Secret Daughter

by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

  Now, as she allows her limbs to relax into shavasana, her fingers to curl up, Somer thinks of Asha and Krishnan, together on the other side of the world. For the first time, she is separated by an ocean from the two people who have formed the fabric of her life. When they each announced their departure for India, she thought they were rash decisions, designed to punish her. But now, Somer can see, those decisions had been coming for years. It was she who had acted out of anger and fear, she who had walked out on her family without considering the repercussions of this choice. Just as she had married a man from another culture without understanding what it meant to him. Just as she had adopted a child from India without thinking through the implications. Always so eager to achieve the next milestone on her path, she has neglected to question that path or to look ahead.

  49

  THE ONLY SAFE GROUND

  Mumbai, India—2005

  ASHA

  THE FIRST TWO LISTINGS PROVE TO BE FRUITLESS, BELONGING TO other J. Merchants. It was a struggle for Asha to communicate enough to learn even that. On her way to the third address on her list, she wishes Parag were there to translate for her. She begins to feel as if this was a foolish idea, to think she could find her parents in this city of twelve million people, if they’re even in Mumbai at all. What if they’re in one of those villages Deshpande mentioned? Could she go out there? How would she communicate? When the driver stops in front of a dilapidated tenement, Asha is reluctant to get out. But he confirms with more incomprehensible language and vigorous hand gestures that this is the place she is looking for. There is no listing of residents downstairs, so Asha begins climbing the stairwell, which reeks of human waste. She covers her nose and mouth with her hand. Cockroaches crawl busily in the corners, and on the first landing, she carefully sidesteps a man sleeping on his bedroll. She averts her eyes but cannot avoid the sinking feeling in her stomach. Her mind hovers between the equally distasteful thoughts that her parents might live in this place, and if they don’t, she doesn’t know how else to find them.

  On the second floor, most of the apartment doors are open. Small children run freely through the hallways and chase one another in and out of doorways. Through one of these doorways, Asha sees a young woman squatting and sweeping the floor. “Excuse me, do you know where I can find the Merchants? Kavita Merchant?” Asha says. The woman shakes her head from side to side, scoops up a crawling baby, and motions for Asha to follow her. They walk across the floor and directly into another apartment without knocking, where another young woman beats a rug on the balcony. The apartment is oppressively small—a single room from the looks of it—and barely furnished. The paint on the walls is peeling, and one bare bulb hangs from the ceiling. The smell of simmering onions and spices wafts out from the tiny kitchen. The two women speak, watching Asha curiously. They aren’t much older than she is. If it wasn’t for the difference in language, their conspiratorial talking could pass for Asha and her friends back home. Yet here these women are, living with husbands and children instead of roommates, their days occupied by household chores rather than textbooks. Asha feels claustrophobic at the thought of living in a space this small.

  “Kavita ben? You want Kavita ben?” the second woman asks in halting English.

  “Yes, Kavita Merchant,” Asha says.

  “Kavita ben no live here anymore. Move to Vincent Road. You know Vincent Road?”

  ASHA RUNS DOWN THE TWO FLIGHTS OF STAIRS AND OUT OF THE building. Someone knows where my mother is. At last, she knows she’s on the right track. The first taxi driver she approaches does not know where Vincent Road is. The second one does but is unenthusiastic about driving there at this time of day. Asha pulls some cash out of her pocket, but this does not seem to convince him. Damnit. So close. She’s going to get to Vincent Road if she has to hijack this man’s taxi and drive there herself. She empties her money belt and waves all its contents in front of him. Finally, he gives a slight nod and opens the rear door from the inside. Her mind races during the entire half-hour drive in the backseat of her fourth taxi of the day. The various revelations of the last twenty-four hours swirl through her mind. Her name was Usha. She has her mother’s eyes. She has a cousin. She has parents living on Vincent Road, right here in Mumbai. Her heart is pumping so hard, it feels it’s going to burst through her chest.

