The men set out early to stand for work. Even as she slept, her baba shifted and crept away, leaving empty space beside her. Then the aunties stirred and spoke in low voices, one to another, as they crouched outside and blew on the fire to boil up chai and cook rotis. Some days, all the men were chosen, even her baba. They came home late in the night, lunghis white with dust. Her uncle’s face shone red with country-made toddy and the children knew to hide.
‘So much work is there, nah?’ Uncle boasted, hollered at his wife to stir herself and cook food. ‘So many big buildings the Britishers are making, offices and whatnot. So much of money.’ He clapped Baba on the shoulder. ‘Come, bhai, eat. We need strength to work.’
She sat beside her baba, his thigh warm against her side, and he fed her titbits before they slept.
Other days, only the uncles worked and Baba sat the whole day long at the crossroads in the heat. On these days, he crept back to the room, ashamed, and lay alone in their corner and refused to eat even one roti.
Once Uncle hit Baba with his fists and cursed him. ‘You lazy idler, when are you going to make money and pay me rent? I don’t sweat in the dirt all day to keep you. Do I look a rich man?’
In the morning, the men made rough peace again. They set out together, side by side, pale-faced and subdued, nothing but chai in their stomachs, to wait in the sun in the hope of another day’s work.
‘Tell about naming me Asha.’
Baba sighed. She knew already, of course. It was their secret story. The uncles were out and Baba sat alone in the dirt by the entrance to the shack, smoking a bidi and watching the street. Nearby the women crouched by a stick fire, shaped patties of roti dough and slapped them into rounds between their palms.
Asha lifted Baba’s hand and measured it against her own. His skin was hard and lined. The fingernails had shredded and split with building work.
‘Please, Baba.’
He lifted his hand and put it round her shoulders, drawing her to him. His breath smelt of the cigarette. ‘Well, Asha, it was like this. Your mother and I were longing for a child. So many years we were married and all our cousins and neighbours in the village had three, four, five children and still we had none. The women looked sideways at your mother when she walked through the streets. Like this.’ He pulled his face into a haughty expression to make her laugh. ‘And the men in the chai stall gave all manner of stupid advice. Send her home and take another wife, they said. Beat her more. Make her eat coal.’
‘So what did you do?’
He shook his head. ‘What could we do? We lived. I hoed and planted and weeded. Your mama cooked and cleaned and drew water from the well and you know what else we did? We did puja every night, praying to Goddess Lakshmi and Lord Hanuman for the blessing of a child.’
A fly landed on his arm and she leant forward, blew it off. ‘And then what happened?’
‘What do you think?’
She tugged at him to carry on.
‘One day the gods were blessing us and sent you to join us. And you were so beautiful, such a tiny, perfect baby, nah? So we named you Asha. Hope.’
His voice was sad and when she tried to cuddle against him, he didn’t respond. He seemed to forget that she was even there.
Baba came back to the bustee early one day. He strode out to the waste ground behind the shacks where Asha played with her cousins, took her by the arm and half-guided, half-dragged her back to the room.
‘Wash your face.’ He watched while she poured water into a basin and wiped at her cheeks. ‘Harder.’ He took a cloth and held her fast, then scrubbed at her cheeks, her chin, rubbed over her eyes.
Next he hunted through the pile of odds and ends on the room’s one shelf and found a piece of broken comb. He spat on the few remaining teeth, then used it to tug at her hair.
She squirmed and kicked as it bit into the tangles. Finally he let her go, stood back to look at her. ‘Is that your best dress?’
It was her only dress, a cotton kameez, handed down from an older cousin. The material showed red along the seam but faded to a grubby off-white in the centre where it was much scrubbed. She smoothed it with the palm of her hand.
He took her by the arm and led her along the narrow, twisting street. His steps were quick. She had to trot to keep up. Faces blurred as they rushed past. Women crouched over fires. Old men smoking, spitting, hugging shafts of shade. Toddlers, half-naked and grimy, raking through the filth. A dog appeared from the mouth of an alley between houses, stared, then turned and picked its way past them along the edge of the open drain.
