Mother India

by Tova Reich

  From Jerusalem your father Shmiel the Holy Beggar called—the last thing I needed at that moment. I hadn’t heard from him in over five years, when I had bought off all his rights to you with an all-expenses-paid, five-star deluxe spiritual tour. I had assumed the cannibals of the Andean Islands had taken care of him for me, but apparently he was unpalatable even to them. Now he was calling to inform me that business was very bad at the gravesite of the Singing Rabbi, nobody came anymore—and why was that? Because word had spread that his daughter—his own daughter, the daughter of Shmiel the Holy Beggar no less—had run off with an Arab. According to the intelligence reports, there was a danger the couple might figure out a way to sneak into the country on her Israeli passport even though there was an all-points bulletin out blocking them, and make their way to the cemetery to blow themselves up at the grave of the Singing Rabbi while everyone was sitting around having such a nice kumsitz, and feeling mamesh so high, so openhearted, turning their pockets inside out and emptying every last grush into his guitar case. The whole cemetery was crawling now with military types with shaved heads and walkie-talkies, Mossad, Shabak, guys in suits and sunglasses and hearing aids, the security was so tight with X-rays and shmex-rays and body searches and pat downs and friskings and the whole shmear, nobody wanted to put themselves through all that garbage even for the Singing Rabbi, nobody was coming to the gravesite anymore, it was just too much of a pain in the you-know-what. His whole personal income, his livelihood, his bread and butter, his pita and hummus, all of his revenue was flushed down the toilet, down to minus zero—and why was that? Because bottom line, he claimed, I was too busy to do my job as a mother and watch over my own daughter in the proper way, I was too busy bowing down to elephants and monkeys, sinning and causing others to sin like Yerovam ben Nevat, with my idol-worshipping tour business, I was too busy chasing after other women like a “prevert,” and so on and so forth.

  I cut him off; I could not bear it any more. I did not deserve this, I was in pain. I was quite possibly a candidate for the title of em shakulah, for which there is no equivalent word in the English language, as if only a Jewish mother can be a mother who has lost a child in the tradition of our Mother Rachel weeping over her children, unreceptive to comfort of any sort, and here he was your own father thinking as per usual only about himself and where his next falafel would be coming from, it was inhuman.

  Since he had the audacity to refer to Geeta, however, albeit indirectly of course, without of course uttering out loud the anathema of her unmentionable name, I should tell you in case you were wondering, that, yes, she did get in touch during this period—exactly once. I don’t know who told her what was going on, maybe it was Manika who had a smartphone of her own, one of Amma’s old models; Amma was always upgrading, the castoffs were encrypted and wiped clean of all data by the techie devotee and presented as a much prized trophy to a chosen follower. The entire communication from Geeta amounted to a tweet with the hashtag, #ItsNotMyFault: “She’s not here, if that’s what you’re thinking. No clue where she is. Ready to offer help. Just ask nicely.”

  Not her fault? My head spun, I was barely holding myself together, and now it felt as if I might not be able to go on after all, I would just fall apart, collapse. Whose fault did she think it was if not hers? Did she imagine for one minute that it’s a small thing to be abandoned by your mother? She was your mother exactly as I was, we had always regarded it that way, we had never discriminated between biological and adoptive or whatever, that was how we conducted our life together, yet she just picked herself up one day and walked off without looking back. You were traumatized, your self-esteem plummeted to ground zero, everything that happened to you happened after she walked out on us—your two sad little crushes, first on Shmuly, then on Samir, one and the same—hopeless, doomed monsoon crushes, which you fixated on subconsciously to court rejection, to confirm that you were essentially unlovable. After all, how could anyone ever love a girl whose own mother had abandoned her? The most basic human right, a mother’s love, and even that you couldn’t count on, even that had been withdrawn from you. How dare she claim it was not her fault? Of course it was her fault, she was entirely to blame for everything that had transpired after she walked out, including the smashed hopes and endless depression of the monsoons, and now your disappearance. There was no way I was going to stoop to ask for her help—nicely or otherwise, thank you very much. Fortunately, I did not need it. For cash and connections I had Charlotte and Amma, with resources in and out of India that sufficiently matched Geeta’s to get the job done. And for the human touch, for tenderness and sympathy, I had my twin brother the guru, Shmelke, known worldwide as Reb Breslov Tabor, safe at last in the asylum of India, venerated now as Rebbie-ji, who somehow, I believe through his own rare mystical powers and the unbreakable connection formed between us in the pools of amniotic fluid in which we had floated side by side during our gestation, discovered what was going on and reached out to me.

