The thing is I like Rohan. Very much. More than I have ever liked anybody before. I don’t want to be cheap in his eyes; like you have warned that girls will be once they have gone the whole way.
And so, I brush my hair off my face with fingers that tremble. ‘I need to go home,’ I say. For all my bravado, I think, I am still a meek mummy’s girl.
‘Okay,’ he yanks a reed from beside him and sticks it in his mouth, sucking deeply.
He stands and gives me his hand to pull me up. I do not take it. I hold on to the banyan tree for support and heave myself up on unsteady legs, dust my sari, which is thankfully dry now. His hand drops to his side and I keep my gaze fixed on it as he turns and starts walking up the slope to the road, as I slowly follow.
When I rush home, an hour later than I said I would—common practice for me, you know to expect it —frenziedly trying to iron out my crumpled sari and dislodge the clumps of mud adhering to the skirt, you are waiting, your eyes wild, an expression in them I cannot name. You do not say anything, anything at all, just allow me to talk myself out. And still that expression, that strange glint in your eye. The first sliver of foreboding slithers down my spine. I have never seen you like this. Usually you are shouting, you are yelling, you are smacking your head, you are sobbing. You are never silent.
Still not saying a word, you retrieve the cane from its hiding place behind the kitchen door. You’ve only ever used it to scare the crows that dare to steal grains meant for the chickens. You come towards me and only then, far too late, I comprehend what you mean to do. I make to run but you are already there. You do not heed my pleas, my entreaties, my explanations. You ignore Bobby the puppy’s whines as he cowers beneath the aboli bushes howling mournfully, his paws covering his ears. And you whip me for the first time in my life although I’ve given you plenty of cause to whip me before. I am too stunned to protest, too shocked to fight back. You whip me frenziedly, desperately, the fragranced breeze lifting my sari and helpfully exposing tender flesh. You whip me, unmindful of the tears streaming down your face and soaking your sari blouse. You whip me until Jalajakka comes back from the market and yanks you off, her face blanched of colour, her basket of shopping scattered all over the courtyard, bitter gourds bursting in a spectacular green-and-white mess, a marrow regurgitating creamy gooey fluff; and the chickens have free rein, pecking at the seeds of the watermelon which lies broken and ruined, a green-backed book with red pages, bleeding pink water onto dry red mud, tinting it the dirty orange of sadhus’ robes, leaving me sunken on the ground, weeping red welts rising on my back and arms.
Dusk descends; the sky a warm golden pink. Crickets sing. Bobby comes up to me, tail between legs, and licks the tears off my face. The air reeks of rotting watermelon and decomposing vegetables, a rich organic smell. Lights come on in the houses among the fields and on the far side of the hill a flickering light jumps, playing hide and seek with the shadows. The first of the glow-worms arrive, a series of pearly illuminations which turn on and off, on and off, tantalising. Dancing to a tune only they know.
After a bit, you come outside, your face and eyes swollen from crying.
Why are you crying, I think, when I am the one you have hurt?
You gather me in your arms and carry me inside, and I am too tired and in too much pain to protest, though my mind rebels. You apply salves to my wounds and bandage them, the smell of mint making me want to retch, the agony making me feel faint. Your hands are deft, your touch gentle. You feed me rice and fish like you used to when I was a child, fashioning a ball of rice with fish in the middle just the way I like it, and I force it down past the lump in my throat and all I taste are tears. Salty with an aftertaste of rage, hurt and a residue of the guilt that is ever present. Afterwards, we sleep side by side, you and I, sharing a mattress as is our wont, and still you have not said a word and neither have I, although I know you are not asleep—your breath too even, too controlled. I am unable to sleep because of the aching, throbbing pain in every part of my body and the anger that bubbles up inside, threatening to burst out of me in scorching waves.
Ma, wet splotches dot this sheet of paper and I realise that I am crying, tears of rage. I look at it all written down here and I can taste the pain, touch the anger bursting out of me. The hurt is as raw now as it was that evening. I cannot write anymore. Not today. I think there is enough here to keep us both occupied at the hospital tomorrow, to fill the silence.
