Red Indian Sun

I walked through the market and looked at the passers-by. I could not believe that I was in the real world. It seemed to me that I was in an oriental tale or on the set of a film.

I noticed that Indian people have rare beauty, delicate features, large eyes with infinitely long doll eyelashes.

In the village of Samain, I saw the stunning beauty of a woman of about fifty. She had huge emerald eyes framed by two-centimeter velvet eyelashes, olive skin color, and all facial features harmoniously combined with each other as if painted by a talented artist. On her head she carried a metal basin, not holding it with one hand. It was evident that she was engaged in physical labor, but even her tired look did not hide her natural beauty, but, on the contrary, emphasized.

Often I looked at my Dadi and admired her. A thin, toned face with large blue eyes and a straight nose. Grandma was already ninety years old. But the sculpture of her face has not changed since her youth. There were deep wrinkles on her face. And in the bottomless eyes, the naughty light of former youth played. Still, only the body is aging, and the soul remains forever at the age when the person loved the last time.

* * *

Before bed, I tactfully asked me to bring a sheet and a duvet cover. But Tenardieu said that they did not use sheets and duvet covers in the house.

He slept on a synthetic bedspread and covered himself with a thick blanket. All the guests visiting the house were lying on the same bedspread during the day or sitting with their feet.

The next day, the young man’s mother smiling brought me a beautiful sheet of yellow satin fabric with blue flowers and a golden pattern. But she said that they were not sleeping on this, but, on the contrary, they sometimes covered the bed for beauty during the daytime.

How did I suffer in my soul when guests came to the house and lay down on our pillows with head, and someone did not hesitate to fold unwashed feet. The fact is that there was no spare pillowcase either, and instead of a pillowcase, I laid out one of the new hand towels that I brought with me. But it was still unpleasant, and it seemed to me that then the pillow smelled of someone’s feet.

For many years, I did not wash by hand and did not wash the dishes with my hands, as I had a dishwasher and an automatic washing machine. In the house of my future husband, almost everything was done manually. Small things were washed right on the granite floor, soaping and beating on the floor.

The washing machine was semi-automatic and assumed a constant presence to drain and pour water into the tank, and then shift it to the centrifuge.

There was also no trash can in the house. After peeling vegetables, the peel was dumped in a corner of the kitchen, cigarette butts were thrown right there on the floor next to them. Then when cleaning the room it was all swept away in a heap, shifted to the basin. Basin put on his head and carried to the dump. The dump was spontaneously located. That is, at the end of our small street, one needs to go out onto a large road, cross it, and rubbish was thrown onto the side of the road. There were already piled mountains of garbage, and no one took them out for recycling. We did the house-keeping with my mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law every day, so it was clean. I often saw the old grandmother in some kind of homework, such as cleaning vegetables or sweeping the floor.

In India, you will rarely find garbage bins. The local population throws small rubbish everywhere, but not near their home. Large waste is carried to an arbitrary landfill, which, as a rule, is located every 500 meters. But in Indian houses, cleanliness is impeccable, even the poor wives have dusty clay floors in dugouts for days on end.

Drainage was also absent. In front of our house, the pavement was dismantled, and the car was pumping waste from the pit. At such moments, you begin to appreciate what you have not noticed around you before – the livability and comfort of modern apartments.

In the kitchen, huge cockroaches constantly crawled out of the pipe into the sink. I have never seen such big ones before. Each cockroach was four centimeters. There were also ordinary small cockroaches.

The first time I saw them was when I brewed tea in an aluminum scoop on the stove. My future husband was standing nearby. Then he suddenly said:

– Next to you crawling cockroach.

For fear, I screamed so loudly that people could hear me in the next village. I jumped onto the back of the young man and hung on it, continuing to scream with fear.

His father entered the kitchen, frowned and asked:

– What happened?

– She saw a cockroach.

He looked at me, laughed, and left.

Much to my surprise, I learned that my future husband was not at all afraid of cockroaches. Not even the slightest hostility to them.

– So what if cockroaches. They are also living beings. As a child, we even played with them, planted them in our palms, he said good-naturedly and smiled, as if recalling his childhood friends.

