by Amrit Chima
Satnam nodded behind him at the house. “Is that why you built this?”
Baba Singh regarded his son carefully, searching the boy’s eyes for something, and then he said, “I built this house so that it would always be here, even if I was not.”
~ ~ ~
“I will not go with you,” Sada Kaur said flatly. She looked stunning in her purple and green sari, but she was tired after the tonga ride from Amarpur’s gurdwara where they had just celebrated Satnam’s wedding. And she was angry.
She unwound the yards of fabric, tossed the sari aside, and stood before him in her tunic and petticoat. Baba Singh led her to a chair in the corner of their bedroom and kneeled beside her. “Fiji has a large community of Indians. We will be very comfortable. Onkar went. He is there. Families are starting businesses and trading.”
She shook her head. “You do not even truly want me to come, or expect me to. You only ask because you hope to disguise the fact that you do not want to be near the things that could possibly make you happy.” She pulled her hand from his. “What were your reasons for leaving the first time? Was it to give me what I wanted, to give your sons what they wanted, to give us something that you did not have?”
“Yes, of course.”
“No. It is what you have always told yourself, that it was about me and about them, but it is not the truth, and I can see that you know that now, that you are not lying to yourself anymore. It was always for you, to make up for some loss of your own.”
“I wanted to give you all safety so that you could avoid my losses.”
“But you wanted us to do it your way. There was no room to exist outside your losses. We have always existed within them.” There was reproach in the cut of her single eyebrow. “What is so wrong with the life we have here?”
He stood and strode across the room, pacing. “Everything is wrong with it. Nothing is right. There is so much bad feeling.”
“That is not our fault.”
“I do not want to be here and farm and have this life, acting like none of it ever happened.”
“Like what never happened?” she asked, standing to face him, the toes of her bare feet peeking out from under her petticoat. “Would having a life elsewhere change anything that has ever happened?”
Feeling hot, he removed his turban and tossed it on the bed. The air was cool on his scalp through his thick hair. “I do not know,” he replied.
“I know you will ask them to go with you for the same reason you have asked me,” she said, lowering her voice. “I will not, but they will go.”
This surprised him.
“They would do anything for you,” she said. “I know them, each one of them. They think that if they go, they will finally hear that you approve.”
“They hate me,” he said quietly.
She glared at him. “You want them to hate you. But where there is hate, there is a need for love.”
She then shoved his turban off the bed and climbed in. He did not move for a while, and she lay there with her eyes wide open, staring up at the ceiling. Finally, looking regretfully at his wife, Baba Singh dragged a chair out onto the balcony. Lighting an oil lamp, he thought that if someone were observing him from a mile away, he might appear to be a star hovering close to the earth.
He pulled out Dr. Bansal’s letter from his pocket and stared at it for a moment before finally tearing it open in frustration.
My dear friend Yashbir,
It has been a while since I have been able to write. I am sending my best wishes from Calcutta prison. It seems that after so much moving around, I have made it home after all. My circumstances have been ironically fortuitous. My mother has come to see me. I never stopped writing to her, and once she knew that I was home, she finally came to make peace. It was not easy to move beyond our regrets and unhappiness, but she is sorry for all the years we have lost. I am very happy.
I will not write again. It is time to let go of Amarpur, but I am grateful to have known you. Please, if Baba remembers anything about what happened, tell him that this life works so strangely. I do not want to be found, and he does not need to worry. There have been very difficult periods, but my choices have also given me so many blessings. Guilt is a waste. He should know that we are only able to bear so much, that sometimes things are so heavy that we burst. But even what seems like the worst can be forgiven. He should do everything possible to release his guilt. Tell him to eat a ladoo. It always helps.
A happy life Yashji,
Nalin
Refolding the letter and reinserting it in the envelope, Baba Singh was flooded with a rush of relief. He smiled faintly, remembering the animated, brimming spirit of his friend.
Stepping inside, he glanced at Lal’s chest under the dhurrie rug, thinking that this time he would take it with him. When he was ready, he would abandon it out in the world where the history inside could no longer touch him. He would do as the doctor had said and release his ghosts, returning unburdened to his village.
Sada Kaur had fallen asleep. He approached the bed and moved a strand of loose hair from her face. Bending, he whispered with conviction into her ear, “I will come back.”
PART II
Manmohan
Greater Suva, Fiji
Plastic Toy Tools
1947–1948
Family Tree
The kitchen cupboard was a portal, an entry to a black hole, like the ones Manmohan had read about, that sucked even light into its vacuumous mouth. He stared helplessly up at it, gathering his courage, one hand gripping the kitchen counter, the other poised on the knob of the cupboard door, until finally, in spite of himself, he pulled it open. A store of memories flooded forth when he saw, there on the top shelf, the handmade plywood box that he had not opened since 1945, just after Darshan died, and which contained the few trinkets of his son’s short life. That was how black holes operated. They dredged up even the most deeply buried feelings until there was nothing left but emptiness.
“Let’s fix, Bapu,” his son used to say. “Let’s go. Let’s play.” Let’s. As in, let us. Manmohan missed that.
