10/14/2010

 

The first time I see her, I am ten years old. My mother has taken me to the library, “The Library with the Piano” as I’ve come to call it, which has slowly become my second home. Every Thursday we come here, and while my mother gives tutoring lessons, I have thousands of books at hand.

 

But for me, all that matters is the shimmering black piano with the gold logo on the side.

 

Today, as usual, I walk over and sit down on the bench, tracing the beautiful black and white keys. I begin to play, and immediately become lost in the experience, because nothing matters except this; this music that makes everything else seem meaningless; that can make me feel like crying and laughing at the same time; that can transport me out of this world better than any book-

 

“What’s that you’re playing?”

 

I yelp, banging my feet against the pedals. 

 

Turning around, I find myself face-to-face with an elderly lady. She’s Indian, like me, with thin, shoulder-length hair, milk-chocolate skin, and a kind face carved with wrinkles. I want to reach out and trace her wrinkles, because they seem so natural on her face, like grooves on a leaf, and she holds herself as if they are battle scars from a long, long time ago.

 

Sitting on the couch next to the piano, she raises an eyebrow.

 

“Oh, it's- it’s ‘River Flows in You’. By Yiruma.” I sputter.

 

“Ah, I see. It’s very nice.”

 

We stare at each other. I notice how she doesn’t have an accent. She must have been born in America, like me. 

 

“Do you play?” I ask. “Piano, I mean.”

 

She looks away. “No. Not anymore.”

 

“Oh. How come you don’t have an accent?” I ask impulsively, cringing regretfully afterwards.

 

She notices, and chuckles, a warm sound that is happy and sad at the same time, like thick caramel lined with salt.

 

“It’s okay. Innocent curiosity is never a crime. I was born in India, actually. We immigrated here when I was two. Just me and my parents, braving a whole new world.” She pauses for a moment, then adds, “And my sister.”

 

“How come you forgot your sister?”

 

“I didn’t.”

 

I wait for further explanation.

 

None comes.

 

I clear my throat. “I’m Maitreyi, by the way,” I say, holding out my hand, “and you are?’’

 

“Roopanjali.” She smiles, shaking my hand enthusiastically.

 

“Roopanjali.” I say the name over and over again in my head. It’s such a pretty name. “The last part sounds like ‘angel’.”

 

She chuckles again, sadder this time.

 

“Well, maybe I’m your angel. Maybe God sent me down here just to spy on you, Maitreyi.”

 

I laugh, and then she laughs, and then we both laugh until our stomachs hurt and my mother comes to pick me up.

 

8/19/2012

 

Roopanjali grins at me. “Twelve years old tomorrow!”

 

“Yeah,” I say softly, tracing the lines on my hand. “But Amma still won’t let me straighten my hair.”

 

Roopanjali gives a hearty laugh that seems to bloom from her chest into mine. “Straighten? I think your curls are beautiful.”

 

I tug at my hair. “It’s too curly. All the girls at school have nice, straight, silky hair.”

 

“So did I. And look, now it has all fallen out!”

 

I try not to look surprised.

 

She goes on. “When I was little, my sister had the hair of the family. Thick, luscious, curly hair. My hair, on the other hand, was as flat as grass. I tried to curl my hair with curlers, rods, anything to make it look like hers… but it wouldn’t even budge. Imagine how I felt when she, like you, began to get ashamed of her hair. I still remember standing in the hallway, looking into her room as she angrily shaved all her hair off. I wanted so desperately to snatch the locks that were slowly drifting to the ground… but all I could do was stand and watch as she willingly banished a part of her identity.”

 

She looks at me then, and silently, I look back.

 

She sighs. “So, Maitreyi, if you really want to, of course you can straighten your hair. But please do not do so just to straighten who you are... in order to fit into the low expectations of society.”

 

The next day, as my parents presented me with a flat iron after years of requests, I just smiled tightly. Only I knew that it would forever remain untouched and unused.

 

10/14/13

 

“You know Chopin? I’m playing two of his pieces at the same time. Fantasie Impromptu, and then this other Etude nicknamed “The Bees”. I keep on mixing them up! ” I groan.

 

Roopanjali laughs.

 

“Roopanjali?”

 

“Mhm?”

 

“Is my name weird?”

 

She looks taken aback. 

 

“Because many people can’t pronounce it,” I add quickly, “I might just go by Mai. Or Maiya.”

