by Asha Miro
I have always imagined what it would be like to meet my natural family and often wondered if they would be like me. I always thought we would have nothing in common, that my Mediterranean gestures, the way I spoke, picked up from my adoptive parents, the education I received in Barcelona, all of this would distance me from those with whom I shared a mother, a father, grandparents, and other ancestors. I have always defended the idea of the adoptive family and the idea that the adopted culture is the one that leaves its mark. But now I don’t know what to think. Despite the fact that there are more things that separate us than bind us together, and despite the fact of having to speak through an interpreter, which makes good communication impossible, I still feel that in some way I am at home here.
But I am also very aware that it would be impossible for me to live here. I am sorry to have to acknowledge this. I look at them, Asha, her husband, their children, knowing for certain that they are my family and that they would give everything for me. Everything and more, even though I am still a total stranger to them. We know nothing about one another, but despite everything we are bound by very strong feelings. I wish so much that my parents could suddenly appear from Barcelona to witness everything that I am experiencing.
My two young nephews insist, one after the other, that we take pictures of all three of us together, lots of photos. I live each scene as if it were a film.
Before I have really come to terms with the vast magnitude of it all I begin to think of what I could do for them. A school, a medical dispensary for the village, a cultural center. Just a little bit of economic help could make an enormous difference to Kolpewadi, and the idea makes me feel both happy and a little uneasy. It would take a lot of work to keep track of it from a distance, to make sure it was working properly. I would like to take my two young nephews with me today, hidden in my baggage, halfway around the world to show them where I live …. For a moment I imagine Ashain my house, cooking, looking at my photo albums, and introducing her to my parents.
And while all these ideas are turning over in my head, I also feel that I am thinking of helping them in the most typical Western terms, which makes me feel a twinge of embarrassment. A school? They already have one! A medical dispensary, a cultural center … perhaps they don’t need any of that! Surely they would prefer me just to come and visit them more often. Maybe they would be uncomfortable if Asha’s sister, whose life led her to Europe, and who now has a life that is unattainable for them, turned around and started changing the whole village. It has to be thought over carefully. What I do know is that finding my sister has not been a simple thing and that right now a huge question mark hangs over whatever might come out of this, for her as much as for me.
“I prayed a lot to be able to find you, and I knew that I would find you, that one day I would see you again.” Asha tells me this through Francis on the way to Shaha, the village where we both were born. “There are so many things I would like to tell you!” The language really gets in the way. She speaks Marathi with some dialectical differences. They tell me that normally she talks a lot and that I shouldn’t think she is shy or reserved, just that at the moment she can’t say everything she would like to. “What a shame you don’t speak Marathi!” Yes, it is a shame. I got over that particular disappointment the first time I came back to India, when I longed to be able to understand what had been my language. Children can entirely erase their native language in less than six months if no one speaks it to them, or if they don’t hear it spoken anywhere. When those same children grow up, however, they might possess a greater facility for learning that forgotten language, because the sounds are left somewhere in their memory. I would like to study Marathi someday, and return to Kolpewadi and be able to have a conversation with my sister without an interpreter of any kind. Francis is a perfect translator, the best interpreter we could possibly have. He never stops talking, in one language or another. He too is a part of our story and these moments are very intense for him. Even before I ask, he comes over to explain things that he thinks are important, repeating them as many times as it takes for me to understand. His accent in English is a little difficult for me to understand and he has to work hard to allow both Asha and myself to express ourselves through him.
Asha and I are sitting in the front of the jeep, with Akaram driving in the direction of Shaha. In the backseat are Jordi, Francis, and the journalist. At the very back, bouncing and laughing among the cameras and bags, are Mikele, Anna, and Grau. There is no end to the holes in the road.
When we were leaving Kalgaon-Thadi to go to Shaha, Asha’s husband wanted to come with us, but there wasn’t room. He stayed behind. I think he is a little worried that we will take Asha away!
We drive along a narrow, winding road. Three children are squatting by the side of the road, relieving themselves. It seems to be the most entertaining place to take care of such necessities, chatting and watching the cars, carts, and bicycles going by. All three of them wave enthusiastically as we go by, without getting up, and with their pants down.
I imagine Radhu plowing the field just like the men we can see through the window of the jeep, dressed in white, working the dark and dusty earth. We pass through villages with houses made of mud with straw roofs and small houses made of brick, square, recently constructed. I note every detail of the landscape, solitary, dry, the shape of the trees …. We leave the small road and turn onto the main road, which is a little better than the one that leads from Shirdi (a town where there is a big Sai Baba temple) to Nasik. Asha and I spend a good deal of the journey holding hands. As though we don’t want to experience what we are seeing separately. We are both very emotional on the way to Shaha. It is as if by holding hands we can transmit what each of us is feeling. There are moments in life when words are not necessary.
