ONE HUNDRED

SHADES OF WHITE

PREETHI NAIR

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Copyright © Preethi Nair 2003

Preethi Nair asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780007143450

Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2011 ISBN: 9780007438198 Version: 2016-10-05

For Ammamma, who loved

us enough to let us go.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

MAYA

NALINI

MAYA

NALINI

MAYA

Keep Reading

About the Author

About the Publisher

MAYA

Chaos seems to gravitate towards me. It has always been this way. At the time of my birth, the milkman lost the bicycle which had taken him five years to save up for; my much needed grandmother had to drag out my screaming brother who had accidentally wandered into the room; the rain decided to fall even harder and cut off the current (it made no difference to the midwife, she was blind anyway) and the cockroaches which had congregated on a fallen bhaji were crushed by an unexpected, heavy foot.

The battle that ensued between Amma and I continued. She pushed with all her life and I held on. And so it went on for hours and hours, years and years. Amongst secret whispers, a meticulous strategy emerged and reinforcements came in the shape of forceful fingertips that belonged to a wrinkled pair of hands. The midwife pulled me out, determinedly. The first thing I saw were the dusty blades of a khaki fan. I cried.

At that moment, I wanted to turn right back and ask God to tell me again what he had planned for me and why, exactly, He had chosen this family. Born into a cold, bewildered room, the midwife left me screaming as she lay me out to count my fingers and toes. I was then wrapped up and handed to my Amma.

‘She’s beautiful, just beautiful.’

But I didn’t glance up to see my mother’s face and instead I turned my head to look at my Achan. I saw an old rhinoceros-skinned man sitting in the corner of the room and howled even louder.

He was, thank God, the astrologer who sat through the whole commotion in stony silence. The astrologer noted the time and then shook his head. ‘You shouldn’t have held on,’ he said to Amma. ‘The second child always brings change, but this one has come with Mars in the first house and she will surely be the cause of much, much upheaval.’ But before she had a chance to reflect on his words, the rest of my family walked in.

The heavy foot belonged to my Achan who was supposed to be away on a business trip. He must have come back just for me. Not sensing my imminent arrival, he decided to escape the commotion to look for my grandmother and little brother Satchin. He found Ammamma entertaining him in a rickshaw and brought them both back in.

Ammamma took a look at me and then ignited like a fluorescent tube light, laughing at me trembling in the cool morning breeze. She wondered which old woman’s soul I had borrowed. She reached out her arms to hold me but Achan looked at Amma and Amma said, ‘Raul, let Raul take her, Ma.’

He took me in those big strong arms and I felt very, very comfortable. Satchin watched, then he went over to Amma and asked to see the family that would be taking care of me. This was after he had finished stroking my foot whilst he sucked his thumb, using me as a temporary substitute for his beloved blanky which wasn’t looking in good shape at all.

‘No, Monu, Mol is coming home with us, she’s your new little sister.’

‘No, no, Am, don’t want.’

‘Monu,’ she said as Ammamma lifted him up so he could sit next to her, ‘things will be just the same but better, you now have a little sister to play with.’

It was then I looked at my Amma’s face, seeking reassurance. It was so radiantly happy and anything she told you, you would want to believe, for this is the kind of face she had, calm and peaceful.

But they should have paid attention to his little words.

The upheaval that was supposed to mark my arrival, and the subject of much speculation and gossip by the man plotting our lives, was delayed by some inexplicable Jupiter/Saturn conjunction. The fact was that it was some three years later that the full effects of my birth came into force.

God gave me a good deal with my parents. My Achan was handsome and my Amma was really very beautiful. She had extraordinary green eyes that shone when she laughed and long delicate fingers which she hid her laughter behind. Achan came from a wealthy family. He had sixteen cows more than Amma. In fact, his family had sixteen more cows than all the villagers put together but I never got to see the cows or any of Achan’s family as I was told they lived far away. Amma and her mother came from the same village but had more of a middle-class background. They had a buffalo that slept in the kitchen with them and who seemed to enjoy the bedtime stories more than Amma did. This I know because Amma said his snores reverberated through the house and many times were mistaken for the tremors of an impending earthquake. Amma didn’t have an Achan because he died when she was little, but I don’t know how it happened because whenever I asked about him, she became very sad.

I can’t tell you either the exact circumstances surrounding my parents’ marriage because whenever I asked, it was always hastily explained in one simple sentence, ‘Your Achan came to see me, fell in love and so it was arranged that I marry him.’

That’s how they did things in Kerala. The man and his family would go and see the lady, who would have to go to the kitchen and make him some tea and serve it in the best cup, along with some savouries, and then he would look at her as she handed the cup to him. The lady would glance at the man fleetingly; if she liked him she would smile coyly and sometimes he would respond by touching her fingertips whilst she gave him the tea. This meant that he really loved her. The rest of the family would sit observing the interaction to see how well it had gone. They were also observing other things like if she was well mannered but then, I think, of course she’s going to be well mannered, it’s only five minutes while she’s serving him, it’s not that difficult. They would also take into account family background and history; there must be no scandal with any of the extended family members like divorces or separation. Other things were also important like how much money the family has and if the lady can cook well and, finally, their astrological charts must match. My Ammamma told me that the latter wasn’t a huge problem as there was a woman in the village called Laxmiammayi who could doctor unsuitable charts. Laxmiammayi could tweak Uranus or Pluto so they sat in the right house and matched perfectly with the proposed suitor, but she did that for a hefty fee.

If the lady was dark, rake-thin and had buckteeth, then Laxmiammayi couldn’t do much about that and the man’s family would ask for an extortionately high dowry to take her away. If, however, the family background checked out all right, the lady was pretty, well mannered, not belligerent in any way and could cook, then sometimes they would wave the dowry altogether. It was very rare, but this is what I think happened to my Amma. She was all of those things and could cook exceptionally well, due to the fact that she and my Ammamma were the village cooks. But even not having to pay the dowry didn’t make my Ammamma happy; she became upset at the bit when she told me how Amma left home and then said she really couldn’t talk about any of it.

My parents married when she was seventeen and he was twenty-six. The astrologer says that when an event takes place, like a birth, death or marriage, then something else happens in quick succession. ‘Nature responds,’ he says, ‘and moves things around in accordance with the new energy.’ So after they married, an enormous combustion of luck moved them to a bigger town and promoted Achan once again. He became chief oil importer for India and Amma had to move out of the village and settle in a town near Mumbai.

My brother Satchin’s arrival a year later sent my Achan soaring to the dizzy heights of true success and gave my family four more servants, including a kitchen hand for the irritable cook, and ten more cows. It also brought my Ammamma to come and live with them. My Ammamma wasn’t really a town person; she said that people are born city people, town people or village people, and she was definitely a village person. Village people understood how nature worked whereas town and city people couldn’t because the pace was just too fast to be able to take all the signs in properly. The pace of village life definitely ran through her whole body, she said, and although people gossiped, they had something very solid about them; they were firmly grounded and had time to stop and notice things. But Ammamma never complained about the move to the north and said that sometimes you have to do things even if you don’t like them because it makes other people happy and that in turn made her happy.

They all lived in a big, white colonial-style house with a red roof and matching floor tiles. The house was encircled by many, many gardens and was protected by trees and huge iron gates. Although it was near the town you would never have known as a sea of tall palms kept the noise of traffic, pollution and bustle at bay. It was a very comfortable life: my Achan would go out to work, my brother would chase anything that moved, and the whole household would run after him. Amma spent lazy afternoons talking to neighbours who came to visit or went shopping for groceries and other items with Ammamma and Nila, her servant boy, or she would cook. At five o’clock sharp, Satchin would sit looking out of one of the windows, waiting for Achan’s blue scooter to pull into the veranda, and then he would indicate by some blubbering that he was waiting to be taken out for a ride.

My arrival hindered this ritual that he had set up for himself. Now at five o’clock, my Achan would walk into the room and head straight for where I was sleeping. He would pick me up and rock me and his odour of damp linen and the musty scent of burnt wood would waft in the air with the motion. His moustache tickled my ear, a soothing presence like his voice which was deep and rhythmic. Whilst I was in his arms, Satchin would pull at his trouser leg, a technique he had learnt with Nila and the mango trees; Nila would shake the trunk and he would watch the mangoes fall one by one. Satchin secretly hoped I would meet the same fate. Achan would laugh and hoist Satchin up and say ‘Give our little Maya Mol a kiss,’ and so he would salivate over my face, accidentally biting me in the process. Achan would stay for a while and then he had to leave; he was a very busy man.

I was especially close to the young Aya who was assigned to assist with my care. Her particular role was to make sure I got to sleep okay and, if I awoke, to see if I needed anything. She did her job so beautifully and sang melodically whenever she could, the tunes whistled through the gap in her teeth. Aya was unlike the old toothless woman who didn’t understand her own job description and thought she was there to make sure my blood circulated correctly. She did this by vigorously knocking my joints with her bony hand. Then she would massage me like she was stretching out a piece of dough and put me in this cradle-type thing made from starched sheets, and hang me out to dry like some old piece of popadom. But this, along with bath time, was the only hardship I had to endure and attentive people were never really far away, my Achan being at the very front of all of them. If he was on one of his trips then it was Ammamma who I needed.

When she went to bed, she would pick me up and take me with her, cradling me against her warm flesh as she told me stories. There was, she began, a musician who lived in the sky who was responsible for changing the seasons. In the dry season, people planted their dreams and then they waited patiently for the musician to send the heavy rains; if they didn’t believe enough, the rains flooded their dreams, but if they held on with faith, trusted and let go, the rain would bring them many things and these things came in the month of Shravan, harvest time. Ammamma knew lots about harvest time and food because, as I said already, she was a cook. She and Amma would spend hours in the kitchen and Aya would take me in to watch them.

They worked like two magicians and with smoke they could turn piles of vegetables and colourful spices into feasts. Amma would point at the vegetables and tell me the names and all I had to do was to gurgle something back at her and that was enough to make her laugh. It took me a year to realise that this pointing game was a distraction because as she was pointing, Ammamma was getting the condiments ready for bath time. Bitter gourd skin mashed into a pulp, chickpeas ground into flour, and coconut oil, all prepared and on standby. Before I knew it, my clothes were removed. Aya would be running round quickly heating pots of water whilst I was placed on Amma’s outstretched legs. I wailed as she covered me in green gunk and yellow flour, ‘for healthy bones and beautiful skin, Mol,’ Amma would say, trying to console me. Then as I was washed and dried, coconut oil was poured on my head and massaged in and, after that, she tried to feed me. As a sign of protest, I spat out everything she placed in my mouth so Ammamma had to take over. When the whole ordeal was over, Aya took me to play in the sun. I learnt to hate the sight of the kitchen and when I was old enough to crawl, I would do my very best to scramble out of the situation but they would always get me.

