by Amita Trasi
I fell asleep again, and when I woke up the morning birds had returned to their nest, and night had fallen. I could hear my name being mentioned outside. The voice was distant at first, bouncing off the corridor walls and approaching my room. I could hear footsteps and a woman’s gentle voice, comforting and maternal, saying, “You work with that organization in Bombay. You help so many kids. Help this one. She is a child. If you leave her here, you know what will happen. She will live like all those women. Take her, I beg you.” I imagined her to be elderly with grey hair.
A man’s voice boomed in the corridor outside. “But Aai, I cannot take her. I work with street kids in Bombay and children who don’t have a family. Her grandmother is alive . . . ”
“Look, her grandmother will only make her life worse. The police will arrest the villagers who killed her mother and find out who did this to the girl. But you know how that works. Nobody is going to go to jail. Money will solve that problem. Then what will happen to this girl? You are my son and I expect no less from you. She is all alone unless you take her with you.” The woman’s voice was soft yet stern.
The man sighed resignedly.
The sound of their footsteps entered the room now. The old woman sat by my bedside, tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, and gave me a warm smile.
“There, there, you are safe now. They will leave you alone,” she said and looked at the man. But the man looked at me blankly, said nothing, shook his head, and sighed again.
“My dear, you will go with this Sahib to the city of Bombay and live with his family. You will do as he says from now on. Do you understand, my dear?” she asked.
I nodded.
Before we left, I watched the funeral pyre of my mother from afar, its flames leaping and rising into the sky. Amma’s body was placed on the logs of wood, and I wondered how her once living body could so easily go up in smoke, how ashes were all that remained of a lively, smiling face. The priest said a mantra that drifted in the emptiness and disappeared along with the flames. There was nobody there, not even Sakubai, nobody to sing mourning songs, nobody to say a goodbye to Amma except Sahib and me. Sahib paid the priest and stood at a distance, watching the fire after the priest left. We both waited until the fire had died down, then he turned his back towards the charred remains and walked away, leaving me to catch up to him. That’s when Sahib told me he had offered Sakubai some money and asked her to stay away from me.
“It’s better that way.” He smiled at me.
In the days after my life had taken a turn, I must have been in a daze because nothing made sense anymore. So it never occurred to me to question why any of this was happening to me. I didn’t even grieve over the death of the one person I loved the most. I felt like an empty bucket tossed out in the sea, drifting at the whim of the waves.
I don’t remember exactly how we arrived on a train to Bombay—if it was a bullock ride or a bus ride from the village to the railway station. There are faded memories of this journey to Bombay—of hawkers peddling samosas, chai, and cold drinks as they ran alongside the train, the wind blowing on my face from the window, and a dim image of Sahib sitting beside me, offering me a packet of biscuits as he adjusted his glasses on his nose and continued to read.
It was 1988 and many things changed in my life from that time on. When the train came to a stop in Bombay, I watched it from the window. This was the city Amma had talked about for so long. It was where my father lived. Sahib and I stood by the door, only to be thrust back into the train by a crowd eager to step out. It was alarming—the sudden crowd of people on the railway platform—some running towards a train, others waiting anxiously for another train to arrive. I worried that all these people would know what had happened that night with that man; they would stare at me, spit on me. How ashamed I felt imagining their eyes on me! I walked behind Sahib, keeping my eyes lowered, hugging my bundle of clothes closer to me, trying to hide my face in it. But when I looked around, I realized people were passing me by and not giving me even a glance.
A terrible void filled me as Sahib lifted me and put me in the backseat of a taxi. Immediately after, I felt a sense of panic when the crowded city rushed past me through the windows—the sounds and the noises of the rumbling buses, the cars that raced through crowded streets, the beggars who knocked on the taxi windows asking for food. Everything around me was spinning. I wanted to scream, let my terror out, but I admonished myself to be very quiet. We stopped outside the gates of a building, and a chowkidar opened the gates for us. But I had almost stopped breathing, and Sahib had to take my hand and pull me inside the apartment complex, into a world which forever changed my life..
I look back at a time when, absorbed in our own sweet lives, we were unable to see the sadness in another’s eyes.
– TARA
Eight
That morning at the police station, Inspector Pravin Godbole told me Mukta was sold as a maid servant to one of the middle class families and had lived with them as a slave ever since. I imagined Mukta crouched in the corner of some house, shivering at the touch of another man, waiting and hoping someone would rescue her.
“It is her,” he said confidently. “She’s got green eyes just like this girl in the picture you showed me the other day. A local NGO needs our help in raiding the apartment and rescuing her. They told me her name was Mukta, and she had lived with a family in a building on the same street as your apartment . . . wait, what is the address you gave me the other day?”
He opened a file and read my address aloud, “Vijaya Co-operative Housing Society. Yes, that’s it!”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said.
I was suspicious. Could it be that easy finding someone after eleven years? Maybe I was just lucky, I told myself. I rode in the jeep with the police to a part of town I had never been to. The jeep sliced through narrow alleys, took many twists and turns, and rushed toward pedestrians who moved out of the way just in time. By the time we reached the place, I was feeling motion sick.
