He moved swiftly to get into the sealed room but I moved quicker. ‘He has necrotising fasciitis – if you go in there you’ll get it too! It is a flesh-eating bacteria and the pain is impossible to bear! It will kill you, Raju.’
Raju hit at the glass panes with his cane. ‘What did you do to Nila? How did she die? Tell me where her grave is!’
‘He can’t speak,’ I told Raju. ‘He himself will probably die in the next day or so.’
‘You! You must tell me where Nila’s grave is!’ Raju said, turning to my mother.
‘My sister died in a bus crash. There was no grave,’ mother replied in a little girl voice.
‘Oh God!’ Raju cried, sinking to his knees. ‘So it was true. My poor darling girl.’
‘Can someone explain to me what’s going on?’ Lucky shouted.
‘Your Aunt Nila was my first wife,’ Raju said, looking at me. ‘That man dying in there was the man who doused me in petrol and burnt me in revenge for marrying her.’
‘My family did this to you,’ I said softly.
‘It was all Nila’s fault! If she hadn’t run off to become a saree maker, all of this would never have happened!’ my mother shrieked, close to hysterics. ‘Because of her I met Sunil and because of that . . .’
‘You had me,’ Ryan said softly from behind. A nurse had wheeled him in. ‘Yes, living in Sri Lanka has been very enlightening. There are no secrets here, Amma. Uncle Manoj got very drunk one night and confessed that some up-country tea planter was my father and not Albert Gamage.’ He turned to Raju and Lucky. ‘And the other thing my uncle confessed was that his sister Nila didn’t die. That’s all a lie too. She is alive and living in Negombo.’
I was completely frazzled by the time I got to Katunayake International Airport. The car I hired to take me to the airport broke down four times. Yes. Four times.
First it had stalled not far from the hotel. Bizarrely, it had stopped right in front of the Sri Ponnambalavaneshwarar temple. So while the driver fixed the car, I wandered into the shrine room, offering a short prayer to the gods asking them to stop the pain in my heart.
‘We can’t marry,’ I’d said to Lucky after Raju had acquired my aunt Nila’s address from Ryan. ‘You know it won’t work. Not with this between us.’
‘What do you mean? This has nothing to do with us!’
‘No, it has everything to do with us. Every time your father sees me, he will be reminded of the fact that my mother and uncle hurt him.’
‘Marion, that is just an excuse and you know it! You’ve wanted to find an excuse to go back and hide in Australia and you’ve found it,’ he’d accused.
That night back in the hotel, I’d booked the first flight back to Australia. I wasn’t sure if I would stay in Melbourne when I got back. Perhaps I would move up to Cairns or somewhere up north.
My phone rang for the hundredth time that day and I switched it off without looking. It was probably my mother calling to tell me of my uncle’s death, but she needn’t have bothered. I was glad he’d died, uncharitable though it might have seemed. He’d finally paid for his crimes.
The car broke down three times more, each time in front of a Hindu or Buddhist temple. I supposed it to be a sign. Maybe I should look into religion. Women fresh out of relationship break-ups did that kind of thing.
By the time I finally got to the airport I knew Lucky and his father would be up in Negombo. Just ten kilometres north of the airport. Lucky’s father would at long last be reunited with his first wife, my aunt. And she would love Lucky. Lucky was an easy person to love.
I was feeling so numb that I nearly missed the call for my flight. I was sitting in a stupor until one of the ground staff came up and got me. ‘Are you Dr Gamage?’ she asked. ‘We’ve been calling for you for the last ten minutes. Can you please board?’
I’d walked onto the plane with lead feet. Was my real name even Gamage? What was the name of the tea planter who’d sired me anyway? I made mental note to call Ryan once I got home. I needed to find out about our father.
The flight attendant helped me to my first-class seat as I placed my oversized sunglasses on my face to shade my eyes from the light. I couldn’t cry but I still needed to grieve – to feel the pain even if I couldn’t express it. The plane pushed off and had started to taxi down the runway when out of the corner of my eye I saw an approaching tank. An army tank and, judging by the dented panels, it had seen action too.
