She takes a deep breath. Something has unfurled inside her, is blooming, slowly but surely, is pushing past the plug in her throat, is bursting out despite the clamped lips, ‘I love you, Matt.’
She can hear his smile down the crackly, disturbed line populated by gremlins. ‘Another miracle has occurred.’ His joyous laughter bubbling down the static-infested line in infectious waves starts her off. And she stands there, the dust swirling around her, sweat drooling down her back, sandals biting into her feet, laughing until tears deposit briny caresses on her cheeks. It occurs to her that she hasn’t laughed like this in ages. She feels unfettered, free. Despite the fact that she has yet to meet the woman who birthed her and then gave her away, despite the fact that her twin sister and father still elude her. She will find them, she knows, and the certainty fills her heart with the calm her calculations used to, once upon a time, in another world. She does not know how and when but she knows she will. This is just the kind of thing her parents would have pooh-poohed, a conviction based not on fact, but on intuition.
‘It is lovely to hear you laugh, albeit down a horribly poor line. I miss you so. Come back to me, Nisha,’ Matt says.
‘I will.’ A motorbike starts with a rev and a whirr, the putter of the engine fading into the distance. Dirt swirls, making the air shimmer, assaulting her nose, stinging her eyes. Water sloshes from the pot of a woman effortlessly hefting a pail on her head, shiny drops glinting on her chocolate arms and standing out in relief against her red-and-gold-sequinned sari as she sways gracefully down the road, scarlet bangles clinking, silvery anklets teasing. ‘Matt, I know who she is and where to find her. The woman who gave birth to me.’ She cannot bring herself to say ‘Mother’. ‘I am…’ The rest of her words are eaten by noise. Stomping, thundering noise as if a herd of elephants is bearing down on her. What is happening? A stampede?
In her ear, as if from a distance, she hears, ‘Nisha? You there? What’s that sound?’ panic-laced.
‘I don’t know,’ she yells, but her voice is drowned out.
A thousand voices buzzing busily. Marching feet. A man on a moped weaves unsteadily, brakes, and comes to a standstill next to her. A boy, looking to be about five, wearing a white robe with a red collar, walks past waving a round gold ball with holes, suspended on a chain, infusing the salty air with the distinct smell of camphor. He is followed by a couple of slightly older boys, wearing similar robes, marching with their hands wrapped around thick gold candlesticks, sprouting creamy candles topped with licking, dancing flames. A priest behind them, hands folded, expression serene, decked in gold and violet dress robes. Behind him, eight men bent heft a life-size statue of Christ on the cross replete with sainted expression and the halo of nails, red paint in lieu of blood dripping down his too-white face. Their vests and lungis are stained yellow with sweat and their faces strain with effort. A bevy of women in multi-hued saris follow, in two neat lines, prayer books in hand, mouths working busily. As they pass Nisha, they burst into song, a hymn that is at once familiar as it is alien. A group of bedraggled men, mostly old, bring up the rear. The man next to her executes the sign of the cross, his expression sombre, as the procession trundles slowly past, through the gate behind her and into the church. That is why the church was so empty, she thinks. A breeze caresses her face; where a minute ago it had smacked of incense, now it smells of churned earth and sweat with a faint undertone of cinnamon.
‘Nisha? Helloooo?’
She turns away from the man who holds on to his moped with one hand and with the other whips from his pocket a blue-and-red-striped handkerchief the size of a dinner plate and wipes his gleaming face. ‘Yes, I’m here. I forgot that it’s Lent. They are doing Stations of the Cross.’ Auto rickshaws honk. The traffic, what little there was, that had come to a standstill due to the procession, resumes.
‘You were saying... that you know who your mother is,’ his voice gentle.
Your mother came often, asking after you. Sister Priya’s words, resounding in her head.
Why did you give me away? And once you did, why did you come back? And when I saw you, recognised you, was about to call out for you, why did you turn away, disappear like a fleeting mirage I had conjured up out of sheer longing? ‘Her name is Shilpa. Sister Priya said she lives in Sompur. It must be somewhere near here. Can I rely on Sister Priya’s failing memory, Matt?’