“Here, here,” Inspector Godbole directed the driver of the jeep as he squeezed past a car and parked in a small space near an apartment building. A large truck barreled down the street, honking past us just as the inspector was about to get out of the jeep.
“You wait here,” he instructed me as if I were a little child. I watched him run up the stairs and felt a need to run up the stairs after him. I wanted to knock on that apartment door and call out to Mukta. Then she would recognize me. I would envelope her in my arms and take her home, tell her how sorry I was for whatever happened. That was the hope.
Upstairs, I heard screaming and yelling. The constables handcuffed a man and dragged him down the stairs to the police jeep.
“I didn’t do anything to her,” the man kept repeating. He was in his underwear.
The Inspector pulled a girl outside. She was trembling, sobbing, as Inspector Godbole brought her down the stairs. She had a deep cut on her forehead, a black eye, and a purple bruise spread across her right cheek.
“Mukta?” I called out as she climbed down the stairs.
Her green eyes fixed on me for a while, and then she looked away. I got out of the jeep.
“Mukta?” I said again, trying to hold her hand as she neared me. She knocked it off.
“My name is not Mukta. Mind your own business,” she hissed and walked away from me to the police jeep. She was young, in her late teens. It wasn’t Mukta.
“She said her name is not Mukta.” The inspector shrugged as he knew that already.
“This girl must not be more than eighteen. Mukta was fifteen when she was kidnapped. She is about twenty-six now. I thought you knew that. I thought I had made myself clear.”
“Madam Tara, look . . . it is so much hard work just to rescue one girl. You saw what happened today. There are so many such cases. You are coming from Amreeka, and you wouldn’t understand there has to be some incentive to look for that girl . . . what’s her name . . . Muk
ta.”
He looked at me expectantly and cleared his throat. Behind him the constables waited patiently in the jeep.
“What do you think, Madam?” There was a glint of greed in his eyes.
I took a deep breath. This entire morning had been a ruse to extract a bribe from me. I wondered if that girl in the jeep would even have been rescued if I hadn’t been desperately looking for Mukta. Or was it all just a set up? Had she been paid to act a part so I would hand over some money? I could refuse to pay him and never find Mukta. But that wasn’t something I was willing to do. I sighed, put a few thousand rupee notes in an envelope, and slipped it to him.
“You better help me find her.”
“Yes, yes,” he said and returned to the jeep.
I hailed a taxi to take me home. When I looked behind, the girl sitting in the jeep continued to stare at me. I felt as if I was eight years old again, watching a girl with similar green eyes walk into our lives.
As the years have gone by, I have often thought about the day when I first met Mukta—a sunny evening in the summer of 1988—the year I turned eight. The sun had barely begun its downward journey. It was a Sunday, the day Papa was supposed to return from his weekend trip to his village. I was playing cricket with the neighborhood boys on the playground. But my attention was hardly on the game. My eyes turned every now and then to the gates of our apartment complex, searching for Papa, hoping he would appear there anytime.
Papa went on official trips to different countries and brought back souvenirs for me. I treasured those souvenirs, not because they were from some exotic, foreign land but because they were a gift from my Papa. It meant the world to me that Papa thought of me despite his work and worries. Perhaps Papa thought the anticipation of those impending gifts would distract me from his absence. But they always failed to console me. Every day he was away, I got up hoping I would be able to see his face, sit on his lap, and listen to the poetry he read out loud to me. This time, he had been away to visit his parents in his village and, as usual, had promised to bring me a gift.
When I saw the chowkidar opening the gates to let them in, I left the game I was playing and ran toward him, flying into his arms. I did not notice the girl walking beside him. Papa picked me up and gave me a peck on my forehead.
“What did you get for me from the village, Papa?” I asked.
“Nothing this time, Tara.”
He sounded tired; he did not promise me something for the next time, neither did he apologize for not getting me a gift. His mind was somewhere else, a light crease appearing between his eyebrows. I didn’t pester him with my thoughts, didn’t ask him anything about his trip as I usually did, didn’t ask why he had returned from his village empty-handed. I put my arms around him and allowed him to carry me home. It was then I saw this scrawny girl following us, carrying a bundle of clothes and a solemn expression. That evening when she entered our lives . . . I remember how her fair complexion shone in the orange hues of the setting sun, how her brown hair, tied into pigtails and braided with red ribbons, dangled on the side as she walked, and her eyes—her brilliant green eyes—stood out like emeralds on her skin. She looked at me with those forlorn eyes for a moment, and then lowered them.
The women in the courtyard, watching over their children as they played, looked at us and whispered. The girl walked slowly as she climbed the steps, following us into our apartment. She stood in our living room.
“Who is she?” Aai had asked, emerging from the kitchen, looking her up and down. The girl took two steps back; her eyes filled up.
“Let her stay with us for a while,” Papa said. “I’ll find her a place in the orphanage soon.”
“What is your name?”Aai asked the girl.
But the girl looked at her feet. Her eyes brimmed with tears. Aai asked her many questions, but she did not reply. At best, she nodded or shook her head. I thought I saw her lips move, but I didn’t hear anything.
“Can’t she speak? Is she mute?” Aai asked Papa, “What’s her name?”
