by Sharon Maas
You know that I send Sundari some money to buy a birthday present for Asha every year. I kept my HSBC account in India open, and I just wire money into that account and then to Sundari’s – Internet banking is a godsend, isn’t it! Whatever did we do before? Anyway: after her birthday she always writes me a short thank-you message. I’m sure Sundari forces her to write it but at least it’s her own writing. And Sundari sends a photo so I can see how much she’s grown in the past year. They are always studio photos so a bit stiff and serious – I understand that the Iyengars don’t have a camera, but I long for a photo of her at play, natural, laughing! – I treasure them. I also send photos of myself regularly, so she won’t forget what I look like.
But this year, nothing. I wrote Sundari to ask if everything is OK but no reply. It’s been weeks now since her twelfth birthday. I called the house and a strange woman answered the phone, and she didn’t speak English. I sent a telegram last week and again asking for confirmation that all is well and again – no response.
I am so worried that I have decided to close down my therapy practice for a month and go to India. It’s going to be a huge hassle and my patients will be upset and you know how I hate India but I don’t care – I have to do it.
I’m telling you this because my one hope is that for some reason it’s just me – that for you contact is as usual, that you got a thank-you for your birthday money etc.
If not I expect you are as worried as I am. I’m wondering if it would be possible for you too to take leave and we meet in Madras and travel up to Gingee together? I do feel such a stranger in India and it would be great to have you at my side as co-parent and to help me out if there is truly some problem. Of course I don’t know how easy it is for you to get leave at such short notice but my fingers are crossed. I haven’t booked a flight yet but I’d like to travel ASAP – next week hopefully. How about you? If you can come we should coordinate our bookings.
No other news really. Wayne and I are fine. I’m doing my best to be the perfect wife to an up-and-coming junior partner at a prestigious law firm but I have to admit that sometimes I feel I’m just playing a role – that this perfectly groomed hostess in a perfect home leading a perfect life isn’t really me, she’s just a character in a movie! But Wayne is a good man at home – ruthless at work, I’ve heard! – and I suppose I’m happy.
As for children – he desperately wants a few but while I was building up my career it just wasn’t feasible and in the last few years, well, it just hasn’t happened. So Asha is still my one and only. My precious. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I’d been a better mother, or if I had liked India more, or if we had moved back to America soon after she had been born, after I’d realised I was having problems? What kind of life would we have had, Kamal? And most of all, would Asha have been happier, growing up as an American kid? We’ll never know the answers I guess and it’s wrong to speculate, but I just hope she is still as happy as she was and nothing is wrong. I have to admit I have a bad feeling inside but I keep telling myself it’s just my own fears speaking.
By the way, do you have Janiki’s email? She’s sure to have one as an IT student. Last year Sundari told me she was coming to California on an internship and hoping we’d meet – she didn’t realise just how enormous America is, and that Cambridge is on the other side of it to California! But Janiki would know more, if only we could get in touch. I wish now I had asked Sundari for Janiki’s email – I just didn’t think of it at the time. And after that the letters stopped.
So this turned out to be a very long email – hope to hear from you soon.
Kamal’s head hurt. He’d been planning on writing to Caroline himself – had she heard from Sundari? It wasn’t like her not to respond to letters, not to send a thank-you letter from Asha after her birthday gift arrived. That is, the money for her birthday gift – not knowing what Asha liked, he always sent extra money and Sundari chose the gift; usually books, which Janiki would buy in Madras and either send or bring for Asha. Asha, he knew, devoured detective stories by Enid Blyton; ever since Janiki had given her the first she had craved more and more, and luckily Janiki had been able to supply them. Though that was likely to have changed – in her last letter, about six months ago, Sundari had said that Janiki was now in America, working as an intern at an IT company. Janiki, it occurred to him, would know what the problem was – but how to contact her?
Yes, Caroline was right – he was worried, very worried. The worry was compounded by guilt. He hadn’t seen his daughter since she was eight years old, and she had been so non-communicative then that he had lost all confidence in himself and his role as father. All he could do was send money, transferred from his Bank of India account to Sundari’s. He knew very well that money wasn’t enough. He knew very well he was a bad father. Bad father, bad father went the mantra in his head, impossible to silence by positive thinking. Because it was true.
And because he knew it was true, and because the worry had escalated to a nebulous panic, he knew he had to do something, Something drastic. It was time to be a good father. Good fathers acted. They didn’t just sit back, hoping and praying. Good fathers were on the front line for their children. His return mail to Caroline, unlike hers, was succinct:
I haven’t heard from Sundari either. I’ve been very worried. I’m not taking leave – I quit my job. I’ve got so much overtime due I can actually leave without notice, which is good. Planning on flying to India next week, so great minds do think alike. My flight arrives in Madras next Tuesday, so book to arrive then. I’ll meet you in Madras.
