‘Where exactly do I come? I mean I know you live in India, but where?’
Sunny told her the name of the town where they lived. It sounded strange yet musical.
‘And how do I reach there?’
‘Ronnie, Diya wants to know how to get here.’
She heard Ronnie’s voice in the background.
‘He says he will send you an e-mail and explain everything.’
She gave Ronnie her e-mail address and hung up.
For the first time in months, Diya did not feel lonely. Sunny’s cheerful voice still boomed in her ears. The invitation was tempting, a chance to leave the cold cocoon of grief. The cheery laughter and banter that she had heard between Sunny and Ronnie seemed like the perfect antidote to her preoccupation with death. Diya banished the thoughts of her red blood on the pristine white snow and moved away from the window.
In ten minutes, she received Ronnie’s e-mail with all the details.
The next available flight was three days later. Diya took a deep breath and clicked on the “Book” button, hoping she was making the right decision. If nothing else, the trip might help restore her sanity.
She e-mailed the itinerary to Ronnie and his one-word response, ‘Yippee!’ made her smile. Another e-mail followed with his mobile number and the promise that he and Uncle Sunny would be waiting for her at the airport.
‘Are you out of your mind?’ Her best friend, Julie, was stunned when she gave her the news.
‘Diya, don’t be rash. You don’t know if these people are really who they claim to be. I mean, wouldn’t your father have told you if he had a family back in India? They could be crooks or killers, who knows?’
‘I stand as much a chance of being killed in my bed by a dope-head here.’
She told Julie about the night intruder.
‘Why didn’t you tell me earlier, honey? You know you can come stay with us.’
‘Thanks, but you have a lot to deal with yourself, and I just feel that I have to go meet them. I think they really loved my father, and they seem genuine.’
‘You can’t really be sure of that on the basis of one letter and a phone call. And even if they are who they claim to be, I am sure your parents had a good reason why they did not tell you about them.’
‘I think I may have been adopted,’ Diya confessed.
‘Oh, honey, I am so sorry for you, but no one who knew your parents would doubt how much they loved you.’
‘I know. Even if these people are my biological parents I will never be able to love them the way I loved my parents. But, at least, I will have someone in the world who knew my parents.’ She wasn’t sure if she was making sense.
‘I understand,’ Julie said. ‘If that’s what you need to do, then go ahead, but be careful and keep in touch.’
Diya hugged Julie and went back to the cab that was waiting to take her to the airport.
FIRST GLIMPSE OF INDIA
T
he mountains soared through the clouds as the small plane descended on a tiny bare patch amidst the dense greenery.
Despite most people being closer to her in terms of skin colour and features, Diya felt like a foreigner. Everything was colourful – right from people’s clothes to the row of blossom-laden trees outside. The mixture was heady yet refreshing.
Diya loaded her bags on the cart and pushed it towards the exit. Like its brethren, in airports all over the world, the luggage cart proved unwieldy.
She scanned the small crowd for Ronnie and Sunny. What if it was all a hoax and no one came to receive her? She had nothing but a yellowing photograph for reference; she did not even know their home address.
‘Diya!’
She spotted the short balding man with a paunch.
Sunny had grown horizontally in the decades since the picture was taken. His once glossy hairline had receded into an equally glossy bald pate, but time had not dimmed his radiant smile.
Diya moved towards the gap in the barriers, still struggling with the luggage cart.
‘Allow me.’ A pair of muscular arms steadied the cart.
The body lived up to the promise of the arms. He was tall and broad-shouldered, clad in tight blue jeans and a black t-shirt that clung to the slopes of his powerful chest. He had the same radiant smile as his father. Ronnie, Diya guessed.
Sunny came forward and offered her a hand. He was trying hard but could not hide the tears leaking out of his eyes. Diya moved forward and hugged him.
‘Diya, my child.’ Sunny gently patted her head.
When they moved apart, Sunny’s eyes were red and his cheeks wet with tears.
