Daughter of the Ganges

by Asha Miro

  Nirmala is listening to the story and nodding her head in agreement, as if suddenly the memory of all these images came back to her, but she says nothing and lets Francis continue.

  Before leaving me, Radhu, my father, wanted to do one last thing: change the names of the two girls. Asha means hope and he decided that little Usha would need hope and luck in her life. Usha means sunrise, dawn, and is the goddess of morning. Asha was named Usha. And that was how I, Usha Ghoderao, became, one Monday in 1968 (or it might have been 1969), Asha. The name that has always been with me, giving me strength.

  It is difficult to describe what I feel as I try to take in what I have just been told. Nirmala is remembering it all and is as moved as I am. Until now this part of the story was half forgotten and confused in her mind. She has lived through the stories of so many girls! Tears are running down my face. But where is Usha?

  “Yesterday I went to her house to see her,” Francis tells me, his face lighting up. “And she would really like to see you. She has never forgotten you and she actually tried to find you, but without means or resources it was impossible.”

  My sister still goes by Asha. After our father, Radhu, decided to change our names, Asha continued to be called Asha, perhaps because she was aware of what her real name was and a girl who is aware of who she is can’t be made to change her name easily, even if the grown-ups decide to do so.

  Asha, the other Asha, is married and has four children. Tomorrow we can go to see her. My heart is beating. Tomorrow!

  A nun comes into the dining room and breaks up the conversation looking very worried. There are three men outside who want to see Nirmala. One of them is the husband of my sister, who has come from Kolpewadi, a village about eighty kilometers from Nasik. The other two are his cousins who live in the town and decided to accompany him.

  My brother-in-law—it is strange to think that I could call somebody that, someone whose name I don’t even know—came all the way by bus on his own to see me, to know if I really exist, because he can’t believe that his wife’s sister has suddenly appeared just the way Francis explained it. Nirmala is concerned. She is worried that they will ask for money. In India, the Catholic nuns and the convents are not very popular and have even been attacked in some states. This puts them in a state of alert. We go outside and find the three men, more frightened than we are. Their eyes fill with tears to see me come down the steps from the door. I exist. I am Usha, and yes, tomorrow, if you have no objections, we will go to Kolpewadi where the two sisters will be reunited.

  Anna takes a picture of the three men, Nirmala, and me. The two cousins insist on giving me their address so that we can send them a copy. Asha’s husband will return to the village this evening. I feel sorry for him having to make such a long trip, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He is as happy as he is incredulous.

  When the three men leave, Francis explains that Asha’s husband is called Bikhaji Balaji Meherkhamb and he works in a sugarcane factory in Kolpewadi. He and my sister have two boys and two girls: Sheetal, who is twenty, is now married and no longer lives with them; Savita, seventeen years old, who is to marry soon; Bhausaheb, who is thirteen; and Rahul, who is eleven.

  Nirmala and Merlyn wish us much luck for tomorrow. They are going through all this with as much intensity as I am. Nirmala seems like a grandmother to me, like a person who practically watched me being born. She was the one who took the first steps toward giving me a new life when Radhu asked her to help him. It is easier for me now to understand the work of these women and what Nirmala’s role was in my adoption. Perhaps because of her shyness and her sweetness, I was unable to realize just how much Nirmala had done for me the first time I was here. Nirmala was one of the first people who cared for me once my father left me with her, and it has been proven that in the process of growing as a person the most important thing is the affection you receive when you are very little. She was also the one who decided that I could not stay in Nasik forever. In those days there weren’t that many children at Dev-Mata. I remember only Johnny, my playmate. Nirmala says that he is dead. He was adopted by an Indian family and he died years ago of an illness. Nowadays, Dev-Mata looks after more than eighty orphan girls of all ages and they have constructed a separate building for them, where they can sleep, eat, and have classes. I saw them and I played with them for a time. Laughing with the little girls of the villages around Nasik in the Dev-Mata gardens is the closest I can get to the early years of my childhood.

  17.

  DAUGHTERS OF THE GODAVARI

  Our lives are dotted with special dates marked in our personal calendars like constellations. June 28, 2003, is just such a date: I shall meet my biological sister, Asha, with whom I imagine I have a lot in common, but then again, perhaps not.

  Now I wish I could meet someone who has been through a similar experience and could explain to me what to do in this situation, what I am supposed to say, whether it is normal to feel this mixture of fear and excitement, of wanting it to be happening and not wanting it at the same time.

  We head toward Kolpewadi. Two hours in the white Toyota thrown about by all the bumps in a badly covered asphalt road that should be two lanes but often converts to four. There are eight of us squeezed together, including the driver, Akaram, who is driving as fast as he can. Apart from Francis, we are accompanied by Vinod Bedarkar, a journalist on the local paper, Sakal, which is published in Marathi and can be bought all over the state of Maharashtra. He wants to write an article about what happens today. He is tall and slim, with a mustache and a dark gaze. Seated in the back of the car, in among all the film equipment, he watches us avidly without understanding what we are saying. My nerves are shattered; I have managed to get only a couple of hours sleep.

