Turmeric powder—1/2 tsp
Salt—to taste
Fennel seed powder—1 tbsp
Lime juice—2 tbsp
Sugar—to taste
Coconut Oil—1 tbsp
Method:
1. Wash, remove seeds and chop the bitter gourd into coin-sized concentric pieces.
2. Heat the coconut oil in a frying pan.
3. Add the fennel seeds and cook until brown and then add in turmeric powder and mix.
4. Add in the onions and salt and mix. Allow the onions to brown and get caramelised—this might take about 10-12 minutes. Stir frequently.
5. Add in the bitter gourd and a little more salt, just for the bitter gourd.
6. Cover and cook for 10-15 minutes, stirring in between.
7. Once the bitter gourd has cooked, add fennel seed powder, lime juice and sugar. Mix well.
8. Cook for another 5 minutes until all the flavours are mixed in well. Adjust seasoning if needed.
* * *
Dear Diary,
Once upon a time, there was a girl who dreamed of having a husband to love her, a family all her own. She got it all, though not in the way she had imagined, hoped for. She got the husband. She lost him. She got the family, twin girls, and… lost one. Now all she has is one angry little girl, who will not do her mother’s bidding, who misses her sister dreadfully.
Everything the wise woman predicted has happened. The prophesy has finally been fulfilled: I have paid in full. I mourn. I grieve. I rant. I rave.
Mostly, I regret—and it is like having the taste of bitter gourd in your mouth all the time. No matter how much sugar you eat, how many sweets, the acrimonious taste never really goes away.
And I remember. I remember. That fateful day, that monumental decision.
My babies are crying. My babies are crying and they won’t stop, their cries getting weaker by the hour, resembling a kitten’s pitiful mewls. My babies are hot, so hot, like holding live coals, one in each arm. I rock them, I sing to them, I cannot soothe them. They are inconsolable, they hurt, they look to me with eyes tired beyond their years, and I, who am meant to look after them, make them better, cannot. I have failed. Failed as a mother.
I longed and ached for children, and when the Lord Ganapathy finally blessed me with not one but two—nothing short of a miracle —I cannot afford to keep them, feed them, look after them. Bad mother, that’s what I am.
Since Manoj… I have been living off Sumitranna and Jalaja’s charity. While I desperately try and fail to relieve my precious babies of their suffering, doubts assail me, accusatory arrows find aim. I did not feed them enough. Did they fall ill due to malnutrition? I can’t be sure. Bad mother.
There is no milk, so I give them drops of water through a pipette. They won’t drink. They weep plaintively, hot slack tears squeezing out of barely conscious eyes, their breath like a furnace. Their little emaciated bodies, the ribs in danger of poking through fragile skin the colour of the inside of a watermelon, red and bruised. I put one to each breast, like I used to when they were younger, even though they’re too big now, two and a half, even though their teeth will bruise my nipples. They won’t latch on, they won’t drink. The fever won’t relinquish its grip, won’t come down.
In desperation, I wrap both in my sari and carry them down the path, through the fields to the wise woman. I lay them down at her feet, on her feet. She doesn’t flinch, though her eyes widen at the heat of my poor battered children.
I fall at the wise woman’s feet. ‘Do something,’ I pray. ‘Please do something.’
People stare, flinch away from the sight of Nisha’s gaping face, her gash of a mouth. They turn away from the pitiful wails racking my daughters’ ailing bodies.
‘It is time,’ the wise woman says.
I look up at her benevolent face crisscrossed with lines, her steel-grey hair, those matching eyes, soft as clouds at dusk.
‘One to keep, one to lose,’ she says.
‘I cannot bear to lose either, I cannot.’ I cry. ‘Can’t you heal them, intervene with Lord Ganapathy on my behalf?’ I beg. ‘Please.’ I catch a hold of her bare feet, my tears washing the grime off them. ‘Please.’
‘You stole from fate, Shilpa,’ she says, and her voice is gentle as twilight ushering out a perfumed summer’s evening, soft as a mother’s bosom. ‘You were warned.’
I want to lash out, hit her, make her feel the hurt, the pain that is tearing me apart. I look at my babies, lying at her feet, mewling in agony. I pick them up; boiling, wailing, wrap them very carefully in my sari, heft them on either side of my heart. ‘No,’ I tell her, ‘I will not lose them. I will not.’
