Secret Daughter

by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

  The nursemaid walks into the drawing room and nods her head at Rupa, to indicate she has finished bathing and dressing their father and he can now be seen. “She has been a blessing, Kavi,” Rupa says softly as they stand. “She is so patient with Bapu, even when he’s cranky. And Ba loved her…” With the mention of their mother, Rupa’s voice cracks and Kavita feels her own face crumple. They clutch each other as they used to when they shared a bed as young girls. “We must be strong for Bapu,” Rupa says, wiping her sister’s tears and then her own with the twisted end of her sari. “Come, bena.” She grips Kavita’s hand firmly, and they enter the bedroom.

  The first thing Kavita notices about her father, sitting on the bed with his legs extended, is his sunken face. His cheeks are drawn in, and his jawbones outline a much narrower profile than she remembers. She rushes to him, falling to her knees beside the bed and touching her head to his feet. She is alarmed to feel the sharp angles of his leg bones through the sheet. And then she feels the familiar touch of his hand on her head.

  “My child,” he says in a raspy voice.

  “Bapu?” Kavita looks up at him hopefully. “Do you know me?” She sits beside him on the bed and clasps his two frail hands lightly in hers.

  “Of course, dhikri, I know you.”

  She notices the milky gray of glaucoma that has taken over his eyes, rendering it impossible for him to see all but vague shadows right in front of him.

  “Rupa beti, where is your Ba gone to now? Please tell her I want to see her.” He speaks these words looking directly at Kavita. She pulls back for a moment, taking in both revelations at once. Not only does her father not recognize her, but he still doesn’t understand her mother is dead. She is at a loss for what to do next when Rupa sits down on the other side of the bed.

  “Bapu, it’s Kavita. She’s just arrived today, she’s come all the way from Mumbai!” Rupa’s voice is forcefully upbeat.

  “Kavita,” her father repeats, now following Rupa’s voice and looking at her. “Kavita, how are you, beti?” He raises a hand to Rupa’s cheek. “Do you know where your mother is?”

  Rupa answers him gently, as she would speak to a child. “Bapu, we talked about this. Ba is gone. She was ill for a long time, and now she is gone. The cremation ceremony is tomorrow.”

  Kavita sees a brief look of recognition pass over her father’s gaunt face, an aching sadness in these eyes that otherwise can see nothing. He leans back on his thin pillow and closes his eyes. “Ay, Ram,” he prays softly. Kavita presses her own eyes closed, and the tears squeeze out and roll down her cheeks. She raises her father’s hand to her face and kisses it.

  “DON’T FEEL BADLY, KAVI. SOMETIMES HE DOESN’T RECOGNIZE me either, and I’m here every day,” Rupa says, rinsing a thali and handing it to Kavita.

  The statement, though intended innocently, delivers a fresh wound to Kavita, a reminder she has not been here for her family. “Achha, I know, it’s all right,” Kavita answers dutifully, drying the thali with a cloth.

  “It’s been so hard on him, Ba’s passing. It’s as if what little will to live he had left is now going. I’m worried about how the ceremony will affect him. It is good you’re here. You bring us all strength.” Rupa wraps her arm around her sister and squeezes her shoulder with a damp hand.

  Kavita marvels at her sister’s ability to be such an adult about this, concerned with everyone else’s needs, taking care of the house, handling preparations for the ceremony. All Kavita feels is the deepest sense of despair at the loss of her parents: the death of her mother, the remoteness of her father. It feels as if the very structure of her family is crumbling underneath her. She looks around and is almost surprised to see the walls of the home still standing. She doesn’t know quite who she is in the world without her parents behind her. Even though it’s been fifteen years since she left Dahanu, this feeling of being a little girl in her parents’ home has not changed. She silently admonishes herself for acting like a child, for behaving so selfishly in light of her sister’s strength.

  “When are Jasu and Vijay arriving?” Rupa says.

  “The morning train.” Kavita takes the next thali from Rupa. She doesn’t mention it will likely only be Jasu who comes.

