by Amita Trasi
She walked up to Amma who was still bound and squirming on the floor.
“You are an intelligent woman to give birth to a girl, and she’s a beautiful, fair one too. Only people in our community realize how important a girl child is, to carry our tradition forward, to receive the blessings of the Goddess. You cannot escape your fate by hiding your daughter.”
“We will definitely spend our money on the girl for the dedication ceremony,” Madam told Sakubai as they were leaving.
“Whatever is in the girl’s destiny,” Sakubai said resignedly, looking out the window, already bidding me goodbye. After they left, Sakubai limped inside, untied Amma, and caressed her back. Amma jerked her hand away. I could see the trail of tears that had left their mark on her cheeks. She gathered me in her arms and let me cry.
“You called them, didn’t you, Sakubai?” Amma asked.
“Yes. You don’t listen. You are sitting in some stupid hope that Mukta’s father will come. I cannot sit by and do nothing. We have a tradition to follow.”
“I will never let it happen,” Amma said.
“You have no choice,” said Sakubai.
Many days later I was still wondering if it was a bad dream, if what had happened was merely my imagination. I would have liked to think it was and that I had woken up from a deep slumber in the forest, woken up under the shade of the trees with dappled sunlight on my face. The air was so warm and rich with the smells of the forest—the sounds of my life before that day. Truthfully, I had not understood why the strangers had treated us so badly or why Sakubai had invited them to our home, but I had begun to understand the pull of fear—how my heart beat faster for no apparent reason, how the heaviness in my chest never went away, and how I could hardly breathe in the open space of my beautiful forests.
Quietness descended on our lives at home. Amma and I mixed the spices while we cooked. There was a distant look in our eyes. We were afraid that if our eyes met even for a second, the bitter memory of that day would come spilling out. Sakubai left us alone. Most days she sat in her room looking out of the window or tottered around the house without glancing at us. Silence crept into our lives, allowing us to keep our nightmares and our thoughts to ourselves. We simply carried on, pretending it had never happened.
One morning I heard Amma’s sweet voice calling out to me, “Mukta, Mukta, Come here my child.”
She sat by the furnace, a pot of rice boiling behind her. She gave me a slow, strained smile and patted the ground beside her. I sat down but remained very still, worried that any slight movement on my part could change what we seemed to have in that moment. Amma cupped my cheeks in her hands.
“I have been thinking about what happened that day,” she said, and we both lowered our eyes, not looking at each other.
“I will call your father. I don’t know which part of Bombay he lives in, but I know someone in this village—your father’s mother—your grandmother—and she has promised to give me a telephone number where I can call him. You and I can visit the village and talk to him then. Your father is different than any other man I have known, Mukta. He always helps people in need. People come to him for advice. I am sure he will understand how desperately I want you to get away from this life. I want it to be different for you. I want it to be better.” She looked away, a wistful look in her eyes. I nodded, still feeling very numb. I had never known that my father’s mother lived in our village or that Amma was in touch with her. And once again, I did not ask.
“I couldn’t protect you that day,” Amma whispered, caressing my hair.
I looked at her then and felt as if my heart would burst. Tears poured relentlessly down my face. She put her arms around me, and I clung to her. I don’t remember how long we sat there, near the furnace, holding each other, its warmth surrounding us, the rice boiling over behind us. Through my tears I could see the flames in the furnace rising high and low like the turns about to come into my life.
Sifting through scattered memories is like sifting through sand. Some remain, some simply slip away…
– TARA
Three
2004
When I woke up that morning, it was with a feeling of puzzlement. For a few seconds, I stared at the dusty arms of the ceiling fan that whirred overhead and listened to the wind chime as it tinkled in the breeze. The faded cream-colored walls around me added to my confusion. Where was I? Then it came to me. I was in my childhood home—Papa’s apartment in Bombay—far away from my tiny apartment in Los Angeles. It had been two weeks since I had returned, two weeks since I had contacted the police, and yet, I didn’t have the slightest clue where Mukta could be.
I took a deep breath and fumbled for my purse on the bedside table, delved into it, and opened the list of NGO’s I had downloaded from the Internet. There were five names on it—centers that dealt with missing or kidnapped children. I started dialing the numbers. The numbers for the first three organizations rang, but there were no replies. The fourth organization politely took down the details and said they would contact me if they heard anything. When a man picked up the phone at the fifth agency, I hoped I could find an answer there.
“My father had hired a detective agency to search for Mukta,” I told the man at the other end of the phone after I let him know all the basic details of the case.
“I see. And you said this detective agency that had been looking for her isn’t responding to any of your calls?” He spoke in a low, rough voice.
“Yes. I have tried calling their office several times. Nobody picks up. I have been to their office almost daily since the day I’ve returned, but it’s always closed. I just . . . I don’t know how or where to start looking for her. Even the police aren’t much help. I’ve been here for two weeks and there has been no progress.” I am surprised at my frustration and how easily I’ve spewed it at a stranger.
The man let out a sigh. “What did you say your name was?”
“Tara.”
