Daughters Inherit Silence

by Rasana Atreya

  “Yeah.”

  “Now, go home to your wife and daughter. We’ll catch up when you’re not so jet lagged.”

  13

  Jaya

  The days turned longer. The sun dialled up its intensity from warm to extra hot. Over the course of the summer, Jaya learned, in ten-minute increments, of vegetable-seller Ramu’s hopes and dreams for his family.

  “My older son, Amma, he is nineteen. He is no good at studies. Only sports all the time. But one can’t make a living from playing cricket all day, no? My younger one, though, he is very bright. I am not saying it. The 255 Saar is,” he said, elongating the respectful “Sir” and giving it a Telugu-language twist. The gentleman who had built his house on plot number 255 was a teacher.

  “What did he say?”

  “He said my younger boy is very intelligent. He can go to college.”

  The pride in the man’s voice was unmistakable.

  “Have you done anything about it?”

  “What would I do, Amma? I’m an uneducated man.”

  Jaya looked around surreptitiously. A married lady could have openly exchanged mobile phone numbers and offered help. As a widow, she was especially vulnerable to her character being questioned. But the street was empty. She quickly programmed her number in his old Nokia.

  “Give me a missed call when your son gets home. I’d like to talk to him.”

  “Missed calls” happened when someone called you, but you didn’t pick up in order to save them money. You called them back, instead. Milkmen, maids, washermen, newspapermen—all of them communicated using this uniquely Indian workaround. Missed calls had become so much part of the Indian lexicon, Tollywood now used the phrase in their songs.

  So, when Ramu’s sons gave her missed calls, she called them back with advice, and when personal interaction was needed, she asked them to come to the computer centre during office hours.

  14

  Jaya

  Jaya sat in bed, staring at the logs on her server. Her little computer centre had suffered a DDoS attack. Again.

  She sighed.

  It was a constant battle, trying to stay one step ahead of the hackers.

  It could be anyone: the computer centre in the neighbouring village wanting to neutralise competition; kids with too much time on their hands; people who thought that a lady had no business running a computer centre.

  The attackers had sent massive amounts of data to her server. Unable to handle the additional load, it had crashed. The intent was malicious—of that there was no doubt. The question was, why? And, more importantly, who?

  She shook her head, trying to dislodge the headache that wouldn’t budge. There was a good chance that she’d never know. But now she had to take the time—again—to tighten security.

  Prosecution for cyber crimes, not just in India, but worldwide, was relatively rare, and not because the authorities didn’t consider this a serious offence: proprietary data of companies was routinely stolen, bank accounts drained, websites of rivals brought down. Sometimes servers were taken over in order to commit cyber crimes elsewhere. Unfortunately, the bad guys remained a couple of steps ahead, and the police did not always have the technical knowhow to keep up.

  Ananta sat on the bed with her, idly playing with the edge of her mother’s sari.

  To Jaya, this time—after dinner was cooked, eaten and cleared—was sacrosanct. She focused exclusively on her daughter, never letting work intrude. But this was different. This was their survival at stake. She bent and kissed her daughter on the head.

  Ananta looked at her questioningly.

  Jaya smiled and shook her head. She reached over and swallowed a couple Crocins, hoping to ward off the migraine, though that was looking unlikely now. She started scrolling through the logs.

  “Amma,” Ananta said.

  “Hmm.”

  “Amma!”

  Jaya looked up at the plaintive cry.

  “You’re not paying attention!”

  Jaya set her laptop aside immediately. “I’m sorry, baby!”

  “Did you know Nina has a father?”

  Jaya turned away to hide the onrush of ache. Surreptitiously, she blotted her tears. “Yes, I heard.” She turned back to her daughter and opened her arms.

  The girl crawled in and rested her head on her mother’s chest. “Must be nice to have one.” Her voice was wistful.

  Jaya rested her head on her child’s head. “I’m really sorry that you never knew your father. But you’ve had people who loved you just as much. Do you remember your great-grandparents?”