“Her name is Mukta. She has to get used to the city. She will take her time.” Papa settled on the couch, opened the newspaper, and hid behind it.
“Hope she doesn’t take too much time.” Aai sighed and mumbled something else as she led the girl into the kitchen.
“Let’s give her the extra room—the storage room. Didn’t you clean it up last weekend? Let her have it.”
“You want her to stay in there?” Aai was shocked.
“Yes. It might be nice for her to have her own room.”
“In that room?” Aai repeated.
Papa nodded. Aai sighed again, loudly.
“You can sleep here,” Aai said, and there, in our small apartment, in that even smaller room, the girl came to stay.
Our apartment wasn’t as spacious as many other apartments in the building. Apart from the living room and the kitchen, it had two bedrooms; one of them belonged to my parents and the other was mine, next to the storage room. When she first arrived, all I did was share a wall with her. I heard her crying herself to sleep at nights, her sobs rising and falling in the silence of our home. Some nights, I would jump out of bed and stand outside that room, wondering if I should ask her if she needed something. But I never dared enter that room. Instead, I tried telling Papa that the girl cried throughout the night. He patted my cheek. “Oh, you shouldn’t worry about it. It is a new place. She is getting used to it.”
Yet I couldn’t help but wonder if it was the room she lived in that made her cry. It was so tiny, dingy and dark, with faded paint that looked like the designs of a monster to me. As far as I remember, sunlight was never kind to this room, though the moonlight did spare it a few moments of light.
As the days passed, we grew accustomed to her stifled sobs and choked whimpers and let them mingle with the ambient sounds—the noise of traffic, the chirping of crickets, the distant barking of dogs. For a long time she never spoke. Neighbors made strange sounds as they called out to her.
Aai tried to train the girl, teach her household chores—to cook for us and clean the dishes, sweep and mop the floors, wash and hang our clothes to dry—but she was always clumsy, dropping things at the slightest pretext. Her hands shivered at the smallest sound, her eyes welled up with the gentlest scolding, and the rings around her eyes darkened as time passed. Soon her silent sobs turned into screams. I remember one night the lights came on in my parents’ bedroom. I watched their shadows saunter to the storage room, and I curiously hurried behind them. Papa sprinkled water on Mukta’s face as she quivered on the floor, hysterical from her nightmares. When she woke up, she cowered in the corner, her eyes frantically darting from one side of the room to the other, searching for something that was not there.
Neighbors came knocking on our door on one such night. It was windy and the breeze blew on our faces as Papa opened the door. I peeked from behind him at all the angry faces gathered outside our door. One man with a bald pate and tufts of hair sticking from his ears looked at us with his sleepy eyes and warned us, quite politely, that every night the girl screamed and wailed she invited evil into our home.
“After all,” he said, “how can a mute girl scream?”
A lady standing beside him made a sign of the cross and said the devil must be in her. Papa laughed, said there was no such thing as the devil, and there was nothing evil about crying. All the people spoke respectfully to Papa, some talking in hushed tones, then a man grumbled loudly, “You should keep her under control. Waking us up in the middle of the night?”
It emboldened the rest of them.
“We all have to go to work tomorrow.”
“Yes, yes. Take her to someone who can cure her of her mental illness, you know. We don’t want such children spoiling our peace of mind.”
“You should take her to the jandeshwar Bhaba outside the temple. He cures all ailments with a touch of his hand, I hear,” a woman said.
“I am not taking her to any quack,” Papa said firmly. �
��She is new to the city, new to this place, and she will get used to it.”
That silenced the crowd for a minute, then someone mumbled something, and they began to rail again. By now, Anupam chacha had woken up, appeared outside his apartment, rubbed his eyes, and asked, “What’s happening?” I saw one of the neighbors say something to him after which Anupam chacha patted him on the back and said, “We will sort it out. Come on, Chalo, let us go to sleep.” And with a wave of his hand he herded all the neighbors away to their homes.
When they left, Papa and Anupam chacha sat on the balcony discussing the situation in the middle of the night. “Maybe I should take her to a doctor.” Papa sighed.
Whether he made that doctor’s appointment or not, I don’t know. I never saw him take her to a doctor.
“She is a lowly girl,” Aai reminded me every night before she put me to bed. “Your Papa has all these fancy ideas about equality. Society doesn’t function that way. We have to know our place in society.”
Back then I always did as Papa asked. Every time Papa brought home a street child, he took me aside and said, “You have to be kind. Everyone is equal in the eyes of God.” He repeated the same thing to me when he brought Mukta home.
My Aai was troubled by the arrival of Mukta, but she incited a deep curiosity within me. I yearned to know more about my grandparents from her; after all, she came from the same village as Papa. One afternoon I stood by the kitchen door and watched the girl cutting vegetables while the sunlight poured through the window. I walked toward her, contemplating the question I wanted to ask, and stood beside her near the kitchen sink, expecting her to look up at me. When she didn’t, I asked anyway, “Do you like the village you come from? Do you think of it?”
She lifted her head, looked at me as if I was causing her pain by asking that question, and continued chopping the vegetables, the sound of the slicing on the wooden board slicing through the silence between us.