I imagine them meeting, talking, getting to know each other, and being as inseparable as they used to be once. And perhaps I will get to see Nisha. Perhaps I won’t. But knowing that she has met her sister, known her, will be enough.
One day soon, I will gather the courage to tell Devi. ‘Have you read the letters?’ I ask during every phone call. ‘Not yet,’ she says, that familiar petulant tone creeping into her voice. If she doesn’t read them soon, I will tell her. I have to. She cannot be so close to her sister and not know her.
I will.
Chapter 25
Nisha
Makeshift Steps
Sompur is a drowsy little village, a smattering of huts masquerading as shops littered beside the road, which seems to be mostly given over to a posse of cows and dogs who do not move away as the auto trundles up, so the driver, swearing profusely, is forced off the road and into the muddy ditch. The village seems to be an afterthought, an outpost between towns. A huge peepal tree takes up most of the space on the left, a fisherwoman squatting in the shade afforded by its overhanging branches hawking drooping sardines on a banana leaf tray hitched across the handles of her cane basket. There’s a bus stop opposite, two tired-looking cement posts festooned with peeling posters holding up an awning. A group of teenage boys huddle around a hut sipping a pink-coloured liquid from tiny glass bottles shaped like a woman’s body and look curiously at her as the auto navigates the ditch, gives a reluctant splutter, and dies.
‘I can’t go any further like this,’ the auto driver grumbles in Kannada, lifting his hands up into the air in defeat. ‘Lo,’ he yells at the boys who come over and peek inside, staring right at her unashamedly. ‘Is it always like this here? Those animals don’t move?’ His head jerks away from a cow which has come up to him and is sniffing the steering wheel.
‘Except for the bus. They have respect for the bus.’ The boys smirk.
The cow defecates right there, splattering the auto’s rear wheels with dung, closing its eyes and mooing joyfully now that it has disposed of its burden. ‘Now what am I to do?’ the driver laments, head in his hands.
Nisha jumps off gingerly, trying to avoid getting stung by thorny bushes littering the ditch, picking her way through the various heaps of dung dotting the bushes. The air smells of earth and manure, an organic, earthy tang. Dust swirls in thick swishes around her eyes and she is temporarily blinded. She fishes in her bag for her sunglasses, puts them on. The boys melt away, back to the shop, and whistle softly from the safe distance. She presses fifty rupees into the auto driver’s hands and he grins, yellow teeth flashing. ‘Thank you, thank you, Ma’am,’ he says, starting the auto with a flourish after only three tries, the wheels displacing dung helter-skelter as they navigate the ditch.
She cautiously makes her way onto the road. The dogs bark at this intruder and the cows lumber up to her and thrust their wet faces into her hips. She walks to the fisherwoman who is eyeing her inquisitively while fanning her face with one of the banana leaves. ‘I am looking for Shilpa,’ she says in Kannada, mentally thanking her parents once more.
The woman scrunches up her face in an effort to understand her accent. Nisha repeats her request, enunciating each syllable very clearly. ‘Shilpa,’ the woman shakes her head vigorously. She says something in rapid-fire Kannada, shaking her head back and forth, and Nisha struggles to make sense of what she is saying.
The tang of fish cooking in the relentless sun, the reek of sweat assaults her nose.
‘Can you take me to her house?’ She tries again.
The woman stares intently at her lips, trying to follow her speech.
Nisha points to one of the huts on the far side of the road. ‘House. Shilpa’s house.’
‘Oh, yes, yes.’ The woman nods enthusiastically. She stands, hitches the basket onto her hip and says in Kannada, but slowly this time, ‘Come. I’ll show you.’
And it is that easy. Her heart thudding vigorously in her chest, she follows the woman. She is lightheaded from her journey, the heat, the convent, meeting Sister Priya and now this. The air smells of dung and rotting fish, tastes of fear and a nervous excitement. The fisherwoman walks slightly ahead, her gait uneven, her pace languid.
Nisha wants her to hurry. She wants her to never get there.
