Mother India

by Tova Reich

  The next morning before eight, two strangers showed up at our door wearing jeans and bright orange T-shirts inscribed with the words, Slum Power, NGO¡—the exclamation point upside down, blooming into a raised clenched fist like a mushroom cloud. The subtext of this early-morning visit was that jetlag is an indulgence of the rich and pampered, the starving children of India can’t wait. They had come to fetch you, to take you to Dharavi for your first day—“To orient you,” as the young man explained, “since we are in the Orient,” he added in excellent English with an appealing smile that showed off a keyboard of strong white teeth in his dark handsome face. His name was Samir, Samir Khan, a Muslim, “But you can call me Sammy, mama,” he offered obligingly. His silent partner was Sita, a Hindu; Sammy was the designated talker at this party, it seemed. Slum Power was committed to diversity, Sammy said with a nod to Sita who was also smiling in such a professionally friendly way. “Multi-culti, yes?” he elaborated, shaking his head in that endearing Indian way from side to side. Yes, I agreed, and now they would be diversifying even further with you, I reflected, their token Jewess.

  Sammy and Sita were codirectors of Slum Power’s internship program, he told me. They were in their early twenties by my estimation. They had come to show you how to travel safely and efficiently by train to Dharavi through the Churchgate station, always a treacherous trip in any weather but especially so now in the monsoon downpours and wetlands. Sita would accompany you to the ladies’ compartment of the train, necessary to avoid the occupational hazard of being groped and so on, and instruct you further on how to protect yourself from being pushed by the ruthless commuter mobs, not excluding women, out of the open doors of the car onto the track and crushed like a bug. His role would be general escort, as is proper since in truth women should not be permitted to go out into the street unaccompanied by a male relative, he observed with an ironic smile to signal that he was in politically correct disagreement with his own words coming out of his own mouth—he was only kidding. I could consider him my daughter’s big brother, he reassured me.

  All of this special treatment was happening at Charlotte’s behest, I recognized that. Charlotte was a major donor to Slum Power, acting in turn in zombie obedience to top-down orders from Amma. Special favors, kickbacks, payouts, corruption—this was the grease that fueled everything in India, and especially Mumbai, so-called nonprofits and charities not excluded. I gave no indication that I understood the unsavory inner workings of the system, however; it would not have been in your best interest to show off how clever I was, however much I was tempted. I went to your room to inflict against my will the necessary blow under the circumstances of waking you up after the long ordeal of your journey and the stupefaction of your circadian rhythms. “What are they wearing?” was your only question, mumbled in hoarse grogginess. “Jeans—and this.” I handed you the oversized orange Slum Power T-shirt uniform they had given to me for you to put on.

  While you were showering and dressing, I eased their wait by offering some chai and biscuits, and sat down myself with them at the table to socialize. I understood that even though you had agreed to live with me in our Colaba flat during your internship rather than be housed in some one-room shack with no toilet or running water in Dharavi itself with a multigenerational family of ten minimum in order to enjoy the full-body slum experience, the likelihood was minimal at this stage in your life that you would reveal anything of importance to me about your activities or anything else, in typical teenager mode. Now at least with these two as my short-term hostages, there was a chance to tap the politeness obligation in order to get some inside poop.

  They were actually only sixteen, Sammy and Sita, I learned to my mild surprise, extraordinarily poised and mature for their years; I should have guessed—slum kids age fast and die soon. They had grown up in Dharavi, which was really a mini-city within the maxicity of Mumbai, as Samir who was monopolizing the talking described it, with all the infrastructure of a city in the form of what some might characterize as a cautionary tale. They had acquired their English by watching American films on TV. Every basti family owned a television set, he informed me, even if they owned nothing else, it was a vital connection to the possibilities of the outside world, it was the only thing that made life tolerable. Because of how well they had taken to English, and also what was regarded to be their personable and congenial natures, Sammy admitted with a modest dip of his head, they had been selected to lead Slum Power’s internship program, which catered primarily to North American kids, most of whom were paying top dollar for the privilege of shoveling waste matter out of the open sewage dumps. Slum Power also sponsored a recycling plant, a papadum bakery for women, a pottery factory, a fair-trade crafts workshop, and other small businesses in Dharavi. After expenses, including worker’s wages, every paisa was plowed right back into these startups and other essentials—so much was needed: electricity, water, sewage, toilets, roads, the list went on and on. The nonprofit survived on contributions. The donation form could be found on its website, all types of payments accepted, including credit cards and PayPal. Sammy took out a pen and scribbled the URL on a napkin, pushing it toward me across the table and remarking, “In general, I disapprove of paper napkins for environmental reasons—but sometimes they come in handy.” He flashed his ingratiating smile.

