Daughter of the Ganges

by Asha Miro

  “Don’t stop me,” I insist. “I want to know more, I need it.”

  To silence me she says, “Asha, you are a daughter of the Ganges.”

  The moment finally arrives when it is time for me to leave. We make a symbolic exchange before we part: I swap my Panama Jack sandals, strong and supportive, for hers, which are almost falling to pieces and hurt her tired, sensitive feet. She gave me the wings to fly. In some way I give her the shoes so that she can carry on along the path that still remains for her. Finally, we hug each other emotionally. I squeeze her so tightly that I make her stagger. Poor dear! She is so frail. I squeeze her with all the affection I feel for one of the most important people in my life. I turn to cross the garden toward the wrought-iron gate and I begin to see that the memories are starting to settle into place. But I still leave with a slightly bitter taste: there is one piece missing. I did not manage to complete the puzzle of my life that would allow me to fully face the future. I stop once more to look at the orphanage from outside before taking a taxi to the house of Naresh and Kamal. I feel lighter than I did a few hours ago.

  Monday, October 28, 1974

  Today, at seven in the morning, you woke up, Asha, completely terrified. Your cry of “Mommy, Mommy” gave me a start and I came running to your room. You looked like you had had a nightmare, my poor girl. We have the problem of the language, but with gestures you made me understand that you were afraid of the dark and you wanted the light on. I feel so bad that we can’t communicate verbally …. You would have been able to tell me that you were afraid, that you had dreams that scared you so much …. I would love to be able to comfort you and tell you that there is nothing for you to worry about here, that you are with us and we will not allow anything bad to happen to you. I gave you a tight hug and you understood that. On the lower bunk your sister Fatima had also woken up. Because it was still early I carried both of you to our bed and there all four of us had a lot of fun. You and Fatima played trying to tickle each other and your father and I felt incredibly happy. Your father is completely mad about taking photographs of these precious moments. He went to fetch his camera, and with the automatic setting we took photos of all four of us together. I am bursting with joy. I know there are feelings that neither photos nor these badly written words can manage to describe, but I shall settle for leaving this account and perhaps one day, when you become a mother, you will understand each and every one of these emotions.

  After all of this uproar, the day-to-day activities began, for you as well as for us. We went out to buy clothes and shoes.

  The nuns had bought you most of the essentials for the journey but the clothes you brought are too thin for the cold weather that is just beginning in Barcelona.

  How lovely it is to go out in the street with my little girls. In the neighborhood, everyone stops us to say hello. You add a touch of color. Some of them mutter, “poor things,” and you can’t imagine how much this bothers me; others might think I must have lost my marbles to embark on this adventure. But they don’t know, my girl, that for us it is not an adventure, it is our life.

  At the shoeshop I had a battle on my hands to get you to try on some school shoes. There was no way of persuading you. You picked out some other shoes, very elegant, but not practical for playing in the schoolyard. I don’t know how I managed to get you to understand, but in the end you went along with me.

  The next episode was at the butcher’s. You looked at the meat and started stamping your feet on the ground and shaking your head. It is at moments like this that I wish you could speak. I imagine that you have never eaten meat in your life.

  Your father and I have read a lot of books about the customs in your country. It helped us to feel a little closer to you while we were going through with the adoption. We had books and maps scattered all over the dining room table. Your father looked at the map of Bombay, locating where the orphanage was, the Spanish embassy, the courts, the famous Victoria Station, the Taj Mahal Hotel. Each day he would take a different route, imagining which way you would have to go to get to the airport. Sometimes I feel sorry I missed the early years of your infancy, the moments when you were discovering the world around you. I envy the people who were at your side and took care of you, but now I have you here, and with all the time in the world ahead of us.

  Lunchtime has been a bit of a struggle. You turn your nose up at everything. I know it is difficult for you but you will have to get used to our eating habits. To avoid eating you burst into tears with sobs that would break anyone’s heart. I have no choice but to force you a little, because you are very undernourished and you must have a terrible case of anemia.

  What makes me marvel is that I thought it would be more difficult with a girl who was a little older. I thought that perhaps I wouldn’t be able to manage, that you would have problems adapting. But right now everything is going as smooth as silk, and I hope and pray that this feeling of harmony is mutual.

  6.

  SOMETHING TO OFFER

  Arriving in Bombay, the group from Barcelona divided into two: those of us who would work as volunteers in the school and those who would work in a refuge for women in a run-down area. There is a lot of prostitution in that zone and all the problems of destitution associated with it. It is a very sordid area, an extensive shantytown constructed of the worst materials—plastic, cardboard—and the sanitary conditions are horrendous. It is a feat just to get hold of clean drinking water. The women who prostitute themselves live in tiny rooms with their children. Those children have to leave the shack when their mother needs to work, and they run aimlessly through the alleyways, which hold no possibility of escape, or else they are made to hide under the bed and try to sleep because they have learned that they are not to be any trouble. Their reward is not a doll or a bicycle but a handful of rice or lentils.