Chapter 19
Asha
There was one thing, and one thing only, that gave me hope in that house. The man had a home office full of bookshelves and a big desk and chair and cabinets. And he had another desk, a smaller one, and on that desk stood a computer, and the man would get up early in the morning and sit at the computer and do things on it for hours and hours, before breakfast. I would watch that computer with such longing! I can’t tell you how much I loved that machine. We are not supposed to love things, but I loved it and it was the only thing I loved in that whole house, because it gave me hope.
One day, I promised myself, I would sneak into the office and switch on that computer and write Janiki an email. But it was difficult, because the man went off to work after breakfast and the woman would be in the house all day watching me and telling me what to do, so that I did not get lazy. And so I did not get a chance to get to the computer. I thought maybe I could sneak out at night and use it, when they were asleep, but when I tried I found the room was locked. He had the key on his keychain with his other keys, door key and car key and the key to his business premises – I watched him carefully when he thought I wasn’t watching, and that’s how I knew this.
But there was a spare key, and I knew where it was kept: with all the other household keys on a board in their bedroom. I knew this because once a day Srimati would take the office key and open the office for me so I could clean in there. I had to dust the desk and wipe down the computer, and I can’t tell you with how much love I wiped that computer, because one day I would use it to write Janiki. I promised myself this. But Srimati watched me like a hawk, and while I was cleaning the room there was no chance to do anything. And then one day in my third week my luck changed, because Srimati complained of a headache all morning. It’s because she was having her period because I saw the bloody things in the bathroom rubbish bin.
After lunch she said, ‘I am going to lie down for an hour. You have been here long enough – you know which rooms need cleaning. Do the office and the children’s bedrooms. Don’t be slack – I will control everything when I wake up.’
And so I actually had the office key in my hand!
‘Yes, ma’am!’ I said and went off to do my work while she lay down in her bed.
I cannot describe my joy the moment I sat down on that desk chair and switched on the computer and saw it lighting up, leaping into life, just for me! I was a bu
ndle of nerves. And then something strange happened. Across the screen, a little box, and it said, ‘Enter Password’. I did not understand. On my own computer I did not have this. I switched it on and I could go straight to my email. I knew what a password was because I had one for my email, though Janiki had explained to me that it was ‘saved’ so I didn’t have to enter it every single time. ‘Only on a different computer,’ she said, and ‘Never tell anyone your password. It’s your secret.’ I thought it was strange that this computer was asking for my password so soon, so I entered it, and it said, ‘Wrong Password. Try Again.’
I didn’t know what to do. I was afraid to try again. I was afraid of what might happen. Probably it was asking for the man’s password, not mine. So I switched the computer off and in utmost dejection cleaned the room. My plan had failed.
I would not have believed things could get any worse but of course they did, as you know. But before they got worse they got better, much better, and for a while I believed I was saved – that God had answered my prayers. It’s no consolation to say that that man and his wife got their just punishment. Because that is what happened next. And at first I thought my luck had changed because all of a sudden the sun came out and I got what I wanted. That is Lady Karma. She always wins in the end.
Chapter 20
Caroline. Madras, 2000
Caroline stepped off the plane at Madras International into what felt a soup of sweat. She had all but forgotten the heat, the humidity, the closeness of climate that clasped you the moment you set foot in India. And then the endless waiting in an endless queue while they checked your passport. And then another endless wait for her suitcase among a milling crowd of Indians and Westerners, all pushing themselves forward to be near the moving luggage band, grabbing suitcases and lugging them away, piling them onto rusty creaking trolleys. Remembering how long it usually took before the luggage started to be disgorged, she went to the State Bank of India counter to change her dollars into rupees. That done, she returned to luggage claim and was relieved to see movement: people, mostly Indians, wheeling or dragging or lifting their baggage out of the milling crowd.
Some people seemed to have mountains of luggage, piles of suitcases and boxes. Caroline had only one suitcase. She knew the value of travelling light, especially in India. And after all, what would she need? She wouldn’t be doing any sightseeing or going on any pleasure outings where she would need nice new clothes. She was looking for Asha. She had brought practical things, light cotton trousers and T-shirts and loose blouses: comfortable clothes, suitable for the heat, but nothing armless or skimpy, a concession to Indian modesty.
There it was, her small green suitcase leaning against a huge one wrapped up in pale cotton and tied with several bands of rope, an address scrawled in large letters across one side of it. A burly man barged forward, grabbed the large suitcase and lugged it off the band and, by the time he had dragged it away, Caroline’s suitcase was several metres away, chugging around the bend in the band and making its way back to the bowels of the airport. There was no way to push her way through the crowds to grab it; she would have to wait till it came around again.
At last, suitcase rolling smoothly along behind her, she was ready to exit the airport. Two uniformed agents checked her documents, wrote something on chalk on her case, and then she was walking along a corridor outside the airport with a metal barrier to her right and crowds and crowds of Indians behind it, many of them waving signs with names on them, names of passengers or hotels or companies, leaning forward over the railing, scanning the emerging passengers for the one they had come to meet.