  “So Maya’s going to spend her internship baking papadums?” Finally, I was moving the conversation in the direction I wanted it to go. The two of them paused to stare at each other, then as if programmed, simultaneously coughed up an amiable laugh. Sammy turned to me and sandwiched my hand between both of his, gazing into my eyes with practiced empathy like a doctor about to give vital test results. “Mama, I just want you to know, when the applications came in for the internship slots this year, your daughter’s rose like a spray of perfume to the top of the heap. Your little Maya was number one plus. Not only an excellent student at the best schools with English as her native language, but also fluent in Hindi, not to mention Marathi, Gujarati, some Urdu, some Bengali, some Tamil—plus a very nice reference note from Charlotte aunty. So maybe she’s a little on the young side for a westerner who matures more slowly, but it was a no-brainer, Mama.”

  “Also Hebrew,” I said, who knows why, a mother’s boast, or just for the sake of completeness.

  “Yes, also Hebrew, for sure, betakh. So Mama, with all that under her belt, do you think we would waste such talent setting her to baking bloody matzahs all day? Of course not! Your daughter will be a teacher in Dharavi—a beloved, respected teacher of women and girls of all ages. She will teach English, computer skills, maybe another subject or two. After she’s oriented, with her superior language gifts, she can also fill in sometimes for Sita or one of the other girls as an apprentice tour guide. You know, our tour business is very successful, Mama, one of our biggest moneymakers—slums by day, the red-light district and Falkland Road with the merchandise on display in cages by night, a huge tourist attraction—the Lonely Planet kids love it, it’s a must-see, a tremendous draw, awesome. But of course, for such a respectable girl like your Maya, we would only put her on the slum tour detail, no trolling by night, no cages, don’t worry your head about it for one minute.”

  Slum tours. It had been a proposal that had crossed my desk in connection with my own business, I now recalled, but I had quickly rejected it as prurient, disgusting, and above all too confusing for my clientele in their designer traveling gear seeking their spiritual center in accordance with their idea of India. Who would want to go on a tour of a slum anyway, with its filth and disease, its sick cows and goats, its squealing copulating rats and squealing defecating children squatting in the mud, its full-frontal exposure of every revolting insult life dishes out, from birth to death? Only mental cases, people with a screw loose, voyeurs, masochists, perverts, only nutjobs would want to slosh through the open cesspools, subject themselves to such an ordeal—it was a sick idea, obscene.

  I could have gone on in this vein, but you stepp
ed into the room in your jeans and orange T-shirt taking our breath away, the three of us earthbound there at that table were overcome as if struck by a vision. On top of everything else, she’s also gorgeous—I could read that in their eyes.

  As you were pulling on your knee-high rubbers and poncho, arming yourself to go out and face the elements, Sammy went on. “It’s our hottest ticket, the slum tour. You should try it, mama, it’s not only for the backpackers. We’re always full up, first come, first served, always turning people away, but if you SMS me, I’ll jump you in the queue as a special favor for our friends. It’s very illuminating.”

  Yes, I’ll register myself for this abomination right away, I decided the minute you left, no matter how distasteful I considered the whole idea morally and aesthetically. I would do it for you, Maya. It would be a way to get closer to you, to bond, mother and daughter.

  For some reason though I kept putting off signing up for my slum tour. Already we were three weeks into July. I would rise up in the morning meaning to get the job done, but the rains hammered down against the windows and puckered the walls with mildew, wetness permeated everything. I pictured myself sloshing through the muck and contagion of the basti, and my good intentions washed away with the day. But what really was stopping me? Tourism after all was my business. If a particular destination however repugnant or contrived draws in the paying customers, who was I to object? I hadn’t yet stooped to peddling sex tours, it is true, but certainly I knew very well how I myself took full advantage of the sad human longing for meaning in this life, for relief from suffering by delivering all of those spiritually needy souls to the feet of gurus such as Amma and other frauds. Truly, the entire India itself that I served up was a freak show—tourists flocked to gape as if at performing monkeys, they couldn’t get enough of the grotesque novelty, the garish exotica, the nonstop street performance, within half a day after arriving they were all flying high in shawl and salwar kameez, and I was their enabler. I had no right to sit up there on my high horse declaiming about this pathetic minor manifestation of human prurience, these harmless sideshow tours of the slums with their landscapes of shit lakes and garbage mountains, and especially because in the end it seemed everyone left feeling good, everyone benefitted, spiritually or monetarily, and no one was harmed.

  You didn’t pressure me, you never even reminded me to sign up, which, to excuse myself for my procrastination, I interpreted as a sign of your dread of being embarrassed by having your mother show up at your place of work in front of all your friends, a totally normal adolescent reaction, I was not offended. It was your preference that I stay away, I decided, I was only doing what you wanted. Still, your friends were the ones who had invited me—that was a fact. I knew virtually nothing about what you did all day, even into the night. You were coming home later and later, always escorted by someone, you assured me, Sita, Samir, others I had not met, though they never came in to show their faces and say hi mama, they didn’t want to disturb me, you said. There was so much to be done after the day’s teaching, you said, paperwork, planning, meetings, but otherwise you revealed almost nothing. You were not silent though. You talked over the light supper I set before you. Whatever the hour you came home, I was always waiting up for you with a warm meal, lentil soup, biryani, vegetable curry. You talked with striking animation and heat in fact, but never about yourself, always in generalities, about social and political issues, your consciousness was being raised, in principle a good thing. I suppose in retrospect, though, I should have realized that this was your way of talking about yourself, you were trying to send me a message, I should have understood.

