by Amita Trasi
“Hmm . . . no, no, nothing weird about it at all; your father had that effect on people. In his zeal to do good, he made many enemies. Don’t I know that?” he sighed. “But wait. Maybe, I can help you with a list of the children he rescued. You might find some answers there.”
He typed something on the computer, then handed me a printout.
“It’s a complete list of all the children he helped. He wanted me to maintain the list so he knew where the children he rescued were at all times—if the families that adopted them were treating them well. He always looked out for them. You see, these adoption programs never really worked well . . . ” he sighed. “Couples want their own child, you know. Who wants to look after such children? So we sometimes allowed Ashok Sahib to bend the law a bit and let the children stay with him for a while so he could help them. It wasn’t legal, but it was for a good cause. But this girl, Mukta . . . there doesn’t seem to be any official record of her . . . anything that says your parents fostered her . . . so I don’t know. Many children slip through the cracks. Some who get rescued land up as indentured servants. We try to make sure that doesn’t happen, but we all know such things are always happening. I am sorry we couldn’t be of more help.”
“No problem. Thank you for your help,” I said, and parked the list in my purse without looking at it. This search didn’t seem to be going anywhere. As I was walking out of there, I wasn’t sure if it was a gallant or a foolish choice to fly all the way back to Bombay to look for a friend who had disappeared eleven years ago. Maybe there was no coming back from what I had done. Back in Los Angeles I had been a waitress at a small restaurant, besides having two other jobs. I worked all the time and barely managed to pay the bills, while Brian played in a band. Out here in this city, I did not know a single person who could help me. Maybe someone like me didn’t know how to go about a search like this one. There was an easy way out of all this. I could simply leave—go back to Los Angeles to the life I had built. But I knew that could never be an option for me.
I thought of Papa and what he would have told me if I wanted to give up so early in my search. We are strong people Tara—you and I. We will survive no matter what. I thought of his bright, smiling eyes that always gave me courage. Then I realized he himself had given up easily—committed suicide—given up on the search for Mukta, given up on me. I had told Papa’s friends he had died of a heart attack, never letting them know he had hung himself. There was a certain shame in saying those words out loud. Perhaps it was the way Papa had raised me—to never ever quit.
I spent the next few days cleaning Papa’s apartment. I scrubbed the floors on my haunches; I stood on my tiptoes to get the cobwebs off the ceiling, wiped the dust off the tables, and rinsed the windowpanes. Some photo frames toppled to the floor as I opened the windows in the living room. Most of them were empty—I had taken the pictures with me to America. The ones that remained looked old—black and white pictures where the color was left to one’s imagination. There was one of Aai beside me, celebrating my fifth birthday. Another where, as a three year old, I am sitting on Papa's left shoulder and Papa is clutching both my hands tightly. How proud he looked holding a daughter on his shoulder. Then there was that wedding picture of my parents—Aai dressed in a green sari, glowing as a bride and Papa in a white kurta bordered with golden threads. There had been no big wedding for them, neither of their parents running around to make arrangements, no henna on my Aai’s hands, no jewelry on her except for a simple gold chain and bangles, which her grandmother had given her. There was no ravishing hairstyle embellished with hair jewelry or jasmine flowers that all brides seek to have. Instead there was a flower that dangled from her hair bun, as lonely in her hair as she must have felt on that day. Aai and Papa are smiling in the photograph, but to me, their eyes always said something else. Tears had glistened in Aai’s eyes whenever she spoke of her wedding day, and all I had ever seen was the disappointment in her eyes that her marriage would go unacknowledged by their parents.
Once, my desire to know my grandparents had known no bounds. The question of why both sets of grandparents never wanted to meet me crossed my mind now and then, but the desire to know them grew stronger during summer vacations when my friends would rush home excitedly to meet their grandparents who were visiting for the summer. I had wondered aloud to Aai once, asked her if I had done something wrong because my grandparents weren’t keen to meet me. Aai said it wasn’t my fault but theirs—Papa and hers. They were the ones who had eloped from their village and married without their parents’ permission. Aai used to sigh and say the shadow of their elopement had fallen on their lives and followed them wherever they went, and that if she ever dared to step inside that village, her father would have killed her.
“That is what fathers do in my village when their daughter does something so dishonorable. It is not safe for you to go there. If you step foot in that village, your life is in danger too.” She used to sigh, “Only your Papa is forgiven. Only he is allowed to visit the village.”
I never again asked about my grandparents or tried to persuade my parents to take me to the village.
My parents were upper caste Brahmins from Ganipur, but there was a flaw in Aai’s horoscope which made Papa’s parents vehemently against the match. It hadn’t stopped Papa. He had married Aai anyway. I was always sure it was my Papa’s charm that led Aai to take such a bold step. For it wasn’t possible that my usually quiet mother, who believed it was her duty as a woman and a wife to always serve and obey the man she had married, could ever be so brave to defy her own parents. It must have been an enigma to anybody who knew this about her. Aai told me she did not have the good fortune of finishing her studies in the village. Her parents wanted to educate her brothers, so they had pulled her out of the village school in the fifth grade to help out at home.