As I began to walk and talk, Satchin found me interesting. He taught me how to put straw up the cows’ noses so we could make them sneeze and measure how far the mucus landed with our footsteps. This seemed to divert us for hours and we only stopped this because one of the cows lost her calf and she cried for days. The cow mucus game was replaced with another distraction: Satchin showed me how to open the catch of the chicken coop so they would all run freely on the compound and Amin, the hand, had to go and catch them all. Amin would panic at seeing the chickens everywhere and we would watch him jump up and down, running around chasing them. The driver only helped if he wasn’t too busy combing his hair in the car mirror or sitting in the front seat admiring his newly acquired decorations. When he did help, we would jump into the front seat of the car, lock the doors and begin playing with the horn.

‘Sahib will be very upset with you,’ he shouted through the side window.

Sahib was what he called my Achan but Achan was never upset with us. He got upset with other people, sometimes he shouted at them fiercely, like when the guard kept him waiting at the gate and didn’t open it quickly enough, but he never said anything to us. If anything, when he was there he let us do things that even Ammamma wouldn’t let us do.

This was because Achan was away a lot and so he really missed us. When he came back, he brought us many gifts from faraway places. Dolls for me and normally aeroplanes for Satchin and presents for Amma, too. We weren’t allowed to play with all our toys; some of the really special ones Achan kept locked in a glass cabinet in the sitting room so when visitors came they could see what we had. On these days, Amma also wore the clothes and jewellery bought for her. If it was a special occasion, we could take our toys out, one at a time, but we had to promise that we wouldn’t lose them, break them or take them outside.

Then Achan stopped buying us things because he went to a place called London. Before he went, he gave me a little golden Labrador. Satchin and I fought over the puppy because I was sure that Achan said it was for me. ‘Mol, this is especially for you because I am going to miss you very much. He’s called Tikko and he will look after you,’ he said, handing me the puppy. Amma explained that it was for sharing but that is not what I heard. I thought Achan would come home soon to sort it out but he was away for ages and we didn’t see him for what seemed to be a very, very long time.

When my Achan went away, Amma and Ammamma did strange things and were particularly busy making bundles of food which they sent somewhere with the driver. The house was also always full of people. One day it got particularly busy and there was much activity going on; banana leaves were collected, the veranda was decorated with flower petals, and it felt like the whole town had come to visit us. Ammamma said it was to celebrate Onam, a festival to give thanks for the harvest.

This Onam thing confused me because it kept changing; sometimes it was in August, sometimes in September, but Ammamma said that was because the calendar went according to the phases of the moon and then she began yet another story, this time about a king, but because she told me so many, I couldn’t remember it. The servants, their families and the neighbours didn’t care much about that king story either because they were busy polishing off the food, but they nodded fervently with their mouths full as she was trying to explain it to them.

Other times, the neighbours came with their elderly parents and their children who also finished off all of the food, every crumb, so even the red ants had nothing to fight over. Occasionally, a vada would unwittingly fall out of someone’s pocket as they said their goodbyes and made their way back home. At that moment, every conceivable life form made its way towards the food but normally Tikko got it first. The crows would screech with disappointment and attempt their fourth or fifth assault on the rice that lay in the sun but Aya was too quick for them and she waved them away with her palm switch. The polecat looked disappointed and took her eye from the crows and moved swiftly onto the chickens, just in case one of them escaped from the coop. Often, the polecat had to settle for a lazy lizard that couldn’t be bothered to move quickly enough in the hot sun and if this was the case, the polecat gobbled him up. Ammamma said you had to always be observant, even with nature, because predators were always about, waiting for an opportunity to descend on the vulnerable. She reminded me about the predator every time we went out of the enclave and as the only time we did this was when we went to the beach, I took the predator to mean the sea.

It was a long ride to the beach on a bumpy rickshaw. Ammamma shouted at the driver to avoid the potholes but he never took any notice and so we bounced up and down on the seat. On the way there we saw lots of rickshaws and taxis lined up like an army of yellowback beetles who had suddenly escaped from wherever they were trapped. It was like a race for them all to be first to get to where they were going and they left behind trails of smoke. Once we were at the beach, Ammamma would run into the waves and urge me to follow, but I was scared, the sea was a predator after all, so I dipped my toes in whilst she ran in with all her clothes on. We then sat together on the rocks to wait for her clothes to dry. ‘The sea has many answers, Mol, just sit and listen to it and it will bring back the pace.’ She described ‘the pace’ as a universal pulse. If you felt the pace, you could see the signs but the difficulty wasn’t really in seeing the signs but interpreting them. ‘Feel it, Mol, breathe it, listen to the waves and you’ll hear all the answers.’ The only answer I wanted to hear was her say yes to the balloon seller who often came up to us as we sat there. I was desperate for her to buy me one of his long balloons that he had twisted into an animal shape, but she never did. Other children rallied around him, fascinated by the shapes he had twisted, but knowing they could never have one, not unless he gave them away and this was highly unlikely. Ammamma said that they didn’t have Achans or Ammas who could buy one for them and that is why they looked sad and scruffy. ‘But we can do things for them, we can make them feel that someone is listening to their prayers and that magic exists,’ she said. So every time we went, we buried rupees and paisas along the beach. ‘All anyone needs is a little hope so that they are able to trust, and from trust, amazing things can happen,’ she informed me as we dug the money into the sand. What we did on the beach was our secret and I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone that, not even Achan when he came back, or, she said, she would be upset.

Ammamma hardly ever got upset and she only shouted at us once when Satchin and I kicked over the mountain of colourful spices that she had left out to dry. It went everywhere, staining the white walls with bright yellows, oranges, reds and browns. Nobody could clean it off, not even the dhobi, but that was hardly surprising as Ammamma said she wasn’t very good at removing stains. She said she was sorry she shouted at us but it wasn’t because of the mess we had made, but the lack of respect we showed for the spices. ‘You have to treat them with respect because they can do magical things,’ she explained. We didn’t see what magical things they did but we said we were sorry and that we would help Amin whitewash the walls. Ammamma said that we had done enough. The walls would have been whitewashed the next day had the postman not arrived with a telegram.

Amma tipped the postman, took the telegram and said that it was from England. Ammamma looked nervously at her.

‘He wants us to go and join him there as soon as we can,’ she said to Ammamma sadly. ‘It will only be for a short while, a year. He says he desperately misses the children and me. I am also to sell the house as soon as I can.’

Ammamma nodded.

‘Ma, I don’t want to go to England. If we have to go, you’ll come with us, won’t you?’

Ammamma didn’t say anything.

‘Come, we need you, the children need you,’ she pleaded.

Ammamma looked at her, looked down at me, and then back at her.

‘He’s left a number to call him. I’ll sort it all out and arrange it, Ma, you’ll see.’

I ran to find Satchin to tell him that we were going to England to be with our Achan. He was helping Amin collect coconuts and dumped the basket on the floor, running to find Amma. ‘Is it true, Amma? Is it true that we are going to England on an aeroplane? Is it?’

‘Yes, Monu,’ she said, but she looked very disappointed.

That is how I remember it. The telegram came and then time went at an exaggerated pace, like the hour hand decided to become the second hand so that it could make up for the things we had missed with Achan. Amma frantically began to sell the furniture and found the servants other positions in the town. Our dog Tikko sensed the chaos and left home so he didn’t have to say goodbye. Sellers were turned away as they came to the gates, all were told that we were moving and all looked devastated. I don’t know if this was because we were their best customers or because they knew something that we didn’t.

The whole move to England was explained to us as if we were going on a big adventure and we would return from our expedition shortly. The way Ammamma got herself into the habit of packing me with old wives’ tales, cramming me with every conceivable detail, told me she knew what the sellers did. There was something else that was happening and I was unaware of it, but she listened, listened to the pace and the signs.

It was the month of June, the time when the wild musician took over the skies and began jamming, hitting his drums with such strength that the rains fell harder than ever, flooding people’s dreams. The workers abandoned their fields, shaking their heads; beautiful flower blossoms fell, drenched by the weight of the water, and their petals were washed into murky puddles that splashed everywhere; ugly furry caterpillars, red and black centipedes crawled out of the ground; food became inedible and schoolchildren ran as fast as they could to avoid the night fever, arriving home with soaking books to a beating because there was no money to be so careless.

Ammamma, interpreting the signs, went to consult the astrologer. When the rain did not subside as all had hoped, her visits to the astrologer became even more frequent and she took me with her, as if to verify that the child he spoke about was the right one. They got into this shell-throwing routine. He would mumble a prayer and throw three shells across a board. Ammamma would look up at him, he would talk to the shells and then shake his head or ruffle his beard, at which point she would try not to look upset or cry. We followed this routine twice a week, always with the same outcome.

On one of our trips, we stopped off at the beach, yet Ammamma didn’t run into the sea but instead sat on the side.

‘Mol, promise me you’ll try to remember this, all of this, the place you are from when you are older, not just the place but the pace. You won’t forget the language, the smells, colours, the people, will you, Mol? Don’t ever forget where you’re from.’

What was she talking about? I wouldn’t forget in one year; Achan went away for a year and I never forgot him. I would remember her every day for that year because Amma said that a year wasn’t really a long time. The balloon seller stopped and instead of waving him away, she asked me to pick two, one for me and one for Satchin. I was elated and chose a blue one that looked like a dog for Satchin and a pink one that looked like a bird for me. As we rode back, she told me that it would be hard to say goodbye, that I should try not to cry because crying would indicate that the person wasn’t coming back and that was not the case as she would be with me always. ‘Mol, sometimes when you have to say goodbye it will feel like there is a monsoon inside. When it feels like this, breathe.’

‘Amma says that a year is not such a long time,’ I said to Ammamma.

‘It’s not so long, Mol,’ she replied.

Little by little, the house was emptied of our possessions until all that remained were three suitcases packed with our worldly goods, tied with string. The patter of raindrops echoed throughout the empty house. Ammamma stood at the gates, waving her young family off. Amma would not let go of her, drenched in a pink sari and with wet hair, rain running down her face. Ammamma kept looking over at us both seated in the car and mumbled, ‘The children, the children, you just take care of the children.’ And then she pulled out a little bronze figure from the pocket of her mundu and gave it to Amma.