Baba’s breath was short and hard and she too began to pant. Her hair pricked with sweat. His hand, where he grasped her, was hot and slippery on her skin. Finally he pulled her up a steep bank, strewn with sodden scraps of paper and torn sacking and they emerged onto a ridge. She looked back over her shoulder as he tugged her along. The bustee lay beneath them, a patchwork of wood and tin that flashed in the sunlight, punctuated by slowly rising smoke. It looked peculiar to her. The noises were softened by distance and the squalor veiled by the lazy peacefulness of late afternoon.
‘Come, Asha. Quickly.’ Her baba pulled and she turned to face forward. They crossed the road and entered a neighbourhood of individual houses set in gardens and circled by high walls. After some time, Baba stopped at a tall gate and rapped on it with his knuckles. His forehead grew lines as he waited. The gate creaked open a fraction. A young man in a dark uniform peered out at them, then jutted his chin, widened the gap and let them slip inside.
The house had its back to them. Its windows were shuttered and dark. Two young men in lunghis lounged on the lawn. One, languid and propped up on his elbow, barely raised his eyes to acknowledge her. He tore up strands of grass and dropped them through his fingers.
The other, sitting with straight back and crossed legs, twisted round. His features were even, a strong nose offset by a wide mouth and creamy brown cheeks. He looked her right in the face and his gaze was frank and alert. She stared back. He smiled and she felt herself dissolve into a flush and drew her eyes at once down to the grass.
Her baba led her round the flower beds, past the bright splash of flowers, towards a narrow doorway disguised by sacking. He rapped on the door frame. An unseen hand lifted back the sacking curtain and Baba pushed her inside, his hands on her shoulders, guiding her down a short corridor and into a dimly lit room beyond.
It smelt of men, boiled chai and cigarettes. She blinked, looked round. At first, there were only shadows. Slowly they began to part and to fill. A man, older than Baba, sat cross-legged on a charpoy in the centre of the room. He smoked and the end of the cigarette winked red as he drew on it and the rising smoke softened his features and blurred them. Other men stood to the side but she daren’t turn her head to look.
The man on the charpoy raised his hand and beckoned at Baba and Asha found herself pushed forwards towards him. He had sharp eyes and he stared right into her face and said nothing for some time. She wondered if Baba had scrubbed her well enough. Baba’s breath sounded behind her, still heavy from the rushing.
‘How old is she?’ The man’s voice was calm and clear.
Baba shrugged. Who knew?
‘We’ll say seven years old, nah? Maybe she’s older, maybe not.’
He held out a hand. She looked at it but didn’t know what to do.
‘Come closer, girl.’ He had gentleness in his voice. ‘Do you know what country you belong to?’
She twisted round to look at her baba. He looked tired and shrunken beside this grander man. His face didn’t give her any answer.
‘This one, ji.’
‘But what is its name?’
She faltered, looked at her feet.
‘You live in a great country. Hindustan. Remember that. Be proud.’ He tutted, shook his head. ‘Do you do puja? Has your baba taught you well?’
She nodded.
‘Tell me which gods are there when you go for puja.’
She th
ought of the temple and the statues with their snaking arms and plaster headdresses and painted faces where she and Baba prayed on holy days.
‘Goddess Lakshmi and Lord Hanuman and Lord Ram.’
‘Good. Never forget them. Whatever else they teach you. Do you see? You are Hindu-wallee. From birth until death. Ye sach hai? Is it truth?’
She nodded.
‘Now go and play. Your baba and I will talk awhile.’
She didn’t want to go outside on her own. She hung around her baba’s side but he frowned and sent her out. The young men still lounged there and she took herself as far from them as she could. She found a piece of broken stone in the shade and crouched and watched a trail of ants run back and forth across the ground, falling and struggling and rising to run again even as she shifted the dirt into mountain ranges with her finger.
‘You don’t know me, do you?’
The languid youth called to her. She kept her head low.
‘Your name’s Asha. See? I remember.’