  Francis explains that the district of Nasik contains fifteen talukas, or villages. There are a lot of fields on either side of the road. It is the time for plowing and the men work the land, helped by bulls or emaciated cows. Women wearing lively colored saris, which contrast with the dull brown hues of the earth, carry water in big aluminum jars on their heads or against their sides. They pass through the flat landscape with their very elegant way of walking. It is a gray day with a lot of clouds, but the air is warm and humid. We pass by Pangri, a village cut through by the road. There is a Hindu procession. The orange robes dominate the scene as the people follow along behind the little altar, carrying flags and garlands of flowers. We move on, between herds of goats, dogs, motorcycles, houses without roofs, and very modest restaurants and bars at the roadside with large signs for Fanta or Coca-Cola, which contrast with the semidesert landscape. Nearly all the men in the villages of this taluka wear a Gandhi topi, a white hat like an old-fashioned sailor’s cap. It is the same white as the salwar kameez they are wearing.

  We stop at a crossroads and Francis indicates a small road that leads off to the left, toward Shaha, the village where I was born. Asha ended up living just a few kilometers from our village while I was thousands of kilometers away. I examine the landscape as the car stops by the side of the road. It is all very flat. The earth is a certain shade of brown and the trees have peculiar shapes. They are called babhool and they belong to the acacia family. Shaha. I repeat the name of my village, trying to discover what the sound evokes in me. The contradictions continue. On the one hand I feel an intense emotion, and on other, complete indifference. With my gaze fixed on the direction of the little road that leads to Shaha, I ask myself whether it really matters whether I was born in Shaha, Nasik, or any other spot in the world. Why does it matter to so many people to know where we are from rather than who we are? I don’t have an answer.

  Pathri, Francis’s village, is where my natural father, Radhu Ghoderao, handed me to Nirmala and Martín de los Ríos so that they could give me a better life than the one he could offer me. At the entrance to the village, on a road that looks important but that is not asphalted, we stop to shoot some film, and an immense crowd, most of them boys and men, surround us curiously. It is not
at all normal for a car like ours to turn up full of strangers. Some of the men recognize Francis (a school colleague, a neighbor) and ask insistently who we are. They press in so closely that we cannot move, and until he tells them everything they want to know they will not step back and allow us a little air. All the roads in the village are made of earth. The houses are very small, and are also the color of earth.

  We arrive at the stone house where Francis lived as a child, which was also a dispensary for handing out medicines to the needy. He has forgotten the keys, which his mother still keeps in Nasik, so we can’t go inside. No one lives there anymore. We sit together on the stones at the entrance. It moves me to think that this is the house where my second life began, the one I have now. If my father had not brought me here I would have lived an entirely different life. Francis tells me that he had not really thought about this episode in his family history until Nirmala asked him to “investigate” for me. Now, with the two of us sitting on the stones of the catechist’s house, I silently observe the houses along the road in front of me, a landscape that we shared when we were young. Francis says that practically nothing has changed in more than thirty years. Some women sitting on the ground are washing aluminum jars; a piglet crosses the road looking for something to eat. Neither they nor I make any move to approach each other. There are only women, and the women, as opposed to the men we met at the entrance to the village, observe everything discreetly from a distance. Alongside Francis’s house is a little temple that looks as though it has been abandoned. It exudes tranquillity. In this house I began my journey toward a new life, the first step toward Barcelona.

  We arrive in Kolpewadi by means of a bridge that crosses the river, where the women are washing clothes. On the outskirts are some houses, very simple, most of the walls are made of mud, some of them brick. There are cows, with their long, pointed horns, tethered to wooden carts with big wheels parked in the middle of the yards. There are also some cars, motorcycles, and bicycles to be seen. Francis guides us to the neighborhood of Kalgaon-Thadi, on the edge of Kolpewadi, and we park the jeep at the top of the road, still some way off from my sister’s house. A large group of men and boys gathers around us, hardly allowing us to open the doors to get out of the car. It starts to rain. My nerves are on edge and I no longer know what I feel.

  What should I say to my sister? What do you say to a sister whom you haven’t seen for so many years? What do you say to a sister from whom you have been separated by seas and deserts, beliefs and languages, cultures and experiences? And she—will she be as nervous as I am?

  I walk down to her house along the uncovered road, accompanied by Francis and the journalist from the Sakal paper. A group of men dressed in white, with the same old-fashioned sailor’s cap, and children in blue school uniforms follow us doggedly down the street, making a great racket. It looks like a procession. We pass a fountain. There are cows everywhere, and hens running back and forth. A strange silence comes as the rain suddenly stops, as if it too wants to observe what is happening.

  My sister’s house is typical for a normal village family, the family of a man who works in a sugarcane factory. These houses are called vasti. My sister’s is a square construction of brick with a corrugated Uralite sheet roof and a little porch with plastic chairs. At the entrance are two buffalo with very long horns and young calves, all a very dark gray, tied to the little stable …. And there is Asha. Dressed in a pink sari, slim like mine, with the same dark gaze as mine, with her hair tied up. And as emotional as I am. Francis introduces us. It is obvious that even he, who was so sure of himself up until this point, has no idea how to act or what to say.

