THE IMMIGRANT Read Online Free

broke their fixed deposits to help him set up a dentistry practice further down on Rajpur Road. They applied for a one lakh loan from the State Bank of India with their house as collateral to help finance the office equipment.
    This done, they insisted it was time for him to marry, he was already twenty four. Marriage brokers were contacted, the family grapevine alerted, advertisements scanned. Photographs with attached bio-datas began to appear and were judiciously scrutinised before being offered to the son for comment. It would take a few months for her to be found, assessed the parents, but before a year was over they expected to have a daughter-in-law. In anticipation of this, they bought a second-hand car, a Premier Padmini with only thirty thousand miles on it.
    Ananda wanted to keep a driver but the parents insisted such expense was unnecessary. They hardly went anywhere; the driver would sit on their heads the whole day and steal petrol. When the bride came and his practice was more established, they could consider it.
    ‘My practice is established,’ countered the son, ‘and surely you need the car more than my wife, whom nobody has yet seen.’
    ‘May you live forever, may you always be happy,’ murmured his mother.
    The boy felt baffled. It was not a question of his happiness but theirs. ‘No arguments, I am keeping a driver. He can get the fruit and vegetables if nothing else.’
    The young were so headstrong. What did they know about preserving the life of a car, rationing petrol or saving the salary of a driver? The minute they earned they started to spend. That was not the way, the way was to save, to conserve; how else had they managed all those fixed deposits which had supplemented Ananda’s one lakh bank loan? Besides who could trust food bought by hired hands?
    The driver was not kept.
    Ananda took the car to his clinic, and as always, the parents went for their evening walk to Gandhi Park, stopping on the way back to buy fruits and vegetables, selected only after they had been prodded, smelled and haggled over, piece by piece. One fateful day their rickshaw was hit by a truck speeding through town. They died instantly.
    Relatives came. Relatives commented. His parents’ karma, his own karma, what could anybody do? If only they could have seen to his marriage, he needed a wife to cushion such a tragedy. His sister kept crying and pointing out that all he had was her.
    The son’s tears finally came after everybody left. It was his fault, his fault. Why hadn’t he forced his parents to keep a driver? Why were they so paranoid about money? Look where it had led them.
    He flipped through the Gita his brother-in-law had left him. Do your duty, never think of the consequences; life is full of suffering—that he liked. Every time he read life is full of suffering he felt a mournful resonance deep within him.
    Meanwhile his sister took up from where her parents had left off. He was now an even more ideal candidate for marriage: own house, own practice, no parents-in-law to mar this perfect scenario. Offers flowed in, but Ananda had lost the desire to marry. He was marked by fate, happiness was unattainable and he wanted nothing of life.
    Destiny though had other plans. His mother’s brother, the doctor uncle settled in Halifax for the past twenty years, urged him to come to Canada. In India he would be constantly reminded of his loss, whereas if he wanted to make a fresh start, this was a country filled with opportunities. He sent one through the post: admission forms for the Dalhousie University Dental School.
    His sister did not want to lose him to the West. ‘I will never see you. You are all that is left of Ma and Baba.’
    Her husband scolded her for her foolishness. There was nothing in this country, and how often did they meet anyway? He strongly advocated his brother-in-law’s departure. His own luck came through proximity to The Family, and could not be shared. For most of the middle class