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THREE ISLAND STORIES
A Perfect Life
Living a perfect life was simply a matter of choice. Once that idea took root in his head, he started making wholesale changes in his life. He was a graduate student from India studying in a no-name Midwestern university when he thought of the perfect life concept.
He applied to and was accepted by Stanford for a transfer. With that success he became convinced that a perfect life was merely a matter of planning and executing. He would become the messiah for a perfect life, molding his own life as a testament to that belief.
It was shocking how easy it was to orchestrate a perfect life. It all came down to careful selection. And patience. Gourmet cooking was nothing but selecting fresh ingredients�food slow cooked with patience. He chose only to read books by posthumous authors that were still in print. Books distilled by time.
He was listening to grunge rock and assorted trash, but in Stanford he switched to Classical music. He started out with the more accessible A composers � Antonio and Amadeus. Then he moved on to the three B�s. He was especially drawn to Bach. The Passagliata in D minor, and his Brandenbergs, oh God. The fans were right � a lifetime wasn�t enough for JSB. And then he graduated to Mahler, and Bartok. Sibelius and others waited in his carefully planned list.
He used to buy any brand of six-pack that was on sale. In his quest for a perfect life he considered joining the Beer-of-the-month club. Instead, in Stanford he switched to wine. He taught himself the difference between a Chardonnay and a Sauvignon blanc.
Just prior to graduating, many of his Indian graduate student friends were making a two-week dash back home, coming back engaged. Next trip, marriage. His mother who was living in India wanted to start looking for a bride for him. He refused saying that he absolutely wasn�t going to marry an Indian girl. Why limit his choices to the familiar when there were over 300 countries in the world? Around that time, he read a magazine article claiming that Japanese women made perfect wives � Asian docility combined with imagination in bed, the article said. He was very intrigued.
In the Economics for Engineers class for which he was the TA, there was a slight Japanese girl. A girl with a round face and a build so delicate that it would break you. TA�s were not allowed to fraternize with their own students, so he waited for the whole semester to pass before making a move on her.
To his surprise, she was both available and interested. Over lunches at the Quad and dinners at the Palo Alto hangout places, he learned her history. She�d been born in Japan but was part-Hawaiian. That explained some of her non-Japanese features, and perhaps the whole of her allure.
While in Japan, her mother had booted out her Hawaiian father to return to Kona. He too had grown up fatherless having lost his father when he was in ninth grade, and so that became an added dimension to their bonding.
She didn�t care for his Western Classical. She introduced him to Japanese pop songs by local bands no one had ever heard of. Listen to this, listen to this. He found her undergraduate enthusiasm refreshing. Even while their relationship was platonic, he wondered if she was imaginative in bed. His friends advocated a cautious approach, but things moved at a rapid pace � courtship, engagement and a 2-part marriage with ceremonies in both India and in Japan.
They timed their college graduations to coincide. She announced that she wanted them to look for jobs in the Kailua area in Hawaii. She said wanted to get to know her father, to claim back a part of her childhood she had never experienced. He agreed because living in Hawaii was in keeping with his strategic plan to reside in a perfect location. Over the phone, he tried to convince his mother in India that the Big Island of Hawaii was paradise.
Turned out her father wasn�t as keen to get to know his daughter. He had another wife and a whole different family. The dad�s only interest seemed to be to sit around waiting for the OTB to open and to start relaying the races from Hollywood Park and Los Alamitos. He seemed to be guzzling cans of beer at all hours of the day. There was a reason why her Japanese mother had kicked out her deadbeat dad.
Next, his wife wanted to move to Japan, to be close to her mother. Over the phone, he told his mother that he had relocated to Okinawa, an island in southern Japan. His wife�s mother spoke no English. On most evenings, he had to accompany his wife to her mother�s place. It was always the same ritual. She smiled and he smiled. She bowed, he bowed, she bowed lower, and he retired to the tiny sofa to read his magazine. Inside, mother and daughter gabbed on for hours. He sometimes listened uncomprehending. There was a reason why his Indian friends married Indian women.
