‘It wasn’t like that—’
‘And then you got pregnant and my mother took your baby.’
Bharati walked away again in disgust, and this time she circled the tomb in a wide arc, stepping across the canals, passing a crow drinking from a tap, and a man peeing in a bush, going up to the wall at the end of the gardens that backed onto a slum connected to the railway station. She thought of climbing over the wall as she had done as a teenager and jumping down into the pile of grass that the gardeners left there and escaping from this woman and the things she was saying. She could go back to Kavita’s place this evening and get stoned with her and stay stoned until she left for London on Saturday morning. But there was no point in running away. There was no point in doing anything other than what she did: which was to walk slowly back round to the front of the tomb again, walk up to where Leela was still sitting on the grass, and say, ‘It’s been hard growing up without a mother. And now the knowledge that I had one, somewhere else, and that she didn’t want even to meet me . . .’
Leela looked up when she heard Bharati. ‘I did want to see you, of course I did. But after you were born I had to make a choice. The most important thing was to protect you in the way that I was protected.’ She shook her head: ‘Perhaps nowadays it would be easier to live unconventionally, but when you were born it wasn’t like that. You know what Meera’s parents did for me – imagine if they hadn’t. Imagine how difficult your life would have been if Meera hadn’t taken you with her.’ She was pleading now. ‘What kind of life would you have had with me? We would have struggled. You wouldn’t have gone to a good school, you wouldn’t be at an English university. You wouldn’t have had your brother, or your father, or his mother. You would have just had me.’
‘Don’t be so fucking patronising,’ Bharati said. ‘Your father would have looked after you.’
‘He was old, he died soon after—’
‘You could have lived near us, been like a surrogate mother, an extra auntie.’
‘I couldn’t have.’
‘It wasn’t very brave of you, was it? To rely on these men to fend for your children?’
‘How do you know what’s brave or not?’
‘Why shouldn’t I know, for fuck sake?’
Bharati crouched down on the grass. She felt as if the inside of her – the tender, feeling part – had been scoured. There was an ache that hadn’t existed before. She shook her head. Did she believe it? Leela Sharma was telling lies.
‘What hospital did Pablo go to at Santiniketan?’
‘The one where you were born. The Santhal Mission Hospital.’
That was the hospital Pablo had mentioned too. Pablo would return tonight and affirm everything Leela had said.
She put her head in her hands, overwhelmed by the unfairness. ‘It’s horrible of you not to have come to find me before,’ she burst out, her voice hurt like a child’s. ‘You lied to Baba about his own children. How can you have done such a thing?’ She began weeping, tears and gasps pulling apart the words she spoke. ‘You lied to everyone. You let me think my mother was dead. You let me mourn for a dead mother – Oh my God!’ She put her head back and screamed at the sky. ‘You let Ash and me think that we were twins! You let us think that. Don’t you care about anything? Haven’t you got any feelings at all?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Leela said. ‘It was a huge, terrible mistake. Meera and I thought it was the best thing for you. It would have been a scandal for your father if it ever got out: two girls pregnant at the same time, two sisters, at that—’
‘So it was like in the poem?’
‘It was like in the poem, yes. Like in the epic.’
‘But why didn’t you come back and find me? She died when we were two years old. We were babies still.’
‘Of course I longed to.’ Leela put out a hand and touched her shoulder. ‘Meera’s death was very difficult for me. It made me see only bad in the world for a long time, and only sadness. I didn’t think you would want a mother like that. And then my father died . . . all I had left was my husband Hari and I thought—’
‘BUT YOU HAD ME!’ Bharati shouted, pushing her hand off, and this time an old man who was passing with his stick and his old-man’s thoughts looked round in surprise, and to her annoyance she recognised him as the retired judge who lived in the house that backed onto theirs and devoted his dotage to growing marigolds which he transplanted in springtime to the communal park.
‘Yes, I had you,’ Leela said, shrinking back, ‘but I didn’t want to inflict myself on you.’
‘But you just have.’
