He fumbled for the watch in his pocket and found, for the fifth time since he’d arrived in the garden, that the minutes would not vapor themselves away. He had been pacing up and down the same portion of the garden’s chalky dirt pathway, avoiding the splotches where it sank into mud, and each time he would pass the same set of four columnar cacti, two on either side of him, all of them a dull green, taller than he by about three or four heads. The garden was empty, which was no surprise because it seemed to be the most hastily put together garden he had ever seen, lacking the beauty and symmetry of the gardens of India. In lieu of the Muslim fantasy of paradise, there was a haphazard arrangement of low stones, large-spined shrubs growing wildly between the cacti, and, at a distance he had yet to reach, a large palm. Still, he conceded to himself that the cacti were rather interesting. He had never wandered into the Thar Desert, hadn’t visited the reaches of the Deccan that rarely saw rain, so he had never seen that type of plant before.
Perhaps Indra would have been more amazed at these wonders if not for the fact that he was nervous, and for what—a woman? But not quite a woman. It was a similar feeling to when he was younger and had to take his exams viva voce. He would be judged for this performance. Not by her, but by some part of himself. His life had been in constant motion until this journey, a respite marked by the terrible news of his friend Nitin.
Nitin, I met a woman, he said silently, to no one.
A woman? his friend replied. What good is a woman? Women won’t lead our country to freedom.
You should hear her speak. She could move mountains.
His friend laughed. Three steps into the west, and you’ve already changed.
As a ghost, Nitin was gaining a capacity to lead him into—and compel him from—loneliness. In that vacuum of sorrow, Indra was pacing a garden, seeking out that basic human need that he had once denied himself in service of a greater cause: the tremble-anticipation of joy, of possibility, of someone new.
There wasn’t much to do in Palo Alto, in any case. Even with the news about his friend, he wasn’t going to give up his mission. He had paid the German consulate in San Francisco a visit on his first day. They kindly told him to be patient, that they were awaiting the capital needed to move their grand design into order.
Indra had come to California to put a plan into action. Not only was he going to traverse the country to catch a U-boat somewhere off the coast of New York and, from there, cross the lines of war into Germany to cement an allyship between the kaiser’s government and the revolutionary fighters of Bengal, but he also was to make sure that the German consulate in California kept up its promise to his cadre of nationalist fighters in India: that the country would pay for a cache of arms to be secretly shipped to Calcutta. While Indra could have left for Berlin before the cache was secured, his comrades in India had been burned before, guns never sent out from Java or Shanghai. He had to see proof of these weapons before he could move on.
Indra’s plan had been sanctioned by Wilhelm Obermeier, who had said that he wouldn’t have to wait long to see the arms cache sent off.
Obermeier was Indra’s German handler, spymaster, agent, the one who had dictated his fate from Calcutta through Kobe and now in California. And yet Obermeier was one whom he had never met, was simply the signature at the end of a letter or the initials W.O. at the end of a terse telegram.
Indra felt a tap on his shoulder and turned around. The wild curls of her dark hair were tied up, and the angular lines of her face gave her a severe look when not smiling.
Cora.
Ko-rah. He’d liked the way it sounded when he repeated it back to her at the party, so similar to the Bengali verb meaning to do.
“So, do you send letters like that to every girl you meet?” she asked.
“Only the ones whose conversation keeps me up at night,” he replied, feeling a little confident, a little haughty.
“How many of those are there?” she replied, not missing a beat. “Ten, fifteen, thirty?”
He fumbled over his reply. “You’re the only one I’ve written such a letter to.”
“Oh, that’s no good,” Cora said. “It’s either you’re too picky or you’re too much of a loner.”
He stared at her blankly, his heart dropping a bit into his stomach, the gears and movements of which seemed to be seizing out of beat into a standstill.
Her thin lips broke into a smirk, and she gave him a little push on the shoulder. “The look on your face right now,” she said, laughing.