‘She recognised you, Nisha.’
‘Yes.’ And you have nothing else to go on. No other facts to follow up, no other clues… ‘I will make my way there now.’
‘Nisha, when you find your mother, remember that it’s okay to rave and rant. You are entitled.’ His voice is gentle.
He knows exactly how she feels. And he said ‘when’, not ‘if’. Bless this wonderful man she has the privilege of knowing and loving.
The man next to her pockets his handkerchief, climbs onto his moped, releasing a mini-avalanche of dust.
She sneezes.
‘Sorry,’ he says, kicking the throttle, and the moped springs to life with a phut phut phut.
Inspiration strikes. ‘Hang on a minute, Matt,’ she says into the phone, and to the man, ‘Excuse me, Sir.’
The man looks up at her, his hands on the handlebars. ‘Yes?’
She swallows. She might as well. Talking to Matt, knowing he’s there, gives her courage. ‘Do you know how to get to Sompur?’
The man smiles, the smile lighting up his whole face. ‘I am going near there myself. Hop on.’
She stares at him, uncertain. This man is middle-aged, balding, except for his hirsute moustache. How can you sprout hair above your lips while having none on your head? she wonders, and then chides herself for thinking of this now.
The man senses her hesitation. ‘Don’t worry, Ma’am, I am not going to do anything to you. I have two children and a loving wife who’s a great cook and I am going home to her cooking now.’
She looks at his earnest shiny face, the globules of sweat beading his moustache, the lines crowding his eyes. ‘Matt,’ she whispers into the phone, ‘this man is offering to take me near Sompur where Shilpa lives.’
‘I wish I could be there with you now.’
She knows that he understands exactly how she is feeling. Apprehension mixed in with wary expectation, warring with anger at the woman who birthed her and then gave her away—and hope. Hope of finding her sister hovering cautiously. When I look at you, will I see myself? When I touch you, will I remember the nine months we spent together in the womb, jostling for space?
‘Good luck,’ Matt says softly. ‘Stay safe. Call me. I love you, Nisha.’
‘Me too,’ she whispers. ‘I love you too.’ This time round it’s easier. It is as if there was a boulder in her chest that needed to be moved to allow her to say these things and even perhaps believe in miracles. I am a miracle child. Nonsense. And yet, isn’t this nothing short of a miracle—she, Nisha Kamath, pegging a lift on a stranger’s moped in an alien country that nevertheless feels like home, to the village that supposedly houses the woman who conveyed her into this world and whose last name she doesn’t know? The Nisha Kamath she was a few weeks ago would have blanched at the mere thought of this expedition, would have laughed at this foolhardy mission…
And there was that moment in church when she could have sworn the statue’s lips had curved upwards at the sight of her…
And then she is sitting behind a complete stranger, holding on to him with all her might as the scooter trundles over the stones and bumps in the road of this extraordinary country which has populated her dreams this past week and is fast becoming familiar and, she thinks, much beloved, as they race past lorries which horn constantly, seemingly for pure sport, a grating sound fit to burst eardrums, as they squeeze in between two lurching buses with a temerity that terrifies her, the people hanging out of them almost falling on top of her. The wind, which carries the stench of fish and the tang of spices makes her hair dance and jig, the loose strands buoyantly trailing behind
her.
‘Are you Catholic?’ she asks the man, shouting to be heard above the thrumming song of the wind.
‘As Hindu as they come,’ the man grins.
‘You made the sign of the cross when the procession passed by us.’
He shrugs and the moped sways to the right. ‘Oh, that. Catholic school upbringing. And you never know what works. Perhaps their God will help.’ He flashes her a grin via the mirror.
We all need something to believe in, she muses. I had the immutable solidity of numbers until recently. Now, I don’t know what to believe. And yet, this doesn’t faze her as it would have a couple of weeks ago. She is happy to defer judgement, and that is an improvement. I hated waiting, loose ends. I would have rushed to find answers. Now, I am relaxing into the languid pace of the inhabitants of this country, taking things as they come.
