by Preethi Nair
My flat was small but it was located near the Retiro Park, in an area that resembled a village. Tree-lined streets were dotted with a few obscure shops filled with strange curiosities. The grocer’s opposite me was like a little toyshop with fruit beautifully displayed and tins and jars stacked neatly. The most expensive products, like bottles of gin and whiskey, were guarded safely behind the counter, which the owner never left. His wife would help all the old ladies who came in for a chat or give sweets to the little children, pinching their cheeks or cooing at them. Sometimes their two older children would come in and work on the weekends. If they didn’t see me for a couple of weeks they would be concerned, though they knew that it was not in my nature to defect to a large supermarket. In many ways, their little shop reminded me of Amma’s. I loved going in and it never once frustrated me that it would take half an hour to buy a bunch of grapes because people just stood and chatted. Everybody knew everyone else.
I had named the caretaker of my building, a woman in her fifties, ‘Zubi’, after a Spanish goalkeeper because she didn’t miss a thing. If you asked her my shoe size she probably knew it. On several occasions, I caught her cleaning the landing with her mop, her ear pressed against the front door and it felt like the gasman came every week because this is how often she let herself in.
On my way to work, I’d stop and have coffee at the local bar. The waiters would put out a coffee cup and begin to toast a croissant before I walked in at around nine o’ clock. Then I walked to the boutique which was half an hour away, passing the old man who would wish me a good day, as he stopped momentarily from begging on the street, and the lady with perfectly set hair who was always dressed in a suit would just smile as she was walked her two dogs.
In the afternoons there was a three-hour lunch break, so I would go back to the flat, cook and fall asleep watching the customary Latin American soap. All the banging and shouting that came from the open windows stopped at this time as housewives everywhere settled themselves to find out whether Rosa had managed finally to discover the affair her husband was having. Work finished around seven or eight and we’d all go out for drinks afterwards, tapas filling us along the way so that by the time we were ready for dinner, we weren’t really hungry.
Working with Enrique was not how I expected, it was better. Every day was different and filled with colour. Some days I did administration, calling and arranging meetings with clients, other days I would talk to suppliers and sometimes I would sit in the workshop and design, working with his team of designers and tailors. Occasionally, I popped into the boutique but it never lasted long as I didn’t have the patience to flatter the clients as he did. ‘No, cariño, you don’t look fat in that,’ he would say to women popping out of dresses that did them no favours. Six months into the job, he wanted me to go abroad and buy fabrics.
‘I’m thinking ethnic, Maya, something Indian, find me a supplier.’
‘How do I do that?’ I asked, thinking that the only supplier I knew was the shop in Green Street. ‘Go there,’ he said. ‘I have a list of Indian suppliers, take a month and come back with what you think is appropriate.’
‘To India?’ I asked bewildered.
‘Yes, yes, you’re from there, aren’t you? It shouldn’t be a problem.’
I couldn’t tell him that I hadn’t been back for twenty years, that it wasn’t something that I wanted to do, that I was comfortable in Madrid. ‘No,’ I said, ‘it won’t be a problem.’
‘You can’t go, Maya,’ Marcos exploded. ‘Are you crazy? Tell him no.’ That’s what I appreciated about Marcos, encouragement and support when I most needed it.
‘Marcos, don’t be like that,’ I replied.
‘How long will it be for?’ he asked.
‘About a month.’
‘You know you don’t need to work, Maya, tell him you are not going. A month is too long.’
Despite the sulking and the silence, I left on Monday morning for Madrid, saying that I loved him and I would call as soon as I got to India. Then I began to get organised. I made two calls; one was to my father in the States. I thought perhaps he could help me with contacts for when I got there and maybe someone who could accompany me and give me assistance with the language. I also wanted an address for his parents; I didn’t have any intention of visiting them but it was always better to have it. He said he would call me back in fifteen minutes. I called up Ravi and asked him the same thing. ‘No problem, Maya, I’ll have someone waiting for you at Mumbai airport and they will have a list of people that I will arrange for you to meet, also take these numbers just in case you need anything,’ he said. I waited for my father to call me back from the States. After two days had passed, it was time to leave. There was no return phone call.