‘We’ll see you soon, Ammamma,’ Satchin shouted.

I was sitting in the car, trying desperately not to cry, thinking how was it possible to have the monsoon drummer inside and not let it show. I breathed and tried not to look at her.

‘Yes, Monu, look after your Amma and be good for her. Bye, Mol.’

I said nothing. I wish I had taken one last look at her.

We arrived in England on my fourth birthday.

I thought my father would be waiting for us on the other side with a big gift, but he sent a driver to come and get us. We pulled into the Hilton on Park Lane. It was cold for me, despite being the end of August. Amma took a big yellow cardigan out of her bag and wrapped it around me whilst Satchin had his nose stuck out of the window, mesmerised by the different types of cars. I didn’t feel that way because that was day one of remembering my Ammamma. Although it was just the first day, I felt sad, so I looked down at the floor and occasionally I looked out of the window. The only way I can describe our arrival was that it was like being taken from bright Technicolor into a silent black and white film. No rickshaw noise or horns or buffaloes or cows crowding the street, blocking traffic, no grasshoppers or croaking toad lullaby or screeching chickens, just a mute, inoffensive calm.

Half asleep, we waited in the lobby for my father. He arrived a few hours later in an immaculate dark blue suit and a big smile and Amma woke us up, telling us that that he was there. Satchin and I went running over to him and I asked him what he had got us. He laughed, squeezing me tightly, hoisting both of us up, and then he went over to kiss Amma. Her lower lip began to tremble and she looked as if she was going to cry, but she smiled and looked at my father saying, ‘You know it’s Maya’s birthday today. We have to celebrate.’ The driver came back later with a Dundee cake and a rag doll that he said my father had left behind in his excitement. ‘She’s called Jemima, Mol,’ he said, giving her to me. What kind of a strange name was that? ‘Jemina,’ I repeated.

‘Jemima,’ he said, making a face.

I made the same face.

‘Oh, my funny little Mol,’ he laughed. ‘You will like England.’

If he said that I would like England, then I knew I would like England.

We sat and played in the lobby and then I was taken off by a deep, deep sleep.

The next thing I knew I woke up in a strange bed with lilac sheets and I was surrounded by beautiful lilac walls with balloons painted on them. Amma must have told him that I loved balloons and so he did that for me. That’s how I would say I woke up to my new life in England; happy, in a new, big five-bedroomed house in South London. I went to investigate all the devices and wandered into the bathroom. We didn’t really have a bathroom as such in India; Aya brought the hot water to us on the veranda, so the glistening silver taps intrigued me. I turned them and water came gushing out. It startled me so that I fell back, tumbled onto soft green carpets, and then hastily retreated. Then I saw him, my brother, in his room in a peculiar two-bedded house with a ladder. I climbed the stairs to meet him at the top. He was still asleep and so I shook him to wake him up but in one of his strange moments of fright, he rolled over, falling from a great height and crashing to the floor, making the sound of the dhobi’s wet clothes hitting the wall.

Amma came running in and found her son’s body under a blanket. She began crying, ‘Monu, Monu, are you all right?’

He was still for longer than he needed to be, making sure he had her full attention, and then he began to stir slowly back to life. She was kissing him on his forehead and checking if he was okay. He looked fine from where I was sitting – the body occasionally needs a good shake up. Then he began to moan, just a droning type of a sound, managing the word ‘Maya’. Her eyes widened as she plucked me off the top of the bed and she was about to shout at me when my father walked in and rescued me from whatever fate she had planned. ‘It’s just children playing, Nalini, no need to get upset,’ he said reassuringly. I was so happy to have him back and was taken into those arms with that familiar rocking motion. Amma made a big fuss over Satchin, which seemed to greatly ease the pain. Both of us looked at each other, with our respective parent on side, and drew the battle-lines. Within a few hours he had made a miraculous recovery, vowing some kind of pay back.

Later that day, Achan took us shopping. We went to a huge department store and he asked Amma to pick clothes for us for our new school and buy us anything else we needed. She didn’t know what to do so Achan called over a shop assistant and asked her to bring garments in our sizes. Then he turned to Amma and asked her to buy some English clothes for herself but she shook her head and wrapped her shawl tightly around her. He asked the shop assistant to get some clothes for Amma too and the shop assistant said something to her that she couldn’t understand. ‘She wants you to try them for size, Nalini.’ But Amma refused. Achan bought her the clothes anyway. He bought lots of things for all of us and then he took us to eat.

Amma looked distressed when we went into a restaurant and Achan ordered hamburgers for us. Up until then we had never eaten red meat but Achan said it was important to try new things. Whilst we waited, the waitress came and brought us a colouring book and crayons. This never happened in India; I couldn’t imagine Aya bringing us our slate and chalks before we ate. Then the burgers came and they had flags made from cocktail sticks on top of them and came with something called chips and ketchup. It was an amazing taste and Satchin and I looked at each other chomping into our food and drinking cola. I don’t think Amma was that hungry because she left hers.

That week Achan had a holiday and he did lots of things with us. We played in a big park, we went to a place called the cinema, we watched television and he let us do anything we wanted. Then he had to go to work and Amma prepared us to go to school.

‘Do we have to go to school?’ I moaned. Satchin went to school in India and never once did I envy him. The only part that I thought was fun was when Amin took him and collected him in a rickshaw. Satchin came home with a heavy satchel, his slate and lots and lots of things to memorise. He could recite everything about the Mogul empire by the time he was six.

‘Yes, Maya, you’ll enjoy it,’ Amma said, greasing my hair with coconut oil. I subsequently learnt that greasing is not the best technique in England to keep hair healthy and clean, in fact it was the opposite. There was a thing called shampooing but Amma didn’t know that back then. She also packed us off with moist sandalwood, bright red stains on our foreheads because we had just said our prayers, and a tiffin carrier each with our lunch in. Thank God we didn’t understand a word the other children said to us that first day.

Achan sent a driver and a lady from his office to take us to school and Amma came with us. My class had a lovely, white, round teacher called Miss Davies. They were making crocodiles and snakes from egg boxes when I walked in. Miss Davies stopped all the other children, said something to them, and then they looked at me strangely. Someone pointed at my forehead. Miss Davies said something else to them and then they clapped. All of them were eager for me to sit next to them and I sat next to a girl called Catherine Hunter. Miss Davies handed me a paintbrush to paint the snake she had strung together with parts of the egg box. I wanted to tell them all that Amin had once caught a real snake that had made its way into the house and then he put it into a bag and Satchin and I weren’t really frightened, but I couldn’t say any of it. Miss Davies smiled at me and I smiled back.

‘How was it?’ Amma asked when we got home.

‘Miss Davies is warm and cuddly and is nice to me, she sat with me at lunchtime, to make sure that I ate properly. She helped me undo all the tiffin carrier tins and then, Amma, all the other children looked at me when I ate with my hands. Miss Davies then taught me how to use a knife and fork.’

She shook her head at the knife and fork part. ‘And the other children, were they good to you?’

I told her that I played with a girl called Catherine and I remembered how to say her name because it sounded like ‘Kathi’, our surname, but I don’t think I said it correctly as she kept repeating her name. Everyone else was nice but then our company school, along with our company house and car, was very accommodating and all the other children were told to go out of their way to make us feel welcome. Then Amma asked what we had done that day and playing with the cows and chickens seemed so far removed from finger painting and crocodile egg boxes that I thought it might be too difficult to explain. So we both said that we learnt some new words in English like ‘Hello’ and ‘Thank you’ and Amma looked satisfied.

The only time Amma ventured out was when she had to occasionally take and collect us from school. This was if my Achan needed the chauffeur and, even then, she would grip tightly onto our hands, more out of a fear that we would run and leave her stranded in the middle of the road than to show us the way to school. She didn’t even go shopping. Groceries and things like spices and other ingredients, which weren’t readily available, were delivered to our house every Thursday by a man named Tom. Achan had arranged this as Amma liked to cook. It was the only thing she really loved to do. She could have done other things, like play tennis with Catherine Hunter’s mother, and I suggested it, but she didn’t want to. In any case, Amma only spoke a few jumbled phrases in English so she wouldn’t have understood the scoring system and she wouldn’t have worn the white outfit. Amma didn’t want to learn English either, as she secretly willed that we would be going home soon and her taking English classes would somehow indicate to whoever was listening out there that this would not be the case. So she spent her time cooking with the ingredients Tom brought.

That first week he came in September, he brought all sorts of vegetables both Indian and English. ‘Do you remember Mol, Onam? It’s all for Onam,’ Amma said, pointing at the vegetables. The prickly bitter gourd looked almost offensive sitting next to a sedate cucumber, the black-eyed beans looked evil next to the green garden peas, and the hairy yam looked as if it was going to eat up the potato. ‘For aviyal, olan, thoran.’ She reeled off a list of dishes just like she used to do when she trapped me in the kitchen in India and I nodded and made my way quickly out of there before she decided to paste me up with them and put me in the bath.

Her food would often go to waste as Satchin and I discovered that we liked burgers and fishfingers with ketchup a whole lot better. We would gang up against her and make her place these items on the grill instead or tell her how to make English things. The food that was all dressed up on the table would go into our tiffin carriers the following day but it got embarrassing doing that whole tiffin carrier routine day after day, especially when Catherine Hunter held her nose, so we would get the chauffeur to stop on the way to school, run out and throw the contents over somebody’s fence. Amma didn’t know better and was happy that we ate it all. We also asked Amma if we could get rid of the red stains and sandalwood tribal look. She got very upset at this and said it was God’s blessing for the day to us. Satchin asked her if God could put it somewhere else and she almost cried. So instead of upsetting her further we washed it off before we got into class and would tell her that it was smudged off during the course of the day. We also decided against broaching the shampoo concept, that could wait a while longer.

Even though Satchin and I went to the same school, had the only two ethnic-looking faces and the greased back look, he refused to acknowledge me as his sister. ‘Is that your sister?’ his friends would enquire and Satchin would swear no relation to me and walk off. I really did envy his group of large friends and longed to break free from my role as ‘Danny’.

