by Amita Trasi
On the third day, as I was consoling the girl, persuading her to come out with me, there was a knock on the door. I carelessly opened it to find Navin standing outside.
“How are you Tara?” Navin asked.
I couldn’t smile, couldn’t return his warmth.
“All right, I suppose,” I said, then turned around and left the door open behind me. He entered my apartment, his five-year-old by his side. Before I knew it, Rohan had rushed to Asha’s side, asking her to play, and she held his hand, jumped down, and rushed out to play.
“Don’t worry. They won’t go far,” Navin said.
I had a smile on my face before I realized it. “All this time spent cajoling and persuading her to come out with me, and Rohan does it in a second.” I laughed.
“Children understand each other better than we adults can understand them.”
“That’s true,” I said thinking of the childhood Navin and I had shared, of the thoughts Mukta and I had read in each other.
“I came to see how you were doing.” He looked at me. In his eyes, I could see concern.
“Are you all right?” he asked, “You don’t look so good.”
“I am just tired, I think, from Asha living with me for the last few days. “
“I know. Raza told me how you rescued her. Know this Tara, you are doing something very brave.”
I didn’t acknowledge his compliment, just looked at him blankly. An awkward silence settled between us.
“It’s dark in here,” Navin said looking around.
“Asha asks me to keep the curtains closed. She is not yet used to the light. She’s been held in a dark place for too long.”
“Hmm,” Navin sighed. “The things those girls have to endure in their lives! How evil of people to put them there.”
The irony of the statement surprised Navin.
“What do you want Navin?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.
“Forgiveness,” he said, looking me straight in the eye. The word burned in my throat. Forgiveness. Was it that easy to expect?
“I want to say how sorry I am for everything Daddy did,” he said, standing near the door, sunlight pouring behind him. “I am shocked . . . ashamed. Will you ever be able to forgive me?”
I recognized his expression—it was like looking at my reflection in a mirror, waiting to be forgiven. Tears burned the back of my throat.
“I know you mean it, Navin, but I . . . I don’t know how . . . to forgive,” I whispered, my voice coming out as a croak.
“I was a child, Tara; I didn’t know what to do.”
“I was a child too,” I whispered and looked away, the tears burning in my eyes.
He shook his head, sighed, then turned around to go. In the distance, I could see Asha cackling on the swing set with Rohan.
“Maybe someday—just maybe—you will find it in yourself to forgive everybody—your Papa, my Daddy, me, and more than anyone—yourself,” he said as he walked to the door, stepped out, and disappeared around the corner.
“Maybe,” I whispered as I watched him leave.
Four months had gone by since I had brought Asha home. Raza and I were sitting on a park bench watching Asha do cartwheels, slide down the playground slide, and wave at us. She was coming out of her shell, although even now, she was occasionally afraid and pestered me about her mother. I was happy she mingled with other children so well.
“I think,” Raza told me softly, as I waved to Asha, “you should send her to the center now. This was supposed to be temporary, just until she regained her confidence in the world. Dinesh calls me every day, telling me it will not be good for the girl if you keep her too long. If she gets attached to you, she will find it difficult to adapt to other people at the center.”
He smiled as if he knew what I was thinking. It felt like Asha had always belonged with me. Sending her back to the center had been such a distant possibility for me. If I was honest with myself, in the last couple of days, I had worried, in fact feared, that the apartment would return to its stillness, the stillness that reminded me of the past and continued to haunt me. Besides, the last few nights when I watched Asha sleep in my bed after I had read a story, she would not let go of my hand and risk the chance of me leaving her behind. I understood that feeling.
“Are you there?” Raza’s voice startled me.
“Yes, I am not so sure if that is the right thing for her—going to the center.”
“This isn’t about you, Tara. It’s about the girl.”
“I know and the girl’s name is Asha,” I said, my voice rising. The kids who were riding their scooters stopped to look at me.
Raza stood up and straightened his shirt, obviously upset by what I had said. “I think we should go,” he said.