The novelty of living in Japan wore off quickly. He hated getting tiny portions of the exorbitantly priced food. He was a coffee man. And if he had to endure one more cup of green tea, he was going to puke that same color.
To him, the Japanese pop songs started to sound annoying. He hated their way of usurping English words into their lyrics with the Japanese pronunciation. There was a reason why he hadn�t heard of these Japanese bands in the Bay Area. He was eager to revert back to Bartok and Mahler, maybe sample a little Debussy.
In Japan, he had been hoping to see movies by the contemporary Kurosawas. Instead, his wife couldn�t get enough of the bubble gum movies that he couldn�t stand.
When he proposed divorce, she didn�t even seem surprised � she accepted it with a what-took-you-so-long look. Alone and dazed, he hung around in Tokyo for weeks. His project plan for a perfect life had gone off course.
In his weekly phone calls to India, his mother urged him to return to India. She kept hinting that he ought to start afresh. Turned out that his mother hadn�t cared much for his Japanese wife after all.
When he didn�t respond to his mother�s subtle hints, she became more direct. Increasingly, she mentioned the growing availability of divorced women in India. His mother said these women mainly wanted the security of having a man around. After having been through bad marriages, they were overjoyed if the man was halfway decent. They�d do everything for him, his mother said. All he had to do was to go over to India, and take his pick.
It sounded perfect.
Making Change
A decade ago, when he walked into a conference room full of people, he would scan the room to ascertain that he made more money than anyone else in the room. That knowledge comforted him greatly. These days he didn�t bother. He usually was worth more than all the occupants of a conference room combined. He had developed a keen sense about people. Good employees were hard to find. In his business deals, he could smell out who was genuine and who was scamming him. He always hired the good ones to work for him, and the money just flowed.
Early on, his wife had left him, accusing him of being more interested in his work than in her. He hadn�t had one decent conversation with his teenage daughter in months. However, when you had money, plenty of intelligent women made themselves available to you to make conversation if that�s what you wanted. Or, if he didn�t feel like conversing, he could always ask for an eastern European woman. They were perfectly content to sit and smolder and sip sullenly at daiquiris all evening until called upon.
He couldn�t remember the last time he had waited for a public bus. Private limos or cabs�money did that to you.
But at this late hour, he was waiting for a bus in the North Shore. A series of little breakdowns. He and his Hawaiian business partner had stayed back long after the regular transportation with all the delegates had left for the Waikki hotels. Then, when he was in the restroom, his business partner had left the center. And to cap it, his cell-phone battery died. He walked up to the security guard and asked him to call a cab. It was the guard who had suggested that he take the Night Bus, which would drop him practically in front of his Waikiki hotel for just two dollars. A cab would actually take a lot longer to get to the North Shore, the guard said. The bus was due within minutes. And so, for the first time in years, in his Brooks Brothers suit and wingtips, he walked up to the bus-stop though it was past midnight.
It was pitch dark by the bus stop. There was just the dark road, and the dark sea in front of the bus stop, nothing else.
Soon another guy, a black man, walked up to the bus-stop and started staring at him. He was wearing dark glasses � who wears shades at night? He hoped the bus would show up quick. He�d never paid much attention to what was in his wallet. Someone from his retinue handled all his transactions. But he did have several 50- and 100-dollar bills in his wallet. This idea of taking the bus was terribly foolish. If the other guy attacked him, not a soul would hear him even if he screamed.
Foolish, stupid, impulsive. After several tense minutes, a speck of yellow light in the darkness. It was the bus. His relief came as a surge. He let the black man board first, then he got on himself. The bus driver, a big Hawaiian lady said no, the bus didn�t give change for $50. In fact it didn�t give out change at all. She laughed out when he asked if credit cards were accepted.
�Get in, get in. Someone inside make change for you.�
There were only five passengers in the bus and sure enough, not one had change when he held out his fifty. The black man came up to him and said, �Wait, I think I have a dollar in here somewhere.� He rooted around his tiny money purse and pulled out a dollar triumphantly, and handed it over saying �My emergency dollar!� Two others in the bus chipped in a few coins, and he had his two dollar bus fare.
