A Sister's Promise

by Renita D'Silva

  Orange heat, sinister and swelling on storm clouds of suffocating navy hits me first. It is a completely different heat from the heavy, over baked, aching-for-rain temperatures we have been experiencing during the drought. My eyes sting and I cannot breathe as I run into the smoke that invades my lungs. Then, as my sight becomes accustomed to the dark smog, I come to a shocked standstill.

  The market is no more. Just gyrating balloons of dense blue smoke interspersed with tongues of ruby flames that a few men are desperately trying to put out, a losing battle for lack of water. The place where our stall used to be, where I have spent so many happy, content days, is razed to the ground, just a charred wasteland.

  Where are you and Da?

  I grab the lungi of a man rushing past me.

  ‘Please,’ I say. ‘Where have they taken all the people?’

  He nods his head to his left, where the highway used to be and I see the bodies laid out in a grim, unremitting line.

  I walk over on unsteady legs.

  Please God. Please.

  I don’t want to look. I don’t want to see anything familiar. At least then I can hide behind the flimsy skirts of faltering hope.

  But I can’t not look. What if you and Da have been put there by mistake, if you need me and I didn’t check . . .

  I take a quivering breath. Some of the bodies are charred beyond all recognition. My fellow villagers, every one of whom I know by name, each with their quirks and their vices, now unrecognisable, their unique traits, their flaws, their passions wiped out by the impartial brushstroke of death. And then . . .

  No!

  I don’t want to see this, not here. I want to run away, back the way I came, but I lean closer anyway, my subconscious knowing what I don’t want to acknowledge.

  My da’s big toe, with the broken nail, bent out of shape when he fell off the coconut tree. It never got fixed back in place as he couldn’t afford to get it seen by the doctor. I follow the leg up to his face, my heart weighted down with the horror of what I don’t want to admit.

  I will his chest to move. Up and down, Da, up and down. Please.

  But it doesn’t. It doesn’t.

  He used to carry me on his shoulders, those mornings when we went to meet the boats and I would rest my cheek on his head, the smell of coconut oil and unwashed hair, my arms tight around his neck, until he said, ‘Look, Sharda, here we are,’ and then he would gently squat down and I would climb down the ladder of his back and jump off, my feet sinking in the soft sand.

  ‘Da,’ I whisper, ‘come back, come back to me,’ and I hold his body, too warm, still burning.

  Hands grab at me. ‘Come away, girl.’

  Where are you, Ma?

  I don’t want to find you here too. My eyes flicker up and down the line of bodies, Hindus, Muslims and Christians, united in death. My gaze cringes from the gruesome tableau and yet I am unable to look away, coming back agonised, to rest on the one with the broken nail.

  Please God, I’ve got it wrong. Please.

  I fight the arms holding me, the smell of ash and cooked flesh, but there is no give. I try to close my ears to the screams emanating from loved ones, the howls that are being wrenched out of me without my being aware of them. I ache to block my heart to the truth of what I have just witnessed.

  You are not among the bodies, Ma. At least I cannot recognise any parts of you. I quake as I think this.

  Please God, I pray even though God has not heeded a single prayer of mine. Not one. Are you even there, God? If so, how can you condone this? How?

  ‘They took some of the injured to the clinic in Dhoompur,’ someone says.

  And I pray, once again, despite having doubted God just moments before. I pray that you are one of the injured, Ma, and not one of the bodies they are still pulling out of the wreckage.

  Puja.

  Puja needs to know and I must be the one to tell her. But first, I need to find you. I begin looking for you, Ma, and I get lost in the smouldering crowds. The entire convent, nuns and youth alike, their faces locked in a collective grimace of intense shock, have congregated in this wasteland that was once our bustling market, the repository of so many happy memories.

  Just then there is a loud groan, a demonic clap, a flash, and the sky erupts and the rain we have all been longing for explodes onto the blistering earth. It quenches the flames the few straggling survivors have been trying desperately to extinguish, and drenches the dead, these men who have longed for rain but who can no longer feel it—their last rites of fire and water.