  Vincent Road turns out to be a short street, only two blocks long with three tallish buildings that look like apartments. She pays the driver everything she promised him and only briefly considers that this leaves her without any money to get home. The first building lists no Merchants as residents. She enters the second building and sees a uniformed man sitting at a table in the lobby. “Can you tell me if a Kavita Merchant lives here?”

  The uniformed man shakes his head. “Regular doorman on break. Come back later.”

  Asha sees a binder on the table in front of him. “Can you check, please? Kavita Merchant?”

  The uniform, who looks as if he’d rather be on break himself, flips open the binder and runs his finger down the list of names. “Merchant…Hahn. Vijay Merchant. Six-oh-two.”

  Vijay? “How about Kavita? Kavita Merchant? Or Jasu Merchant?” she says, looking around to see if the regular doorman is anywhere in sight.

  “Nai, only Merchant here is Vijay. Vijay Merchant.”

  She feels her pounding heart plummet all the way into her feet. How can this be? There’s only one more building on Vincent Road. She turns to leave.

  “Ah, here he is,” the uniform says to another similarly dressed man, who must be the regular doorman. “This girl wants Kavita Merchant. No Kavita here on list. I told her only one Merchant here. Vijay Merchant.”

  “Heh? Stupid idiot. Do you know nothing?” the doorman says, then babbles something she can’t understand, except for the names Kavita and Vijay. The doorman turns to her and explains, “Please, this man is confused. Kavita Merchant lives here, yes. Only the flat is in Vijay’s name. That is the reason for confusion.”

  “Vijay?”

  “Hahn. Vijay. Her son.”

  What? “No, that can’t be her. She…she doesn’t have children. I don’t think this woman has children. Kavita Merchant?” she says again, consulting her notebook for clarity. “M-e-r-c-h-a-n-t. Her husband’s name is Jasu Merchant.”

  “Hahnji, madam,” the doorman says, looking directly at her and speaking with complete confidence. “Kavita and Jasu Merchant. And their son Vijay. Flat six-oh-two.”

  Their son. The word reverberates in her head as she tries to make sense of it. “Son?”

  “Hahn, you know him!” The doorman mistakes her repetition for recognition. “Must be about your age. Nineteen, twenty years old.”

  My age? “Are you…sure?” The words and numbers bang around in Asha’s head like billiard balls. Suddenly, the facts arrange themselves in an unmistakable order. It finally makes sense, and then again none at all. Her real parents had a child, another child. One they’d chosen to keep. Her mouth tastes of sour acid. They kept him. Their son. They kept him instead of me.

  From somewhere in the distance, she can hear the doorman’s voice but catches few of his words. “Kavita…gone away for some time…back to her village…return in few weeks.”

  The ground buckles under her feet. She stumbles and somehow finds the step beneath her to sit down. It wasn’t that her mother wasn’t married. It wasn’t that they didn’t want a child. It wasn’t that they couldn’t afford one. It was just me. It was me they didn’t want.

  She is vaguely aware the two uniforms are watching her now, but she can’t stop the tears from rolling down her cheeks. “I’m sorry…it’s been a long day. I’m not used to the heat,” she tries to explain. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.” Even as the words come out of her mouth, she realizes how absurd she must sound to these two strangers. They won’t worry like Dadima, probably waiting at home for her with a cup of chai. Or her father, who called her before she went to the orphanage to wish her luck. Or even her mother, who
mashed her bitter malaria pills into fruit smoothies so she could stomach them before she left for India.

  She buries her head in her hands and cries helplessly in front of these two men, who don’t know her any more than Kavita and Jasu would if they walked into this lobby right now. With this thought, Asha feels her stomach tighten. She panics at the thought of further humiliation. I have to get out of here. Sniffling loudly, she stands and scrambles to gather her bag. The pressure builds in her lungs, and all she can think of is the need to get outside. “I have to go.” She turns for the door.

  “What’s your name?” one of them yells after her as she runs out of the building. “I’ll tell her you came.”

