Caroline snuggled deeper into Meenakshi’s lap, her favourite place in all the world. Meena’s whole body was a cushion, soft and yielding, and when you cuddled into her it moulded around you and held you safe. It was the best place for a five-year-old to spend a summer evening, swaying gently in the rocking chair on the back porch, Meena’s arms around her as she held the book.
The backyard smelt of summer: of sun and moist earth from the water sprinkler gently waving to and fro. The sounds were of summer too. Birds twittered in the chestnut tree in the centre of the backyard, squirrels scampered across the branches, chattering among themselves. The sights and sounds and fragrances of a leafy neighbourhood in Massachusetts, America surrounded them. Meena didn’t smell of America. Meena had her own distinctive smell, and Caroline breathed her in. She smelt of India, sweet and spicy all at once, a thousand secret aromas all mingled together. It was in the fabric of her saris, in her hair, in her very skin, dark as a hazelnut and shiny as silk. It wafted, too from the pages of that book, which Meena had brought with her from India when she was a little girl, the same age as Caroline was now.
It was a big book, the biggest book on Caroline’s shelf, with over a thousand pages. They had been reading it for months now, every day a chapter, and it might be a year before it was finished, and that was fine with Caroline. She hoped it would last for ever. It was that sort of a book, the kind that took you off on journeys with different characters to different places but sooner or later brought you back to the main story; and you would understand the main story a little bit better because of that little excursion. It was the sort of book that took you on a voyage far, far away and made you live in another place and another time and become another person while you were away. It was the sort of book that created vivid pictures in your mind so that you were actually there and then and among those people and even turned you into those people so that they weren’t foreign any more because you became them.
Meena’s voice was perfect for the story. It was languid but strong; Meena was never in a hurry to get to the end of a story and close the book. She read as if she had all the time in the world, and probably she did; and she could put on a man’s voice or a girl’s voice or a demon’s voice or the voice of a god and make you believe that very person was speaking. She could give you goosebumps, and make you quake in fear. She could transport you into that person’s soul.
Right now, Caroline was in India, a young prince disguised as a simple priest, and he was about to win the hand of the most beautiful princess in the world, Draupadi.
‘“Arjuna strode over to the bow, head held high,”’ Meena read, in her strongest book-voice – her royal voice, Caroline called it. ‘“As effortlessly as Karna had done before him, he raised it; the kings gasped. He picked up one of the glittering arrows, took aim at the fish spinning high above, released the arrow. With a silver streak almost invisible to the eye it pierced the eye of the fish, which tumbled to the ground. A roar as thunder filled the arena; furious, fuming, the assembled kings waved their fists and screamed insults into the arena; but Arjuna was unmoved.
“With three wide springs he leapt onto the royal dais and stood before Draupadi, holding out his hand. Dhrishtadyumna helped his sister to her feet and placed her hand in Arjuna’s. Conch moaned and trumpet blared as Arjuna led his bride away: like a young celestial with a heavenly apsara…”’ (‘What’s an apsara?’ asked Caroline, and Meena replied in her normal Meena voice: ‘a heavenly dancing maiden.’) ‘“…like god Vishnu with his consort, the goddess Lakshmi, like the sun with the moon by his side, the two left the arena, flowers raining down on them from heaven. Brahmins cheered, kings raged. Karna fell to the ground. The four remaining Pandavas looked at each other and they, too, left.”’
Meena closed the book. ‘And that, my sweet, is enough for today.’
‘No!’ cried Caroline. ‘I want to know what happened next! Do the Pandavas get their kingdom back? Do they come out of hiding? Does Draupadi have to go and live with them in the forest? What happens, Meena?’
‘Well, you will just have to be a bit more patient, because tomorrow I will read to you some more. Your mommy and daddy will be home from work any time now and they will want to see you and hear what you have been doing all day.’
Caroline pouted. ‘I want you to read some more! I want—’
‘What! What are you telling me! What happens to little children who say I want all the time?’
