On a deserted train platform in New York City, the burden of true valor falls on a young daughter's small shoulders. After her mother makes her promise she will never be a victim of her circumstances, she abandons the little girl, leaving her to walk alone through life. Karisma is a blank slate. Her destiny is unknown. Years later, Karisma is riding the A train with other vagrants; a mendicant priest; and her sister, Pam, when she feels a man observing her with an interest that is anything but casual. Although she finds it perplexing, Karisma has no idea that the mysterious man has been secretly watching her for a few days-and that he has already crafted an ingenious plan to help alleviate her challenging circumstances. But when the man who claims to be a recruiter from Princeton begins a conversation with Karisma, everything changes. He knows her name, and he knows she is a genius. In this compelling tale, a young woman is trapped between becoming a victim of her circumstances and the life her mother dreamed of for her. As she embarks onto a journey through time, she must decide whether to walk into the darkness of self-destruction or into the light of a new life.
Paradoxically a Woman
By T. DarshaniUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2012 T. Darshan
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4759-3453-3 Chapter One
It was time. The end of the road is never farther away than it is before you take the first step along it—and it was time to take that step. Even as the tears burst from her eyes and ran suddenly down her face, the mother knew it was time. And still each tear fell with philosophical patience, each giving her a chance to think things over. She wiped them away before taking a knee on the scathing concrete, before gazing into the infinity of her daughter's eyes. They appeared brighter than her own ever had. Never did they fail to convey something deeper about life, something she'd yet to figure out. As with the innocence of fertility, they were still untouched by the scars of time. For they were buoyed with a splendor that seemed beyond time, one that illumined greatness and sublimity, something from which authenticity emanates and courage peers out; they illumined the woman inside her.
"People live long after they die, sweetie. You know that, right?" the mother whispered in a soft voice. The curious spectators walking on the train platform, their inquiring eyes and subtle accusations, were the least of her concerns. Right now she was only concerned about her daughter. "They live right here." She pointed to the inner sanctum of her daughter's heart. "And they live right here," she said, now tapping on some metaphysical point around her daughter's stomach. Of this higher point, most ten-year-olds were unaware. But not her daughter. She'd encountered real pain, and she'd survived its worse blow.
"You reach down here if you ever get lost." She engulfed her daughter's hand in the palm of her own, placing both hands near her daughter's heart. "If you ever feel forgotten, you reach for your gravity, baby. You're a woman, and so you're born strong. Reach for your gravity; it's there."
Tears resurged, aging the mother's face with every drop.
Watching helplessly, her daughter suddenly remembered what her mother once said about crying. It's healthy to tear up every now and again; just let it out and release the sweat on your soul. But this time was different, her daughter knew. This time her mother wept.
The little girl placed her half empty can of 7 Up to the side, wiped the trailing tears from her mother's eyes, and attempted to understand where all this was coming from.
"Decisions are made in life, baby. You make them, and you stand by them," the mother declared.
The little girl could only offer a blank stare. Her mother was talking randomly again, the clarity in her words only faint.
"They're what make us who we are, sweetie. They define us in the end," she continued, sweat now pouring down her forehead, a mark of the unrest in her calmness. She could see the confusion in her daughter's eyes, but she had to get this out. "Don't let anybody tell you different, you hear me. Through thick and thin, you stand by your decisions—don't let 'em tell you different." Her throat became heavy with the weight of her words. "We women always have a choice. The powers that be have stopped us of a lot, but we have a choice and must make a decision. Don't you lose sight of that, baby. Don't let this world limit you by losing sight of that."
Her mother was far too pretty to be this serious, her daughter thought quietly to herself. Besides, people didn't take mothers seriously. Her daughter watched closely as her mom stood in a deep pause, seemingly collecting her thoughts. Sometimes she did that—just stood there like a sticker in place. And sometimes the girl would mimic her mother, and the two would stand there like human statues, seeing who could stay frozen in time, without flinching, longer. Her mother usually won.
Suddenly, her mother drew another deep, long breath. Looking at her baby girl was like looking into a mirror, its brighter side. She ran her fingers through her darling's curly hair; parted its brown, wavy bangs; and stood in admiration of her little Indian princess.
"You're such a pretty little thing, you know that?" she asked with a smile on her face.
This new sweet tone of endearment, after the mixture of insistence and patience in her mother's previous words, was no longer disturbing, and the girl was no longer mystified. She simply nodded her head up and down in approval, as though her mother was stating the unassuming obvious. "I know that, Mom; you know I know that."
"You're almost as pretty as your mommy!" she teased her daughter.
"I'm just as pretty as you, Mommy. Sometimes you even say I'm prettier!" The little girl yanked on her mother's jeans, as if to say stop pulling my leg.
Neither the pounding racket chiming from the train nor the disembodied clamor shrilling about the platform mattered. Only her daughter did. To love someone more than yourself meant she mattered—always.
Suddenly, her fleeting thoughts halted and her thinking grew reflective. She contemplated the road that lay ahead of her baby girl. A free road. No veil. Only America, she thought. There would, of course, be hurdles; there always were. But American hurdles in particular could spin a person right off the path. They were like whirlwinds that twisted your sense of direction into a fermented disarray. That was the danger of too much freedom. Trying to determine whether the American experience would have room for her daughter's hyperactive imagination had brought her to the brink and back, only to revisit the brink again. America's expectations were so euphorically high; its reality was much more sobering.
Still the idea was to be free. She'd brought her daughter here to experience freedom. But now her doubts begged to differ; could the certainty of social freedom somehow provide true self-liberation? She begged and pleaded with herself, worrying that the essence of the Indian culture could never reconcile itself with the superlatives of Western thought. So maybe she was dumb for peeling back Maya's veil so soon. Her daughter's eyes were still so innocent, and the world already so corrupt. Yes, she was dumb for this.
What had she done? It all dawned on her that she had made one big mistake. The veil protected. That was its function. It screened the pain, preventing it from channeling into suffering. But now she had removed the veil, and as the veil was thrown to the side, so was the person behind it thrown to the world. No crutch would be available; nothing would break her daughter's fall. To catch the American dream, her daughter would have to hit the road running—she would have to wipe the dirt from her knees, hope her achilles was strong, and pray that the air in her lungs was stubbornly stout.
New York moved at the speed of light. Hesitate and you would be left behind. The mother knew this, and so she had done her best to show her daughter how to walk the intellectual track across the highest of ideological tightropes early on. She had paid special attention to proper technique and crafty footwork. Her daughter would have to learn to walk across the wire on her own; we all learned that on our own. Yet reality stretched out, the wire suspended in front of her; every inch made across it would only strip another inch from the veil—from their heritage, the mother felt, unweaving the Indian essence into separate strands until it chanced becoming but a traceless memory.
But there was no turning back now. Henceforth, forward could be the only direction, and that meant never turning back to peep over your shoulders. It also meant that decisions were made, and...