Oh, I almost forgot. Ma, just as I was leaving your bedside this afternoon, the nurse came to me, holding out something, ‘Here, this was lying beside your mother. That woman, Shali, brought it in.’
A tattered, worn notebook, like the ones I had at school. I opened it—could you fault me? A diary. Yours. The first entry written when you were just a child, your handwriting neater than mine ever was. I have started reading it—I cannot help it, Ma. I am giving you the gift of my thoughts; isn’t it but fair that I get a glimpse into yours?
Yours,
Devi.
Chapter 3
Shilpa
Plantain Podi
Plantain Podi (Serves 4):
Ingredients:
Vegetable oil—3 cups
Two green plantains, sliced thinly into rounds
Gram flour—2 cups
1 teaspoon chilli powder
Water as required
Salt to taste
Method:
Place gram flour in a mixing bowl along with chilli powder. Add water and mix to a gloopy paste, not too watery, mind. Add the plantains and mix until each piece is fully covered.
Heat the oil in a deep-bottomed frying pan. When the oil is very hot, drop the plantain pieces in, one by one, standing back so the oil doesn’t splatter you. When the pieces turn the deep orange of the sky at dusk, take them out using a porous ladle. Serve hot with coconut chutney (recipe to follow).
* * *
Dear Diary,
My name is Shilpa and I am thirteen and three quarters years old. Today I got my period. To celebrate the occasion, my mother presented me with you, dear Diary. You are the first gift I have ever received and are the only notebook I have that is brand new. My school notebooks (I go to the local government school which is free), are all hand-me-downs, sewn together from loose, empty sheets torn from other books. My mother must have been saving for a very long time to be able to afford you, dear Diary. As it is, we hardly have enough money to buy rice and dhal and oil from the ration shop.
I went to bed last night with a pain in my stomach and lower back and when I woke this morning, the old sari we use as a mattress was stained. My mother pulled water from the well (usually my job but I was in pain all over and couldn’t do it) for my wash, and then we cleaned the mattress together, she scrubbing and I rinsing. Then she sat me down in the shade of the banana and coconut trees, the crows cackling and the frogs croaking as the wind hissed among the trees, the fragrant air tasting of rain, her hands smelling of the soap used to scrub the mattress, and she told me the story of my birth.
I have heard this story a million times before and yet I never tire of it. We are poor now, but when my mother first came to this village as a new bride, she and my father were poorer still. On their wedding day, my father made it clear to my mother that her job was to produce healthy strapping boys to help out with the farming. While she waited to get pregnant, my mother worked as a servant except for three months of the year during the monsoons when all the women in the village were incorporated into sowing paddy saplings. ‘Our duty as women,’ my mother intoned in her musical voice as she plaited my hair, ‘is to get married, have children.’
‘But Ma,’ I said, ‘I want to study, work in an office.’
‘Aiyyo, don’t tell your father that,’ she grumbled. ‘You are only going to school because it is free and because nobody will take you on as a servant. You are too scrawny they say.’ She sighed deeply. ‘Wish we had enough money to buy some meat so I could fatten you up,’ her voice took on that melanc
holy tinge I hated. Any minute now she would commence sobbing, hitting herself with her fists, lamenting the fact of her birth, my birth, our sorry circumstances.
‘Tell me the story,’ I said, desperate to stop her tears.
A year went by, then two, my mother said, her hands gently working warm coconut oil into my hair, her touch comforting as a soft pillow at the end of a long day. People started to talk, calling my mother barren, urging my father to leave her and marry a fertile woman instead. And then, just when she was despairing, my mother got pregnant. She prayed and my father prayed for it to be a boy. Her belly grew bigger and bigger and she grew more and more tired, but she had to work. And then one stormy afternoon, as the clouds held court and thunder reigned supreme, as the intermittent bursts of lightning picked out rows of women, their backs bent, singing to ease the mind-numbing rigour of sowing paddy saplings, their voices carrying over the drumming rain, the mud squelching beneath their bare feet, my mother felt this bolt of pain in her belly, like nothing she had ever experienced before. Her thighs were soaked as a burst of water ran down between her legs, nothing to do with the raindrops pelting down from up above, the gods crying, bemoaning their fate for being stuck amongst angry clouds. The air tasted of earth gorging on rainwater; a pregnant, sated smell. The pain assaulted my mother again and then again until, with a thump and a plop, I dropped down into the mud with a high-pitched squeal to rival the groan of thunder and the screech of my mother’s agony. A squirming raging bundle, christened in mud. A girl.
