by Amita Trasi
“I wanted to know more about the village, that’s all, but if you don’t want to tell me . . . ” I shrugged and left the sentence open-ended, like the ache in my heart. I walked toward the door and thought of what Papa would have wanted me to say. So I turned around and said to her, “Navin and I play in the courtyard with the other boys. You can play with us if you want to.”
She looked at me with surprise. I expected her to smile, but she didn’t respond, leaving me to wonder if God had forgotten to put a smile on her face when He sent her into this world.
Sometimes words defy the pain, the sadness in our hearts. Even if I could have spoken, had begun talking, what would I have said?
–MUKTA
Nine
Outside our house in the village there was a sacred peepul tree not far from where we lived. Amma would pray to it and walk around it, circling a thread around its thick trunk in the hope that her wishes would be fulfilled. I would watch her as the thread enveloped itself around the tree, noticing the dried leaves fall and gather at its roots then flutter away in the wind. I often wondered what it would have felt like to be that leaf, blowing away in the rage of the wind without a will of its own, traveling far away from the tree it called home, not knowing at whose doorstep it would land. But here I was—far away from the only home I knew, in a city, among strangers. You would probably ask me why I didn’t run away, why I was willingly carried whichever direction the wind was taking me. But where could I go? There was nowhere to go. Truthfully, the idea hadn’t occur to me then. Those first few days in Bombay, whatever I did, I did in a daze.
That day I followed Sahib into the apartment, she came running out of nowhere, like a gust of sudden wind. That was the first time I saw Tara—Sahib’s daughter—rushing into her father’s arms, the joy of seeing him spreading on her face. Watching her father take her in his arms and plant a kiss on her forehead, I couldn’t help but feel a pang of envy jab my heart. She had kind eyes, just like Sahib. She smiled at me as if I was her friend. She was a couple years younger than me, and she adored her father—anybody could see that. Whenever I saw them together, I would have to stop myself from wondering what that felt like—to have a father who loved you so much.
When I entered their apartment I told myself Sakubai wasn’t here to spoil the air with her complaints, which should have been a relief I suppose, but it failed to quell that terrible feeling of emptiness inside me.
“What is your name?” Tara’s mother asked, and out of nowhere Amma’s face appeared before my eyes and tears slowly dripped down my cheeks. Tara’s mother must have asked me many questions, but as I tried to speak, I couldn’t hear myself, and it astonished me. This was the first time after Amma died that I had tried to open my mouth and say something. I knew then that sometimes even the tongue dries up, just like the heart, and withers away in pain.
Looking back, I don’t know if I had truly lost my voice. Maybe I chose not to speak. My memories are very hazy about that time. In the first few days in this apartment with this family, learning to live in the kitchen by myself while everybody around me was asking why I didn’t speak, I remember feeling lost—things happening to me didn’t seem to really be happening at all. Sometimes when I stared at myself in the mirror, I let my fingers trace my image to understand if it really was me.
Tara’s mother was a slim, good-looking woman with skin the color of honey, who always wore her sari pallu as a veil, hiding her face in it every time a man appeared at our doorstep. She was a dutiful wife who never raised her voice against her husband. I was instructed to call her Memsahib even though I did not speak back then. She was very strict about the housework and would not spare me if I missed a single detail. If I missed a stain on any of the clothes I washed, I earned two hours of extra cleaning time, and when one of the washed dishes still showed grime caked on its inside, I would spend hours cleaning the grout on the bathroom tiles as my punishment. I didn’t mind the work; it kept my mind off the images from my past that came back to haunt me, especially the image of that night, which refused to leave me. Each morning she asked me to hold Tara’s school bag and walk her to school.
The way things functioned in the city was very different from where I had lived. For one, every evening the light bulbs would glimmer down at us, and the electric fans whirred on the ceilings like ghosts at work. There was an electrical grinder so noisy that the first time Memsahib tried to teach me how to use it, I ran and hid behind the door. I was so afraid of it. Memsahib laughed until tears came to her eyes. I only came out when Memsahib assured me repeatedly that it wasn’t going to hurt me. During such times, I could almost hear Sakubai in my head saying the demon was running his vile powers through this apartment.
At the very beginning I knew there was something about Sahib—the warmth that shone through him—that I saw in no other. He was a man of few words, but when he spoke, everyone listened. And then of course, there was Tara—a zeal glowing through her. There was a strange energy in the girl that made her stand up to the world, stand up to anybody who got in her way. One day I watched from my window in my quarters as she played with the boys on the playground. It was a game of marbles and a boy who lost the game to her said, “She is a cheat.”
Tara advanced on him, but Navin held her hand. He turned to the boy and said, “You are new here. You don’t know anything about her.”
“Look at her buck teeth, her short hair. My mother says girls who are good don’t look like that.”
“Don’t look at me then,” Tara said and punched him hard in the face before he knew what was coming.
Oh, it was a sight to watch! Such spirit! I wondered about it that night and asked myself if I would have the courage to do what she had done. Of course I didn’t have a shred of that courage. Back in the village, I couldn’t open my mouth when the villagers accused Amma or me.