‘Is that normal?’ I asked the attendant as the airplane came to a screeching halt.
She did not respond but rather hit the panic button immediately.
‘Get down! Under your seats!’ she called through the cabin. ‘We are about to have a hostage situation.’
The lady next to me snarled. ‘Bloody Tamils. The war is bloody over but they still try to ruin our island.’
I saw the pilot come out of the cockpit and have heated words with the flight attendant before opening the door.
Everyone on the plane was agog to see what was about to happen next. Stairs had been hurriedly wheeled to the plane and now someone was climbing them, carrying a large square object. Incredulous comments flew about. ‘They stopped the plane so that someone could transport a painting?’
It was Lucky.
‘They said you were up front,’ he huffed as he stood the large painting in the aisle beside him and took a deep breath.
‘What are you doing here? I’m going back to Australia.’
‘Wait a second,’ he replied, breathing in deeply. ‘Have you ever wondered why everyone in my family thought you looked familiar?’
‘Coincidence?’
‘No. It was because of this,’ he explained, pulling off the dust cover to reveal the painting. It was a near life-size painting of a woman standing in a river dyeing a saree. Her resemblance to me was uncanny, though there were some clear differences. The woman was not tall, but her eyes and jawline were identical to mine.
‘Did you paint that?’
‘No, my father did,’ Lucky explained.
‘He’s fast.’
‘No, he isn’t. He painted this thirty years ago. It’s a portrait of his first wife, Nila.’
I didn’t understand what he was saying.
‘Anoja was never your mother. Your mother has just arrived on the tarmac,’ Lucky told me with shining eyes. I looked out the window to see a diminutive woman being helped out of the army tank by Raju.
I did not think as I rushed down the stairs and across the burning hot tarmac and into the arms of the woman I’d seen at a Hindu temple in Melbourne many years before.
‘Oh, my precious girl. My precious Marion,’ Nila cried, running to me, with Raju limping slowly behind. And for the first time in thirty years, I cried.
When I’d ‘agreed’ to Lucky’s moonlight proposal on the ramparts on Galle Fort, it’d been madness. Absolute madness. How could I agree to marry a man I barely knew? I knew better than most how awful a bad marriage could be. I had always assumed that Albert and Anoja hadn’t known each other well enough before they were married.
So looking back years later, I realised that I fell deeply in love with Lucky in the weeks after I met my biological parents. I finally got to know him through one of the most difficult times in my life. Everything I knew about myself and my life had been turned upside down in a matter of moments, and it took time to make sense of it all.
Lucky took it in his stride. His kindness, gentleness and intuitive knowledge of what needed to be done showed me the man he truly was.
My mother could not stop clinging to me. ‘I didn’t even get to hold you properly,’ she cried, her dark eyes constantly brimming with tears. ‘I went into labour late one evening and had you only four hours later. I fell asleep with you in my arms and you were gone when I woke.’
My father, Raju, was equally affectionate, kissing me on my forehead and hugging me when my mother could bear to let me go.
‘My beautiful, beautiful girl,’ he’d repeat over and
over again.
And it was all too much. I’d lived all my life without love or affection – and I could not breathe. I could not run away, lest I compounded the hurt felt by my parents, but I could not stay either. Which was when Lucky would step in, carefully disengaging me from my parent’s clutches, claiming his rights as a fiancé and taking me on long walks, down to the river and beyond. And sometimes even into town in Panadura, to the huts along the beach where the vendors sold hoppers and curries.
‘I don’t know how to do this,’ I confessed. ‘I don’t know how to be a daughter to them.’
‘You are their daughter,’ Lucky replied, holding me gently. ‘Just be yourself.’
‘How do you know so much, Lucky? How do you know what to do?’
‘Because I have done this myself,’ he reminded me. ‘I went in search of my biological mother, remember? I found her. And my sister. The first few months of our relationship were difficult. I didn’t need her as my mother. I already had one. But I needed her all the same. We had to find a space that was right for us. Just do what comes naturally.’