The posse of dogs and cows follow at a regal distance. The fisherwoman turns off the main road onto a path which is little more than a strip of mud. A small pond on one side, mostly dry, the smidgen of water reddish yellow, silt overflowing the banks. A banyan tree on the other. A hut, roofed with yellowing hay, mud walls, big-eyed children with protruding bellies clothed in rags etching in the dust with twigs, stopping to stare curiously at them as they pass. A woman wearing a dirty brown sari cooking outside, earthen pot bubbling as it sits on a hearth of smoking twigs, the stinging tang of onion. Chickens squawking. A baby crying somewhere, a plaintive, keening sound. A dog’s bark, sharp, staccato. And the entire posse behind them starts off, a cacophony of howls and yelps and barks and moos.
This may not be my mother. Sister Priya might have got it wrong. And if she hasn’t, well, this might be a different Shilpa altogether. And then, how many Shilpas can there be in this little ghost of a village?
A cat sunning itself on a low wall, the bricks crumbling and riddled with moss: a glossy green carpet, the orange of the bricks peeking through in places. A well, an empty pail lying overturned and forlorn beside it, the coir rope hanging soullessly from the wheel pulley used to haul the pail upwards.
The woman comes to a stop at a little opening between thorny bushes. Nisha sees makeshift steps hewn from a couple of stones arranged on top of each other leading down to fields. The woman lays her basket down, wipes her face with her pallu. She points, gesticulates with her hands and Nisha follows her gaze. ‘Down here,’ she says. ‘Not the big house but the little one after, that is Shilpa’s.’
Nisha nods, presses twenty rupees into the woman’s hands. ‘No, no,’ the woman protests. ‘Yes, yes.’ Nisha insists.
The woman touches the notes to her forehead, kisses them and then deftly ties them into a knot at the end of her pallu. And then she turns and walks away, swallowed up by the haze of yellow dust swirling in her wake, her red sari shimmering in the sun, the mob of dogs and cows following. Nisha stands there for a minute eyeing the makeshift path and then, slowly, she makes her way down.
Fields stretch out on both sides of her, a profusion of twinkling emerald basking in sunlight. A stream tinkles nearby—she can hear it, the gurgle and splash of water play-fighting with the rocks, but she cannot see it. She walks on like the woman asked her to. The path is precarious, requires all her concentration, only wide enough for a foot at a time, the mud slippery, giving way beneath her feet.
The path widens with no warning at all and suddenly she is at a clearing. A dog barks. A house looms up ahead. Hibiscus and aboli flowers wave. Orange tiles, red pillars, veranda. Deserted. A dog bounds up, quickly followed by another. They dance around her legs, and she squats down, pats them, scratches behind their ears. They lick her hands happily, obviously glad of the company. The veranda is cool, the house looks abandoned. The washing line is empty, no clothes billowing on it, the washing stone bereft. The front door, ornate, wooden, carved with impressions of the gods, is shut. ‘Hello?’ She calls. No response. No noise from within. She walks round the back and sees the little house, huddled in the big one’s shadow. Its front faces the fields. There’s a tamarind tree, knobbly brown fruit dancing on every branch. Chickens peck in the mud. The dogs are still boogying around her legs. There’s a veranda running the length of the house, which isn’t saying much. Two doors, both open. A banana tree rocking in the breeze. Her heart thuds loudly in her chest. A crows cries mournfully from its perch among the coconut trees.
‘Hello?’ She calls. From somewhere within she hears a sound. She peers inside the first door. A kitchen, dark. There are a couple of broken flip-flops, the straps held together with safety pins, sitting f
orlorn on the stoop. She slips off her sandals and leaves them there beside the flip-flops to give them company. They smile up at her, pleased, safety pins twinkling. Get a grip, Nisha.
The floor is cool beneath her bare, blistered feet. The kitchen smells stale of food gone bad: old rice, congealed curry. Her head brushes the rotting beams of the ceiling. She bends, ducks inside. There’s only one other room. It houses a worn wooden bench and a book lying on a fraying mat beside the open front door, sheaves of loose, lined paper splayed on top, a pen and an aluminium jug keeping company. The dogs who came bounding up to her sprawl across the stoop beside the front door, side by side, tongues hanging out.
