Daughter of the Ganges

by Asha Miro

  My mother was cremated on a pyre in the middle of one of the fields at Shaha, and her ashes were spread there. Asha tells her that we went there together a few days ago and that she showed me the place and the village.

  On the day of Sitabai’s death, Hari and Sakubai took me home with them to their house in Ujani. Radhu didn’t know what to do with me, a baby only a few months old, who needed to be nursed. Asha stayed there with the other, older siblings, while they carried me away on foot. Sakubai remembers having covered the four kilometers to Ujani with me on her back, nursing me from time to time. Hari carried little Balu, who was only two months old, in his arms. Sakubai had always known that when Sitabai died she would have to take care of her little ones. That was what Sitabai had asked her to do. They went to fetch Asha the following day, but she came and went between the two houses. They looked after me in that house for three months. By then they had discussed it with Radhu: Little Usha would stay there until they were sure she could survive, or else for good. Hari and Sakubai were much younger than Radhu and had more energy for taking care of children.

  During the months I spent in her house as one of her children, Sakubai had the idea that it was like having twins and she would bring up Balu and myself as equals. Hari thought this was a very good idea and made sure that his wife ate as much as she could to keep up her strength so that she had enough milk for both babies. “And I didn’t let her work, I wanted you both to be taken good care of and didn’t want her to be more tired than necessary,” Hari explained.

  Then, one day, Hari’s father, Kasinath Jagtap, forbade them to carry on raising me. He argued that Balu was not only their natural child but was a boy and therefore took precedence, and that Sakubai would not have enough milk for both and was risking the life of the baby who really mattered. Both Hari and Sakubai tried to persuade him otherwise, but they were unable to change his mind. Hari, looking into my face, explains to me in Marathi, which Francis translates for me, that his father was very strong, very dominant, and very imposing. It wasn’t possible to defy him. If it hadn’t been for him, they would have adopted me and would have been my parents forever.

  I am completely transfixed listening to this story. Sitting on the floor, at the foot of the bed on which we three sisters sit, Hari is crying inconsolably. I am the girl who could have been his daughter. In some ways I was his daughter for three months. When he stops crying he tells me firmly that he now thinks that, thanks to his father, I have had a better life. At the time they were very sad about having to let me go, but now he is content: “If it hadn’t been for my father you would be living like this, like us. I am sure you live much better and now I am happy.” Those are his words. It touches me that a man who lives so far outside the world, so disconnected from everything, illiterate, with no access to the news, no press, no television, could be so convinced that the life I have led has been better than that which he could have offered me. It touches me and makes me cry. Anything makes me cry now. It is a very powerful moment, experiencing what is happening to me, feeling what I am feeling now, as satisfying as it is hard to digest and absorb. I am sitting with the people who could have been my parents. I am closer than ever to my own mother. Sitabai and Sakubai resembled each other, they were practically the same age, they were friends. I want to remember forever the warmth and the feel of Sakubai’s hand. She holds on to me and I feel as though I am living between the past they are telling me about, and the present. I feel out of time. Holding hands with my first adoptive mother, and with my sister, I feel at peace.

  Carrying out the orders of Hari’s father, they began to think about what to do with Usha, what to do with me. Radhu and Hari had heard of the catechist, Francis’s father, in Pathri. The two of them went to see him alone. Radhu asked him for help with his two daughters, Asha and Usha. He wanted to give them to the chaplain and the nuns who he knew went there every Monday, so that they could take care of them until they were grown up. Nobody could take care of them other than Hari and Sakubai, but they were being prevented from doing so. Francis’s father listened to them. A few days later he went to Shaha to see the girls, Asha and me. Then he decided that to ask the nuns to take care of two girls would be too much. The older one, Asha, could now walk and eat by herself if need be. The little one, Usha, was only a few months old and was still very fragile. She needed feeding and caring for, otherwise she would die. He would tell them only about Usha, about me. The air could be cut with a knife, as we all listen to the story attentively. Neither Francis nor my sister knew about this and they are very surprised. Asha breaks the tension by saying that Francis’s father made the right decision, otherwise she wouldn’t have been able to live with Bikhaji! We all laugh. Bikhaji has been sitting in the corner all this time, listening to the story.

