by N. H. Senzai
“And your family decided to leave?” asked Zara gently, taking their grandmother’s hand.
“At first my father and his brothers couldn’t agree what to do,” said Naniamma, her eyes clouded with memories. “For days they debated, feeling as if they were being torn in two. In the end, our entire family decided we would go to Pakistan, and if things didn’t work out, we would come back. So we packed up our family house in Aminpur, but my mother didn’t want to take our valuables, in case we were robbed, so she hid them. Then my father, mother, three older sisters, and I got into our car and were driven by Dr. Tripathi to the train station. Once on the train, we squeezed into a compartment and barred the door.” Naniamma stopped to take a sip of tea, while Maya shared an amazed look with her sister.
“We arrived in Delhi,” continued Naniamma, “where my uncles and their families joined us. The train started moving again and things were fine until we arrived in the city of Amritsar, near the new Pakistan-India border. A group of men climbed aboard . . . and I don’t remember anything after that.”
“But you got to Pakistan,” Maya burst out, unable to hold in her curiosity. “What happened to your parents, your sisters, aunts, uncles, and cousins?”
“When the train pulled into Lahore, no one disembarked,” said Naniamma.
Maya gulped, the orange juice turning to acid in her stomach. She had to lean closer to her grandmother to hear her whispered words. “When the train conductor climbed on board, he found the aisles and compartments flowing with blood. Only three people on that train were alive, and one of them was me.”
5
Delhi Landing
Saturday, September 17
Approaching Indian airspace
Here are some facts about India:
1. India is officially known as the Republic of India.
2. It has the second largest population in the world, with over 1.2 billion people.
3. Many different languages are spoken but the main ones are Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, and Urdu.
4. The capital is New Delhi, and the most populated city is Mumbai.
5. The official currency is the Indian rupee.
6. The most popular sport is cricket.
We will be landing in Delhi soon. The city is located where the Ganges and Indus Rivers meet. This area has been inhabited for a really, really long time—since the 3rd century BC. It’s the spot where two families, the Kauravas and Pandavas, went to war. They’re so famous that their story was written down as an epic Sanskrit poem, called the Mahabharata. Since then, Delhi has gone on to be the capital of many rulers, from the Muslim Mughals to the British.
Maya glanced up from her journal toward her grandmother and Zara, both asleep. Naniamma’s story had left them all teary eyed and exhausted. But Maya couldn’t sleep. She turned back to the journal.
You might be wondering why we’re on our way to Delhi. Well, it’s been my grandmother’s dream to go, and since we already had our visas, we decided to come, just the three of us. My sister asked my grandmother why it was so important to go now, right after our grandfather’s death. I’m glad she asked. I was too nervous. My grandmother’s mother hid a chest at their old house. It contains her family’s treasures! We’re going on a treasure hunt! But what Naniamma really wants is a special ring to bury with Nanabba. I don’t quite get what’s so urgent about finding this ring, but Naniamma says it’s important. She’s so sad, it’s probably wise not to question her too much.
Maya reread what she’d written. It sounded pretty lame, she thought, but it was the best she could do, considering she couldn’t fully grasp the truth. After learning so many family secrets, writing them down relieved the pressure in her head, so she continued.
I still can’t get my head around the fact that my grandmother was one of millions of people who tried to cross the new border between India and Pakistan. Her family were among the million who died.
But these people, who I never knew existed, were my family too. And they were Indian, so I guess that makes me a quarter Indian. I feel like I’ve discovered a part of myself that was hidden. Well, I can go home and tell Kavita, “Hey, I’m Indian too.” Boy, will she be confused!
The FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELT signs flickered on, and the pilot cheerily announced that they were now over Delhi. Maya shut the journal as a thought struck her: I’m part Indian, but before August 14, 1947, everyone was Indian. Her nose pressed against the plane window, Maya gazed down at the sprawling city she had just been writing about, startled by its lush greenness. Wide swaths of parks and forests rubbed up against scabs of urban development stretching in all directions.