 

Her gaze drops. “Sashvitha.”

 

“What?”

 

“My sister’s name. Beautiful, right? Before high school, she was Sashvitha. My beautiful Sashvitha, with a laugh like diamonds clinking together and a smile like the moon in the sky. But then she started saying ‘I go by Sasha’. Soon, simply ‘I am Sasha’. Sasha was born, and Sashvitha was forgotten.”

 

I stare at her, eyes wide.

 

Roopanjali continues. “Sashvitha means “God”. She certainly had a gift from God… maybe she was one herself.”

 

“What was her gift?”

 

“Why, she was a composer! A pianist! She could have gone on to become one of the greats, composing at the age of six… She composed a piece for me, ‘My Little Angel’. I never learned it until it was too late.”

 

Roopanjali looks away, and I, too, feel like crying when I see the wetness in her eyes.

 

12/11/15

 

I finish playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, and collapse in my seat, utterly exhausted. 

 

Roopanjali stares at me, mouth in a perfect circle, and then gets down on her hands and knees and bows her hands like she’s worshiping me.

 

“Roopanjali!” I giggle. “Stop!”

 

“The whole piece? Memorized!” She sits back down on the couch. “Wow. Just wow.”

 

“Isn’t it crazy that you can explicitly tell when each movement begins? This is why Beethoven is a true legend.” I smirk. “At some places, it feels like Beethoven was really drunk when he composed this thing. Drunk pianists are the best pianists, I guess.”

 

I laugh.

Roopanjali stays silent.

 

After a few moments, she clears her throat. “Maitreyi, tell me. What is the difference between scales and arpeggios?”

 

“Well, on scales, you play every note. In arpeggios, you skip a bunch.”

 

“Yes,” she says wistfully. “And do you know how this might relate to living?”

 

I am confused at first, but slowly, I understand. “A person who lives their life like a scale takes it slow. They touch every note, live every moment. But a person whose life is an arpeggio tries to grow up too fast. They skip meaningful moments, and touch only a few notes on their scale. They don’t live their life in full… more like a half-life.”

 

Roopanjali looks into my eyes. “Maitreyi, I want you to live your life like a scale. Don’t get caught up in trying to be like everyone else. Don’t try to grow up too fast, and be yourself. You’ll see many other kids being arpeggios. But remember, arpeggios end much quicker than scales.”

 

All I can think to say is, “What if my life is a hard scale, like E flat?”

 

Roopanjali laughs her beautiful laugh. 

 

“Everyone knows E flat is the best-sounding scale!”

 

11/13/16

 

“Roopanjali, guess who drove herself here,” I singsong, “all by herself…”

 

Roopanjali sighs. “You’re growing up so fast, my little Maitreyi.”

 

“But not too fast.”

 

Roopanjali nods and then smiles. But then her smile vanishes.

 

“I think I should tell you about my sister.”

 

I look up, surprised. This topic is one Roopanjali has skipped away from for years, going silent whenever I mention it. It seems she has concluded now is the time to tell me. But why?

 

Roopanjali takes a deep breath.

 

“My sister taught me how to play the piano. I became so enraptured by her performances that I begged her to teach me, so she did. She was a brilliant composer, too. ”

 

She goes silent. “I had no such talent. I started to become jealous. Sasha... Sashvitha was better than me at everything; she was prettier, smarter, more talented. My parents loved her. She was everything I desired to be. When she was in eighth grade, and I was in fifth, she composed a piece for me. But out of spite, I had no intention, then, of learning her piece.”

 

A tear rolls down her cheek.

 

“In her freshman year of high school, Sashvitha began to… change. She went by Sasha. She completely cut off her Indian culture. And her hair. She would have bleached her skin if she could. She… she stopped playing piano. My parents were infuriated. But I- at first I was glad, in a twisted way. Finally, I had gotten what I always wanted. A sister less loved, less cherished, less amazing than I.”

 

Roopanjali sobs quietly. “But I wanted my sister back. I wanted my Sashvitha...

 

...In her sophomore year, last year, Sashvitha shaved her head. I realized, then, watching her do it, watching her hair drift to the floor, that I needed to bring her back. 

 

That is why, for the past five months, I have sat at the piano bench, learning her composition for me. But I have taken care to only practice when she isn’t here. 

 

She is never at home. It is not hard.

 

The beginning notes have become engraved in my mind. G, C, E, D, E.