‘I did not have any more children after you. I could not.’ My mother sighed. ‘But your father did not leave me.’ This is the bit I like best. I think it is so romantic.
‘Why, Ma? Why didn’t he leave you if he wanted sons so?’ I asked, knowing that any minute now…
My mother blushed, colour flooding into her face, making her honeyed complexion glow. ‘He likes my cooking,’ she mumbled.
‘Anyway, enough said.’ Her voice was brisk as she tied my plait up neatly with a strip of old housecoat masquerading as ribbon and turned me round to face her. ‘You are a woman now. You know what this means, don’t you?’ Her eyes were serious.
A butterfly, brilliant yellow wings tinged with emerald, landed on a hibiscus flower. The sky was a bright blue, cloudless. ‘Yes, Ma.’
‘Your duty as a woman is to make a good marriage. Your husband may not be as forgiving as mine, Shilpa.’ Her voice soft as a ripe cashew. ‘So remember this.’ My mother cupped my face in her hands. This close, her eyes were tawny, like the muddy water collecting in pools in the holes in the road during the monsoons, and flecked with gold. ‘Please your husband. He is your God. Keep him happy. Give him children. Throw away all these fancy ideas of studying and working in offices. You are going to stop school as soon as you get a job in one of the houses where I work. Come,’ she said.
My mother is permanently tired, always grumpy. She is either yelling or crying. Today she was neither. My coming of age had surprised a rare good mood out of her.
‘To celebrate your becoming a woman,’ she said, ‘we will make plantain podis today, with the plantain Mrs. D’Sa gave me. You make them. I will watch. From now on, you do all the cooking. I know you can cook, but that is not enough. You have to cook well. The most important skill you can learn is how to make something out of nothing, feed the brood. There will be times when all you have in the house is half a potato, a sliver of onion, no chillies, a smidgen of tomato and no money to buy any more. Yet you will be expected to cook and feed a dozen people. We might as well start now. I will tell you all my secrets.’
She walked up to where the bedding was piled haphazardly and picked something from underneath the pillow. ‘I got you this,’ she said and there was a strange expression on her face. I realised with some shock that she was shy. My mother. ‘I was waiting for you to become a woman to give it to you. Since you like your learning so much…’ Something flat and rectangular. I took it from her, my heart fluttering like a trapped bird. A book. Shiny and new and imbued with the fresh smell of promise. You, dear Diary. I hugged you close, held you next to my burgeoning chest. At that moment I would have done anything my mother asked, even if she had ordered me to wed the sun.
‘You can write your recipes in this,’ she said. ‘The ones I teach you. I have them all in here,’ she tapped her forehead. ‘But you like writing things down, I know.’
And so I have compromised. I have written the recipe on one side and my thoughts on the other. You are so beautiful, your pages so pristine, unsoiled, untouched by grimy hands before mine that I almost didn’t want to sully you with writing. Soon your pages will be thumbed, your edges will become worn, but I promise you this: I will keep you always.
The green plantain podis I made today were the best I have ever tasted. I thought it was just me, my pride in my cooking, but my mother’s smile, her nod of acceptance, her, ‘Not bad,’ when she bit into one, my father’s gulping them down with gusto, mumbling, ‘These don’t even need chutney, they are so good. You will make some man very happy one day,’ between hasty mouthfuls—these were reward enough.
Afterwards, as I went about doing the myriad chores that define my day—drawing water from the well, watering the plants, feeding the chickens, sweeping the floor, grinding masala into paste, my back aching and my stomach hurting, I thought of the family I would one day have: the handsome husband, the brood of children—who would all take pleasure in my cooking. My husband would beam at me and say, ‘I am so lucky to be married to the best cook in the village.’ My children would cluster round me, like the hens were doing as I scattered grain for them. They would tug at my sari, wrap their twig arms around my sari skirt: ‘You are the best Ma in the world.’