I go to Jalaja. I link my hands as if in prayer, ‘Please, I need to take them to hospital,’ I say.
She covers my hands with her own rough, callused ones. ‘You are shaming me by doing this, Shilpamma.’ Her tears fall on our joined hands. ‘You of all people do not have to beg. You, your girls, are family.’ She takes care not to look at my Nisha as she says this; she still shies away from the sight of my poor girl with her wounded face.
At the hospital, my babies are whisked away from me, hooked on drips, tubes half their size feeding nutrients into their poor ravaged bodies.
‘They are in safe hands now, they will be fine,’ Jalaja chants, her words taking the form and rhythm of a prayer, and I try to relax, I do, but the madwoman’s prophesy resounds in my head, her deep, melancholy sigh as I said no to her for the first time ever and left with my children, echoes in my ears. Doctors and nurses flit about the room, check on my children, the space around them a hive of activity, but they themselves lie unresponsive, quiet, pale, their little bodies lost under the machines doing the feeding, the beating, the living for them. They seem so distant and I ache to hold them in my arms, ache to hear their delighted laughter, their robust, healthy cries, not the mewls they have taken to emitting since this fever possessed them.
Once we put this behind us, my girls and I, I will go to work, I vow. It is my fault. My fault that Manoj… I will not think of him. After he… I could not work, I was heavily pregnant. Then, after the babies… they needed me. Jalaja gave without me having to ask, but I hid how much I needed from her. She urged me to take them to hospital when they first fell ill, but I demurred because of the cost. And now… I hope it is not too late. I need the wise woman… But the wise woman, she’s said… the prophesy… I cannot lose one, I cannot…
The main doctor, the one they all defer to, comes to me and I read in his eyes what he is going to say before he says it, echoes of the time Manoj and I went with folded hands to a doctor about my chances of having children reverberating from the past. Another hospital, another doctor. He had said I wouldn’t have any kids, the chances were nil. Now I have two, and I listen to this doctor in this hospital say that it is too late, that nothing more can be done, that it is time to say goodbye to my precious girls. No. No, I cannot let that happen. I entrust my babies to Jalaja, who keeps watch at the hospital and I run through the fields, bare soles blistering on pebbles scorched white in the sun. I run to the wise woman, fall at her feet.
‘Which one?’ I ask like I did once before, when I’ve gathered my breath. ‘Which one do I have to lose?’
‘Your choice,’ she says.
‘What?’ I blanch. ‘How can Lord Ganapathy do this to me? How do I choose which one of my babies is going to die?’
The madwoman smiles, her face settling into familiar furrows, her grey eyes, like shadows dancing in the hearth of an evening, reflecting the turmoil I feel. ‘Who said anything about dying?’
I stare at her as the meaning sinks in, lying prostrate in the mud, dust swirling around me, the peepal tree leaves swishing languidly in the leisurely breeze, unaware of the grit digging into my knees, unaware of my sore, scalded feet. And then I am smiling along with her, I am throwing my head back, revelling in the hot rays warming my face, feeling the sun for the first time in days, and I am laughing. ‘They are
not going to die; my babies are not going to die.’
‘No,’ she says, her voice soft as the gurgle of a faraway stream. ‘But you have to lose one.’
In the market, life goes on. Aarthiappa’s wife haggles about the price of fish with Shali, someone guffaws loudly and the bus trundles down, the driver tooting the horn relentlessly in an effort to chase the cows out of the road.
‘Take her to the convent in Dhonikatte,’ the wise woman says.
I do not ask why the convent, why not Lord Ganapathy. The gods work in strange ways; they work through this woman in front of me. I will do whatever she says if it means my babies will get better. I wearily pull myself to standing, make to leave.
‘Wait,’ her fingers on my arm. I turn. ‘Once you give her to them, you can’t take her back.’
* * *
And once more, I have to choose. But this time, it is between my girls, both of whom I love more than life itself. I look at them, lying there under the machines, barely breathing, their twin hearts barely beating. Jalaja is sobbing into her soggy pallu. The medical staff have given up on my girls. No activity around them now, no nurses hovering, no doctors with clip pads and devoted entourages.
I have to choose.
Devi? My first born? My perfect little girl?