  The following Monday, Radhu and Hari returned to Pathri, only this time they had me in their arms. They met Martín de los Ríos and Nirmala. Yes, they were prepared to take care of me, but it wasn’t all that simple. They needed to have the permission of their superiors. When permission was granted, Sakubai and my father took the bus to Nasik. This was Sakubai’s first visit to the city. She carried me in her arms all the way and my father carried Balu. Sakubai breast-fed first one and then the other. The journey took four hours. They passed through the wrought-iron gates of Dev-Mata, the same gate that is there today, and they crossed the garden to the house. Sakubai clearly recalls the conversation Radhu had with Nirmala. Radhu wanted to leave me there for only a short time, just until I wasn’t so fragile, until I could walk and eat rice and cereals. But Nirmala told him that would be impossible; if they left the child, it would have to be for good. They both spent the night at the convent because it was already late. Then Radhu signed the papers, in a manner of speaking—that is, since he couldn’t read or write. They arrived at an agreement with Nirmala: The nuns would bring little Usha back to the village once in a while and they would let them know how their little girl was doing.

  Sakubai handed me over to Nirmala. It was she who actually did the physical act of placing me in the arms of another person. Afterward, she, Radhu, and little Balu went to catch the next bus back to the village.

  “What else could be done but to leave you there? We were poor, we lived in the country, my father-in-law wouldn’t allow me to raise you, and there was no one else to take care of you …. Your mother had asked me to make sure you survived, more than anything else, and taking you to that convent in Nasik was the only solution we could find to save you.”

  While I listen to Sakubai I think of Nirmala and I imagine her telling me that everything happened differently. I know it is impossible to get all the exact pieces of the story, but what I am finding out now seems to fit. This must have been one of the most intense episodes that Sakubai ever experienced in her life, and it is difficult to believe that she would make too many mistakes in talking about it. What reassures me most is knowing that my sister Asha wasn’t there when they handed me over to the nuns, which is what Margaret told me in Mumbai. It was too much to bear thinking about and I put it out of my mind straightaway. I am glad to hear that that scene never took place.

  We don’t want to say good-bye. Sakubai is like a fountain of memories and doesn’t stop telling me about my mother. She has told me time and again that she was a very good woman, tolerant, affable, open—the best friend she could remember ever having had. She always wore a sari and whatever color it was it suited her well. She didn’t eat meat, and the only religious practice Sakubai could remember her maintaining was that of the ekadashi, a Hindu ritual of fasting on the eleventh day after the full moon and the eleventh day after the new moon. A day and a half of fasting, purification before the gods with only water and tea.

  Sakubai and I leave the house arm in arm. Sakubai accompanies me to the car. I walk by her side, savoring the last minutes in her company. Being with her is the closest I have ever been to my mother.

  During the conversation I asked about Balu, my “twin,” and, as it happ
ens, he is the child who has turned out best in life. Sakubai and Hari had six children (four boys and two girls, the way they count). Balu was the second born. He lives in Sinnar and has a small restaurant in front of a factory where they serve food for about fifty people a day. He bought a little piece of land in front of the factory and built a house on it. He is making a good living. He works with his wife and they have no children yet. And since it is on our way, we are going to see him. Balu is a curious character in my story. He is surprised at our visit. His father, Hari, arrives with us and will spend the night there. He tells me that his documents all give May 3, 1968, as his date of birth, but that this was invented by the school administrator the first time they went to register him. In other words, we all end up the same as before, with the same collection of dates, months, and years we had to begin with, which vary according to who is telling the story.