‘“I want never gets,”’ replied Caroline, her bottom lip stuck out. ‘I know. But still. It’s not fair.’
‘Life isn’t fair,’ Meena said as she lifted her up and placed her on the ground. Laying the book on the porch table, she tilted the chair forward and slowly, with much effort, pushed her cushiony body to her feet, grasped Caroline’s hand and led her indoors, through the kitchen where Lucia was cooking the evening meal, into the hall and up the stairs to Caroline’s bedroom to get her ready for her parents’ homecoming. Her three older brothers were still outside, at friends’ homes, playing baseball on the street, climbing trees; the things boys do after school. They’d be in soon, too.
Caroline’s father was a lawyer; he worked very hard and sometimes he didn’t make it home for dinner. But her mother, a doctor, always did; and it was her mother who, after dinner, would give her her bath and put her to bed and read her a story. But those stories were never as real as the ones Meenakshi told from memory, or read from books: stories of Indian kings and queens, heroes and villains and gods disguised as animals or beggars; cows who could fulfil desires and deer who could speak and monsters who could change shape at will.
If you asked Caroline what she wanted to be when she grew up, she’d say, like many an American little girl, a princess. But Caroline would be no Disney princess. She’d marry a prince like Arjuna, and ride to her wedding in a howdah on an elephant’s back wearing a fabulous sari adorned with real jewels; and her palace would be in India.
Caroline was in love with India before she could even write the word. She could point to it on the globe, and she’d tell anyone who asked that that was where she’d live when she grew up. Adults would laugh indulgently, and pat her on the head, and tell her she was dreaming; but Caroline knew it was destiny. She would grow up to marry an Indian prince.
I am forever lost. No one can save me. Not one of my three mothers is here to rescue me from this hell. Not one of my two fathers.
The mother who gave birth to me? I have no memory of her. I know her only through the letters she wrote to me over the years, the photographs of herself; she has yellow hair and pale skin, because she is a foreigner. She signs her letters Mom. She is so far away in a country called America, and does not even care. She can never save me.
Amma is my other mother, the one who raised me. Mom gave me to her because she had no milk. She is the one who nourished me at her breast, the one I love. But she is dead.
Janiki is my third mother, my chinna-amma, my little mother. She isn’t really my mother. She isn’t even really my sister. Janiki was thirteen when I was born and she has told me the story over and over again. How Amma placed me in her arms after the one called Mom left, and said to her, ‘Janiki, I have been given this little waif to look after but my hands are full with Kanaan and the next one to come. I give her to you; you care for her. She is yours. I will feed her, but everything else, you must do. You must be her chinna-amma.’
And so, though I shared Amma’s milk with Kanaan, and later with Ramesh, Janiki became my little mother. But she too is far away now, in another country, another world, and she will never find me in this hell.
Three mothers, and two fathers. The man I called Appa, Father, was Amma’s husband. He is also dead. Appa was headmaster of the English Medium School and so he was highly respected, and so were his children. He wore large thick glasses and he would peer at you over the top of them and smile. He was kind but distant, and could also be strict. As a headmaster you have to be very strict. Sometimes he even flogged some of the naughtiest children, but only the boys, never the girls. But then girls are never naughty. Why then is it always the girls who get the worst punishments? I would rather have been flogged a million times than endure the punishments I had to take later, because of being a girl.
A father should find his lost daughter. But Appa is not my real father.
There is only Him. The man I am supposed to call Daddy, but I cannot. Daddy is too ordinary. He is not ordinary.
I’ve always known about Him. Always, as far back as I can remember, there he was, the man who was supposed to be my real father, but who for me was more like a god, up in the heavens somewhere along with Indra and all the other celestial beings, occasionally deigning to descend to us and bless me with his presence. He came seldom; the last time I was only about eight, and I never forgot that last visit.
