The Lost Daughter of India

by Sharon Maas

  Subhadai placed a bowl of some payasan before him, and his eyes lit up. ‘Did you try this payasan?’ he asked Janiki. ‘Subhadai makes the best payasan in the world. It is the one enjoyment in my life. I look forward to it all morning. Let me eat now in silence.’

  He stopped talking as he dipped his spoon into the soft white pudding, and closed his eyes to emphasise his delight.

  ‘Delicious!’ he said. ‘Simply delicious!’

  Janiki still said nothing; she found his ability to speak of the abomination of Kamathipura in one sentence, and the next to fall into ecstasy at the taste of payasan, extraordinary, callous, even. She couldn’t even think of enjoying a pudding, ever again, as long as Asha remained lost. She supposed that years of work in the field would force a person to grow a scab, a skin so thick the horror remained underground, allowing one to continue with a shallow enjoyment of life. For her, impossible. She felt as sensitive as a mimosa, the sleepy plant whose leaves closed at the slightest touch. Every inch of her soul ached and longed to withdraw; yet couldn’t, as long as Asha was out there, lost.

  Dr Ganotra’s glance fell on the Mumbai Drums local newspaper Janiki had laid on the table. The paper was folded back on the page ‘Mumbai News’. She could tell by the movement of his eyes that he was scanning the news, interest in the delightful payasan already faded. Suddenly he stiffened, his gaze held in place. An instant later he sprang to his feet, his pudding half eaten.

  ‘Come,’ is all he said, gesturing to Janiki. ‘Maybe it’s a miracle. Read that.’ He thrust the newspaper into Janiki’s hands and strode to the door. Janiki sprang up and, infected by his sudden vigour, hurried behind him. Out of the house, out of the gate; a black car waited in the street outside, a driver asleep at the wheel. Dr Ganotra practically leapt into the passenger seat, gestured for Janiki to get into the back. The driver awoke with a start and, as the doctor fired off a few words to him, turned the ignition key. The car drove off. Dr Ganotra seemed to have forgotten her; he was talking to the driver, now, in a rapid flow of Hindi of which she understood not a word.

  The newspaper was still in her hand. She scanned the headlines; what had so galvanised Dr Ganotra that he had left behind his beloved payasan? She immediately ruled out the strike by medical students, now in its fifth day, and an incident at the Viddalayak temple the previous day, in which a garland vendor had been injured by a pilgrim. The planned demolition of a tenement in Mumbai’s outskirts seemed also unlikely. Impatiently her gaze wandered from headline to headline, rejecting, rejecting, rejecting. And then a word in a headline, two words, jumped out at her.

  She read the article, and read it again – a small item, tucked away in the bottom left-hand corner.

  Child Prostitute admitted to Hospital.

  A twelve-year-old prostitute was admitted to B. K. Shivnandan Hospital with several knife wounds and a broken arm, sustained during a fight between a pimp and a drunken customer in Kamathipura. The girl was in a state of extreme shock yesterday and unable to speak to investigators. However, other prostitutes from the same brothel revealed that she had been kidnapped in Madras and sold into prostitution about a month ago. She was brought to the hospital bleeding from the knife wounds by a health worker from an NGO, who later filed a charge of trafficking with minors…

  The article made her sick and hopeful simultaneously. Could this be Asha? The timescale was wrong. Asha had supposedly been in Bombay not a month, but a week, ten days at the most. But people’s memories were faulty; a week could very well seem like a month. But twelve years old, and from Madras…

  The idea of Asha as a prostitute dismayed Janiki to the core. She had lurked around that word for days now, not wanting to even think it in connection with Asha. Refusing to admit the likelihood, the probability, of Asha’s fate. She had clung to the idea that no, it hadn’t happened yet. She had come in time. She would save Asha. She would. She would. There was still time. Asha had not yet been – she couldn’t say that word either. Because to say it was to imagine it, and she refused to imagine it. But her body knew which thought she was rejecting. Her body revolted. The nausea was too much to bear.

  ‘Stop the car!’ Janiki was able to yell, and luckily they were driving not in the middle of a gush of traffic but at the edge, so once Dr Ganotra had translated the driver obeyed and came to a screeching halt next to the kerb amid a clamour of enraged car horns and claxons, and Janiki flung open the door and leaned out and vomited.