Whatever anxiety he had did not abate quickly, but he laughed all the same. “You know, Cora,” he began, “keep that up and I might try to retract that letter.”
“Retract?” Cora asked. “This isn’t some article published in a journal where you can send angry letters to the editor. How would you go about retracting it?”
“Perhaps I could find it and destroy it, then pretend it never happened. You’re making a good case right now to do that. Shall we?” he asked, pointing toward the path, smiling, emboldened by the off-balance precarity from Cora’s first volley.
The two began to walk, side by side, just far enough away from each other for the heat of one to dissipate into the air.
“I bet you could find and destroy it,” Cora said. “You knew where I live. How’d you find that out, anyway?”
“I asked Suresh. He told me your address. I didn’t know it was private information.”
“What else did he tell you about me?”
“It never occurred to me to gossip. Now, remind me, you said you were studying a woman playwright, is that correct?”
“Yes, Rachel Crothers. It would be a shame to think of her just as some woman. Yes, she writes about women in some of her plays. But she also writes about the changes we’re going through right now. I think she belongs up there with all the big names, our generation’s James Herne.”
“I don’t know much about the American stage. I attended quite a few plays in Calcutta. We have wonderful theater there. It’s a city of playwrights and poets. Did you know that in Calcutta, the only women who act in plays are prostitutes? It’s not considered something that proper ladies do.”
“What are you saying, Indra? That I’m not proper?”
Indra laughed. “I wouldn’t have sent you that letter if I thought something as silly as that. No, I think you wonderful,” he said, and he could feel the hammer beat of his own pulse as he said it.
“Wonderful,” she repeated quietly, with a small smile. “And the same could be said for you.”
The conversation paused, as if whatever that which was fleeting between them needed a moment to breathe, to relax, to begin to establish itself a bit more.
“And then what do you plan on doing?”
“Oh, God, you sound just like my father. ‘You’re a woman of twenty-four, you must settle down before it’s too late,’” she said with a heavy, mocking impression.
Indra shrugged. “It’s good to have the attention of your father. When I was younger, it was all I wanted. I have three older siblings and four younger. I’m not sure if I could recall my father saying much of anything when I decided fight for the good of my country. There were other mouths to feed.”
“Seven siblings! Dear God. I remember when my half brother was born and I felt like things got a little too crowded.”
“Well, I don’t want to sound like your father with my questions, I suppose.”
“No, no. He’s got a point. It’s just that—” Cora stopped midstride. Indra turned around. “I’m not sure when it happened. I just don’t find any of this very interesting anymore. I mean, I still love Crothers’s plays, and it was my work on Crothers that introduced me to suffrage, to socialism, to an entire world. I’m not sure if I want to focus on one little thing. I want more than that. I love writing. I’d love to find a way to support myself with my writing work in a bigger way, not just about the theater, maybe taking what I’ve learned from the NWP.”
“I see,” Indra said, struggling to keep up with the rapidity of her thoughts.
“It’s silly to say this out loud, isn’t it?” she asked, turning to face the cacti. “It’s embarrassing to hear myself say that I have thoughts and opinions and want the world at large to read them. I think my father was right, that it’s time to figure something out. Move to San Francisco and start having a couple babies.”
Indra looked at her quizzically. She clearly didn’t know the extent of her own talent. “What you said at Suresh’s party about the cause of the individual—it was absolutely inspired. That’s why I had to share it with others. If you want to make a living through your writing, it’s a question of when, not if. And if you’re interested in writing something, in a few days’ time I’m going up to Berkeley to meet with a few of the fellows working toward Indian liberation there. Some of them were at Suresh’s party. Maybe you can come along with me? They publish a newspaper in English and Hindustani. The editor will be there too.”
She smiled, warm and true, and Indra felt a lightness, if only because he had shared a truth that she, for reasons unknown to him, seemed to be denying. Perhaps what he failed to see was that in his flirtation with this woman, he was looking at a trick mirror. He was attracted to an outline—within the borders of a person, he was coloring in his own imagination.
