The Color of our Sky: A novel set in India

by Amita Trasi

  “No other way but to let her live like another street child in our home? She lived with us for five years, doing menial chores around the house. If Papa felt, even for a minute, that she was his daughter, didn’t she at least deserve an education? She could have studied, earned a degree, and had a better life.”

  Ajji looked up, sensing the anger in my words.

  “You must understand, Tara, that your Papa didn’t have a choice. It would have destroyed your family if the possibility of her being your sister ever got out. He was... confused. He wanted to protect Mukta and keep her home, but at the same time he couldn’t give her an education because your Aai wouldn’t hear of it.”

  Stray thoughts of my childhood came to me: Mukta following me, carrying my school bag, waiting outside the school, telling me she wanted to study, and sharing her hope of seeing her father one day. All of it could have been possible for her.

  “Papa told you he wasn’t sure if Mukta was his daughter. What if Mukta’s mother wasn’t lying? What if Mukta was . . . is really his daughter? Do you know for sure if she is my half-sister?” I asked.

  “Tara, when you want to see something, you see all the signs, whether true or not. And when you don’t want to see . . .” She shrugged, tiredly.

  “Then you don’t know for sure?”

  “No, I don’t, but tell me one thing—does it matter if she is your sister?

  “YES, of course it does.”

  “No, I mean will you stop looking for her if she isn’t your sister? There must have been a very strong friendship between the two of you to keep you searching for her. Until now, you had no idea she could be your sister. Yet you came here all the way from America, leaving everything behind. Think about it,” she laughed, “I have known real sisters . . . blood related . . . who could push each other over the cliff if they wanted to.” She laughed ruefully as if reaching for a memory in her own life. “So I ask again, would you stop looking for her if you knew she wasn’t your sister?”

  Her words made my mind race and travel to those moments Mukta and I had shared. The words that came out of me surprised me.

  “No,” I said, “I wouldn’t . . . I . . . can’t stop looking. But I think I need to know if she is my half-sister.”

  She smiled. “I have something for you. Something your father left with me.”

  She hurried inside and returned with a letter, held my hand, and let the letter fall into it. “This was the last letter he wrote. You should have it.” She smiled and retired inside.

  I played with the letter in my hand, feeling its texture. Papa’s writing. Papa’s fingerprints were on it; it felt like Papa was back with me just for a little while. I opened the letter.

  Dear Aai,

  Pranaam,

  Hope this letter finds you well. Both Tara and I are doing well in America. Tara wants to get married to a musician called Brian, and although I know she is planning to do it just to fill a void in her life, there is nothing I can do about it. She is all grown up now. And who am I anyway, to tell her how to live her life? Especially, if I have always lived my life the way I wanted.

  There will always be one thing gnawing at my heart—not accepting Mukta as my own. That and the fact that I lied to Tara, told her Mukta was dead. But you know that, don’t you? I always tell myself that I knew no other way of helping Tara forget all that had happened, especially after Tara’s mother died. How long could we have stayed in India, searching for relief from our memories? I wish I could tell my dear Tara, tell her everything, but then I fear I will lose her; I will lose her credibility for me; the respect, the pride she has for me will evaporate. And what will she be left with? My burden?

  I’ve always wanted to tell you this. When you persuaded me to take Mukta to Bombay, I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to have a clear conscience, be certain that she wasn’t my daughter, though at times I felt she was my daughter—the way she laughed, the green eyes she had inherited from me, the way she always thought about others before herself. But then again, my doubts would come up and I just knew that she couldn't be my daughter. I thought the best thing to do for her was to let her live in my apartment, with my family, and do some small chores. I told myself it was many times better than what her life was offering her. But I never knew, hadn’t ever imagined in my deepest dream that my Tara and she would grow up sharing things like sisters, that they would be inseparable from each other, the best of friends. When I saw them doing things together, sharing books or giggling together, I could tell it was time I accepted Mukta as my daughter. But every time I would wonder if a prostitute could ever really know who her child’s real father is. Maybe if I had really asked myself, I would have known that I was ashamed to be a father to a prostitute’s child. Perhaps, I'll never really know if Mukta is my daughter but I could have been a father to her just the same.

  All that time spent over all those childish debates in my head—what a waste! I wonder why I spent so much time debating whether she is my blood or not, when all I should have done is see her for the child she was . . . just that—a child! I should have treated her like I treated my Tara. I wonder if I will die without finding forgiveness.

  Hope you continue to be as kind as you have always been to me.

  Your loving son,

  Ashok.

  I folded the letter, walked to the garden, and sat on the bench outside. Flowers that had blossomed swayed in the breeze, the azure sky looked down on me, the sun gleaming at this time of the day. I read the letter again, went over Papa’s words again and again and imagined him sitting beside me, reading it to me. I wept for his troubled spirit which had always been torn between accepting a child as his own and choosing Aai’s happiness. I looked up at the sky and shouted at him in anger for not making the choice of giving Mukta a better life. I confessed to him, to the emptiness around me, told him that if it hadn’t been for my foolish choice of getting Mukta kidnapped, our lives would have been different, Mukta’s life would have been different. And I hoped that for both our sakes I will be able to find Mukta.

