any of them.
Janya was more free-thinking. Educated by Catholic nuns, never discouraged by her parents when she made friends with classmates with Buddhist and Muslim backgrounds, she had learned to look for the similarities in all religions, the distilled essence of what was true, the consequences when people paid scant attention to what they proclaimed to believe. In her home, though, she was determined to hold fast to the most basic traditions of her childhood. She was so far from her beloved India, and she didn’t want to move even farther.
A Hindu home, even the poorest, had a special place for prayer, a puja room, which was sometimes no more than a corner. The beach cottage was so small that at first Janya had feared she would need to set up her altar in a corner, too. But the moment Rishi showed her the closet for coats on the east side of the living room, she knew that would be the place for worship. Not elaborate, not built to the specifications of those who gloried in obedience to every man-made rule. But a place, nonetheless, to remember who they were and what they believed.
Now she opened the door to reveal a platform covered with a beautiful blue sari, on which sat the puja tray with the items they would need for their worship and a statue of Krishna. She had painted the inside of the closet a dark red, then adorned the borders with silver and gold paint, and designs of flowers she remembered from home.
While Rishi waited, she lit the wick of a small brass oil lamp, then a cone of incense. Finally she made an offering of water from a pitcher she had placed there before she began dinner preparations, and a bowl of freshly cooked rice.
She stepped back, they folded their hands, and Rishi intoned the familiar prayers they had agreed upon, still somewhat awkwardly, since this had been done only occasionally in the home in which he grew up. They completed the familiar rituals, finishing when Janya laid flowers at Krishna’s feet. Later she would use a flower to put out the flame, as her mother had always done.
When they finished, Rishi followed Janya to the kitchen. “You know the meaning of the word ‘lite’?” Rishi spelled it. “In this country we say something is ‘lite’ if it’s not quite the real thing. We practice Hindu-lite in this house.”
“Perhaps you want something more elaborate?”
He laughed. “No, I’m happy, but your mother and father won’t be when they come to visit.”
This was a game they played. Rishi talked about her parents visiting as if it might actually happen someday. She wasn’t certain why. Either he wanted to make her believe it, too, so she would not mourn so acutely for her home and family, or, just as sadly, he wanted to believe he had made a normal marriage, with in-laws who were every bit as happy he was their son-in-law as he was to have them in his life.
Of course neither was true.
She stirred the pot of New England-style beans she had made to go with rice and a plate of raw vegetables. “This is not quite ready. Perhaps you would like a snack?”
Rishi opened the refrigerator and stood staring into it, as if he had never imagined such contents. When her husband had gone to live with his uncle and aunt, he had been granted few liberties, and helping himself to food when he was hungry had not been one of them.
Janya found this sad. Rishi had been a beloved son until his parents were killed in the poison gas disaster at Bhopal. His mother and father, who had worked for the trade union that represented workers at the Union Carbide plant, had worried about increasingly deteriorating safety conditions and sent their young son to stay with an aunt in Delhi, planning to join him there at the end of the year. Before they could leave for good, their fears had come to pass, and Rishi had been orphaned.
Rishi often said he had been blessed to have an uncle who was willing to give him a home in America, but Janya was not always certain it had been a blessing. To her, Rishi was like the beggar children who pleaded for attention and recognition on the streets of Mumbai. Hungry for love, graceless, even frightened. Sometimes she thought he stared into the refrigerator just to be certain that food still occupied the shelves and access was