I knew he was right. She was probably better off with Dinesh and Saira who knew how to take care of her and with the children at the center who shared her pain. I called out to Asha and we strolled down the park, Asha walking between us, holding onto our hands, swinging between us. I told Raza then that he was right, that we needed to drop her at the center. He smiled at me.
On our way to the center I thought about what I was about to do. I watched Asha slurp her ice cream cone in the backseat and wondered what it was that was driving me crazy.
At the center, Dinesh applauded me. “Leaving Asha here? Good decision. You know we saved the girl just in time. Couple more years and they might have sold her to another brothel; who knows what they would have done.”
His wife Saira entered the office and said, “I heard. You are leaving Asha here? Yes, yes, it’s better this way. I have been saying this for a couple months now. We just wanted her to stay with you for a few weeks until she opened up since she was so fond of you. But if she stays any longer, she will become too attached to you.”
I sighed. It was not just Asha who was getting attached to me. It was the other way round.
“See,” Saira pointed out, “she is already making friends.”
I watched Asha play with the girls outside and knew I had made the right choice. She was better off here with other girls her age. She would be able to settle in better, adapt more quickly. She would understand that her need to find her mother was shared by many girls her age.
I spent the evening with the girls, playing badminton with some of them in the courtyard. Dinesh ordered food from a restaurant and all of us sat on the grass outside and ate together. The smell of the food wafted in the yard as I watched Asha eat with the other girls, chatting loudly as children often do. I felt I was letting her down. I wondered what I would tell her. Raza squeezed my hand understandingly. After dinner, Raza and I stood outside in the cool December breeze, bidding everyone goodbye. Asha stood next to me waving a goodbye to everyone, too, expecting to come with me. The moment had come; I had to explain to her that I was leaving her behind. With dread, I bent down to face her.
“Asha, you must stay here. I am going away for a while but I will be back soon. They will take care of you here. See, you have already made so many friends. You can stay with them now.”
Her eyes widened, tears filling them. Her face shrank and she kept repeating, “No, no, no.” She clutched at my hand, and I felt a raw tug in my chest. Was this the way a mother felt leaving her daughter behind on her first day at school?
Dinesh picked her up. She resisted him, her arms flailing about her, her legs kicking Dinesh. “I cannot leave you. I am not supposed to let go of your hand,” she wailed. The other girls watched the scene with horror on their faces, and Saira asked them to go inside.
“I think we must go. Standing here will only make it more difficult,” Raza told me, his arm on my shoulder.
I turned around to go, smelling the sadness around us just like I had years ago in the storage room. I could hear the heavy sobs of a girl who whimpered through the night. The sky was sprinkled with stars on this night like it had been years ago when another little girl had lost her mother.
“Please,” I turned back and
faced Dinesh who was still standing there, “let me take her with me just for one night. I will bring her back tomorrow morning.”
Dinesh studied my expression for a while, then sighed while Asha whimpered between us. Finally he shook his head, defeated, and let Asha down.
“Just one night,” he said.
I nodded. Asha wiped her tears, sniffled, and clasped my hand once again. In the taxi, I watched Asha sleep. I felt like she was the answer I had been seeking, and for a minute, everything fell into place. With her, I always had a feeling of familiarity, like we had known each other long before we met.
Next morning, I took Asha to the park. In just another hour’s drive to the center, Asha would become one of those girls living at the shelter, waiting and hoping for their mothers to show up. People jogged in the park around us. Others walked their dogs. I watched Asha play on the playground, then looked up at the birds that chirped in the trees.
“You are sad,” a voice said. Asha had stopped playing. She was standing by my side. I hadn’t seen her walk to me.
She leaned by my side on the bench. “Amma used to be very sad too,” she said, digging her feet into the soil. She looked at the sky then looked at me, “Do you think I shouldn’t have watched?”
“Watched what?”