“That sounds wonderful,” she said. “I don’t know a single thing about the struggle in India.”
“There’s what we discussed at the party—you were a quick study. I imagine that the men in Berkeley would be excited to explain more specifics to you. If you have a moment, I’m sure you can find a book at a library. It’s called Poverty and Un-British Rule in India. It’s almost fifteen years old but still reads like it was written yesterday.”
“I’ll be sure to check it out.” She paused. “I do have a question. What does Germany have to do with any of this?”
“Did Suresh tell you this?” he asked.
“No,” Cora said with a chuckle. “I heard secondhand, from Hazel.”
“I see,” Indra said with a chiding air. “Yes, I am trying to meet up with members of the German consulate.”
“Why’s that? Doesn’t seem to be a great time to be involved with the Germans, with all the saber-rattling that’s going on.”
“It doesn’t concern this country,” Indra said. “We’re just trying to find ways to further our cause. The war in Europe is an opportunity in India. The Germans have agreed to support the fight for national liberation.”
“Sounds dangerous. Is it?”
Her voice was smaller than it had been. She seemed fearful, and Indra wished to do his best to quell that fear, because the last thing he wanted to do was scare her off—to do so would be to lose this (and what was this except for a great bloodrush of feeling).
“Everything is dangerous when you’re fighting a great power upon the world stage, but this in particular? Not compared to what I’ve seen back in India. This is simply a few meetings.”
It was true, this was just a few meetings. Again, the thought of Nitin, and of the loss, news delivered the day he was to leave Japan. His dearest friend—his comrade, his fellow nationalist leader—had been shot and killed in an encounter with the colonial police. He had entered the open ocean of this journey with the sorrow of death. A meeting in a consulate was nothing compared to the possibility of dying. And yet, there too were the beginnings of doubt, that this meeting could lead him to Nitin’s fate. Losing a friend side by side in a gunfight often meant pursuing vengeance in his memory, taking care not to squander his martyrdom. To lose a friend from a distance added a complication—Indra was beginning to see his friend’s life as some sort of set piece. Indra wondered, Did it truly have to end this way?
Cora seemed placated by his response, and the two agreed to meet in two days to head up to Berkeley. Before she left, Indra placed his hand briefly upon Cora’s lower back. He meant only to lead her forward out of the garden, but she stopped and put her hand on his shoulder. He felt the electric arc surge through his body, and there came the kiss, slow, lingering in the silence of the garden, ended only by the sound that came in the distance, the chimes of the hour from the campus church. She had to attend a meeting with a professor and left him in the garden.
The quickened pulse remained.
This was madness. Mostly, he saw white women as a right hand of power, an empire built of Lady Macbeths. Calcutta, that city at the crossroads of the world where he had most recently lived, was where almost every race upon the earth could find their place in the city’s geography. In Chowringhee, he could walk among the Europeans and Anglo-Indians of his city, each of them passing around him in a hollow way. An international city provided no means for understanding among people, only a way to hear small voices on a street or in the bazaar.
And he knew, if he were to look upon a white woman in any way that could betray a feeling of want beyond perhaps the paid-by-the-hour appointments of Free School Street, the reprisal would be swift, unforgiving—terrible. There was no such admonition against his feeling here. In fact, California seemed to care little about his nation’s history, precepts, rules. He hadn’t meant to kiss her, yet it happened without his willing it. He had an inkling that things would move fast with her, faster than he wanted or intended. In India, he had been a leader among men, and to be in that position meant to stand alone. Since then, he had crossed an ocean and was now awaiting orders in a foreign land. Amid all this change, some deep part of him was seeking a break from the past, a firm desire to move with another, even if that meant that he would no longer be the sole arbiter of the pace.
The world felt like it had been inverted, a photographic negative imprinted upon his vision.
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From A Bomb Placed Close to the Heart by Nishant Batsha. Copyright © 2025 by Nishant Batsha. Excerpted by permission of Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
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