  * * *

  The door to the ward stood open. Inside, several simple cots, about twenty in all, lined the two sides of a long room. The patients were all girls and women, plainly of low income judging by the simplicity of the beds and the worn-out state of the sheets and pillowcases. All of the cots were occupied; the patients lay in various conditions of apathy or illness, some alone, others surrounded by family members; some slept or sat up in bed talking with relatives, or ate from tiffin boxes, or simply wept. An elderly woman was being hand-fed by a younger woman; a middle-aged woman with oily, uncombed hair cried, alone, into a corner of her sheet. The ward, sparse and drab in its appointments, smelt of stale urine mixed with medicine and antiseptic. A slowly rotating overhead fan did little to dilute the smell with fresh air from the open window. Nausea rose up in Janiki.

  There was only one girl of even nearly the right age.

  But:

  The girl was not Asha. Nothing like her; for a start, she was much younger, ten at the most. She lay there, curled on the sheet, her face half-hidden in the crook of her left arm, which was encased in fresh plaster of Paris. Her left shoulder was thick with the padding of an elaborate bandage, which could be seen at the short sleeve and the neck of her white hospital nightdress. A threadbare sheet covered the embryo-like curl of her body.

  Her terrified eyes clung to Janiki’s face. When Dr Ganotra leaned over her she shrank away, petrified, and he stepped back, nodding. ‘She’s afraid of men,’ he said. ‘And no wonder. I’ll bring a female colleague.’ He turned and left the room.

  It was such a sad place, and all Janiki could do was try to relieve the sadness a little way by sitting on the girl’s bed holding her hand. She spoke, as she had done to Ratna before, just for the sake of speaking, this time in Tamil; the girl, after all, was from Madras, according to Mumbai Drums.

  Not knowing what else to say, she spoke of herself; told some of the stories of her own childhood, stories she had told Asha when Asha was this age, stories she had read to Asha that had delighted her. She couldn’t remember them perfectly, but it didn’t matter; she told them as they came; about child detectives and girls in English boarding schools, and she told them in her best storytime, bedtime voice. Her voice seemed to have a calming effect, for the little girl began to listen, the little hand she held gripped hers tightly, and the eyes still fixed on hers became moist and the lips moved, just a little, and the little body began to relax, and to uncurl, and a small sound came out, which Janiki did not understand: a single word.

  Janiki smiled at her, brushed the hair off her face, pulled her slightly up so that she leaned against Janiki’s side with Janiki’s arm around her. Janiki adjusted herself into a more comfortable position and continued to talk.

  Before long, a young woman in her mid-twenties approached wearing, rather than the usual sari or shalwar kameez, jeans and a T-shirt. She was light-skinned, but not European – the coffee colour of her complexion was natural, not a tan, and that thick black hair, swept back and up into a ponytail, and the bushy eyebrows over coal-black eyes were definitely Indian.

  She smiled first at Janiki and then at the girl.

  ‘Namaste,’ she said, ‘You must be Janiki – Dr Ganotra told me about you. And I see you’ve already made friends with our little patient here. Hello, beti. How are you? I see you have a friend!’ The last caused the girl to curl up and hide her face in Janiki’s thigh, and grip her hand yet tighter.

  Janiki translated into Tamil.

  ‘You speak Tamil!’ said the woman, and
her eyes lit up. ‘Wonderful – she’s terrified, and doesn’t understand a word we say. Our Tamil nurses are far too busy to spare a moment to translate. By the way, my name’s Gita. I’m a social worker in the hospital, but also a volunteer who works with Dr Ganotra’s patients, in the hospital and out there in the wilds, as we call it. I need to ask her a few questions; can you translate? I take it that this is not the girl you are looking for? What’s her name again?’

  ‘Asha,’ said Janiki, ‘and no, this isn’t her. Asha is a bit older.’

  ‘But she has certainly taken a shine to you! See if you can persuade her to talk, to answer my questions. I see you’ve been talking to her already; she seems so much more relaxed now. Well done! You have the gift of kindness – I can tell. That comes first. And then the questions. Can you help?’

