The Color of our Sky: A novel set in India

by Amita Trasi

  But there was no waking up because it was no dream. I was wide awake. Mukta squirmed and tried to push the man away. I remember trying to get up—I wanted to help her—but my body wouldn’t move. My mouth opened to scream but snapped shut on its own. Tears crept down her cheeks, reached the borders of the tape on her mouth, and slid down her neck. All her attempts at screaming came out soft and garbled. It came to me then—Salim—it was Salim—it had to be. He picked Mukta up in his arms and flung her over his shoulder. When she looked at me one last time, her face on his shoulder as he turned his back to me, I could see the fear, the pain, the confusion on her face. But most of all, I remember—I am unable to forget—the hope I saw in her eyes as if she believed I was brave enough to save her—I, who had gone to all the trouble of seeking out Salim to get rid of her.

  I don’t know how long I lay there, my eyes shut, lingering in that silence, frozen in time, perspiration beading my forehead. When I opened my eyes, the room seemed bereft of all that had happened. I looked around and examined it. I tried to convince myself Mukta was still sleeping on the floor and whatever had happened was a figment of my imagination. The sequence of events buzzed in my head as I walked to the storage room, hoping to find Mukta there. It was empty—as empty as the space in my heart.

  I didn’t wake up Papa that night. I sat on the floor of that storage room, waiting for somebody to jolt me from my nightmare. The main door must have been left open by the intruder because I could hear it creak all night and could feel the cold breeze that blew inside as I waited for light to appear. In hindsight, I could have woken up Papa or at least screamed, both of which would have been good choices to catch a kidnapper. Was I actually afraid or had I not been able to move because I wanted Mukta out? For years I’ve tried to analyze that night in my head but have never gotten an answer.

  The next morning Papa called my name several times, and it echoed in our apartment until he found me sitting in the storage room. I remember the way he looked at me, standing outside the room, peering inside, his eyes widening in alarm. I got up and rushed into his arms. I remember trying to tell him everything between sobs as he held me close and caressed my hair.

  “Shh . . . it’s all right, you can tell me later.”

  At the police station, Papa pressed my trembling hands while we waited on a bench. The barred window let the dappled sunlight fall on my face. I saw his concern for me and knew that was what I had been missing. Ever since Aai died, there hadn’t been a moment like this between us. It reminded me of why I had wanted Mukta gone from our home. With the bad omen no longer there to create any trouble, I felt reassured everything would be all right now, that though I would miss Aai, things between Papa and I would revert to normal. Guilt surged through my heart, but I decided it was best not to tell anyone what had really happened that night. Telling the truth would mean leading the police to Salim and eventually to me. Not only would I be in trouble, but Papa would know. He would know the evil way in which his daughter had conspired to let a poor village girl vanish from their lives. So I carefully planned what I was going to say. I would tell the policeman I didn’t remember anything. If he pestered me for information, I would make something up.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” Papa kept telling me, holding my hands, clenching and unclenching them as we sat there. His hands were cold although summer was at its peak.

  We sat on that bench for a long time. The couple before us complained about a stalker troubling them. The constable scribbled something in the register. When it was our turn, we sat in front of a constable who asked, “What is your complaint?”

  “Someone broke into our apartment last night,” Papa said.

  The constable bent his head forward.

  “The man kidnapped a girl . . . this girl who was staying at our place. He—”

  “Who was she?” the constable asked.

  “She was an orphan from a village. She used to live with us.”

  “So she’s a servant! I’ve seen people like you who bring young girls from villages to be your servants. Now you want to complain about a man kidnapping a servant? What did you do to her?” The constable raised his eyebrows.

  “She wasn’t a servant. She just did some chores in the house. She helped out, that’s all.”

  “I see. So you sent her to the same school as your daughter? And your daughter did as many chores as her? Who are you fooling, Sir?”

  Papa’s face tightened and flushed with anger. The chair scraped the tiled floor as he stood up. “I want to speak with your senior,” Papa said. His voice boomed across the station. For a second, the din in the police station settled around us like dust.

  A police officer emerged from an inner room and looked at the constable, “What’s the issue?”

  His attire was different than the others and gave him a presence of authority. The constable sitting before us got up and hurried toward him. “This man wants to complain about a kidnapped village girl,” he said loudly.

  The police officer looked at Papa.

  “I am Inspector Chavan,” he said. He led us to his office and asked us to have a seat.

  “So how can I help you?” he asked with genuine interest. The grim expression on his face frightened me. I was afraid I might break down and narrate the sequence of events as they happened, but Papa began to speak. “A girl was kidnapped last night from our apartment. A man broke into—”

  “Hmm, did he take anything? Rob you?”

  Papa paused, “I didn’t check. But the girl was sleeping in my daughter’s room.”

  “Did you see the man?”

  “My daughter was awake—”

  “The question was meant for her.” The inspector looked at me.

  I was startled by his eyes on me. “I-I . . . couldn’t see that well,” I managed to say.

  “I see. If you remember details like how tall he was, what he looked like . . . anything can help.”

  I lowered my eyes and shook my head.

