Shirin looked at the headstones dotting the cemetery. Birds flew overhead in the twilight sky, making their way home. A dog howled mournfully.
‘I know you, Shirin. You are not one to bear grudges. You will not be able to live with yourself if she dies before you have made peace...’ Madhu said softly.
A cat jumped over the low cemetery wall and walked between the headstones. Its orange eyes glowed like headlights in the darkness. When it saw Shirin, it mewed and slunk away.
‘She loves you, Shirin.’
Shirin watched shadows play on the headstones, performing a ghoulish dance.
‘It’s hard to forget, Madhu. To forgive.’
‘I know. But you will.’
* * *
Everyone was squeezed into Jacinta’s little room, repeating the Catholic prayers recited at deathbeds after the priest. ‘I went to the church first, asked the priest to come and administer communion to her before I found you,’ Madhu whispered. Years of living in a Catholic household had made her wise to the rites and rituals.
The room was dark. The lone sixty-watt light bulb hanging from the ceiling flickered with the fluctuating voltage. Shirin’s eyes picked out her daughter and her heart did a little flip of joy. Then she turned her attention to her mother.
Jacinta looked even smaller than she had just that afternoon. More frail. Her breaths came in loud, laboured gasps, their harsh sound somehow louder than the prayers being chanted by the rest of the family. The air was stuffy with grief and populated with ghosts whispering among the shadows. Outside the tiny window, lights from neighbourhood houses twinkled like beacons in the heavy darkness. The banana tree just outside the window swayed in the light night breeze. Ordinary sounds drifted in, only to be stifled by the heavy, oppressive silence weighted down with sorrow that had settled in the room, in the wake of the prayers, which, Shirin realised with a start, had ceased. In her white nightgown, silhouetted against the shadows, her mother looked like a pale ghost herself, already less of this world and more of the next.
The doctor had been called and sat beside Jacinta holding his bag, looking just as helpless as the rest of them.
‘Too late for medical help.’ He mouthed to Shirin as she squatted down beside her mother.
She nodded at him and turned to look at the slip of a woman who had once been regal, awe-inspiring, beautiful Jacinta. The mother she had been so proud of.
Jacinta moaned loudly, gasped for air and turned on her side. Shirin reached forward and gently laid her hand on top of her mother’s cold, shrunken one. Jacinta’s eyes opened, focused on Shirin. Recognition settled gradually into their murky depths. Slowly Shirin leaned forward and kissed her mother’s gnarled cheek. And though it seemed to take every last ounce of her remaining strength, Jacinta looked straight at the daughter she had once denounced and smiled.
For Shirin, that was enough.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Kulfi Ice Cream
‘Why did she give me away?’ Reena asked. She was sitting on the rim of the well, her hands stroking the velvet moss growing up the sides. Shirin was in Bajpe meeting Vinod who was arriving from the UK. Preeti was inside helping Madhu and Aunt Anita sort through Jacinta’s stuff. Deepak had come in search of her, bearing kulfi ice cream, holding out the green cone dotted with yellow pistachios like a peace offering. ‘Want some?’
Reena had nodded, patting Gypsy’s warm flank which sprawled across her lap, still unable to look directly at him. So many things had happened so quickly and she felt bruised all over, as if she had survived a crash. She liked Shirin and then she hated her. The rage she felt for her parents bubbled over like rice boiling in a too-small vessel, and during those times all she wanted to do was put as much distance between her and these traitors who had passed for her parents as was possible. She went for long walks in the fields, Gypsy keeping her company, trying to sort through her thoughts, her emotions. She felt she had grown a thousand years in the past weeks, suddenly shot up, and she was surprised that her clothes still fit. On the walks, images would come to her, suddenly, without warning. Preeti holding her during one of her nightmares; waking up delirious with fever to find her dad dozing by her side in a chair, startling awake to place a wet cloth on her hot forehead; Preeti comforting her when Gypsy’s predecessor died; her dad lifting her up over a puddle, his arms strong around her, ‘One, two, three, jump!’; rocking her on his lap and singing to her in his tuneless baritone when she was so tired she couldn’t sleep; her parents coming to her school play where she had a bit part and clapping the loudest; her mother saying, ‘Our special miracle.’