“Tara. I suggest you keep trying the detective agency; they may have some information. We don’t like to turn people away, but you say she has been missing for eleven years, and we don’t take cases more than five years old. We are a new setup and are trying to expand our services, but we won’t be able to help. I don’t like to tell this to people who are searching for a loved one, but the reality is there are about ten children missing every hour in India and more than 70% are never found. Also there is the possibility—”
I replaced the receiver as the words continued to pour out of it. I got up and walked toward the balcony of our second floor apartment. I watched the city from up here. The street outside the apartment complex was flooded. Multicolored umbrellas fluttered mid-air as pedestrians waded through knee-deep water. A chaiwalla served hot tea and pakoras in his streetside stall. Beside him, a hawker roasted corn for passersby. Red sparks flew in the air as he fanned the burning coals. As a child, I used to love the rain, mostly for its dramatic presence, the way it rammed down on this city, and brought life to a screeching halt. Only the rains, I used to think, had the power to humble this city.
There were memories of sailing paper boats in the gutters created by Bombay rains, of playing cricket on the wet playground with the neighborhood boys, of coming back home drenched and muddy, of Aai admonishing me for my tomboyish ways. If I closed my eyes, I could see my Aai, her soft eyes flashing with anger, that red bindi quivering on her forehead when she scolded me. I remember the time Aai used to invite the neighboring ladies to our home. They would gather in our living room eager to gossip, the cacophony of their cackling voices surging from our apartment. Meena-ji, our neighbor and Aai’s best friend, a round-faced woman with a sharp tongue, was the one known to carry tales.
“I have always wanted to tell you this—about your daughter,” Meena-ji would often tell Aai. “It is not good for a girl to have so much josh . . . so much spirit. How do you say this to a mother? How will she find a husband? Only we women know how difficult it is to get a suitable boy f
or our girls. How will she look after the house? Beating up boys, playing with them? Terrible! Teach her this or else you will never find a husband for her. You will spend the rest of your life collecting dowry but no one will marry her.”
I smiled at the memory now, wondering what Meena-ji would think of me now— unmarried and not a person in the world to call family. If Papa were alive we could have laughed off her remarks together. Papa had always been my closest supporter, warding off such loose talk and rumors.
My Papa was such a tall, handsome man, and neighbors often knocked on our door for his advice. They would sit on our sofa in the living room and rattle off their woes while Papa listened carefully. Sometimes, I would hide in the kitchen, trying to listen in. I could always hear the grief-stricken tone in which those muffled voices spoke and how after my Papa had spoken to them—softly, reassuringly—they would emerge from our home with faces so cheerful I thought Papa had sprayed magic mist on them. I used to ask Papa if he knew magic, and he would laugh. “The magic is in the words, my dear girl. When you bend one’s thoughts with words that touch the soul, they call it inspiration.”
I thought of Papa and how he used to enjoy a chat with his best friend, Anupam chacha, here on this balcony, sharing a smoke, blowing curls of smoke into the air while Aai served them samosas, our apartment smelling of a mixture of smoke and fried food. Sometimes Papa would sit here by himself, his head buried in a book, and I would interrupt him and pester him to tell me about his life in his village.
“How many times are you going to listen to the same story?” he would laughingly ask.
I loved listening to it—over and over again. In those moments, he would take me with him as he wandered into his memories of when he grew up in the village of Ganipur. I would sit on Papa’s lap; the eyes with which he watched this world became mine in that moment. His fair skin would acquire that flush of youth, his green eyes pondering over a distant memory of playing kabaddi and cricket with the other boys in the village. He told me about the mangoes hanging from trees and peacocks dancing in the rain, about the swaying rice and millet fields and the huge banyan tree in the middle of the village square where he and Aai had first met.
“Wherever you looked, Tara, the sky was clear and blue, bringing peace to the heart. You took one breath, and ah, the air was pure . . . so fresh.”
It was a world different than the one I knew—this city of Bombay where there were buildings after buildings, and when there were no buildings there were construction sites. I hadn’t ever seen any green swaying farm fields with peacocks dancing in the middle of them. Those images would unravel in my mind’s eye like one of the fictitious stories I read.
“I will take you to my village one day,” he used to tell me. And I waited for that day to come. It never did.
I wasn’t even born, Papa used to tell me, when my parents eloped from the village and arrived in this bustling city. They made their home in Dadar in this very apartment. Now, standing here, looking at the city from up here, I realized that nothing much had changed about this place. A row of ashoka trees and coconut palms still lined the walls of this complex, and a lonely badam tree still stood on the corner, its branches swaying in the breeze. I remember a board that hung crooked on the gates outside, with the words “Vijaya Co-operative Housing Society” which greeted us when we entered the complex. That dull chowkidar who sat outside the gates always reminded me of Suppandi—the simpleton who appeared in my comic books. Every time we passed the gates, my best friend Navin, who was two years older than me, nudged me, reminding me of the resemblance, sending me into a bout of giggles.
It was on this balcony Navin and I watched wedding processions that went by, staring in awe at the horse carrying the groom and the people who danced to the loud music around it. Before Mukta arrived in our lives, there wasn’t a time when neighbors couldn’t find Navin and me together—talking, laughing, or arguing—walking to school together, playing with the other boys, running after the ice cream carts during the summers, or trapping butterflies in plastic bottles.