  “My daughter . . . she is in shock. In a day or two she may recollect something.” Papa looked at me as if somewhere in my mind was a clue which could unravel his troubles.

  “All right,” the inspector sighed. “I will have to come to your home in a day or two to investigate.”

  I walked out of the inspector’s office, holding Papa’s hand, not knowing where my lie was leading me.

  The inspector knocked on our door two days later. I hadn’t expected it. I had overheard Meena-ji saying the other day that no one takes any interest in the disappearance of such a child. But here he was, with a bright smile as I opened the door.

  “Hello Tara,” he said, tapping his lathi lightly on the door.

  A constable stood behind him. I invited the inspector in and absentmindedly called out to Mukta to bring him some tea. It was just a force of habit. Behind me, the kitchen echoed its emptiness, the spoons hanging off a stand made a clanking sound in the breeze.

  “Is your father here?” the inspector asked.

  “Yes, yes, so nice of you to come,” Papa said behind me. He shook hands with the inspector, asked him to sit on the sofa, and asked me to get him a glass of water. By the time I returned with the glass of water and handed it to him, the inspector was examining our apartment. Papa led him to my room. He stood in the doorway, studying the interior of my room.

  “Where was she sleeping?”

  “In there with Tara.” Papa pointed to the floor beside my bed.

  The inspector turned to me. “You little girl, must tell me what happened.”

  “I would really appreciate it if you keep her out of it. She recently lost her mother, and I am unsure if she is ready to—”

  “I understand, but I can’t keep her out of this. She is the one who saw everything.”

  “Can we . . . ” Papa indicated with his fingers, asking the inspector to step aside, out of my earshot. They walked outside, out of the main door, and talked in whispers. When they were back, the inspector walked toward me.
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br />   “Now, I have spoken to your Papa. He says you are a smart girl. So you will understand that if you don’t tell me what you remember it will be difficult to find her.”

  I looked at Papa. He nodded. “Tell him whatever you remember,” he said.

  The inspector looked at me suspiciously, his penetrating eyes trying to decipher the secret I held.

  “Were you sleeping right there?” He pointed to the bed in my room.

  I nodded.

  “And you didn’t wake up all night, not at the slightest sound?”

  I let my eyes tear up at the question and looked to Papa to rescue me.

  Papa walked up to me and squeezed my shoulder. “She isn’t usually like this. If she knew, she would tell you. She is a brave kid.”

  The inspector sighed and stood up. “We will do what we can.” He shook hands with Papa and was on his way out when he stopped.

  “Do you lock the door every night?” he turned to ask Papa.

  “Right before I go to sleep.”

  The inspector nodded and pursed his lips as if deep in thought, then walked to the door and examined the lock. “The lock is intact. Nobody has broken it. Somebody had to have unlocked the door from the inside and opened the door for the intruder.”

  “What rubbish,” Papa said. “Why would anyone in this house do such a thing?”

  I would, I wanted to say. In a way I had opened the door to an intruder, to Salim, by asking him to take Mukta away. But I had no clue as to how he had opened the door. I had unlocked the door but our door lock was such that without the keys to our apartment, one couldn’t open it even if it was unlocked from the inside. How could he have possibly broken into our home without breaking the door?

  The inspector ignored Papa’s raised voice and continued, “Who else has the keys?”

  “A few of our neighbors,” Papa said, giving him some names. The inspector noted them down.

  “We will talk to them and check if, by any chance, they have lost the keys to your apartment. They must have fallen into the hands of the intruder,” he said. Then he smiled, shook Papa’s hand, and left, leaving our empty home to us.

  Days later, when we went to the police station to inquire, the inspector said he had been busy and hadn’t found time to inquire with our neighbors, let alone investigate the case. Papa said it was the inspector’s way of telling us the kidnapping of a village child wasn’t that important, at least when the police were still busy trying to weed out the culprits behind the bomb blasts. After this we went exactly four times to the station, although I am sure Papa must have taken this trip several times after work. Each time the inspector said they were investigating but had nothing so far. We returned home every time, Papa’s feet heavy with disappointment, my mind burdened with guilt for making Papa search for a girl who I had wanted out of our lives. But he probably knew that eventually we would have to stop looking for her, and we did.

  I remember how those last few days in India went by—Navin and I walked around fruitlessly, silently, as if he understood what I had done. Most days when I tried to talk to him, he said he had an errand to run or had to meet another friend. Papa came home tired from work and grunted when I asked him anything. That’s how he talked to me in those days. On some days, I wondered if this was what the rest of my life would be—watching happy families saunter down the road, reminding me of my childhood before all this happened. I tried to find that affection in the winds on the terrace—the winds Mukta used to talk about; I wondered if I could hear what she had wanted me to hear in them. I wished I could go back and cry in Aai’s arms and tell her I had meant no harm to Mukta. But even this small delight wasn’t meant for me anymore.

  There were times, looking up from my homework, I would see a pigeon fluttering its wings outside the window. Mukta would have discovered a hidden message in it. At times like those, I wanted to shout out and tell Papa everything, tell him what I had done, tell him Mukta must be back where she came from and we should go get her. That is what I hoped Salim had done—taken her back to her village. In my sanest moments it seemed implausible, but I didn’t question it. Many times, sitting silently surrounded by the four walls of what was once home to me, I wondered if I should talk to Salim, ask him if Mukta was safe, but even this, I couldn’t manage.

