Free Bodies in Motion by Mary Anne Mohanraj Page B

across the wide wide ocean, to the banyan trees, the coconut palms, the bougainvillea climbing brilliantly pink over his mother’s kitchen window.
    They did not speak the same language. Both Tamil, yes, but her Tamil was not the same as his. Their ancestors had crossed the ocean in small boats, crossing to the island, three hundred years before the birth of Christ, but his family had stayed in the north, immersed in Tamil language and culture, while her family had moved south to the capital, spoken Sinhalese to the servants in the evenings, and Tamil rarely. They murmured their love words in English instead, in the language of knowledge, hope, the future. Not even an errant breeze could carry these words back to their parents. Aravindan kissed Shanthi’s neck , her breast , her navel . His fingers cupped her silk-clad thigh . That word, thigh —like sigh , like the sounds she made as his fingers slid under her shirt, dipped inside her skirt. She never removed her clothes, so neither did he, though he ached for the length of her body to be pressed against his, without such artificial barriers.
    They married in Oxford in the sweet summer, amid the climbing roses and over her mother’s distant wails. The church choir couldn’t drown out the voice in his head, the voice that said he had gone too far. Wealthy high-caste girl and only middling-high-caste boy. Though the father was dead, so what could her mother do to prevent them? If her parents had been wise, they would never have let Shanthi go so far away. Shanthi’s mother cried for three weeks straight, according to her eldest sister’s letters, written in steady hand on translucent blue paper.
    England was caught up in the war, but they built a space for themselves, isolated and alone together. Quiet despite the screech of air-raid sirens; bright, despite the blackout curtains. They studied, they made love—Shanthi became pregnant, and in June they had a daughter. A year later the peace was signed, and their interlude was ended.Aravindan graduated, and there was a job, in America, so far away. He left his wife and daughter in the rain at Oxford that September—Shanthi agreed it was wise. She only had a year left, and they’d hired a woman to help her—soon Shanthi would finish, and then she and the baby could join him. He took the long boat trip, started research in Boston, working with bright minds, pushing harder and harder, and how he longed for his wife, for her curries almost as tasty as his mother’s, though always somewhat strange, ginger instead of garlic, fenugreek along with the fennel. He longed for the way she moved through the halls, swaying like a dancer, for the length of her body (only in the dark, but that was enough), pressed against the length of his. His head hurt at night; he lay on the rough wood floor in the dark, a wet cloth on his forehead, trying to think of math, thinking, instead, of her. Shanthi, sweet and creamy cool, like a mango lassi, chilled with ice. He was lying on the floor when the letter came that November. She was pregnant again.
    Aravindan wanted to go to her then. To feel her belly swelling with his son. To rub coconut oil onto its sore stretching. To hold her in the mornings when the shudders racked through her. But the ocean was wide, the journey long, and she said that she could manage. It was a crucial time, a most important time, with his work getting harder, harder, harder. And more exciting too, he must admit. At times it seemed that perhaps he might love this after all, the quest to find out what and why and how. To unravel creation, to find a piece of the grand puzzle, to understand the underlying structure. He sent her letters, long letters full of English words. Words like love and heart and dearest . Words like patient and work and soon . Shanthi sent him pressed petals of roses from her small English garden, sketches of his first child, Kili, his daughter.
    Two children were