I remember waking up waiting to hear the music resonating from Navin’s sitar, the rhythm of the raga, and Navin’s voice filling the air with melody. I would get out of bed, finish my breakfast in a hurry, and race to his apartment to hear him sing. Papa would laugh and tease me saying, “Except for one boy, nothing in the world is able to get you out of bed this early.”
Papa used to say my friendship with Navin was destined to happen, written into our lives even before we were born. After all, Navin’s father, Anupam chacha, and Papa had been childhood friends. Anupam chacha was a tall, broad-shouldered man, built like Papa with similar green eyes. While Papa got his engineering degree from IIT and joined a top firm, Anupam chacha started his own business in Bombay. Papa said they were brought up like brothers even though they were neighbors back in the village. They played together as children, went to the same school, and studied together. Anupam chacha was always telling us how as children they played pranks on the innocent villagers. I remember Anupam chacha telling Papa about his wife—Navin’s mother—who died of cancer when he was six years old. Anupam chacha often reminisced about her, talking to Papa about her melodious voice, her singing talent. I learned from their conversation that she had been a gifted sitar player, and her last wish had been for her son to become a famous musician. Anupam chacha, wanting to honor his wife’s last wishes, subjected Navin to hours of music lessons every day. I never heard Navin complain, not once, about these long music lessons even though I used to think they were torturous.
I looked across at the balcony next door—the apartment where Navin and Anupam chacha used to live. It had been silent since I had arrived. I had looked into its darkness through the windows; watched the locked doors hoping they’d appear there someday. Perhaps they had moved away too, trying to escape like we had. All our friendships had come to an end on that fateful day when Papa had taken me to America. I had not spoken to Navin or Anupam chacha after that day. And I had always wondered why Papa had stopped talking to Anupam chacha, why he never called him after we set foot in America. I thought of how the good memories from my childhood had disappeared so suddenly, like fleeting moments that I had to rummage through to remember. Next door, a neighbor hung clothes to dry on an indoor clothesline. A radio rang out with an old Hindi song in another home. “I have lost too much here,” I said aloud. “I don’t know what I can do to make it right.” Birds chirped in the distance and the crows on the electrical line fluttered their wings at me.
That afternoon, I decided to give the detective agency another go. I didn’t know what Papa had been thinking, wasting his time and money on a detective agency that didn’t respond to any calls. I fetched the document the detective agency had faxed over to Papa in the US. There were two branches listed on their letterhead. I decided to visit the head office.
I caught a taxi and read the address to the taxi driver. He didn’t know my destination but promised to take me anyway. As we neared the place, we stopped every few minutes to ask pedestrians for guidance. People were helpful, patiently giving directions. When we finally reached the building, I stood outside, watching the taxi roar away. The building was old, the walls cracked and uncared for. I entered the corridor and read the nameplate, “M/s Dharam Private Detective Agency.”
There was no elevator, so I walked up three stories. To my surprise, the door was open. I peered inside. It didn’t look like a detective’s office at all. There were two tables littered with files, surrounded by empty walls. A girl in her early twenties sat at one of the tables. She lifted her head momentarily, her kohl-lined eyes peering above the files.
“Hello,” I said.
“Yes?”
“Well, my father is . . . was a client.”
She didn’t reply.
“May I speak to someone who runs this place?” I asked.
“Wait please.”
I looked around. There were too many files fallen on the floor.
“Ashok Deshmukh—that’s my father’s name.”
She typed the name on the keyboard, and then sifted through the files on the table.
“Yes, I remember. His file is not here. My boss has taken it with him.”
“Your boss?”
“Yes—the one who owns this agency—Mr. Dharam Deo.”
“Oh, yes. See, I have all the letters my father wrote to Mr. Dharam Deo from America. And here are the receipts for the payments my father made. But I can’t find any response from Mr. Deo detailing the task he had undertaken. He was searching for a girl who was kidnapped years ago.”
“I am sorry. I don’t know anything about it, Madam. You will have to wait. He may be back in two hours, or I can ask him to call you when he returns.”
“I’ll wait,” I said and took a chair near the window.
The girl did not seem happy about me waiting in the office. She kept typing furiously on the keyboard. I waited for five hours, listening to the faint honking of cars, watching her work, wiping the sweat off my neck as the ceiling fan whirred above us.
When I was tired of waiting, I walked up to her and asked, “May I have this detective’s cell number? A card maybe? The number I have been trying to call doesn’t work.”
She rummaged through her drawer, managed to find a card with oil stains on it, and flicked it on the table.
“Here’s his card, but his number won’t work.”
“Really? I should complain to your boss, tell him how rude you are.”
She looked up at me for a second. Then put up her hands.
“All right, all right,” she said, “let me look at those files in the cabinet and see if I can find something.”
She shuffled through the files in the cabinet and looked at some papers in the drawers.
“Your father’s name is Ashok Deshmukh? See, this looks like a list of the NGO’s your father used to work with. I can’t find the file. But you might learn something from them.”
