Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine # 14

Sunny in India There are so many people in India that we can afford to have three guides: Sunny, our guide; Rohan, his assistant; and the bus driver.

Driving in India requires its own dedicated resource. Like some Bollywood dance, it’s all color and motion: cars, motorcycles, trucks, buses, bicycles, tuk tuks, carts, pedestrians and, naturally, the sacrosanct cows. Our Sikh driver is unflappable, his eyebrows and turban fixed. Roadblocked in Old Delhi by a too short overpass and sandwiched in a glacial stream of cars, our driver somehow maneuvered the vehicle to freedom, inch by inch, gingerly avoiding the cows. Even Sunny congratulated him afterwards, in words we do not understand.

Conspicuous signs hang on the backs of trucks, ordering “Blow horn!” Our driver obliges, honking to say, “Excuse me, just letting you know. I’m behind you.”

Remarkably, there’s little hostility; it’s pointless to yell and scream over the Bollywood soundtrack playing in everyone’s head.

Rohan also does not speak English, except for words like “sir” and “ma’am,” which sounds more like “mom” in his adopted British accent. His job, when we climb onto the bus, is to offer a squirt of antibacterial gel and a cold drink.

We are in India, the six of us, my husband, his sister, his brother, and their respective spouses. It is a chance for the siblings to return to their youth, make new happier memories in the wake of their mother’s and eldest brother’s deaths.

In Agra Rohan accidentally drops a water bottle, the plastic tube rolling on the bus floor towards the Taj Mahal and Sunny’s feet. Ever helpful, Nellie in our group bends down to retrieve it only to hear Sunny say, “Leave it.” Faster than a family of frogs, we all jump to conclusions. Sunny looks ahead, ignoring the water, and begins his story about the labor of love that produced the Taj Mahal.

In that moment, Sunny reminds me of my mother-in-law. She had grown up in Shanghai as the daughter of the family that owned the salt mines, one of the key ingredients of soy sauce. Like the royal family, she had a nanny for each of her four children. Of course, once she moved to California, her children raised themselves. She