  The group that works there is demoralized. They feel useless because even a small change in an environment as run-down as this will begin to become apparent only in the very long term. Westerners always feel a need to achieve results quickly. Perplexity and impotence make you want to turn the whole thing upside down, but effective help can come only with a profound understanding of the culture, traditions, and spirituality that motivates people. The moment to actually do something comes only after having learned to listen.

  The project set up in this neighborhood is a refuge for women and their children. They are given food to combat nutritional deficiencies and an attempt is made to teach them a trade that will help them get ahead. The project also campaigns to teach people about AIDS and other illnesses. Supplying these essentials demands a great deal of compassion, in addition to water, rice, and medicine.

  Those of us working at the school go to the women’s cooperative some afternoons to lend a hand. We receive widows and women rejected by their husbands. Some of them have suffered abuse or apparent accidents, which are really intentional acts of aggression, such as the disfigurement of their faces with acid. They are women whom society has turned its back on. They have been led to believe that they are worthless and will never improve their lives. But this cooperative, which started from nothing, has continued to grow among the locals. There are more women all the time who are capable of doing work that affords them a decent life. They live in shared houses and do manual work, mostly with textiles. The range of products has also grown: rag dolls, bags, aprons, towels, coverlets, cushions … all decorated with traditional patterns as well as declarations on women’s rights. These objects are sold in Europe through organizations dedicated to fair trade, which guarantees that the people are fairly paid. With this work, they are able to recover their personal dignity and life begins to make sense again. Some of those who have been attacked with acid are able to travel to Europe for operations, which opens up a new life for them.

  Those of us who travel to India with their heads full of good intentions and a will to work and make themselves useful often find themselves disillusioned because a month is barely long enough t
o find your feet and make a difference. Yet in retrospect I realize that these work camps are focused primarily on having us observe and learn from everything around us. All the things we have experienced will continue to grow inside us, and once we return home we won’t just throw ourselves down on the sofa and watch the world pass us by, but rather get to work and try to change things as best we can.

  I came back to India to do something useful and so I spend hours at the school in the neighborhood of Andheri instead of simply being a tourist. I want to return to Barcelona with something to show for it, to have contributed in some way. I know that the work camps thrust me directly into the toughest side of the country and that India is more than destitution, children forced to work, and women who have been abused. I spent years learning about my country from books and documentaries. I know that it is a country rich in many things. A country where people of different religions, more than thirty official languages, and an infinity of dialects are able to live together in varying degrees of harmony. India is a country with a culture that stretches back thousands of years, and that can be felt on the streets of this city. Bombay is also host to the Indian cinema industry, so impressive as to be dubbed “Bollywood.” India is an overpopulated country filled with contrasts that reach astonishing extremes. These days, between trying to fit into the daily lives of the children at school, and my own interior journey of returning to the country where I was born, I continue to wonder what my life would have been like if I had not been adopted. It is like a personal riddle and I still have no answer.

  It will not be long before I shall go to Nasik with the rest of the group, and I feel a bundle of nerves in my stomach. I will have two tasks there: to learn about the water-conservation project and to dig into the most remote parts of my personal history. I hope to meet someone who still retains some memory of me, that the monsoons have not washed it all away.

  Tuesday, October 29, 1974

  I couldn’t sleep in the early hours of this morning and I came in to see you in your room. Both of my little darlings in a deep, calm sleep. Like all mothers, I watch over you night and day. During the day I see in your eyes a joy which is contagious, at night I hear your steady breathing, like the rolling of the waves. It is marvelous to be your mother.

  These days, Asha, the simple dialogue of signs and hugs is helping us get along. Your laughter is only silenced during meal times. Every day we have a little quarrel, but your tears are not going to make me give up. My dear girl, if you don’t eat, you won’t grow. Perhaps I should devote more time to you, but Fatima has been jealous ever since you arrived and also demands my attention. Aside from that, I can see she is quite happy for you to follow after her all day, playing and leading her around. You spin her round and play all kinds of tricks on her, and when you finally set her down she staggers about until she can get her balance. She is not as advanced as she ought to be and has only just learned to walk, yet you make her rush around like a rocket.

  Your arrival has required great changes. When we started thinking about adoption, I decided that I would have to give up my job to devote all my time to the two of you. But you pay me back in all manner of ways. I can say that I am better off now than I was before. From this point on I shall have time to sew for my little girls and take part in all your little discoveries.

  7.

  MARY

  Wednesday, October 30, 1974

  Dearest Asha, you don’t really leave me much time to write these days but I want to tell you my story. When I got married I wanted to have a family, and I imagined what it would be like. I always said to your father that I should like to have twins. It was a dream and as the years went by it stayed like that, just a dream. Health problems meant that I had to have surgery a number of times … and without what nature provides for procreation, you can ask for the moon but it won’t make a difference. Fate made reality of an impossibility. We were to adopt two babies, Fatima and Mary. They were not the fruit of my womb, but of my most intimate wishes.

