by Veena Rao
“Why?”
“India gave me the power of imagination, but America gave me a taste for freedom.” She smiled at Zeenat, who, mouth slightly open, tongue stuck to one side of her cheek, was trying to make sense of what Tara had just told her in English.
“Freedom? I hope it is tasty like my laddoo,” she replied in English at last, giggling.
“Yes, like the laddoos and halwas and Mysore paks you so lovingly create. They bring you freedom, no?”
On a whim, she asked Zeenat to accompany her to her childhood room upstairs, lacking the courage to go there by herself. They made their way up the smooth teakwood staircase that Gangamma mopped every day, hands guiding feet. The door to the room was latched and raised a shrill furor when Tara unfastened it. She slowly pushed open the doors and walked into the room, Zeenat behind her. She had not been here in years; perhaps not since high school. It was like walking back in time.
The room was crowded with unused chairs and desks, an old hand sewing machine, and one of the twelve wooden boxes that had arrived in Mangalore a month after Tara’s family had in 1975. The sun filtered from a glass pane on the tiled ceiling and fell softly on the dark wood of the dusty floor, giving the room a haunted bungalow feeling.
Tara walked across the room, lightly touching the things she remembered: her desk, the rusty table lamp with peeling green paint, the solitary wooden box painted blue—a reminder of her early childhood. She cupped a hand over her nose and mouth and walked to the shelves on the far walls that still bore the weight of rows of crouching books. They were all still there, every one she had voraciously escaped into. She ran a finger across a set of hardbound Charles Dickens’s works. She spied the spot where Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Anna Karenina leaned loosely against each other on the bottom shelf.
“You have never been up here, have you?” She turned to look at Zeenat, who had covered her mouth with the edge of her dupatta. “I spent years holed up in this room because of my uncle’s illness. It was like a prison sometimes.”
Zeenat coughed in response. Her eyes were tearing up from the dust in the room.
“Are you allergic to dust? I’m so sorry; let’s get out of here. I’ll get the room cleaned tomorrow.” She took Zeenat’s arm and quickly led her out.
Zeenat was still breathless when she heaved herself into a rattan chair in the living room. “Why are you here all by yourself? Why aren’t you staying with your parents or in-laws?” she asked in a wheezing voice.
“I have some work at the foundation we run for children,” she started to say, but somehow, holed up away from her real world, the truth felt easier to tell. “There’s a family wedding at my parents’ house, and I was in the way.” She took the other rattan chair, leaned back sighing.
“In the way?”
“Yes, I am a bit of a pariah. I was ostracized for spoiling my family’s good name.”
“How?”
“I divorced my first husband, and married again for love outside my community.”
“Your family is upset with you?”
Tara nodded. “I ruined their reputation in the community, didn’t I? If I had stayed, people would have talked, the groom’s family would have found out. It would have been all-round embarrassment for my family.”
“People have no work but to gossip.” Zeenat spat out her reaction. It had come from her gut. She asked to know more about Tara’s second marriage and her reasons for ending her first one. Talking to Zeenat about her Atlanta journey was like lifting a weight off her chest. Perhaps she needed to hear the story from her own mouth, to assure herself that she had done the right thing in marrying Cyrus. The glaring September sun shifted outside, the early evening shadows falling upon the front yard at Shanti Nilaya.
“Let them gossip,” Zeenat said when Tara finished. “People can talk, but they cannot take away your dignity.”
She spoke about her grocer husband, Abdul, who had treated her like a fairy; who had even managed an LPG gas connection for their tiny kitchen when they could barely even afford firewood. When Abdul died, she decided to face her family head on, fighting for independence, fighting to start her business.
“It makes you rise in your own eyes. In the end, what matters is how you feel about you.” Zeenat patted Tara’s sweaty arm. Her face was still red, eyes watery. Tara couldn’t tell if it was from empathy or allergy.
“I am so mad at myself for fleeing, not standing up to my relatives.” Tara bit her lower lip. “I’m an escapist.”
“You didn’t escape. You left in protest, came back to this childhood prison alone. That is no less brave,” Zeenat said kindly.
