Secret Daughter

by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

  Before he left, her father gave her the only details he could remember, the name of the adoption agency and the representative who helped them. When Asha called the agency, they directed her to the orphanage. Dadima gave her the address of the orphanage and the name of its director, Arun Deshpande. She wrote it in Asha’s spiral-bound notebook, in English, Hindi, and Marathi, just in case. Dadima offered to come with her, but Asha wanted to do this alone. She settles into her seat on the train, pulls the silver bangle out of her pocket, and holds it for the duration of the ride. When she gets off the train, she makes her way to the front of the rickshaw line, where she shows the driver her notebook with the address of the orphanage. He nods, spits betelnut juice on the pavement, and pedals off on impossibly thin, sinewy legs.

  The orphanage looks different from what Asha expects, a sprawling two-story building with outdoor areas where children play. She pauses at the plaque inscribed in English outside:

  SHANTI HOME FOR CHILDREN

  EST. 1980

  KIND THANKS TO THAKKAR FAMILY

  FOR GENEROSITY IN PROVIDING OUR NEW HOME

  Thakkar? As she’s learned since arriving here, there are thousands of Thakkars in Mumbai. It’s a nice change to not have to spell it for everyone. She rings the bell at the front gate, and an old woman with a puckered mouth shuffles out. “I’m here to speak with Arun Deshpande.” Asha speaks slowly, assuming the old woman doesn’t understand English. Upon hearing the name, she opens the door and points to a small office at the end of the hallway. Asha puts her palms together to thank the old woman and steps tentatively into the building. She was so confident on the way over here, but now her legs feel weak, and her heart is racing. The door to the office is open, but she knocks nevertheless. A man with pepper-and-salt hair and bifocals perched on his nose speaks loudly on the phone in a language that doesn’t sound familiar. He motions for her to come in and sit down. She clears a pile of papers from the one chair in the office. She sees a nameplate on the desk that says ARUN DESHPANDE, and her palms begin to sweat. She takes out her notebook and pencil while she waits.

  He puts down the phone and gives her a harried smile. “Hello, I am Arun Deshpande, director of Shanti. Come in, please,” he says, though she is already seated.

  “Thank you. My name is Asha Thakkar. I am visiting here from the United States. I…was actually adopted from here, out of this orphanage. About twenty years ago.” She puts the end of the pencil in her mouth as she waits for his reaction.

  Deshpande pushes himself back from the desk. “Thakkar? As in Sarla Thakkar? She is your relation?”

  “Sarla…uh, yes, she’s my grandmother. My father’s mother. Why do you ask?”

  “We are very grateful to your grandmother. She made the donation for this building, must be, almost twenty years ago. She wanted to make sure we had enough classrooms upstairs for all the children. Every day, they continue their studies here after school. Music, language, art.”

  “Oh, I…didn’t know that.” Asha chews the end of her pencil.

  “I haven’t seen her in many years. Please give her my very best regards.”

  “Yes, I will.” Asha takes a deep breath. “Mr. Deshpande, the reason I’m here is I’m hoping you can help me. I’m…trying to find my birth parents, the ones who brought me here, to the orphanage.” When he doesn’t respond, she continues, “I also wanted to say I am thankful for all that you did for me here. I have a good life in America, I love my parents”—she pauses, searching for the words to convince him—“and I don’t want to create any trouble. It’s just that I really want…I have always really wanted to find my birth parents.”

  Mr. Deshpande takes off his glasses and begins rubbing them with the tail of his shirt. “My dear, we have hundreds of children coming through here every year. Just last month we had over a dozen new babies left on our doorstep. The fortunate ones are adopted; the others stay here until they finish their schooling, sixteen at most. We can’t keep records on every child. For most, we don’t even know their true ages, and back then, well…” He sighs heavily and tilts his head to look at her. “I suppose I could check. Very well. Thakkar. Asha, you said?” He turns to the relic of a computer on his desk. After a few minutes of fumbling with the keyboard and squinting at the screen, he turns back to her. “I’m sorry, I can’t find that name. There’s no record of you. Like I said, our record keeping…” He shrugs and puts his glasses back on.