He still had Mohan, but his oldest son did not seem to need him the same way. Manmohan had hoped losing Darshan would bring them closer, but even now, at nine years of age, Mohan possessed a clear sense of self-sufficiency, an ability to cope that Manmohan never had and greatly envied.
This was particularly evident on the one-year anniversary of Darshan’s death, after they returned home from the memorial service at the Sikh temple in Suva. Manmohan had thought it would help to spend some time with Mohan after the service. But the moment they arrived home, his son scooped up his soccer ball and headed toward the front door.
“Wait,” Manmohan said. “Where are you going?”
“To play a game with Narain,” the boy replied.
Manmohan sighed. “I thought we could sit together for a while.”
Mohan glanced impatiently at the front door. “Sit?”
“We saw a lot of sad people at the temple today. Maybe you want to talk about it.”
“About what?”
“Don’t you miss your brother?”
Manmohan would never forget his son’s expression then, the perplexity, the discomfort and confusion. But they had both lost someone. They were supposed to be mourning together. “Well, don’t you?” he asked again.
He could not recall his son’s answer, only that Mohan had gone to play his game of soccer.
Now, staring up at the top shelf, the loss of togetherness Manmohan used to share with Darshan pinched his heart. His hand tensed, ready to shut the cupboard, intending to leave the box there for eternity, or at least until the solar system had reached its end and the box would be disintegrated in a roar of planetary collisions.
But it was, however, necessary to open it. Jai had gone into labor that morning. He had already checked her into Colonial War Memorial Hospital. He could not imagine meeting this new person, welcoming him or her into the family without at l
east trying, after all this time, to say goodbye.
He reached up and pulled the box down, marveling at how light it felt. For some reason he had expected it to be weightier, but he supposed it made sense. The effects of a boy who had lived only three years would not be very heavy.
The box brought to mind his father’s chest that had come from Hotel Toor, the one that had been hidden away under a dhurrie rug in the years before they all traveled to Fiji. It was now shoved in some corner of the house on the outer island where Baba Singh lived with Satnam. He suspected that the chest was full of sad memories, that it contained a number of sentimental artifacts, proof that people who were now gone had been on this earth; keeping their possessions meant still having a small remaining sliver of them that was tangible. It surprised Manmohan to realize he shared this with his father, that he could relate to the propensity to do such a thing.
Taking a deep breath, he carried the plywood box past the chrome-rimmed kitchen table and vinyl-upholstered chairs where Mohan was eating his cold lunch of lentils and roti. “Hurry up. And you better change your clothes before we leave,” he told his son, who nodded obediently.
On his way through the living room, Manmohan was conscious of the black-and-white family portraits hanging above the couch between a framed painting of the ten gurus and a black and gold tapestry of Fiji’s main island. The portraits were serious, unsmiling faces captured with his flash-bulb camera. The photograph just left of the center was the only picture he had ever taken of Darshan. It was hard to see the detail of it from where he now stood, but he knew that picture well. The snap of the flash had made Darshan laugh. His son had been looking directly into the lens, the only smiling face on the wall. Manmohan had taken it one morning while testing out the camera he had just purchased. After that, there had not been enough time for more pictures.
He shoved aside the sheet that curtained the glass door leading to the backyard and stepped out onto the cement patio. Sitting on one of the two wooden chairs he had built the year they moved in, he placed the box between his leather-booted feet.
Regarding his boots, newly buffed but worn after years with the Fijian police force, he thought that he should go change out of his uniform before heading back to the hospital. He had already been dressed for work when Jai’s water broke and had been in a rush after that. He had to send a courier to the outer island to fetch his father before rushing to check Jai into the hospital. He had to get her settled before driving to the ferry to pick up Baba Singh—and unexpectedly, Satnam’s wife Priya as well. He had to drop them off at the hospital before pulling Mohan from school and bringing him home for a quick bite of lunch. The thought of going to the bedroom now, unlacing his boots, undressing and redressing seemed unnecessarily tiring after the morning’s running around. The snug feel of his boots was comforting. He did not want to take them off.
He flipped up the box’s metal latch, the lid squeaking on its hinges as he lifted it open. Darshan’s soft, grey hospital-issue blanket was at the top. Unfolding it, he held it to his face, disappointed that it smelled of wood, remembering how difficult it had always been for Jai to put Darshan to bed. His son had never wanted to sleep.
Draping the blanket over his shoulder, he frowned slightly at what was underneath. There they were, the two halves of a coconut shell. He had never been able to determine where the coconut had come from, or why it had been tucked under Darshan’s arm. Although he knew that Hindus regarded the coconut as an object of worship and offered them to their deities, coconuts had no major significance for Sikhs. The doctor had been a Hindu, but Manmohan had long ago dismissed the idea. The doctor had never been alone with Darshan. Perhaps it was Baba Singh, who had been the last one in the room before Manmohan went in to find Darshan no longer breathing.
The recollection was disquieting, especially now. His father had been talking lately of having vivid dreams. He said they were messages.
“You will have a boy,” Baba Singh had told him several times over the last few months.