  Papa came home one evening, let his briefcase drop on the floor, and said he had a surprise for me.

  “What? I asked excitedly.

  It had been months since silence had overwhelmed our home—something I was still not quite used to. I waited as he loosened his tie and sat down on the sofa near the living room window, his arms spread on its back.

  “Come here,” Papa said.

  I left my homework on the table and settled on the sofa near him.

  “I have accepted a job with an international organization, Tara.” He took a deep breath and looked out the window; his arms settled on my shoulder. Outside it was a bright evening, the sky blue and cloudless; I could see birds flying together in a V pattern. I looked at Papa anxiously, knowing there was more to come.

  “Tara, it means we will have to leave this apartment, leave this country for America. I have a good job now and this means a good education for you. The dreams I have for you can still come true. Besides, I think it is time we moved on from this home, from the bitter memories it gives us.”

  I sat there watching the sky for a moment and thought of Mukta then of Aai—two people I had lost so quickly and without notice. In the last few months, the emptiness Mukta left was beginning to haunt me, and in some strange way, since I could never confess, I had hoped the police would search for her, unravel her whereabouts sooner or later, lead us back to where she came from, and just maybe, we would be able to bring her home once again.

  “Tara, are you listening to me?”

  “But Papa we have to find Mukta.”

  Papa grew morose. “There . . . there is another thing I have to tell you.”

  His expression, his sudden despair, was unsettling. He blinked his eyes and looked away. “The police phoned me at the office. They said she died a couple days ago.”

  The silence resounding through our home echoed in my ears. That night, her silent struggle, the look of anguish in her eyes, and that hope on her face—everything came back. This was the result of what I had attempted to do. How could I have done something so careless, with no thought or caution that something might happen to her? Worse, I had been naïve enough to think that Salim would never hurt her. What had I been thinking?

  The tears I hadn’t shed all this while came free. Papa sat next to me, smoothing my hair until the sunlight faded around us.

  The day we boarded the plane, I remember looking back at all the families who had come to drop off their loved ones, waving at them. I searched for faces I knew, but there was nobody there for us. As the plane took off, I remember watching the dimly lit city below us, wondering if I would ever return.

  “Tara, sometimes we have to find a new life, a new dream, especially when the old one doesn’t work out,” Papa told me as the plane was about to land. Around us people tightened their seat belts and awaited their destination. Papa didn’t smile at me as he said this. He kept looking ahead, with a deep furrow between his brows, and I waited for him to look at me, to say something else. I wondered if he believed it himself—that we would be successful at building this new life that he talked about.

  As the plane landed in this foreign land, I knew the weight of what I had done could never wash off in these foreign waters.

  Have you ever had the feeling you are plummeting down a deep dark hole? The worst part of it isn’t the fear of what might happen to you but the desperate hope—the futile wait— that someone will be there at the end of it, someone who loves you enough to save you.

  - MUKTA

  Sixteen

  Kamathipura, Mumbai - 1993

  I had the feeling I might drown in the darkness—it was everywhere around me. When I came to, my wrists and ankles ached f
rom being bound. The ground was damp under me. I could hear a steady trickle of water, then a sob—a girl’s sob, or perhaps it was the crying of a baby left on this wet floor beside me. I tried to feel the ground with my hands, to reach the baby, but the cries kept getting louder and louder. I couldn’t speak so I started humming an old Hindi song, hoping the baby would quiet down, hoping I soon would hear its sweet gurgle. But it was the voice of a girl instead, and she was saying something. I tried to listen.

  “Are you . . . ?”

  I strained my ears and listened harder.

  “Are you awake?” the voice whispered to me between sobs.

  I whimpered—my attempt at a response.

  “Don’t worry. You will feel that way. It is because of the drugs they have given you.” It was another voice from behind me.

  How many people were here, wallowing in this darkness with me? Tara’s face flashed before my eyes, startled as she lay in her bed, watching me being taken away from her. Then the images of our childhood together—of us sitting on the terrace watching birds, reading books, giggling frivolously, the walks to her school, the moments we stole to eat ice cream. It didn’t seem real anymore; it was as if I had dreamed up my time with her. Maybe this was where I was supposed to be—the place I had been trying to escape from for the last five years. I tried to rouse myself from my grogginess and forced my body to move. But I was handcuffed and my legs were tied, and there wasn’t much I could do. It was dark and I couldn’t see a thing. I tried to look at the faces, the shapes floating around me, crying softly.

  The voices drifted around me, whispering, lulling me to sleep. I slipped in and out of sleep, struggling to return to reality. When I came out of it, I could hear the girls around me sobbing, talking in hushed tones.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “Don’t know.” A girl’s voice said, “They must have kept us here for at least two days. I am Jasmine. I have been with this brothel for ten years. Every year I try to escape, and they trap me in here. This is what they do when anybody tries to escape from here. I am used to the drugs now. None of the new girls can take it like I can.”