  She feels a hollowness in her stomach and looks down at her notebook, where the page is blank. No record of me. She digs her nails into her palms to stave off the tears waiting anxiously behind her eyes.

  “You know, we’ve had other children come here, like you, and it’s been challenging to find the mother, even when they have a name. Sometimes these women don’t want to be found. Many times they were unwed, and no one even knows they had a baby or brought the child here. It could be very…difficult for these mothers if people found out now.”

  Asha nods, gripping her pencil and trying to maintain her composure. What is my next question? What do I write on this blank page?

  Suddenly, Arun Deshpande leans forward and peers at Asha’s face. “Your eyes, they’re so unusual. I have seen that color only once before on an Indian woman.” A look of comprehension spreads across his face. “When did you say you were adopted?”

  “Nineteen eight-five. August. Really? What—”

  “And do you know how old you were?” He knocks over a stack of papers on his way to the steel filing cabinet behind her chair.

  “Around a year, I think.” She stands to join him, peering over his shoulder.

  He shuffles through the files, which look even more disorganized than his desk. “I remember her…She was from Palghar or Dahanu, one of those northern villages. I think she walked all the way here. I remember those eyes.” He shakes his head, then pauses and looks up at her. “Look, this will take some time. I have to go through all of 1984—these files, and then some more in the back. Shall I call you if I find something?”

  She feels feverish at the thought that the information is here, somewhere in this disheveled office. She can’t just leave now. “Can I help you look?”

  “No, no.” He gives a small laugh. “I’m not even sure what I’m looking for, but if it’s here, I’ll find it. I promise you. For Sarla-ji. Promise. One hundred percent.” He nods his head from side to side in that confusing way people do here. This is the way things work in India, she’s learned. You have to have faith. She tears out a sheet from her notebook to write down her number and lodges her pencil behind her ear. “Do you have a pen?”

  SEVERAL DAYS LATER, SHE MAKES THE JOURNEY BACK TO SHANTI. She can hardly keep from breaking into a sprint to Mr. Deshpande’s office after entering the front gate. She is jittery as she waits for him. When he enters, she stands up. “I came as soon as I could. What did you find?”

  He sits down at his desk and hands her a manila folder. “I remember her. Your mother. I never forgot those eyes.” Inside the file folder, there is a single sheet of paper, a partially completed form. “I’m sorry there’s not much information,” he says. “Back then, we thought it was best if things were anonymous. Now we do a better job collecting information, for health reasons and whatnot. Oh, but I did discover why I couldn’t find you at first. You see right there…” He leans over and points to a spot on the form. “Your given name was Usha when you arrived here. I guess our records aren’t so bad after all.” He sits back in his chair, smiling.

  Usha. Her name was Usha. Her given name. Given by her mother. Usha Merchant.

  “That was my first month as the new director, when you came here. We were full to capacity, and I wasn’t supposed to accept any more children. But your mother came here with her sister, who convinced me to take you. She said you had a cousin here already, it wouldn’t be right to separate you.”

  “A cousin?” Asha has spent her entire life without any cousins, and since coming to India, there seems to be another one eve
rywhere she turns.

  “Yes, your aunt’s daughter. She said she was a year older than you, but that would’ve been before I was here, and there are definitely no records from back then.”

  “Mr. Deshpande, I want to find her…my mother, my parents. Do you know how I can?” Asha asks, trying to swallow back the lump in her throat.

  He shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I’m surprised I found that file at all.”

  Mr. Deshpande helps her hail down an auto-rickshaw, and gives the driver instructions to take her to the train station. She clutches the manila folder tightly in one hand and, with the other, shakes Mr. Deshpande’s. “Thank you so much. I appreciate your help.”

  “Good luck to you, my child. Please be careful.”

  BACK IN HER CHAIR AT THE TIMES OFFICE, SHE STARES AT THE single page inside the manila folder, although she has already memorized the few bits of information it holds.