  51

  MOTHER INDIA

  Mumbai, India—2005

  ASHA

  ASHA SITS AT HER DESK IN THE TIMES OFFICE, SURROUNDED BY her notes. In the midst of the paper are two message slips from Sanjay. She has thought about him many times since she first went to Shanti two weeks ago but cannot bring herself to call. The discovery she made in that building lobby on Vincent Road has left her feeling ashamed and confused. She cannot explain it to herself, much less to someone else. She has not wanted to face Sanjay and relive it all again.

  Today, Asha has been trying to transcribe her interview footage, but instead she keeps thinking about what Meena said that day at Dharavi—Mother India does not love all her children equally. She walks over to the terminal connecting her to the Times database. Into the blank search box, she types “India, birth rates” and gets over a thousand unintelligible results. She modifies her search by adding the phrase “girls and boys” and gets a dozen articles. She clicks into the first article, from the United Nations in 1991, and reads how birth rates for girls in India have declined steadily. The corresponding line graph shows both the precipitous decline for girls and the increasing gap between girls and boys. The next article criticizes the spread of lightweight ultrasound machines throughout the country. The advent of the smaller, affordable machines, it seems, made it easier for unscrupulous people to travel around rural India and charge expectant mothers to identify the sex of their unborn children. Although the Indian government outlawed ultrasound for gender identification purposes a decade ago, the practice is still rampant and often leads to sex-selective abortion, a phrase Asha has never heard before.

  The third article mentions the infanticide of baby girls, along with bride-burning and dowry deaths, as part of a series on the struggle for women’s rights in India. Asha glances over this one only briefly before she has to close her eyes and then the article. Her stomach is starting to churn. She wills herself to look at only one more story, and searches for something uplifting. She finds a profile of a Canadian philanthropist who has established a number of orphanages throughout India. Asha stares at the photo of the older Caucasian woman dressed in a sari, surrounded on all sides by smiling Indian children. Beneath the picture is a quote that overseas adoption of children from their orphanages is not encouraged.

  Asha hoists herself out of the chair and back to her desk, where the screen holds a frozen image of Yashoda, the little shorn-headed girl from the slum. Little Yashoda, so full of energy and promise amid the misery of Dharavi. Yashoda, with her sweet smile, oblivious to her lice infestation and the fact that she will never attend school. Is that what my life would have been like in India? Over the past several months, she has envied Meena with her great journalism career, and Priya with her salon and shopping lifestyle. But now it is evident to Asha that this would not have been her life. She would have been like Yashoda or her sister Bina—just one of India’s statistics, another little girl that nobody values. What kind of future will those girls have? Will they spend their whole lives, childhood to motherhood, in Dharavi like the bruised woman she interviewed? Or will they be the fortunate ones—will they get out of the slums, only to end up like those two women in the tenement on Shivaji Road, saddled with husbands, children, and domestic duties?

  All her life, Asha has dreamed about what she missed by not knowing her birth parents—unconditional love, deep understanding, a natural connection. Is that really what I missed? Or was it just a life without opportunity? Arun Deshpande’s words come rushing back to her. The fortunate ones are adopted. She thinks of her childhood in California, her bedroom twice the size of those Dharavi homes, her Harper School uniform and Ivy League education. All those years spent wondering about her parents. Maybe they did her a favor.
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  Usha. Her mother loved her enough to give her a name.

  She stares at her screen, at the thin string hanging around Yashoda’s neck, remembering how enthralled the little girl was with Asha’s rings. Meena explained later these girls grow up seeing jewelry but never owning any. Her mother loved her enough to give her a silver bangle.

  She was a brave woman. She must have been quite dedicated to get you here. Her mother loved her enough to travel all the way from some village to take her to the orphanage. She loved her enough to give her away.

  She loved her enough.

  She loved her.

  Asha wipes away the tears from her cheeks and forces herself to watch the rest of the interview with Bina, trying to find a ray of hope. Seeing herself now on the screen, she realizes how insensitive she was, with her questions about the short hair and school. Parag was only trying to spare those girls some embarrassment, not hamper her interview. The sorrow of Yashoda’s life is trumped by the tragedy of the crippled girl who appears next. Asha looks away again when she sees her, just as she did the day of the interview. Then, slowly, she turns back to the screen and leans forward to watch it closely. She doesn’t remember seeing the girl’s face before. The girl is smiling, and so is her mother. The woman actually looks happy as she sets out on her two-kilometer walk to school with her legless daughter on her back. How can that be?