  Ananta nodded, but she looked doubtful.

  “Tataiyya adored you. And Nainamma showed her love by telling you stories and cooking all your favourite foods.” It saddened Jaya that her daughter was forgetting them. The elderly couple was the reason Jaya was able to survive independently.

  Her own parents were alive, but Jaya hadn’t had a proper conversation with her mother in years. Amma refused to accept that Jaya was an adult who was allowed to make choices independent of her mother. She had accused Jaya of bringing dishonour to both sets of families—birth and marital—by defying her in-laws.

  After the death of her husband, her in-laws had demanded that she abort her girl-child. As far as they were concerned, a girl was one more body to clothe, one more dowry to save, with none of the retirement benefits that came from giving birth to a boy.

  Despite their fallout on the issue, her in-laws had ended up shifting in with her, anyway. The irony was not lost on her.

  She’d taken her in-laws in when they had nowhere else to go, supporting them with the money she brought in. This shift in dynamics between her father-in-law and her was not acknowledged, but Jaya wasn’t unaware that her father-in-law harboured resentment. She knew he’d be more comfortable with her dowry than her earnings. But what could she do? She had no desire to bleed her parents and brother dry; she regretted she’d allowed it to happen in the first place.

  As for her father, he’d defied his wife every time he came to visit Madhav and Jaya, but his visits were getting fewer.

  Jaya shrugged off her sadness. “And Madhav mavayya? You’re lucky to have an uncle like him, aren’t you?”

  Ananta nodded energetically. She adored Jaya’s older brother. “Now that Nina’s father is coming, do you think she’ll have time to play with me?”

  “It’s six months already? You girls have been friends for a while now.” Jaya knew she was stalling. She didn’t know how to allay her daughter’s fears.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Ananta accused.

  “Sorry.” Jaya held the girl tight. “You have a mother, right? One who loves you very much?”

  Ananta nodded.

  “But you still make time for your friend?”

  Ananta brightened. “I do, don’t I?” She seemed to have another thought, because her face fell again.

  “What, Kanna?”

  “What if her father’s here to take her away?”

  For a moment, Jaya didn’t answer. The other girl was so outgoing, she’d settled in the village school, American accent and all, presiding over the other girls like a queen bee. The differences between her American and Indian school lives were a regular topic of discussion, as was her beloved father.

  This was the first time Jaya’s shy daughter had a close friend. Ananta didn’t have to make much of an effort. She just got carried along in the whirlwind that was Nina. It would be hard on Ananta if the other girl left.

  “Well,” Jaya said carefully, “If that’s the case, we’ll just have to be happy for Nina, won’t we?”

  Ananta nodded, even as tears rolled down her cheeks.

  * * *

  “Aunty,” Nina said, bouncing from foot to foot, grinning up at Jaya, “Did you see what we found?” She opened her cupped palms to display tiny, unformed fruits of mango. “You know what that means? It means that mangoes are coming. Daddy always says that nothing beats Indian mangoes. And you know what?” Sh
e put a finger on her cheek. “Daddy’s always right.”

  Jaya smiled down at the child as she stepped into the courtyard. She slipped out of her slippers and walked over to the ancient metal hand-pump set in a 3'x3' square of cement.

  “Here.” Nina thrust the small mangos in Ananta’s hand and hustled to the pump.

  Jaya smiled as her own daughter, measured as always, stood by the side.

  “Did you know,” Nina said, bouncing along with each downward thrust of the hand-pump, “that before I came to the village, I’d never seen this?”

  Jaya laughed. In the months Nina had been in India, she continued to be fascinated by the hand-pump.

  “Do you know why I wear so many bangles?” Nina raised her arm in the air, admiring the multi-hued bangles running down her arm from wrist to elbow. “Because they would look silly in America.” She giggled. She was also dressed in the traditional langa. Shiny bottus—sometimes more than one—adorned her forehead. Her hair was oiled and braided on either side of her head, with multiple hair clips adorning her hair.

