by Amita Trasi
But there must have been something comforting about it, about having another person next to me in my moment of chaos. We didn’t say anything to each other. The only sounds were the chirping of crickets, distant traffic, and her intermittent choked whimpers.
I remember trying so very hard to follow Papa’s ways, to try and be kind to Mukta. But I am not sure if I was always kind to her. There are many things I don’t remember now; I don’t recollect when she began speaking or when we became friends or when the bond between us strengthened. I don’t think Aai was ever kind to her, although that is a memory I would like to have. What I do remember are moments Mukta and I shared—like on that first rainy day of school in 1989 when it began to drizzle.
Mukta was carrying my school bag for me as she walked me to school. I was telling her how Papa loved the rain.
“Aai says Papa should have been a poet. Because Papa said,” I jabbered on, “when the first raindrops smudge the soil, the smell that wafts into the air is like . . . ”
I had the sudden feeling I was walking all alone. When I looked behind me, Mukta was nowhere in sight. I retraced my steps. She was standing in the middle of the street, looking up at the sky with frightened eyes. The sky roared above us as dark clouds gathered. I walked to her.
“What happened? We will be late for school.”
She was still staring at the sky. It began raining hard then, the raindrops falling with such force and ferocity that people took cover in nearby shops and under tarpaulin roofs put up by hawkers.
“We should go too. There . . . ” I pointed to a shop. Mukta stood rooted to the spot, quivering, tears rolling down her cheeks, clutching my school bag to her chest. I pulled at her hand, trying to wake her up from her reverie.
“Come on,” I urged. But she didn’t give me a glance.
The rain poured even harder. Sudden lightning bolts in the sky made everybody on the street wary. I was completely drenched and mad at her. I told her that I’d complain to Aai. Before I said anything else, she dropped my school bag on the street and started running.
“Mukta,” I called after her.
She had disappeared in the rain. I picked up my soaking school bag and ran in the same direction. I couldn’t see through the heavy rain, so, squinting, I searched for her, and then spotted her sitting somewhere. As I neared, I realized it was a shop that was closed for business. Its shutters were down and Mukta sat on the steps outside. I stood there watching her. The roof, a thin asbestos sheet, protected us from the rain ramming away on it.
She sat holding her knees to her chest, swinging back and forth. I sat down beside her, watching people fleeing the rain, searching for a shelter, escaping from the flurry around us.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“Amma died . . . ” Mukta whispered, looking toward the sky. “Amma died in the rain. They beat her and left her to die.”
Suddenly, I wished Papa were here. He would have known what to say.
“She was ill for a very long time, and I thought . . . I thought she’d get better . . . but . . . ” she sobbed, her words melting into tears.
I put my hand around her shoulder, and we huddled close together. In that moment I had forgotten she was just another homeless kid Papa had brought home. We were simply two girls sitting on the side of that street, watching the rain wash down the debris. When the rain diminished to a drizzle and the skies were clear, people stepped out of their shelters and went their way. I sat there for some time holding her close, hoping my warmth could dissolve her pain. I’d like to think that was the beginning of our friendship.
Every moment we spent together brought us closer. I remember I was eleven when she first asked me if I could teach her how to read. Amused, I had laughed out loud. But she had insisted, day after day, and so I thought I’d teach her a few alphabets and leave it at that. After all, how much could a girl like her be interested in learning? But unlike anybody I had ever met—among my friends or in my class—her hunger for reading was unique, never seeming to stop. When I brought her the alphabet book, I thought she would be bored with it and give up on her outrageous desire to read, realizing it wasn’t meant for her. Instead, she surprised me. She kept going with it and learned how to read proficiently within a year, probably less. When Aai wasn’t around, she borrowed books from the library in our apartment, and I brought her books from the library in my school. I always wondered what she saw in them. Once I even asked her, “What do you get from those books anyway?”
She closed the book she was reading, thought for a while and said, “It is better than the world we live in.”
“You are crazy,” I said, shaking my head.
Now, when I think of my childhood, these are the images that drift to me: I am sitting by her side talking to her as she is busy with the household chores; we are sitting on the terrace, huddled together, discussing books because she likes to do that and discussing sports because I like to do that; we are walking to school or are walking back from the crowded bazaars; we are sitting on the park bench licking ice cream cones. These and many more pictures remain, and it is what I think about the most—our time together.
I discovered that, when you find a true friend, a strange joy suddenly springs from within—one you could not find for yourself until then—one you hope will carry with you as you go along.
–MUKTA
Eleven
I would do just about anything for Tara if she asked. She was the only one who greeted me with a smile in the morning, making me feel as if I meant something to someone in this world. Memsahib woke her up and combed her hair lovingly, but I fussed over her while I served breakfast, giving her an extra helping. Memsahib watched with a frown on her face while she knitted but didn’t seem to mind.