While Ronnie loaded her luggage in the car, Diya walked around the parking lot. Her legs ached from the long travel and cramped leg space in the small aircraft.
‘Akka. Akka.’
A young boy in tattered rags beseeched her with outstretched palms. Diya fished out a twenty-rupee note and dropped it in the boy’s cupped hands. As if on cue, a group of beggars surrounded her; four young children, two women cradling babies in dirty cloth bundles and an old man so bent that his forehead almost touched his knees.
Diya tried to avert her eyes from the emaciated bodies and bleak faces as she searched for more money. As she struggled to find the money, the group moved closer, making a tight circle around her. Diya felt nervous by the ever-reducing circle of needy hands and unwashed bodies.
‘Shoo! Go away. No more, don’t bother her.’ Ronnie was by her side.
She had never seen beggars in real life, only in movies. The beggars in movies too wore rags and looked emaciated, but there was no comparison with real bodies hollowed from starvation. The worst was the look of hopeless defeat in their eyes.
‘You should not encourage them,’ Ronnie said gently.
‘I did not realize so many would just …’
‘I am sure you meant well.’ He shepherded her back to the car.
‘You must be tired. Why don’t you take rest? Manu always fell asleep the moment he got in the car,’ Sunny said.
As far as Diya was aware, her father had not visited India in decades.
Sunny cleared his throat, but did not elaborate on his statement.
The car glided along the garland of black tarmac wrapped around the mountains.
As the mountains drew closer, they shed their blue-grey veils; the scrub and trees gained form. The white blades of the giant windmills along the mountain range rotated in the lazy wind, glinting in the golden afternoon sunshine.
They drove with the windows half open.
‘We have natural A.C. here, atmospheric conditions.’ Sunny laughed at his own joke.
The mountain air was crisp and fragrant, resonant with bird cries.
The cool breeze that swept through her hair soothed her into sleep, but peaceful oblivion eluded her as usual.
She knew they entered a town as the car slowed down and the cacophony of traffic invaded her fitful sleep.
A woman knocked on the window, beseeching her for alms.
Diya tried to open her purse but the zip was stuck. As she struggled with the zip, the woman’s knocking grew insistent.
The woman must have mistaken her hesitation for apathy because she opened the cloth-wrapped bundle and showed Diya the raw skin of the burnt baby.
Diya tugged at the zip and it finally opened. She thrust her hand into the depths of her purse scrabbling for coins: something, anything to make the woman cover the mutilated child.
Her wallet was in the purse, but she could not find it.
‘Please don’t!’ Diya yelled trying to close the window as the woman offered her the burnt baby.
She gave her purse to the woman, anything to make her take back the baby, but the woman dropped the still-smouldering cloth bundle in Diya’s lap.
‘It’s burning …’ Diya yelled.
The car stopped with a jerk and Diya woke up. Her limp body was slumped sideways; only the seat belt had prevented her from falling.
Diya looke
d around searching for the burning baby the woman had dropped in her lap.
Ronnie was out of the car and by her side before she realized it was a nightmare, and stopped searching for the baby. Ronnie helped her out of the vehicle.
Diya took big gulping breaths, filling her lungs with the clean, sweet-scented mountain air as she frantically tried to replace the memory of burning flesh that still sent a wave of nausea rushing to her throat.
‘Are you all right?’ Sunny was looking at her with an anguished face.
Diya nodded, unable to speak.
‘Did something hurt you?’ Sunny said. He still looked as if he had seen a ghost.
‘I am sorry; I didn’t mean to scare you. I must have had a nightmare.’
‘You are tired; all the travel on top of everything else. What you need is Ruth’s hot chicken soup.’ Sunny tried to smile, but his face seemed frozen with shock. ‘Ronnie, call your mother and ask her to have soup ready.’
Ronnie dutifully called home while Sunny vanished down the slope behind a line of trees. Diya turned her back as she realized Sunny’s mission. Ronnie was leaning against the car watching her.
‘Hey …’ she said, uncomfortable under his gaze.
‘Do you …’ he hesitated.