She felt shame at the thought of how she was conceived. She worried that she might be bad, like her father, remembering the monster that sometimes threatened to take her over, that had made her bite her mother that time. She was grateful that she had the parents she did, even though she was terribly angry with them, had lost trust in them. But the question that played most on her mind was this: Why had Shirin given her away? Shirin had tried to explain to her the day she found out, but that day was all jumbled in her head. And she wanted to hear her father’s side of the story.
‘You can ask her yourself of course…’
‘I knew you would say that. I knew you wouldn’t give me an honest answer…’ The rage, always there, simmered. She jumped up, pushing Gypsy off, who howled in protest.
‘I hadn’t finished, Reena.’ Her dad held her wrist, pulled her back.
‘Don’t touch me!’ she yelled.
‘Please, Reena.’ Something in her dad’s voice made her finally look up at him. Dark circles under his eyes, lines on his face, running into his stubble. Hurt in his eyes. This was her dad, the one who had taught her patiently how to play chess, who helped her with her maths, who even played hopscotch with her once, not caring how silly it looked. The dad who had marched up to her school and yelled at the head teacher for saying in assembly that Reena was not good with numbers. The dad who had tried to plait her hair and cook her noodles the way her mum did when Preeti had gone to visit a relative once. The dad who was always there for her, no matter how busy he was. The dad who made her laugh.
The dad who had lied to her all her life.
She sat down and Gypsy rolled back into her lap. ‘When will this dog learn?’ she thought. ‘I keep hurting her, but she keeps coming back. She trusts me implicitly. She loves me. What if I hit her repeatedly? Would she still come back? Everybody has their breaking point. I have reached mine.’
‘She called me, after you were born. I was living in Indiranagar, with Preeti. It must have taken great courage to call me, you see. We were all ignoring her; she was dead to us. Luckily for her, for us, Preeti took her call. She persuaded me to go and visit with Shirin. Shirin was broken, Rinu. She couldn’t handle what she had done, what had been done to her. She begged me to take you. “Reena is the best thing that happened to me,” she said. “She is perfect, unspoiled,” she said. “She doesn’t deserve me, I will not be able to mother her the way she deserves to be mothered,” she said. “She doesn’t deserve me,” she kept repeating. “She needs someone who will love her, focus on her; not someone who is haunted, who doesn’t have the energy to get out of bed.”’ Her dad paused. ‘It is a hard thing to get your head around but there it is. She loved you. That is why she gave you away. She said something to me as she handed you over that I have never been able to forget.’ He rubbed a weary hand across his eyes. ‘She said, “If I had to go through all this again, I would, for the gift of her.”’
He was quiet a long time. A crow cackled from among the fronds of the coconut trees. The air smelt of pineapple. A stone plopped into the well, a hollow sound.
‘My biggest regret is that I let Shirin go, to live so far away, punishing herself, for so long. It just—it was the easiest thing to do. I fooled myself that it was for the best. Mai, Taipur society and all t
hat. And of course we had you to consider. Innocent little thing caught up in all of this. Shirin was adamant that you were not to know. She did not want you to have to carry the burden of how you were conceived.’ He paused, took a breath. ‘Reena, look at me, please?’
His gaze, boring into hers, his voice firm, ‘You are not to feel ashamed of who you are. Do you understand? A person is what they make of themselves; what they become, not what they came from.’
‘Sometimes when I am very angry, a monster takes me over. It makes me do bad things.’ She concentrated on scratching behind Gypsy’s ears, head bent, not daring to look at her father. Gypsy moaned with pleasure.