  A few months ago Mary closed her eyes, unable to beat the illness she was fighting. And so fate took away what it had given me. And it is thanks to all of these twists and turns that you are here with us.

  One day, leafing through a book, your father came across an anonymous poem in which all of your names appear. Yes, the names of all three of my daughters: Asha, Fatima, and Mary (Marien):

  Tres morillas me enamoran en Jaén

  Asha, Fatima y Marien.4

  Just like the poet, I am also in love with my three girls …. You are the most important thing I have! Now you see that you must keep on believing in your dreams and one day, sooner or later, they will all come true.

  Every new day is special, as much for the intensity of our lives in the different volunteer camps and our coexistence with the people of this country, as for all the turmoil I feel from confronting my history. Once I have showered and dressed, Kamal leads me by the arm and makes me sit on the carpet that covers the living room floor. She is proud that I am dressing as an Indian and she wants to add her personal touch. Each morning she does my hair in a different way. One braid or two, or a whole bunch of them plaited together. All day long she is rushing around, seeing to the children and the housework, but she has transformed the act of doing my hair into a ritual. She brushes the hair energetically but unhurriedly and separates the strands to braid them. It has been years since anyone brushed my hair and the feeling is so pleasant that I shut my eyes and let myself go. These are perhaps the only moments when I can let my mind go blank, no thoughts … I spend too much time worrying. Today is going to be particularly trying. She knows where I am going and I interpret her efforts to make today’s braiding more intricate than usual as a way of saying that she will be there with me. She stands in the doorway to wave good-bye as I walk up the street. I stop to buy some flowers. I skip over a couple of puddles left by the last downpour and carry on to the taxi rank. Again I recite the address that my father once circled on his map of Bombay. I have another appointment with Mother Adelina. First we are going to Mass and afterward to the cemetery. It is an unavoidable duty, but I am doing it as much for myself as for my parents and Fatima. After bombarding me with questions about what I was going to do, Mom said quietly, “Asha, make sure you go and visit your sister, little Mary’s grave.”

  The flowers I have bought are for Mary. I can’t avoid thinking that she would be twenty-two years old now, like Fatima. And what would have become of me? Would I have stayed in India forever? Would I ever have been adopted? By the same parents? We would have been three sisters then, what a handful that would have been. Poor Mom!

  In front of Mary’s grave, Mother Adelina takes my hands in hers, which are trembling, and she tells me that they did everything they could for her. We sit on a bench facing it and think awhile in silence. I stifle my tears in front of Mother Adelina and say a prayer to my parents’ daughter, Fatima’s twin and, now more than ever, my sister. Mother Adelina prays with me, silently. Mom and Dad would so much have wished to be here.

  While I divide the flowers into two bunches to place on either side of the memorial stone, Mother Adelina tells me that on the day of Mary’s funeral, when the ceremony was over and they had gone back to the convent, they received a call from Barcelona. Mom, worried, was asking if the little girl was all right. It was the middle of the night in Barcelona and Mom had been woken up by a nightmare. She had heard a baby crying in pain. Anxiously, she called Bombay and they had to tell her that Mary had fallen ill at the last moment and that she had died.

  The nuns put up a memorial stone with words in English in the name of the parents who had already adopted her.

  DARLING BABY MARY, YOU WENT TO HEAVEN JUST BEFORE YOU COULD COME TO LIVE WITH US, BUT DEEP IN OUR HEARTS YOU WILL ALWAYS STAY AS OUR BELOVED DAUGHTER. YOUR LOVING FOSTER PARENTS, JOSEP CATALÁ MIRÓ AND ELECTA VEGA DE MIRÓ, BARCELONA, SPAIN. BORN NOVEMBER 2, 1972; EXPIRED MAY 31, 1974.

  During the time when Fatima and Mary were staying at
the orphanage in Bombay, I was already making a nuisance of myself asking for a set of parents. And Mother Adelina said that sometimes, at the top of the spiral staircase, I would ask for parents from Barcelona. What could I have known of Barcelona? In all my nosing around I must have picked up on the fact that two girls were about to be adopted by a family in Barcelona. That’s the only explanation I can think of. That exotic name must have sounded like the promised land. I imagine that in my subconscious I must have associated that city with an equation for happiness: Barcelona = Happiness = Parents.

  For Mother Adelina, today’s trip to the cemetery, with all the memories it has stirred up, has been very exhausting. In response to some of my questions she seems brusque and evasive. I don’t want to upset her any further. I am not dispirited, though. I still have to go to Nasik, where I hope to find out more about my past. I accompany her to the convent and, once again, turn to say good-bye. I had the premonition that this would really be the last good-bye and that I shall never see her again. She tells me that she will always be by my side, as she has been all these years, and I believe her. We embrace one last time in front of the wrought-iron gate and I remain there, but I’m not sure why. I could have walked up with her, arm in arm, to the house. But I stay there, watching her advance slowly, wearing my sandals, through the garden until she turns and waves good-bye with a smile before going inside.