A noise behind her. ‘Who are you and what are you doing here?’ A woman’s voice, strident.
She whips round, colour flooding her cheeks, trying to come up with an excuse for entering this house without permission. What has gotten into her? This is not the Nisha she knows; this is a stranger who has inhabited her body, taken her over, ever since the letter. She wants to say all this, she wants to explain, but the words die on her lips as she takes in the woman facing her, her legs set apart in an argumentative stance, her hair obscured by a towel masquerading as turban, her body sporting a loose nightie, her hand brandishing a coconut tree frond. Nisha takes in the woman’s eyes, leaf-shaped, the colour of coffee with just a dash of milk, her straight nose curving slightly at the end, her perfect voluptuous lips. She stares shamelessly, breathing in the sight of her twin, her doppelganger, standing right there in front of her so close she could touch her if she stretched her arm, and the winter that has taken residence in her chest since her parents died relinquishes its icy hold, allows spring access to her heart.
Chapter 26
Devi
Ebony Waterfall
Ma,
My sister is in England? I flipped through your diary searching for an address, contact details—nothing. No more entries. This is it… All that you have written. Your story.
Weren’t you curious about the couple who adopted Nisha, Ma? Didn’t you want to know where in England they were from, where they were taking your daughter? Why didn’t you find out, ask the nuns? Or did you? But if you did, surely there would be a mention in your diary? Or was there a letter from the nuns somewhere in the house, replete with information about my sister? Once more, I ransacked the house, searched it top to bottom. Once more, I did not find what I was looking for.
I think I know why you didn’t find out, why you let things be, Ma. The temptation to find Nisha, look her up somehow, would have been too much. And you knew only sorrow would come of it, even if you could afford by some miracle the airfare to England, even if you found her, contacted her. What would you say? ‘I am sorry I decided to give you away and keep your sister?’
Ma, the choices you had to make—no mother should have to.
In your diary you say that your hope is that one day my twin and I meet. I will find Nisha, Ma. That is a promise. I will find her and she will be amazed at our likeness. I will open my mouth to speak and my voice will be an echo of hers. I will smile and she will smile right back; the joy that I feel will be mirrored in her face, the face that is a reflection of mine. I hope, Ma, that my sister has had a wonderful life. That your sacrifice paid off. That she is happy, that she is loved.
I have a confession to make, Ma. The letters you wrote to me, that you pressed into my hands at the airport as I was leaving—I can picture them, untouched, smelling of lime pickle, waiting in the suitcase on top of the wardrobe in the flat in England. I didn’t read them. And then, as is my wont, I blamed you for not telling me the truth. You tried, Ma, perhaps later rather than sooner, but you did try.
Ma, I understand so many things now.
The answer to the question—What mother gives her child away at the behest of a madwoman? A desperate one. Your children are comatose with fever; the doctors have given up hope. If someone told you they would both live if you gave one of them to the convent, wouldn’t you do it? Wouldn’t you try anything, anything at all?
I understand why I forgot Nisha—it was my way of coping with the trauma of losing her, much as I fought to remember.
I understand why you didn’t tell me about her.
I understand why I am so angry all the time, why my default emotion is rage, aggression. It is a reaction against a world that bequeathed me a sister I loved and then took her away so capriciously.
I understand fully now why you are the way you are with me. You had to make a choice no mother should have to—choose between her children. And you chose me. I don’t know whether to be grateful or angry. I don’t know what I would have done in your place, if, God forbid, I had to face that decision.
Ma, you wanted me to read your diary; you hoped I would and that Nisha will, one day. When I find her, I will give it to her, Ma, this gift of your words.
In the end, though, despite everything, what comes at me is this: I have a sibling, my twin.
* * *
Ma, a miracle has occurred! It has… a real, live, miracle. A Catholic miracle, a Hindu miracle, A You-Name-It miracle, but a miracle all the same.
I read your entry. I wrote to you. I resolved to find Nisha. And then I went to have a wash.