  Every day throughout my ordeal, Rebbie-ji found a few minutes in his busy schedule to call and check on me. How ya doin’, Meena’le? His intimately familiar voice wrapped me in the warmth of the Brooklyn of our innocence, it took everything in my power to keep myself from opening my mouth and howling. Not a single call passed without him urging me to come to his ashram in Mother Teresa’s old hospice in Calcutta, near the big Kali temple, his House of Holy Healing, HHH, like Ha Ha Ha. He erupted in laughter. It would do you so much good, he declared. Come and stay for as long as you like, Meena’le. You are so, so welcome, not only are my doors open to you, but also my heart. I know you will come soon. Maybe next week you will come, maybe tomorrow you will come, any minute now I will see you, you are on your way, I feel you are near, ah, here you are.

  The alert went off. A developing story was unfolding very close by in the packed women’s compartment of a commuter train as it was coming into the Churchgate station during the evening rush hour. Details were still sketchy, but so far what was known was that two burqa-clad passengers had suddenly shouted, Allahu Akbar in the mosh pit of the ladies’ car and thrust out their hands from under their black robes waving butcher knives. They proceeded to slash indiscriminately in every direction, according to eyewitness accounts, inflicting numerous injuries and drawing streams of blood until the heroic ladies in that car banded together and took matters into their own hands. With the full united force of their bodies, the ladies pushed the alleged perpetrators off the train through the open door of the compartment down onto the tracks. According to early unconfirmed reports, the two suspects were neutralized either from the fall itself, or crushed under the wheels of the train, which was still moving, or beaten to death by enraged citizens who happened to be in the vicinity.

  I have no memory of summoning the black Ambassador, or of my ride through the choked traffic to the morgue. My first vivid memory was of incredible relief as I paused to gather strength at the now-familiar entrance to the autopsy room where the two bodies were laid out on top of the stone altars, side by side, naked, still awaiting the knife of the medical examiner, and I was struck by the unmistakable sign of maleness. It was a common tactic for men to disguise themselves in burqas and chadors, I reminded myself, assuming the roles of women, the perfect cover-up for all kinds of male mischief. As I drew nearer I could see that the bodies were severely battered and discolored and swollen, the noses smashed in, the limbs broken, they had been dumped from the train like trash. The maleness of the one nearest to me was confirmed as I stood beside him—Samir Khan, the one we had been seeking, surfaced at last. On the altar beside him was the girl, so young, so slight, so beaten, so abused, no one on the face of the earth would have recognized her except her mother.

  Save your poor daughter, mother. See how they have tormented her.

  O my daughter, Maya, would that it had been me in your place, my daughter, my daughter, Maya.

  Her name is no longer Maya, mother says. It is Malala. Look, she lives. They tried to kill
her in the Swat Valley but kind-hearted souls saved her and brought her back to life for the good work she was destined to do for the sake of the feminine gender. The perfect daughter, a mother’s heart bursts with pride. Did you know that she has just won the Nobel Peace Prize, the youngest laureate ever? Rejoice. It will look awesome on her college application.