What would have come naturally for me would have been to run and hide, but Lucky did not let me do that either.
‘Oh, come now. Surely you can’t be afraid of a tiny woman and a disabled man?’ he’d laugh before gently dragging me to my parents’ little bungalow and leaving me there in awkward silence until I learned how to be around them. Getting to know them. Understanding their story and mine.
‘My mother . . . sorry . . . your sister hardly ever spoke of her family. I never met her parents or your brothers until Uncle Manoj got hurt,’ I told Nila one evening.
‘I am not surprised,’ Nila said. ‘We are not a particularly nice lot. Manoj and Rupani got along best, I suppose.’
‘Why do you call her Rupani? Her name is Anoja.’
‘Rupani was the nickname I gave her as a baby. It means she who is beautiful.’
‘That was one of things that made tracking your mother so difficult,’ my father explained. ‘Everyone knew that Manoj became involved in politics, but no one could tell me what happened to the sister Rupani because they all knew her as Anoja.’
‘They were my mother’s favourites,’ Nila said. ‘Rupani always detested me and Herath has not had anything to do with us since he went to university.’
‘Was Uncle Manoj really that evil? Did he have any good qualities?’
‘If he had any, I don’t know of them. Mrs Vasha, our neighbour, always said that if she knew he’d turn out the way he did, she would have stuffed him in her sewing bag after she’d helped with his delivery and drowned him in the canal.’
‘Why aren’t you angry? Both of you?’ I’d demanded.
In some ways I resented the ease with which the two of them had fallen back together as if they’d never been apart, finishing each other’s sentences, both quietly content to do whatever the other was doing, chatting or laughing at silly jokes as my father painted and my mother designed some saree or worked on a piece of embroidery. That they were two halves of a whole no one could doubt. Sometimes I felt like an intruder in their happy party.
‘Darling, why should we be angry? Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that I would see my precious Nila again in this lifetime. And not only that, I found I had a daughter. A beautiful, intelligent and wonderful daughter,’ my father replied, stroking my face.
‘What about the time you have lost? What about the lives you should have had? Both of you suffered terribly. Aren’t you angry about that?’
‘My precious angel, don’t forget yourself. Do not forget yourself,’ my mother whispered, kissing my cheek. ‘I cannot imagine that you’ll ever forget the pain of your own childhood. But please, do not destroy your present happiness by thinking of what could have been or should have been.’
‘I didn’t know you were a Buddhist philosopher,’ Lucky chimed in cheekily, coming into the room with some snacks and breaking the tension. ‘Why aren’t you wearing a yellow robe?’
‘I was quite mad, you know,’ Nila confessed. ‘I completely lost my mind for many years. Within the blink of an eye I saw my husband burning, I lost you, my darling Marion, and I lost my craft. After I came back from Melbourne, we lived near a temple for a while. Not a common end-of-the street temple but a meditation centre. I visited them often, and by their example, I learned to gain control of my mind. I learned to let go of the memories and live in the present.’
‘Maybe I should go there too,’ Raju said. ‘Perhaps all of us as a family. It will help us heal.’
‘Aren’t you Hindu?’ I’d asked, confused.
‘Honey,’ Lucky said, taking me by the shoulders and spinning me around so I could see the amphitheatre through the window and statue of the goddess Saraswati which still lay on the ground. ‘That is the goddess Saraswati. The patron goddess of all artists and craftsmen. The patron goddess of the Saliyas. She is also the goddess who protects all Buddhist pilgrims. She understands that their quest to understand their minds and spirit is the only way her holy water can douse the fires of ignorance.’
‘When we seek God, we only find ourselves,’ my mother added as evening closed in properly.
‘And in finding ourselves and quieting our minds, we find the divine within ourselves,’ my father finished.
‘We only have the comfort this world can give us, Marion. You have endured enough in this lifetime. Happiness is as much a decision as it is a consequence of external factors. Make the decision to be happy, Marion,’ Lucky said.
And I knew that I could not have found a better man. A better partner. And perhaps in time, I would be convinced that Lucky was the part of my soul that had always been missing.