Some days I liked, and even looked forward to, when Tara would make an attempt to talk to me. Every now and then she would appear from behind, tap me softly on the shoulder, and when I turned to look, run away and hide behind a door, peering out and smiling at me. I know she did this on purpose to make me smile, make me speak. Unlike everybody else who was either asking me to get something for them or was talking about me as if I were invisible, she said she wanted to be my friend.
Memsahib used to shout at her, tell her that she couldn’t be friends with a girl like me, but that didn’t stop Tara. She continued to pester me with questions, her mind like a beaver burrowing in, never seeming to stop. And on some days, I wished I could speak so I could tell her that she should never try to talk to a girl like me.
You see, I don’t think I have quite explained the kind of strength Tara had. If she put her mind to it, I am confident she could do just about anything she wanted to.
One day when she asked, really pestered, me about my father, I told her he lived in Bombay. After all it was true. When I told her about this on our way back from school one day, she marched me straight to the police station. I kept pulling at her hand, saying that was not a good idea. An inspector sat before us, smiled, and humored her. “What can I do for you?” he asked.
“She is searching for her father,” she told him, pointing at me. I sat next to her, her school bag in my lap, utterly dumbfounded; all I could do was stare at her with my mouth open. The inspector called Sahib while we each drank a bottle of Limca. He took us back home, all the while telling her that was a foolish idea. I have never forgotten that episode. She was ten years old. Even now, I don’t have that kind of boldness.
I was becoming quite a nuisance to everybody around me. The neighboring people complained about me constantly, saying I was keeping them up at nights with my crying. But I wasn’t doing it deliberately, so it was not something I could have stopped, although I tried to. Looking back, I didn’t know who I was crying for—my dead mother or the child in me I had left behind. I didn’t think of all these reasons then, but I tried to figure out a reason and came to the conclusion that I must
cry just for him—for my father—in some vain hope that my wails would reach him somewhere in this vast city. Why else would my wails spread so far in the night that people would complain?
Memsahib wasn’t happy when Sahib said he would take me to a doctor. That morning I should have realized Memsahib was in a bad mood because of it. I was drying the glasses and one slipped from my hand and fell to the floor, shattering. Memsahib, who was wiping a glass plate, put the plate down, lay her hands over the counter, and took a deep breath. Her eyes flashed with anger as she leaned towards me and brought her face closer. I thought she was going to admonish me for what I had done, but instead she said, “I know who you are. I come from the same village. I know everything about you and your filthy mother. You have trickery in your blood. Don’t try to trick me.”
I knew then that she knew everything about me, and shame pierced my heart. After this I always kept to myself and put all my energy into trying to do my work properly. That way I hoped Memsahib wouldn’t tell anybody what had happened to me. But no matter how hard I worked, it didn’t seem enough, because for the next two nights, she dumped all the leftovers in the dustbin, leaving me nothing to eat for dinner. I must admit, at times I felt it was better this way—she gave me what I deserved, unlike the gentleness and warmth Tara and her father offered, which was such a shock.
The next afternoon, after lunch, I was standing in the kitchen washing the dishes, daydreaming about Amma, imagining we were walking along a narrow street to the village as I watched the sparrows hopping on the branches of the nearby trees. I was suddenly brought to reality, ripped from my daydream, when Sahib’s loud voice boomed across the living room, telling Tara he was going to the library to search for a book he had wanted to read for a long time. I think this was actually meant for Memsahib to hear; she was in the kitchen at the time with me. Those days, that was how they communicated with each other—by letting Tara know what they were doing. I presumed this still had something to do with Sahib trying to take me to the doctor, although I knew Memsahib had already convinced Sahib I did not need one.
I could hear Tara pester her father to take her along, like the way I used to pester my Amma. I didn’t expect Sahib to come in, wave his hand at me, and ask me if I wanted to come along. I was so shocked; I kept staring at him then looked at Memsahib for approval. She was standing near the stove, chopping ginger, and she lifted her head but barely looked at me.
“Come now, don’t worry about Memsahib,” Sahib said, so I left the dirty dishes in the vessels, wiped my hands on the towel on my shoulder, and hurried along as the chopping sounds from the kitchen behind me grew faster and louder.
Navin wanted to come along too, but his father looked up from the newspaper he was reading, frowned at him, and said, “Your music lessons?” Navin returned home with a dismal expression.
Like I said before, the street outside this apartment complex was lined with shops and we walked for a distance—Tara holding her father’s hand, walking ahead. Many shopkeepers poked their heads outside, joined their hands in greeting as Sahib nodded at them. My fear could have easily overtaken me, I suppose, but today for some reason thoughts of my father invaded my mind. I imagined to see him in every face that passed by, imagined that one day he would recognize me on the street and call out to me the way Amma would lovingly call out, “Mukta, come here my child.” It was a remote possibility, but I hung onto it like a spider hangs onto the weave of its damaged web.
