Twenty-three

Gyan and Sai’s romance was flourishing and the political trouble continued to remain in the background for them.

Eating momos dipped in chutney, Gyan said: "You’re my momo."

Sai said: "No you’re mine."

Ah, dumpling stage of love – it had set them off on a tumble of endearments and nicknames. They thought of them in quiet moments and placed them before each other like gifts. The momo, mutton in dough, one thing plump and cozy within the other – it connoted protection, affection.

But during the time they ate together at Gompu’s, Gyan had used his hands without a thought and Sai ate with the only implement on the table – a tablespoon, rolling up her roti on the side and nudging the food onto the spoon with it. Noticing this difference, they had become embarrassed and put the observation aside.

"Kishmish," he called her to cover it up, and "Kaju" she called him, raisin and cashew, sweet, nutty, and expensive. Because new love makes sightseers out of couples even in their own town, they went on excursions to the Mong Pong Nature Reserve, to Delo Lake; they picnicked by the Teesta and the Relli. They went to the sericulture institute from which came a smell of boiling worms. The manager gave them a tour of the piles of yellowy cocoons moving subtly in a corner, machines that tested waterproofing, flexibility; and he shared his dream of the future, of the waterproof and drip-dry sari, stain-proof, prepleated, zippable, reversible, super duper new millennium sari, named for timeless Bollywood hits like Disco Dancer. They took the toy train and went to the Darjeeling zoo and viewed in their free, self-righteous, modern love, the unfree and ancient bars, behind which lived a red panda, ridiculously solemn for being such a madly beautiful thing, chewing his bamboo leaves as carefully as a bank clerk doing numbers. They visited the Zang Dog Palri Fo Brang Monastery on Durpin Dara, where little monks were being entertained by the gray-haired ones, running up and down pulling the children on rice sacks, sailing them over the polished monastery floor, before the murals of demons and Guru Padmasambhava with his wrathful smile ensconced in a curly mustache, his carmine cloak, diamond scepter, lotus hat with a vulture feather; before a ghost riding a snow lion and a green Tara on a yak; sailing the children before the doors that opened like bird wings onto the scene of mountains all around.

From Durpin Dara, where you could see so far and high, the world resembled a map from a divine perspective. One could see the landscape stretching below and beyond, rivers and plateaus. Gyan asked Sai about her family, but she felt uncertain about what she should say, because she thought if she told him about the space program, he might feel inferior and ashamed. "My parents eloped and nobody spoke to them again. They died in Russia where my father was a scientist."

But his own family story also led overseas, he told Sai, quite proudly. They had more in common than they thought.