  The woman in the next interview, the bruised one in the dull green sari, does not smile at all, except briefly when Asha gives her the fifty-rupee note. Damnit. Why didn’t I give her more? Perhaps it would have saved her from prostituting herself for a night or two to feed her three kids and alcoholic husband. On the screen, her eyes look hollow. Asha consults her notes and remembers that this woman is her age. She can’t imagine having to sell her body, or any of the other things these women do to take care of their families. Asha jots down a few notes, then scrolls back and watches it again, focusing on the women as they talk, explaining what they do every day for their families. The next thought descends upon her like a parachute covering the ground. The real story of life in Dharavi is these mothers. They are the face of hope for these children, born into poverty and desolation. Asha extracts a still image of the crippled girl’s smiling mother and copies it to a new screen. On top of the photo she types out a caption: “The Face of Hope: Surviving Urban Slums.”

  She starts typing, telling the stories of these women’s courage. Her fingers fly across the keyboard, racing to keep up with the ideas flowing through her. She glances quickly at the clock on the screen and realizes it’s nearly seven o’clock. She will be expected home soon. The familiar rush of adrenaline floods her body, just as it did on a nightly basis at the Herald, and she knows she has to keep going, all night if necessary. Still typing, Asha picks up the phone and cradles it on her shoulder. Devesh answers.

  “Hi. Asha here. Please tell Memsahib I won’t be home tonight. I’m working at office. Be home tomorrow.” She speaks slowly, pausing between each word so he understands. She works assiduously through the night until her whole story takes shape. Only then does she lay her head down on her desk to rest.

  WHEN MEENA ARRIVES IN THE MORNING, ASHA IS WAITING IN her office. “Arre, look what the cat dragged in. You look terrible. Have you been here all night?”

  “Yes, actually, but that’s not important. Listen, I want to go back to Dharavi, I need to do some more interviews.”

  “What, you want to talk to some men this time?” Meena takes her sunglasses off and drops her handbag onto her desk.

  “No, women. Mothers, actually.”

  Meena raises one eyebrow. “Sounds interesting.” She sits down. “I’m listening.”

  “Well, I was going to focus on the children, you know. I watched the interviews over and over, and I realized it feels so depressing because the kids are born into those circumstances, they don’t choose them and they have no power over them. It’s sad, but it’s not much of a story. But if you switch the perspective, and tell the children’s story through their mothers, it changes everything. You see courage. Resilience. The strength of human spirit.”

  “I like it,” Meena acknowledges, spinning in her chair. “It’s a nice angle. But listen, Asha, I’m swamped. I can’t come with you.”

  “What about Parag?”

  Meena shrugs. “You’ll have to ask him.”

  ON THE WAY TO DHARAVI, ASHA DESCRIBES TO PARAG THE TYPE of interview subjects she’s looking for. She’s not sure if he agreed to come out of some sense of professional duty or male chivalry. “Hey listen, I’m glad you’re coming with me,” she says to him as they leave the taxi. He nods his head in that low-key Indian way. “No, really. I don’t know my way around here so well, as you’ve probably noticed. I really need your help.” She detects a slight smile and decides to drop the subject.

  Dharavi is full of women, mothers caring for their children. There are plenty of willing participants, but Asha walks down the lane until she finds the first woman she wants to interview. She is sitting quietly, scrubbing clothes in a bucket outside her hut while three children mill around her. Asha does namaste to the woman and waits until Parag gets permission for her to turn on her camera. She whispers a couple questions to Parag, and lets him handle most of the interchange while she stands back, capturing the interview on film. After answering several questions, the woman invites them into the hut. Both Asha and Parag must duck their heads to clear the entrance. Inside, Asha sees two thin bedrolls laid out on the floor and, on the wall between them, framed photographs of an elderly woman and man. She’s learned such pictures honor deceased family members or gurus, usually with fresh flowers, but these two are adorned with wilted garlands buzzing with flies. In the corner is a small shrine of statues and incense sticks. After filming the interior of the hut, Asha turns off the camera. She asks Parag to thank the woman for her time. He translates and turns back to Asha.