Leela began to cry again, and Bharati listened to her sob, and did nothing to help her or comfort her. Gradually the crying stopped. They sat side by side, not looking at each other, in silence as the sun began to set, and one by one the picnicking families and romancing couples and exercising geriatrics started to leave the gardens.
‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ Leela asked, breaking the silence. ‘It’s such a bad habit, but . . .’.
Bharati shook her head. ‘I’ll have one too.’
Leela handed her a cigarette and the matches, and as soon as Bharati lit up she felt a wave of calm.
As she was finishing her cigarette, one of the men from the ticket booth came over to ask them to move towards the exit. Bharati got to her feet. She felt not just calm now but superior – numb, perhaps. ‘I’ve got to go,’ she said. ‘I’m having dinner with my father. Ash has gone to celebrate Diwali with his marvellous new in-laws.’
‘Will you tell Vyasa?’ Leela asked.
‘I’ll have to, won’t I?’
‘This evening?’
‘Probably.’
‘When shall we speak again?’
‘I’m going to London on Saturday.’
‘Oh, Bharati.’ Leela got to her feet too. ‘Please don’t leave like this. Can we meet again? I would love more than anything in the world to meet you again.’
Bharati held up her hands. ‘Father’s lecture at the old fort tomorrow.’
‘Shall I see you there?’
Bharati shrugged. ‘Goodbye, Leela,’ she said, before the woman tried to hug her or extract any further promises. She began to walk away, but Leela called after her. ‘It’s your birthday tomorrow.’
‘I know it is,’ Bharati said, turning. ‘At least, I’ve always believed I was born on that day. Maybe now you’re going to tell me something different. That you gave birth to me in March, in a temple ashram, that my name was originally—’ She broke off, disgusted with the way her words were coming out.
‘You were born on November fifteenth, like your brother.’
‘Right. Fine. Great. So. See you tomorrow then,’ Bharati said, and before Leela could say anything else, she walked away towards the archway.
Only when she reached the steps did she feel the unfamiliar wrench of loneliness and fear, and turning again, she looked back at the woman who claimed to be her mother. Leela was still standing alone on the grass, gazing after Bharati – with that hair, and those long eyes, and those lips set in that way that seemed so much part of her, and that wrinkle of worry on her forehead. The strange unwanted ache of recognition made Bharati flinch as if in pain, and she hurried away to meet her father, thinking, That woman is my mother.
chapter 14
Ash Chaturvedi spent Diwali in his lab on Mall Road, at the edge of the university campus. This was, indisputably, the finest scientific institution in Delhi – one of the finest in India – a huge, imposing grey concrete structure, ultra-modern, the hallways haphazardly lined with red marble: a pristine bubble of progress set apart from the rest of the country. Wherever life took him in the future, Ash would always value the time he had spent here in this sequestered intellectual community. But he sighed as he walked down the corridor from the lab to his office. He had been on his feet from early that morning: collecting human gene samples from a doctor’s surgery in Bhogal, taking them in a taxi all the way to CBT, processing them there alone
in his lab – isolating the DNA, amplifying it, and then running it through the automated sequencer – and now that the data had been generated, transferring it onto the main server, where it would be slotted neatly in with the others in his gene library. And all this he had done at his sister-in-law’s express request.
The telephone call he had received early in the morning was highly unexpected. He knew of Urvashi’s existence, of course, and had long urged Sunita to introduce her sister to his family: after all, they were neighbours. But he was taken aback to find it was her when his grandmother called him to the phone before breakfast. ‘It’s Uzma Ahmed,’ she said as he came downstairs. ‘Please hurry. She has been waiting all this time just for you to finish flossing.’ He had been in the bathroom when the phone rang and Sunita was still there, taking a bath. He took the phone from his grandmother, trying to remember if he had heard of someone called Uzma Ahmed. Maybe she was ringing from the travel agency with news of their honeymoon hotel in Goa? ‘Hello?’ he said.
