Sacred Waters

by Meira Chand

  ‘Muni gave you to me. Please understand, she told Ramaiah to give you to me, and he fulfilled her wish.’

  ‘That man, is he still alive?’ Amita asked. She could not call him, father. Sita shook her head.

  ‘He died some years ago. Gopal, on the estate, wrote to me.’

  ‘He never came to see me? Never sent you money?’

  ‘I adopted you. Everything was legal; the Ramakrishna Mission helped me. You are my daughter.’

  ‘Do I look like him, or do I look like her?’ She had to ask the question.

  ‘Like him,’ Sita was forced to admit.

  ‘I look like the man who tried to drown me in a bucket of water!’ For once Amita was lost for appropriate words.

  Sita was silent, gazing at her daughter and then down at her hands, as if they were a place of refuge. There was nowhere in the room to hide.

  ‘What is this, then?’ Amita asked savagely, staring at the pendant in her open palm.

  ‘It was Muni’s good luck charm. She wore it always. Her mother died when she was small, of malaria; it belonged to your grandmother. And Muni crocheted that jacket for you. The last time I saw her she was knitting it for you.’

  ‘This is crazy,’ Amita shouted so loudly Sita drew back.

  ‘Why did you not tell me all this before? Why are you telling me now, on this day of all days?’

  Amita wanted to scream and laugh at the same time. She was entering a madness she would never be free of, a madness she feared she might not even survive. The chill of it filled her, and she found she was trembling. She could hear the chatter of her teeth.

  ‘It’s a lie. It’s all one of your lies,’ she shouted.

  ‘If you were my biological daughter, you would be older than you are. The war was already finished and Shiva some years dead when I adopted you,’ Sita replied, speaking carefully, holding on to the facts.

  Amita paused for a moment to calculate, and she saw this was true. Why had she never seen this blatant discrepancy in her age before? Had she not wanted to see it, or had she just accepted as children accept without question, the circumstances of her life?

  ‘Go away. Just go away.’

  ‘I wanted you; I love you. I wanted a daughter,’ Sita pleaded.

  ‘Go away. Go away.’

  Amita slept and could not seem to wake up, leaving her bed only for the bathroom. At times, as she tossed and turned, she was conscious of Sita opening the door and peering in at her. Sometimes, she entered with a tray of food, a sandwich or a cup of Milo. If Amita woke up hungry she ate the food her mother left there, and when next she woke she found the snacks had been replenished. She lost count of time, waking with the expectation of day, only to find it was night. In the distance she heard the hoarse chime of her mother’s old clock, striking again and again, marking unheeded hours. Each time she woke she thought the nightmare was over, but surfacing into consciousness, she found that the bleak reality remained.

  The balance of her life was changed. It had been tossed up into the air, as if a great weight had suddenly been placed upon one side of the scale of her existence. She drank the Milo and ate the sandwich, but nothing stopped the pain of being forced to recognise that her life was an aberration. She tried not to think about it, and yet she could not stop thinking about it. It was a grotesque injury she was forced to examine, like a wounded soldier must face the sight of his own guts spilling from his ripped belly. That was how she felt. She slept again, and did not know if hours or days passed her by. Strange dreams wrapped about her, moving through her, leaving within her an unpalatable residue.

  Eventually she awoke, and although the same sickening reality was still before her there was a sense that the weight had lessened, like an over rich meal she had partially digested. Beside her on a tray was the usual vacuum tumbler of Milo and a sandwich wrapped in cling film. She sat up in bed and drank the hot Milo, and for the first time ate hungrily, tasting the sandwich filling of egg mayonnaise with an edge of satisfaction. Beyond the curtained window it was dark, and in the depths of the flat the clock struck eight. A faint smell of food and incense drifted into the room. Her mother would have heated the food she had cooked with Joyce’s help in the morning, and earlier in the evening she would have lit a stick of incense before the devi’s picture. Even as these images came before her Amita corrected herself — the woman whom she called her mother but who was in fact not her mother — the confusion was making her ill. Sleep once again drew her under, and she gave herself to it gratefully. All Amita wanted was oblivion.

  Once again strange dreams floated through her. Amita stood by the river in her mother’s village; behind her was the banyan tree Sita had climbed as a child. Although she had never been to this river, Amita felt she knew it well. Squinting across the broad channel of glinting water, she saw the white shapes of temples on the opposite bank, the thick smell of the river filled her nose. The water was glassy clear and she could see right down to the river bed, to the dark waving tangle of weeds, where fish darted and wheeled in flashes of silver. The river appeared to be alive with the sinuous movement of thousands of fish. Yet, when she looked again she saw it was not fish the river held, but the lithe and mercurial souls of a missing multitude of girl children, jostling and swimming together as one. The sacred waters shimmered and glowed and she saw then that it was no ordinary river, but the river of consciousness from which all life drank.