• • •
Maya followed her sister and grandmother from the plane, clutching her backpack, overwhelmed that she’d arrived in a country where they were foreign . . . unwelcome. At passport control, the official’s bushy eyebrows scrunched together as he scrutinized Naniamma’s Pakistani passport. He glanced at her and her picture, but when he saw her place of birth—Aminpur, India—his brows relaxed.
• • •
“Ugh,” grumbled Zara, fanning her face with a magazine as they stood at the edge of a huge crowd.
Maya frowned. The weather was exactly like Karachi’s, hot and muggy. As her grandmother called out for a taxi through the clamor of voices, Maya looked around nervously, ears tuning into the conversations around them. Surprised, she realized that she could understand many of the words rushing past. Much of it was in accented English, a legacy left from colonial rule, she guessed. Some dialects were incomprehensible, but she deciphered much of the chatter, though some of the words sounded a bit different since the Hindi being spoken around her was a cousin of Urdu.
They clambered into an air-conditioned taxi and fell silent as they watched out the window. Maya saw three-wheel rickshaws, identical to the ones back in Karachi, and thought of Kavita, whose family was from Bangalore, India. They often spent the night at each other’s house and never had she overheard anything bad about Pakistan from her or her parents. On the contrary, when they’d met in kindergarten they’d formed an instant bond, feeling like brown kindred spirits who shared a love of funny black-and-white movies and spicy fried pakoras, and a repulsion for wearing tight, sequined shalwar kameez outfits on special occasions. India . . . Pakistan . . . For them, they’d just been names of countries their parents came from, and that they sometimes visited over vacation, occasionally returning with stomach problems after eating something they weren’t supposed to.
The impatient ringing of a cell phone broke through Maya’s thoughts. It was coming from Zara’s purse. Her sister pulled out her hot pink phone, a present for her fourteenth birthday. “It’s probably Mom,” she whispered, showing them the flashing number from Naniamma’s house in Karachi. “It looks like the SIM card I put in in Karachi for local calls works in India too. What do I do?”
“Pick it up, jaan,” said Naniamma with a deep sigh. “There is no point in avoiding the inevitable.”
Zara pushed the button to accept the call but was too late. It had rolled over into voice mail. “I’m sure she’ll call again,” she said, shoving it back in her purse. But not before the phone resonated with a deep buzz. The sisters shared an anxious glance. It was a text. From Mom. Ignoring it, they went back to staring out the window.
The driver exited the airport and took the first right off the roundabout. “Where are you coming from?” he asked, glancing back at them via the rearview mirror, his eyes thickly lined with black kohl.
Naniamma was silent, then said quietly, “From Pakistan.”
“Oh ho, Pakistan,” said the driver warmly. “Welcome, welcome. Is this your first time?”
“No,” said Naniamma. “I’m coming back after many years.”
“Well, then, we have been having good weather,” he said, exiting the airport. “Bit rainy, but good. The mangoes ar
e delicious this season. . . .”
As he chatted on, Maya stared out the window, looking for something, anything, that proclaimed that they were now in a foreign land—India. But the reverse was true. A sense of familiarity settled over her as their taxi overtook a rickshaw, then sped past an elegant European sedan and a donkey cart. The faces that swam past her on the expressway ranged from pale cream to mahogany, and the people wearing familiar shalwar kameezes or jeans or suits could have easily been back in Karachi. The main difference was that the billboards and signs were in Hindi, its square script different from the flowing letters of Urdu.
They passed a series of large malls and multistory office buildings and stopped at a light. Beside them sat a husband and wife on a white Vespa, clutching three little kids. Maya grinned, thinking that India’s seat belt laws must be as lenient as Pakistan’s. As the taxi’s meter whirred, counting the fare, the driver exited onto a wide, leafy boulevard. The driver pointed out a series of parks, mansions, and administrative offices that had been built to house and entertain the British during their reign.
As the driver slowed at an intersection, Zara pointed out the window. “Hey, isn’t that Gandhi?”