It was intensely humid when I got off the plane in Mumbai. It was as if the heat wanted to wake me from a deep, deep sleep by trying to steam all the dormant feelings out of me. A smell lingered in the air; I couldn’t quite make it out but it was like sweat and sadness. You try and push it away by not inhaling properly, but it follows you. At first you cannot see very clearly, everything is blurred with dust and heat. The distant sound of ringing comes at you from everywhere; bicycles and cowbells, scooters and car horns, all keeping you alert so you will not go back into slumber. As I stepped into the airport building, these sounds grew louder as if to compete with the shouting, protesting and bustle inside the terminal building. Sweat-stained khaki uniforms with bushy moustaches and guns fixed me with their gaze as if to say, ‘You are one of ours.’ I was scared.
The guard took my passport and handed it back to me with a flirtatious glance which I did not respond to. Averting my eyes, I took it, and walked away. Young boys fought over each other to help me carry my suitcase, shouting ‘Ma’am, Ma’am, Ma’am’, all so desperate that the experience of picking one was impossible. The stench grew stronger as we walked out of the airport, the smell of armpits and urine was everywhere, the noise became louder and suddenly, I was descended upon and then surrounded by countless faces, begging at me, crying out; limbless, blind, old, young, mothers with babies, children shouting ‘paisa’. All at once, the stench no longer followed you but was there in front of you; fear and sadness. I handed over whatever small change I had, knowing that it wouldn’t make a difference, but at least for that moment, I was unaccountable. They came after me and the only thing I could do was look away. Amongst the chaos, I saw someone holding a big sign with my name written across it. Relief.
Ravi Thakker had called up one of his friends who had arranged a driver and chaperone to meet me just outside the airport. Krishna, the chaperone, introduced himself and asked me whether this was my first trip to India. I didn’t know what to say, this was the country where I was born and then for twenty years, I blocked it off like it wasn’t even on the globe.
‘I was born here,’ I replied.
He smiled, sensing that I was a stranger in my own country.
As we got into the car, he waved the beggars away like irritating flies. Each time we stopped at some lights, they came at us from all directions, putting their arms through the open windows. He continued talking to me as if they didn’t exist and when one little girl put her hand through the window, I had just enough time to remove my bracelet and give it to her.
‘You shouldn’t do that, Maya. Most of it is organised and these children don’t get to see any of what you give them. Ignore it.’
How could you ignore what was staring you in the face? But people of better means drove through the poverty as if it were all part of everyday life, they were accustomed to it. Shantytowns built with shacks and cardboard boxes littered the streets, roofed with dirty linen or newspapers that provided no shelter from the rain. Surrounding them were sewage pits and dumps where children played. These towns were set against a backdrop of colourful billboards announcing the latest Bollywood film or advertising domestic appliances, creams and make-up with Indian ladies who looked too fair to be Indian. People drove by on motorbi
kes, carrying mobile phones, or in fast cars wearing designer clothes, fighting for space on the roads alongside errant cows that wandered freely. Women dressed in saris, alive and vibrant with just a little flesh showing, gift-wrapped by the tucks and folds of their garments, yet the way they would look away shyly, suggested it was wrong to admire them.
As we drove nearer the city, more people wore western clothes and the rhythm changed again, with pop music blasting out of the shops and roadside stalls selling Coca Cola and Fanta in returnable bottles. The smell of roast peanuts and traffic replaced the human stench and MTV played in the background, satellite dishes eagerly swallowing up the waves of Whitney Houston’s ‘I’m Every Woman’.