  Love breaks down walls, surprises you, rekindles your faith in humanity. Like an unfurling flower, love opens your heart.

  - MUKTA

  Twenty

  1997

  “Do you think you can help me? You have been so kind to me,” I asked a customer. “Will you help me escape or tell someone that I need to get out of here?” I had thought it was the right opportunity to appeal to his kindness, but his eyes filled with fear.

  “It’s not any of my business—what happens here. I don’t want to get into trouble.”

  He gathered his clothes and went away. I never saw him after that.

  I had tried appealing to some good customers—kind ones—who I knew would never say a word to Madam, but I knew it was a risk to trust them. If Madam knew what was on my mind, she would lock me up in that windowless room. So for a while, I stopped asking for help and hoped that someday I would meet someone who could get me out.

  I had come to realize that most men who come here are either trying to escape something or are seeking something. Some men don’t talk at all; they come here and go away as if they were performing a chore. Many talk about their lives, their wives, their children, memories they are leaving behind while visiting me. They show me photographs of their little children and beautiful wives and slur: you are the only one who understands. I’ve learned to smile and nod, but I always wonder why such seemingly happy men need to seek pleasure elsewhere. Perhaps we all have something to hide, something mysterious, deep and disguised behind our happy selves.

  There was one man I loved very much—Sanjiv. Together we planned my escape.

  I was seventeen when Sanjiv walked into my room and my life. I thought he was like one of those men who would sit by my side, show me photographs, and share stories of his life. In the very beginning, I thought he might be a good candidate for getting me out of this place. But that was before I fell in love with him. When he first came to my room, he stood b
y the door watching me, as if I were a mystery he was trying to solve. Tall and well built, somewhere in his early twenties, he stood there, smiling at me. I worried about the way I looked. The previous night a man had beaten me, and my face might have looked swollen. But it didn’t seem to matter to him. He walked towards me and set a tape player by my side. He sat on the ground beside me and gently lifted a strand of hair from my forehead then tucked it behind my ear.

  “Who did this to you?” he asked softly.

  My eyes filled up. For a long time, no one had treated me so gently, with so much care.

  “Never mind, if you don’t want to tell me. Do you know what this is?” he tapped the tape player.

  “Yes, a tape player.” I had seen one in Tara’s apartment. Her Papa liked to listen to it.

  “Hmm . . . ” He smiled and his entire face lit up. It made me smile too.

  “I am an artist, a struggling one actually. I make music, and I thought we could listen to some music together. My name is Sanjiv.”

  Sanjiv, I thought, like life, vast and expansive, mysterious.

  He clicked a button on the player and the music began to flow through the room—both of us absorbing it with so much hunger, so much thirst. For a minute, I traveled back in time, to when I was a six-year-old and music reverberated in our house in the village, and Amma danced like the true dancer she was, and I danced with her, my shy awkward steps no match to her perfect ones.

  “Will you dance for me?” Sanjiv asked.

  His black eyes sparkled with affection. It wasn’t a command, not like when other men forced me to do what they wanted. The way he asked, it was as if I had a choice, as if such a thing could exist for someone like me. I could be brave and tell him no, and I knew he would be fine with it, perhaps even laugh it off. But in that moment, I was ready to do anything for him. I stood up, let my body sway to the music; my feet were miraculously finding rhythm, the delicate steps I had been so meticulously taught by Amma took over for me. He stood up, took my hand in his, and swayed with me, our bodies molding into each other. My feet felt like they were off the ground, lingering in the air, and for the first time in a long time, I felt so light there was no force in the world that could bring me down.

  “Hmm . . . you understand rhythm. Not many have the gift,” he said and smiled.

  We didn’t make love that night; he said he didn’t want to. He wanted to get to know me first, to get to know the artist hidden in me, because that was what was beautiful, he said. When he left that night, it felt like four hours had gone by too quickly. I wished and hoped he would stay a bit longer, but I didn’t voice it. I was afraid if I showed too much interest it would frighten him, and he might never return.

  I lived with that fear for several days, waiting for him to return. Most nights, when other men told me their stories, my mind drifted away from them, lost in that moment when Sanjiv and I had danced together, the rhythm running in unison through us the most natural thing on this earth. He arrived three days later, his tape player suspended on his right arm. I was delighted to see him and got up and ran towards him. He didn’t smile; he laughed. I felt like a child running after a toy it had pined for. When I realized what I was doing, I made myself stop and watched how his laughter filled the empty room with happiness, pushing out the loneliness.

  “You were waiting for me?” he asked mischievously.

  “No, not at all.”

  We danced once again that evening, music filling our souls, uniting us in a way no one could understand nor imagine. I was lucky to experience something so unique and blissful, to be with someone who shared that with me. He told me more about himself, how he had run away from home when he was eighteen because his parents had been too business-minded to understand his creative mind. They wanted him to be a businessman and take over his father’s business.