  Asha and I embrace. We laugh and cry, but speaking is impossible. I don’t know enough Marathi, which is the only language she speaks. It all seems to happen in slow motion. Bikhaji, her husband, is here. He looks much happier than he did yesterday. His wife is happy and so is he. Today is a big day for the Meherkhamb family.

  Sheetal, my eldest niece, who is married and lives in another village, couldn’t come, but the other three are here. They are very happy to see me. We sit on the porch on the red plastic chairs, and Francis acts as our interpreter. Now it is as if not just the rain has stopped, but time also. Completely.

  We sit side by side, the two Ashas, holding hands. We look at each other without saying anything; all we can do is cry. I have never looked at anyone this way, wanting to see myself through her eyes, knowing that it is possible that I am still in there, that my image has remained imprinted in her mind all these years. Asha also looks at me with an expression of curiosity, emotion, and surprise. How did she imagine me? What idea did she have of me? What is the last image of me she can recall?

  It is clear that she is my big sister, and she treats me as such. She dries my tears with her sari and tells me things to console me that I don’t understand. This intimacy is limited as almost the entire village is watching. I understand that this cannot be avoided, but I would prefer not to have this spectacle in Kalgaon-Thadi. The neighbors, mostly men and boys, form an uncontrolled mass of people who encircle the house and climb the posts of the small cattle stable. It is strange that it doesn’t collapse under them all. The women are all gathered together on one side of the house, farther away. Out of the corner of my eyes I watch them and see that some of them are so moved that they are passing handkerchiefs from one to the other. Suddenly the entire village is living these moments as though they are part of their own story. They laugh and cry with us. Feelings can also be experienced communally. They feel that Asha’s story is also their own.

  Asha shows me her house, with Francis translating everything she tells me. There is only one room, its walls painted a very light green. A garland of orange flowers hanging over the door bids us welcome. It is a small, rectangular room, about twelve square meters, not much more, with a bed pushed into one corner next to the window by the entrance, and one piece of furniture (a wardrobe with doors). There are no objects or appliances of any kind, only a Chinese paper lantern hanging from the ceiling, a picture of Jesus, and a wooden clotheshorse with a few things hanging on it. On one of the walls three posters of landscapes have been stuck up along with another of the English alphabet for children. Opposite the entrance is another door, that leads to the latrines and the area which is used for washing oneself. The kitchen is dark with only one tiny window. A washbasin, a stove, some pots with flour, tea, and spices, aluminum plates …. There is only one lightbulb in the whole house, and to turn it on my niece, Savita, has to climb up on one of the red plastic chairs from the porch to hand the electric cable that is rolled up in a crack in the wall to her father so that he can fix it to the end of a fork-shaped stick and then cross the road to connect it inside another house. The windows have bars on them but no glass. Savita and the two children sleep on mats on the floor while Asha and Bikhaji sleep on the bed. They probably have to do their homework from school on the floor as well, and it is where they amuse themselves when it is raining and where they all eat together. I find it difficult to picture scenes from their daily life. Everything is so spartan and reduced to the minimum that it is difficult to describe.

  Asha goes into the kitchen with two other women who help her to fry a kind of noodle made of potato paste and some fritters made of onion mixed with another ingredient that I don’t know. She moves around the kitchen energetically, talking nonstop with her friends. The way she puts the fritters into the boiling oil is firm and determined. She seems to be the center of this household and I am happy to hear her talking to the others. We eat what comes out of the kitchen served on aluminum trays, all seated on the floor between the wardrobe and the bed, and surrounded by dozens of people trying to enter the house, or else watching us from the doors and windows, all jostling one another. We must really make quite a spectacle. I feel like a wild animal in a zoo. We have to ask them to move back a bit from the two doors because we don’t have enough air to breathe! It is very hot and the humidity makes it even more intense.
Asha takes a fritter and puts it in my mouth, without warning and without giving me a chance to respond. Another fritter, a biscuit …. Later on, they explain to me that this gesture of giving food to someone is a sign of affection.

  My two little nephews, Bausaheb and Rahul, look a lot like me—so much so that someone remarks that they could easily be my own children. Physically they resemble me more than they resemble their mother, but they are also like me in the way they look and speak, and in certain gestures. I am quite conscious of this. It is clear that we are family, they too can see it, and they are happy. They are very sweet and never stop smiling and going in and out of the house to chat to their neighborhood friends and classmates outside. All the children are wearing their blue uniforms from the school. My nephews seem to be very intelligent and know perfectly well who I am and why I have come to their house to visit. Despite the scarce resources of my sister’s family, the boys are very passionate about their studies. They observe everything, without letting a single detail escape, and they repeat all the phrases they know how to say in English, as if they are trying to demonstrate that they can speak and we can understand each other correctly.

  My niece, Savita, has not stopped smiling ever since we met. She is very affectionate and is attentive to everything. She helps her mother to bring one more chair here, another cup of tea there, and with everything else that is going on.