by Amita Trasi
“Can’t we leave her alone?” Raza asked timidly, his voice panic-stricken.
Salim turned around to stare at him, “Shut up,” he barked. “You have much to learn. Don’t worry, you will get used to it.”
Out of the blue, I heard a sudden whoosh in the air behind me, and before any of us knew what was happening, Salim was kneeling down on the street, rubbing his eyes, and screaming in pain. Raza too had fallen back; his hands were covering his eyes. I could smell the sand scattered in the air around me. Mukta had gathered sand from the construction site, snuck behind me, and thrown it in their faces. I sat rooted to the spot, listening to my heart pound in my chest, still unable to grasp the sudden turn of events.
“Run,” Mukta said, her eyes wide with urgency. She untied the knot on my wrists. But I stood there staring at her.
“Run,” she repeated, tugging at my arms.
Then I ran, next to her. We ran as if our feet knew the way to carry us back home. Everything we passed and everyone we bumped into on the way was a blur. I remember now—that’s when she began speaking. Run was her first word to me.
I never thanked her for what she had done—saved my life from those two boys that day. Perhaps I had slipped that into her duties. Probably I didn’t want to admit I hadn’t been as brave as she’d been. I remember convincing myself that a lower caste girl like her should be grateful to us and not the other way around, after all we were the ones looking after her.
Several months later, the incident had still flashed before my eyes from time to time. It had still frightened me. I didn’t tell my parents about it. There was the danger of being punished for wandering onto that lonely street at that hour of the day, but mostly I was ashamed of what had happened. I tried to behave as if it hadn’t happened. When I couldn’t sleep, I walked into the storage room to talk to Mukta. She was the only one who knew. Several nights in a row, we watched the sky together, the clouds floating around the moon, the sparkle of the stars. On starlit nights we would sneak up to the terrace, stand up on the parapet and watch the city from up here. Below us, the city was alive and throbbing, and above us, the stars would be watching over us. Mukta used to be afraid but I’d pull her up to me and hold her close. If someone had told me how dangerous this was, it wouldn’t have stopped me. I suppose this was the only way I could escape the fear the two boys had introduced into my life. I wanted to unburden myself of the shame and feel free, and Mukta was the only one standing beside me—the only one who understood how I felt.
In all those years we spent together, I don’t think I ever considered her to be the same as my other friends. She was always someone who did as I asked. What I did not realize then is that I needed her. She had saved my life and what had I done?
That was many years ago, and yet, on this night, I was unable to sleep; the sheets rustled as I tossed and turned. Then I sat by the window in my apartment and thought of something Papa used to tell me: The only way we can rectify our mistakes is to try to undo the wrong we have done. His voice had faltered as he had said it, his hands clenched tightly into a fist as if he was speaking about himself. Was that even possible, undoing the wrong?
It only takes a few seconds for one’s life to splinter. Then all one is left with is picking up the shards.
–TARA
Thirteen
I awoke with a start. The birds were chirping, and I could hear the honking and chaos of traffic outside. It felt like the morning after Mukta had been kidnapped. I waited to hear Papa call out to me, for his voice to echo through this apartment. The sudden sense of foreboding was overwhelming. Maybe calling someone would help me forget. I tried to shake myself out of my reverie. I picked up the phone and made a call to Elisa, the only good friend I had made in America besides Brian. We had been friends since high school, and she was the only one I had come to rely on since I left India.
Three rings and Elisa picked up. “Hey, how’re you doing?” she asked.
“Okay, I guess. This morning the sun seems sad . . . I don’t know why . . . ” I was babbling.
“Are you okay?” I heard the concern in her voice and sat up in my bed. My head ached.
“Yes, yeah . . . it’s . . . I’m kinda trying to figure out my way here. I’ve been here more than three months, and I don’t seem to be making much progress.”
“You better be taking care of yourself.”
“Elisa . . . ” I said softly, “this place has too many memories.”
I heard a long breath at the other end. I imagined her sitting by her bedroom window, the ocean roaring in the distance, her blond hair curled into perfect loose waves for a night out with her fiancé, Pete. “I want to tell you to come back,” she exhaled, “but I know you are so stubborn you won’t listen. But I’m sure you will figure out a way to deal with it.”
I chuckled. That’s something Papa would have told me.
“What happened to the search? Did you go to the cops? To the detective?”
“Yeah, but they don’t seem to be a lot of help. I . . . actually . . . I met this guy—”
“Oh, that sounds interesting,” she said mischievously.
“No, Elisa, not in the romantic way that you imagine. This guy . . . this man . . . he was involved in some bad stuff, criminal activities when I was a child. He had once tried to . . . ” I let out a long sigh. “Anyway, he seems decent enough now. He says he runs a non-profit organization now and can help me locate Mukta.”
“So what are you waiting for?”
“I . . . don’t know if I can trust him.”
“Hmm, people change you know. And he runs a non-profit now, didn’t you say?”
“Yes. But I’m still not sure—”
“Well, sometimes we have to take that chance.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said. “How is Pete doing?”