By then, Amma had told me he is really a prince. And that makes me a princess. Amma used to call me Little Princess. But I am not a princess. A princess does not live in such wretchedness.
Whenever he came I was truly tongue-tied – I could hardly speak a word to him, and answered his questions with a yes or a no or even just a shrug of my shoulders, turning my face away so as not to meet his eyes, for I could not bear the way they seemed to see all the way through me, right down to the bottom of my being, and I would tingle with happiness. And when he left again the tingling would stay with me for a long time so I hardly felt like a human child until normal life seeped through me once again and called me back to earth. What I am saying is I really worshipped that man, and I didn’t think of him as a father but as my saviour, even as a small child. Yes, I worshipped him. But he never came again, and so I know he has forgotten me. Amma told me he lives far away, in another country, a country that is all desert. So he, too, cannot save me.
I want to go home!
I used to live in a big house in Gingee, with Amma and Appa and Janiki and our five brothers. At least, for me it was a big house, though I have since seen really grand homes and ours was a hovel in comparison. But compared to other Gingee homes it was certainly large. I had seen the homes of other children in my school class and ours seemed so much grander – though now I can only laugh at such innocence. I mean, I would laugh if I could, had I not forgotten how to laugh.
Our home, in fact, was just a gathering of rooms, and mats laid out where we slept – inside in winter, outside in summer – and some shelves where we kept our clothes and utensils. That’s all, though we did have electric lights and a radio that blared filmi music all day long; Amma liked this music, and she sang along with the radio.
So we had comforts, and our home in Gingee was no hovel either – for now I live in a real hovel. The very worst kind of place, a hole in hell. The only escape is in sleep. I sleep as much as I can. But when I open my eyes again and remember where I am my heart beats faster and I feel the panic rising in me like vomit, panic that is trapped inside me and can never leave the body, like vomit that lurches up but falls back down again. I would give anything to be able to vomit but I cannot. It is trapped in me for ever and when I pray it is for healing from that sickness in me.
Looking back, I think of my Gingee home as paradise. And I would exchange all the palaces in the world and all of paradise to go back there – or better yet, never to have left. But my destiny said otherwise.
We were all so happy, but didn’t know it. We lived in a quiet part of Gingee. When we finished our schoolwork and our household chores we children could play in the street outside our door as much as we wanted, because there was not much traffic, not like in the busier areas of town where the whole street would be filled with all kinds of vehicles with stinking exhaust fumes, as well as rickshaws that would appear out of nowhere and pounce on you if you tried to cross the street. I used to be terrified of streets like that and always grabbed Janiki’s hand when we went anywhere in the town. Janiki was always there for me.
But of course now I know that that those terrifying Gingee streets were really nothing more than quiet lanes; because now I have seen the world and I know the terrors the world holds are worse than any terror on the main streets of Gingee.
I have read about hell, and the demons that live there, but I can assure you, this hell I am in now is a million times worse. That is the truth. And because I was happy with Amma and Appa and Janiki and my brothers I can compare, and so I can say my childhood was pure heaven. That is how it seems to me now.
Looking back, I cannot see much of the details. I see our home, a house with a large veranda at the front, where Amma used to sit cleaning rice or stringing beans and things like that, because she liked to see who was passing by and sometimes have a little chat with the other ladies who lived on that street.
I cannot believe I was fortunate enough to have parents like them, even though they weren’t my real parents. And Janiki. How I long for Little Amma! When I think of them and that time before my twelfth birthday tears come to my eyes because a good family is so rare. I know that now, and when I close my eyes I can see Janiki’s beautiful face and those eyes brimming with love.
