The Way Things Were Read Online Free Page A

exchange student; Kris(hna), a Californian Brahmin; and Alexis Dudney, a thin pale-faced scholar of Indo-Persian, who adds Sanskrit to his repertoire of languages the way a sexual adventurer might add a red head to a catalogue of other conquests.
    ‘Skanda Mahodaya!’ Theo Mackinson says, his image lagging. He is from the west coast, Oregon perhaps. He is in his early thirties, with short brown hair and brilliant blue eyes; his handsome face has hard edges, and a glow: a real tranquillity, Siddhartha-like, a mixture of Indic and west-coast serenity.
    ‘Skanda Mahodaya,’ he repeats in a more solemn tone now, then looks about the classroom and thinks better of it. Hurriedly he types a message: ‘Everyone is here at the moment. But I’m very sorry for your loss. If you’d like, we can arrange a chat next week.’
    Skanda: ‘I’d like that very much.’
    Theo: ‘Great!’
    Then aloud, Mackinson says, picking up the thread of an earlier discussion, ‘What we have here, in
The Birth of Kumara
, is a dual narrative. There is the realm of the gods and the realm of men. The two narratives breathe easily next to each other; rarely is it made explicit that one is aware of the other, but we, the readers, on some implicit level, will always sense the presence of the other. Here, in the second canto, the gods, harassed by a demon called Taraka, have been told by Brahma that only a son born of the seed of the great god Shiva can kill Taraka. For this to happen Shiva must fall in love with Uma, the beautiful daughter of Himalaya. Uma, who, like an embodiment of the female principle, is central to this poem. Uma, “whose waist is altar-shaped, with three beautiful folds, which are like a ladder for Love to climb.” The only trouble is that Shiva is deep in meditation and cannot be disturbed. Which is why, at the end of this canto, the gods will recruit Kama – Love – to go into the forest and disturb Shiva’s austerities. And, for this,’ Theo says, with mock solemnity, ‘Love will die. Skanda Mahodaya, 2.10, if you will: ā tm ā nam ā tman ā vetsi . . . You know the self by the self.’ Then, teasing him for his love of cognates, he prods: ‘
Vetsi
? From
vid
, like
veda
, cognate with . . . ?’
    In the world of Indology, these are the cheapest of cheap thrills. But his father had understood.
After the material from which we’re made
, he would say,
this shared history of sound and meaning is our deepest affinity
.
    ‘The Latin
videre
, to see,’ Skanda answers. An old beautiful root, which fuses words of seeing with words of knowing. ‘Related also to the Dutch
weten
, the German
wissen
; in Old English
witan
. And wot: singular present of wit.’
    ‘Right, Skanda Mahodaya!’
    Now, Dudney, the most Indo-European of them all, cannot contain himself either. He says, ‘It’s the source of such words as video and vision. And I read somewhere – in Calasso, I think – that the reason veda has the same derivation is because the seers did not, as is commonly believed, hear the Vedas. They saw them!’
    When it is over, he is drained. Over-caffeinated and sleepless. It is only 10.20 p.m. or so. Not yet 1 p.m. in New York. On his iPad, the Leonard Lopate show is still playing. They are predicting clear skies over Central Park, and temperatures for the first time in the high 70s. He is not homesick, but a feeling of dislocation is setting in. And the flat is eerily unchanged, a monument to his parents’ relationship. When, at length, his mother calls, she says, reading to the bottom of his mood, ‘And so, then? Are you going to just stay on there? Indefinitely? You can, you know. I have no objection. In fact, it’s nice for me to have you there, nice for the flat to be used. But what about your college? Your degree?’
    ‘Well, we’ve broken for the summer. I just had a make-up class via Skype.’
    ‘Great! Well, then, stay. Stay as long as you like. Skype, did you say? I love it: a man sitting in India