  She woke with a start and found she was sweating, her heart pounding in her chest. The images of the dream were fading fast and she sought to hold onto them as they weakened and broke apart. Soon they were gone, but one truth stayed with her. She had been saved from a bucket of water, and fished from a river of souls. And with the dream came another conviction. Perhaps in claiming her, Sita had reclaimed the lost soul of her own sister. These strange thoughts filled her with confusion; tears welled up in her eyes, tears for herself and tears for Sita, and for the unknown woman who had been her birth mother. For an instant, the image of the river’s mercurial water filled her mind again, lithe with jostling souls.

  Then her mind was filled by another image. She imagined the bucket of water, and herself, newly born, pushed down head first, her lungs heaving and spluttering as she struggled to live. She lay back on the pillows, her heart still thumping with the vividness of the scenes passing through her mind.

  When next she woke, she sat up in bed, put on the light and reached for the soft package upon the bedside table. Lifting the tiny jacket from the paper, she held it up before her. The woman who had knitted it had fashioned it for her and nobody else, and had formed each stitch in an anticipation of love. Then, picking up the pendant on its thin chain, Amita stared at it as it lay in the palm of her hand. The light from the table-lamp warmed the dull gold, and the tiny grain of ruby glowed, the eye in a needle whose thread guided her back through the generations of women whose blood she shared. The gold in her hand had absorbed the very essence of the woman who had given birth to her, whose flesh she had fed off and grown upon, who herself might have escaped the fate of the river or a bucket of water by a narrowness of margins Amita would never know.

  Sita’s slow shuffling steps could be heard coming down the corridor. They paused before Amita’s door as Sita pushed it open a crack to check on her daughter.

  ‘Come in, Ma.’ There was no place left in her now for anger.

  ‘Did you drink the Milo?’ Sita asked.

  She stared hesitantly at her daughter, who sat gazing down at the chain in her hand and the knitted jacket spread out on her lap. Picking up the tray, Sita took a step towards the door, but then turned back again to Amita.

  ‘She loved you. She wanted you. She died to give you life.’

  However Amita would respond, Sita knew she must risk her daughter’s wrath and say the things that had been repeating in her head through the hours Amita had been asleep.

  ‘I know,’ Amita whispered, tears filling her eyes.

  Surprised that Amita did not attack
her with the usual shower of jagged words, Sita was emboldened to continue.

  ‘When she knew she was dying she told him to give you to me, to protect you. She knew what he would do to you if she did not tell him that. Those were her last words, he told me. She rescued you. And you rescued me.’

  ‘I know,’ Amita repeated, almost under her breath.

  ‘Muni and I, we have both loved you; we have shared you. She grew you and I have looked after you. You have us both, you have two mothers.’ Sita’s voice gained strength as she saw Amita was listening to her.

  ‘More Milo?’ she asked as she turned towards the door, and Amita nodded.

  Lying back again on the pillows, the pendant warm in the palm of her hand, Amita stared up at the stain of the incubus on the ceiling above her. Through the open door the scent of incense drifted to her again. On a shelf in her mother’s room, snug in her metal frame, the devi sat upon her tiger, flowers and offerings spread before her. Amita wished she could pray with the ease of her mother, wished she had the gift of humility. Instead, she stared up at the incubus.

  ‘Tell me what to do,’ she entreated.

  As her mother’s footsteps sounded again in the corridor, the image of the river flickered before Amita, fleeting fragments of her dream returning like formless spectres, only to vanish before she could grasp them. Her heart stirred in a way she now recognised, when that other woman within her decided to emerge and take hold of her life. How many versions of herself had she travelled through to disembark at this unexpected place? How did one become the person one became, she wondered? Had she now arrived at herself, or were there still further versions of this person to journey through before she reached a destination? Would there ever be a destination?

  Sita entered the room with a new cup of Milo and an extra cup for herself, and sat down apprehensively on the chair, uneasy about the damage her revelations had initiated. Before she could speak, Amita turned, her face firm with new resolve.

  ‘Soon, I’m going to a conference in Delhi and afterwards I plan to find your village, Sagarnagar, and see the river where you played.’

  ‘Everything will have changed,’ Sita warned, sipping the hot drink cautiously.

  When she gave her plenary in Delhi on the ‘missing’ girls, Amita decided, she would tell them how she sought to personally balance a terrible practice in her own way.

  ‘I’ve decided, I’m taking you with me. We will go back to that river together,’ she told her mother.

  Already, she smelled the thick scent of the water, and saw the endless spiral of souls in its depths. Just days ago, in desperation, she had planned to go to Delhi and stay on to have her child in India, and to later return to Singapore with news that she had adopted an orphaned girl. And that was what she would do now. Her own child was gone, but just as she had been saved from a bucket of water, she too could fish a being from that river of souls.