* * *

In the evening, I asked the young man and his family to come down. I said that I prepared something interesting for them.

Then they came into the room and sat around the table. I laid out a gift for a gift, brought from Moscow, and presented them to each family member.

When I gave my mother-in-law bracelets, contempt flashed in her huge tarry-black eyes. On the face of my future husband was a painful disappointment.

Immediately after the parents left the room, the young man arrogantly stated that the Italian dress, which I brought to his niece, he can buy from a flea market for a hundred rupees, but not for many thousands, and all the other gifts are cheap.

Then, squinting, he told me:

– You don’t seem to have money for a study in the USA. On what money were you going to go to America?

– What do you mean? Why are you talking about this now?

– Well, once you told me about the plan to study in the West. I thought there would be such a rich woman.

I said nothing and did not answer him.

The only person who showed respect was his father. He thanked me and proudly wore watches on his hand for several days; I was very pleased to see it. After all, the watches were good.

* * *

In those days I met my husband’s second cousin named Kamlesh. It was an educated thirty-year-old married woman. She came to her native village to her parents from another city, where she lived with a rich husband and children. She was happy in her marriage. She and her husband had two children – a boy and a girl. Among all the relatives of my future husband, Kamlesh was the most conscious.

She did not communicate with relatives of my husband and himself. In a large family of my father-in-law, many relatives did not speak among themselves for many years. But in those days she broke this rule.

A few years ago, a relative of my husband committed a misdeed connected with a girl. After that, the whole family became an outcast in their own society.

Once we sat with Kamlesh on the couch and chatted nicely. Then she told me:

– Now everything depends on him. If he wants, he will make a big wedding in a restaurant.

But the young man did not want to do anything. He only said that he had no money. And besides, he said I did not bring a dowry to their house, and this was important for him.

I actually had a dowry. But did it really matter, if everything turned out this way? So I said nothing.

And the next day I, my future husband, his father, sister and child got into the car of his friend Mandip – an intelligent young man and went to the regional center – Tohana.

Right at the bus stop in Tohana, there was a small, cute Hindu temple of white marble. We got out of the car and headed towards the temple.

Bus stops in India are equipped with comfortable, wide benches, some with backs, some without backs. Nearby you can find a public restroom. Not far from the benches there are trade shops, where right in the open air in large cauldrons they fry delicious dough products, for example, samosa. Other products are also tasty, but I do not know their names. Directly behind the shop, there is a small room with tables and benches, there is also a refrigerator with drinks. Travelers sit in the cool at the tables and eat the delicacies they just bought from disposable plates, seasoning them with ketchup.

* * *

The Hindu temple is a separate world, an amazingly beautiful architectural ensemble of marble, granite, limestone, and stone. Even the smallest temple in some lost Indian village is built as a small copy of its grandiose original with the repetition of all the necessary elements of style, with statues of Krishna, Vishnu, Shiva, Ganesh, Kali. In a different way, the statues of the Indian gods are called murti, that is, the “material form of God”, otherwise it can be expressed by the word “idol”. During the installation of the statue, the clergy from the highest caste of the Indian society, the Brahmans, conduct a special pran-pratistha ceremony, during which they ask God to incarnate in this statue. Every detail of the statue, every attribute of it has a specific meaning. For example, the crescent moon in the hair of Lord Shiva is a vessel with the nectar of immortality, it symbolizes control over the mind.

In Hinduism, the spiritual principle is called Brahman. Brahman is the absolute beginning of everything existing in the universe, it is neither good nor bad, it is impassive, infinite and unchanging. It is nirgunam or qualityless. Brahman consists of three gods – Brahma-forces, which creates, Vishnu-forces, which protects, Shiva-forces, which destroys.

You enter the Hindu temple and walk on cool, white, pure marble, walk towards a smiling Indian god and smile at him too, the sweet aroma of Indian incense hangs in the air. The atmosphere of goodness, love envelops like a cloud, and your heart thaws, everything that is outside of the temple is forgotten. Then comes the understanding that you are alone with this Earth with God, that you come into this light alone and live alone, and around you only him, God, exposed in the bodies of people, phenomena and events. It takes the form of different people and circumstances, and each time it asks you its own questions.