I am sure there were unpleasant things in Gingee as well, but I don’t remember them because they are nothing. I only remember the good things. It is as if my life back then, the life I lived from day to day, was nothing more than a film passing before my eyes, insubstantial pictures of no lasting value, so there’s no use at all in describing them to you. The important thing was the feeling I had, the feeling of being embedded in this wonderful cushion of love where nothing could touch you and nothing could ever hurt you. I suppose that is the essence of my childhood, not the individual events that followed each other in a chain – because those things
pass away, passing pictures in a cinema. What remains at all times is the thing behind it – the screen of my being, you could say, over which those pictures passed; a backdrop of goodness. Because that is what has stayed with me, what keeps me alive: the remembrance of goodness. Of what goodness was like. That memory is what really keeps me alive when everything else is
dying, crumbling into a dark abyss and swallowing up my soul. That is what has sustained me in my journey through hell.
Because I am able to say to myself, if the events of my childhood are nothing more than passing pictures, then so is this horror. Everything else is a passing picture.
That is the secret of my survival. I don’t mean my physical survival, for my body, though often injured, was never even near death – though often it felt that way, and often I prayed it could be dead, and I know that one day it will be dead. I mean the survival of my soul, which has been so much in jeopardy these past weeks or months or even years. I have lost count of time. I have stopped counting the days. My life now is from breath to breath. The only one who can save me now is Bhagavan, God. He could but he won’t. My prayers go unanswered.
I said I don’t remember the unpleasant things of my past life; well, that’s not quite true. I do remember the day when Amma and Appa never came home.
That was the beginning of the end. Now I am in this monstrous city, a single grain on a beach full of sand. No one can find that single grain. That is what it means to be lost. But my name is Asha. It means hope. In her last message my sister Janiki said never give up hope, Janiki. Hope, and faith, will keep you safe. Even just a spark of it. And so, though I know I am forever lost, I cling to that one spark of hope.
Kamal tried not to breathe; he was sure they’d hear him if he did. He could hear his own breathing and the drumming of his heart, loud and erratic, and it seemed to him the whole world must be listening, watching for him. He crouched lower in the hamper, hugging his knees, curled into a ball with his head tucked in, exactly fitting the circular shape of the basket. For the first time in his life he was glad that he was so small, so supple, like a cat, they said, loose and limber and able to crawl into the smallest spaces and jump from the highest windows, landing like a coiled spring and sprinting off before they could blink twice.
That’s why they never caught him; that’s why when Rani Abishta, his grandmother, Daadi, sent them for him he was able to wriggle loose and run, and that’s why Daadi tried all the more to bind him to herself. But bondage, for Kamal, had the effect of a whiplash, urging him to escape, stimulating his ingenuity so that, short of winding him in thick chains, Daadi remained the loser. He smiled to himself, thinking of Daadi’s rage, and then her panic, when he turned up missing.
He had placed a cloth over himself so that if someone did happen to open the hamper, they wouldn’t notice he was there; they’d be deceived into thinking the hamper had been sent back with its contents intact, rejected by the caretaker. At first he squeezed his eyelids together as if, by shutting out the world, the world would also shut him out – at least the little world of Moti Khodayal which he knew so well, every tiny corner and crevice so that he could find his way blindfolded through the labyrinthine passages and staircases; led on by the pungent smells, the sounds, the shape of the cobbles, the smoothness of the stones beneath his bare feet, the texture of tapestries and curtains, the senses of touch and hearing and smelling refined to such perfection he could almost abstain from the sense of sight.
With the passing of each second his excitement grew, but also his anxiety. The more time it took to load the cart and coax the bullocks into movement, the more dangerous it would become for him; he had to make sure everything outside was normal. Cautiously he opened his eyes to a slit. It was dark inside the hamper but not fully dark: slabs of daylight glinted between the strands of wicker. Curiosity won over caution: carefully he adjusted his position, pushing his face right up to the hamper’s side, aligning his right eye with one of those daylight cracks, and peered out.