The young men said something to each other in low voices, then got to their feet. Her body tensed as they came over.
‘My baba was cook at the Britishers’ house.’ He laughed. ‘I gave you cocoa once on a wooden spoon and you were sick.’
The ants ran back and forth but she barely saw them now. If the boys pestered her, she would run back inside, whatever her baba said.
‘It’s true, little sister.’ The second voice, softer than the first. The youth who had smiled. The boys settled on a low stone wall beside her, their feet big in dusty chappals. ‘Your baba worked there too when you were a baby.’
She shook her head. The bustee was all she knew.
‘He was the sweeper-wallah. Don’t you remember anything?’ the first boy said. ‘The big trees with mango and jamun? My mama minded you sometimes. You called her Didi. Didi and Baba. The only words you knew.’
She raised her eyes, unsure. ‘Who are you, anyway?’
The gentle boy said: ‘He’s Rahul. I’m Sanjay. This is my uncle’s house. Maybe it will be yours too. My uncle heard what happened to your baba. He’s going to give him work.’
She stared. ‘Heard what?’
The boys exchanged glances.
Rahul said: ‘Don’t you know?’ He looked across at the house to make sure no one was near. ‘The Britishers disgraced him. Said he’d stolen money.’
‘My baba never—’
He lifted his hand to quieten her. ‘I know. They found it. Every rupee. Weeks later, when you and your baba had gone already.’
Asha frowned. ‘So why didn’t he get his job back?’
Rahul shrugged. ‘No one knew where you’d gone. Back to the village, my baba said. You were a baby only.’
Sanjay said: ‘They’re like that, the Britishers. My uncle hears all manner of stories.’
Asha shook her head. Her baba never told how they came from the village to the bustee. She thought it was when her mama died.
Rahul pushed off the wall, slapped down in his chappals and pulled at Sanjay’s arm. ‘Come on.’
Sanjay carried on speaking over his shoulder as they moved off.
‘Your baba’s not built for labouring. My uncle’s a good man. You’ll see.’
That night, back in the bustee, everyone argued and it was all about the visit to Sanjay’s uncle. She lay quiet in the corner and listened.
‘Why you, anyway?’ That was Uncle. ‘And why now? After many years, nah?’
Her baba, hesitant. ‘He heard about me, that I was here in the bustee. Some gossip.’
‘Why didn’t he hear before?’
‘Bhai, how can I be knowing? But it’s good work. Sweeper-wallah, like before. Fetching and carrying. And a place to sleep also.’
‘What about us?’ Auntie. ‘Isn’t there another job?’
‘And what’s all this about the girl?’
Shuffling as Baba shifted his weight. He spoke in a voice too low for her to hear.
Another auntie said: ‘What’s the use of learning for a girl like her?’
‘She should be working.’ Uncle. ‘There’s a man who takes girls for sewing. Maybe it’s time.’
‘She’s just getting useful. All these years eating, eating, and finally she might be of use.’
Uncle again. ‘She could weave carpet or maybe silk with those little fingers. I’ve got it in mind for my girls. Why not her?’
‘She should marry.’
‘At her age?’ Baba spoke softly.
‘Someone might take her.’
Baba tutted. ‘She’s too young.’
‘Don’t give the girl ideas, bhai.’ Uncle again. ‘What good will it do?’
Baba muttered under his breath.
‘What will it cost at this school?’ Auntie’s low voice.
‘Mind your business.’ Uncle. ‘Who asked you?’
‘It’s free. He says he knows someone there and he’ll speak for her.’ Baba sounded pleading. ‘They get free meals, every day. Hot meals.’
‘They’ll make her Christian. That’s their price. Is that what you want?’
‘Afterwards, when she’s ripe for marriage, will any decent Hindu family take her?’
Baba sighed. ‘If she could learn to read, though. And to write. And to speak English also. If she has brains and works hard, all that is possible, he says. He’s an educated man himself and a Brahmin. What a blessing.’
‘Blessing or curse?’