Or Nisha? The one who arouses my protective instincts, on whose behalf I want to fight the world. Nisha whom I love so fiercely, the more because everyone else shuns her so.
How could I bear to lose either? But this way they both survive. Otherwise, as the wise woman has cautioned, as Lord Ganapathy has shown in no uncertain terms, if I go against the prophesy, I lose them both. I have to do this to save them.
A distressed whimper startles out of one of the girls, loud in the stark quiet of the room. Nisha.
Jalaja goes up to Devi, wipes her face with her pallu, whispers endearments into her ear. She carefully avoids looking at Nisha.
‘It was Nisha who murmured, Nisha who needed comfort,’ I want to yell. Instead, I go to Nisha, I wipe her face; I whisper endearments into her ear.
And that decides it for me.
* * *
As I hand my precious little girl, her sickly little body so hot it feels like she is on fire, over to the nun, I watch the nun’s face. She holds my daughter close, not recoiling from my child’s gaping, ravaged face, and for that I am grateful. ‘The Lord made us all in His likeness,’ the nun says, her eyes tender as she plants a kiss on my baby girl’s scorching forehead.
I have made the right choice, I think. I have. I dithered and dallied; surely Nisha needed me more because of her cleft? But if she stayed with me, in our village, without the security blanket of her sister beside her, shunned by even those closest to her, mocked and teased because of her disfigured face, would my love, my fierce protectiveness be enough? And the child who stayed with me would be in for a struggle—even though I vowed to find work, we wouldn’t have much. I would barely be able to feed her. Nisha had already had a poor start in life; she deserved more than I could give her. So much more. Perhaps this was her chance; perhaps this was what the wise woman had meant when she said that Nisha’s disfigured face could be a blessing rather than a punishment, a curse.
I fall at the nun’s feet. ‘Please,’ is all I can think to say. ‘Please.’
She hands my baby over to another nun, takes a hold of my shoulders, lifts me up. I collapse into her and I sob.
‘The Lord has a plan for your child,’ she says.
I have to believe her. I do. Blind belief is all I have left to fill the chasm that yawns between me and my precious little girl.
* * *
Just as the wise woman predicted, as soon as I give Nisha away, Devi starts responding to the medicines and makes what the doctors term a ‘fantastic’ recovery. The fever drops, her colour returns and I take her home. But one thing, however, remains the same.
My girl cries and cries. She will not stop. She is crying for her sister. Not fevered mewls, no, thank the Lord Ganapathy; proper livid, furious sobs. ‘Nini,’ she moans. ‘Nini.’ This is what she calls her sister. She comes to me, her nose running, her face flushed and raging sobs escaping her. She grabs my sari with her little fists and urges me to search for her sister. I try to gather her in my arms and she pushes me away. ‘Nini,’ she moans. ‘Nini.’
She waddles through the whole house looking for her Nini. Under the mattress, behind the door, even in the dog’s bowl. She points to the empty space on the mattress next to her: ‘Nini.’ A question, a lament. She cries herself to sleep.
One day I spy her near the well, half her body dangling inside as she cries, ‘Nini, Nini,’ and my heart jumps to my throat. It is the monsoon season. The water is almost near the top and she had seen part of her reflection, mistaken it for her sister. I manage to pull her away just in time, thank the Lord Ganapathy.
She looks at her image in stainless-steel tumblers and smiles. She takes a tumbler to bed with her, hugging it close, talking to it, pushing me away—that is the only way she can get to sleep.
* * *
My other daughter, however, is still ill, I hear, despite the nuns’ prayers and the doctors’ interventions. I worry, I fret, I alternate between praying, desperately, frantically: ‘What more do you want, Lord?’ and doubting both Him, fate and the wise woman. I run to her, dragging a complaining Devi along. Devi takes one look at the wise woman and begins to yell, loud cries racking her body. I try to gather her in my arms but she pushes me away. ‘Nini,’ she yells, furiously ripping a peepal leaf to shreds, kicking up dust, making passersby sneeze. ‘Nini…’
‘Nisha needs me,’ I cry to the wise woman. ‘She is pining for me,’ I sob. ‘Perhaps if I had left her at the hospital…’
‘Then you would have lost both of them; you heard what the doctors had to say,’ the wise woman reminds me gently.
