My brains are fried—fried as beans—and so tired from jets lagging and wagging; hey, I'm time traveling. It's been fifty-four hours since I slept, and (as Gramps used to say) I slept like a baby, tossing and turning and crying for Mommy. The plane lands, I look out the window and see the outdoors spinning upside down, round and round. I’ve woken up in another century, somehow sittin’ next to my beloved grandparents. It's 1966 and Nana's pregnant; my mother is still a fetus.
Welcome to India: home of the mysterious and grand.
The locals deplane the Emirates flight in a scurry, can’t wait to get that hot curry, and needless to say: Grandma’s worried. So many people roam all over. They be goin’ crazy, cutting in line and rushing through the exit security. We never seen anything like it. It’s a total frenzy, like something’s erupting, a timequake’s coming. Lotta chaos for the baby in her belly. Meanwhile, I can’t help but notice so many bare feet on tile floor. This really bothers me; it’s unsanitary. Our luggage is then thrown to the side in a heap. I’ve traveled through generations and I’ve had it with this shit. But Grandpa’s at my side looking slick, black hair and sunglasses, while Grandma’s so young and wrinkle-free she looks like a blonde Jackie Kennedy. What a beauty she is in this year of nineteen sixty-sick. I love looking to my side and seeing them step in line with me. Look just like their photographs, they do, but without the grain and fleshier too.
Suraj, my New York roomie, waits outside by the curb. He stands tall, leans back against a vintage ride—a red Beetle—with cigarette smoke slipping out of his grin like he’s being advertised. His beard reeks of an American Spirit as we bro-hug and greet. Nana’s hand requires a bow and kiss, because she’s royalty.
Suraj’s personal chauffeur drives us down the city streets, where lanes are only a suggestion, and the Marutis, motorbikes, and yellow three-wheelers fit in whatever space they can to the point that I’m surprised there’s not more accidents, everyone forcing their way through, just hoping other cars get out of their way, but hey, they do. I guess it works! I’m still here. And my grandparents have seen it all too. I feel comfort knowing that, separated by decades, we’re now in the same space, in this totally new place, each of them on my other side, me in the middle seat, all of us peering out the windows at the half-constructed buildings. Were they abandoned? Or is nothing ever finished? To be continued.
I lean into my grandmother and say, “Crazy that I’m seeing things my mom now never did. She was only ever here on the inside.”
“Huh? Who?” Grandma says. She doesn’t know who I am yet. Doesn’t understand this strange new setting, but it feels familial.
We arrive at Suraj’s house. It’s like a minimalist castle, five stories and their own security gate, but only the necessities inside: beds lie perfectly centered in each room, barely off the floor, no sheets, Zen-like. Suraj’s mother welcomes us with irani chais on saucer plates, as sweet as she. Then we eat dal makhani with paratha, mhm delish, savoring the spices but later flowing out like lava. Still, so good while it lasted. Meanwhile, Suraj eats chicken biryani with the concentration of a panther, leaning into his plate, fingers and thumb pushing food together with precision, scooping it right into his wide-open mouth as his eyes scan the room with a total magnetism.
“Boy, he sure is handsome!” Grandma says, with a wink.
Grandpa’s jealous, but I nudge him not to worry. He and Nana are in it for the long haul, so in love and adventurous, even as they age, that I’ll always be aspiring and following after them, sending postcards home, gramming up my phone, so Mom’s like whoa, now where’d you all go?
“So, what’s the agenda?” Gramps says. He’s as practical as taxes.
“Next morning we’ll bus it in a Volkswagen to Kerala, tropical land!” Suraj says, his mouth full of rice and chicken and bread.
And so: the trip begins with the smell of hashish, as Suraj’s hippie friends hotbox the van, passing around a joint as we drive. My grandparents sit in the back, coughing and out of place. They’re from a different generation, too old for this counterculture revolution, but legend goes my grandma kept a single spliff in a plastic baggie just in case they ever wanted to try it one day. I tell her they never will but that when she’s old and sick and medicinal is legal, she’ll eat half a gummy. She won’t like it. Tame Impala’s on the stereo, giving me those apocalyptic dreams; I’m totally hazy. Kevin Parker sounds just like John Lennon and I forget this isn’t really the 60s, but it’s cool that Suraj’s Indian friends like the same music as me.
My grandparents and I are the only ones here with peach skin, and passersby glare in surprise. Yet the billboard models still look more like us, like light sheaths are draped over their face. This makes me uncomfortable. At one point, some kids must think I’m famous, they ask my name and where I’m from, start Snapchatting us. (Somehow the Trekkie-tech don’t even phase Nana & Gramps.) This makes me feel glamorous, and that makes me uncomfortable.
I look down at my legs and they’re glowing, their outline radiant and pristine. I feel how small they really are, like a child’s, how condensed the muscles in them are, and how insignificant I am. I look into my grandparents’ eyes and they know what I’m talkin’ about. I understand I owe these legs to them and together we are one, I realize that all is love, and then remember I been mixing things up.
