LITMIR.BIZ

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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.

      According to Indian philosophy, the soul is ignorant. It will be reborn again and again, participating in the cycle of life and death, which is called the “wheel of the Sansara”, until it knows the truth. One soul in every life is born in different bodies – it can be a microbe, an insect, an animal, a man, at the end of rebirth a pure soul becomes a part of Brahma. In the process of circulation, the soul goes to purgatory, where it is to redeem sins for the acts committed, or, on the contrary, it finds peace for good deeds in life.

      * * *

      So, we went to the temple. My future husband’s sister and I stayed inside, and he and his father left after talking with the temple attendant. I and his sister and her child sat for a long time on a clean white marble floor.

      What we did and why we sat there, I did not understand, there was no one to ask, his sister did not know English, except for some well-known words, and I did not know Hindi to ask her. From time to time we smiled sweetly at each other and looked at each other sympathetically, complaining about the incredible heat. A fan was driving hot air. They brought me a glass of fresh juice, which I drank with pleasure. A cool stream of cold drink was most welcome.

      In India, they make juice right in front of a client. There is a small shop on the street with ladles and a juicer like a meat grinder, near the shop there are a lot of fruits. The shop assistant immediately prepares a juice from any fruit you like.

      Two hours passed, and then a young man came with his father. I was asked to go to the altar. The priest hung us on the neck in a flower garland and said something in Hindi. Then each of us put a spot on the forehead with red paint. I thought it was some kind of preliminary proceedings before the wedding, because in weddings usually there are many guests in fancy dresses.

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