“When they did things to her . . . ” she gulped and twirled the side of her skirt, “bad things. They thought I was asleep, that I had taken the sleeping pill they gave me, but I would throw it away, pretend I was sleeping when the . . . the men came. Do you think Amma was sad because of what I did?”
“No, it wasn’t your fault,” I said, pulling her close. She sniffled and wiped a tear that fell from her eye. This was the first time she had opened up to me.
“Then they took me away, kept me with the other children in a dark room. Now Amma will be sad because of me, because I am no longer there for her.”
I took her in my arms and held her tight. She cried softly. She smelled of the sweet mangoes I had fed her for breakfast. The wind whooshed around us.
“See, Amma used to tell me when I hear the wind whistling in my ear, she is thinking of me. I can hear her now, can you?” she asked.
I looked at her face for a while; that was something Mukta had told me years ago.
“Amma said you would come looking for her, and you would teach me how to read and write, the way you had taught her, years ago.”
“Yes,” I said, laughing and crying at the same time; holding her tighter, “I’ll teach you just the way I taught her.”
At the center, Dinesh was initially confused to see my beaming face.
“I am not leaving her here. She is my niece,” I told him. I repeated all that Asha had told me. I had renewed hope, renewed strength that I was getting closer to finding Mukta.
“Yes, but still. Unless it gets proven she is your niece, I can’t let her go with you. You don’t even know if Mukta is your half-sister in the first place. So unless there is an official adoption, which can only happen if we declare Asha an orphan . . . ”
“Really, Dinesh? Look where we are standing. When I first came here, all people told me was how many kids go missing here, and there is no one looking for them. There is no report, no proper paper trail. Officials like to be bribed and are ready to produce false identity papers at a moment’s notice. I have worked with you for four years. Do you think I won’t be a good caregiver to the girl? And please, how many rules or laws do you think we follow to a tee. You and I both know that sometimes we have to bend the law to do some good.”
Dinesh sighed and shook his head.
“Look,” I softened my stance, “let her stay with me. Isn’t it better to have a home for a child than to have her stay at the center? How many children go without a home? Meanwhile I will file papers for the adoption. You trusted me with her for the last few months, didn’t you?”
Dinesh looked out the window and then looked back at me.
“All right,” he sighed. “But you will have to declare her an orphan, file the adoption papers, go through the system. I will see what strings I can pull.”
“Thanks,” I told Dinesh, wanting to jump for joy.
It all comes down to that one moment— the crack of dawn—which is all one needs to come out of darkness.
– TARA
Twenty-nine
April 2009
It had been four months since that conversation with Dinesh. I had filed Asha’s adoption papers; the process was long and laborious, but I was hopeful. For the duration of the application process and until the adoption was approved, Asha had to stay at the center. But Dinesh allowed her to stay with me from time to time.
“This isn’t something I normally do,” he told me every time he let Asha stay with me. I knew he could get into trouble with the authorities over it, and perhaps, I was also risking my application, but the lure of being close to Asha didn’t allow me to think of the repercussions. Raza had also helped a great deal by contacting all the people he knew to expedite the process.
So when he called saying he wanted to talk to me about something important, I asked him to come over, expecting him to have some information on the adoption. While I waited for him on that dreary summer morning, I remembered the time when I couldn’t wait to tell Raza the news. It had been just four months ago that I had stood before Raza in his office.
“Asha is my niece.” The words had been so delightful as they slipped off my tongue. “She told me things only Mukta could know. I spoke to Dinesh, and he said he would help me adopt her.”
He had watched my beaming face for a minute, momentary gladness passing over his face, and then had looked back at the door deep in thought. “You sound so happy. Good. Now if you find Mukta, you will be free to go to America.”
“What? Why would I go back to America?”
Instead of answering my question, he had changed the topic. But his pain at the thought of letting me go hadn’t escaped me.
Now, as Raza stood outside my apartment door, knocking on it, I suddenly wished he had asked me not to leave him.
“Hi,” I said as I opened the door.
Raza burst in without acknowledging my greeting.