The high is at its peak now and we’re at a secluded beach, being served mini bananas and coconut water with straws sticking out the shells. Suraj and co. are floating in the sea as the sun sets. The water looks like paint drops. I go to the yoga center and meditate with Ram Dass; it’s real spiritual. I open my eyes and Grandma’s in lotus, bare belly protruding. She grasps her stomach and yells, “the baby’s kicking!” Grandpa races over, his flat hands out, ready to touch. I just shout in exclamation, “Jill!” I’m glad she’s still making her presence known. They look over at me, confused; they don’t know who I’m talking about. I wonder if I’ve given them the idea for my mother’s name, if this is one of those weird time travel loops. Then, out of nowhere, the Fab Four appear in our hut with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, doing Transcendental. The time is right, I’m weeping, and I inspire George to write my favorite song on their best album (it’s the cover where all is white). They offer us psychedelics, but I refrain. I mean, I’m with my grandparents for god sakes.
Besides, my mind’s already all over the place.
And McTaggart’s A-paradox states that the present is the present in the present is the future in the past is the past in the future and the past is the past in the present is the present in the past and the future is the future in the present is the present in the future and the past in the past is past past, even farther past, the future in the future is future future, Futurama future, and so what even is the present, right?
We drive straight to New Delhi overnight, the bus beaming forward like a rocket ship, bleeding rainbow colors. I can’t understand why sitting still for hours makes me so tired, but that’s time travel, always moving from next moment to next—
We stop at the Akshardham Hindu temple. Pause for: Breath. No pics for reverence. I marvel at the beauty of its grand design, the intricacies of its marble carvings. This is why I love going to old religious buildings: I feel the presence of ancient history, like I’m one with it, right up in its face. I imagine how such immense majesty probably had to be built on the backs of slaves hundreds of years ago, how it’s simultaneously a symbol of overindulgent wealth as well as spiritual devotion, and how pain and greatness oft go hand in hand. God, I’m genius. Then I find out this place was built in like 2006. Still pretty impressive.
A swami meets with our group in a private room. His robe is orange and revealing, his belly as round as my grandmother’s. He speaks of how God is an aura, a kindness, passed from person to person; it matters not if you’re Hindu, Buddhist, or Christian. And I feel it, time slowing down, as he stares down our souls with his eyes and his well-spoken words, as our heads turn from side to side, each pair of eyes passing down to one another, my grandmother to my grandfather to me to the many blazed red eyes to Suraj’s panther ones, so focused, like he’s eating food.
From there, it’s straight to the Taj. Our Muslim tour guide keeps eye contact with my Irish grandmother the entire time, never daring to address me or granddad. Nana’s white but fair, freckles and blonde hair. I lean in and whisper to Gramps, “I wonder if our guide knows we’re Jewish.” It’s all tribal. At one point, none of us—Jew, Muslim, Irish—would have been, will be, are welcome in the US. Mom later tells me, in future future tense, my grandparents didn’t even like this trip because of India’s poverty, the little children tugging at their waists. But I’m waking up, the high’s declining, and I’m recognizin’ that I frequently pass homeless pleas on New York City streets, shedding my empathy. America’s not so different. Cultures differ, but societies are the same the world over. I see a group of women standing in unison and wearing long black cloaks with only slits for their eyes; it’s striking. We lock gazes, as I move from pair of eyes to pair of eyes, my pupils dilating, my sensations heightening.
We enter through a shadowy archway, and see the mausoleum, framed by curved black darkness, gleaming white in the distance. It’s even better than the pictures. Legend goes emperor Shah Jahan constructed it to honor his wife Mumtaz. While imprisoned by his son in the Agra Red Fort, Shah Jahan would look out at his wife’s tomb in perfect view, arms reaching out to it but separated by a vast distance. I look at my grandparents, now dead, but in this moment holding hands and in awe of what rests before them, in total bliss. I’m reaching out to them too, decades afar. With Suraj, I recreate their family famous photograph in the garden, standing in front of one of the world’s seven wonders, standing in the place of two of the others. Suraj wraps his arm around me, lovingly, while I wear a white button-down like Nana. We smile and the tour guide snaps an iPhone still. I feel their presence, knowing they once stood here too. They’ve been passed down and rest inside me now. I feel you. I miss you. I wish this was real. But time doesn’t stop, and I must keep traveling forward.
The earth beneath us starts to shake, time’s about to break. I’m dreaming those apocalyptic fantasies. Tourists scramble and scream, like they’re rushing through airport security. There’s a crack in the ground between my feet, a crack in the fabric of it all, and it feels soft, like my grandfather’s cashmere. Soft, like letting go and falling deep deep into baby sleep.
m.m. gumbin is a 26-year-old writer and filmmaker from Tucson, AZ. He is an MFA candidate in Fiction at Vermont College of Fine Arts and a graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts. He currently lives and works as a bookseller in Los Angeles, CA. This is his first publication. Twitter: @mmgumbin Instagram: @mmgumbin
Photo provided by the author.