WHO Cathal & Rosario WHEN Saturday, 28th May WHERE The National History Museum WHAT Is ‘meet me under the barosaurus’ just how nerds make friends?
Cathal knew that sometimes when kids moved away from home they might have lost track of their parent’s birthdays, but that became almost impossible when your own father’s birthday was a religious festival.
“Have a blessed Rama Navami!”
The old man had addressed the words more towards Cathal than any of the other people standing around him in the market, simply because Cathal was the only Indian person currently in close view.
The group - obviously from the nearby Hindu temple that Cathal had noted and felt was way too close to his new home - were carrying a platform on their shoulders, a serene golden baby on it draped in carefully made flower wreaths. Yeah, Cathal knew that baby. Or, at least, he knew the man that that baby became. “May the divine grace of Lord Rama be with you always!”
May he not, thanks, Cathal thought, giving one of the women an uncomfortable smile and a quick nod.
Seeing the celebrating group made Cathal feel that twitchy tickle of a familiar thought: if Cathal were to run into the American version of Rama here, would that Rama know him? Would that Rama look straight at Cathal across a crowd and say that is my son?
Nope, nope, Cathal didn’t want that, not at all.
But there was also the idea that Rama here was not Rama back home. He knew about how the gods were all subtly different, picking up different traits from the beliefs of their people. Maybe the American Rama wouldn’t get under his skin. Maybe Cathal wouldn’t see the way this Rama acted as cruel, clinging to the toxic masculinity he’d been created in the midst of. But… the stories were the same here as back in Ireland. This Rama had still been the one who had banished his recently kidnapped pregnant wife at the suggestion from an old beggar that she was an unfaithful slut, even after she had proved herself through a trial of fire. That was built in. That was just how it went. For all Rama’s positive traits of being the perfect man, how could Cathal - after seeing that play out for himself - not focus on the aspects that had made his childhood so miserable? There was only so many times you could watch your mother cry while she defended the man who’d caused it.
But maybe - just maybe - the Rama and Sita here didn’t keep re-enacting that story. Maybe they had found a way to leave that awful cycle behind.
Maybe.
But if Rama and Sita were around, then Ravana surely wouldn’t be far away either. Cathal had had enough run-ins with the demon king through his life to never ever want that again. Cathal didn’t want to return to being a pawn in all of that, and he was older and wiser now anyway: Cathal had to believe that he’d be much harder to snatch up and take away as an adult than as a child. Children were just so easy to kidnap, something his parents had seemed to continuously and conveniently forget.
Another old man tried to lay a wreath around Cathal’s neck and Cathal recoiled physically with a look of horror, as though it were some sort of homing beacon being attached.
“No,” Cathal said too firmly and then, with a little less vehemence: “I mean- no, no thank you, but, uh, thank you.”
The man didn’t take it personally and Cathal moved back against a fruit stall a little more as the procession passed by, singing and chanting and dancing.
Fuck. Maybe he should call his parents. He didn’t want to, but Cathal had the image of his mother waiting beside a phone and there was no way not to feel guilty about that.
Ireland was five hours ahead, so if he was going to call it better be before evening. But… Cathal instead wanted to spend his afternoon at a space exhibition with someone who really seemed to know what they were talking about when it came to space exhibitions. Rosario, even though they’d only chatted a few times since meeting, seemed genuinely interesting and (as well as that) not the cause of guilt and trouble.
So he put his parents from his mind and by the time Cathal arrived at the museum and found Rosario - under the big dinosaur as promised - he had managed to turn his focus fully towards just having a nice day.
“Hello,” he greeted his neighbour as he approached, raising his hand with a small brown paper bag in it to wave. Cathal nodded up at the fossil looming over them. “Trust he’s been good company?”