  NAME: USHA

  DOB: 18 08 1984

  SEX: F

  MOTHER: KAVITA MERCHANT

  FATHER: JASU MERCHANT

  AGE AT ARRIVAL: 3 DAYS

  Only a few details, and yet they have already brought discoveries. Her mother was not unwed. Her parents were married, and she knows their names. Her own name for her first year of life was Usha Merchant. Asha practices writing it out, first in block letters, then as a signature, and finally just the initials she uses to sign off on her edits. She looks at the reflection of herself in her darkened monitor.

  Usha Merchant. Does she look like an Usha? “Usha Merchant,” she says, extending her hand in introduction to the stapler on her desk. Asha rests her head on the back of the chair and stares at the ceiling. She calls out to Meena in her neighboring office. “I don’t even know where to start. How am I going to find her?”

  “Well, you’re in the right place. The Times has access to the best database in India.” Meena leans over Asha to type on her keyboard. “We have good information on all major cities.”

  “What if she’s not in a city? What if she’s in a village somewhere? The orphanage director said she came here, walked I think, from a village.”

  Meena stops and looks at her. “Really?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “That’s remarkable. For a woman to do that, especially back when transportation was less reliable. She must have been quite dedicated to get you here.” Meena pulls up a chair. “Okay, I’ll show you how to use this. It’s only cities, but you might as well start here. Start with Mumbai. Good thing their name isn’t Patel or something like that. It will be easiest to find her through a male relative, property holdings and such. Okay, here we go, tenant listings for Merchant…oh well, still quite a few.”

  There are no Kavitas, but there are dozens of listings for Jasu Merchant or J. Merchant in Mumbai alone, and they haven’t even tried other cities yet. Asha begins with a long list of names and spends several hours trying to piece together scraps of information. By the end of the day, she has narrowed it down to three valid addresses, none of which may yield anything. Still, she feels hopeful as she heads toward the elevator with her notebook clasped to her chest.

  “Wish me luck,” she says over her shoulder to Meena. “Who knows what I’ll find.”

  48

  REVOLUTION

  Palo Alto, California—2005

  SOMER

  “PICTURE YOURSELF AS A STRONG TREE, A MAJESTIC TREE, AND breathe deeply into your lower belly.” Genevieve, the yoga instructor, has a soothing voice that trails her as she weaves in between the dozen people spread out in the studio. Somer stands absolutely straight, holding her arms high up above her head, palms touching. The sole of one foot is lodged firmly against the opposite thigh, and her eyes are focused intently on a small white speck on the brick wall in front of her. Vrikshasana, tree pose, has been giving her difficulty since she began taking this yoga class with Liza a couple months ago. Invariably, Somer wobbled on one foot and fell out of the pose while others in the class stood serenely. After class one day, Genevieve told Somer the key to the pose was to calm her mind and concentrate on the moment. What a difference this made, this one small change in focus, this slight shift in her perspective. Instead of fighting and struggling to stay balanced, she found a point to gaze at, and suddenly, all her energy was aligned and the pose was simple. Today, Somer stands perfectly still in vrikshasana, along with the others, until Genevieve’s calm voice beckons them on to the next pose.

  Somer has been coming to this yoga studio, ambitiously named Revolution, two or three times a week. When she woke up sore after the first few classes, she realized how long it had been since she had done anything really physical, since she had run until her lungs burned or swum until her muscles were happily tired, as she had during each of her short pregnancies. Twenty-some years ago, after her body stopped working, Somer ceased to think of it as an important part of her. When her back gave her trouble or her allergies acted up, she felt resentment toward her aging body for failing her again and again. Each new yoga pose she tried was a challenge, not only in the stretching and the twisting, but also because she had to get to know her body again, which muscles were tight, which joints inflexible. She had to be gentle with herself—understanding at first her body’s limits, and then how to push beyond them. In doing so, Somer learned to reclaim the body she felt had betrayed her so many years earlier.

