local governments to distribute free Beads. The Third World had been ripe for them. Power cut? A torch in your finger. Poor schools? Google in the palm of your hand. Slow communication? A photo beats a thousand words: a Bead was also an eye.
Naila opened the camera app now, reversed it, and stared at the girl in her hand. She ruffled her greasy mop of hair, pinched her chin pimple – satisfyingly, it spat its ivory guts out – and plucked a remnant of saag from her teeth. She hadn’t showered in days. This was starting to feel like a matter of principle: she was in mourning, she refused to be clean. She had three more hours on the train. Suitcase and rucksack tucked around her like a fortress, Naila closed her eyes.
* * *
She was inside a warped cage of grey limbs shot through with violet light. She saw the ground from up in the tree – dappled shadows over rooty ground – then at eye level, the dull planes of the earth, the purple wrinkles of fallen blossoms. She was curled up on her side. A pair of green trainers approached but then the shoes became brown feet, a woman’s manicured toenails. She was being lifted, carried. A curtain parted. Steady, sure arms – a passage.
* * *
Naila woke to the tumult of Tirupati. It was not a quiet town, as she had supposed, given how close it was to a pilgrimage site. The train rumbled between narrow buildings with flat roofs and multicoloured walls, Telugu script crawling like creepers over them. When it pulled into the station, she disembarked with the other passengers and walked out to the main road, which was as busy as Chennai had been. There were no apparent rules or lights to obey: pedestrians shuffled around and between cars, their pace calm, their movements fluid – no jerks or pivots. Fooled by this rhythm, the friendly brown faces and the modern feel of the place, she decided to save the taxi fare by walking to the hotel a few blocks away. It was around 10 a.m. She had time to spare now.
She crossed the main road and entered a maze of alleys, rolling her suitcase behind her, eyes on the map in her palm. Autorickshaws paused putteringly to offer their services to her – ‘No, I’m fine. Yes, I’m sure’ – then zigzagged off into the traffic, waggling their bums. The alleys narrowed and disintegrated to ruts and rubbish. Cars and autos gave way to cows and chickens. The sun rose like the red in the Global Climate Change thermometer. Her rucksack was a hot grasping thing on her back, her suitcase wheels crudded with mud, by the time she deadended in front of a house that looked like marzipan – matte pastel walls, slanted roof and windows. A cow lounged in front of it.
This was absurd. She was Zambian, for goodness’ sake. And Indian, by descent at least. How could she be lost? The cow swung its tail and painted the back of her calf with a slick brown stripe of god-knows-what. Self-pity stung her throat again. A woman stepped out onto the balcony of the marzipan house, nursing a baby while talking into her Digit-All wristband. Naila asked for directions, and after a stilted English conversation and a dozen more labyrinthine turns, she found herself in a hotel lobby icy with air conditioning.
Her clothes stiffening as her sweat dried, Naila filled in the register. As she wrote the time, she realised she had managed to catch her train only to lose an hour getting lost. She rushed up to her hotel room, changed into a kurti, threw a shawl over her head, grabbed her rucksack, and went back down to book tickets for the temple. The concierge shook his head. It was far too late to buy a Special Entry Darshan ticket to see Sri Venkateswara today. But, he smiled, if she was willing to walk up the mountain, darshan would be free.
‘How long is the hike?’
‘Oh, just five–seven hours for pada yatra.’ His head wobbled smugly. ‘Beautiful views.’
‘I’ll book a car,’ she mumbled. ‘Tweather says it looks like rain. Early monsoon.’
The concierge wobbled his head again, as if he had expected this of a foreigner, then lifted his beaded finger to his ear to book her a car. She was considering running up to her room to stash the box of ashes in the safe when the driver walked in.