“There is a journalist, Andrew, who got in touch with Dinesh today,” he said, breathing hard. “He said he was interviewing prostitutes from a brothel for a book he is writing. He . . . ”
“Yes?”
“He interviewed Mukta! She goes by the name Sweety. If he is right about this woman—if she is Mukta—then he says they’ve moved her to Sonagachi in Kolkata.”
Was this just another hoax or was I really going to find Mukta this time? Anxiety filled me to the point I could not breathe.
“Sonagachi is another area just like Kamathipura but in Kolkata,” Raza explained.
“Kolkata . . . ” I repeated, as if dazed.
“Why don’t you sit down?” Raza led me to the sofa.
“Dinesh and his team won’t be able to come with us,” Raza said, kneeling down beside the sofa. “They don’t work outside Mumbai, but we can ask the help of another NGO there. I will come with you. We can leave Asha at the center for a while. What do you think?”
“No, we will leave her with Navin—she will be happy playing with Rohan,” I said. “What if—”
“Yes?”
“What if it isn’t Mukta?”
“It is a chance we will have to take.”
By the time I had packed my bags, Raza realized he wouldn’t be able to make the trip with me. He apologized, told me he was supposed to finish some work, but would definitely join me in a couple of days. The journalist, Andrew, was in Sonagachi, and I was to meet him first. If whatever he told me proved it was Mukta, Raza would be there by the time we prepared for another brothel raid in Kolkata. Raza said he knew somebody in Kolkata who would guide me. At the station, I boarded the train and stood by the door talking to Raza.
“I know you think it might not be Mukta, and you are worried that taking time out to go to Kolkata
will probably set you back in your search in Bombay, but trust me the raids will go on as planned. Dinesh will keep us updated. So don’t worry, okay?” Raza said.
“Yeah. You’re right. I think I am going on a wild goose chase all over again. After almost five years of searching, I don’t know what else to think.”
“I know,” Raza nodded.
“So what do you plan to do without me around?” I teased, trying to change the topic.
He looked away then swallowed hard, tapping his palm with his cell phone, and asked, “Tara, are we always going to pretend as if we are just good friends, that what we share isn’t more valuable than that? I’ve waited to ask you this . . . for the right time . . . maybe when you’ve found Mukta, but I am not sure waiting any longer will help me.”
I hadn’t expected that. His eyes met mine as if speaking a language I had always been too afraid to utter.
“I-I don’t know,” I said, my shoulders stretching slowly into a shrug.
I studied his expression, afraid it would shatter like glass by something I was about to say. I took a deep breath and said it aloud in one breath as if spitting out something that had been stuck inside me for a long time: “Raza, I always lose people I love—one by one—I have lost them all.”
It was the truth. He was as surprised as me but his eyes deepened into affection. “Tara,” he said softly, “that’s not a rule.”
“It is a rule. Come to think of it, it is almost like a curse I carry.” I tried to laugh but tears welled up in my eyes.
“So you are afraid you’ll lose me?” He raised his eyebrows and smiled, pleased at the thought. “But if you don’t give this a chance, how will you ever know?”
The train whistled and pulled away. I waved to him.
“Think about it,” he mouthed to me and smiled as I left him behind.
His words didn’t leave me as I slept in the train. When I woke up, I could hear the wind whipping through the windows. I almost expected Asha to be sleeping beside me, her breathing deep and peaceful. Then it came to me—I was on my way to Kolkata. I had left Asha behind with Navin. Navin had been thrilled that Rohan and Asha got along so well. Then I thought of Raza—what is it that Raza had asked me before I left? Are we always going to pretend as if we are just good friends, that what we share isn’t more valuable than that? I sighed. He was right. I had been lying to myself for the last five years. If it had been another time— a time when there was no desperation, no guilt—it would have been easier to admit how much I liked him. But now, it didn’t feel right to be able to find love. I watched the sky rush past me through the window. I was still thinking of Mukta when my phone rang.