‘Rinu, sweetheart, we all feel like that sometimes. We are human, after all.’ Her dad’s voice was gentle. ‘When I was six, I pushed Shirin into the stream. She hit her head and had to go to the big hospital in Manipal, have stitches. I went to mass twice a day for the two weeks she was in hospital, promising God that I would be good for the rest of my life if only she came home alive. We all get angry and we all do bad things sometimes. It’s okay to get angry, Reenu. Look at me.’ Her father’s eyes, the colour of hot chocolate. ‘I have known you since you were two weeks old and I can tell you one thing: you are not like Prem was. You don’t have it in you. You are a better person already than Preeti and I, than any of us. Aunt Anita told me how you questioned her, how you championed Shirin’s cause, how you made her feel ashamed of the way we all had behaved. You are wise, you are honest and you stand up for what you believe in. More than can be said of any of us.’ And then, softly, ‘Shirin loves you, Reena. Very much. As do we. You are loved, my darling. You are loved.’
The ache in her father’s voice. The yearning. She had never heard her father speak so openly before, put so much of himself into his words. There was no point perpetrating regrets, she thought, continuing the chain of hurt and hate. She went up to him and gently, with one finger, brushed away the tears squeezing out of his eyes, pooling into his stubble. She rested her head on his shoulder and watched the ice cream melt to a jade puddle, watched Gypsy greedily lap it up and choke on the pistachios, her expression that of unabashed disgust.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Beginnings
Bajpe Airport. Twice in two weeks. Jostling for space among the crush of taxi drivers, rickshaw vendors and relatives, Shirin waited. Watching the new arrivals, their faces emerging from behind the trolleys, blink in the sudden blast of sunlight, their faces transforming as relatives jumped over the barrier and enveloped them in bear hugs, ignoring the harassed security guard futilely waving his baton. And she watched him walk out, wheeling one small suitcase behind him. He didn’t see her, he wasn’t expecting her. His face, that familiar face, was tired, new lines creasing it. He looked older somehow, and had he always walked with a slight stoop? His shirt was untucked. His eyes scanned the crowd, probably deciding which taxi driver to choose, and landed on her. The surprise in them, the joy. She watched as his face transformed. That smile that had won her over. He looked years younger. Her Vinod once more.
She went up to him, jumping over the barrier, ignoring the security guard’s, ‘Hey, miss!’; ignoring the calls of ‘Sir! Taxi, sir, ma’am—where do you want to go?’
She looked up at him, his eyes soft as he smiled at her, his day-old stubble flecked now with more grey than black. She lifted her palms and cradled his face in them. His eyes widened, but his gaze never left her face. She gently lowered his beloved face down towards hers, ignoring the oohs and aahs and aiyyos from the crowd around them, ignoring the ‘Oh, my God! Look. What is she doing?’; ignoring the security guard whose baton pressed into her back: ‘Ma’am, ma’am, please, public place, ma’am,’ he kept saying, thinking switching to broken English from Kannada might help, get the message across.
‘I love you,’ she whispered, just before her lips touched his, and then she was kissing him. She was kissing him and nothing else mattered—not what had gone before, not what was to come. All that mattered was this man, here, now, with her.
Afterwards, she inhaled the familiar smell of his sweat, rested her cheek in the crook of his neck. ‘I missed you,’ she whispered as the security guard shooed them down the steps, dispersed the onlookers with a flick of his baton, yelling, ‘What are you gaping at?’ and went back to guarding the barrier muttering, ‘These people! Going to foreign countries and coming back with ideas in their heads. Kissing in public—and on the mouth, too! Ayyo devare…’
‘I have waited so long for this, Shonu,’ Vinod said as her hand found his and squeezed.
* * *
Shirin smelt fish frying as she and Vinod neared the house she had called home for the first twenty-two years of her life. They had stopped off at the church, deposited flowers on Jacinta and Walter’s graves and were now making their way home through the fields.
The air smelt of rain and earth and something else, something fresh. Perhaps this was the smell of seeds drunk on rainwater and soil, ready to sprout; the smell of new beginnings, of hope, Shirin mused. Her feet led her unerringly toward home, balancing with ease on the precarious path between the fields. Vinod followed, not balancing quite as well.
Dark clouds collected in clumps, staining the azure sky black, playing hide and seek with the sun. Looks like rain.
