Some Notes From The Afterlife…
From the chapter “Dusty and Padma — Vancouver — 1995”, a note from Dushyant’s afterlife
by Arindam Roy and Joyce Yarrow
My name is Dushyanta Sharma, aka Dusty. If you picked up today’s Vancouver Sun, chances are slim to none you read my obituary. They gave me a lousy column inch at the bottom of page thirty. Not that I deserved more coverage, being no model citizen. The obit screwed up most of the facts — I wasn’t born in Surrey and I did not graduate from Burnaby High. That’s no big deal and serves me right for doing such a great job hiding my true identity after arriving in Canada. But when I saw the article on page eight about what went down on Hastings Street, I nearly threw a fit. If my dead self had blood pressure it would have pounded like thunder through these collapsed veins. That reporter got it all wrong and until I set it right there will be no RIP for the likes of me.
‘Her Radiance’ is what I called her. It never failed to make her laugh no matter how much trouble we were in, and there was plenty. I can’t remember a time without knowing her. Crazy huh? How can you rub out thirty plus years of no-good livingin a single minute? But that’s what Padma did. Made me new, made me whole.
It was a dull day. We were smoking whatever we had and joking around outside the Cedar Street Center, a safe injection site better known around here as Fix-It House. Drizzle was amusing himself by tearing down the Get Help Here and Change Your Life posters tacked to the front door. From my personal experience I can tell you that the only kind of help an addict needs doesn’t walk or talk; it’s a needle spike loaded with deliverance that shoots straight into your brain.
We were talking the usual shit, desperate for something, anything to happen. Drizzle came by with some glue and a packet of meth. Spike, Drizzle and me were about to get loaded when a long silver limo slid into the loading zone in front of the Fix-It.
We stood there blinking at the stunning girl who stepped out, enthralled by the way her jet black hair streamed down past her honey-coloured face. With one step she turned that hot pavement into the pathway to heaven.
Looking back, I’m ashamed to say that my first thought about Padma was that she could give a eunuch a hard-on. Some might have called her eye candy but she was more like a full entree with red meat. Any one of us would have eaten her raw, then and there, if it hadn’t been for the police escort that stopped us cold.
And then the newly sworn in, honourable Joginder Singh Rana (JSR) — the first Indo-Canadian Mayor of Vancouver — got out of the limo. JSR had brought this luscious beauty to East Van to flaunt his prowess while pretending to be our saviour.
A few counsellors came out of the Fix-It and herded us inside.
They had splashed mismatched paint over the graffiti and laid a new rug in the game room. Someone had moved the pool table into the corner to make room for a platform. The Director and JSR posed in front of the Canadian flag, droning on about how much in need of saving we were. Nobody heard a word they said.
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Courtesy: Vitasta Publishing[/caption]
We were too busy staring at the angel without wings standing next to them. The Director introduced her. She was called Padma.
The gold sparkling in her dark eyes spread to her face and then lit up the entire room. I had to shut my eyes. Then she sang some songs. Oh! What a voice! All I heard was the pure sound of it and it took me a while to realise she was singing in Hindi — the language of my forefathers. Some ancestor within me, who I’d never even been aware of, began to sing along.
Before Padma sang her second number, most of us were crying inside for a homeland we had never seen. We couldn’t help it. It wasn’t fair. We were helpless babies under her spell.
I didn’t see Padma again for a week or so. This time she came on her own, wearing a sari. If she was trying to play down her looks it didn’t work. I had no idea then why she picked me to talk to. Maybe it was because, being in my forties, I might carry some weight with the youngsters.
“What’s your name?”
“Dusty.”
She looked at me, so I added, “Dushyanta.”
“Where are you from, Dushyanta?” Hearing her say my name like that made something turn inside me.
“Seattle,” I said. “Actually Lynnwood, a crappy suburb a few miles north. My dad drank, had his eye on my sister, Emily. I waited ’til after she got married and then I joined the Army.It was the 70’s and I was about to be drafted anyway. I thought maybe I’d get a better deal if I enlisted. Worst idea I ever had. There was good reefer in Vietnam and lots of reasons to smoke it. I didn’t realise most of the pot was laced with heroin until itwas too late. I brought home an expensive habit and did some bad things to feed it.