“But that doesn’t bother me, Tara. What would I have done studying anyway? I don’t have your Papa’s brains,” my Aai used to tell me. “A good woman’s life is in her husband’s happiness, in being a good wife and a good mother, taking care of the family. And you better learn it too. Even six-year-old girls in the village know how to make dal and sabji. You better learn too.”
It was Aai who told me about their life back in the village. “I was a moneylender’s daughter. Your Papa,” she told me in awe, “was always different. He married me, a dark-skinned girl, and could never see any wrong in it. Still can’t. Even then, when he was hardly eighteen years old, instead of accepting the rules set by the upper caste Brahmins for the lower caste villagers, he rebelled against the zamindars, telling them the lower castes should be treated well. The zamindars were shocked. His parents thought this rebellious spirit of his would wear off if they sent him to Bombay for further studies.” She laughed. “They must have thought being in Bombay would keep their son away from the village. But your Papa was a smart man; he finished his degree in engineering and returned to the village, causing so much unrest. Someone in the village once said your Papa’s words were like lightning that lit souls on fire.”
I used to gather these tales from Aai, and in all of them, Papa always emerged the hero in my eyes—like the one in the movies who saves young children and makes everything all right.
Once I had asked Papa why he did it, why he went against his parents and caused such a revolution in the village. He had laughed when he told me, “I was young then—I knew no other way of making the upper caste society understand that the lower caste deserved respect.” He sighed. “You know Tara, I still wish people would open their eyes and understand that humanity is more important than caste or even religion. And every human being has rights; treating others badly is a sin.”
For Papa, these weren’t just words. He put every good thought into practice. I remember the first time Papa brought a kid home to live with us. Eight-year-old Aram, with burn marks on his face, was abandoned at a train station. Papa said no couple was willing take him in, let alone adopt him.
“Let him stay
here for a few days. I’ll find him a home,” Papa had assured Aai.
“Do you think such children should live in our home?” Aai had responded gently.
Papa glared at her, but didn’t say anything.
The first night Aram had managed to break almost all the glassware in the kitchen before my parents could get up and restrain him. The second night, Aram had taken the scissors to the curtains and made a rip in every cloth he could lay his hand on. The next morning Aai had cried at the dining table. She reminded Papa gently about finding a home for Aram. After this she tried to keep me away from all such children who passed through our lives, determined that I not talk to any of them.
“They are not good for you,” she would tell me.
I think it must have been a way to indulge Aai’s misgivings when Papa told her that learning household chores would make such children self-reliant. Aai seemed thrilled to hear this, and she made sure all such kids who lived with us learned all household chores from washing dishes and clothes to mopping floors and running errands. Until Mukta’s arrival, she never complained to Papa, not once, about looking after children who were badly behaved and angry at being abandoned. And then Mukta arrived in our lives—lost and lonely—and Aai’s tirade just wouldn’t stop.
It is only now that I understand how my Aai suffered because of Papa’s kindhearted nature. Every time my Papa dumped another poor, homeless child on us, my Aai had quietly cooked and cleaned and taken care of a child that was not hers. Not all of them listened to Aai, nor did all of them try to do their household chores. Angry at being abandoned, some even treated her badly. Perhaps everyone reaches their breaking point because the arrival of Mukta had brought out Aai’s worst side. After Mukta’s arrival, however, she would often tell me softly, “If I had known this was what was in store for me, I never would have eloped.”
Now, as I mopped the floors, I thought of my Aai’s upper caste upbringing that had taught her to look down upon such children, and my Papa’s free spirit that had always prompted him to help. Despite their opposing value structures, they had always loved each other. At least, I’d like to remember it that way. After I finished dusting a part of the living room, I looked around at the rest of the apartment that still needed cleaning and told myself I would get to it the next day. I wolfed down the energy bars I had brought with me and crashed on the couch. I glanced up to look at the sun setting in the sky and thought of the summer of 1988 when Mukta had first entered our lives.
It took me most of my childhood to realize that traditions have infinite power over us.
-MUKTA
Six
I was almost ten when I began to accept my life without a father. Amma, too, had resigned herself to the fact that my father would never return. In the days that followed after the incident outside the mansion, she never spoke of him, and her eyes never recovered from the loss of hope. There must be something about pain, about the way it touches you so deeply that sometimes you never get back to being the person you once were. You can even fall sick and never recover. That is what happened with my Amma. It was the beginning of bad times.
Amma was falling seriously ill; the disease that would ravage her body was just setting in. I did not know this then. Then all I could see was how her days had grown morose and her nights weary with thoughts, how there were dark half moons under her eyes and how her glowing complexion had dwindled to paleness. The men had stopped visiting a long time ago, and most days I grappled with housework alone—boiling the dal and rice, hauling water from the well, cleaning the house, washing the dishes—the work was neverending without Amma by my side.
It was Sakubai who was the first to point out that Amma had shrunk to almost half her size.
“Men don’t want to hold a woman’s corpse in their hands when they are paying for a visit. No wonder no man shows his face in the house anymore. Who will earn for the family now?” she lamented.