  We have some tea and pakoras at Balu’s restaurant, along with his wife. Sitting on the porch looking up at the black smoke that is coming out of the big factory chimney just across the way, I think about how I actually went a lot further than he did. But Balu is happy, and in the eyes of his family he has succeeded.

  19.

  MY SISTER ASHA’S STORY

  It is a splendid day in Nasik, with not a hint of rain. The convent garden in Dev-Mata is lovely. Asha and I have finally found the perfect place to spend a long time talking, explaining our lives to each other. Merlyn acts as interpreter. It is a quiet conversation between women, after all the emotion we have been through. I feel at home here, and, thanks to the understanding of Merlyn and the other nuns, I have invited Asha to spend a few days with me at the convent. And now here we are sitting on the stone benches in the garden, among the carefully nurtured flowers. Some of the older girls are sitting beneath the trees a little way off, studying for their exams.

  “Usha!” she says to me. “You can’t imagine what it means to have you by my side. For years I had forgotten you. But since you appeared all I think about is you! I remember every minute we spent together when you came to see me the other day for the first time, after so many years of not having heard anything from you. Now we are here, in the place where you lived when you were small, where I might have lived too, and it all seems like a dream. You don’t know how grateful I am that you have given me this time. I imagine that where you live now you are very busy. Just being able to spend a few days with you is fantastic, like being on holiday! It is a long time since I have slept so many hours in a row as I did last night here in the convent, in a room of my own and in a bed with a mosquito net. Ever since I was married I have only very rarely left the village, I have never gone very far from Kolpewadi. And until yesterday afternoon I had never stood on the ghats at the center of Nasik! What would I do there? Who would take me? It is funny to think that you brought me there for the first time, even though I live so close-by!”

  When she is feeling comfortable my sister has no difficulty in talking. I have a lot of questions for her, knowing that everything she tells me could have been the story of my life. She is the other face of the moon, the other side of my story. Merlyn has quite a job translating it all because Asha talks so quickly.

  “I wanted so much to see you again! For a time I thought you might be in Goa. You know that a lot of the nuns at the convent in Nasik are from Goa. And Goa was the farthest away I could imagine. Once, when I was grown up, I gave a photograph of myself to someone I knew who was a driver who often went to Goa in his lorry. I asked him to look out for a woman who looked like me and said that he should ask her if she was my sister, and to see if anyone might recognize me by looking at the picture. It was the only thing that I could do. The lorry driver came back with no news. This city that you say you come from, Barcelona, I have no idea where it is. You told me that it was much farther away than Goa, that it takes many hours traveling in an airplane. But I find it difficult to imagine. Now, every time I see an airplane, I think of you.”

  Asha looks toward the iron gate of the convent. I suppose she is imagining the same scene as I am: Sakubai and our father coming through that gate with me and little Balu in their arms.

  “I was very small when our father took you to the nuns so they could take care of you. I don’t remember it. It is strange to be here, in the place where they brought you! But what I do remember is the day they brought you back to the village in Shaha. I was seven years old then. I was in the field cutting grass with Baba Radhu, our father. I called him Baba or Baba Radhu. Someone came running up shouting that you had come back again. You must have been about three then. I don’t know how many years there are between us. Two? Three? Four? I don’t know how old I am. I don’t have any paper on which it is written. At first you cried and shouted, ‘Sister, sister,’ because you wanted to go back with the nuns. Later on you calmed down. All the family came to see you. Baba Radhu cried as well. I didn’t really understand what was going on. Now I know that that day was arranged so that we could say good-bye. A few days later they would take you to Mumbai. We went to the place where they burned our mother and we all prayed. Then we sat down under a tree and you sang a song. Someone took some photographs, perhaps one of the nuns: Baba Radhu and his two little girls, you and I, sitting on either side. I never saw those photographs. We were together for perhaps two or three hours. Then they took you back with them in their jeep.”