  And the people who are still alive turn their faces up to the heavens and open their abused mouths, greedily lapping up the ash-flecked drops, and even though it seems sacrilegious to be drinking while their loved ones cannot, their thirst wins out.

  I find you lying on a mat in the corridor of the clinic in Dhoompur, which teeters under the unexpected weight of this inexorable influx of casualties.

  You are unrecognisable. Your body is distended with weeping wounds as you wait your turn for medical attention. Your flesh sizzles to the touch, throbbing and sore. But you are alive.

  Your eyes light up when you see me. You manage to wrap your swollen, suppurating fingers around my hand even though it must be agony for you to do so.

  ‘Your Da? . . . ’ Your leaking eyes plead with me to lie.

  I look down, at my blistered and ash sprayed feet, and see a blackened big toe with a broken nail.

  ‘No,’ you whisper.

  I gather up the courage to look at you. Your eyes are closed, and tormented tears squeeze out of engorged lids.

  ‘I was fifteen when I married him. We were wedded twenty eight years. He was a good man.’

  I hold you then, as gently as I can, your hot body pulsing, as we weep for the man we loved. Da’s memory colours a space between us, and robs us of words.

  ‘Puja,’ you whisper at last, invoking the other person missing from our family tapestry. Your voice is halting, and your breath comes in wheezing gasps. ‘Please. Find her. Be the one to tell her. Bring her home.’ You try to squeeze my hand, your palm too warm.

  I nod, unable to speak, my throat clogged up with hurt and grief and loss.

  ‘Promise me,’ your voice is urgent, ‘that whatever happens, you will look after your sister.’

  ‘Ma, please, don’t speak like that. Nothing will happen to you . . .’ Tears prick my eyes.

  Your sigh comes from deep within your chest. ‘Sharda, listen. You have to be prepared. I cannot . . . I cannot go on much longer. I can feel myself weakening.’

  I give in to the sobs building in my chest, willing the tears to wash away my panic and death’s ashen presence that I can sense is hovering close, and that I can hear in your laboured breathing.

  I cannot envision my world without you. I do not want to. I will take care of you forever; I will wash your wounds, and cradle your body in my arms like a precious treasure, if you would just be with me for always.

  ‘Promise me that you will find Puja, that you will look after each other, look out for each other. Forget what went before, Sharda. Please. You only have one another in this world, you are bound by blood.’

  ‘Ma,’ I manage to gasp out between sobs, ‘We also have you. Why are you speaking like this?’

  ‘There’s a knot in the pallu of my wedding sari, containing my karimani and a necklace. Sell the gold. Then you and Puja go to another village, or even stay with Nilamma, if she lets you, until you finish your degree.’ Your breath is straining. ‘I know you will succeed somehow to make ends meet, Sharda, I have great faith in you.’ Your eyes are soft and filled with such love that it hurts.

  It hurts so much. How can you look at me like that and say what you are saying?

  My aching heart bleeds to see you are making provisions for us for after you go, Ma. I cannot bear this knowledge.

  ‘We, your Da and I . . .’ Your eyes shimmer, and silver tears sprout on puffy lids.

  Is your breath becoming mor
e uneven? Or is it my imagination?

  ‘We thought we would be around to see you both married and settled, to play with our grandchildren, look after them, help bring them up. Oh never mind.’ Your face is creasing with the effort it is taking to speak, your breath coming in winded gasps.

  All this talk of death seems to have conjured it up. You are fading right before my eyes. It is as if you have given up.

  ‘Please Ma,’ I implore, ‘Stay with me.’

  I hold you close, trying to inject my need of you into your soul, willing some crucial life into your flagging body.

  ‘Your Da and I should have made provisions for your marriage and Puja’s,’ you are sighing now, spent. ‘Please look after Puja, see that she is well settled. And that you are too. Promise me.’ Your boiling fingers are grasping, begging. Your eyes beseech.

  I promise, my voice a jumble of sob-swallowed words.