  The air outside is thick with smog, but it is still a welcome change from that building and its revelations. She needs to get far, far away from there. A taxi driver pulls up to her. “Need ride, madam?” He grins at her with his mouthful of crooked, stained teeth.

  She climbs into the backseat and says, “Churchgate, jaldi!” She has picked up Priya’s habit of automatically telling drivers to go quickly, but never has she meant it this much.

  He pedals off and says, “Where you go, madam?”

  At that moment, she remembers giving the last taxi driver the rest of her cash. She has no money left. She desperately searches in her backpack, unzipping all the pockets and fumbling around. She feels something unfamiliar in the bottom and pulls it out. A bag of chocolates. Ghirardelli mint chocolate squares. Her favorite. Mom. She must have slipped them into her backpack at the airport, just as she used to put a single chocolate square in her lunch bag. Asha lets out a cry, and the driver turns around. She waves him off and keeps looking through her bag. There’s no telling what he’ll do if she can’t pay him. Behind her notebook, she finds a worn envelope, the one her father gave her at the airport. A small laugh erupts through her tears. Her father’s afterthought will help her get home. She opens it and counts out the rupees. She taps the driver on the shoulder and shows him the money. “How far will this get me?”

  He spits on the road before answering. “Worli.”

  The driver drops her off and she steps out of the taxi into a large crowd of people, who all seem to be climbing to somewhere. She looks up and sees an enormous ornately carved building at the top of a long flight of steps. “Excuse me.” She stops one of the passing climbers. “What is this place?”

  “Mahalaxmi Temple.”

  She blinks and looks again at the building. She hears Dadima’s voice echoing in her head. It brings a little bit of peace to my day. Asha slowly climbs the steps. The narrow walkway leading to the temple is lined with tiny shops selling bright flowers, boxes of sweets, small Hindu idol figurines, and other souvenirs. During her long ascent, raindrops begin to speckle the ground, coming faster and harder, imploring her to quicken her pace. As she nears the top, a breathtaking view of the Arabian Sea spreads out in front of her. She slips her sandals off outside the temple to join the hundreds piled there already. Inside, the floor feels cool beneath her bare feet. At first it seems silent, compared to the noisy bustle of outside, but once her ears adjust she can hear the low murmur of chanting, and waves crashing on the rocks outside.

  The temple features three gold statues of Hindu goddesses, each in its own nook, decorated with jewelry, flowers, and offerings of coconuts and fruit. Yellow, white, and orange floral garlands are draped from the center of the ceiling and wrapped around the pillars. Asha sits down on her knees in the middle of the open space, looking around at others for guidance. Standing in front of the middle goddess, a priest with a shaved head and white loincloth is conducting a ceremony with a couple wearing floral garlands. Several heavyset middle-aged women in saris are singing together in one corner. A young man about her age is sitting next to her with his eyes closed, rocking forward and praying.

  About her age. She has a brother. Vijay. A brother she’s never known about, and one who certainly doesn’t know about her. He could be anywhere in this city. He could be here.

  The scent of incense reaches her nostrils. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. All these years, she’s been longing for her parents, dreaming of the moment she would meet them and finally feel complete. She always thought they would be longing for her too. Her face burns with shame at how foolish she’s been. The tears flow again. Her parents haven’t been longing for her. They don’t miss her. They just discarded her.

  And in that moment, the dreams she has carried in her heart and in her white marble box are gone. They vaporize into air like the smoke rising from the incense in front of her. Her questions are answered, the mystery surrounding her roots is gone. There is nothing left for her to find out. She doesn’t need to meet her parents, just to be spurned again, rejected to her face.

  All around her, the singing and chanting engulf her and crowd out the angry voices in her head. The silver bangle slides easily off her wrist. Asha turns it over and over between her fingers. She squeezes, and the soft metal bends under her touch. It is warped in shape, dull with age, imperfect. This, apparently, is all she will ever have from her mother. She holds it between her palms and closes her eyes. Then she puts her forehead to the floor and weeps.

