Things would have been different back on Earth. We would have laid him out, bhasma marking his forehead, clothed in white and covered in flowers and jewels, his head pointing southwards to the land of the dead. I would have cried along with his mother, chants rising behind us in the air. The Shmashana, his cremation ground, would have been in Hardiswar, on the banks of the Ganges. We had the money to afford it. Money was never the problem in our marriage. He had showered me in gold from the start. His eyes had been dark and large, his smile white as he had slid the elaborately scrolled bracelet onto my slim brown wrist one sunny day in front of the university's library. He was a business major, a rich boy who would soon take over his father's multi-million company. I was a physics major. The metal had been cool against my skin. I had cried. Not out of fear, out of luck, I was so in love and so happy to have found him. 356 days later I found myself dressed all in red, matching the kumkum dot on my forehead at our betrothal ceremony. His family had seemed distant, polite smiles on their faces. My mother looked shabby and overworked next to his mother. I was embarrassed of her. She had refused to wear anything new and wore the formal green and gold sari she had worn to my sister's wedding. I remember stressing over the holes in the hem. My family had crowded around, rustic and backwards next to these suave and sophisticated creatures of 25th century India. We had celebrated in the cold and rainy monsoon season, for 13 days of loud drumming music, bright vivacious color and spicy food. The whole village turned out. My aunt Priya had been the only one frowning. She warned me on the third day that it would leave me with unhappiness. Money did not equal love she said. I had smiled and laughed, patting her hand under the lamps and umbrellas, reassuring her that he had loved me and only me. Every month for the first year we were married he had brought me a new piece of jewelry. Bracelets shackled my wrists, gold clasped around my neck, pinpricks of sun in my black hair and gold thread running through my sari. I had never been the ideal Indian daughter; but I promised Dev I would be the ideal Indian wife.
If we were home, our son, had there been one, would have sprinkled the water and ghee onto the body. He would have had the honor of lighting the torch. Afterwards we would have bathed in the sweet waters of the Ganges, purifying ourselves, drums in the background. I had done so with my family after my father's death when I was 8. It had been warm and liberating and I had seen the souls traveling down the river, dark smears flying southward under the blue. I had tried to chase them, but my mother held me with an iron grip, tears running down her lined face. But here there was no son, no family, no south, nothing. Only impure death and the overbearing lack of warmth hemmed in by silver walls with the dark expanse of space waiting outside.
The second in command to the captain, enters my cabin 35 days after leaving Vespa. He is not happy to be transporting a corpse all of the way back to Earth. His eyes tell the truth, he finds me strange, he finds my customs strange; he tells me the body must be ejected out into the cold regions of space. They are strange, superstitious, they do not understand I cannot let my husband just be ejected out into nothing. Tradition demands his spirit must go home to India to make its final transition from ghost to where our ancestors rest. I shake my head. His hand touches mine for a brief second, hesitant, as he apologizes and begs me to reconsider. He's nice enough. I raise my eyes to meet his blue ones. I am young still and even though he is not Indian, he is attractive with his pale skin and squinting blue eyes. I lower my own. These are not proper thoughts; these are not the thoughts of a good wife aboard a ship still carrying the cold body of her husband. He leaves the cabin and in a sudden fit I start to slide my bracelets off my arms. One by one they land on the dark floor with a happy colorful 'clink'.
Weeks pass in this state and I start to come alive again, I am still young, I am still alive. And Earth feels so very, very far away. I stay in my cabin; I'm the only passenger to come so far from Earth and I prefer silence to chatter. The blue eyed man, occasionally checks in on me. He's growing warmer. He is still not happy at the cargo. He shakes his head, still not understanding tradition. Most westerners do not like bodies, bad luck they say. He is no different. I begin to tell him of Dev. My heart feels fine in the telling and I feel different, like none of this had ever happened. Yet he is kind and I find myself smiling occasionally in his company. He brings me dinner more often than not as an excuse. We are still so far from Earth. 120 days to go until we are home.