  And just like that, you close your eyes and leave me, Ma, as if you had been holding on to precious life just long enough to hear me say I will look after Puja, do my best by her.

  You look as if you are sleeping. Your bruised face is peaceful.

  But you have gone, leaving me alone in that festering corridor crowded with fear and pain and the smoky scent of death.

  RAJ

  A HUG FROM A HOT SPRING

  INDIA.

  He was expecting high temperatures, of course he was. What he hadn’t expected was the physical nature of the heat. It had trounced him with a sweltering, moist slap, had enveloped him like a hug from a hot spring, when they exited Bajpe airport after a hair-raising ride in a tiny aeroplane that he was afraid would not be able to carry his, let alone the other passengers’ weight, as well as their luggage. He had sat by the window, and when they commenced their descent into Bajpe, and he had spied those undulating emerald hills and flashes of twinkling, silver rivers snaking between valleys that were coming right at them, he had closed his eyes and prayed. Actually prayed to a god, any god, some god to deliver him safely back home.

  I want to see Ellie again, please God.

  When they finally ground to a juddering halt, in one piece, thank you, God, he had turned to grin at his mother, who was gripping the seat rests as if they were her salvation

  ‘We have landed, Mum. We are good to go,’ he had said, unable to keep his relief from giving his voice wings.

  ‘I don’t know if I can do this,’ she had whispered.

  ‘Then you don’t have to,’ he had said, thinking, Couldn’t you have thought of this before we left?

  ‘I want to see them. But . . . how will I face them? What will I tell them?’

  ‘The truth. That it is all their fault. For shunning you, for discarding you and shrugging you off like the memory of a nightmare in the bright light of morning.’

  His mum had rewarded him with a smile, tremulous but filled with purpose. ‘I am sorry, Raj, for everything. I know I have been a rubbish parent, and have failed you, let you down very badly. . .’

  ‘Mum . . . ’

  ‘I gave you all the material things,’ she’d said softly, ‘foolishly convincing myself it was enough. I did not give you what really mattered. I did not give you myself.’

  ‘I . . . ’

  ‘And yet here you are, so generous, so giving,’ she’d said, ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you. Thank you for forgiving my mistakes. For accepting me, warts and all.’

  ‘Thank you too, Mum, for the same,’ he’d said.

  She’d smiled again.

  And then she’d taken a deep breath, stood up, and walked down the small aisle of that minuscule plane. ‘Let’s see about finding a taxi and then I’ll continue with my story.’

  Now, he tries to get comfortable in the ramshackle seat of the decrepit taxi that his mother picked at random from the horde of taxi drivers who descended on them like the ducks that flocked to the breadcrumbs he flicked into the pond that his nanny used to take him to when he was little.

  He is not prepared for the sheer intensity of the noise in this country, the crowds, the chaos. He is not prepared for the smells, like living things that burrow inside you and take up residence. The piquant zest of spices mingles with the festering reek of open sewers and the aroma of heat and sweat, and earth and dust—billowing apricot clouds of it.

  He is not prepared either for colour, the abundance of it, from the saffron hued mud to the kaleidoscopic saris that hang from the garish shop awnings, dazzling in the brutal sunlight. The hawkers’ carts proudly bearing mounds of spices: yellow turmeric and red chilli powder, green coriander powder and brown garam masala, or piles of food: crimson fried chicken and heaps of pink-flecked white rice, bright yellow syrup-filled tubes and glossy, treacly ochre balls.

  And nor is he prepared for the mind-numbing poverty as gaudily on display as everything else, and as much a part of life. People cooking, eating, defecating, dressing, bathing, urinating, and living their lives by the side of the road: in ditches; in flapping tarpaulin held up with twigs and festooned with holey saris; in huts that appear to be shaped from mud and topped with grass, or even in cement pipes!

  Naked urchins weave between traffic, picking up crumbs from the dirt and stuffing them in their mouths. Mothers in bedraggled saris beg for alms with concave bellied, emaciated children on their hips. Vagabonds sprawl by the side of the road, their gaunt bodies infested with weeping sores and swarming flies, their sunken eyes pleading.