Maya peered over her sister’s shoulder, staring at the black sculpture of a familiar stooped figure in a loincloth, leading a group of people.
“It’s the Dandi March,” said Naniamma. “He led freedom fighters against oppressive salt taxes imposed by the British.”
“Yes, madame,” said the taxi driver, noticing their interest. “This sculpture was put in front of the President’s House, which was formerly occupied by British officials.”
“He fought against the British with such grace,” sighed Naniamma, “but an assassin’s bullet took his life soon after independence.”
“Who killed him?” asked Zara, who’d pulled out her phone to take a picture.
“Nathuram Godse,” said Naniamma.
The driver looked back with a nod. “Yes, madame knows,” he added with a glower. “Nathuram was a member of a Hindu nationalist group, the RSS. He felt Gandhi betrayed them by giving the Muslims a separate country.”
Maya stared at Gandhi’s bespectacled, smiling face with a pang of sorrow as the taxi continued past the President’s House, a columned mansion with sprawling gardens. Just down the road, past the Nehru Memorial Museum, rose their destination: the majestic pink sandstone Taj Palace Hotel. As Maya followed Zara from the taxi, she stumbled at the sight of a group of street children being shooed away by the hotel’s efficient security guards. Before she could see where they’d gone, the doorman had whisked them inside. In another few minutes, their passports and reservation had been reviewed and they were being escorted to their room on the fifth floor.
• • •
An hour later, Maya sat eating toast and jam while her sister finished off the akoori, spicy scrambled eggs, at the small table overlooking the swimming pool from their room. She eyed the eggs, which she never ate. The texture was too weird—chewy and spongy at the same time. Their grandmother lifted her purse and gently removed a sheet of graph paper and smoothed it out on the table. Maya stared at the rows of bulleted points, diagrams, and tiny pictures drawn with a careful hand.
“What’s that?” asked Zara, before Maya could open her mouth.
“This is my memory map,” Naniamma said, her eyes beginning to glow with excitement.
“Memory map?” asked Maya, elbowing her sister in irritation.
“They are the things I remember from my life in India.”
“What’s it for?” asked Zara.
“I’ve created a map using my memories as markers, leading to the chest my mother hid before we fled.”
“You remember where it is?” asked Maya, stomach aflutter.
“Of course,” said Naniamma. “I helped her dig the hole under a guava tree in the back garden.”
“I know you said you wanted to find the chest, but why is it so important?” asked Zara, echoing Maya’s thoughts.
Naniamma paused, her eyes still, staring off toward the rain-smeared window. “When I was growing up in the orphanage, the image of my parents became a blur in my mind,” she whispered. “I’ve forgotten their faces . . . the shape of their noses, how they wore their hair.”
Maya shivered. She couldn’t imagine not knowing what her parents looked like or what it must have felt like to be alone in the world.
“My mother, according to family tradition, had four rings made, for each of her daughters. They were betrothal rings to be given to our husbands on our engagement day. But,” she continued with a hollow chuckle, “I came to your Nanabba penniless, without family or possessions. So it became my life’s obsession, if you will, to find the chest containing my family’s treasures. No matter how long it took the Indian government to give us a visa, I was going to come so that I could put one of those rings on your grandfather’s finger and show him where I came from and connect him to my family.”
“But, Naniamma,” said Zara in a whisper. “Nanabba can’t wear a ring now, or see the photos.”
With a glare, Maya elbowed her sister for her insensitivity. Realizing her mistake, Zara clapped her hand over her mouth. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Don’t worry, jaan. I know he is gone.” A determined glint had appeared in Naniamma’s eye. “But before he’s laid to rest, I want him to have a ring on his finger, to keep always. Plus,” explained their grandmother, “there are other links to our past in that old box—photographs, letters, jewelry, a Quran containing our family tree, and other heirlooms handed down for generations, worth far more than their monetary value. It’s the only connection to my family that I have left—something I can bequeath to you so you know where our family comes from.”