  Ananta, in contrast, was dressed in a plain pink t-shirt and jeans, her hair bound in a simple ponytail. One would think Ananta was the girl from America.

  Jaya made her way into the house, trailed by the girls. Her father-in-law was seated in his armchair on the veranda. Jaya touched her hand to her chest in respect and proceeded to the kitchen. The girls trailed behind.

  “Do you know why I look so pretty today?” Nina asked.

  Jaya turned to hide her smile. She hung up her purse behind the door and considered the girl. “You always look pretty, but you’re right. You are looking extra pretty today.”

  The young girl patted her braid in satisfaction. “Daddy’s coming next week. I’m wearing a different dress each day to try them all out. I want to look my best for him. After all, he hasn’t seen me in six months. He misses me a lot, you know. He FaceTimes me every day.” She rolled her eyes in the quintessential American-preteen fashion.

  As always, a part of Jaya’s attention remained on her daughter. A fleeting glimpse of pain on the child’s face, and it was gone. “That’s so wonderful,” Jaya said to Nina, but the girl was already skipping across the courtyard, back to her grandparents’ house.

  Jaya knelt and opened up her arms to her daughter. “Are you sad?”

  The girl buried her face in her mother’s sari and nodded.

  Jaya hugged Ananta to her side and walked them both to the bedroom. Her in-laws, and dinner, could wait.

  15

  Jaya

  “Look what I got!” Nina waved her watch so close to Jaya’s face, the watch swam.

  Jaya lowered the hand lower so she could see better.

  “A watch!” Nina danced on one foot, then another, reminding Jaya of her boisterous niece. “And you know what?”

  “I know ‘what.’”

  “Aunty!”

  Jaya laughed, then obliged her. “What?”

  “My grandfather got one for Ananta too.” Nina grabbed Ananta’s wrist and shoved it under Jaya’s nose.

  She blinked, moving the girl’s arm away once more, so the watch didn’t blur in her vision.

  “And you know what?” Nina narrowed her eyes at Jaya, daring her to tease her again.

  “What?”

  “These are smart watches.” She bounced from foot to foot. “My grandfather is smarter. You know why? Because he did not buy the expensive watches for us. Not worth it, he said. These are made in China. Or Chennai. I forget.”

  Jaya smiled, charmed by the girl’s lack of guile.

  “Come.” Nina held a hand out for her friend. “Let’s go. Radha said she’d meet us in the park.”

  As the girls headed for the gate to celebrate their unexpected day of no school—some protest march or the other—Ananta hesitated. Unstrapping her watch, she ran to her mother, put it in her hand and ran back.

  A surge of love for her child flooded Jaya.

  Growing up in a house with adults, it was inevitable that Ananta would hear snippets of grown-up conversation, not that her in-laws were particularly watchful around their granddaughter. Consequently, Ananta worried that her mother wouldn’t have enough money for her own needs. This had translated to extreme care in how she treated her possessions.

  Jaya’s in-laws constantly complained about the lack of money, especially when it involved the increased dowry demands from the in-laws of their daughters. But post widowhood, Jaya had learned to put her foot down. Neither her parents, nor her brother, would be funding someone else’s lifestyle. She, herself, was saving up for her daughter to go to college, wherever in the world that might be.

  Jaya wished Nina’s joie de vivre would rub off on Ananta. If it meant a few broken gadgets, Jaya would happily rework her budget.

  She inspected the watch in her hand. It wasn’t a regular watch, though it also displayed time. Curious now, she picked up the packaging Nina had discarded on the floor. It contained instructions for parents on how to download an app on their phones.

  “What are you looking at so ferociously?”

  “Uncle!” Jaya smiled at Prakash uncle, getting up to unfold an armchair propped against the wall.

  Prakash uncle craned his neck, looking past her into the house.

  Jaya smiled, thinking part of her fondness for her neighbour stemmed from the fact that he was as full of life as her late grandfather. “They left.”

