said. “What time is it?”
“Half past twelve.”
“We’ll have to catch the bus back to Delhi in the morning and buy you train tickets,” I said.
“Here’s an extra blanket.” He threw a patchwork quilt from the mahogany dresser onto the bed. “Good night Sid.”
“Good night Saraa.”
He shuffled down the marble steps and walked along the bank. I leaned out the window watching his silhouette glide over the white sand. My hands trembled against the glass. I felt ashamed that he was not disappointed in me but sympathetic. I looked at the check once more. It was enough to cover hospital costs, doctor visits, medicine, even a private nursing home. When I looked again at his tent, his flashlight was glowing, then he turned that off too and went to sleep. There was a gnawing at the base of my stomach as the rain beat down against the pane and a crackle of thunder startled me, making me realize I had been looking out the window at the river for some time now. I had become the sort of man I despised, a man who took away from another to make his own life bearable again. I peeled away the sheets and turned off the light.
*
The night was dark. A chill swept through the room. I lay in bed tossing through the night. When twilight came, I opened the door and went outside, it was the time between night and morning when nothing seems real. I walked barefoot from the terrace to the banks and along the winding path of the river. A circle of hawks rose from the pines and scythed the sky. I began to run, following the curve of the river, and I kept running, until I reached a point where the river grew wider and wilder. My heart was beating. I walked what felt like miles up the hills, criss-crossing through the mountain. To rest, and to see if Saraa had woken up and tried to follow, I sat on a rock at the edge of the river. I remained there a long while thinking about how I would be snatching him away from this kingdom. A light wind rattled the leaves and vines. Overhead a few bats reeled silently back and forth. I took a deep breath, then returned to the ashram, to my room. I left the check on the table and packed my things before Saraa could wake up and find me gone.
The bus was full of tourists as it fishtailed through the mountains on its way back to civilization. I slid deeper into the vinyl seat and as the bus wound around, sleep slowly took over me. I faintly heard the call of birds, leaves rustling in the wind; smelled the mustard fields between the valleys. I sunk further into the seat, falling deeper and deeper. In the distance I could hear the river flowing.

2008-03-24T15:49:00.000-07:00

I am a San Francisco-based writer and editor. My work has appeared in Eclectica, Small Packages, and Lanterns; A Nottingham Anthology. I am currently working on a novel and a collection of stories. I also write feature articles for the BBC and volunteer with literacy programs in the Bay area.

For my day job, I'm a writer and editor for a design agency called Hot Studio. Feel free to explore my website, read some stories, and look at my resume.