Free Inheritance by Indira Ganesan Page A

life, and yet I’ve had fortune beyond my expectations.”
    She told me that she had begun writing in the eighth grade, that she had tried her hand at protest plays in Oklahoma and then New York, but the audiences were small and there were always squabbles among the actors. She taught drama for a while in a community college but gave that up when her daughter was born. She was writing romances when her husband asked for a divorce, and two years later, she moved to Pi. Friends of hers had recommended it to her as a restful tropical island and had told her also about Guru-ji, a meditation leader and a follower of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. At first I thought it was the same guru that Richard had spoken of, but I soon realized my mistake. This guru just led Yoga and classes on breathing and also performed some religious functions.
    It occurred to me that foreigners latched onto gurus when they came to the island because it gave them a sense of community and some direction to their lives in a foreign place. Maria told me she was a Buddhist, a practitioner even in the United States, when the conversation veered toward religion. Foreigners liked to speak of religion more than islanders did, I thought, but maybe that wasn’t the case.
    My own beliefs were varied. Raised a Hindu, I took part in the daily prayer and ritual in my aunts’ household and in my grandmother’s home. I grew up withthe images of the idols, and loved to hear the stories about them over and over. I didn’t dwell on ideas of God and religion, though; it was just a part of ordinary existence.
    I thought of Jani, and all of that Christianity, that Catholicism contained in her. Where did it spring from? My schools in Madras and hers in Delhi were either Catholic, nondenominational, or Muslim. In our books in English, the writers often wrote of Christians and heathens, and in my thirteenth year, I realized that I must be a heathen in their eyes. It was a shocking discovery and made me leery of Christianity. But Jani was befriended by one of the nuns at her college, Sister Ava, who gave her a Bible.
    The Bible was illustrated, and Jani showed me the pastel renderings of the Holy Family. I thought Mary looked a little like Jackie Kennedy, dark haired, elegant, noble. There was a story about a good Samaritan who helped a fallen man, and Jani told me about his piety in helping strangers. She made Catholicism sound attractive, but still I wanted her to believe in Hinduism, in our gods. Gently, Jani admonished me, asking, “Aren’t all gods equal?” Modern Hinduism, after all, absorbed Jesus into its fold, Buddha too, and Muhammad.
    When I had earlier spoken to Richard about it, he talked of Existentialism, of the nonbelief in God. Atheism and Agnosticism. He believed in a higher power, but not in organized religion as manifested in the twentiethcentury, or even in the Middle Ages. I had read of the Middle Ages in the West, and told him that I admired King Arthur and Galahad and the quest for the Holy Grail, but I still liked Hinduism best.
    “That’s equally offensive as not liking Catholicism.”
    “But I do like Catholicism.”
    “But you like Hinduism best.”
    “Yes, but—”
    “But what?”
    “I don’t know, Richard. I think it’s dangerous to step away from the religion in which you were raised and embrace something new.”
    “Maybe it’s the danger that attracts Jani.”
    “But she’s scared of marriage!”
    “She wouldn’t be the first. Maybe she chose the Catholic God and the convent to safely unleash all the terror inside her. Maybe she could only express her courage by running away.”
    And then I thought of my mother and the possibility of her courage in running away from me. Maybe I represented domesticity to her, responsibility, yet how was this courageous? Running away seemed cowardly.
    “The I Ching speaks of retreat, the courage to know when to step back from battle and gather strength before reentering the fray later,” said