  When I ask what her childhood was like, I remember clearly what mine was like in Barcelona. The weekends and all the holidays we spent in Vilanova de Prades, the village where my father comes from, where I learned how to roller skate, and the first dolls I shared with Fatima …

  “I don’t have any good memories of my childhood,” Asha tells me. “Baba Radhu and I lived with Janardan’s family, the only son Father had left. From his first marriage, he only had one son and three daughters. From the second marriage, with our mother, he had two sons, Dingar and Ananadar, but both of them died young, and three girls: Matura, you, and me. Baba Radhu was already very old by then. He was always sad and had to work in the fields. If I didn’t ask for food he wouldn’t give it to me. I was a nuisance to our half-brother and his family. Janardan drank a lot, he was very violent, all of his six children were very afraid of him. But he ignored me. Baba Radhu protected me … I didn’t want to do anything without him.”

  “But don’t you have any good memories of when you were little?” I ask her.

  “One of the few good memories I have is when I played with the newly grown grass which grew after the rains, and with the mud with the other girls in the village. We would make little figures out of mud, and plates and jars, and would leave them to dry in the sun. If they didn’t call us to do some kind of work or to eat, we would spend hours playing with mud. I love the warmth of the damp earth …. I also remember the Diwali festivals. And also Christmas because the Jesuits and the nuns who came to the villages to bring medicine would tell us about their own festivals. I was always very impressed by those priests and nuns who used to come to our village and without knowing us at all would try to look after us and helped us so much. They had such a kind way of treating the poorest among us! No one in our village was Christian, but we thanked them for coming to see us and for helping us. I have never been baptized but ever since I was little I have felt an urge to pray to the god of those good people.”

  Asha continues to tell me her story, with Merlyn translating perfectly what she says, from Marathi to a Spanish that she claims to hardly ever use but that she speaks very well, and I listen and ask, and ask and listen, without stopping.

  “Sometimes Baba Radhu would take me to the house of our big sister, Matura. But she had a lot of work to do, carrying firewood and fetching water. I was very young when she got married and went to live a long way away, close to Mumbai. She was never really a big sister or a mother. We spent very little time together. She gave me these holes in my ears and nose, to wear rings in, just before she left. She died far away, many many years ago now. Other times I spent so
me days at the house of my uncles, our mother’s brothers. Pandit and Murlinder Sansare. It was nice in their house and their wives loved me very much. Our half-sister, Sakubai, and her husband, Hari, also loved me a lot and I lived at their house for many months, during some harvests. As a girl I remember moving about from one place to another, not knowing where I would end up sleeping, how many days I would stay in one house or another.”

  “And school? Did you go?” I ask, knowing what kind of answer to expect.

  “I never went. We were poor and in those days you had to pay to go to school. If I didn’t help out with the work that had to be done, I wouldn’t eat. I only know how to write my name in Marathi because my daughter, Savita, showed me. Bikhaji, my husband, also learned how to write his name, the boys showed him, but he doesn’t know any more than that either. My uncles wanted to send me to school, but I recall that I didn’t want to go, because it would mean leaving the village, going to live with them and leaving my father. He was the only one I really felt belonged to me.”

  “Baba Radhu had around two hectares of land, which he had inherited from his family. We depended on the land to give us what we needed to eat. He had a horse for traveling from one village to another and three cows. The land needed a lot of work and constant attention. I helped as much as I could. Because Janardan drank so much he didn’t do enough work. And Baba Radhu couldn’t manage all by himself. This was a time of droughts, and Janardan began selling off pieces of the land, little by little, until there was nothing left of it for us. Baba Radhu was a gentle man. He never ever lost his temper with me. He took good care of me, almost as much as a mother would. He is the only man I have ever seen take care of a girl. Here, that is quite unusual. The men don’t know how to take care of children but our father did. You take after him a lot, you have the same color skin and the same eyes. I can see that you are his daughter. My son Rahul also looks a lot like his grandfather and you in the same way. I don’t remember anything about our mother. Only what people have told me.