Excitement ran like quicksilver through Maya’s veins. Maya knew that Nanabba would have wanted Naniamma to look for her family’s lost treasures.
“We really are going on a treasure hunt,” she breathed.
Naniamma laughed. “Yes, a treasure hunt of sorts. But first we’re going back to where my journey to Pakistan began—to my uncle’s house in Chandni Chowk, in the heart of Old Delhi,” she said, pointing at the list. A series of streets crisscrossed the top left corner of the paper, drawn with a neat hand, each labeled with a remembered landmark. An X marked the spot beside a square labeled “Sunehri Masjid,” or “golden mosque.” Behind it stretched a squiggle of a lane labeled “Naughara Lane.” “My uncle’s neighbor was an old family friend, Mir Hayat. The keys and the deeds to our house were left with him for safekeeping.”
“You still know someone in Delhi?” asked Zara, amazed at the news.
“Well, he’s probably passed on, but his family must still be there.”
“How can you be sure?” asked Maya, before she could stop herself. She didn’t want to dampen her grandmother’s enthusiasm.
“Mir Hayat and his brothers swore on their great-grandfather’s grave they would never leave Delhi,” said Naniamma. “You see, they’re descended from one of the oldest families in the city and have several bookbinding businesses in the bazaar. They wouldn’t have left any of that for all the tea in China. So freshen up—there’s no time to waste.”
6
Down Memory Lane
THE TRIO STEPPED FROM the hotel onto a sidewalk cleansed and cooled by the monsoon showers. With springs in their steps, they strode down the sidewalk, looking for an open-air rickshaw, since Naniamma didn’t want to be cooped up in a taxi. They paused at the corner to allow a group of smartly dressed families to stroll toward a small building nestled beside the hotel. Heads bowed, the group entered the turquoise structure, decorated with six pointed stars.
“‘Judah Hyam Synagogue,’” read Zara, pausing at the sign.
“Jews arrived in India two thousand years ago, after their temple in Jerusalem was des
troyed,” said Naniamma, admiring the building. “The king gave them a set of copper plates, granting them the right to live freely and build their places of worship.”
Mark Twain sure wasn’t kidding, thought Maya, giving the synagogue a last glance as they walked on. India does seem to be the home to a million religions.
Crowded in the backseat of a rickshaw, with Zara leaning precariously out over the edge to take pictures, they journeyed toward Connaught Place, a huge circle with roads spreading out like the spokes on a wheel. Maya had read up in the guidebook and found out that this part of Delhi, New Delhi, had been designed by the English architect Lutyens as the seat of British colonial government. They sputtered past a metro station, trendy boutiques, a McDonald’s and Pizza Hut, cafés, and sleek office buildings marked with names of familiar companies. Soon the streets began to narrow and grow bumpier as they left New Delhi behind. As the rickshaw pulled up to a red light, Maya looked down and froze. They were surrounded by children in ragged clothes, some selling flowers and balloons, others with their hands out, begging. Maya remembered the kids sleeping on the roundabout in Karachi, and before she could take a few coins from her jean pocket, the rickshaw rattled on.
The children momentarily forgotten, Maya followed the line of her grandmother’s intense stare, catching sight of a majestic dome looming up ahead.
“I so wanted to show your grandfather this . . . ,” whispered Naniamma.
“What is it?” asked Zara, craning her neck.
“It’s Jama Mosque, the largest mosque in India,” said Naniamma, knuckles white as she gripped the edge of the seat. “My father took me and my sisters to see it one summer. . . . I remember counting the steps as we climbed to the north gate—three hundred eighty-nine. We were out of breath when we reached the top.”
Maya imagined a man gently guiding a gaggle of giddy young girls up the steps. As the three sat in the rickshaw, lost in their own thoughts, the driver pulled aside at a towering three-story structure, stretching half a city block. The dull pink stone was set with semi-octagonal towers with lotus flowers carved into the horseshoe-shaped arch rising at its base.