  The turning point came one day when Genevieve urged the class to pay attention to their breath. “Are you holding your breath?” she asked them. “Notice if you are holding your breath after inhaling, and if so, what are you afraid of letting go of? Or are you holding it after exhaling, and what are you afraid of letting in?” Somer realized she was doing both, and so, as Krishnan had accused her of many times, she was being governed by fear.

  After three months of living by herself, she has found some ways to combat the loneliness. On Thursdays, she goes to her Italian class with Giorgio, who sounds much sexier than he is, a grizzled old Sicilian man whose white chest hair peeks out above his shirt. She’s been learning the language slowly, in preparation for her trip to Tuscany. During the week, when her days are busy at the clinic, and the streets of downtown Palo Alto are buzzing with students, she finds the pace of her new life tolerable.

  The weekends are more difficult. The open hours stretch on and on, and she finds herself without someone to talk to for long periods of the day. She usually makes dinner or hiking plans with Liza, who has perfected the lifestyle of an older single woman. Still, it is the weekends when she misses Kris most. She longs for the lazy mornings they spent lying in bed, reading the paper. As the day turns to evening, she wishes she could walk arm in arm with him down to their neighborhood Thai restaurant and share a bowl of rich coconut curry. She misses his heavy arm across her body as she lies alone in bed. When she sees students around town, she tries to remember the carefree feeling she had with Kris back then. She lingers over the memories of their early days with Asha, when she was just a small bud unfolding in front of them, and everything she said or did made them laugh: going to the zoo and spending all their time in front of the monkeys, Asha beckoning both her parents to make monkey sounds and gestures before they could finally leave. The vacation they took to San Diego when Asha was six and she buried Krishnan up to his neck in sand when he fell asleep on the beach.

  The time alone has made Somer appreciate how much of her life was built around Kris and Asha. For all she gave them through the years and the regret she sometimes felt over her career sacrifices, without them, her life was devoid of its meaning and fullness. Even now, what she most looks forward to each week is Sunday morning, when she goes over to the house so she and Kris can call Asha at their scheduled time. He and Asha do most of the talking, but this doesn’t bother Somer as much as it used to. Often, just the sound of Asha’s voice from miles away can bring tears to her eyes. It is a false premise, she knows, she and Kris are presenting, that of a happily married couple. But for those thirty minutes when she shares the ph
one line with them, and a cup of coffee afterward in the kitchen with Kris, it doesn’t feel false at all.

  Now, much too quickly it seems, it is time for shavasana, the resting pose that takes up the last ten minutes of class. At first, this was the part Somer used to dread, lying there with nothing but the anxious thoughts swirling around in her head: thoughts of Asha leaving, her daughter’s anger toward her, fighting with Krishnan, the promotion she’d lost, the uncertainty of her future. Shavasana, corpse pose, meant to relax the mind and body, was her enemy—the one time she was forced to confront her darkest thoughts. And once the thoughts came, there was no confining them. They infiltrated her time alone, when loneliness ached in her heart, when quietude engulfed her apartment. It was a Sunday morning, as she lay in bed counting the hours until her phone call with Asha, when it occurred to Somer that all her efforts to protect her daughter had backfired. It was fear that kept Somer from letting her go, but by holding too tight she’d produced the opposite effect. She had driven Asha away. Just as in tree pose, her constant struggles had knocked her off balance.

  One morning before work, standing in the shower until it ran cold, Somer realized first that she had used all the hot water, and then that there was no one left to save it for. It was then that Somer admitted to herself that she had, at some point, stopped giving to her marriage. She had always expected Kris to be the one to assimilate to her culture, as he had in the beginning. Even after they adopted an Indian baby, even when he missed home, even when he asked her to go with him. Somer felt she had given so much to their family already. But her mother always said the key to a successful marriage was for each spouse to give as much as they thought they possibly could. And then, to give a little more. Somewhere in that extra giving, in the space created by generosity without score keeping, was the difference between marriages that thrived and those that didn’t. Every time Sundari asked one of her many questions about India and its culture, questions Somer couldn’t answer and had never asked herself, it made her think there could have been another way. She could have embraced what she had tried to push away. A slight shift in perspective, one small change in focus, might have made the difference.