‘If I had given Devi away perhaps…’ I say softly, giving voice to the doubts that assail me every waking moment, that grip my chest in a vice-like fist, choking hot sobs out of me at night as I count out the hours till morning, second-guessing my decision, desperately missing my child, praying that she gets better, that my belief in the wise woman pays off, that this hurt, this pain of losing her, of giving her away was worth it. Guilt colours my voice the flaming scarlet of shame. ‘Perhaps I made the wrong choice,’ I mutter, while the precious daughter I chose to keep hits me with her palms, her fists, yelling ‘Nini, Nini,’ as if she knows the traitorous words I have just uttered, as if she wishes she could give me away, barter me for her sister.
‘You made the choice,’ the wise woman says, her voice stern, her eyes on my daughter, ‘You have to live with it.’ And then, more gently, as if she understands the constant war I wage with guilt and remorse, ‘It will be alright, Shilpa, it will. Wait and see.’
But how can I wait when my daughter is ill, when the choice I had to make perpetually torments me? Have I done the right thing?
‘Yes, you have,’ the wise woman says as if reading my thoughts.
And I carry my daughter, who fights me all the way, home. And I wait.
I wait.
* * *
A miracle occurs. My child is cured. This Catholic God, he is so powerful, dear Diary. He performs a wonder to top the one Lord Ganapathy did by consecrating my barren womb with twin blessings. Just as my daughter knocks on death’s door, the Catholic God snatches her away, brings her back into the land of the living. That is what the Catholics specialise in, don’t they? Resurrection?
I go often to see her, hiding out of sight, by the gates to the convent. A little girl skipping in a courtyard, the air fragranced with jasmine and a hint of lime—tangy, slightly bitter. The little snub of a nose. Eyes the colour of roasted groundnuts. A little girl, so close I could touch her, claim her. My little girl. Mine, and yet mine no longer.
I rage at the wise woman. I yell.
The rain arrives on a gust of wind, the drops smelling of mango and mud. Skittish, mango-sc
ented, turmeric-tinged, bitter-tasting drops land on my face, my head, my arms, and gradually soak my sari. ‘I miss her,’ I lament. ‘Devi misses her. How can you, how can Lord Ganapathy expect me to live without her, live knowing she’s close by? So close.’
‘She won’t be for long,’ the wise woman says in her gentle voice, and I am possessed of the urge to shake her, shake her as much as the leaves of the peepal tree trembling in the wind, shake her until her teeth chatter, until she tells me that my baby’s rightful place is with me.
‘What do you mean?’ I ask instead. ‘What do you mean?’
‘She will be fine,’ she says, laying a gnarled hand on mine. ‘It is meant to happen. Everything that happens is meant to be.’
‘Easy for you to say,’ I yell, yanking my hand away.
‘I lost a son too,’ she says gently.
‘He died!’ I yell and for the first time I watch her cringe and I am pleased that I have at last pierced that calm countenance. ‘My girl, she’s so close, so close.’ I give in to the tears that rock me. Devi is with Jalaja, she will not come to me. She is angry at me, blames me for her sister. As she should. And I blame this woman, even though a part of me knows that she is only a messenger. That she is as helpless as I am.
I ache for my child. I want her back.
‘You gave her away,’ the wise woman says softly. ‘You could have kept her, disregarded my words. Why didn’t you?’
I almost did. And I almost lost them both. Almost. I collapse into myself. She is right of course. If anyone is to blame, I am.
‘Say you bring her back,’ she says, and I look up at her, hopeful.
‘How is it you will feed her, feed the both of them?’ she says, her voice gentle, but it is as if she has slapped me, and the hope that bloomed within me moments before is displaced by wrath warring with guilt.
I glare at her and she looks right back, her eyes peaceful as the river at dawn. She is not mocking me, she is asking.
My secret shame, bitter as bitter gourd masala—that I cannot feed my own children, that I have to live off Sumitranna’s charity. I am furious at the wise woman for bringing it up. If only Manoj were here. But whose fault is it that he isn’t? His pain-filled eyes haunt me every single day, as does my daughter’s face. When I am holding Devi, I ache for my other daughter. Devi searches for her sister. She looks behind me, beside me, up my skirts, in the hope her sister is hiding there. It breaks my heart.
The Forgotten Daughter Page 26