There were other things I liked doing for Tara—packing her lunch box, cleaning her room, collecting her scattered books and putting them in her school bag, but most of all I had begun to enjoy our long walks to her school. Following her, carrying her backpack, was all I looked forward to those days. The school wasn’t far away, a half hour’s walk, but listening to Tara’s stories of school, of her day, of the friends she made, the teachers who bothered her—her nonstop chatter—was such a pleasure. I tell you, the way she could talk! You could travel the world but never be able to see it the way she could describe it to you.
When I asked her if she liked to study, she said studying wasn’t that great. To prove her point she showed me a village on the map of India—a tiny area marked with red ink that looked so small I wondered how I must have lived in one such village, how all of us could have fit in such a tiny place. It confused me.
“See, they confuse you. Sometimes you are better off not knowing.”
“But don’t you like that you can get to know everything there is to know?” I asked. “If it meant that I had to search for a thousand villages on a map, I would be ready to do it.”
She sighed and said nothing else. I knew I had overstepped my boundary. It wasn’t like me to say what I liked to do, but she was the only person I could say anything to who would understand.
You see, there was only one thing I couldn’t tell Tara —about the village I came from, although she insisted many times that I tell her about it. There were too many bad memories there, things I couldn’t share with her or anyone for that matter. And I knew she was annoyed with me for not telling her about my life back in the village. Some days, she would be silent, not speak to me, and that was punishment enough for me.
Sometimes, I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to study. To be educated would mean gaining respect in everybody’s eyes. But did someone like me deserve that? Memsahib had made it very clear that I shouldn’t have fancy ideas about school. She had spoken to Sahib about that. “As long as you live with us, you will not be going to school, you hear me?” she had said.
There were days when I walked Tara to school, watched her disappear inside the compound, then stood for a long time watching the premise
s fill with students in their brown uniforms. When all the parents and servants left and all the cars, rickshaws and taxis disappeared, I stood outside the school, as if it were a dream. Of course Memsahib used to be livid with me for not being back in time, threatening me by saying she would put me back on the streets where I belonged or slapping me.
I think Memsahib was the only one who didn’t like me. I remember how terrified I was of her. On some days, she increased my daily chores, and I struggled hard to complete them. It was in 1991, when Memsahib got an offer to use her embroidering skills in a garment shop opened by one of her friends near Century Bazaar, that I found relief from her hatred. That also gave Tara and me a lot of time with each other. Sahib was traveling and Memsahib was too busy with her work to worry if her daughter was mingling with a girl like me.
Once when Tara and I were walking back home, I commented on the book shop next door and said jokingly, “I would never be able to go to a store like that. If I went in there it would be like a pig wanting a bath.” I giggled. I thought it was a great joke, but Tara kept looking at me seriously.
“Maybe I will help you learn to read,” she said. “You talk so much about it. Once you study we will be equals—you and I—just like sisters. Then Aai wouldn’t treat you badly. But you have to learn English for that. Nobody can call you lowly if you know English. Aai says people who know English are very smart.”
My eyes widened, and I felt like a brick sat in my throat. I couldn’t believe she was willing to teach me.
Over the next few days she didn’t bring it up again, so I thought it must have been a joke. But Tara kept her promise. One afternoon after Memsahib stepped out to Century Bazaar, she led me to the terrace. Under the warmth of the afternoon sun we laid down a blanket on the terrace floor and sat cross-legged on it. She handed me a book from her school bag; when I opened it, everything that looked back at me was foreign.
“It is an alphabet book. Let’s start from there,” she said.
Tara was the one who taught me how to hold a pencil, the one to hold my hand and make me draw the lines and the curves of the English alphabet.
“Okay, you have to repeat after me,” Tara said, and I repeated every alphabet after her.
I practiced it many times over and over in my head as I washed dishes or cooked. I learned to form words and picture them as I repeated them to myself. I read under the candlelight at night and learned as fast as I could. Over the few years that I lived there, I learned from her and from listening to people around me, forming haphazard sentences as I spoke. Back then my grammar wasn’t good, and Tara corrected me whenever we walked from school. For example, I might say, “I coming to pick you up,” and she’d correct me, saying, “I’ve come to pick you up.” And when no one was listening, we tried to speak in English so I could practice.
Every time I read a poem, I felt as if I had floated back into my world of forests. I yearned to know more, read more. Tara brought me books from the school library, and I hid them under my blanket in the kitchen. I never knew there was a language that had such utter beauty—something that could so easily take me to the time in the forests, when Amma was alive. In my short life, I had only ever spoken one language. Now there was this world I had been introduced to, and it took me to places I would never be able to travel. The more poems I read, the easier it became to glide into different lives, to know them better, to learn from them. I have often thought about the space we created for ourselves, away from the eyes of this world, on the terrace of that apartment building. Those couple of hours—there was just Tara and me.
I remember even at night, Tara didn’t leave my side. When everybody was asleep, she leisurely walked into the storage room with two pillows tucked under her arms and a bed sheet trailing behind her with no worry about what her parents might say. I insisted she sleep in her bed and suggested that I sleep in her room on the floor. That way I would be the one getting into trouble if we were ever caught.