That alone was not particularly unsettling, though admittedly strange. What troubled Manmohan was that, because of those dreams, Baba Singh insisted that the baby’s name be Darshan. His father behaved as though he knew something the rest of them did not, but Manmohan had never known his father to be wise, only rigidly distant. It was best, however, not to argue the matter. He would pay for it dearly—as he always did when he disagreed with Baba Singh—with shame and embarrassment. Nevertheless, it annoyed him to feel so inconsequential in the issue of naming his own child, to feel so compelled to obey.
Setting the shells on the cement next to the box, Manmohan peered down at the last item within, a cotton sack filled with plastic toy tools. Resting his elbows on his legs, he scrutinized the sack as though touching it would reduce it to dust.
Just then Mohan flung the curtain aside, joining him on the patio, crumbs of his lunch at the corners of his mouth. “What are you doing out here, Bapu? You did not eat anything.”
Manmohan pursed his lips in exasperation. “You have not changed your clothes.”
Mohan glanced down at his Samabula Government Boys School uniform. “You said we were in a hurry.”
“There is a little time.”
“But you haven’t changed either,” Mohan replied, bending down to peer into the box. Then he glanced questioningly at his father. “I remember those tools, that bag he used to carry them in.”
“Yes.” Manmohan nodded, tugging the blanket off his shoulder. He carefully folded it, squaring up the corners and hems.
“Can I open it?”
Manmohan eyed his son for a moment, until finally he gave in. “Just be careful.”
Mohan pulled the sack out and sat cross-legged on the cement. He shook out the wrench, the hammer, the two screwdrivers, and shovel, all of the tools landing with a hollow clatter on the cement.
“Be easy,” Manmohan said, gently laying the blanket on the bottom of the box and nesting the coconut shells on top of it. He took the empty cotton sack from Mohan, an onset of apprehension making him want to stop this nonsense. “Maybe it is better if we put these away and get going.” A large drop of rain struck the soil just beyond the patio. He gazed up into the darkening sky.
Mohan brandished the hammer. “Can I keep this one?”
“What would you do with it?”
The boy shrugged.
Manmohan hesitated, considering the hammer in Mohan’s hand, the brown paint of the handle meant to give the impression of wood, the line down the middle where the plastic had been cut on some assembly line. His son waited hopefully, stirring Manmohan’s sympathies at the idea that this was an expression of the boy’s grief.
“Please do not lose it.”
“Thank you, Bapu.”
“Maybe you and I can do something together when we get home.”
Brushing aside several hairs that had come loose from his topknot, Mohan asked, “What do you suppose?”
Manmohan collected the remaining tools and replaced them in the cotton sack. “You have any ideas?”
“I hadn’t thought about it.”
Manmohan set the sack inside the box, closing and latching the lid. “We should go.”
When he replaced the box on the top shelf of the cupboard, knowing that it was not possible, he nonetheless imagined a slight change in its weight: a short life minus a small piece.
The day’s tropical rains began to fall, first in thick, sporadic droplets, then a rushing sheet battering the corrugated tin roof of the front door overhang. It pelted them sharply as they ran toward Manmohan’s used World War II truck. Flinging the vehicle doors open, they clambered into the solid steel cabin, drenched. As the downpour hammered the windshield, and the humidity entered through the ventilation slits in the side panels, Manmohan glanced behind him at the six-foot cargo bed, wishing he had not forgotten to throw the tarp over it. He was fond of his truck, had purchased it the year the war ended. With its walking beam suspension and locking d
ifferentials that had made it such a useful off-road vehicle during the war, he easily traveled the poorly paved roads throughout the island. Noting the rust along the steel bed, he thought that he would have to treat it soon.
As abruptly as the rain had begun, it stopped, leaving the ground wet and steaming in the heat. Adjusting himself in his seat, using the hem of his shirt to dry his face, Manmohan inserted the key into the ignition. “Ice cream?” he asked as they pulled away from the curb.
Absently tapping the plastic hammer against the dashboard, Mohan grinned, his face bright and wet. But then his expression fell. “Bebe is waiting for us.”
“There is always time for ice cream,” Manmohan replied, although he was not entirely certain about it.
The diesel engine grumbled as they drove down the hill away from their house in Tamavua toward the hospital in Suva, past large palm trees and verdant jungle that blanketed every inch of soil. The last vestiges of ocean view disappeared as they descended toward the small city.
They had been living on the island now for nearly ten years, which often astonished Manmohan. He had truly believed they would be back in Barapind by now. After their initial weeks on the quarantine island of Nakulau where immigrants were taken for processing, forced to eat rice crawling with worms, and sleep on the hard ground like animals, Manmohan could never have imagined one day calling Fiji his home. Jai had been nine months pregnant with Mohan. He hated to see her eat that food, but she merely smiled and picked out the bad parts. She never once complained.
Even after they had cleared processing and docked in Suva, it was Manmohan who had the most trouble with the constant tropical rains, the mosquitoes that made his legs and arms swell. The Toors spoke Punjabi, Urdu, and Hindi, but Indians on the island spoke an unfamiliar dialect of Hindi that had been initially bewildering. It was too distorted. They were too far from home.