This was around the time when ‘Grease Lightning’ took hold of the playground. All the girls with blonde hair became Sandy and because most of the boys didn’t want to join in, I was elected to play John Travolta’s role. I passed myself off as a cheap stand-in for Danny, even though I hadn’t seen the film and couldn’t really sing in English. This didn’t seem to matter as the other girls just needed someone to twirl them around and because I was quite tall for my age and had jet-black, greased back hair, I seemed to fit the role. The way I just kept saying ‘summer lubbing’ over and over again also seemed to swing it for me, so at every playtime for the next two months or so this is what I did. Nobody ever knew that I harboured a desperate yearning to have blonde hair and become Catherine Hunter, they just thought it was a strange foreign custom thing that Indian people did when I shaved off my eyebrows.

I took one of Achan’s razors and shaved off my black bushy eyebrows so I could draw new ones in with a yellow crayon. It would have looked good but I didn’t know how to use a razor properly and so cut myself and then the yellow didn’t show. Amma looked horrified when she saw me and she said Achan would be very upset when he got back from his trip. This didn’t scare me as Achan never got upset with me. She also said that the sooner she got me out of England the better, adding that it was making me do things that even she couldn’t understand.

More than a year had passed by then and, if I am honest, I stopped counting the days and remembering the things that Ammamma told me, because I grew to really like England. I loved my school, my teacher, the food, television, and I didn’t want to go back. If I was asked to make a choice, I would choose England every time. It wasn’t that I forgot India or my Ammamma but India became less and less important and I thought maybe Ammamma could come and live with us. If she came, I knew she would like England too. I didn’t tell Amma that, or that I secretly willed Achan’s contract to go on forever.

Dundee cakes came and went to celebrate all the special occasions. Everyone got a cake for their birthday and I was about to have my third one with six big candles. Somebody should have told my Achan that we absolutely hated them and that these cakes only served in joining my brother and I in a perverse friendship. The only time we teamed up was when we threw those chunks of cake behind the sitting-room cabinet. The fear of our father finding this Dundee cake wall behind a hideous mahogany cabinet united us in a way that had never seemed possible. Achan came back for my sixth birthday but he could only stay for two weeks because he had to go back to America again for business. Secretly, I liked it when he went there and came back because he would buy us things that you couldn’t even get in England. Once he bought me an air hostess doll that talked and even the teachers were so impressed that they allowed me to take her into assembly to do a demonstration for the other children. I also loved it when Achan was home because he played with us; piggyback rides; hide and seek. He’d understand the games and play what we wanted.

Satchin and I didn’t really play together, not even after school. I tried to be his friend but he never let me because he thought I was too messy and chaotic. So after school we did our own thing. He had this endless obsession for colouring with his felt-tip pens, which he guarded with his life. My scrawny colouring pencils were not of the same standard so I didn’t relish the prospect of colouring as much as he did. On several occasions, I offered to swap the whole set of my pencils for just his pink and blue pens. His refusal was categorical. So the day these very same pens went missing, all hell broke loose in our house. The only way I survived the neck lock he held me in was by signalling with my eyes at the Dundee cake wall that we had built together. But I suppose that if we knew what was going to happen, then the Dundee cake wall hardly would have mattered. When the cabinet was eventually removed and all the old bricks of cake lay there, nobody said anything. My Achan never got to see it.

Achan’s trips abroad became longer and my Amma really missed him because at night we could hear her cry a lot: not a loud inconsolable cry, more of a whimper, a bit like when the school hamster was trapped in his wheel. Amma started learning English, annoying us by interrupting the television programmes we were watching with questions every five minutes as to who was saying what, but she did make a big effort to learn. Maybe this was a sign that we were going to stay in England for longer. She would even venture out to get some of the groceries herself and collect us from school. Achan didn’t see any of this or he would have been proud of her; he was always telling her to be a bit more independent. When he did return it was always to a hero’s welcome and his gifts became more ostentatious. Satchin and I could have whatever we asked for; a new bicycle, games, toys, anything. Our only preoccupation at this time was whether we should stay in and watch Blue Peter and learn how to make what they had made earlier. That was until the death of Fluffy.

We hadn’t really seen death before. The calf’s death was different because we never saw her die but Satchin actually witnessed Fluffy’s death. Fluffy was my brother’s class hamster. To my astonishment, he asked me to come along and attend Fluffy’s burial. All the children held hands and prayed as Miss Turnbull said a few words. She said that Fluffy had gone so peacefully and was happy in heaven, playing with his friends, but the truth, confided in a moment of frenzied grief, was that my brother had accidentally murdered him. Dropped from a great height because he had had a fight with Jessica Thomas and didn’t want her to take him home for the holiday, Fluffy’s death was instantaneous. Nobody saw. So how he could have played in heaven in that state I really don’t know. Not unless God had fixed up his tiny legs along the way.

For weeks, Satchin was terrorised by Fluffy’s face coming to him in his dreams. I could hear him from my room, crying, shouting and jumping around like a fish in his bed. A truce descended between us when I offered to move into his room and sleep on the top bunk bed. I managed to convince him that just in case Fluffy decided to come down and get him, he would find me lying on the top bed instead.

Ammamma would say that we should have read the signs, but we lived in a big city and the pace didn’t allow it. Three weeks after that, my Achan died and life would never, ever be the same.

Amma picked us up from school. She had a bandage wrapped around her hand, her hair was unbraided and she was wearing a pair of trousers and a light green pullover. She never dressed like that and was always wrapped like a mummy from head to toe in a sari, even covering her head with the final piece of material that remained. So instantly we knew something was wrong.

‘What’s happened to your hand, Ma? Are you all right?’ we asked.

‘My hand will be fine, I had a little accident.’ There was a long silent pause and then she told us. ‘Makkale, Achan had an accident too.’

Was Achan’s hand damaged? I thought, but before I had a chance to ask, she blurted it out.

‘He died.’

Satchin started to cry.

No, he couldn’t have died, my father would never die, he went away but he always came back. There must have been some mistake; you can’t die from a hand injury.

‘He’s not coming back, Mol,’ she said again, crying.

I watched her lips move and the only other thing I heard was that, ‘He died a hero and there was no pain.’

He was rerouted on one of his business trips and he went to heaven instead as he saved a boy from having a horrific accident. He would save a little boy, that was the kind of thing that my Achan would do, but he wouldn’t die. There was some mistake.

We gripped her hand firmly, more so that she would not run and leave us, and we walked home in silence, not stopping once to jump and scrunch the leaves on the ground as we normally did.

The house was in a mess. Where were his pictures? They couldn’t have gone with him. I ran into the bathroom to see if his toothbrush had come back but it wasn’t there either. Did Amma think that she could put his pictures away and that we would forget about him? I went into his closet to look for them and saw his clothes weren’t there either. They were packed away in a big cardboard box. How could she pack him up like that? In just one day, like he never existed. I told Satchin but he made no response.

‘Why are Achan’s clothes packed away, Amma?’ ‘Mol, he’s not coming back. Come, eat something.’ Eat? Is that all she ever thought about? How could we eat? She had cooked an elaborate dinner and placed some chicken drumsticks coated with breadcrumbs on a side plate (more as an afterthought that we might not like the rest). We ate none of it and went to bed. The three of us slept together in my Amma’s bed. I wanted to cry but I remembered that Ammamma said that crying would indicate that the person would not come back and this was clearly not the case so I couldn’t cry. Amma lay in bed with us and Satchin whimpered as she held us. I contained my sadness and desperately wanted to hold both of them but then I decided not to get too attached to either of them. Everyone I ever really loved seemed to disappear.

Death precipitated events, just like the astrologer said it would. With no income and no way of getting back to India, Amma began packing things. The grocery man, Tom, came most evenings to help her. He had a sister who lived in the East End of London and he thought perhaps we could rent one of her bedsits. Tom helped us sell most of the furniture, Amma sold her jewellery and our toys, and she put down the deposit for two months’ rent on a shabby room. Satchin and I didn’t want to leave and we were sad but Satchin said that we had to be strong and not make any fuss. We did not say goodbye to our teachers or school friends. We left like thieves with the three suitcases, all tied with string, and as we climbed into Tom’s van, our childhood effectively ended.

I can’t remember much of that journey, except that it was raining hard and that the rain began to fall inside of me, suffocating me and taking with it any hope that I had of Achan’s return. The sea predator could not get me so it sent the rain. My heart beat faster and the rain fell harder: the rest, I cannot remember.

The flat was a semi-furnished bedsit off Green Street in the East End of London. We had to share an outside toilet with the man on the same landing as us. He was Polish and he dressed in an old black pinstriped suit every day of the week and rarely left the house, except on Sunday when he went to Church. Tom’s sister, Maggie, was the Irish landlady and she lived above us with her two cats, Arthur and One Eye. She was the one that came over to us as Tom parked the van.

Maggie was a fiery lady with bright red curly hair and a big bust that she emphasised with a light sweater. She wore a black pencil skirt which was obviously too tight. Miss Davies would say that she was having her last fling with youth, that’s what I heard her say to another teacher about Catherine Hunter’s mother who dressed in those type of short skirts. Maggie also had long nails and her fingertips were stained the colour of dried henna, like her teeth. She showed us into our new home. Amma thanked her. Maggie looked down at our three suitcases and smiled at us, a smile that pretended to look reassuring. She ruffled Satchin’s hair, which was the wrong thing to do because he only let Amma do that. He stepped back from her and clung to Amma who held onto him. Maggie smiled at me and I smiled back.

‘What’s your name, darling?’

‘Maya, Maya Kathi, and I’m six and my brother’s called Satchin and he’s eight.’

‘Well, Maya Kathi, if you ever need anything, I live upstairs,’ she said as she left.

The room had horrific orange psychedelic wallpaper, a decorative attempt to distract us from what it really was; damp, cold and sparse. It had dripping taps, a hob ring for a cooker, and a greasy, thick green curtain to divide the kitchen from the sleeping/sitting area. Tom showed us how to insert the ten pence pieces in the electric meter under the sink. He looked at my mother and he told her that it would not be forever, it was just a start. When he said that, I could tell Amma wanted to cry, but she didn’t. He left and we unpacked our things.

Maggie and Tom came back a few hours later with an old iron bed for the three of us to sleep in and a few other bits and pieces which Maggie said she didn’t need. ‘Tom said you’ll need a job,’ Maggie said to Amma. We translated and Amma nodded. ‘There’s a factory a bus ride away from here that is always looking for people. Can you sew?’ Maggie waited for us to relay what she had said and Amma shook her head. ‘It’s not difficult, it’ll take a day or two to get into it. I’ve a machine upstairs. I’ll teach you.’