Oh, it was all so familiar! India opening its arms and folding them around her, possessively, stealthily and yet blatantly, brazenly. Two-faced India, gentle and brutal, gloriously beautiful, hideously ugly. The India that kissed you on one cheek and slapped you on the other. The India that soothed your soul one day and ripped it to shreds the next. The India that nourished your senses and starved your ego, kicking it into the ground. The India she had embraced so eagerly the first time she had walked this very path, emerging from the sanctuary of the airport into the heart and the bowels of a culture she would never understand. That first time, so many years ago, her beloved Kamal had been at her side, and she had been in love not only with him but with his country, sight unseen. India. The India she had rejected so thoroughly, fled from in the throes of a debilitating illness, and then reluctantly returned to when Asha was five.
Now, the third time, this time almost senseless with worry. This time, to find her daughter and secure her well-being. This time, too, to meet Kamal again.
And there he was. Kamal. Waiting for her at the very end of the walkway. No sign in his hands; he didn’t need one. She saw him and all the building emotions she had been holding back so bravely for the last few weeks and days and hours, the mounting fears, all the worries and the guilt and now, on seeing him, the release and the relief burst forth from her and she flung himself into his open arms. They closed around her and she was at home.
Kamal’s taxi driver grabbed hold of the trolley and she and Kamal walked behind him. Suddenly, she felt shy. Kamal’s welcome had been – well, not as warm as she had expected. He had embraced her, yes – he could hardly not embrace her, seeing as she had flung herself at him. He had been forced to open his arms to receive her, but let her go just as quickly. And now he walked beside her, not touching her – really, they could have held hands, thought Caroline. They were still friends, after all – what’s wrong with a perfectly platonic holding of hands? But perhaps, as an Indian, Kamal was inhibited about touching her, a female, his ex-wife? Well, she thought, I’ll have to do something about that.
Chapter 21
Asha. Madras, 2000
I never knew what really happened, I only know that one day in the early morning hours the dogs barked and the chain on the garden gate rattled and somebody shouted loud enough to wake the whole street. I jumped to my feet and ran to the kitchen and looked out of the barred window; I couldn’t see much but certainly three or four people were at the gate, shouting to be admitted. I sat up on the floor, wiping my eyes. The man as usual had been working in his study as he did early every morning, before dawn, and I heard footsteps, running feet as he rushed from the room and the lady rushed from her bedroom and they stood there in the corridor whispering together. The kitchen was still dark but the door was open and I heard them whispering. It seemed they had decided not to open the gate; at least no one went out to do so, and the shouting only grew louder.
Somebody brought one of those cone-shaped things people shout into… Yes, a megaphone. And then I understood. Police, open! they were shouting. Still no one opened the gate, yet the next thing I knew one of them had cut through the chain – I didn’t know it at the time, of course, but I saw the cut chain later – and the three policemen were marching down the drive. The dogs charged at them. They were on long chains, long enough to reach the path and jump up at any stranger coming along. The first police simply shot them. Both dogs! It was so scary I decided to hide. Well you know what big Tamil houses are like, built in a square around a central courtyard. So I ran out of the kitchen and into the courtyard and hid. I knew exactly where I would hide because that is where I hid from the man sometimes. There was a bench with a seat that clapped up and a compartment underneath with a few cushions, and room enough for a small girl like me. So I jumped in and closed the lid, which was the seat; but because the bench was made of wood slats I could still see some of what took place within the courtyard. And of course I could hear everything too.
They were at the door, banging away, and the lady must have finally let them in; I suppose she knew they’d break down the door if she didn’t. They swarmed through the house. I could hear them in all the rooms and see them as they criss-crossed the courtyard searching the place. The man had disappeared, but he must not have had a good hiding place because soon they found him. There was a lot of shouting. The children were running e
verywhere, crying and screaming. I couldn’t see very much but I could hear. Through the slats I glimpsed the man in handcuffs being marched across the courtyard to the main hallway, the woman being held at the wrists and dragged behind him, the children screaming and clinging to her clothes. She was wearing her old night sari and her hair was all loose, hanging down.
And then there was silence. They were gone.
Well, I had to see more so I climbed out of my bench and ran to a front window and watched, and my heart soared when I saw them dragging that man, handcuffed to the wrists of two policemen, up the garden path. The woman was not handcuffed. They held her at the elbow. She was shouting about the children, who were running behind her screaming Amma! Amma! A lady policeman was trying to grab the children’s hands but they were screaming and kicking. So it was a lot of madness out there on the drive with everyone bawling and screaming, and then they were out of the gate and I couldn’t see any more but heard several car doors slam and then cars driving off. But that wasn’t quite all. Two policemen stayed behind and they were laying tape all around the house, you know that yellow tape you see on American TV shows after a crime. So the house was shrouded in this tape and I was inside and nobody knew. And everything was quiet and I was alone in the house.
And all I had to do was open the front door and break the tape and run. I was free to go. But I didn’t go and do you know why? There are two reasons.
Because, reason one, I didn’t know where to go – I couldn’t go back to Gingee, of course, but where else? Madras was such a huge city. Teeming with people and buildings and vehicles, two-wheelers and four-wheelers and busses and lorries, and I was scared of that city and didn’t know where to go at all.