Tara slept well that night, for the first time in days, as if she had had a session with a therapist. She woke up when the sun was only a deep blue glow in the narrow window of her new bedroom. She left Shanti Nilaya early and took a rickshaw to the taxi stand outside the crowded Mangalore Central railway station. It was several years since she had journeyed by train. Maybe she would return tomorrow, make a train trip to the sea-kissed Bekal Fort in the neighboring Kerala state. She had been there once with her classmates, a high school trip, when she had created a fantasy tale in her head about bumping into Cyrus high up in the observation tower overlooking the vast expanse of the Arabian sea.
She hired a cab to take her to Panambur Beach. She had forgotten the sound of the ocean, the feel of golden sand under her feet, the calm of an empty beach. It was too early for the food stalls, the horse rides, the merry-go-rounds, for children frolicking in the water. Only a bright red cargo ship floated where the sea met the sky. She meditated, feeling the warmth of the morning sun in her eyes, the heavy, salty sea breeze running through her hair. She imagined Cyrus by her side, clad in a cool white linen shirt, her head resting lightly on his shoulder; and strangely, for the first time in days, she was not haunted by visages of Munmun. Her own love for him felt enough.
When Tara returned, Zeenat was waiting for her on the edge of the top step leading up to the house. She thrust a plastic shopping bag, its edges knotted tightly, in Tara’s direction. “Open it after I leave,” she said. Her voice was more tremulous than usual. Tara looked up to see an anxious face; there was no smile today.
She sat below Zeenat on the third step. “A gift for me?” she asked.
Zeenat pressed a folded handkerchief to her lips. “You will see.”
“I might as well open it now.”
Zeenat drew back her handkerchief, wet her lips as if to thaw them. “Okay, open it,” she said.
Tara had trouble untying the firm knots, so she clawed holes in the plastic bag using her fingernails, used her teeth as additional tools. She drew out the something that was wrapped in layers of newspaper, each layer secured with cellophane. She peeled them, aware of Zeenat’s sharp breathing over the rustle of paper.
“Why sheet after sheet of paper?” she asked, amused.
Zeenat smiled awkwardly, then motioned, with the arch of her eyebrows, the sideway swing of her chin that Tara should keep on with the unraveling of the great mystery. And then, when all the layers of paper had been discarded, and because the quirky working of some karmic law had decided that this would be the moment, she was back in Tara’s hand, her lost doll Pinky.
Pinky stared at Tara because she had lost her ability to close her violet eyes. Her hair was matted and dull, her replacement dress of yellow flowers against red had faded with age, and she was barefooted. Still, she had fared pretty well in thirty-two years.
“You took her?” It was not a question, Tara needed no answer. The apology was written on Zeenat’s face.
“Truth be told, I have wanted to bring Pari back ever since I took her. But I was afraid I’d be called a thief.”
“Pari? You changed her name, too?” Tara’s voice was sharp.
“What’s her name? I don’t know,” Zeenat stuttered in English.
“Pinky. Her name is Pinky.”
“Pinky,” Zeenat repeated. “English name. Very good name
.” As if being agreeable would make up for taking the doll and keeping it for thirty-two years.
“What was that story about the magic doll your uncle brought you from Kuwait? You turn her left arm, and orange candy appears out of her left palm. You turn her right arm, and lemon candy appears out of her right palm? And all the time you made me wait to see the imaginary doll, you had Pinky at home?”
Zeenat looked forlorn. “What to do? I had no uncle in Kuwait.”
Tara smiled through her annoyance. She felt too numb to grasp the significance of Pinky’s return, or to freshly capture the vestiges of an old loss. Zeenat laughed too, in relief. Her voice, as she narrated her story, was more stable than the loud voice that had made up the story of the magic doll.