Shaha belongs to the taluka of Sinnar, a very poor and dry zone where cultivation is not easy. Asha tells me that she goes there often, every couple of months or so to visit all the family who live there, at least the ones she is in contact with. We turn onto another road. This is very narrow and there is almost no asphalt left on it. The journey seems very long to me, and the monotony of the untamed landscape, which is lovely, makes me nervous instead of relaxing me. When I am least expecting it we arrive at Shaha. We pass through the length of the village because it turns out that we were born in a place called Chari Kramanka Athara, which can be translated as Shaha’s Channel Number 18, a kind of conduit that brings water from the Godavari. We are daughters of the Godavari.
We pass a red tractor carrying a couple who wave and smile at us. On either side of the road are fields of corn, cows, herds of goats …. Now we are there. We enter the neighborhood, or quarter, or whatever they call it on the outskirts of Shaha. Channel Number 18 and the asphalt disappears completely. Two boys on bicycles escort us and show us the way. It is quite unusual for a car full of so many foreigners to turn up in Shaha.
We get out of the jeep. There are a few mud houses with straw roofs, cows tethered to the stables, and plowed fields. The ground is hot. A warm breeze is blowing. It is silent. Women dressed in saris appear, then boys and men. I don’t know where they come from because the village looks half abandoned and the houses are small. Asha seems to know almost everyone and she presents me to them, one by one, and they all look at me as though hypnotized. I try to imagine what Asha must feel, presenting her sister to the people of the village where we were born, decades after that same sister vanished from sight. I feel a knot in my stomach and wonder if I am not dreaming all of this.
We hold hands and we walk up to a field from which you can see the house where I was born. There, between those walls and that straw roof that cuts across the horizon, we lived together as children. Asha, less than forty years ago and I, Usha, about thirty-five. Now I am in doubt about my age, about the date of my birth, but it doesn’t matter. I am not interested in verifying it, and besides, it would be quite impossible to find anyone who could actually remember the exact date when Sitabai
gave birth to little Usha. Asha suggests that we walk over to what used to be our house, across the fields, but the fatigue is getting to me now and I have no energy left. Having not slept for more than two hours, and with all the accumulated emotion, I am incapable of taking one more step. For the moment I am quite happy just to look at it from a distance.
And so, many years after having left Shaha, the two Ashas, one from the West and one from the East, stand hand in hand looking out across the fields at the horizon, listening to the sound of the wind in the trees. In the distance two men dressed in white are plowing the fields; the horns of their cows are painted orange and turquoise. Our father, Radhu, must have done the same thing so many times! The ashes of our mother, Sitabai, are spread out on the fields we are looking at, perhaps in the field that we are standing on now. There is nothing to indicate the exact spot. She died when I was three months old. I repeat to myself everything that I have discovered up until now, to fix it firmly in my memory. Sitabai. Sita. My mother had the name of a goddess! This is the name of my origins. I am wearing sandals and I can feel the heat of the earth through my feet. I think of Sitabai and I imagine her watching us, Asha and me together. United forever.
The people of Shaha watch us and I recognize myself in many of their faces. Some of them have the same blood as I do and they have a similar genetic makeup, but there is so much that separates us! They introduce me to the wife of our half-brother (the son of Radhu and Shevbai) and two of her children. One of them looks like me, like my young nephews, Asha’s sons. It is obvious that we belong to the same family. I recognize myself in the faces that I see around me, in the faces of the people of Kolpewadi and Shaha. They too recognize me as a member of their family. So many familiar faces, what a strange sensation! I, who have always been so different from everyone else! Anna and Mikele are joking, “Look, there’s another Miró!” They are my people without actually being my people, because we share nothing but our physical appearance. I suppose you have to experience it to understand.
We retrace our journey to return to Kolpewadi. Asha’s husband’s face lights up when he sees us arrive, as do those of Savita, Bausaheb, and Rahul. They say that it is a shame we have to go back to Nasik so soon, today, and that I have to come back again soon with more time to spare, that there are a lot of people who want to see me, cousins, the children of cousins, uncles …. The Meherkhamb house is still full of people, neighbors of every age curious to know more about the story.
I ask myself if I could last very long in the little house in that part of Kalgaon-Thadi, and once again I come to the conclusion that I am completely Western, in the worst sense of the word. I have become used to all the modern conveniences and would now be incapable of sleeping on the floor in the little room of the Meherkhamb house with everyone around me, literally living on top of one another with no privacy, listening to everyone breathing, one coughing, another having a nightmare. I might be able to spend a day there, but I have to admit that it would be no more than that. And I wouldn’t even know where to begin washing myself in their bathroom, where there wouldn’t be room for even half of my soaps and creams. I think that I would die of hunger, too, because I find it difficult to eat Indian food, the spices, everything that I am not familiar with. Getting used to the water, too, which I know is better not to drink because our bodies are not used to it (despite taking precautions, I have suffered the effects since the first day), and all the tea with milk they drink at any hour of the day and that I am not too keen on unless they add a disproportionate amount of sugar … I know that I would have a difficult time of it, and I am ashamed to admit it, but that is the way it is.
Asha and Savita show me family photos and the two younger ones help to comment as well. This is the scene that really brings us together, more than anything else that has happened since I arrived. The scene seems familiar and comfortable to all of us. The language of photographs is universal: sitting on the porch of a house passing pictures around of everything and nothing, a performance at the children’s school, a fancy dress party, an excursion to a temple …. Now I really do feel at home, part of the family. And they do too. I would like to stretch this moment out to its limits. I would like to come back loaded down with my photos to explain in images everything that I have been through, from when they left me with the nuns until now. Perhaps that is what I should do soon.