  Meena

  1

  IN THE MIDDLE of the journey of our life, having passed through the phases of studentship and householder, the first two of the four stages allotted to mortals on this earth according to the wisdom of the holy men of the East, I found myself in a black hole. Two more stages stretched ahead of me—renunciation and withdrawal—on the long road to liberation, but I felt myself unable to go on, craving death.

  How I had arrived to this dark place I could barely say aloud, the memory was too bitter to form into words. But as I was falling into the abyss and succumbing at this halfway point, weary and lost, there appeared before me a holy man from my deepest beginnings, like an angel with white hair flowing down his back parted in the center into two flanks like sidelocks, long white beard, robed entirely in white linen, starched and flowing. He clutched me by the waist, reaching up with two mighty arms strengthened by years spinning the wheels of his throne taking him along his destined path, and he halted my descent. “Let me go, Rebbie-ji, have mercy,” I cried. “Stay,” he said. “Even in this place of death, my message to you is, choose life.” His voice was my blood voice, my brother’s voice calling to me as if from the ground. There was no place to hide.

  For his sake, conditionally, I continued in life, but not by choice. Choice was his domain. He had chosen for his sins to be a fugitive and wanderer on the face of the earth, marked and set apart. I had rejected all that when I had chosen to no longer count myself among the chosen. But he needed me now, he had asked me to stay, he had asked me to do him a kindness, to say I am his sister, in this strange and dangerous place he had asked for my help, never an easy thing for him to do. I remembered his youthful sweetness. He had been such a dear boy, my soulmate. My innards ached for him. I pitied him and could not refuse.

  In special circumstances it is permissible to skip over one or two of the four stages in life and head straight to renunciation well before the designated age of seventy-two, or to personalize and tweak the stages in some way, or even to invent a fusion of sorts. This was the option I was forced to accept for the interim, under pressure from my twin brother, Shmelke, revered and reviled worldwide as Reb Breslov Tabor, Rebbie-ji, who had beseeched me to stay. The time had not yet come when I could indulge the luxury of dying, or even of withdrawing to a hermitage in the forest for the third stage of retirement and meditation to prepare myself for the fourth and final act, sannyasa. I was obliged to remain at Rebbie-ji’s ashram in the throbbing heart of Kolkata. My involvement was still mandated, I was still needed it seemed. I had not yet won liberation, a reprieve from my life sentence. I had not yet earned the privilege of setting out in search of moksha as a sannyasini, my face smeared with ash, my hair matted, nothing on my back but a garment made of grass chewed and regurgitated by a cow, nothing in my hands but a stick and a beggar’s bowl, but with full conviction of my sanity, oblivious to the world that might think me out of my mind.

  Still, until the blessed moment arrived of complete renunciation, I could improvise. I could practice austerities and carry out various forms of asceticism. The ultimate goal was to achieve a state of detachment as if I were already dead. I regarded myself as my own widow. My husband who had died was myself. Instead of throwing myself on my pyre as a sati, I gave up all of life’s pleasures like a pious Hindu widow. I shaved my head, cast off all ornamentation, shrouded myself in a borderless white sari, fasted three days a week, and withdrew. I was dead in this world as if I had been reduced to ash.

  I was doubly dead, since a sannyasi is considered to be dead too. Like a sadhu, I renounced all ambition, all striving and desire, except for the desire to be dead. During the day I collaborated at my brother’s side, counseling and strategizing, but it was as if I were doing nothing at all. At night I slept in a primitive coffin, a stretcher bier, on the floor of the cell I shared with the cast-off girls whose care Rebbie-ji had entrusted to me in his House of Holy Healing, formerly Mother Teresa’s Kalighat Home for the Dying Destitutes.

  It was also during my time in Rebbie-ji’s ashram that I took upon myself the task of setting down this memoir in the first person, though the first person no longer mattered or even existed. I was completely detached, indifferent, merely an observer—the omniscient third person observing myself, the nonexistent first person, a work of fiction. It was simply an exercise in overcoming the limitations of the first person in the narrative of remembrance—a way of carrying forth with the me-me-meena story even when she no longer is present, a way of negating the first person by validating my witness even though I was already dead. It was a laboratory experiment, and I was the rat.