There then ensued a very unexpected conversation. Uzma Ahmed was actually Urvashi Sharma, and she wished that Ash should analyse the DNA of the man who had raped her maid on the night of his wedding. ‘I believe she is your maid, too?’ Urvashi said as she finished her speech. She spoke politely but firmly. Her voice had cadences of her Hindi medium education and upbringing, as Sunita’s did, but overlaid with something different and more recent and more urgent.
‘You will have to collect the samples from the doctor,’ Urvashi said. ‘He won’t give them to me.’
‘No, of course not,’ Ash said, and thought about it. ‘I’ll need permission from my head of lab. It might be difficult on Diwali. Isn’t there a normal police procedure you can follow?’
‘No,’ Urvashi said firmly. ‘The police are not motivated by the right considerations. You know they beat up Humayun and that now he’s disappeared?’
‘I didn’t know that,’ he said.
‘Well,’ she said, trying to sound understanding, ‘you’ve had your wedding and all. You’ve been busy.’
‘I’ll speak to my head of lab,’ Ash said. ‘It shouldn’t be too difficult. Each new sample is useful for my forensics identification protocol.’ The constricted feeling he had woken up with – a whole day alone with Sunita on Diwali – disappeared. This gave him the perfect excuse to get out of the house. She would be fine on her own – she was using the time between now and Friday, when they left for their honeymoon, to train the cook up in all her favourite recipes, and to find a place in the house for each and every one of her brand-new possessions.
‘Do you have the number of the doctor?’ he asked Urvashi. ‘I’ll go round there right away.’
In his office, Ash brought up the details of the DNA analysis. For the purpose of his forensics chapter he looked at nine markers on the autosome, and every time he processed a new sample it gave him a little thrill. The doctor had provided him with an uncontaminated sample of the maid’s DNA – a cheek swab – and with it a vaginal swab, which would presumably contain her DNA and that of the rapist. There were just three sets of coloured peaks on his chromatogram, including the control, and it would barely take thirty minutes or so for the software to remove the maid’s verified genetic fingerprint from the tangle of DNA produced by the vaginal swab, and isolate the culprit’s. This he would print out, and take straight over to Urvashi Ahmed’s house, as proof that he had done what she had asked for. He had to hurry, because he was due home to Nizamuddin soon in order to pick up Sunita and drive her south to her parents’ house for Diwali dinner.
Ash left the software running, and went downstairs to see if he could find a tea stall open on Diwali. Half an hour later, when he returned, he sat at his computer, brought up the Excel spreadsheet, and was about to press print, when he saw a message on his screen that made him push his glasses back onto his nose and peer in confusion at the computer.
The software had automatically searched for duplication between the new information he had added and data already on the system – and it had found a match. Ash blinked and stared. He rubbed his eyes and looked again. He was confused. His computer was telling him something that couldn’t possibly be true.
In his mind he went slowly and mechanically through every viable explanation for the result the computer had thrown up – that the doctor’s samples were contaminated; that the software was malfunctioning; that his eyes weren’t working properly. Then he shut down the program, restarted the computer, ran the software a second time and waited. Ten minutes later the match appeared as before, and at last Ash was forced to confront the possibility that . . . But he couldn’t.
There was a telephone by the door and he walked to it slowly, steadying himself as he went. He dialled his sister-in-law’s number.
She answered immediately and recognised his voice. ‘You’ve done the test?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you have anything?’ She sounded excited.
Ash looked back across the room towards the computer. ‘I think we should speak about it,’ he said. ‘I’ll come round to your house. Don’t mention this to anyone.’
Urvashi Ahmed was not alone when Ash arrived at the house in Nizamuddin. A tall man in a white shirt and jeans, whom she introduced to him as her husband, came to the door with her to greet him.
‘So we are family,’ the man, whose name was Feroze, said with a cautious smile, and put out a hand to Ash. ‘Welcome.’