They rush past fields twinkling gold green in the sunlight, past rows of women hawking baskets of jasmine and aboli garlands which they thrust boldly in their faces, past a little bridge with no barriers, the river winking silvery blue below. Nisha closes her eyes until she is sure they are safely past. When she opens them again, they are racing past a couple of small shops; women loaded with baskets and men chewing paan milling beside a bus shelter. A school ground, the red mud sprouting rows of children in uniform—light blue shirt, dark blue trousers and skirts, saluting a man in camouflage khaki the colour of vomit who stands in front of a post from which the Indian flag flutters: orange, white and green stripes, blue spoke eye winking from the centre.
They are approaching a town.
The man comes to a shuddering stop beside an auto rickshaw stand. The drivers in dirty beige uniforms stained red with mud are congregated in a huddle under a copse of bowing coconut trees, lounging possessively beside their yellow-winged rickshaws, smoking and gossiping. They look up as they see her hop off the moped, dusting the skirt of her dress, their keen eyes taking in her clothes and lighting up at the alluring prospect of a moneyed customer. They make a beeline for her as one, like a swarm of flies alighting on freshly slaughtered meat.
‘You take an auto from here to Sompur, it’s not far. It will cost ten rupees max,’ the man says.
‘Thank you so much,’ she says squeezing his hand gratefully. Should she give him some money for his help? Will that insult him? While she stands there deliberating, one hand reaching for her purse, he grins, ‘I don’t want payment, Ma’am. Just include me and my family in your prayers, whichever God you favour.’ And then, he starts up the moped and is gone and she is beset by rickshaw drivers, a flock of brown faces in brown uniform, all shouting at once, shouting each other down in a mixture of Kannada and broken English. ‘I will only charge twenty rupees and take you where you want to go. Flat charge.’ ‘Don’t listen to him; I will put the meter and charge accordingly.’ ‘Fifteen rupees and not one paisa more.’
She goes with the meter man, and the others mumble and fling their beedis into the street in disdain, reverting to leaning against the trunks of coconut trees, whistling at passing women and gossiping, no doubt, about the driver she chose, who is now looking at her expectantly to tell him where he is taking her.
‘Sompur,’ she says and after three tries he manages to understand her pronunciation.
‘Where in Sompur?’ he asks in Kannada.
Ah. She doesn’t know. All she has is the name. Shilpa. ‘Take me to Sompur,’ she says, ‘and then we’ll see.’ Blessedly, he understands, nodding vigorously and starting the rickshaw, or perhaps he doesn’t but just wants to get away from the others who are pointing at him, shaking their heads and shouting, ‘Lo…’
Dark purple hibiscus flowers nod from gardens and red, white and pink bougainvillea claim compound walls. A man drops a note on the floor and as he bends to pick it up, he kisses it, and touches it to each of his eyes before pocketing it. The air that whips her hair into frenzy and caresses her face smells of a nervous anticipation, tastes of earth and rain. She closes her eyes.
What will she find?
Chapter 23
Devi
Unresponsive Facade
Ma,
I am so angry at you, angrier than I have ever been. I rant and rave. I yell, scaring Bobby who hides among the aboli bushes. I throw your diary and it falls with a flop and a sigh. I loathe you, Ma. I cannot bear to look at you. If I came to the hospital now, I would shake you until I dislodged the truth out of you, an avalanche that finally purged a lifetime of lies, half-truths, aversions.
I am a twin? Me? Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you keep it hidden? Who would have thought you were harbouring a secret of such colossal proportions?
I hate you, Ma—your betrayal, your keeping my sister from me. All these years I ached for a sibling to share the burden of your love, the burden I tottered under, the burden I shook off. And all this while I had one!
I called Rohan and he couldn’t believe it either. Well, well, what else have you been hiding from me, Ma? If I read the rest of your diary will I find a brother I didn’t know I had?
A sister. Mine. Where is she, Ma, this sister I have never known? What have you done with her? Did something happen to her? Did she die? Why do I have no recollection of her at all? How long were we together? Tell me, Ma. Oh, but you can’t, can you? You are conveniently unconscious, opportunely escaping accountability.