That is how we spent the next two days, in Maggie’s warm room with an electric bar heater and a Singer sewing machine buzzing away. One Eye and Arthur were jumping about and playing with us, whilst the television was on in the background. Maggie said Amma was a natural and would have no problems in finding work. We, in the meantime, she said, would have to be good for her and go to school. On Monday, she would take us to enrol at the local primary school and she would then accompany my mother to the factory. I thought that Maggie was another sign and that my father had sent her to show us that he hadn’t forgotten us. I could tell, though, that Amma was very cautious of her. I don’t know what exactly it was about Maggie but Amma wasn’t herself when she was around her. Maybe she didn’t understand her.

That Sunday evening, before we went to bed, I wrote a letter to my Ammamma telling her all that had happened to us. I hadn’t written religiously like I had promised because we had been so busy, but that Friday, I began my first letter, not something that I told Amma to write for me. I really missed her and I tried to remember the things she taught me but I couldn’t, so I told her things that we did and how it was now. I asked Satchin if he wanted to write anything to her on my letter. He took it from me and began laughing. He read from the beginning: ‘Dear Ammamma, Who are you?’

‘You mean how, Maya, not who.’

That was the first time he had laughed since that day. It was worth saying ‘who’ if it made him laugh. How/who, it didn’t really matter, because Ammamma didn’t read English anyway. It was just so that she would get something from me to let her know that I hadn’t forgotten her and I wanted to send it because I needed her now. Amma lit a candle and burnt an incense stick and placed it near her bronze figurine of a little Goddess with many arms and thanked Her for whatever she had sent. Momentarily, the scent masked the dampness and put us to sleep. It took me back to the veranda, waiting for my Achan, who would scoop me up and tickle me, or back to the big house when he came in late at night, kissing me and saying, ‘Who is my best little Mol?’ As morning approached, I had fragments of dreams of my Ammamma, the smell of the sea vividly invading my senses as we were running along the beach, or as I sat on the side, watching her swimming with all her clothes on. Occasionally, it didn’t make any sense, like when she appeared in a red telephone box. I promised whoever was listening out there that I would never complain if I could have those days back with the two people that I loved most. I awoke to the smell of that urine-stained mattress.

Amma got up early that morning and insisted on washing and oiling our hair. ‘You want to look good for your new school don’t you, makkale?’

I thought it was best not to make a fuss because she seemed sad at the prospect that it was the last time she would be able to do that for us. ‘If I get work at the factory, I will have to be up very early and go before you wake up, so I won’t have time to do this for you every day, not for a little while anyway.’

She helped us get dressed and Maggie came down to get us. Maggie said she would be back for Amma in half an hour to take her to the factory. We kissed her goodbye and left her to get ready. ‘Be good,’ she shouted through the window.

Maggie held our hands but Satchin released hers as we began walking to school. We passed derelict buildings, shops that were boarded up and covered with graffiti. Some said simply ‘Pakis out’. These Pakis were everywhere, according to the graffiti. ‘Who are they?’ I asked Maggie.

‘You’ve not to take any notice of that sort of thing. Do you hear me children? Just silly people giving other people nasty names.’

There were empty beer cans sprawled along the way, which had been dented by heavy fists or feet, and a group of punks crossed the road. Their hair colour reminded me for an instant of the exotic birds we had back in India. I looked at my brother to see if he had thought so too but he was somewhere else, looking down at his feet. This was the ten-minute walk to school that we would grow so familiar with, and then we went into a very old, grey building.

Maggie accompanied us along the corridor to see Mr Mauldy, the headmaster. He asked us lots of questions and gave us a stack of forms which needed Amma’s signature. We said we could sign right there as Satchin was the one who normally signed for her when Achan wasn’t around. Maggie smiled at the headmaster, saying that we were always joking around like that, and she took the forms and put them in her handbag, adding she would make sure that my mother got them. He smiled at us uncomfortably and then he took us down the corridor to show us to our respective classrooms.

My new teacher was a lady called Miss Brown; she didn’t have the warmth of Miss Davies and when she smiled she revealed a set of piano teeth, with a protruding e flat. ‘This is Maya, everyone say hello,’ she said, introducing me to my new class. ‘This is Maya,’ she repeated. Everybody talked over her. She shouted at the top of her voice and they stopped for a few seconds and looked at her apathetically. Nobody volunteered for me to sit next to them and I could feel the hostile eyes of a boy in the front row. Miss Brown pointed to the back of the class to a seat next to a small girl. I went over to her and as I took my seat I smiled nervously at her. She smiled back, saying that her name was Fatima and she gave me a yellow fruit gum. This act of generosity meant so much at the time but, weeks later, I realised that she had packets and packets of them as her mother worked at the sweet factory and the yellow ones were the ones she didn’t like and so discarded without a second thought.

Miss Brown was teaching the colours of the rainbow and was asking if anyone knew what followed red. I knew all the colours because in the old school we had learnt a song. I kept putting my hand up and answering questions and the boy in the front row kept looking back at me. I smiled and then he squinted his eyes at me so I ignored him. This aggravated the situation because he mouthed something back, to which I shrugged my shoulders, indicating that I couldn’t hear what he was saying.

‘He’s Mark Fitzgerald, you can’t mess with Mark Fitzgerald like that, say you’re sorry,’ said Fatima.

‘But I haven’t done anything.’

‘Just say sorry or there will be trouble,’ Fatima urged.

I never say sorry, especially if I haven’t done anything wrong, so I continued to ignore him.

At playtime, Mark Fitzgerald and his big friend came up to me.

‘You don’t ever mess with me, Paki.’

I did not quite understand what Paki was so I told him I wasn’t a Paki and I hadn’t messed with him.

A crowd had gathered.

‘Not a Paki,’ he laughed, pushing me.

‘Well, why have you got dirty hair and that Paki smell? Bet you eat with your fingers an’ all. Look, Marty, we’ve got another new Paki,’ he shouted to the other boy.

At that moment, I envisaged Catherine Hunter’s golden locks and wished that I was still at my old school, twirling around aimlessly in the playground with a Hula-Hoop.

‘Bet you’ve brought some smelly sandwiches with you as well,’ he said, grabbing my bag.

Oh God, my lunch box. I hoped Amma hadn’t put in any masala potatoes between the bread or packed vadas. Mark Fitzgerald’s sidekick went to open it. I closed my eyes, fearing the worst, and then I heard the word ‘cheese’.

Thank you, Amma, thank you for not doing that to me.

‘It’s cheese,’ Mark Fitzgerald shouted, flinging the sandwich, and then he threw my bag at me.

That was the Kermit the Frog bag Achan had brought for me from America.

And then I don’t know what happened but something triggered in me and I went for him. I jumped on his back, pushing him to the floor, and pounded him with my fists. All the other children began screaming with excitement and shouted my name. Anger, hurt, sadness all came through my fists as I beat him, I couldn’t stop, and then Mr Mauldy prised me away, marching me into his office.

I ached all over.

‘This is no way to behave, Maya Kathi, especially not on your first day.’

I tried to explain that it wasn’t my fault, that Mark Fitzgerald had started it, but he wasn’t listening.

‘I’ll be watching you very closely. One more episode like that and you’re out. Do you hear me? OUT!’

I said nothing, I didn’t care. I was very, very tired and sad and wanted to sleep and forget everything.

When I walked into my class, all the other children began cheering. Miss Brown said there was no need for any of that and asked them to stop, but they continued. She added that poor Mark had had to be taken to the nurse’s office and then they began clapping. I didn’t really care and sat back down next to Fatima who asked if she could be my best friend.

I thought Amma would come to collect us after school but Maggie came instead, saying that Amma had got work at the factory and would be home later.

‘Did you have a good day, children?’

I said nothing. Satchin shrugged his shoulders.

‘You’ll get used to it. It’s always difficult at first, especially when you’re new.’

Used to it, used to it, we weren’t going to get used to anything. I would speak to Amma, she would make sure that we went somewhere better or find a way of sending us back to our old school.

‘We’re not staying,’ I said.

‘Not staying where?’ Maggie asked.

‘Here, here in this horrible place, in your horrible house,’ I said, as she opened the front door.

Satchin put his hands on his face.

‘Is that right?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Listen, young lady, let’s get a few things clear and then you and me will get on fine. Be grateful, because this is the best there is at the moment and if there wasn’t this you’d be out on the streets.’

There were no beaches in London, that’s why she said streets.

‘Think of your mother. She’ll be working hard all day so she can put some dinner on the table for you, so the least you can do is be grateful; at least she’s there for you.’

I thought again about the children with no Achans and Ammas who couldn’t ever have a balloon, how sad they looked, and then about the fight. It started because he threw my Achan’s bag. What would happen if Amma went too? We would be like those children, out on the streets.

I must have looked frightened as Maggie bent down and looked at me. ‘I’m sorry to be hard with you, darling, but it’s going to be a little difficult at first. That’s always the way it is, but it will get better, I promise you, it will get better, but you have to try and be strong and be good for your mother.’

I looked at her and told her about the fight and what Mark Fitzgerald said to me and how I beat him and I couldn’t stop. Tears rolled down my face.

Maggie picked me up and cuddled me. ‘I’m sorry, darling, not everyone is like him and by the sounds of it you won’t have any problems with him no more.’

She kissed my cheeks and made me feel safe, like I could believe what she told me.

‘Now, would you like something to eat?’ she asked.

Satchin and I nodded and Maggie took us upstairs and made us fishfingers and spaghetti hoops whilst we watched her black and white television and waited for Amma.

Amma came home later looking exhausted. ‘Did you have a good day, makkale?’

‘Good,’ Satchin replied.

‘It was really good and we made lots of new friends,’ I added.

Ammamma said sometimes you had to do things just to make other people happy and then it would make you feel happy, but I didn’t feel anything when I said that. Maybe it was because I felt bad about what I had done to Mark Fitzgerald.

Amma thanked Maggie.

Maggie said it had been no trouble and that we were really good kids.

We went downstairs and went to bed.

The next day Amma got up and went to work early and left us all the breakfast things prepared. Satchin served it all and then washed up and took me to school because Maggie was busy. It was a straight road, left at the crossing and then straight again. It wasn’t difficult, but we followed the other mothers and children just to make sure we got there. I don’t know why I expected it to be different. The children were much nicer to me but there was still sadness, a sadness which was built into the school walls. There were no pictures or singing in the corridors and assemblies were endless prayers and hymns that none of us could identify with, nobody brought in their toys to show the other children; maybe they didn’t have any. You couldn’t really sit assemblies out even if you wanted to. Fatima did, insisting her father would get angry as they were Muslims, and she was taunted regularly, but preferred this to what her father would do if she attended. I wanted to sit out with her but just got on with learning the Lord’s Prayer.