The day after Tara’s family had arrived in Mangalore, Zeenat’s mother had sent her to Shanti Nilaya, as she did most mornings, to buy a measure of milk from Grandmother Indira. When she arrived at the house, she found the family gathered around the table in the verandah, listening to the Prime Minister on the radio. She was enchanted with Tara’s mother, who sat on a wicker chair with her eyes closed, whose face shone like the movie star Hema Malini. All Zeenat wanted to do was look at her lovely saris and makeup. So she walked around the house, slipped in unseen through the back door, and headed to their room upstairs. She spied an unlocked trunk, a grand military-green treasure chest. On opening it, she saw, lying atop the clothes, the most beautiful thing she had ever laid eyes on—a fairy with golden hair and blue eyes. It was all right, she told herself, as she fled through the back door, doll in hand. The little girl’s movie star parents would buy her another doll. She crafted a little tale for her father, about the bewitching lady at Shanti Nilaya taking one sweeping look with her almond-shaped, kohl-lined eyes at Zeenat’s faded hand-me-down gown and bare, cracked feet. “She put the doll in my arms,” she told him.
Tara looked out the window, thinking of the geometry boxes, the nice-smelling erasers with the green tip, the colorful school bags, the bell-bottomed pants and bell-sleeved dresses that her parents sent from Dubai. She was too old for a doll, they had assumed. But she had attached no value to the other things they sent her.
“I never had another doll,” she said.
“I know, Sister. Please forgive me. Yesterday, when you took me to your childhood room, I saw for myself what I had snatched away from you. It wasn’t just a doll. It was your childhood.”
“Why did you bring her back now?”
“Because it was the right thing to do.”
Tara accepted Zeenat’s apology. “I forgive you,” she said.
“Really?” Zeenat’s face lit up.
“You were a child too, Zeenat. I hope Pinky brought you a lot of happiness.” She meant what she said. The real losses of her life had been intangible; they had little to do with Pinky or Zeenat.
She lay on the sofa after Zeenat left, Pinky propped on the coffee table, sheets of old newspaper still on the floor, waiting to be disposed of. Pinky stared at her, her stiff pink arms lifted as if for a hug.
“Dolls have no heart, they cannot love you back. Only living things can.” Uncle Anand’s voice rang in her ears. Uncle Anand, her Kafka, who told her beautiful stories when she had lost her doll; whose kindness and imagination had the power to help her forget her loss.
Her eyes wandered to a newspaper sheet on the floor, at the photos that covered the top half of the broadsheet. The Week in Pictures, the headline said. She picked up the sheet. The pictures were from around town. Solemn looking brides and grooms in silk finery lined up for a free mass wedding at Dharmasthala. Trawlers at Bunder returning from a deep-sea fishing expedition. A man in a canoe clearing weeds from a lotus-filled pond, holding one end of what looked like a long staff, the other end submerged in water. A snapshot of a bhuta kola, an invocation of the spirits, the oracle dancer decorated with elaborate headgear, painted face, and straw skirt, arms stretched high up carrying lit torches.
Her eyes began to close. The sea could be physically tiring. Then, a fearsome apparition imposed itself before her, face painted yellow, enormous eyes accentuated with black paint, the whites bloodshot. The red lips moved to form words in a deep voice, almost a bellow: “Like the purple lotus, rarest of rare, you shall rise from muddy waters to rule the world.”
She woke up with a start. Pinky continued to stare at her in astonishment. Tara closed her eyes again, remembering in a flash the face she had seen in her dream, the voice that was like a tiger’s roar.
When Tara was close to eleven, she had gone with her grandparents and a functioning Uncle Anand to their ancestral home in Bailur. They had stopped their taxi in the shade of a mango tree at the entrance where the asphalt road ended. Trudging along a mud path that wound its way through vast expanses of rice fields and coconut groves, they had come to the nucleus of the farm, a large country home where some of Grandfather Madhava’s relatives lived. The house looked ancient but radiated old world opulence, especially the raised verandah with its sturdy, carved wooden pillars that were so wide they could not be contained in Tara’s long-armed embrace. The inner rooms had tiny windows that left them in darkness, in quaint mystery.
That evening, the family gathered with the village kinsmen in a decorated field near the shrine for Panjurli and Varthe, the boar spirits, for a night-long ceremony of bhuta kola, spirit worship. A dancer, who was soon to be the oracle, was dressed in colorful costume, a palm straw skirt around his waist, a multitude of flower garlands around his neck. Black paint accentuated his eyes, as he flashed them to great effect. The rest of his face was painted ochre and red. On his head was a large Japanese fan-like crown that shone under the gasoline light, and around his feet were bells that jingled loudly as he stomped the mud clearing on the field. He carried a sword as he danced and twirled, preparing to self-hypnotize, as the musicians beat the drums and finger bells in symphony, their tempo escalating as the evening progressed. The crowd sat in a semicircle around the mud stage, Tara ensconced between Uncle Anand and Grandmother Indira.