The driver pulled up to the Taj, a five-star hotel in the middle of the city. The floors were made of white marble and the ceilings were high, beautifully sculptured with intricate designs and painted in fresh, clean white. Hanging from them were ornate crystal chandeliers. The bedroom was immaculate with a pristine bathroom and a double bed scattered with colourful silk cushions. The air conditioning was switched on so you wouldn’t have to open the windows because when you did, the opulence of where you were living made you feel guilty. The same contradiction that resided in this place resided in me. The same India, where I was from, gave birth to a mass of antitheses; happiness, sadness, poverty, richness, abundance, hunger, piety, decadence which engulfed its people. All co-existing together.
I called Marcos and said that I was fine. ‘Make sure you come home soon, Maya. I am sorry about …’ The connection went dead. I called up Ravi at the office and thanked him for arranging all my meetings and asked him one more thing: if he could find out from my mother the address where we lived in the town to the north of Mumbai and then fax it to me. He said he would see what he could do. I went to bed.
Krishna came to collect me in the morning to help me find the suppliers that I had arranged to see on Enrique’s list. A few sat beefed up behind their desks in their dull, grey offices in tower blocks, hiding behind their moustaches which twitched beneath the blades of a rotating fan. When we asked to see their workshops, they hesitated, politely refused and then waved the most elegant fabrics in front of us to entice us away from the very thought.
Only a few invited us to the workshops; dank and sweaty with no proper ventilation and where children as young as five were working. Nobody looked up to see who we were and got on with weaving, dyeing and embroidering. They seemed unfazed by the hovel that they were working in and just continued; they had other things to think about. From those smelly black pits emerged the most lavish fabrics; pink and red chiffon, gold raw silk, turquoise blue taffeta, delicate white organza intricately woven and embroidered. Beautiful things were born from those pits, like the recess of a troubled mind where occasionally inspirational ideas emerged. The materials came out into the sunshine, without a trace of the suffering or the hungry hands that had toiled on them and the irony was that these fabrics were often shipped abroad to be displayed on a Western model who starved herself to fit into them.
Ravi’s list was a little better and whoever put it together either had a conscience or wanted us to see a better side. We collected samples and came to some kind of agreement with a few of the suppliers. With over two weeks left, I kept looking at the fax with the address that Ravi had sent to me and asked Krishna to take me there.
We drove past the sea that vomited a murky brown swell onto a beach and did its best to glisten against the jaundiced sun. Children ran along the beach following a boy who had found a discarded bicycle tyre. An hour north of Mumbai, we found the large colonial-style house protected by enormous gates. Inside the compound, there were many trees. The house looked smaller than my fragmented memories of it and now belonged to a local landowner. Krishna told the man what we were doing there and he invited us in for tea. We sat in the main room behind the veranda. I remembered this room, now dirty white with red-tiled floors. There used to be a sofa in there; Satchin and I would pull the covers off and Ammamma would get annoyed at us. Then I saw a few faded images: a glass cabinet filled with dolls that my father had bought for me; the straw-filled attic which we were asked not to play in because of roaming snakes; Amma sitting on the veranda immaculately dressed, waiting, talking to the postman as he passed with letters; Ammamma’s frustration at the dhobi who over-starched our clothes but who she could not bring herself to get rid of; the servants collecting cow dung for its innumerable uses; the house full of neighbours; the puppy. One of the servants interrupted my thoughts as she came out with a tray on which she carried three shiny steel cups. She handed one to me, her eyes narrowed and she looked at me.
‘Nalini? Nalini?’ she shouted, as she put the tray down and began to talk furiously in Hindi. ‘What is she saying?’ I asked Krishna.
She says that she had missed you so much after you left and it has never been the same. Then she stopped, looked at her employer, and added, ‘Since before Sahib came.’
‘Tell her I am Maya, Nalini’s daughter.’