Assembly was Mr Mauldy’s time for imposing his authority with threats of caning for misbehaviour. He held the cane firmly in his hand as he spoke from the stage and lashed it against the podium, but nobody took any notice. What was another beating in the scheme of things? Then came the occasional morale-boosting song, introduced more as an afterthought that maybe this was the way to go:

‘I love the sun, it shines on me, God made the sun and God made me. I love the rain, it splashes on me, God made the rain and God made me.’

The bullies laughed at the absurdity that there could even be a God, let alone one sitting and making the sun and the rain, and glared at those who were heartily singing away. They had antennae to identify the weak: nobody could really blame them, for this is what they learnt at home. You had to pretend to be strong, even if you weren’t, or you had to find some way of keeping them at bay.

They never touched me, not since that episode with Mark Fitzgerald, and many of them even listened to me. One day Miss Brown had to go in for a blood test which she made such a big deal out of that I thought she might never come back and teach again. ‘She’s going for a transfusion that might not be a success,’ I said, preparing the class for the worst. She arrived back in class the next day, larger than life, to a pile of bereavement cards. ‘It were Maya, Miss, she said you were gonna die,’ informed Nicola Jory.

Miss Brown muttered something about wild imagination but you only had to look at the size of her plaster to know it wasn’t that.

I had to utilise the fact that I wasn’t touched by the bullies and find ways of keeping my status, so some playtimes I set up stories narrating colourful scenes and turned even the most hardened bully into a goblin or a prince. As I narrated, standing on the bench, they would turn their overcoats into fantastic capes and would vent their anger by slaying some dragon, or would make wishes to wizards that we knew would never be fulfilled. Never did I finish with a happy ending, always with a bizarre twist of fate, otherwise they wouldn’t have played. Fatima became my assistant and made some really good sound effects like the wind and torrential rain. Most times, she was made redundant by the real thing and on those days, I found her something else to do.

Satchin kept his bullies away by mimicking. He imitated his teacher really well, curling up his lip and speaking like she did. He was always full of bright ideas and if any of the kids had problems, he would find a way around it. One day when he saw Amma was struggling to pay for the electric meter, he suggested pawning the Silver Jubilee spoons that our old posh school had given us after prancing around a pole, country dancing. We had kept them safe for an emergency and so, one day after school, we took them to the pawnshop. The broker looked at us and then the spoons and repeated our demands for five pounds a piece. He laughed so hard that his belly shook. ‘How much then?’ Satchin asked authoritatively.

‘Five pence a piece and even then, I’m being generous.’

With his highly developed bartering skills, Satchin said, ‘Ten and you have a deal.’

The man paid him and we ran off, triumphant.

We had meant to put the twenty pence in the meter, but on our way home we loitered for several minutes outside Mr Patel’s sweetshop. We stood there grappling with the thought of a couple of packets of crisps each, a few boxes of sweet cigarettes, four sticks of liquorice and two packets of Bazooka Joe’s bubble gum, and succumbed to temptation and went in. Coming out clutching several brown paper bags, we made a pact to make them last and to share. Neither of us was sure of the terms of this agreement and I began secretly eating the contents of the bags and a few hours later, everything was gone. Satchin didn’t fight with me when he found out, he just looked at me, disappointed.

Our relationship changed when our father died and subsequently when Amma had to work. We knew we were fighting on the same side, so it was pointless wounding each other on purpose. Satchin became very protective towards me and although he would not overtly acknowledge me as his sister, he would wait for me near the school gates so we could go home together. He was the one who had possession of the door key and took responsibility for most things. I was in complete awe of my brother, the way he could do things and make things feel so exciting when they blatantly weren’t. We would run home chasing each other, or take turns to kick empty cans, but always in a world of our own, averting the glances of strangers, not giving them an opportunity to say anything or make gestures at us.

We were acutely aware that all around us, on the streets, a battle was raging. Poverty is a hideous thing, it fills people with a sense of injustice, frustration, inadequacy, even unworthiness, and from then on, a secret war begins inside them. The battle is to become someone, to prove something, and it never ends. Surrounded by derelict buildings crumbling like dreams, burnt-out cars and pavements stained with venomous spit, people fought themselves and each other. More often it was each other. Maggie’s simple home was a sanctuary from everything that lurked outside her battered blue door. An oasis in the middle of everything concrete and void.

Once inside the bedsit, Satchin heated up whatever Amma had made for us and we ate together, washed up the dishes, tried to do our homework and waited for our mother to come home. Sometimes the wait was just so boring that it was better to fall asleep. What Amma did at the factory, we didn’t really know, but she always came home very tired. On Fridays, she brought something back for us: a colouring book, a reading book or matchbox cars, so we always stayed up. We never asked her for things and, believe me, I wanted to; I would have loved some transfers or stickers but Satchin told me not to ask. He said that some nights he heard her crying, saying that she couldn’t give us the things she wanted to, and he said that asking for stuff would make things worse.

On Sunday, Amma’s day off, we went to the park and she sat on the roundabout and watched us play or, on very special occasions, Tom would take us in his van to the seaside. They thought we would enjoy this but I hated the sea, it was a predator like the heavy rains, and predators took things away when you least expected, just like the rain. Satchin and I ran along the beach or played in the arcades and for those moments we could be children. Then on Sunday evening, we would crawl into bed, knowing that soon it would be Monday and the week began again. It could have gone on and on like that and we wouldn’t have known the difference had the seasons not changed.

Despite the cold, winter was like a dream for us. Beautiful snowflakes covered everything that was grey, and temporarily we didn’t have to see the reality of where we lived because everything was painted a soft, fluffy white and we could distract ourselves by building snowmen and throwing snowballs at each other. Summer, in contrast, was difficult. Whilst other kids counted the days until the school holidays, Satchin and I dreaded them. In summer it got very hot and sticky inside so we had to be outside but were told not to wander far. We had six long weeks of being together, which meant endless hours entertaining each other. We didn’t have a television so we tried to re-create scenes and stupid dialogue from the Laurel and Hardy films that we had watched when we were rich.

Hardy is entertaining some ladies and doesn’t have enough money for sodas for all of them, so he tells Laurel (me) to say, ‘No thank you, Oli, I’m not thirsty.’ And when Hardy checks the order with the girls, he says, ‘Soda, soda, soda and what will you have, Stanley?’

Stanley says, ‘Soda.’

He pulls him to one side. ‘Didn’t I tell you we only have enough money for three sodas?’

Stanley smiles and Hardy begins again.

‘Soda, soda, soda and what will you have, Stanley?’

‘Soda,’ I reply. Then Hardy chases me around the room and we fall about laughing. Why we laughed so much, I don’t know, boredom and repetition do strange things. Sometimes we got Jatinder and Simon, two boys who lived on our street, to be the extras but they thought this was boring so Satchin told them about this idea he had to make a bomb.

All four of us went out into the yard and began making a bomb from petrol cans we had found in the street and Satchin added some turps we found out in the yard. He doused a rag with the mixture and Jatinder lit the cloth; it went up in flames immediately and set alight the cardboard box that was next to it. Jatinder panicked and threw the box against the fence. Before we knew it, flames were everywhere and we couldn’t put them out. The Polish man saw us and fanned the flames with the buckets of water he was using to clean the windows. Maggie spotted the Polish man jumping up and down, shouting, and his suit nearly on fire, and came running with her extinguisher. Jatinder and Simon ran off.

Maggie reprimanded us, telling us how dangerous and stupid it was and how we could have killed everyone.

‘Do you understand me, Satchin and Maya, do you understand what you could have done?’ she shouted.

She said she would tell our mother unless we wrote a story about the consequences of fire. Mine was entitled ‘The Effects of Smoke Inhalation’. I don’t know what exactly I wrote as I copied it off the piece of paper attached to the fire extinguisher, but she was very impressed and said there were no two ways about it, I definitely had talent, but it was wasted on doing silly things like trying to burn the house down.

Maggie could have shouted at us a lot more because we gave her much cause to. I think the last straw for her was when we almost became the centre of a hostage situation. One evening, there were helicopters patrolling above our house and policemen surrounding our street. We were playing in the yard and these two men shouted at us to open the gate. We were about to do so when the Polish man ran over, picked us both up, and dragged us inside. I kicked, bit him and screamed because that was what Miss Brown had told us to do if men unexpectedly picked us up. Maggie came running down to see what the commotion was all about and the Polish man told her that we were about to let some escaped convicts who had been on the news into the house.

‘You kids can’t go on like this. I know it gets boring but I thought you’d have more common sense than to let strangers in, especially armed ones,’ she yelled. ‘You know it’s not safe.’

It wasn’t safety that we wanted, it was excitement, adventure, something out of the ordinary to happen, but it didn’t.

After that day, she decided that we were definitely a hazard and thought it was probably better if we went up to her flat after school and the days she was there on our school holidays. We could only stay at Maggie’s until seven in the evening and then she would have to go to work. Sometimes, when we came home and Maggie wasn’t in, she would leave One Eye in our bedsit as a substitute, but when she was around she cooked us stew and played with us. Maggie became all things to me, I could talk to her about almost anything.

Upstairs in her home, Maggie taught me how to sew and to knit. That birthday, she made me a rag doll named Kirstin. ‘Here you are, Maya, darling, to replace the one you used to have, Jemima, wasn’t it?’

‘Jemina,’ I corrected her.

Maggie handed me a parcel. I unwrapped the package eagerly, waiting to find a rag doll with long blonde hair but found a creepy-looking thing with black button eyes sewn too closely together. Her black hair was everywhere and she looked like a mad woman who wanted to go out on the rampage. I made a comment about the hair but Maggie said that was fashionable and the current style. I didn’t take her to bed but left her on the sideboard where she stared evilly at me. Maggie insisted that we spend weeks just making different outfits for her. The first thing I made was a large pink hat that covered her eyes. ‘It’s too low, Maya, darling, you can’t see her eyes,’ Maggie said. Then I was resolute that she have a home of her own so she wouldn’t have to glare at us. We got her a cardboard box and made her a house that looked better than ours. I shut her up in there and allowed Satchin to use it as a garage and store all the cars he was collecting, turning Creepy into a parking attendant. He was ecstatic.

