Free As Sweet as Honey by Indira Ganesan Page A

the market so you have something left over to spend again. It’s making sure all the channels of cash flow are open, that nothing is caught, creating blockage, creating snags. It’s making sure that as well as a way out, there is always a way in. Entrance is as important as that Exit sign that’s got you so fixed—oh, I know all about it, how at the movie theater, you spot that sign first. And why not?—it’s so lit up, so red, so bright. It’s for emergencies, after all, for fires and power outages, for stampedes, any unforeseen circumstances. But the Entrance sign is important, too. That one is green, green for ‘go,’ green for ‘hello.’ Theentrance sign that lets you in, no matter what color, what class, the thumbs-up in our lives. You girls don’t know how hard we fought for your independence. You don’t know how it was back then, with the British. You don’t know.”
    And it was true what Auntie Pa was telling us: we didn’t know. Rasi and Sanjay and all of us, girls and boys both, we just felt so free and lucky those days. We were nine, and ten, and eleven. The world really was our oyster, ours for the taking. We did like to run, we liked to shout, and we liked to sing at the top of our voices. Grown people like Aunt Pa were mystifying. They liked to drink tea, they liked to talk, they had eyes so creased with tears and fears and trembling. It made no sense to us. But at one time, Nalani says, they were young too, all of them, in braids and rag-tail hair, screaming and running and shouting for the sheer joy of it. But the years made one quieter, in our family anyway, it made for a steadier gaze, a firmer walk. And all at once, we hugged Auntie Pa, who batted us away, like she was annoyed, and told us to stop making ourselves pesky, so we ran off to find Grandmother.
    We found her in the garden, Grandmother, watering her plants. A new one had bloomed. She called it Chandra, for the moon, and indeed its white, round bloom looked so soft and heavenly, just like the full moon. But softer than the moon, too, which can appear harsh sometimes, all silvery and cold in the sky. This flower was more yellow, creamier, like we could cuddle into it as if it were a pillow and coverlet, and sleep quite soundly, if we were small like Thumbelina, say, or Tom Thumb.
    “There is a saying,” said Meterling, “that the gods rain down gifts and tangle up our brains.” Why else (she thought but did not say, as did we) would the gods give me such a man as Archer, only to take him away? Again and again, all overthe world this happens, this suffering. A baby dies, the parents overcome by grief, overwrought by pain.
    Grandmother takes in all of this hurt, all of these questions, and shrugs her shoulders. In that shrug lies the way of compassion, of not knowing. But when one is in the throes of emotion, a shrug is hard to come by. A shrug is ancient; it is a way of acknowledging the pain, of moving past it while acknowledging it, of recognizing that many things are out of our control, that the world is impermanent, that love and loss go hand in hand.
    As children, our tradition dictates that we be sheltered from all this pain and suffering, sheltered, as it turns out, from the human condition itself. But kids are smart. We figure it out soon enough. We know the grown-ups don’t tell us everything, that their ways and methods are baffling, but they are kidding themselves if they think we don’t know about suffering. We see it all the time. But as children, perhaps, at least outwardly, we recover more quickly.
    Sanjay, Rasi, and I were a team of sorts, a triad of playmates who took turns helping each other to figure it out. When you grow up in an extended , stretchy family, the mothering and fathering is done in batches, but there is also a great deal of freedom. When there are only two parents and one or two children, the attention can be focused, but on the island of Pi, we just ran around like rowdies, like we were