Everything had been going so well I was convinced that something was about to go wrong. It had to go wrong. Such a streak of good luck could not be sustained.
‘I don’t understand why you could not choose a saree from our own mills for the wedding,’ my mother grumbled good-naturedly as she went about tidying the room. ‘Your father, mother and husband-to-be are all saree makers, and you insist on having a saree sent over from Australia.’
‘You don’t understand, Amma, this saree is perfect. I saw it when I was about seventeen. I fell in love with it there and then. It belonged to an old friend of my parents . . . er . . . an old friend, and it is beautiful. Fatima Khan is flying it over especially!’ I replied. ‘You know, I brought it to the Hindu temple the day I saw you in Melbourne!’
I was sitting in what should have been my childhood room. My mother had stitched my saree blouse and underskirt from some vintage silk in the stores, choosing the fabric using the tiny silk scrap Fatima had sent ahead. Such was the worth of the saree that Fatima was hand-delivering it from the vault in Melbourne.
‘You would not believe it, Mum, but the saree has real sapphires and rubies on it. It is beautiful,’ I cried as I twirled around in my saree blouse and underskirt. The hairdresser clucked her tongue as a pin fell out of the elaborate up-do she’d created. I sat back down on the seat for her to reinsert the pin and for the make-up artist to finish her work. In the mirror before me was a woman I did not recognise. My life was brimming with colour.
‘You are beautiful,’ my mother told me, kissing me on the cheek. She herself was dressed to the nines in a burgundy silk saree with a dramatic gold border.
‘What are they doing?’ my mother exclaimed, looking out the window to see a positive sea of waiters walking around with drinks and refreshments for the hundreds of wedding guests. ‘Are they serving the samosas already?’
‘They’ve brought out the champagne too,’ I said. ‘That’s supposed to be for the toast!’
‘I’ll attend to that,’ my mother said and stepped out. ‘Send me a message as soon as your saree arrives. I want to dress my daughter for her wedding!’
As the hairdresser and make-up artist left too I looked out the window onto the lawn and amphitheatre just beyond. The mill was safe now – Lucky would ne
ver lose it. Though his right to it might be challenged, mine could not. I was Raju Nair’s daughter by birth. It felt right to be celebrating my marriage to Lucky here.
My parents had invited hundreds of people. Friends. Family. Business associates. I’d even met a one-eyed merchant called Mustafa Mohamadeen who was a close family associate just the day before.
‘Mustafa Mohamadeen is helping us set up our online business,’ Lucky had explained. ‘He has to be the finest trader south of New Delhi!’
‘I can find you anything you want, my dear!’ the old man had boomed. ‘Sarees, stereos, iPods, iPads. I get them cheap from China these days. But m’dear,’ he’d said, pulling me aside. ‘What I can’t sell you is happiness. I’ve known Lucky since he was but an achaa baby. He is a good man. Treat him well and he will love you like a queen.’
And it was a riot of colour out there. People were dressed so brightly it looked like a carnival. Women in bright blues, purples, reds and sunny yellows mingled happily with men dressed in crisp sarongs and tunics. Yet in among all that colour the large statue of the goddess Saraswati stood out like a beacon. The ancient statue had been lifted and placed on the dais the night before.
‘The trick is the prayer,’ the dwarf weaving master had said, and he’d muttered something under his breath as fifteen men, including Lucky and her father, had hefted the ancient white stone sculpture onto its side and then up to the dais. Men had tried before but had been unable to make it shift at all.
‘Or perhaps the trick is your amazing strength,’ his exquisite wife had smiled. Sindhu had been a lifelong friend of my father’s. He and his amazingly beautiful dancer wife, Sarojini, were an incongruous pair, but I had to concede that they were a well-matched couple.
‘I don’t believe in such things as soulmates,’ Sarojini had confessed over dinner the night before, ‘and certainly not love at first sight. The first time I met Sindhu I did not appreciate his worth, but the second time I met him, while working as a dancer in Mysore, I realised I’d met my match. See, I’d learned to love myself by that time and I could truly accept his love then.’
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