When I was little, some minister or other from the local government visited our school. It was a big event. We all had to line up and salute as he arrived. We had to walk up to him and shake hands while pictures were clicked. My best friend at the time, Anisa, was scared by the flashing camera and burst into tears. The minister had sat us down in a circle and asked each of us what we wanted to be when we grew up. Most boys said ‘farmer’, some girls said ‘secretary’, Duma’s son said his dream was to be a watchman. When it was my turn, I said, very loudly and clearly, ‘I want to be a minister like you.’ The minister had laughed then. ‘Come here,’ he had said. I had walked up to him and watched my hand being swallowed up by his huge one. It was wet and slimy like the frog that took refuge in our kitchen once, hiding from the rat snake that had made our courtyard its home. ‘And why do you want to be a minister?’
I had turned round and looked at the snapping camera, the dozens of adoring, admiring eyes facing me, Anisa’s scared, tear-stained face. ‘Just looks like something fun to do,’ I had said and the minister had burst out laughing, and that was the picture in the newspaper the next day, the minister’s face, mouth wide open and displaying yawning gums like a python’s the moment before it gobbles up its unsuspecting victim, and me standing next to him, looking poised, my hand disappearing in his clammy one.
I was the heroine of the school for the ensuing two days, revelling in all the attention from teachers as well as students. I discarded Anisa’s friendship as casually as throwing away a mango pip and chose friends from the many offers that were forthcoming. I was rude to my mother, not caring when she said I was getting ideas above my station and whipped me. I asked my teachers if they knew how one became a minister. Not one of them had a convincing answer.
But now—today when I served my father the podis I had made, when my mother bit into one, I saw the same admiration, basked in the same feeling I had enjoyed that day when I stood holding the minister’s hand. Pleasure, that was it, pleasure and a sense of accomplishment.
So, if someone asked me now what I want to be when I grow up, this is what I would reply: I would like a house to call my own with a kitchen where I will concoct delicacies to feed my family—my husband, my children.
A wife and a mother. Th
at’s what I’d like to be.
Chapter 4
Nisha
Broadsheet Confetti
Questions crowd Nisha’s head, demanding answers like a class of unruly children. The letter sits on the sofa, a few sheets of paper the greenish blue of Matt’s eyes when he just wakes up. How can a few words have the power to uproot her, destroy her life, her belief in who she is? To calm herself, she leafs through her notebook, coming to a stop at the notes she has made about her parents. She reads through, picks up her pen and starts writing:
9. They never told me they loved me, per se, though they did sign letters, notes and emails ‘Love, Mum/Dad.’ No x for kiss.
10. My mum used to kiss me goodnight when I was younger. But that stopped around the time I turned twelve and started puberty.
11. My happiest memories of my parents are when they were teaching me something. They would be so animated then, so eager to impart knowledge, so full of praise when I caught on. I wanted to learn more just to please them.
12. They never told me I was adopted. They never let on. I didn’t have a clue.
Nisha rereads what she has written. Not much. She cannot think of anything else.
Twelve points describing my parents—that’s twelve more than what I know about me. Who am I?
Enough of this, Nisha.
She closes her eyes, pictures the man and woman she still thinks of as her parents, who will always be her parents. Her mother, those leaf-shaped eyes that crinkled when she smiled. Her father, the way he rubbed his nose when he was thinking. Should she add that to the list? That would make it thirteen, which some people consider unlucky. Not her, she doesn’t believe in such nonsense. Do I really not believe or have I been taught not to believe? If I had been brought up in India, would I have been different?
Nisha, what’s got into you?
I have been living a lie, that’s what’s got into me. I am not who I thought I was all this while, the daughter of Lekha and Ravi Kamath, renowned scientists. I am the daughter of a couple in India who did not want me, who gave me to the convent from where I was adopted. Why? Why did my birth parents give me away? Was it because I was ugly, an imperfect baby with a gash for a mouth?
The Forgotten Daughter Page 4