Ash crossed the threshold and stood in the hallway of his sister-in-law’s house. He looked shyly at Urvashi. She seemed very different from her sister. She was wearing dangling seed-pearl earrings and a loose green printed salwar kameez. He looked at her huge swathes of hair, her healthy glow and happy plumpness. He felt a great relief to be meeting her at last.
‘Can I get you a drink?’ Feroze said, showing Ash to the seats under the window. Ash nodded and asked for a beer. As Feroze went out into the kitchen, his wife’s sister smiled at him. So this was the woman her father had rejected.
‘Does Sunita know you are here?’ she said suddenly, as if she could see what he was thinking, and Ash shook his head.
‘I will tell her, though, as soon as I get back. I am sorry—’ he began, and stopped.
She looked at him questioningly.
‘That you weren’t able to come to the wedding reception,’ he finished – and wished that he had stood up to Sunita’s father on this issue too.
She shook her head and said nothing, and as soon as Feroze returned with the beer she got quickly to her feet and walked out of the room. She was clearly upset. Ash sighed, and looked around him. The house was very large for such a young couple; her husband’s business must be doing well. Or maybe there were other family members living here too. He took the beer from Feroze and asked him, ‘Do you live here alone?’
‘For the moment,’ Feroze said, and a smile appeared on his face. ‘But as of next year, in May . . .’ He paused, waiting for Ash to finish his sentence for him.
‘Is she expecting?’
‘Yes!’ Feroze said. ‘Sunita hasn’t told you? She will become a mother in under six months.’
‘I didn’t know.’ Ash shook his head. Sunita had never mentioned it.
When Urvashi returned, carrying some snacks on a tray, she had recovered her composure, and Ash was able to congratulate her on her forthcoming joy without the tears springing into her eyes again. He felt glad to be sitting with his wife’s sister and her husband, and again he wished that he had done something more about the family divisions before he married Sunita . . . But he couldn’t bring himself to examine the damage he himself was inflicting on Sunita through his secret relationship with her brother, let alone the traumatic revelation that he held in his pocket in the form of his DNA analysis.
He took a sip of beer and said nothing for a moment, unable to think how to describe his confusion about what he had discovered.
‘You are a geneticist?’
Ash looked up. It was Feroze who
had spoken.
‘Yes,’ Ash said, ‘that is why I am here. It’s to do with the rape of the maid.’ He put down the beer bottle on the table.
He realised that an awkward silence had developed in the room. They were waiting for him to speak. He sighed, and said to Urvashi, ‘Please. I have something very difficult to tell you. Should I say it here, or is there somewhere we can go in private?’
She cast an anxious glance at her husband, but he merely nodded. ‘Why don’t you have your conversation in my study?’
Urvashi nodded, and Ash followed her into the room next door. There were books on the shelves, and a computer on the desk, and next to it a large colour wedding photograph of Urvashi, dressed in red silk with a heavy gold tikka in her hair, and standing behind her, one hand resting on her shoulder, Feroze, a serious expression on his face, dressed in a dark sherwani.
Ash and Urvashi sat opposite each other across the desk. ‘Well,’ she said at last, ‘what have you discovered?’
Ash unfolded the print-outs and offered them to her. She took them from him and studied them for a moment in silence.
‘The first thing to say,’ he began by way of disclaimer, ‘is that the PCR I did to get the STRs is only a rough analysis. It proves something is true but it has no legal application. CBT is not a forensic institute and to check that you will have to—’
‘I don’t understand,’ she interrupted. ‘What do they show? What is PCR? STR?’
Ash sighed. ‘Polymerase Chain Reaction. Short Tandem Repeats. It’s a way of—’ But he broke off when he saw the blank look on her face. He took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. Then he put them back on again, smiled understandingly at his sister-in-law and spoke as clearly and simply as he could.
‘The sample the doctor gave me contained the DNA not oftwo people as I expected – the victim and the rapist – but of three people. That is what is shown up on the gel matrix.’ He pointed to the relevant portion. ‘By chance, one of those people had a match with another in my . . . gene database. I had already tested certain people in your family . . . I had already tested your father.’
Leela's Book Page 35