  Uncle dragged forward an armchair and collapsed into it with a sigh. “Aiyyo,” he said, not meaning a word of it. “So sorry I missed them.” He held out a packet of milk.

  “I don’t need more milk. The milkman already stopped by this morning.” For their daily supply, her father-in-law walked over to the cow shed with an aluminium can. Anything extra, especially for festivals, was delivered.

  “I thought you might need some more. It being a holiday.” Uncle pointed at Ananta’s watch. “What’s that?”

  “A smart watch,” Srinivas uncle said.

  Jaya’s face flushed. In the months since Diwakar’s abrupt departure, both Jaya and Srinivas uncle had been careful to see that their paths never crossed. And now he was in her house.

  “I got it for Jaya’s daughter and my granddaughter.”

  Jaya suppressed a sigh. She liked it better when he stayed on his side of the wall. But Prakash uncle was the magnet that drew him over.

  “Jaya was checking it out when I came.”

  “Are you going to tell me this is also unsafe?” Srinivas uncle’s tone was combative. He said to Prakash uncle, “I know this girl runs a computer centre but she’s always so worried. She needs to learn to relax. I’m not an idiot, you know. I did retire as an engineer from a big American company.” He laughed, inviting Prakash uncle to to join in.

  Prakash uncle obliged, but his eyes were apologetic.

  “What’s the problem with the watches?” Srinivas uncle looked at her. “I’m assuming you think there is?”

  Jaya hesitated. She didn’t want to spar with him. But she was concerned. “The watches come with an app.”

  “And why is that a bad thing? You know how common apps are in the US? Millions of people use them. Mi-lli-ons.”

  Millions of people in India used them too.

  He continued, “You think Google and Apple are stupid to allow them to be downloaded if they will create problems for the common man? Hanh?”

  Jaya shrugged. Responding to him would make him angry, and he was an angry man to begin with. Google and Apple didn’t certify every app. If there was a problem with fraud or security, they certainly removed them, but it was a physical impossibility to certify every app, given the sheer numbers and complexity of the apps.

  “What, Child?” Prakash uncle said. To Srinivas uncle, he said, “If Jaya is concerned, I would listen. She is very intelligent. She was a gold medallist in college. A computer engineer.”

  “I have multiple patents, you know,” Srinivas uncle said.

  “I know you do,”
Prakash uncle said, soothingly.

  The other man seemed only partially mollified. “I gave away so many for the greater good. I never even charged money.”

  It should be hard to dislike a person like that. But Srinivas uncle made it easy.

  Prakash uncle, on the other hand, was a good man. “It is my honour to know you,” he said, bowing his head in respect. “But maybe we should let Jaya have her say? My niece, who is a lawyer, has a lot of respect for Jaya.”

  Talking about another professional lady wasn’t the way to curry favour with Srinivas uncle. Still, Prakash uncle was trying. Jaya gave him a quick smile of thanks.

  “I was reading the other day about a smart-watch manufacturer based in the West,” she said. “Their product is aimed at kids too. And, like this watch, that watch also tracked their movements. What was more worrying to me was that researchers were able to go back in the past and track prior movement. And this watch is from China. They have fewer restrictions on privacy and data collection. Which means less safety features are designed into their products.”

  “I admire your bigheartedness, Prakash garu,” Srinivas uncle said. “But these women, you know how they are: always on the lookout for the worst in everything. My wife, she is also like that. Always checking out people with suspicious eyes. It is good, right, that we can track children? Who’s going to swoop down in the middle of Lingampally and kidnap our girls?” Srinivas uncle snorted. “Did you know this watch has a safety feature? So it will accept calls only from safe people?” He gave Jaya a challenging stare. “Don’t tell me that you think it is possible to bypass this feature?”

  The researchers who had tested that other product had found that the device could be tricked into receiving unapproved calls. But like her late grandmother always said, talking with people who were in the conversation merely to hear their own voice, was wasted breath. She shrugged.