She watched fascinated as the dancer began to tremble, as his eyes began to roll. He was in a trance.
“He is having darsana. He is possessed with the spirit of Panjurli,” whispered Uncle Anand. The dancer’s voice deepened as he spoke. Grandfather Madhava stood up to seek the blessings of the spirit. He begged the spirit for protection for his clan, for the continued good health of his second son, Anand.
“How does he do that?” asked Tara incredulously, of the spirit dancer.
“It is the spirit, not the dancer,” Grandmother Indira replied.
“But how do you know he is not faking it?”
“Don’t question beliefs, child.”
Tara stared at the spirit invoker in enchantment. How was it that there were no spirits of dead people and animals in the land of Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys, she wondered. Why did they only inhabit little towns and villages in India?
Despite her lack of conviction in the bhuta, she closed her eyes and begged, “O spirit, please heal Uncle Anand. Please reunite me with my family. That is all I ask for.”
When she opened her eyes, she noticed that the crowd was making way for the dancer, creating a little path right in front of her. With alarm, she realized that the jingle of the bells on his feet was getting louder; he was moving in their direction. She squeezed Uncle Anand’s arm and huddled close to him, hoping the dancer would turn around, stop, have a change of heart. But no, he was looking at her with those massive black, paint-lined eyes; then he came even closer until he was a mere six feet away from them. She buried her face in her cold hands.
“This little girl, she will be queen,” she heard the booming voice say. Uncle Anand whispered in her ear to open her eyes and look at the spirit dancer, but she could not be persuaded. “The Daiva is never wrong, never wrong,” the roar continued. “Like the purple lotus, rarest of the rare, she will rise from muddy water.”
“Rise, Swami?” she heard Uncle Anand ask.
“This pure lotus will rule the world.”
“Tara, open your eyes, fold your hands, bow down,” Grandfather Madhava commanded. Tara opened her eyes slowly, but kept her gaze at the dancer’s mud-caked feet. She brought her hands together before her chest, bowing her head.
The oracle had words of advice for Tara. “Always respect and obey your father and mother; your parents are God in human form.” He then turned around and twirled back to the clearing that was his dancing ground, leaving Tara to exhale in relief. She hadn’t even realized she was holding her breath.
Later that morning, after they had slept a few hours on woven straw mats and had a traditional breakfast of kotte—rice and lentil cakes steamed in jackfruit leaves—and coconut chutney, sitting on a raised wooden plank in the long hall with their extended relatives, they made their way back to the bus stand. They walked through the wet rice fields in single file, Grandfather Madhava leading the way, his wife behind him, Tara trailing behind Uncle Anand.
She tapped his forearm to get his attention. “Why did the oracle say I would rule the world? Nobody rules over the whole world, not even President Jimmy Carter.”
Uncle Anand gazed into the cloudless horizon without shielding his eyes. “It’s quite simple, little girl. The whole of the universe is inside you. To rule yourself is to rule the world.”
Grandfather Madhava was dismissive of the oracle’s prophecy. “Utter gibberish,” he said. The spirit had said nothing about Uncle Anand’s precarious mental health, made no assurances, commanded no poojas to appease the gods for a permanent healing. What a waste of time the trip had been.
“Facing is healing, isn’t it?” Uncle Anand said, his face immobile, expressionless, like it mostly was. He looked again at the burning sun without squinting. His words made no sense to any of them. Grandmother Indira turned around and shot him a worried look, hoping it wasn’t the beginning of yet another difficult psychotic episode.
Tara couldn’t remember if that was the beginning of an episode, but there had been many, each progressively longer and more severe, in the years that followed. She heard Uncle Anand’s voice in her ears; a memory of a deep bellow: I am the creator, the preserver, the destroyer. I am Brahma, Vishnu, Maheshwara. Do not argue, for I am the wholeness of all creation.