Satchin and I also bonded further that summer through the raids we carried out on Mr Patel’s shop. We didn’t do it because we were poor; Amma often bought us the kind of things we stole. For me, it was the excitement of being Satchin’s young accomplice. I would distract Mr Patel by asking him to weigh a quarter of cola cubes, and then Satchin would stuff some Wotsits up his jumper and cough, which meant that I had to then change my mind about the sweets. We would then run out of the shop as fast as we could and laugh uncontrollably. If we were lucky, there would be a packet of Smarties up there too. My brother and I would never have got caught, but one day Maggie overheard us arguing over the stash. The brown Smarties were the source of much contention and, as I threw the whole packet at Satchin, she came in, made us put on our coats, and marched us both into Mr Patel’s shop to confess.

We stood there defiantly, following the procedure that we had rehearsed many times, that was, to say nothing or claim complete innocence. After five minutes, the word police was thrown about a few times and Satchin, forgetting our pact, just broke down and cried. So then some slave labour arrangements were made and we had to help Mr Patel and his wife brush the floors and clean out their storerooms. Maggie made out like we had stolen the Crown Jewels or something, saying that she was extremely disappointed in us and didn’t think we’d sink to such depths. After going on and on she finished by saying that she would not tell our mother as it would break her heart to know that we had been thieving, but I wished she had, then at least Amma might have had some reaction towards us.

I missed Amma desperately, or maybe I missed the idea of having a stay at home mum who baked cakes and read stories, who shopped and gossiped. I felt sad in the mornings when I followed the other mothers taking their children to school and I wished mine was there too. Looking back, I never felt like I really had her and that she was mine, but then I don’t think I ever gave her a chance. It wasn’t because I didn’t love her, for it was hard not to want to love her, it was because I was terrified that she too might be taken away. So I used Maggie as my security and clung to her so she couldn’t throw us on the streets if anything happened. On the days Amma was around, I found it hard, as I also didn’t want to be reminded of India, the good times or our culture, because things were bad enough without all of that to deal with as well. I felt we were forced to make a choice and I chose the easiest route, which was to forget the place and the culture that I was from.

At prayer time, when Amma woke us to pray to the Goddess, she would just manage to say the first few words, ‘Aum, namo Guru Dev …’ when I would suddenly cut in with the Lord’s Prayer which Maggie was helping me with. It probably upset Amma but there was enough confusion without praying to some foreign God. When she prepared for Onam and told us some king story, I interrupted her with the story about the king who asked his three daughters how much he loved them. And as she decorated the bedsit for Onam, I made no comment at the intricate petal design she put on the doorstep and trod all over it with my dirty shoes. When she cooked Indian food, I insisted on something else. I wish I had never done these things but I was desperate for her to shout at me, to react, to tell me that she didn’t love me, that she couldn’t cope with it all and that she was going too, but she never did.

On the days that things got really tough, I locked myself outside in the toilet and talked to Achan, begging him to make things a little better from wherever he was. I knew he was always consistent and listened, as things always improved after I spoke to him. That is how I knew that, despite him not being physically present, he was around us. Sometimes, I would ask Satchin if he spoke to him to make things better for him, but Satchin would get really sad. One day he became very distressed and said maybe he was to blame for what had happened to our father because of what he had done to Fluffy. There was nothing I could say to that as I remembered what the astrologer said about the rules of karma so I decided not to bring up the subject again and thought that maybe he did die because of the bad things we did. Maybe that’s what happened if we did really bad things. I would talk to Achan alone and I asked him many times if it was this but he never said anything. Other times when I talked to him, I would tell him what we had done in the day, because somewhere I was sure he could hear, even if he couldn’t answer. But my greatest wish was that I would wake up and he would come and find us in that house and take us away, saying that there had been a terrible mistake and that he hadn’t died.

NALINI

I cannot easily put into words why I told my children that their father had died. To save them from the lies that inextricably led to the fact that the only person he could have possibly loved was himself, I suppose. Not only this, but what do you say to two small children who are about to lose almost everything? Self-worth is fragile enough as it is, isn’t it? What was I supposed to tell them? The truth? ‘Monu, Mol, your father has had enough of responsibility and if that is not enough, he has another family, he’s gone, left us.’ Maybe there are one hundred shades for explaining truth, a spectrum of light to dark, depending on the vulnerability of those who have to hear it. Things are not always so clear-cut, they are not either black or white, life just isn’t like that. I know my mother would disagree, arguing that there is one immutable truth and it is just a question of facing it. My husband left, just as my own father did, without saying a word. Not even goodbye.

My mother had a series of miscarriages before giving birth to me. She did not really care if I was a girl and she would have to find a dowry for me to marry. I think my mother was happy to prove to her in-laws and everyone else that she could bear children. She was elated when she found out she was carrying me and did not hide her bump like all the other women in the village did.

I was born in a part of India where God had a riot with the colour green; everywhere you looked He had created hues of luscious greens and made the air so healthy and calm. There was, however, not one moment of peace that I can draw from those childhood years. My father was always trying to kill my mother or she was threatening to kill herself by jumping into one of the many wells. The sound of screaming voices invaded the first eight years of my life but the screaming stopped suddenly with the death of my baby brother. My father had already left the day before the baby was born: one day he was there and the next, he was gone. The shame of what she would tell the other villagers meant that we had to leave the village. We walked twenty-seven kilometres barefoot, carrying our scant possessions on our heads, and settled in the village of Collenauta on the border of Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

The only thing my mother could do exceptionally well was cook, so she offered her services to the patrons of the village who owned all the sugar cane plantations and who were immensely wealthy. The story I was asked to relay, whenever probed about my father, was that he had been killed whilst trying to save someone drowning. On hearing me say this with the intonation and facial movements that accompanied the phrase, the patrons, Thampurati and Mothalali, took pity on our plight and offered us a place to stay. That is how we came to be hired by the Kathi family, my mother as cook and I as her assistant, and we lived in the small quarters at the bottom of their land, surrounded by rich banana plantations, mango trees and paddy fields. It was a small room but beautifully decorated with simple woodcarvings and all the utensils we required to do our job along with a buffalo, which gave us fresh milk.

The art of putting together food is a magical thing and if it is done right it has the power to soften the most hardened heart. My mother always said that when you work with what you love, you work with magic. However, if the ingredients are incorrectly administered, or if you work with bad intention, it can also bring the most disastrous results. Subtly, we laboured, convinced that it was the love and gratitude we put into the preparation of the Kathi’s food that made them prosper. Just the right amount of cumin to stimulate appetite for life, a cinnamon quill to bring spice or action into stagnant phases of life, lemon juice to diffuse an argument, chilli to relieve pain and turmeric to heal the heart. Freshly picked coriander leaves tempered bad humour and gave a sense of clarity, fiery peppered rasam warmed the soul, and grated coconut added to many dishes soothed and comforted. Pounded lentils left to soak for days made the batter for soft pancakes filled with shallow fried masala potatoes for a sense of pride and stability. Golden beans added to vegetable thoran were for longevity and prosperity.

My mother would watch situations and then prescribe accordingly under the watchful eye of Annapurna, beautiful pale blue Goddess of food and abundance, lit by the fire and the passion of the sun and the moon. She was placed on a box in the kitchen area and was adorned every day with fresh flowers. We said a prayer to her when we woke up and just before we went to bed, thanking her and asking that she give us the courage to do our job. So I don’t know if we could really take the credit for delivering small doses of happiness wherever possible, but we believed it was Annapurna, and my mother said it really didn’t matter, for whatever you believed became true.

There was also a little bronze Annapurna, no bigger than my thumb which my mother kept in a makeshift pocket of her kasava mundu. She came everywhere with us and was placed in whichever kitchen we were cooking in and was always given the first offering of food. There were many kitchens the little Goddess visited as word spread rapidly through the village that we had the most amazing ability to cook. As we were hired out for village festivals, births and marriages, things in the village began to change: a new temple, renewed rainfall, and laughter. It was almost as if my mother turned the inability to mend her own life outwards and seeing the pleasure this produced fixed her in some way. She took pride in her work and it showed.

The astrologer first thought that these changes were negligible and had been induced by the new phase of the moon. When one of the village women, who had been trying for ten years to conceive, suddenly fell pregnant, he consulted his chart and once again found two new specks pointing in a northward direction. He paid us a visit.

My mother welcomed him in. He looked around at the walls that had been brightly painted and the kitchen area decorated with freshly cut flowers and then he saw the box with my mother’s Goddess covered with garlands and whatever pieces of jewellery she had. The room was infused with cooking smells and the fragrance of jasmine and incense and then he looked down at the floor which had been neatly swept. He felt a little reassured and he removed his chappels. My mother pulled out the best stool for him and he sat.

He was probably in his mid-thirties and had taken over from his father who had died suddenly. He found it difficult at first to speak and coughed everywhere, looking a little embarrassed, as he dabbed his cheeks with his loincloth. His bare chest had red saffron stains and a black piece of string hung diagonally along it. At the other end was a small bag where he kept a notebook, some seashells and a pendulum. My mother smiled at him and brought him some masala tea. He swiftly drank and coughed again. She pulled out some honey-coated jilebies and as she offered him one, his face softened. When that had disappeared, he took another and another, until his whole body surrendered and then he spoke.

‘Why did you come here?’ enquired the astrologer.

‘We were sent,’ my mother replied.

‘Dates of birth?’

She gave him the name of the rainy season and the time at which I was born and she said that he could plot my life for she knew for sure the path hers was going to take.

‘Just do Nali’s,’ she said.

He took out his notebook and began drawing and calculating. Smiling enthusiastically, he murmured the word ‘good’ half a dozen times and then he paused, long silent pauses where he shook his head, and then he began to discuss the plans that had been made for me.

‘Many men will come from afar to marry you and you will be a beautiful woman but you must not readily accept the first proposal and you must not marry in pursuit of love, for this, too, is an illusion, just a state of mind. You will be a very, very prosperous woman, unimaginably so, but never lose sight of your gift. If you do, you lose your centre and all else falls away. You are already very blessed, for many people must go in search of their gifts. Lifetimes are spent on this. You know where it resides, hold onto it.’ He looked up from what he was doing and asked, ‘Father dead?’

‘Yes, yes,’ interjected my mother hastily, ‘lost his life in a tragic accident.’

He was about to probe further when I looked at him sadly and said ‘drowning’ and then I asked him if I would be happy.

He responded by saying that happiness was a state of mind and nature dictates that states are forever changing. He opened his tin of moist sandalwood and placed two dots on our foreheads. Every Thursday after that he would pay a visit, have tea, share his counsel, bless us and leave.