Everything seemed normal. In the greyness of the first morning light there was the usual courtyard bustle. Punraj, wearing only his loincloth and a turban, trotted across Kamal’s limited line of vision, bent slightly forward under the weight of the rice sack he carried on his back. Punraj’s body, black as ebony, glistened with sweat although the sun was not yet out; it was a long way to the storeroom at the back of the complex and this was certainly not his first sack. Kamal smiled to himself. He wished he could call out to Punraj, and share his secret; Punraj wouldn’t mind and Punraj wouldn’t talk. Punraj was a friend, a forbidden friend, one of the many forbidden friends Kamal had made among the palace subordinates.
He couldn’t see much through the slit, and after Punraj there were a few seconds when all he could see was the red-brick building at the back of the courtyard. But he could hear the familiar morning noises and knew therefore that he had not yet been missed, that everything was as it should be.
A goat ran across the fine strip of courtyard revealed to Kamal, the white nanny goat that Kamal had named Wendy. Wendy was being chased by six-year-old Bibi, Punraj’s daughter, another of Kamal’s forbidden friends. Bibi wore a long red skirt and she raced zigzagging behind Wendy, thrusting out grasping arms that the little goat neatly evaded, before she, too, disappeared from sight.
Kamal smelt the smoke from fires lit in the kitchen at his back, and his mouth watered as he heard the sizzling of ghee as the cooks began to fry the breakfast puris. He heard the clang of buckets being let into the well to his side, the creaking of the pulley, the gush of water poured into clay vessels. The chatter of a hundred servants; the strident calling of a peacock on a faraway roof.
He felt another prick of impatience; it was time to get going. Else they would… there! The bell for breakfast rang out and Kamal bit his lip in nervousness: he should be long gone because if he didn’t come for breakfast it would certainly be noticed. And they would start the search for him while he was still within the palace and would certainly find him. He felt his spirits sink – had everything been in vain? Every day for the past week he had watched and waited and every day the bullock cart had left well before breakfast began.
The empty hampers were loaded in the blackness of pre-dawn, which was why it had been easy to slink through the empty corridors, mount the cart and climb into one of them, covering himself carefully before reaching out, groping for the propped-up lid and closing it over himself. Once hidden all he had to do was wait. Today, though, driver-wallah was taking his time. Kamal knew that on every other day he had sat on the freshly swept earth outside the kitchen drinking tea and sharing gossip with some of the male servants who breakfasted at this time, before the day’s work began. They sat in a circle around a small brazier, wrapped in layers of cloth for warmth since the mornings were chilly at this time of year, murmuring to each other, pouring their tea from curved-lip cup to cup to cool it, raising their chins and opening their mouths to receive the milky brew. On previous days Kamal had watched, hidden, and on every day well before now the men had stood up and shaken out their clothes and dusted themselves off before separating to go about their various tasks.
Driver-wallah would return to the cart, settle himself on the wooden perch between the rumps of the two bullocks, call out hey-hey, prod the slothful animals several times on their backsides, and the cart would rumble off long before the bell for breakfast began its rigorous, joyous pealing. The bullocks would pause at the huge grid of gates let into the palace walls. Watchmen swathed in heavy wraps would draw back the many bolts and turn the many keys and unwind the many chains before heaving the heavy gates slowly inward, letting the bullocks and the cart pass through. The gates would close again, be bolted, chained and locked. The bullocks, the cart, the hampers were Outside.
Kamal, in all of his nine years, had never once been Outside.
He had a cramp in his right foot, bent awkwardly into the curve of the hamper. He adjusted his position slightly, wriggled his toes, and tried to move his foot but couldn’t; it seemed stuck into position. Everything was aching by now. And he was cold, and hungry. And worried about being found. Everything was going wrong. Driver-wallah had disappeared from the face of the earth. Today of all days, the day of his escape. That was the worst of it.