Asha, the little girl who, with no say in the matter, suddenly found herself without her little sister, deserves an explanation. She deserves an answer from me to all of her questions, and since I cannot explain in words, it seems like a good idea to try with pictures. And I too have a lot of questions that I would like to have the time to put to her. We have enough on our hands today just taking in all of these new things.
They have called the village photographer and the family photo session begins. One after another they file onto the porch to be immortalized by my side.
Asha gives me two photographs from her collection to take back with me to Barcelona so as not to forget her, and a salwar kameez for me and another one for Anna. A group of neighbors come into the house. Prodding and poking us, they insist, in between laughs and comments that we don’t understand, on leading us into the kitchen, where they strip us down half naked and we wind up wearing the salwar kameez, which makes us sweat even more. The language of clothes and women getting dressed up is universal.
The moment to leave has arrived. Asha is crying; she walks to the jeep with me holding my hand. Each second is like an eternity. Once inside the car, after having hugged and kissed and said good-bye without words, she firmly takes my face between her two hands and then raps her knuckles on either side of her head. She repeats the very quick, precise gesture a couple of times. Savita says farewell in the same way, imitating the blessings of her mother. I wonder what exactly it means.
I will always remember Asha’s open hand against the glass of the car window and her eyes filled with tears looking at me. Eyes bathed with sadness, which I couldn’t bear to see. Seeing her only makes me think of the little Asha, the Asha who lost her sister thirty years ago. I don’t want this to be the last image I have of her. I want to see her again. We shall have to invent some way of communicating, but we can’t let several more decades pass us by without knowing anything about each other. I ask Francis to tell her once more that I shall be back, that I will never forget her, that I will send news through him and she can send me news also. The whole village is there to wave good-bye. Some boys run along behind the car when it starts to move. I can’t look back anymore; I too am crying.
The fact of being told how alike we are as sisters makes me think of a person leading a kind of double life. Like the two faces of the moon, of a coin, of a reflection in a mirror. The Asha who lives in Kolpewadi could be the Asha who lives in Barcelona. I could be the other Asha. If Radhu had decided that it was more difficult to take care of a young child than a baby, I would have had another life, probably very similar to the one that Asha is living. So similar that it might have been the same. By now I might have four children and a husband like Bikhaji. And the life of Asha might have been very similar to mine. Might she have been adopted by my parents? Could she have been the Catalan one and I the one who spoke only a dialect of Marathi? Or might she have been Swedish, or Italian, or French? The questions are endless and there are no possible answers.
In all stories of adoption there is an element of magic, of fate, of a predestined path, of choice, depending on each person’s individual faith, which makes everyone unique and special. Today, for the first time, I have come close to seeing what my life might have been like had my father not handed me over to be adopted. I have come very close, so close that I could actually see myself living there. Asha means hope and perhaps my sister held on to her name in order to preserve the hope that she too needed.
Once back in Nasik, we say good-bye to Francis and his friend the journalist, who has to write his article straightaway so that it can be published tomorrow. Francis
has been more help than I could have imagined and I shall always be grateful to him for that.
We are once again in the Dev-Mata convent, crossing the garden that seems like an oasis of peace to me. Nirmala and Merlyn welcome us happily, having been waiting with great impatience to hear about everything that happened in Kolpewadi, with no detail spared. They have prepared tea and a cake that they made this afternoon. Nirmala is happy because she can see that I am happy, even though I am also very tired. Now she understands how important it was for me to reconstruct my past.
We go to the Church of Saint Anne, which is very close to the convent, the church where I was baptized. Nirmala and Merlyn go with us. The new chaplain—who when we arrive is playing football in the yard, casually dressed, with a group of children—hands us the registry book in which my certificate of baptism is noted, a big book with an antique look about it. It is the same book I saw a few years ago, when I last visited this place. That time I was content to settle for Father Prakaast, who looked after the chapel in those days, copying out all the information. Not this time. Now, I go through the old, yellowed pages written in English script with faded ink and my finger goes back over every entry. Number of baptism: 776. Date: May 7, 1969. Name: Asha Maria. Date of birth: November 7, 1967. Father’s name: Radhu Kasinath Ghoderao. Mother’s name: Shevbai Ghoderao.
And I stop there. Why put Shevbai’s name when she was not my mother? It turns out that in those days and in that kind of register they recorded only the name of the first wife, who was the official wife, the only one who counted. Which is why Sitabai, my biological mother, doesn’t appear anywhere! I still recall the emotion I felt the first time I read the name Shevbai, thinking that it was the name of the woman who gave birth to me. During the last few years I even thought that if I should ever have a natural daughter, I would call her Shevbai. Now I know that it wasn’t Shevbai who gave life to me, though she did give life to my elder half-sister, Sakubai, who nursed me when my mother died. In some way I am also grateful to her and she also forms part of my genealogical tree, as unusual and full of curiosities as it is.