It took us a while to find a taxi on this sleepy afternoon. Tara pointed out to the sea, to the temple, or the garden that we passed, jabbering away, imbuing it with her own colors, and I watched everything around me through her eyes. The waves of the sea didn’t seem as threatening anymore, instead I heard music in them. I didn’t seem to be overwhelmed by the crowd anymore—I saw them as people having their own worries, and when she talked about her mother, I could see Amma and me together in that garden we passed by. I realized then that her presence was giving me more comfort than anything had in the past few days.
When the taxi stopped, Tara opened the door to a world I had never seen before. It was the Asiatic library, she said. I didn’t know what a library was, but as I saw this structure and several steps leading to it, I understood it was a temple—a temple for books. Its presence was so commanding with its white paint gleaming in the sun. I stood at the bottom of the stairs, watching this structure before me, astonished at the tricks my eyes were playing on me. Tara held my hand and led me up the stairs. Her sudden touch, its warmth without warning, astonished me.
The smell inside was musty, but I didn’t mind it. There were elderly people pouring over local newspapers and a spiral staircase that led to more books. I wondered as I looked at those books, trying to distribute a treasure of experiences. How I wanted to gather those thoughts for myself! I opened a book and caressed the letters on the pages, wondering about the strength of those words that had caused people to build a temple for them. I wasn’t listening very well when Sahib pointed to the marble statues, explaining each of them to Tara, telling her about the rare gold coin that belonged to Emperor Akbar. A deep longing to be able to read rose in my heart, just like that day when Amma and I had walked through the village and she had shown me the village school for the first time. I couldn’t believe I was allowed to see a place as great as this.
When we exited the library a bus full of tourists arrived, clicking pictures. As people posed on the steps, Tara insisted on getting a photograph. Overhearing her tantrum, one of the photographers with the tourist group offered to click a snap of us and spoke to Sahib, assuring him, “Don’t worry. I will post the negative and the snaps to you.”
Tara stood on the steps outside the library and insisted I stand beside her. There is a photograph of us when we were little, those eight commanding columns behind us, Tara’s arm around me. Later, the envelope arrived with two identical photos and a negative— one of which Tara gave me to keep. I saved it in a special hiding place under a loose tile in the kitchen.
In the taxi, when we were returning home, Sahib asked Tara, “So are you excited that school begins soon?”
She made a face and shrugged. Then out of the blue, she pointed to me and asked, “Papa, will she be going to school too?”
I looked at her shocked. Sahib turned behind to look at me.
“What do you think? You will want to study, won’t you?” he asked, and before I could digest the thought, I could see myself in his eyes, flying like a bird in the sky.
Papa used to say kindness, even out of selfishness, is a start.
– TARA
Ten
I remember the argument my parents had that night—it was one of their first fierce fights. The voices came from their bedroom. I could hear them through the wall while I lay wide awake in my bed. A frog croaked somewhere in the distance, and I could hear the sputter of a vehicle on the street below, but I tried to concentrate on these sounds instead.
“Why are you doing this to me? Asking such a child if she wants to study?” Aai sobbed.
“Shh, be quiet,” Papa said, “unless you want the neighbors to hear.”
“This is all because I could not give you a son, haan?”
“It has nothing to do with us having a son. I think everyone deserves to have an education. And if she is going to live here, shouldn’t she at least be allowed to study?”
“That isn’t the way our society sees it. She is not our child. Why pay for this child to go to school? What is so important about her that you won’t find her a place in the orphanage? Why does she have to live with us?”
“I . . . I . . . think she needs us. She needs us,” Papa repeated.
“All my friends will laugh at me for taking care of a lower caste child.”
“It is their problem if they don’t understand. You married me because you like my ideas, remember? Or have you forgotten? And I already think you make her do too much work around the house. You—”
“It is my father�
��s curse. The day I decided to run away, elope with you, I chose my fate. How can you . . . ?”
I didn’t listen anymore; their voices put a fear in my heart; a warm feeling of uncertainty rose up in my throat. Before this, I had never witnessed an argument between my parents, and I wondered when Papa’s calmness or Aai’s faithful reticence had disappeared.
I blamed myself.
I wasn’t thinking when I had asked if she would be going to school too. It was an absurd question to begin with, because if I had given it thought, I would have realized all such children who came to stay with us for a while never went to school. They stayed at home and earned their keep. But words once released cannot be taken back.
I lumbered out of my bedroom and walked up to the window, hoping that watching the serene night might drown their argument. I don’t know what made me amble across to the storage room. I sat outside the storage room near the sill where a door should have been and watched the girl as she sat there—looking out the window, wiping her tears.
“Why are you crying?” I whispered, the sill a line that divided us.
She looked at me then looked back at the sky. I thought she hadn’t heard me, so I hollered the question a little louder. When she didn’t respond, I put one foot across the sill and crossed over into that dark room. Without realizing it, that was my first step into her world, a place I had never before set foot, and I remember how the air smelled musty and stale, how hopefully she was looking out the window, sitting with her back against the wall, her knees drawn to her chest. I sat down next to her, knowing if Aai saw me, she would scold me and say, “You should never sit next to such children.”