As I was pouring lukewarm water on my body, I thought I heard a sound. I paused. Bobby barked in that sharp staccato way of his that signals visitors. A few seconds later, I heard him pant the way he does when he’s trying to please whoever’s deigned to pet him. You used to say that the dog was useless as a guard, that he was so friendly all a burglar had to do was scratch him behind his ear.
I knew there was someone at the door, Ma. I was scared, I’ll tell you that. I was all alone, no Jalaja, no Sumitranna, nobody about in the fields. I hurriedly pulled a nightie over my head, wrapped my dripping hair in a towel, picked up one of those coconut tree fronds lying in the bathroom and tiptoed outside, inching along the veranda and into the house. Bobby was nowhere to be seen. On the kitchen stoop lay the gaudiest pair of sandals I ever had the misfortune of setting eyes on, the sequins dotting them no longer shiny, dulled as they were by a coating of brown dust.
My thudding heart relaxed a tiny bit. This was no burglar, I decided. A burglar would not take care to remove their sandals before entering the house they meant to ransack, and, judging from the style and cut of the footwear, the intruder was a woman.
I crept inside, still holding on to the coconut frond, just in case. A woman, endless legs unravelling from beneath a dress so short it could have passed for a T-shirt, bending over the cane mat by the front door, Ma, snooping at my things, making to touch your diary and my letter. The temerity of the woman! First of all she barges into the house uninvited and then attempts to pry into my private musings. Bobby was lying on the front steps, Jalajakka’s mongrel beside him, both of them looking up at this woman, this intruder who seemed to have won them over, with adoring eyes, tongues hanging out.
‘Who are you and what are you doing here?’ I snapped, just as the woman reached out to pick up my letter—my private correspondence with you.
The woman’s hand fell to her side. She straightened, turned around.
The endless legs lived up to the promise. She was tall, dark and stunning. Her hair cascaded down her back, an ebony waterfall, her mouth curved up naturally, as if it was made for smiling. It was slightly lopsided but that added to her charm. She was wearing sunglasses. I knew that when she took the glasses off, her eyes would be almond-shaped, the colour of milk chocolate melting in the sun, framed by long eyelashes. My eyes.
She took a tentative step forward. ‘I’m sorry.’ Her voice was soft, hesitant, musical. Like hearing an echo. ‘I…’
And a name erupted from within the depths of me, rolled out my tongue like a cherished sweet, ‘Nini,’ I whispered. ‘Nini.’
She leaned forward, and shyly put her arm out to touch me. I took her hand, pulled her into my arms. She smelled of sandalwood and vanilla. ‘It’s like looking into a mirror and se
eing a more perfect version of me,’ she said softly, and I looked up at her and kissed her cheek and tasted the memories that had bound us together once, sweet, salty, smacking of love.
And in her embrace, Ma, that part of me that was always searching, always wanting, always restless, always torn, relaxed. It had found, finally, what it was searching for. Without even knowing I was incomplete, I felt whole again. Like how I only realised just how much I loved you when I arrived in England and started missing you, Ma. Like how I realised I had taken the sun for granted when I faced the English winter. I only realised I was missing my sister when she walked into my arms and I felt complete.
She sleeps now, beside me on the mattress that I used to share with you. Soft sighs escape from between half-open lips. I keep watch, just in case she disappears again like she did once before.
I watch her and I write, Ma, the joy blooming out of me in the form of words, settling onto this paper, seasoned with tears, like the first soft snow of winter.
She showed me her notebook. All those many jottings in her methodical, organised, mathematician’s scrawl. My sister the statistical consultant. I read about her upbringing, how she was loved and yet denied physical affection, the affection I had in droves but pushed away. I read about Matt, who loves her like she deserves to be loved. I read about her turmoil when she found out she was adopted. I read about how she found the picture of us, the picture I ransacked this house for. I read about her quest to find me. I read all her many questions, neatly noted down in her book: Why did my mother give me away but keep my sister? Where is my father? Why is there no mention of him?
The Forgotten Daughter Page 28