  Unconsoled and inconsolable, I nevertheless sat down with my twin brother, Shmelke, at a table in one of the two great halls of his ashram that once had been packed with rows and rows of narrow cots upon which Mother Teresa’s lepers, tuberculars, malnourished, and other assorted terminally diseased had lain. This ward, which had housed the women in the days of the hard-hearted saint, now served as the common room of the House of Holy Healing—dining hall, synagogue, meeting place, the space in which my brother held audience when seized by the spirit. From hospice to hope, as Rebbie-ji liked to say—anguish to joy, mourning to holiday, like Purim, when all are obliged to turn themselves into clowns with Rebbie-ji banging his drum and gyrating in his wheelchair leading the way, like King David leaping and dancing half-naked, making a spectacle of himself as he brought home the ark of the Lord through the streets of Jerusalem.

  In the second ward the men had undergone their death agonies, shards of their horned toenails hacked off by volunteer missionaries of charity still occasionally suctioned up by our bare feet as we moved about. Still visible on the walls all around us were the white numbers that had been painted over each cot once positioned there with a nameless dying body coiled up on it, sixty and more in each ward. Now the space had been converted into the ashram’s dormitory, with ropes strung across the length and width like a chessboard over which madras cloths and worn saris and old sheets and other assorted rags and even drying laundry were hung to form tiny cubicles accommodating at least four seekers stretched out in sleeping bags and on straw mats or directly on the floor in each pod, the sexes rigidly separated by a thick clothesline draped with woolen prayer shawls only slightly moth eaten to form a mekhitza bisecting the room. This is where I slept too, alongside my damaged girls, in a pod of cubicles set aside for us.

  Across from where Shmelke and I we were sitting in the great public room, high on the opposite wall, Ma’s extra-large stained damask Sabbath tablecloth given to my brother upon his marriage in the expectation that he was destined to become a rabbinical eminence presiding at the head of a great tisch was draped over a wooden cross; we could make out its menacing cruciform skeleton underneath. In the dormitory ward, the cross was concealed by a soiled moth-eaten woolen prayer shawl, our father’s wedding gift to his gifted son. Somehow, by a miracle, Shmelke had held on to these gifts throughout all his wanderings. Through the high windows pouring down beams of dust motes and malarial flies, the smell of burning flesh drifted in accompanied by the tortured screams of the goats sacrificed daily just up the road in the temple of Kali, most fabulous and savage of mothers.

  Manika padded in silently and set down before us on the table two steaming glasses of tea in monkey-dish saucers, and a bowl of brown sugar cubes irregular like chunks of granite. Tea was always served in glasses at the ashram, the very same type of glasses that had been used in the home of our Brooklyn childhood—yahrzeit memorial glasses, imported from Israel and stocked at the ashram by the caseload, recycled for drinking purposes after the candle inside was consumed during the chroni
c power blackouts of Kali’s cruel city. Without even thinking, operating on automatic as if in the private wombspace of our twindom, Shmelke and I each positioned a sugar cube between our upper and lower teeth, poured some of the hot tea from the glass into the monkey dish, lifted the dish in both hands with pincered thumb and forefinger and winged elbows to blow on the amber pool and cool it, then tipped it with a precise motion to send the tea streaming on its passage through the sugar cube, sweetening it thoroughly as it came into our mouths and glided along our taste buds. Nice tea, bliss, so good—and exactly as we used to do it at home in Brooklyn on a late Sabbath afternoon as the sun was setting and darkness descended. The comical synchronicity of our movements and the convergence of deep memory assaulted both of us at the same moment, and we burst out in wild and tragic laughter, sending our moist sugar cubes flying like a stone from a slingshot across the room in the direction of Ma’s tablecloth to pierce it through the heart.