“Good. You know, we’re both busy with the wedding planning. Yesterday we went furniture shopping for the new house and found this most incredible deal, and Pete says . . . ” there was a pause at Elisa’s end. “Look at me, talking about my wedding when you are going through such a time. I should stop talking and let you go. We’ll miss you at the wedding. I wanted you to be my maid of honor, you know.”
“I know,” I sighed. She didn’t ask me about Brian, about how we broke up. I yearned to tell her I felt guilty that I didn’t think of him anymore.
“Okay. Call me later, honey.”
I arrived at Raza’s office on that overcast Monday morning. It was still drizzling. For a while I stood outside the door wondering what I was doing there. Was I so desperate now that I wanted to seek the help of a man who once, as a boy, had threatened two girls? Did I really want to trust a man who hadn’t stopped to think that he was hurting someone?
The door opened, and Raza walked out.
“Oh, I was just about to step out. I-I didn’t think you’d come,” he said, surprised.
“Yeah, well, I wanted to ask if there was anything you could do for me.” I gulped, looking away, trying to let go of the fear I felt.
“Of course,” he said, leading me inside and pulling out a chair for me. “Why don’t you have a seat? I have an errand to run. I will be back very quickly. I have to meet someone to hand over something—just around that corner,” Raza explained, pointing his finger at the window.
“No problem. I’ll wait.”
I watched him leave and took a deep breath. I could hear raindrops tapping on the window pane. The office looked old. It clearly needed a touch of paint to freshen it. It had five cubicle spaces, but nobody was around. Raza’s desk was in an open space; a pile of files and papers were strewn on the desk not far from a small cooking space in the corner. There were pictures on his desk of a woman in a burkha with his hand protectively around her shoulder while she beamed at the camera. There were other pictures of both of them, one in which they were distributing food at a shelter, another where they were smiling and a field of crops swayed behind them. A piece of paper with lovely handwrit
ing was pinned to the wall:
Let’s take a different road,
Find another way
Pick a road less travelled.
I walked up to the window and watched the rainfall as the sky thundered and lightning bolted its way across the city. I wondered if Mukta was in the city somewhere, watching the rainfall and thinking of me the way I was thinking of her. In the distance, I could see Raza returning, walking swiftly through the rain, his umbrella zigzagging in the heavy wind. He left his umbrella outside, entered the office, picked a towel out from a drawer, and wiped his wet hair with it.
“I didn’t expect it to get that bad outside.” He smiled, gesturing to me to sit down, “Can I make you a cup of tea?”
“That would be nice, thank you,” I said as I came away from the window and took a seat in front of him. It was awkward, but I was trying to be friendly. After all, the memories I had of him were difficult to erase.
He walked to a corner in his office and lit the stove. “Most people who work with me are out today for a food drive,” he said as he added the water and milk to the teapot.
“I like the three lines there . . . on that piece of paper beside your desk.” I smiled trying to make conversation.
“Yes,” he said turning back, “my wife wrote that. She believed that we have to take the difficult path—a different one than most people choose. That is the only way, she said, we could make a difference in somebody’s life.” He looked away and smiled at the memory.
I pointed to the picture frame. “Your wife is beautiful.”
He swallowed hard. “She was killed last year in the bomb blasts. Someone, in the name of religion, always takes our loved ones away from us. After eleven years, it is still the same.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
He nodded, turned to the stove, poured tea into glasses, and placed them on the table.
“Anyway, enough about me. Tell me, how can I help you?” He pulled a chair opposite me. This man sitting before me with a rugged smile was different from that lanky teenage ruffian I had met years ago.
“I am looking for the girl who used to live with us—Mukta.”
“I know. I heard—the constables at the police station talk about your case. They seemed baffled that you would look for a girl who disappeared eleven years ago.”
I smiled and shrugged.
“I need to ask you something?”
“Sure.” He narrowed his eyes.
I forced myself to take a deep breath and measured my words carefully. He was the only one close to the kidnapper—the only one who could locate him, and ask him what he had done with Mukta. I knew this was a chance I had to take. I looked him in the eye. I had definitely lost my mind.
“It was Salim that night; Salim kidnapped Mukta. But he must have already told you that, hasn’t he?”
Those words had never been uttered before. Not once, not to anyone—not Brian, not Elisa, not even Papa. He raised his eyebrows.
“Why do you think I would know that? Because I was in Salim’s gang once upon a time?” He gave out a laugh. “I left that life a long time ago. I have helped people since then. And why are you so sure Salim was the kidnapper? The Salim I knew back then . . . he always liked to scare people. It was his way of showing off, telling people he’s the boss. But to kidnap somebody? He would never—”
“What do you mean?” I interrupted. “Are you saying I am lying? I am sure it was Salim. I saw him. I was in the room when Mukta was kidnapped.”
He looked taken aback for a moment, then frowned, “You were in the room? You watched him kidnap Mukta?”
“Yes . . . I . . . ”
“I am sorry. I had no idea.” He shook his head.
“Do you . . . do you know where he is these days?”
“Who? Salim? We lost touch a long time ago.” Raza sighed.
A wave of despondency swelled in my heart.
“But I can find out,” he said.
“You will? You can? That . . . that will be great. I mean thanks for the help.” I was relieved.
He smiled.