  Janiki nodded. ‘Of course. I’ll try.’

  ‘Tell her that we want to help her,’ Gita said, ‘ask her for her name and her native place, and how it happened that she ended up where she did. I’m not sure if she will answer now, but one day soon, she will. Tell her that Dr Ganotra is going to take her over to Tulasa House, probably tomorrow. She will get all the help she needs there. Dr Ganotra is dealing with the formalities. They will pass her on to him. Tell her that she is going to a good place, a safe place, a place where no one will hurt her again. Tell her she will not go back to the bad place she came from. That from now on she is in safe hands. Ask her if she has family members she’d like us to contact; a place she can return to eventually.’

  Janiki spoke then, her voice calm and soothing. The girl did not respond in any way at first, but after a while began to silently weep. Janiki spoke in Tamil to her again, and a whispered word escaped her lips. Janiki looked up at Gita and smiled.

  ‘Her name is Sakhi. It means friend. It is very fitting, because now she is our friend, and we are hers.’

  Gita nodded, and smiled in delight. ‘That’s a wonderful beginning,’ she said.

  ‘I will go now. I don’t think we’ll get more out of her today, but it’s a good start and she can go to Tulasa House tomorrow and eventually we will know more about her. Are you coming?’

  Janiki nodded, and stood up to leave. She bent down and kissed the girl on her forehead, and told her goodbye, and that she’d be safe now. The girl clung to her hand, and pulled her back; Janiki spoke again, promising to see her the next day at Tulasa House. The girl shook her head, meaning yes, and released Janiki’s hand.

  ‘This is such wonderful work Dr Ganotra is doing,’ said Janiki as she walked down the corridor with Gita. ‘Even if it’s a drop in the ocean. To save a child, even if it’s just one. To return a child to her parents…’

  ‘Unfortunately, it’s not usually a happy ending,’ said Gita. ‘Very often we can’t send a girl like this back to her parents. They won’t accept her – after what she has been through, she must expect a further hurt, the hurt of rejection. These girls usually end up in an orphanage. You must ask Dr Ganotra about Tulasa, the girl he’s dedicated his work to. Ask him. I have to go back to my own work now, but ask him. Goodbye, Janiki, and thank you for your help.’

  * * *

  Later that evening, back at Tulasa Nilayam, Janiki did ask. Subhadai had cooked an evening meal, which was waiting for them when they returned at dusk. Dr Ganotra this time seemed relaxed, and, after they had eaten, needed no prompting to tell the story of Tulasa.

  ‘She was a twelve-year-old Nepali girl who many years ago – the early eighties – was kidnapped from her village and sold into prostitution in Bombay,’ he began. ‘She was systematically raped to make her fit for the trade and then forced to entertain an average of eight grown men a day. I was working at the time in a Bombay hospital and I met her there ten months later. Her tiny body was completely broken: she had all kinds of STDs as well as genital warts and brain tuberculosis, which left her disabled. She told a horrific story.’

  Janiki couldn’t even begin to process the story. What kind of man could do that to a child? Her voice shook as she asked:

  ‘But after you found her, did it get better? You rescued her, so she found help, right? A happy ending?’

  Dr Ganotra shook his head. ‘There was a huge media rumpus when the story broke. At first there was an outpouring of public sympathy for her – offers of adoption and marriage, an invitation to Switzerland, gifts of money and medicine. None of it came to much. We managed to locate her father – her mother had died shortly after her disappearance – and sent her home. But she was sadly rejected by her father’s second wife, and moved into a home. Her father avoided her to keep the family peace. She was in constant pain, but worst of all was the feeling that nobody loved her, that she had been used and abused and finally discarded like a piece of rubbish.’

  Tears blistered Janiki’s eyes. ‘But at least the story broke, and the horror of it all was revealed. Did the police help to rescue other girls? How come it is still going on?’

  Dr Ganotra shook his head again. ‘Police collusion with the flesh trade was at the core of Tulasa’s revelations. And not much has changed since then. The police, the politicians, the pimps – they are all in collaboration. The profit is huge.