“No,” she said, laying the bed sheet on the floor, arranging one pillow on it and offering me the other.
We talked until late that night in whispers. I giggled as she told me tales, distracting me from anything untoward that happened that day. When she went off to sleep, I lay down beside her. In her sleep she put her hand around me and a warm feeling of joy crept through me. I told her how grateful I was—whispered it to her while she slept, hoping she had heard me. She mumbled something in her sleep, held me tighter, and I knew she had heard me. Even in her sleep, her breath warm on my face, I knew she was there for me.
Those were the happiest few years of my life until fate intervened.
Shadows spring from my past and swirl around me. Sometimes there is no other option but to confront them.
– TARA
Twelve
2004
That evening I was walking back to the bus stop from the police station, my head swirling with thoughts, when a voice called out.
“Tara,” he called from behind. I stopped and looked back.
“Tara?” he asked, “I thought it was you. I saw you at the police station. You looked familiar, but I didn’t recognize you. Then I heard some constables talking about your case, about Mukta, and I realized it was you—back from America!” He approached me and smiled as if he had known me for a long time.
I scanned his face, trying to recollect him from my memories. The pockmarks on his face revealed youth long gone by; his dark hair was neatly combed; his eyes looked like they held the experience of a lifetime; his broad shoulders and stubble made him look ruggedly handsome.
“I am sorry. I can’t seem to place you.” I smiled.
“Tara, it is Raza.”
It didn’t take long for the impressions of my past to come flooding back. It had been such a long time ago when he had stood beside Salim, pinning me down in that lonely alleyway, unhindered by my violent screams, unperturbed by my rising sobs. His voice had changed from when I had last seen him. I turned to leave and began walking down the street, but he walked beside me without an invitation.
“After you left India, I heard about what happened to your mother in the ʼ93 blasts. I am sorry.”
I quickened my pace.
“Look, I just want to help. I saw you at the police station and thought I could help.”
“So you followed me?”
I kept walking. He stood and hollered at me. “No, I had work with a detective agency here. I run a non-profit now. I can help.”
I stopped and looked back at him, surprised. I could feel the eyes of the people on the balconies in the surrounding buildings watching us with curiosity. Street children ran around us, chasing each other, running around us as if we were statues.
“I can help,” he repeated, giving me a smile. The concern on his face seemed genuine. He just might be able to help, I thought.
“How?” I asked.
“Take my business card. My office is not very far from here. You can walk in anytime, and we can talk,” he said, walking toward me and planting the card in my hand.
I dropped the card in my purse, turned around, and fled.
It had been years since Raza’s face had loomed in my nightmares. At night, when I had tossed and turned in my sleep, I had seen him standing there, behind Salim, trying to restrain me in that lonely alleyway. In my dreams, their faces appeared as dark and deadly as they had on that day. They were tall, lanky teenagers then, no more than fifteen, but known to loiter around corners to leer at women and harass passersby. That evening Mukta and I had bought a few jalebis from the sweetmeat shop around the corner and were sitting next to each other in a lonely alleyway. We were busy devouring the sweets, the sugar syrup coating our hands and dripping down to our elbows. We were completely unaware of the day dimming around us. That is when they had appeared, out of nowhere, like apparitions, their faces shielded by darkness.
It was Salim who brought his face close to mine. His eyes were bloodshot, his grin vicious. His breath smelled of tobacco and
the bitterness of beer. A high-pitched yelp escaped me; the jalebis in my hand scattered on the dusty ground. In the slant of the dim streetlight, Raza peeked from behind him and gave out a throaty laugh. I fell backward and pressed my palms onto the ground in an attempt to get away. He leaned forward and gripped my hands tightly behind me. I struggled and kicked at him in a futile attempt to escape.
“Tsk-tsk . . . it’s useless to try,” Salim chortled gleefully as he tied my hands, twisting and turning the rope around my wrists. A sharp stab of pain went through my hands as he tightened the knot.
“This here is my friend, my bhai, Raza. We are like brothers,” Salim told me and patted Raza’s back. Raza smiled and tried to get hold of Mukta.
“Leave her alone, she is only a poor village kid . . . lower caste, just like us,” Salim shouted at him. “We don’t hurt our people. And no one would care if we did anything to her. But this girl here,” he pointed at me and continued talking to me, “we could take you away from this fancy life of yours. Do you know how much money we can get for a virgin these days? Or better still, we can make you a beggar on some corner in Bombay and make you bring your earnings to us. It will teach all middle class bastards a lesson. They think they are all superior to us.” He spit on my face.
Everything around me seemed blurry from my tears; all sounds amplified—the noise of a rickshaw engine passing by, the chirp of night crickets, the sound of shutters closing in the distance. After the shops closed for the day, there wasn’t a soul on the street. I blinked at Mukta and tears rolled down my face. She was looking at a trailer that had roared to a stop near the new buildings under construction, a cloud of dust rising from it. I watched as she ran toward it.
“Look at me,” Salim demanded as he pulled me to him. I flinched and let out a wail. My sobs rose in that dark, desolate street.