  Your main topic, in essence your only topic when you talked on and on so passionately on those nights, was slums—not only Dharavi, but slums in general, the condition of slumdom. Everything else you touched upon seemed to flow from this theme as from an open drain. How could we allow ourselves to be bystanders while human beings lived like that—no toilets, no privacy, cardboard walls and rusted tin roofs, all of it lashed together with old electrical wires, bits of rope, tape. Yet even so, this was home, neighborhood, community, you declared. Why don’t people get that? Why is everyone on the outside so clueless when slum dwellers hold out against fat-cat developers, even when they’re bribed with lakhs of rupees and a brand new flat in a concrete block? They never asked to be relocated, they never petitioned for slum clearance—all they wanted is a working toilet of their own instead of being condemned to stand in the pouring rain in that humiliating loo queue every morning, for God’s sake, you declaimed as I nodded now and then to prove I was listening, marveling to myself, and yes, also deeply moved at the wonder of youth pouring forth newly discovered knowledge with such ardor as if it were fresh wisdom on the face of the earth, never before thought or heard. And really they’re such good people when you get to know them, you went on discharging your grand associative verbal torrent, such kind, generous neighbors, there’s such a real sense of community in the basti, it’s a village really, everyone helps each other, everyone looks after each other’s kids, everyone gets along just fine until suddenly, some evil spirit blows in—politicians, gangsters, cops, big money, all the usual instigators and perpetrators, and the whole place explodes. Rioting, killings, mutilations, rape—the Hindu nationalist majority comes rampaging through the Muslim ghetto, which makes it by definition a pogrom—right? The Muslims are plotting to shoot off rockets from the slum aimed at the airport, they’re screaming, get them out of here, it’s ethnic-cleansing time, ship them all in cattle cars to Pakistan, they’re all terrorists—exactly like what’s happening now in the Middle East, in Gaza for example, which they call a refugee camp, but what’s a refugee camp anyway? It’s really just another word for slum. Gaza is one giant slum when you think about it, a filthy, disease-infested shantytown, the most populated strip of land on the planet. Nobody wants Gaza, not the Americans, not the Russians, not the Arabs, not the Zionist entity, nobody.

  The Zionist entity? Where did that come from? If only your father, the Holy Beggar Shmiel Shapiro, either devoured by cannibals on the Andaman Islands or perched there on the lip of Reb Shlomo’s grave in Jerusalem, strumming his guitar and warbling on about how the Nation of Israel lives, could hear you now—what would he say? Oy, this needs such a fixing, he would say. But as for me, I remained silent. I merely sat there admiring your precocity. Already you were ready for the Ivy League.

  Night after night into July to the accompaniment of the drumroll of thunder and the beating of the rain, I sat there nodding in silence as you played variations on this theme, starting always from the rogue cell of slumdom and ending always in the scapegoating of Islam. I am your mother. Whatever you hand out, I take. I was simply grateful that at least you were talking to me. I no longer expected any classified personal information. Often I admit my brain would zone out, confident I could deliver an appropriate grunt if you ever addressed me directly. But then late into the month, you surprised me; you snuck in something almost personal, as if to catch me off guard, like some of my teachers would do when I was still in school to see if we were awake, if we were paying attention. As if in passing, as a sidebar, you let drop that Geeta had come to Dharavi that day, on a VIP tour.

  “Geeta? How did she look?”—the first question that popped into my head, then right out of my mouth.

  “Filmi. Like a movie star. She looked straight at me, but didn’t recognize me.”

  I was stunned that you had volunteered this morsel—eye contact between you and Geeta, such an intimate detail. I had no idea when this window of opportunity would slam shut on me; I felt intense pressure to find out as much as possible while you were still ready to talk. “She was leading a delegation from the orphanage ministry or whatever,” you said in response to my next question. “They’re giving full scholarships to fifty slum girls under ten to come to Delhi to be educated. Their families will also get a lot of money. She was there to pick out the girls. She gave a little speech and promised to be like
a mother to them.”

  “I hope you talked to someone high up,” I said. “She would be a terrible mother.”

  But by then the well had dried up, you no longer were talking. You lowered your head. I was afraid you might start to cry. I understood what you were feeling. Quite apart from your own personal loss—a mother is a terrible thing to lose, even a terrible mother, and yes, let’s face it, for better or worse, Geeta was also a mother to you. What would have happened had you gone up to the slum bosses with your pals trailing behind you, Sita, Samir, the whole gang, to warn against letting the girls go off with such a travesty of a mother as Geeta? They would invariably have inquired how you knew her, and at that point you would have been obliged to tell them that she had been married to your mother, that she had been your mother’s wife. It was an impossible situation. They would not have believed you, they would not have understood it, such things do not happen in the world, they would have thought you were joking, they would have thought you were mocking them, they would have thought you were mad.