�See, this is the Aloha State!� the bus driver said to him. �Someone always help you.�
He sat down, embarrassed. After a few minutes he walked over to the black man and held out his fifty. �Please accept this.�
�What do I need your money fo�, man? I�m heading home, see.�
Only after he was in Waikiki, safely off the midnight bus did it occur to him that he should have given the black guy his business card. Asked him if he was interested in a better-paying job. Good employees were hard to find.
The Aromatic Jamaican Girl
On his way back to Negril town, from his window seat in the bus, he saw the young woman wave. The woman was wearing a smart red shirt and a small black skirt. Her attire perfectly matched the colors of the Appleton Jamaican Rum billboard, under which she was standing. The bus driver had seen her wave too, and he screeched to a halt. The woman took her time crossing the road in front of the bus and coming on board.
When she was closer, he saw that she was wearing a bright red polo shirt with white trim. In her front pocket, there was a small white butterfly logo. There were quite a few seats open, but she came closer and closer with a swaying hip-strut and sat next to him. His heart soared � of all the empty seats in the world she had come next to his. The lady had a fragrance about her�something exotic, something tropical, the fragrance that he would later forever associate with Jamaica.
In the bus, he sneaked a glance at her legs. He saw that her skin tone was what fancy writers might describe as �latte.� A grand latte, he decided. The fragrance of her perfume was getting to him, and for a while, that aroma was all he could think of. It was as if the aroma was extracted from crushing all the fragrant flowers of Jamaica.
The bus was moving at a fair clip, hopping from stop to stop, but neither the diesel fumes nor the sea breeze could overpower the young woman�s perfume.
Her fragrance reminded him of the Rastafarian with dreadlocks. The previous day, a Rasta in a black �One Love� T-shirt had approached him on the beach and asked if he wanted some �Ganja, mon? Good stuff, grown in the Blue Mountains.� He�d refused the marijuana, and the Rasta immediately asked if he�d instead like some �Blue Mountain coffee, the best in the whole world.� The woman�s fragrance had that rich fruity aroma. He wanted to know the name of the scent, to ask her, and maybe even buy a small vial to take back home as a souvenir of his visit to Jamaica.
The bus had come to the outskirts of Negril, where the all-inclusive luxury resorts were located. By then the bus was practically empty of passengers. He knew that if he was going to ask at all, it had to be soon. Maybe it was passion-fruit, though he didn�t really know if passion-fruit had any aroma at all. If he didn�t ask her, it would be one more thing to add to the long list of things of bold actions that he had considered in life, but never executed on. He hated himself for being timid all his life. He worked up his courage. Here he was, alone, and on a holiday in happy Jamaica, and she looked quite harmless. He mentally practiced asking casually, �Hi, what�s that wonderful perfume I smell on you?� and then edited it to the simpler �What�s your perfume called, please?� And then, he just went for it.
The words didn�t quite come out that way though. He had neglected to clear his throat before speaking after such a long silence. The island heat had made his tongue go dry. What he uttered sounded closer to �Waggapuf?�
For the first time since boarding the bus, the woman slowly turned to glance at him. On her face was the beginning of a scowl. To him that downward angle of the end of her lips felt lovely. In that moment, the fact that he had a girl back home waiting for him to return from his vacation became insignificant. He pictured growing old together with this fragrant woman (could it be frangipani?), in Jamaica, him lazing in his hammock outside their white beach home, and her striding purposefully up to him, with that same scowl that he had come to love over the years, telling him to get off his butt and help with the housework. He could picture their future together perfectly.
�What?� the woman in the bus asked him. Her scowl was now on full blast. On seeing her annoyance his courage deserted him. He copped out, cleared his throat and asked �Unh, what is the time?�
�Ten past,� she said in her crisp island accent, looking pointedly at his watch. He could feel his ears burning red. He wondered if maybe it wasn�t a perfume at all, maybe it was just scented coconut oil that she had applied to her hair.
�One stop!� she requested with a shout. The bus driver shouted back, �Let off!� and brought the bus to a screeching halt. She got up, and with that same hip sway, she strutted out of the bus, out of his life.
Ram Prasad
February 2005
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