“Tara, it may take some time to locate Salim—a few months maybe. I will have to put word out on the street. Mumbai is such a big city. I don’t even know if he is somewhere in this city or if he has moved away. The Salim I knew was a scared little boy on the inside. Threatening younger children, robbing, selling drugs maybe, but breaking into a home and kidnapping? I never thought he’d do anything so serious. If, just for a moment, we say Salim committed the crime, what makes you thinks he will admit to it?”
“I don’t want him to admit anything. I just want him to tell me where he took Mukta. I just want to know where she is.”
“Wouldn’t you be better off working with other nonprofit organizations that search for missing children? Maybe I could put you in touch with—”
I wasn’t listening. “Salim will tell you, won’t he? You were close to him once. I think you are the only person he would tell. Then we would know where she was,” I said and felt the tremble in my voice. I left only after Raza assured me he would do whatever he could to find Salim.
On my way back, as my rickshaw bumped over potholes, I kept thinking back to the picture of Raza’s wife, her smiling face disappearing within the chaos that had taken over our lives. I knew how much he missed her. I could see it in his eyes. I wondered how many of us there were, still living and breathing, confused as to why we weren’t chosen to be there on that fateful day instead of our loved ones. If that day hadn’t come into our lives, would things have been different?
12 March 1993 is a day fixed in my memories. I was thirteen then.
“You want to talk on the terrace this afternoon, after school?” Mukta had asked me that morning. I had nodded, absentmindedly. As the day went by, I completely forgot about it. I was worried about a math test at school. I was never very good at math and my thoughts were milling around the test. The very thoughts I agonized over that morning, seemingly so important, would become nothing as the day came to an end.
It was a Friday and, after my test, I was planning on going to a friend’s place to watch TV. Before I left that morning, Aai asked me if I could drop off a bundle of clothes at her friend’s shop near Century Bazaar where Aai worked.
“Once you come back from school, you can take these things. It isn’t very far. I still have some work to do. I have asked everybody I know but they all seem busy. I would send Mukta, but she is not feeling well,” Aai said to me.
I told her I couldn’t go. I was sure Aai would find someone else or borrow a servant from a neighbor to get her work done. Now when I think of this moment, I can’t remember the excuse I gave her. What was it I had said? Had I said I had to go to a friend’s place because she had promised to help with my homework, or had I said that my friend needed help with her schoolwork?
It is hard to decide what my last words to my mother were.
It did not occur to me then that, before asking me, she had told Mukta to drop the clothes at the shop, and she, too, had made up an excuse. I had taught Mukta to feign illness if Aai asked her to run an errand when I needed to talk to her or share something. In the beginning she had been afraid to lie, but I had convinced her it was a white lie and could cause nobody harm. It always happened on my cue; we would discuss the reason in detail so Aai wouldn’t find out that it was a lie. It had worked for many years, and I had warned Mukta to follow my orders, never stray from them. On this day, however, things would be different.
It was late afternoon. After school, my friend and I were sitting on the sofa, watching television while we munched on chips, cribbing about cantankerous teachers and idiotic, bright-eyed students those teachers favored. The news flashed in the middle of the show. The woman on the news channel was strangely calm when she announced the bomb blasts. Behind her, scenes flashed—of walls blown apart, of vehicles whose roofs had landed elsewhere, shards of glass everywhere, wounded faces, bloodied bodies, and the air thick with black smoke
.
Words poured out of the newscaster about the areas targeted: Bombay stock exchange, passport office, Century Bazaar, Zaveri Bazaar, Plaza Cinema . . .
The words rang in my head: Century Bazaar—that was where Aai was supposed to go that afternoon because she hadn’t found anybody else to go to the shop. What if something had happened to her? Everything else the newscaster went on about sounded like gibberish to my ears. My thoughts came in waves followed by moments of numbness. I dismissed the possibility that anything had happened. I remember running through alleys, racing past shops, tearing past people and honking vehicles, opening the gates of my apartment complex, and racing up the steps. I knocked hard on the door of my apartment, but no one opened it. Mukta should have been at home. Had she run out on an errand to the grocery store? Aai should have been back by now. But nobody answered the door. I tried opening the door with the key I had, but it kept trembling in my clammy hands. When I finally opened the door, there was silence in the apartment as I called out Aai’s name. A deep pain throbbed in my heart.
“Aai? Aai?”
There was a muffled voice from outside. I followed it, stepped out of the apartment, and saw Mukta leisurely coming down the stairs, smiling at me, “I thought I heard someone open the door. What happened? I was waiting for you upstairs on the terrace. I thought you wanted to talk.”
Watching her smile, the spring in her steps as she walked down, something inside me snapped.
“Talk? Which world do you live in? You are a useless village girl. What would you know?”
I saw the surprise, then the pain, on her face at my sudden outburst, but I didn’t wait to explain before I turned around and ran down the stairs.
I knocked hard on a neighbor’s apartment on the lower floor. The phone in our apartment hadn’t been working for days, and I hoped to call Papa from somebody’s phone. One of Aai’s friends opened the door in her housecoat. She stood by her door and yelled at me, “What is it? Do you want to break down the door?”