Her childhood home rose majestically above the fields on the hill. Smoke rose from the chimney in the bathroom, reminding her of dreaded scalding baths as a child. She could just make out Madhu in the kitchen, hunched over the gas as she used a spatula to flip the frying fish, stopping only to shoo the cat, Chinnu, away. The front door was wide open as usual. Shirin’s eyes scanned for Reena and she found her sitting on the rim of the well, Gypsy sprawled across her lap, Deepak by her side. Reena’s head was bent and she was stroking the dog’s back. Shirin’s heart did a crazy flip. Her daughter!
She quickened her steps, raced up the hill and Vinod followed, breathless. ‘You need to get fit,’ she said to him, winking. Vinod was too out of breath to think up a riposte. He bent double with his hands on his knees, panting with his mouth open, and she laughed, ‘You look like Gypsy. Go on in. I’ll be along in a minute.’ She looked towards Reena. He nodded, understanding without her having to spell it out.
As she walked to the well, she watched Reena stand up, go to Deepak, put her arms around him, hold him close. Gypsy coughed out something she had eaten, bounded up to her with a low bark, danced around her legs. Reena turned, her face lighting up when she saw her.
‘You came back.’
She came up to Shirin and put her arms around her, as naturally as if she had been doing it always. Shirin held her daughter, breathing in the scent of her. Over her hair, which smelt of coconut, she met Deepak’s gaze. ‘How could I stay away, Reena?’
‘I want to talk to you about something.’ Reena’s voice sounded muffled.
‘I’ll go on inside, let you two catch up,’ Deepak said.
As he walked past, Shirin held out her hand. Her brother took it, his eyes shining. She looked down at his hand—the hand that had snatched the note; the hand that had connected with Tariq’s flesh; the hand that had cradled her child that rain-sodden night and sealed a promise; the hand that had raised the beautiful girl who was now ensconced in her arms. ‘I’m so sorry, Shirin,’ he said. She squeezed his hand hard once and watched him walk into the house, his back stooped.
‘Yes?’ she whispered into her daughter’s hair.
Reena worried a loose thread on her sleeve. ‘I do understand, sort of, why you gave me away. But... I am still very angry with you.’
Shirin gently tipped Reena’s chin up with her finger. Her daughter’s face, so like her own, was distressed. ‘Reena, you have every right to be angry. Rage, fight; get it all out. Don’t let it eat away at you.’
‘Sometimes, I don’t know who I am. I wake up frightened. If my parents are not really my parents, wh
at else don’t I know?’
‘Reena, there will be no more secrets. All the adults in your life promise that.’
‘And you expect me to believe it? You adults make a lot of promises you don’t keep.’ Her eyes sparkled with unshed tears. Shirin held her close, patted her back. Reena snuggled into her, drawing comfort. Her daughter. She breathed her in. She smelt of coconut shampoo, sandalwood, spices and dog.
‘When I found that picture, I identified with you instantly… Since I found out, I often wonder... if you had kept me, not given me away, how things would have been…’
Oh, Reena. She wanted to hold this girl forever. She wanted this moment to never end.
‘But…’ Reena paused, swallowed. Whatever it was that she wanted to tell her, she was finding it very hard to say. Shirin was content to wait, while she held her close, like this. Overhead, thick smoky clouds spirited the sun away. Shadows played across her daughter’s face. ‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ Reena said finally.
Lightning signed in cursive writing on slate-grey canvas.
‘Reena,’ she said softly, ‘I lived for eleven years missing you, aching for you. Nothing can hurt me as much as that, especially not anything you say. You are a gift, Reena. A precious, precious one. I have longed for you for what seems like forever and to have you now... It’s a miracle...’
‘They love me very much.’ Reena’s voice was soft.
There was a sudden playful growl of thunder. Gypsy barked, cowered under the banana tree.
‘I know.’
Madhu rushed out of the kitchen to pull clothes off the line and from where they were sprawled on the aboli branches, a colourful awning. She stopped short when she saw Shirin and Reena. ‘Shirin, when did you come? Come in—you must be hungry. I’ve made mackerel fry; I put lots of chilli and vinegar in the marinade, just the way you like it. And there is raw-jackfruit curry, and I made crab masala with ginger and tomato. It’s going to rain. Why are you standing outside?’ She frantically pulled off the clothes, gathered them in her arms.
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