Dev had never sent pictures or vids of his time there on Vespa. He had left only a year after our wedding, business ventures, he promised me it was the only thing that could tear him away from me. At his insistence, I went to stay with his mother and father in Bombay, the good daughter in law. My belly stayed flat and his letters started to grow scarce. At first they came once a week, then it slowed to small, vague one lined notes enclosed with business contracts for his father to look after. I only knew vaguely what these business ventures had consisted of. My grief had been silent when the final note had come. Killed by a freak accident in the far reaches of our galaxy. On a planet named Vespa. The family cried and I had not cried with them. Three days later, they still cried and I realized that someone had to go collect his body. I wiped my dry eyes, packed and told them I would fetch my husband home. No they told me, it's not done. A woman must wait. You have no sons, send his brother. I shook my head, to their shocked faces. I will go I tell them. I will fetch him home for Antim Sanskar, for his funeral. There's no stopping me, they have realized in the five years that I was not the submissive Indian daughter in law they wanted. I left in October, the air cooling. That was 221 days ago.
Vespa had been small, a tan speck in black, black space. I had stared at it through the portholes in the shuttle when we had approached. It had been 154 days since I set out from Earth. The world had been hotter than India in the summer, dry and desolate. The settlement reminded me of my old village; small round tan huts clustered together, low to the ground. Their roofs were domed and the winds whistled through them like noisy ghosts. Like the vids of old movies set on far away desert planets. My blue sari had snapped around me, my throat stalled as a small group had approached with a long silver tube. Dev Chopras. Prodigal son. Wayward husband. Dust had swirled around. They loaded it onto the grey shuttle and the crowd started to disperse. I signed a form for the foreman of my dead husband's company, my head politely bowed as I accepted his apologies. What does one say in these cases? Before I left I had looked back to see a young woman, her stomach rounded under her blouse, she must of been 150 days or so along, holding onto a squirming boy with large dark eyes. The wind tossed her blonde hair and our eyes had met in silence. She smiled and turned away.
His name is Jon. His blue eyes are light and his hair dark brown. He speaks with an English accent. We spend every night eating dinner, well whatever amounts to night here. After every dinner, I take off another piece of jewelry. It too heavy. It's been 298 days since I left Earth. I've warmed to Jon. My thoughts keep drifting back to the woman on Vespa, her parting smile unsettling. My thoughts wander from there to Dev's crate in the cargo bay. I look up over the grey nutrient cubes Jon and I are eating. They taste plain, no spices, no sweetness, nothing, just paste and mush. I don't mind so much. I voice a question. He says I can check Dev's tube later, quietly, after some thought. I thank him. The blonde woman and her child remain on my mind. It's distracting. After dinner we head down and I stare at the silver tube waiting in the middle of the tan crates and boxes, all stuffed with seed, medicine and food for the colonies we stop at. It seems strange that while they carry life, I carry death. Stevens, a young African, presses a button up top and with an air filled hiss, the top slides back. I stare inside at the stiff face. A white cloth covers the face and I peel it back hesitantly, holding my breath. Black hair, brown skin. The eyes are closed respectfully. Tears do not come. I feel cold and emotionless. My world threatens to slide upwards but I hold on. My arms go around my shoulders as if to rub some heat back into me. But I stare at that unveiled face, my eyes transfixed by the strangeness of the situation.
"That's not my husband. That's not Dev." I say quietly, feeling something unclench inside.
The face is old, older than Dev, the nose too small. There is no identification. Nothing, just some nameless man Dev used to fool me. And why? I slid shut the door behind me once back in my cabin. My stomach unclenches again; something is uncurling in me, something stronger and different than grief, than shock. I realize with a pang, he has left me. He has left his family and India. He has left me. I stare at the bangles on the floor, still sitting there, forgotten. I unwrap my Sari, pull off earrings, necklaces and bracelets. My wedding ring lands on top of the small gleaming pile. I feel naked without the gold but I start to feel warmer. My sari lands on top and I pull out an old pair of jeans, the last pair I had left, I pull on a t-shirt. Scissors appear and I lean over the plain pull out metal sink in my room. My brown eyes stare back at me in the mirror and I realize they are dry. Dry but they look the same. I feel my cheeks start to lift. I smile back at myself and I look different. I look happy. I look like someone who will not go back. Someone who belongs out here in the black nothing. Someone who's free. I snip half of my hair off. It curls inward, just under my chin and the person that looks back in the mirror at me, is the person who disappeared 2790 days ago on a sunny day in Bombay. I finish and Jon knocks on the door. I let him in and I smile again, my hands going to his shoulder, he begins to smile and I let him in. I reach up and I kiss him, his mouth warm, warm and liberating much like the Ganges in summer.