“When they sent me home on leave, I got the hell out of the country. Canada turned out to be a great place to be strung out.If your Jones gets too expensive, they put you on methadone, and if you relapse, they make sure at least the needles are clean. I even managed to complete a year at Vancouver Community College.”
“You’ve been through a lot,” Padma said. She had already pulled more information out of me in two minutes than my so-called friends had in the twenty years I’d lived here.
“Are you working for the Mayor?” I asked, and that’s when I heard Padma’s mischievous silver bell of a laugh for the first time.
“It’s more like he works for me.”
Serious or not, it was clear she was someone who could do anything she set her mind to. So why was she wasting her time hanging out with us? As it turned out there were lots of reasons, lots more than any of us could have imagined.
Padma started dropping by the Fix-It every day around the same time. Since we had nothing better to do, she convinced us to let her teach us some Hindi words. “Even a cactus dies if it’s disconnected from its roots.”
It didn’t take much to get our new friend worked up. Once, when she was driving down Main Street on her way to the Center, Padma caught sight of me and Drizzle makin’ our hand-to-hand sales to some stoners. She parked and crossed over, cool as you please, and set to lecturing us like we were her children. “You’ve got your mirrors facing the wrong way. The guys on top are living in million dollar mansions while you do their dirty work.”
She could scold us all day long … she was so delicious to look at we didn’t mind. One of her favourites was, “Don’t you know it’s god’s gift that goes to waste every time you get wasted!”
Yeah, Padma could come off as super serious, until you realised it wasn’t herself she took so seriously. Like when she fell for Drizzle’s scam about having to buy groceries for his mother. He was smart, had majored in psychology before he became adruggie and knew how to take people in. I expected Padma to blow a fuse when she realised he’d tricked her into fronting him drug money. Instead she said, “What’s the use of being named after the national flower of India, if one is constantly reminded that the Hindi word for flower is phul (fool)?”
As it turned out, she was no fool — we were.
“Each of us is here for a reason,” she liked to say. “You have power if you stick together. But your cause must be just.”
“We’ve already got a cause,” Drizzle grunted under his breath. “It’s survival.”
“Staying alive is not enough,” Padma advised. “If you don’t connect with something bigger than yourself your soul shrinks.”
“I like the size of my soul the way it is ma’am — you want to enlarge another part of my anatomy?”
“Drizzle, cool it!” It was Spike who spoke up for Padma. He was an ex-con we all respected. He didn’t say much, and didn’t have to.
“It’s all right,” Padma said. “The more potential some people have the more they hold on to their ignorance. A caterpillar must work up the courage to give up its past life, even if it’s never seen a butterfly.”
“You calling me a worm!” Drizzle had had enough. He looked like he was getting ready to whack her. He might have too, if Spike hadn’t given him ‘the look.’
Padma smiled and touched Drizzle’s arm. “Why does it upset you so much when someone cares about you?”
Excerpted with permission from Arindam Roy and Joyce Yarrow’s River Runs Back published by Vitasta Publishing. You can buy the book here.
Joyce Yarrow is a Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of the Jo Epstein mystery series: Ask the Dead and Russian Reckoning. She is also the author of The Ring of Truth, a literary crime novel. Joyce has worked as a screenwriter, singer-songwriter, multimedia performance artist, and most recently, as a member of the world music vocal ensemble, Abráce. Ms Yarrow resides with her husband and son in Seattle, Washington. Follow her @joyceyarrow or visit her blog, http://joyceyarrow.blogspot.com. Arindam Roy’s career in journalism spans 33 years. He was the Managing Editor of a Citizen Journalism portal, Merinews, and has held senior editorial positions in several publications. As correspondent and bureau chief, he has written extensively for the Times of India, Associated Press and multiple news outlets. He is the co-author of Kumbh: Confluence of Faith, Allahabad: Where the Rivers Meet and Kumbha Mela: Pellgrinaggio Indianao. He lives in Allahabad.