  50

  A POWERFUL LOVE

  Mumbai, India—2005

  KAVITA

  ONLY THE SHARP TINGLING IN HER LEFT FOOT FORCES KAVITA to finally change positions. She’s been lost in her own head, repeating mantras she remembers from her childhood, conjuring up memories of her mother. It’s as if time stands still in this inner sanctum of the temple, with no windows to the outside and the pandit’s rhythmic chanting carrying her on its waves to the past. The pandit is conducting a Laxmi puja for a young couple, probably newly married. Kavita herself usually prefers to pray to Laxmi, goddess of prosperity, but today she sits in front of the goddess Kali who, with Durga, represents the sacred spirit of motherhood. She feels safe here, with the familiar aroma of burning incense and the small tinkling of the bell in her ears, disconnected from the world outside and its troubles.

  Other worshippers come and go: young and old, women and men, locals and tourists. Some walk around the perimeter once slowly, as if they are visiting a museum. Others come to make a hasty offering, a coconut or a bunch of bananas, on their way to a job interview or a hospital visit. That group of plump, rich women in the corner come here every morning to sing and demonstrate their piety out loud. Still others, like Kavita, just sit and sit, sometimes for hours. They are the ones, she now understands, who are mourning. Like her, they mourn a loss so wide and so deep and so all-encompassing that it threatens to wash them away with grief.

  She kneels and bends forward to the ground to offer her final prayer, as she always does, for her children. Though today she is mourning as a daughter, her duties as a mother never cease. She prays for Vijay’s safety and his redemption. She prays for Usha, wherever she may be, picturing her, as she always does, as a little girl with two braids. In all these years, she has never been able to imagine what her daughter would look like as a grown woman, so this is the image she keeps in her mind, a young child frozen in time. She kisses the joined tips of her index fingers, and then the lone silver bangle on her wrist. Reluctantly, she stands up, shaking the stiffness out of her joints. She doesn’t want to leave, but there is a train she must catch. Outside, it is now raining. The steady downpour soaks her as she trods down the familiar steps of Mahalaxmi Temple, and around the corner to Mumbai Central Train Station.

  KAVITA STANDS ON THE PLATFORM WHILE THE OTHER TRAIN passengers disperse around her. There is no one waiting here for her. Rupa is supposed to come but must be busy with the preparations. Kavita fills her lungs with the familiar scent of earth and sits down on her bag to wait. The fields scattered on the horizon are greener than she remembers, or has her sight become dulled by the gray monotony of Mumbai? Other things have changed since she was last here, nearly three years ago. The dirt roads have been paved over, and there is a telephone booth outside the station. S
everal cars are parked nearby, of the varied modern types she’s used to seeing in Mumbai. Taken together, it is all a little unsettling. Kavita is used to thinking of home as a static place, unchanging.

  “Bena!” Kavita hears the familiar voice and stands up to be engulfed in Rupa’s arms. Her older sister has also changed with age, Kavita notices, her hair more gray than black now.

  “Oh, Kavi, thank God you’re here.” Rupa hugs her tightly and they rock back and forth in their embrace. “Come,” she says, finally pulling away. “Challo, everyone is waiting.”

  KAVITA TRACES THE RIM OF THE STAINLESS STEEL TUMBLER WITH HER finger. How strange it is to be served tea, to be treated as a guest, here in her childhood home. Not much has changed, Kavita notes, reassured. The walls are yellower and the floors show more cracks than before, but otherwise, her parents’ house looks the same. How will Bapu look?

  “Don’t expect too much, Kavi. He’s not the same as he was, this has all been so hard on him,” Rupa says, sipping her tea. “Last night he woke up calling for Ba, and it took me a long time to calm him back to sleep.” She sighs, puts down her cup, and begins wrapping the end of her sari around her finger, a nervous gesture Kavita remembers from their childhood. “He can’t recognize when his own body needs to go to the toilet, but he notices the first night in fifty years his wife is not sleeping beside him.” Rupa shakes her head. “I don’t quite understand it, but that is a powerful love.”