Diya was afraid he would ask her about the nightmare; she could still see the charred baby with raw red patches on its tiny body. She closed her eyes.
‘Do you like chicken soup?’ Ronnie asked.
‘Not really …’ The thought of food was detestable.
‘Well, Daddy seems to think it will help you.’ Ronnie uncoiled his body from the car.
‘What do you think?’
How much had he guessed? Did he buy that she had a nightmare because she was tired, or did he guess that the nightmares were haunting her ever since her parents’ death?
‘Mother’s soup is really special; I can vouch for that.’
‘Good.’
There was no one else around, and no vehicles passed them.
‘Doesn’t anyone live here?’
‘Not really,’ Ronnie laughed. ‘But we have company.’ He pointed to a spot in the field behind her where three cows were staring at them.
‘They know more than you give them credit for,’ he teased her. ‘Doesn’t look like their car is broken, so why are they standing under the merciless sun?’ Ronnie said in a mooing voice.
Diya felt laughter bubbling in her throat. A spark of hope lit up inside her, sending warm tendrils of joy to her grief-stricken heart.
THE FAMILY
‘W
e are home,’ Sunny announced, as the car came to a stop near an egg-yolk-yellow house with white windows. The house looked like an exotic bird perched amidst the dense mountain greenery. A girl in her teens was waiting near the gate; she waved to them and ran inside. By the time Diya got out of the car, the girl was back with rest of the family.
A fragile woman with white hair like fine silk walked forward and enveloped Diya in a soft hug.
‘Diya!’ Delicate bony fingers caressed her cheeks. ‘Don’t worry, you are home now.’
‘Grandma Elizabeth, Diya never has to worry about anything. She has a family! Let’s start with me. I am your cousin Rini, and contrary to what anyone else might claim, I was Uncle Manu’s favourite.’
‘I can guess why.’ Diya smiled, grateful to the exuberant girl.
Rini took it upon herself to do the introductions and moved around the group with Diya.
‘This is daddy’s brother, Uncle Albert, and his wife, Aunt Mary,’ Rini said. ‘They live in a beautiful house higher up in the mountains.’
The couple squinted at her from behind identical spectacles, like a pair of library-dwelling owls, unused to bright sunshine.
‘Pleasure meeting you.’ Diya shook Albert’s extended hand and smiled at Mary.
‘My mother, Ruth.’ Rini hugged her mother.
Ruth’s well-oiled curly hair lay flat on her head like ripples on a deep pond. Diya scanned Ruth’s face for any other similarities but there were none. Both Rini and Ronnie resembled their mother, but Diya did not look like any of them.
‘And my cousin, Shelby, though we prefer to be called the twins.’ Shelby looked like a plump version of Rini with the same bright smile.
‘And the two pests of our family, my brother Ronnie and Shelby’s brother George.’
The duo bowed in unison. Diya felt a smile tug at her lips. She bowed back and everyone roared with laughter.
Diya held Grandma Elizabeth’s hand as they walked to the house.
‘Is that your niece?’ a high-pitched voice enquired.
A woman was standing on the other side of a low brick wall with her hands resting on its rustic surface. Her hands and arms were encased in brilliant white gloves that almost reached her armpits.
‘Yes, she is visiting from America,’ Sunny said.
‘I was so sorry to hear about your parents.’
The woman walked along the wall as they moved towards the house.
‘I heard they died in a terrible accident.’
‘Meddlesome cow!’ Sunny whispered under his breath.
Grandma Elizabeth tightened her grip on Diya’s hand and guided her towards the house.
Rini showed her to a room upstairs. Ronnie came with her bags and left them in a corner of the room.
‘Let me know if you need anything,’ Rini said and followed her brother downstairs.
The room was tidy with a comfortable bed, a table and chair in one corner. Diya opened the wooden wardrobe set in one of the walls; her father’s sweater, the one her mother had knitted for him last winter, hung in the wardrobe. There was a towel and a neatly folded pair of socks in the drawer. Diya was sure they too belonged to her father. She looked around the room and found more of her father’s things: a pair of glasses, a few books, magazines and his heating pillow.