  “And do what? Sit in his office; do the same hopeless job day in and day out? I’d rather be dead. I create music in a small studio I have rented outside the Goregaon Film Studio. I don’t make much, but some of my music tapes do sell, you know. It is not exactly well-paying, but I am comfortable . . . happy.”

  I smiled and offered to make him tea.

  “What about you?”

  “What about me?” I asked.

  “What is your story?”

  “Not very different from any of these girls. Now, do you want two teaspoons of sugar or one?”

  I saw the disappointment in his eyes when I changed the topic.

  “One teaspoon,” he said and took the tea cup from my hand. He smiled, and the disappointment of a moment ago was gone. My hand trembled as he took it in his, prompting me to sit close to him, my heart pounding so hard I could hear it.

  “Well, whatever you tell me,” he whispered in my ear, “you would still be the same to me. And if you don’t want to tell me, that is fine too.”

  I thought for a while as he looked into my eyes. “My friend Sylvia—she calls me Sweety. But they call me by any name here—sweety, chameli, chanda—whatever the customer prefers. My . . . my real name is . . . Mukta,” I whispered. The name sounded strange on my tongue, like I was talking about someone else, a little girl I had met long ago in memories I had left behind.

  I told him about Amma, how much I missed her, about the house in the village, how I could never forgive Sakubai for what she had done. I told him about my father, the man who I was confident I would meet and who, I hoped, would one day come looking for me. But most of all, I talked about Tara, the only friend I had ever had, who taught me how to read, let me have the small pleasure of walking her to school, of reading poems to her, of having ice cream.

  “Amma named me Mukta, you know,” I chuckled. “Since it means freedom, she might have thought I would have mine one day.”

  “You are my freedom from this world, my Mukta,” he whispered and gave me a peck on my forehead. As his hand touched mine, his body enveloped me. I knew there was nowhere in this world I’d rather be. I had spent many nights in the arms of a man, but this was my first night of making love with a man I loved.

  Sanjiv said he couldn’t afford to come in every day; he didn’t make enough to spend on me. I understood. I told him if he could visit me once every week, that would be all right with me. He came in every Wednesday night, brought a red rose for me, and we had six wonderful hours together. He gifted me the Gitanjali, poems by Rabindranath Tagore. Every night we were together he would read one poem to me, and after he left, I would save the rose on the page he read as a reminder of that night together. We didn’t have to declare our love; we felt it in the rush of blood in our bodies, in the bliss that soaked our spirit. For twenty weeks we did this—shared our ear for music, for poetry, and for silence. Then one day after we had listened to a beautiful piece of music, he said he wished he could show me the world outside, a world different from this. I told him not to worry.

  “I have already seen it; Tara’s shown it to me. But now, after five years here, it only seems like a dream.”

  “Still, I want to take you out there. Come with me, let’s escape,” he whispered, his eyes filled with longing for me.

  It was a dangerous thought, and I didn’t want him to think that way. It could jeopardize both our lives and the world we had built together in this spare room. But I must have longed for it too, because I didn’t warn him, I didn’t voice my concerns. It was not that he didn’t know. I was sure he had heard of all those women who had been beaten badly or died from trying to escape. But it was as if he didn’t care, and when I looked in his eyes, I didn’t care either. It didn’t matter what risk we were taking as long as were safe in this illusion of bliss we had built for ourselves.

  We hatched a plan to escape. I hadn’t stepped out of this room in years other than once a month when I was allowed to go to the market with Madam and some other girls. But, we were always accompanied by the security guards. I remembered what they had done to Jasmine, Maya, and many other girls when they had tried to escape.

&nb
sp; Now here I was, trying to plan my own grand escape. When I looked at myself in the mirror I saw the same look Jasmine had when she was being taken outside to be killed. What she said that night echoed in my ears. Sometimes one act of bravery is better than a life lived as a coward, as a slave. It was then that I realized—it was love—love that makes you let go of all fear, allows you to float in life, throwing all caution to the wind. For the first time in my life, I did not fear death.

  Sanjiv made a deal with Madam. “I want to take her out Friday evening, to the mela.” The fair. It was brave of him, I thought, as I peered from the top of the stairs, watching Madam put a paan in her mouth, chew on it, and look at him closely while ruminating over her thoughts.

  “Sanjiv Babu,” she said, “your father is a rich man, and that is why I allow you here. I know that even if you don’t pay, he will pay to keep your name from appearing in the papers. Imagine what people would say if they knew a reputed businessman’s son was rolling in this dirt. But this, asking to take Mukta out, is too much.”

  “Why? I am asking for one evening. I will bring her back next morning, and you know I always pay in advance. You can double her price if you like.” Sanjiv sounded desperate.

  Madam looked at him for a long time, and I thought this was it—Sanjiv had gotten himself in trouble. But surprisingly she nodded and said there would be two guards accompanying us. Madam came to my room after Sanjiv left, held my face tightly in her grubby hands, stared at me, and said, “Look I trust you. Unlike the other girls, you don’t fight. Besides you have been with me for a few years. You know what your fate will be if you try anything.”