  “She wants to know, will you take some chai?”

  Asha smiles at this woman who has nothing, and yet offers her tea. On an earlier visit, this gesture would have made her feel uncomfortable and guilty. “Yes, thank you. Tea would be lovely.” They sit outside while the woman makes tea, and Asha teaches her kids pat-a-cake.

  The other interviews they conduct are similar, much easier than last time. They have lingering conversations with the women about their lives, their children, and their hopes for the future. They are invited in to see other homes, and offered more tea and snacks. Asha asks Parag to write down the names of all the mothers they speak to. By the time they’re hungry for lunch, she can see the story coming together in her mind. “We make a pretty good team,” she says, offering her raised palm to Parag for a high five. He tentatively returns the gesture, and smiles.

  “Hey, do you like pau-bhaji?” she says. “I know a great place near here.”

  AFTER LUNCH, PARAG HAS TO GO TO ANOTHER PART OF THE CITY for his next assignment, so he offers to get a taxi for Asha before heading to the train station. On the corner up ahead, she sees a man selling fresh-cut flowers and garlands.

  “That’s okay,” she says to Parag. “I’m going to stay here a bit longer.”

  He looks at her, raising one eyebrow, and then back over her shoulder at the slum as a warning. She has never been inside Dharavi without an escort.

  “Go on, I’ll be fine.” She gives his shoulder a playful nudge. After he leaves, Asha approaches the flower vendor and asks for five garlands. Then she goes to the ice cream vendor and buys a dozen kulfi ice pops. She enters the settlement again, walking along the path until she comes to the first woman they interviewed this morning, now hanging laundry on the line. Asha holds out two garlands, and gestures toward the woman’s hut. A slow smile spreads across the woman’s face and she ducks between the hanging clothes. She accepts the flowers, places her palms together, and bows her head. Asha smiles and gives her three kulfi pops, then turns back to the path to find the next home, hearing the children’s happy laughter as she walks away.<
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  She distributes the rest of the flowers and kulfi to the other women in much the same way—no words, no translation, no cameras. After she is done, she hails a taxi and climbs into the backseat. With the chance to finally rest, Asha feels a deep ache in her knees, the residue of staying up all night. Her hair feels particularly greasy, more than the usual degree she’s become accustomed to in India. It will be such a pleasure to shampoo it properly once she’s back home. When she was little, her mother would patiently brush it out in the morning while Asha watched cartoons. It was one of her favorite times of day, when she would look up from Bugs Bunny to see her unruly hair tamed into two neat ponytails for school.

  So many memories like this have been coming to Asha lately. The elaborate birthday parties her mother gave her every year, spending the whole morning to make her cake and frosting from scratch. The annual Easter egg hunt she held for all the neighborhood kids in their yard, always hiding a special stash of eggs for Asha in the same corner of her sandbox. And this camera, particularly the camera. Neither of her parents much liked her interest in journalism at first, but her mom eventually came around to the idea. Just as she did when Asha went to college so far away from home, and chose English as her major instead of premed. Despite making many choices that have upset her mother, some even intended to, Asha has never once doubted the steadfastness of her mother’s love. She feels a pang of remorse for how angry she was with her mom before she left, and the short meaningless conversations they’ve had since then.

  IT IS LATE AFTERNOON BY THE TIME ASHA GETS BACK TO THE OFFICE, and although the previous night’s sleep deprivation is beginning to hit her, she can’t stop yet. She goes through the new interviews, and starts writing. She keeps working until she has the skeleton of her story in place. She reviews it all the way through and sits back in her chair. It needs more material and a lot of editing, but there’s a story there, one only she could tell. Asha closes her eyes, and a slow smile spreads across her face. She is exhausted, and there is only one person she wants to talk to. She picks up the phone and dials her parents’ number. It rings four times before the machine picks up. “Mom?” Asha says. “Hi, it’s me. Anyone there? Dad?” She waits a few more moments, then redials. She tries her mother’s mobile phone. No answer. Strange. Where could she be at five P.M. on a weekday? Asha hangs up, leans back in her swivel chair, and stretches her arms high above her head as a deep yawn escapes from her mouth. She can feel the fatigue deep in her bones. She’ll call tomorrow, after getting some sleep.