  ‘After the story broke, the public uproar forced the police to raise their backsides a little. In no time thirty-two persons involved were arrested, including the three brothel owners Tulasa had worked for. The police had known exactly what was going on, and only stepped in when forced to do so. Yet it took them eighteen months to find out her age and three years to file a charge. And only last January, eighteen years later, did the case finally to come to trial. The police were given a month to produce her in court. And then we found that Tulasa had died two years previously. Meanwhile, her abusers have been running free. And not everything is back to normal. There are still thousands of Tulasas out there. Sakhi is one of them, Ratna is another. We cannot save them all.’

  ‘But we have to save Asha! We have to! We can’t let…’ Janiki’s voice failed. She could not let her imagination run with Tulasa’s story and apply it to Asha. To do that would mean despair; utter hopelessness. If not even the police could be relied upon to help, what good could she, Kamal, Caroline, three newcomers to Bombay, do? Even with the assistance of Dr Ganotra? Janiki couldn’t help it – she broke down. Her body shook with sobs.

  ‘We have to find her. Please, please, Dr Ganotra, save her! Save my little sister! She’s so innocent, so young! What will become of her, out there!’

  Dr Ganotra laid a hand on Janiki’s trembling arm.

  ‘I’ll do my best – I promise you that. But the reality is that Asha is just one girl out of thousands. Girls abducted from villages all over India and Nepal, lured away on some pretext or the other: going to movies, cities, temples, making them film stars, lucrative job opportunities, marriage. And then every year thousands of girls are ceremoniously dedicated to the Goddess Yellamma, and must serve her as child prostitutes. Others are sold to the highest bidder and then turned over to the urban brothels. You’ve seen Bombay; you’ve seen the chaos, the crowds. I just want you to know the reality. It won’t be easy. You have my help, but I can’t do much. The police force isn’t going to help at all. You need to brace yourself. I understand your tears, your fears, but wishing and wanting isn’t going to help. Your prayers might – prayers provide strength and faith, and you will need both. You will also need a miracle. And all your wits about you. And you seem to have good wits. You got this far. You say that you were able to intercept some emails?’

  Janiki wiped her tears on a corner of her palu and tried to steady her voice.

  ‘Yes. I was able to contact Asha when she was still in Madras. I was able to check the emails of the people who had captured her. But I was found out and that was the end of that.’ Janiki told him the details of her detective work, her communication with Asha.

  ‘If only I hadn’t tried to be so clever. If only I had told her to run, run away from that house immediately, to not go looking for passwords
and things! I was trying to be clever and I just made everything worse. It’s my fault this happened. All my fault.’

  ‘Blaming yourself isn’t going to get you anywhere. I think it’s time you called it a day. Tomorrow I’ll try to fix you up with a computer and Internet and you can maybe do some more research – you’re good at that. Walking the streets of Kamathipura isn’t going to help. And tomorrow her parents will be here. It’s not good for you to be alone. The three of you, together, will give each other strength. Just don’t give up. All right?’

  Janiki sniffed. ‘All right.’

  ‘Tomorrow is a new day. You look exhausted. I’ll get my driver to take you home. Where is your hotel?’

  Janiki was sure she would not sleep that night. However, the moment her head touched the pillow she sank into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  Chapter 31

  Asha

  It was my first trip on a train. It was like stepping into the belly of an enormous snake that devoured whole people, hundreds of them, thousands of them, except that we entered the snake voluntarily and weren’t exactly devoured, but would leave again at the other end of the journey, exhausted, drained of all energy, limp as a thirsty vine. We were in a carriage that was called Three-Tiered Third Class. Three-Tiered meant that the bunks had three levels. There were only ladies in the carriage and some had babies. During the day there was only the seats, but at night a man came around and lowered the two top bunks and each lady slept on a separate bunk. The woman I was with – she told me to call her Sita Aunty but I never did. The words just could not leave my mouth. I did not call her anything at all, in fact. I just did not speak. Not speaking felt like the safest thing to do, but I knew I was not really safe at all. I did not want to go to Bombay but of course nobody asked me. In my heart I screamed only for Janiki. But Janiki did not come. She did not hear. Janiki was so far away, in a different country, on another continent. Janiki would just be coming home from work in her happy place, just be switching on her computer and wondering why I was not with Naadiya.