Her head reeled at finding the breadcrumbs of her father’s existence in Sunny’s house.
After a bath, the combination of bewilderment and fatigue weighed down her eyelids. The bed seemed inviting and Diya lay down to rest her eyes just for a minute.
‘Diya, are you ready?’ Rini knocked on the door and came in. ‘You should not sleep now; otherwise you will not get over your jet lag. Uncle Manu always stayed awake till 9 p.m. Come down, dinner is ready. Then we can watch a movie so you can stay awake.’
‘It’s too early for dinner, but I am famished.’ Sunny said slurping the chicken soup.
‘Aunty Ruth, the soup is very tasty.’
It was unlike any other chicken soup Diya had tasted; tiny pieces of chicken and carrots floated in the thin broth fragrant with a hint of bay leaf and cinnamon.
‘Manu always said it was the best soup in the world.’ Sunny burped and patted his ample belly.
As far as Diya could remember, her father had never mentioned visiting India. But Sunny and his family’s uncanny reference to her father’s habits and opinions and his everyday things in the room upstairs said otherwise. Why had her father never told her about his family or that he visited them regularly? She did not resemble anyone from the Varghese family, so the possibility that Sunny and Ruth were her biological parents was remote. Maybe her parents had adopted her from a nearby orphanage and Sunny knew the truth?
THE MYSTERY OF MANU MATHUR
T
he cold morning breeze tickled Diya’s toes. She vaguely remembered watching a movie and coming upstairs with Rini. She had enjoyed a rare nightmare-free sleep.
Diya opened the door and stepped onto the terrace. Although the mountain was wrapped in a cosy blanket of fog, it was alive with the chirping of birds. It appeared so close that Diya wanted to reach out and touch the mountain.
A rooster crowed a half-hearted good morning from the yard below, preening as he presided over his harem of fat hens peacefully pecking between vegetable beds. Was one of their kin the key ingredient of Ruth’s delicious chicken soup?
Diya peeked downstairs,
but the house was dark and quiet; the family must be still asleep. She e-mailed Julie, letting her know that she had reached safely, and Sunny and his family had not kidnapped or murdered her in bed.
After a shower, Diya noticed that the house was awash with light, humming with sounds of occupancy. She traced the voices to the kitchen. Rini was having breakfast while Ruth was busy cooking.
‘I will see you in the afternoon,’ Rini said picking her bag.
‘Where are you going?’
‘School. It’s Monday.’
‘Don’t go alone; ask Ronnie to go with you,’ Ruth said without turning.
‘I don’t know where he is, I am already late. I don’t want to miss my bus; we have tennis semi-finals today.’ Rini rolled her eyes at her mother’s back.
‘Why don’t I come with you?’ Diya offered.
Rini picked up her school bag and the two girls walked out of the house. The mist was thinning now but visibility was still poor.
‘Sometimes she makes me so angry. I wish she would trust me not to be silly.’ Rini fumed as they walked down the winding mountain road.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Last month a girl from my school disappeared on the way to school. Everyone thinks she ran away with her boyfriend. Since then, mother makes sure that someone accompanies me to the bus stop and waits till I board the bus. Why can’t she trust me?’ Rini said.
They reached the main road. Other than a lone man smoking nearby, the misty mountain road was deserted.
‘I am sure your mother trusts you. She is worried, that’s all.’
Diya waited until Rini boarded the bus and it lumbered down the mountain.
When she returned, Sunny was sitting in the garden with a newspaper.
‘Good morning!’ she said.
‘Good morning.’
‘Are you going for a morning walk?’ she pointed to his sneakers.
‘See, you agree that now is a good time to go for a walk. But that boy is bent upon killing me,’ Sunny grumbled in response. ‘You know, he woke me up at the crack of dawn and made me run. Then he taunted me for trailing behind him. I was going slowly only because at my age it does not look nice to be seen running.’
The Trickster Page 4