Kamal knew that things only worked out if they were supposed to. You could plan and plot and arrange circumstances as much as you liked but if your plan was not simultaneously destiny’s plan it would definitely go wrong: for, as Teacher always said, man proposes but God disposes. So if today of all days driver-wallah’s schedule had changed, then destiny was saying a loud clear unmistakable no. And now there was an unfamiliar commotion somewhere up in the West Wing, and Kamal couldn’t see but he knew that Lakshmi who was Rani Abishta’s right hand was up on the balcony outside the servants’ room shouting down to somebody in the courtyard. He could hear every word clearly, and he knew his time was almost up; if driver-wallah did not turn up in the next few minutes they’d start a serious search for him.
‘Ramanath, have you seen Kamal?’
‘Kamal? No, he’s not here, why?’
‘Well, he’s missing, he didn’t go to breakfast and the Mistress is frightfully angry, in fact she’s furious. He’s not in his room either.’
‘He’s probably in the stables, have you looked there? That dog must have had her pups, you know he watches for them every day. I’m sure he’s there.’
‘That’s a good idea. I’ll go and check.’
And then Kamal breathed out in gratitude, for the cart swayed to one side with the weight of driver-wallah’s ascent, and the bullocks shifted, the cart creaked, and he heard the familiar cry of hey-hey, and they were off. He heard the grating of gates opening, and then they were Outside.
Near the chowk, the marketplace, the cart came to a halt and Kamal climbed out unseen. He jumped to the ground and, following his senses, drawn by the noise and smells and whirls of colour, made his way to the bazaar. What a world! A world teeming with fruit and vegetables, some of which Kamal had never seen, much less tasted. His nostrils absorbed a thousand different aromas at once, some so sweet he stopped simply to look, and because he was hungry and had had no breakfast his mouth began to water as he stared at a man cutting open a big round fruit and pulling it apart into soft, slippery, translucent sections, bright yellow and luscious.
‘What’s that?’ he asked the vendor, who laughed out loud.
‘You don’t know what a jackfruit is? Where are you living, little boy?’
‘In the palace,’ said Kamal truthfully and immediately clapped his hand to his mouth and gazed at the man with petrified eyes; then he ran down the row of fruit stalls till he came to the flower vendors. Here the fragrance was intoxicating. Kamal looked right and left and all he saw were flowers, piles of garlands and baskets of roses; a girl his age sitting on the ground before a basket of tuberose blossoms threading them expertly with quick, nimble fingers; vendors coming with full baskets and going with empty ones, for it was still early, the stalls were still being replenished, and Kamal alone had nothing to do but stare.
Having seen all there was to see in the bazaar, he wandered up and down the surrounding lanes, the hunger in his stomach gnawing more and more insistently. He found himself in a narrow alley where the road’s tarmac crumbled and the shops on either side all seemed to sell nothing but rusty nails. Another lane was unbearable because here every building was a tea-shop and outside every shop pans of oil sizzled on open fires and golden puris swelled up into crisp balloons, emitting the aroma of breakfast that invaded his nostrils and sank into his belly and screamed there for succour.
Kamal’s pockets were empty. He had not thought to bring money; even had he thought of it, he would not have known where to get it. He had never handled money; he’d had no need to. And now, though his clothes were of silk and the chain around his neck and the ring on his finger were of pure gold, he was as poor as the poorest beggar – those he had seen everywhere – because he could not eat silk or gold. At this thought something clicked in his mind and boldly he approached the boy – not much older than himself – frying puris outside the next shop. He eased the ring from his finger and held it out.
‘Would you accept this ring as payment for breakfast?’ he asked hesitantly.
The boy stared at the ring and then at Kamal and called to someone in the black interior of the shop. A man came out, wiping his hands on a grubby cloth, and, looking Kamal up and down, said, ‘Where did you get that ring, boy? Did you steal it?’
‘No, of course not,’ said Kamal angrily, and then remembered that no one knew who he was and so added in a milder tone, ‘My grandmother gave it to me. It is mine. I would like to eat but I have no money. Would you accept this ring as payment?’
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ said the man then and showed Kamal a bench at a long table where three other men were sitting eating. Kamal slid in an. . .
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