Is it all there in your diary? The diary I cannot bear to look at right now, the diary I want to tear into a million pieces. You better have a good explanation for what happened, Ma. If you blame it once again on the madwoman, I don’t know what I will do. I do not like to be made to look a fool, Ma, as you well know, and especially not by you. I thought I knew you, everything about you. But since I’ve started reading your diary, I have uncovered secret after secret… culminating in this.
So you were the one who had the twins. Why were you calling on Jalaja then? That is why you were so agitated, that is why… Hang on a minute—did you give my twin away? That is what you said when you came to. You gave her away to the wise woman perhaps? Because she lost her son? Did you? Was that her price for foretelling that you would have a child? The madwoman is long dead. So where is my sister then? Tell me. Speak. Stop hiding behind that unresponsive façade.
I cannot fathom this, cannot come to terms with this gargantuan deceit. The very thought of someone else who shares my genes living and going about their business somewhere gives me goosebumps. Does she know that she has a sister? I don’t think so. If I didn’t know, how would she?
How could you give her away, Ma, when you had ached and yearned for us, when you had chosen us over your husband, when you clearly loved us both so? Yes, I know I said I understood your need to believe in the wise woman, but not to the point that you give away your child at her say so! I always hated the wise woman but if I had known the whole story, her part in it, before, she would have foreseen her death that much earlier, let me tell you…
I am angry at you. So angry.
I say the name Nisha out loud. I roll the syllables round on my tongue. Nothing. Not a glimmer of recollection. I cannot remember her at all. Why? How could I forget such an integral part of me, the twin who shared your womb with me?
My baby grows inside of me and I am already so protective, so furiously in love with her. Just because a madwoman predicts that you will lose your child, how can you believe her, meekly accept it, prepare yourself? How can you let your child go? I am fuming right now; I do not have the wherewithal to read the rest of your blasted words. I would like to see the picture though, that photograph you had taken of the two of us with the last of your money. I want to see my sister. I have flipped through your diary—have ransacked the whole house. I cannot find it. Where is it?
I think of you, Ma, all that you went through, have gone through, the choices you made. I think of you running as fast as your pregnant belly could carry you to the hospital to ensure your babies were okay in the blinding rain, on feet swollen and bruised by being trapped under t
he mango tree, your hair wet and trailing behind you, while your husband lay desperately in pain, all alone as the mango tree squeezed the breaths out of him. I think of the madwoman telling you, ‘This pregnancy will cost you dearly.’ And you blindly believing her.
I understand now why I bore the brunt of your love, the love that was meant for the two of us. But was that fair? On me? On her?
On the subject of fairness, is it right that my baby would have been denied an aunt if I hadn’t read your diary, found out about my sister? That, supposing Nisha has children, my child would have been denied knowledge of her cousins, like I was denied knowledge of my sister, my twin? Not that I have any idea how to go about finding her, but at least I know about her, of her now. It was my right and you denied me this joy, this comfort of having a sibling, someone else like me in the world.
This morning at the hospital, Ma, in that stuffy room populated with ghosts of past patients and the pain of more recent occupants, a miracle occurred. Reading all those memories to you worked. You stirred. But this time you were not agitated. This time you did not lash out. ‘Manoj,’ you called softly. ‘Manoj.’ And tears squeezed out of your closed eyes, they sparkled on your eyelids, they ran in marked grooves down your face. And then, your lips moved. They moved upwards in a smile. ‘Devi,’ you smiled. ‘Devi.’
And I was blessed.
And then I came home and read your words, read of your deceit, your horrible betrayal.
You will come back to me, Ma. You will come back and tell me where she is so I can find her. My sister. My twin.
You better.
Chapter 24
Shilpa
Bitter Gourd Masala
and Mango Pickle
Bitter Gourd Masala:
Ingredients:
Bitter gourd—4 big (approx 1kg)
Onions—3, sliced
Fennel seeds—1 tsp
The Forgotten Daughter Page 25