  A full life required embracing, not running away, and she was free to choose her own narrative. Like the devi on her tiger, she too could be both woman and warrior, one-in-herself and answerable to none. If people talked in the conservative town she lived in then she would let them talk, for it mattered little to her, and her mother, she knew, would support her. She saw at last that this woman who was not her mother and yet was her mother, who had nurtured and guided her, had voyaged a similar path to her own. The bond of blood may not hold them together, Amita was not made in Sita’s image, but she had grown up within the rhythm of her spirit and found her reflection mirrored within herself.

  ‘We will go back to the river together,’ she repeated, and a surge of joy rushed through her.

  GLOSSARY

  Aie Bhagwan! – Oh God!

  akka – elder sister

  angrezi – English

  attap – palm leaf

  ayurvedic – traditional Indian medicine

  bidi – a type of cigarette

  beti – daughter

  bhaiya – elder brother

  bhai – brother

  bhajan – Hindu religious song

  bhajanashram – ashram for widows

  chai – tea

  chapati – unleavened bread

  dal – lentils

  devi – goddess

  didi – elder sister

  Dilli Chalo! – Onwards to Delhi!

  dhoti – lower garment worn by many male Hindus

  dosai – rice pancake

  gharry – carriage

  ghats – steps on bank of the river

  gopis – cow-herding girls

  harijan – untouchable caste

  Jai Hind! – Hail India!

  jawan – infantry soldier

  kala pani – black water

  kangani – supervisor who organised labour on an estate

  karanguni man – recycle collection man

  kurta – loose Indian shirt

  ladoo – sweetmeat

  lota – metal water pot

  lungi – sarong

  mais – women

  manga – japanese comic

  mangalsutra – wedding necklace worn in some Indian communities

  mehendi – henna

  matka – earthenware pot

  nataraja – figurine of god Shiva

  pallu – end of the sari

  peon – errand boy

  paratha – unleavened bread, cooked in ghee or oil

  pujari – priest

  shaitaan – the devil

  shakti – divine feminine power

  sati – widow victim of ritual sati

  thanaka – cosmetic paste, commonly used in Myanmar

  tawa – griddle

  sindhoor – carmine mark denoting marriage for Hindu women

  tonga – horse carriage

  tongawallah – carriage driver

  varna – caste

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  My deepest thanks to Dr Cynthia vanden Dreisen for her invaluable help and support over the many incarnations this book has been through, before it arrived at its final embodiment.

  This novel owes its genesis to work done at the University of Western Australia, and I thank the university, and particularly the English Department, for their kindness and support during my time in Perth.

  I am grateful to both Richard Cohen in New York, and Gretchen Liu in Singapore, for their reading of the manuscript and their comments.

  Thanks also to Prof. Chitra Sankaran of the National University of Singapore for making me a guest student in the Integrated Virtual Learning Environment (IVLE) of her Gender Studies Class.

  Suchen Christine Lim allowed me to use and quote from an incident in Chapter One of her novel, A Bit of Earth (2001), and I appreciate this.

  The novel mentioned on page 118 is Rich Like Us by Nayantara Sahgal (1985), London: Heinemann.

  Both the late Padmashri Puan Sri Datin Janaky Davar Nahappan, and Bharati Choudhry (nee Asha Sahay), gave generously of their time to share with me their recollections as recruits in the Rani of Jhansi Regiment of the INA.

  My thanks to Swami Satyalokananda and the Ramakrishna Mission, Singapore, for help in my research.

  I appreciate the assistance of the Oral History Department of the National Archives of Singapore for the use of material regarding the Indian National Army.

  My thanks also to the National Heritage Board of Singapore for giving me special access to the Oral History video interview with Capt. Lakshmi Sahgal.

  Quotes in Chapter 5 are taken from Barbara D. Miller’s paper, Female Infanticide and Child Neglect in Rural North India (1987), and from Rajeswari Sunder Rajan’s book, Real or Imagined Women (1993).

  Quotes in Chapter 8 regarding the practice of sati are from Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s A Critique of Post Colonial Reason (1999), and Julie Leslie, ed., Roles and Rituals for Hindu Women (1992).

  I also appreciate the information found in the following papers:

  • Discarded Daughters: The Patriarchal Grip: Dowry Deaths, Sex Ratio Imbalances
& Foeticide in India by Aysan Sev’er, University of Toronto (2006).

  • Female Foeticide and Infanticide in India: An Analysis of Crimes against Girl Children by Sneh Lata Tandon and Renu Sharma, University of Delhi (2006).

  Last but not least, grateful thanks to Tara Dhar Hasnain for all her help, and for pulling me up over so many important details.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Meira Chand is of Indian-Swiss parentage and was born and educated in London. She has lived for many years in Japan, and also in India. In 1997 she moved to Singapore, and is now a citizen of the country. Her multi-cultural heritage is reflected in her novels.

  Also by Meira Chand:

  A Different Sky

  A Far Horizon

  A Choice of Evils

  House of the Sun

  The Painted Cage

  The Bonsai Tree

  Last Quadrant

  The Gossamer Fly