 

But I don’t mind. It reminds me of her. The old her.

 

I will surprise her, today, on her seventeenth birthday, December 19th. Surely watching me play her composition, memorized, perfectly, will be enough to change her back. 

 

It has to be. I don’t know what I will do if it’s not.

 

My hands tremble as I pick up the phone and call her.

 

“Hello?” Comes the response. Faintly I hear music. Bass thumping. And yelling. Lots of it.

 

“Sashvitha? Can you come home, please? I- I have something to show you. A present.”

 

“No, no. It’s my birthday! Not your birthday. Happy birthday to me!” She sings, laughing. Something clinks faintly.

 

I should have realized something was wrong by the slur of her words, the unstableness of her speech. But I was young. I didn’t know. 

 

“Please, Sashvitha. I’ve worked so hard for this… just please, please, come home, just for an hour. Please? I- I love you, Akka.”

 

She goes silent. Akka means sister. It’s what I always used to call her. 

 

“Uh, okay, I’ll come home. Gimme an hour. I’m coming.”

 

The call cuts. Hope sparks in my chest, and I feel like crying out of joy. My sister is coming home! I will change her. I will. Everything will go back to normal...

 

...But you see, Maitreyi, when Sashvitha was coming home that night, she got into a car crash. She was killed.”

 

Roopanjali is crying hard now. I wipe her tears with my sleeve, at a loss for words.

 

“I’ve never touched a piano since. How could I? It’s my fault she died. It was all because of me, and a piano.”

 

12/19/17

 

As I walk towards our regular section of the library, I hear music. Piano music. What song is it?

 

Wait.

 

G, C, E, D, E.

 

I run, now, towards the section of the library with the piano, as fast as my legs can carry me. My hair whips behind me, and I must look like a lunatic, but I don’t care, I don’t care.

 

Gasping for breath, I stop at the opening and my hunch is confirmed.

 

Roopanjali sits at the piano, playing her sister’s composition.

 

She sways as she plays, like a flower in the wind, and I find myself swaying with her. There is so much emotion in this one song, years and years of grief and joy and love condensed into music notes. I close my eyes and listen.

I see sunshine glinting off water, peaceful lullabies sung in a foreign language;

 

I see held hands, laughter and joy and the ecstasy of innocence;

 

I see fireworks in the sky, sparklers waving through the air, a festival of lights;

 

I see love, the type of love that can only come from family, the type of love that can never be broken, as hidden as it may seem.

 

Roopanjali looks up at me and smiles, a smile so full of this love that my heart seems to join with hers, and says, “Well, Maitreyi, I realized that while music lasts forever, life does not.”
 

The name “Roopanjali” means “offering of beauty”. Beauty can take on many forms, but the form it takes most is love. Roopanjali has given me so much love that I overflow with it. From her soul to mine, it has passed, and in the future, I will pass this love from my heart to others’.

 

As she resumes playing the piano, my heart fills with wonder and possibility, a wonderful mixture topped with love; love for my angel, my angel whose wings had finally healed and who was now flying in all her glory; love for my family and love for my culture, from whose roots I was born; and love for music, lovely music that would never leave me even if others did.

 

And I decided that my life would not be an arpeggio.

 

It would be a scale.

 

E flat. 

 

__________________________________________________________________________

 

“It’s beautiful, Sashvitha.”

 

My sister has made me something for my tenth birthday. She’s stuck pins on a cardboard square in the shape of a treble clef, and looped strings of every color around them. When I put my face really close, the pins create shadows that seem to go for miles, making the whole piece of art look like a world in itself. 

 

On the side, she’s written something in that cursive writing she does so well.

 

“Life is not forever. Music is.”

 

Sashvitha smiles. “Do you understand, Roopanjali?”

 

“Yes. But what if all the humans in the world die? What happens then?”

 

She laughs, her laugh like sunshine glinting off of water, and says, “Why, then the birds will still be outside whistling and chirping to themselves. That is still music, isn’t it?”

 

I contemplate this for a second. “Okay… and what if all the animals die, too?”

 

“Then the wind rustling the trees and the waterfalls and all of nature’s beauty will still be here.”

 

“And what if everything on Earth is dead? What if every single thing has been burned down to the ground?”

 

“Then we all will be reunited up in heaven, Roopanjali. One with the universe, and one with the music we were born from.”