‘What about our daughters, Husband?’ Auntie, timid. ‘Maybe they too could—’
‘You stupid woman. And who’s going to help you to cook and clean?’ Uncle turned his attention back to Baba. ‘And you, if you can afford to send your daughter to school, you can afford to pay the rent you owe me, isn’t it? How many years have you been here, soaking up food like a sponge?’
Baba, very quiet. ‘May the gods bless you, bhai. I’ll send whatsoever I can. I won’t forget.’
Asha lay very still. The adults got up, shuffled to their mats to sleep. Her baba lay solidly against her, wrapped his arm round her shoulder. She tried to twist round, to see his face.
He murmured: ‘Go to sleep, Asha. It’s late.’
As they settled, Uncle’s voice crossed the room: ‘You know who he is, bhai? That man? You know what trouble he makes?’
Baba’s arm around her stiffened but he didn’t answer and soon the darkness became thick with snoring. Only Asha lay awake, listening to her baba’s steady breathing against her neck. She thought of those people who had branded him a thief, her own baba, who never hurt anyone in his life. She curled her fists into balls with the wickedness of it. They had ruined his good name and cast them out from a world of mango trees to this stinking, overcrowded place and he had never told her, never complained. She reached her arm behind her and patted his broad side, softly so as not to wake him, comforting him as if, for a moment, he were the child and she the parent.
Chapter Six
Asha and her baba went to live in a shack at the back of Sanjay’s uncle’s house. When she woke, birds cawed and screeched in the trees along the back of the lawn and the mali’s hose hissed water across the flower beds. The earth smelt moist and rich.
She started school, trailing each day to a brick building at the back of a church. Crows taught her, women in black robes, which covered their heads and fastened with pins at their temples. Their eyes were sharp and solemn. Asha sat on the floor with the other children and learnt letters and numbers and stories from the Bible. In the mornings, before the lessons began, they put the flats of their hands together and closed their eyes. A waxy image of Jesus hung at the front of the classroom. His head fell forwards as if he slept but his hands and feet flamed red with blood.
Sometimes, if she made mistakes, the Crows beat her across the backs of her legs with a cane. First the skin stung, then it tore and bled, then it went numb. At lunchtime, she lined up to take a flat leaf on her palm and a woman ladled first hot daal, then mixed subzi onto its surface. S
he took two pale rotis from the pile, tore them into strips and pinched up the food.
Each evening, Baba rolled out their mat on the mud floor of the shack at the back of Sahib’s house and she curled against him, her face pressed into the sour sweetness of his chest, his arm tucked over her shoulders.
‘Tell me, Asha, what did you learn today?’
She saved up titbits of her day to feed to him: the story of a new English word she had learnt or a sum or a spelling. After too short a time, his breathing deepened and the weight of his arm became heavier as he left her for sleep. She guarded him for as long as she could. Male voices murmured low from the house. Footsteps grated the gravel paths at all hours of darkness. The stealthy footsteps of men who didn’t want their coming to be known. Distantly, the wail of a wildcat and the twang of a country-made instrument playing half-remembered music.
Three years passed.
Then a day came that started as normal but went on to change everything.
Asha and her classmates sat cross-legged on the classroom floor, chalking sums, when a Crow rushed through the door and took their teacher to one side. They bent themselves together against the front wall and whispered. Finally the teacher turned to the class and clapped her hands. Her mouth showed fake jollity.
‘Jaldee, children. School is closed for holiday.’ She shooed them, flapping her broad hands. ‘Go home.’
Asha stumbled to her feet. They hadn’t yet had lunch. She was hungry.
The teacher held open the door. Her eyes were anxious. ‘Run home. Don’t dawdle.’
Asha started for home. It was too quiet. Thresholds which usually gave into shaded rooms were stopped up with wooden doors. Shopkeepers had climbed down from their stools and hurriedly packed goods into crates, latching shutters over front-window counters. A woman hurried past her, keeping to the edge of the path. Her dupatta was pulled low over her head, her eyes downcast. The boulders by the well, usually peppered with gossiping women, were deserted. Asha broke into a run.
Daughters of India Page 5