He told her. She smiled, then she laughed and those yellow pan-chewing, gapped teeth and that white cotton headpiece transported me back to my young Aya. I held out my arms and she came to hug me. ‘Maya, Maya,’ she kept repeating, using her hands to show me how small I had been. Her eyes widened and she asked for Satchin. I shook my head and looked down and she came to sit next to me. Her smell of damp linen and wood smoke reminded me of the times when she took me to the kitchen to watch my Amma and Ammamma cook. ‘And Ammamma?’ I asked. My Aya looked at me and said, ‘Collenauta’. She had gone back to Collenauta.
Aya asked after Amma. ‘And Raul?’ she continued, as she made an awkward face. I shook my head again, thinking how it was possible to explain everything that had gone since. Her face beamed as she made sweeping gestures with her hand. ‘What is she saying, Krishna? What is she saying?’
‘She says she’s glad as he was never good to her. Nalini married a mistake.’
What did she say that for, he loved her. ‘Tell her, no,’ I said. ‘He really loved her.’
Aya looked disappointed, moved her headpiece, said something back and fell silent.
‘He loved himself,’ Krishna translated.
We saw workers planting contradiction in the paddy fields as Krishna and I drove back. He did love her. I know he did. He was a bit slow in communicating, especially bad in letter writing, but that was it.
Riding in a rickshaw to the sea, my Ammamma’s voice whispered softly to me as I sat bouncing on her lap, telling me that the labourers were planting their doubts, their worries, hopes and dreams there in the water and the soil, hoping the ground would nourish with its magic and resolve all that needed solutions. Carefully tending to it, waiting patiently until the moon had done the necessary cycles so that the musician could bring the rains. Then finally they gathered whatever answers had been given to them and took them to the mills. Removing all that was unnecessary, the wrapping that comes with every gift, the husk was separated from the grain. It appeared tough at first, resisting the attempts of separation but once it came away, it came easily. They gave thanks.
Patience, she said, is what this first taught them, for this was one of the most important things. Without this, all the rest of the work would be made redundant. They then laid the grain out on the ground so the sun could send its heat to every single one, magnifying life, energy, fertility with which it had been sewn and the wisdom which was so sought after. From the sky, birds saw it sparkle and came flocking around so someone had to stand guard and watch carefully. Brushed and collected, people waited eagerly. Then it was steamed so its goodness that had been fermenting could expand and fill empty stomachs with the magical answers that came from the soil.
Some people didn’t want to hear the answers so they ate more, hoping for different solutions, indulging and revelling in the feelings that the food temporarily gave them but when the answers came back the same, these too they discarded. They sought further comfort, sometimes
in sweet things like laddoos or jilebies, which quelled human emotion. Others were repulsed by the answers that surfaced and ate just enough to see them through the day. Many went with empty stomachs and these people had no answers, only questions that made them ache with hunger.
We passed the sea again. ‘Stop the car,’ I shouted to Krishna.
‘Here, Maya?’
‘Yes, please, stop the car.’
He indicated to the driver. I got out and ran, ran as fast as I could into the sea, the sea that I thought was a murky swell, the predator. I was a part of it, it was a part of me and I let the swell wash over me. Then I sat on the pebbles so my clothes would dry, and breathed, breathed in time with the ripples of the waves. Krishna came rushing over to me with a look of utter disbelief. He rattled off all the diseases I could have caught by that one act. ‘What were you thinking of, Maya?’
‘I was trying to find the pace.’
He looked completely confused and probably thought it was some bizarre Western notion that I had brought with me.
‘Yes, but there is still typhoid, diphtheria, malaria …’ he began again.
I nodded.
‘Let me get you some clean clothes from the car.’
‘No, I want to sit here by myself for a while, so that they can dry.’
He went back to the car reluctantly as I sat and listened to the sea and tried to find the pace so I could read the signs. A balloon seller came up to me, children crowded around me and instead of giving them money, I bought the balloon seller’s entire collection and handed them out to the children. Colourful balloons ran along the beach. I went back to the car.