  What would Ellie make of all this? Ellie . . . he wishes she were here, experiencing this extraordinary country with him.

  This country grabs you by the throat, he thinks, breathing in the burnt-orange smell of ruthless heat. It leaves you gasping. It makes you want to howl and never stop.

  He recalls how he has shouted at his mother for working, earning a living, how he’d brashly claimed just before they left, that he could live without money. Now, after seeing this, he understands why she’d slapped him. He thinks of his huge house, his Xbox and PlayStation, his bedroom that could house three of the huts he’s seen, his closet that could house at least one, with its surfeit of designer clothes, most of which he doesn’t even wear.

  Shame floods his mouth, bitter as an unpalatable truth.

  How spoilt I have been. How much I have taken for granted. I’ve been feeling sorry for myself because I felt unloved, while here, there are people dying of hunger, struggling to live. What wouldn’t these people give to be in my situation?

  His mother’s soft voice is saying, ‘My stomach had definitely grown. My waist had become thicker. That was when I had the first inkling. I counted back to the last time I had got my period . . . ’

  The understanding of what his mother is saying jolts Raj out of his introspection, drags him back from the perusal of the world outside the paan-spattered, spit beaded, grimy grey window of this ramshackle vehicle. The windscreen is similarly splashed with marks and muddy brown. How the driver can see through it is anybody’s guess.

  An unmarried mother—not a big deal in the UK—a very big deal in the India of his mother’s youth and even now, perhaps, he thinks.

  The taxi rocks and swings as it judders through yet another pothole, setting off a paroxysm of honks and screeches. The driver of the packed to overflowing bus looming next to them, too close, puts his head out of the window(which is just a gaping hole in the rusting chassis) and yells at them and the bus swerves, almost pushing their taxi off the narrow, potholey road.

  ‘Please. Be careful,’ His mother tells their taxi driver.

  People ooze out from two openings that pass for doors, one at the front and one at the back of the rickety bus, holding on with just one hand, their feet barely nudging the steps of the bus, their clothes ballooning in the breeze.

  Raj looks at his mother and raises his eyebrows, and she smiles briefly before resuming her tale. The bus stops with a clanging and grinding of long-suffering brakes, to add even more passengers to the scrum, and their driver takes advantage of this to race ahea
d.

  Raj listens to his mother’s extraordinary story, how she went to the wise woman, and how relieved she was when the wise woman said no.

  Much as he hadn’t been prepared for the many things he is experiencing in this weird, but strangely familiar country, he is even less prepared for his mother to have been pregnant, a pregnancy that went ahead by all accounts . . .

  Mum! Did you keep the baby? Was it me? Is that why you found it so hard to love me, because I was the product of such heartbreak, because I embodied such a difficult time in your life? Is that why you got so angry with me when I said I could live without money, because you had tried your hardest to give me a better life than the one I started out with? he wants to ask, but he cannot find the words.

  His mother is sitting hunched as if being here in India is hurting her. Or is it because she is mining the memories? Telling him the truth about his parentage?

  ‘I want to kill Gopi,’ he says. ‘I want to put my hands around his neck and squeeze. You were very brave, mum, doing it all on your own. Tell me again, why are you going back?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Why are you doing your sister’s bidding, uprooting our lives in order to come and visit her and her daughter when she did not once help you, forgive you your perceived mistake in her eyes, come to find you and bring you home?’

  ‘This has gone on long enough, Raj. We cannot keep perpetuating the hurt. Where will it all end?’ His mother rubs a weary hand across her eyes. ‘And besides . . . ’

  ‘Besides?’

  ‘There’s more to it than . . .’ His mother stops.

  He is suffering from the same problem; unable to ask the question that is swelling on his tongue, that has taken over his mind. Has he been living a lie?

  He is warming to his mother, in awe of the strong girl she was and the stronger woman she has become, putting the past resolutely behind her, bringing him up almost singlehandedly, succeeding in her business against all odds. But if he is the baby she is talking about and she has lied to him about this . . . How can he look her in the eye again?