She went on, complaining that Amma lost her temper at the slightest thing now-a-days, and that was not acceptable. Since Amma didn’t say anything and lay there pale and tired, I thought I should speak for her. For the first time, I managed to open my mouth to tell Sakubai that Amma was a withered flower, one that hadn’t been watered with the seed of hope for days, and that she, Sakubai, should have understood this without my having to say anything.
Sakubai snickered, “Withered flower? Seed of hope? What have you become? A poet?” She laughed as she limped to her room.
One evening, Amma fell down in the kitchen. There was a resounding thud that made me scream in terror. I ran to Amma and tried to wake her up. I shook her so hard, but all I could see were the tears streaming from her closed eyes. I didn’t know what to do, so I sat there sobbing, wiping her tears, until it occurred to me to run to the village to get the medicine man, the vaidya.
When I reached his house, I could see the smoke from the oven curling from the open windows, his wife cooking at the stove. I knocked on the door vigorously; the vaidya opened the door and yawned when he looked at me.
“Hurry, please. There is something wrong with Amma. She fell down, and she isn’t opening her eyes.”
He yawned again and tossed himself comfortably on a cushion in his living room.
“Please help me. You can give her medicines that will make her better, can’t you?”
“Yes, but it’s time to have my dinner now. Come back later.”
I could see his wife near the furnace, slapping the dough on the pan, the smell of warm rotis wafting in the house, six children huddling in the corner biting into their share.
“I will wait,” I said.
He shrugged. “Don’t be so sure I will come to your house after my dinner. I might want to sleep after.”
His wife looked out from her veil, her face flushed from the warmth of the oven, and I could see in her eyes that she felt sorry for me. She gently told her husband, her voice barely above a whisper, that I was a child.
“Shut up. They are lower caste whores, what do you care?” he scolded her.
The woman hurriedly slapped another flattened piece of dough on the pan and didn’t look at me anymore.
“I will tell my father,” I said.
He looked up from his plate as he was about to have his first bite.
“I will tell my father you didn’t help,” I repeated.
“Your father does not even know you exist.” He laughed.
“That’s not true. I have met my father many times. He just asks us to not let the villagers know,” I lied.
His laughter stopped. I didn’t know what I was doing, but it was a ruse that worked. I had seen the villagers’ eyes widen and their bodies stiffen at the mention of my father—after all he was the zamindar’s son. This time I used the power my father had over them to my advantage. I wasn’t thinking; I just said what came to my mind. It didn’t take him long to push his plate away, fling the medicine bag in my hands, and follow me. I wished he would walk faster, but I did not dare say anything in case he changed his mind. I remember how I could hear my heart pounding all the way and feel the moisture on my forehead.
When we neared our house, I ran inside not knowing what to expect. I was relieved to see Amma sitting on the kitchen floor, leaning back against the wall, and sipping a glass of water that Sakubai held in her hands. I dropped the vaidya’s bag, ran towards her, and put my arms around her. The vaidya pinched his nose in disgust at entering a lower caste home but didn’t say anything. He sat crosslegged beside Amma, checked her pulse, opened her eyelids to check her eyes, and then dipped into his bag to get some green and yellow herbs. He thrust them in Sakubai’s hands. “Mix this with honey and milk and give it to her three times a day,” he said to her before leaving.
Amma felt better over the next few days, and her sudden cheerful mood put joy in my heart. But then there was Sakubai who complained about every meal I prepared: the rice was too watery, the dal too salty, and the vegetables too spicy. Then Amma’s health began to deteriorate r
apidly. At night her body would burn, and she would mumble in her delirium, telling me not to worry, assuring me I would find love. Most nights I sat up with her, placing a wet cloth on her forehead, hoping her fever would die down. Days weren’t any better; she was too frail to walk by herself, and I had to carry her with one of her arms on my shoulder whenever she wanted to go to the bathroom. When I tried to make her eat, she would retch violently.
One afternoon I was sitting by the window looking at the forests, trying to sew a tear in one of my old skirts. Amma was sleeping beside me when Sakubai staggered out from her room and began screaming loudly at me, saying it was all my fault. “Your mother is ill because you aren’t willing to dedicate yourself, not willing to take the sacred oath that all women in our family have taken for generations. It is the Goddess’s curse. What else could it be?”
“Mukta will never become one of us,” Amma said faintly, her eyes red with the discomfort of her fever.
Sakubai mumbled something as she returned to her room, “. . . don’t understand what she is doing . . . Where we will get food to eat if she doesn’t earn . . . ? How long can we live on our savings?”
I thought about what Sakubai had said, thought about how right Sakubai had been all along about my father never returning to us. Probably she was right about this too—Amma was ill because of me. Maybe the solution was in my hands. After all, what could it mean to be dedicated? Clean the temple daily? Make food for the priests? Isn’t that what Amma did when she went to the village? It did not occur to me that the men visiting Amma had anything to do with the dedication ceremony.
It was a gray morning when I sat in the backyard thinking about what Sakubai had said. I decided I was going to do what Sakubai had planned for me, what the Goddess had in mind for me. After that, surely the Goddess could grant my wish and let Amma recover.