I did go to school when I could but it wasn’t something that interested me. What I loved was the preparation of a wedding or a village festival; the anticipation, the chopping of food, the blending, the frying, the colours, the aromas, the tasting then adding, and then the final results offered alongside decorations. My mother understood this completely and the only stipulation she gave was that I learn to read and write.

We gained much respect for the work we produced in the village and although my mother had made enough money to buy her own plot of land, she decided not to, saving the money instead for my dowry. She hoped that the money would attract a good suitor for me.

When I was about sixteen, many young men and their families began to come and enquire if I was eligible for marriage. First, the tree climber and his family came. His job was to collect all the different fruit from the trees but my mother looked at the state of his feet and his fingernails and turned him away. Then the doctors’ family arrived, they weren’t doctors as such but were twins. In the village, twins were supposed to have curative powers and if someone had an ailment, one of the twins was brought in to touch the patient. If this failed, the other twin was brought in and the patient was supposedly healed. My mother didn’t believe a word of it, thinking that most complaints in the village were cured by her fiery pepper rasams. She said that ailments were very simple to cure; cold diseases treated by warm spices and warm diseases treated by cold spices. In any case this was all irrelevant; the family couldn’t decide on which twin to marry me to and they began arguing amongst themselves.

Many even waived the dowry like Luxmiammayi; she made her money by casting off the evil eye. Luxmiammayi did this by blowing ashes of holy vibuthi at those touched by the evil eye and purported to fix any number of problems by doing so. One of the farmers was preoccupied that his hens weren’t laying eggs; he was convinced that a neighbouring farmer had put a curse on him, so she looked into it and blew. A few days later the hens started laying again. There was, however, some tension between her and my mother because every time we cooked for a major occasion Luxmiammayi would sit and gossip about how salty the plantain upperie tasted or how badly cut the spinach thoran was. My mother could have said many things about her, like the fact that she didn’t use proper vibuthi and it was really leftover wood ash, but she said nothing and Luxmiammayi too was sent packing. The only good thing about the son, my mother proclaimed, was that he had shiny white teeth and this was because he had nothing better to do all day except suck twigs from the neem tree. My mother warded them all off with strong garlic which she mixed in their tea. None of them, she said, were good enough. She didn’t know that I had fallen in love with one of the Kathis’ sons.

The Kathis had two boys, Raul and Gobi. Both were much older than me and I barely saw them when I was growing up due to the fact they both boarded at the school in the main town. Their father made sure they went to college and got respectable jobs. Gobi, the younger of the two, visited town often on leave and I had seen him a few times but never spoken with him. One day, I was delivering trays and pots to his home, balancing one on my head and carrying the others. He startled me, coming from nowhere, and asked if I was going to his house and if I needed help. ‘No,’ I replied, meaning I didn’t want any help.

It took me half an hour to cross the fields, the sun that day was painfully hot, and I arrived at their kitchen door, sweating. The maid started shouting at me, saying that Thampurati was getting impatient with her and it was my fault. She went on and on and all I could think of was how hot and thirsty I was and I needed a glass of water. She was furious and continued banging pots and pans so that the noise brought down several members of the household.

Gobi walked past the kitchen and stopped when he saw me. ‘You said you weren’t coming here.’

‘I was, but,’ I hesitated, desperate for some water.

‘But,’ he continued.

‘I need some …’ I fainted.

I remember waking up in the most luxurious room. Cool, tiled floors, beautiful alcove ceilings, and the noise of a water fountain. ‘Who is she?’ I heard a voice say.

‘She’s Nalini, the daughter of one of the cooks,’ Gobi replied.

I opened my eyes and there he was. Deep almond eyes looking down at me, full, defined lips, jet-black hair, very tall and sturdy. ‘Get her some water,’ the man said to Gobi.

He touched my forehead which pulsated and took hold of my hand. It fell into his voluntarily.

‘Will she be okay, Raul?’ Gobi asked, as he handed him the glass.

‘Heat,’ he replied, as he put the glass to my lips and poured the water gently into my mouth.

All of a sudden there was a shout. ‘Monu, Monu, what’s happening? What are you doing? Why are you giving the servant girl something to drink and in one of our best glasses, we won’t be able to use that again.’ Raul stared at his mother who had just walked in. He ignored her, turned to me and said, ‘Nalini, drink.’

‘They are silly girls, no sense, walk in the full sun, what do you expect and then, then they land up here and give us problems,’ Thampurati continued.

‘I feel better,’ I whispered, getting up uneasily. ‘I have to go home.’ There was a pause and he, Raul said, ‘I will take you.’

Another loud shrill broke the silence. ‘But, Monu, you can’t be seen out walking with a servant girl. Tell him, Gobi.’

At first Gobi said nothing and then his mother glared at him. Gobi suggested that perhaps the maid take me home.

Raul got up, took my arm, and walked with me past his mother. As we walked together across the fields, he held up an umbrella to protect me from the sun. The workers in the fields stared at us, women turned their heads, shyly pretending not to notice him when he passed. We said nothing to each other, the silence between us said more than was necessary. Some of the older women, like Kochuammayi, stood with their mouths open. She had a mouth like a buffalo and I was sure that after her work was done she would run to tell her husband in the toddi shop. ‘Come home, I have something important to tell you,’ she would shout, attempting to entice him away from his drink, but he would ignore her. She would then run over to the temple and sit outside on the bench and add a little more to the story, sharing it to those who were ready to listen.

I didn’t want Raul to see where we lived, because just for those moments, I wasn’t the cook’s daughter, I was somebody important, somebody who he wanted to be with. Almost sensing this, he stopped at the tree on the path that led to our dwelling and said with certainty, ‘I have to go but will come back to visit for Onam.’ I wanted to say, ‘Wait, there are so many things I haven’t told you.’ But I could not say or do anything.

My head was full of so many ideas as I opened the front door. ‘Ma, I have found him. It’s him,’ I wanted to scream.

‘What took you so long?’ asked my mother.

‘Nothing,’ I replied.

Nine weeks. Nine weeks until Onam and then I could see him again. Every detail of that afternoon was etched on my mind and played over and over again; the way he smelt, the strength of his hands, the confidence in his stride, the tenderness in his eyes. My mother rushed back in, interrupting my thoughts. ‘Nali, you didn’t tell me you fainted and Raul Kathi brought you home.’

‘It wasn’t important, Ma.’

The month of Shravan seemed to take forever to arrive. Onam was the biggest festival of the year where every household celebrated the harvest just after the end of the rainy season. The main celebration was held on the tenth day at the patron’s house and they would invite all their employees and give food and gifts to them as a way of saying thank you. This was the busiest time for my mother and I and preparations began many months in advance.

Before the rains began, we collected banana leaves to serve the food upon, we prepared dried palm leaves and saved empty coconut shells to burn as fuel, and jackfruit was preserved to be used for payasam. We pickled tender mango, ‘to let dreams ferment for an abundant harvest,’ my mother said, as she packed the finished bottles away in anticipation. In this period, we also cooked and served food to all our neighbours who were helping each other build new roofs with sugar cane leaves in time for the monsoon. Then the rains fell hard and people prayed for an abundant harvest and the whole village waited to celebrate Onam.

As we collected and washed the food for the feast, my mother would tell me again and again its significance. ‘It’s to welcome the spirit of King Mahabali.’

‘I won’t forget, Ma,’ I reassured her as she began again. ‘The Asura King was worried that the kind, wise king Mahabali was becoming too powerful, so he enlisted the help of Vishnu to curb Mahabali’s power. Vishnu disguised himself and took the form of a dwarf called Vamana and went begging to the king. The kind king asked him what he wanted and Vamana asked for three steps of land where he could sit and pray and the king agreed. Soon the dwarf expanded and became a giant. His first step covered the sky, the second step covered the heavens, and the third was about to engulf the earth when Mahabali offered his head as the last step so the earth wouldn’t be crushed. The Gods were pacified by his sacrifice and his spirit was allowed to return once a year to visit his kingdom and celebrate with his people.’

‘Sacrifice is important, Mol,’ she concluded. ‘Spirit will live forever.’

The evening before Onam, every veranda was decorated with intricate patterns of flower petals and in the centre was a four-sided pyramid of Mahabali. I went to collect the final petals to finish off and as I looked beneath my tree, I saw a package: somebody had left a parcel with my name on it. I tore off the wrapping and inside was a bright blue hand-embroidered sari which would have taken us three years to buy. I looked inside again but there was no note. Raul, I thought, he has bought this for me, he is back.

I went back home and begged my mother if I could serve instead of staying behind in the kitchen. ‘You don’t know the order of food,’ she said. ‘Not this year, Mol, next year, then I will have plenty of time to teach you.’

‘Please, Ma,’ I begged, ‘this year, tell me now.’

She relented and the two of us sat up late as she took out a banana leaf and explained how to serve on it. ‘The narrow part of the leaf must always be on the left, serving begins at the bottom left corner, and first you place a small banana, next to this come the banana chips coated with jaggery, then popadom. From the top left hand of the leaf, mango pickle, injipuli, thoran, olan, khichidi, aviyal. Only after this is placed can the guest begin eating. Wait for them to begin and then at the bottom centre you serve the rice, then pour the sambar on top of the rice. When they have finished, serve the payasam and after dessert, pour the rasam into their cupped hands and then wait, wait to see if they would like more.’

She went over it three or four times until I felt completely sure. Then we fell asleep.

The next morning I woke up very early and headed for the lake to bathe. Frogs were dancing on the lotus leaves, croaking loudly as I washed my hair, scrubbing it with chickpea flour so it shone. Running coconut oil through it, I tied it up with a fresh garland and unwrapped the sari. I would tell Ma it was a gift from the Kathis for all our help, that I had taken it back to Thampurati, insisting I was not worthy of such a gift, but she would not accept it back and asked not to mention it again for that would embarrass her further. I began to get dressed and let all the confidence and power I had seep into every tuck and fold of my new outfit and then I headed towards the Kathi’s house so I could serve.

Stepping into their courtyard, my glass bangles jangled and people turned around to stare. They stopped and looked again. The temple drums were beating softly in the background, calling everyone from the village. When they were all assembled, I began serving. Gobi was first. ‘A beautiful colour that suits you,’ he said. I smiled and continued serving. The drums began beating faster and faster and then I reached him. I could feel Raul’s presence without even looking. I nervously poured the aviyal onto the leaf and as I finished, I looked up and held his gaze. Something exchanged between the two of us. It said a thousand things between us and yet it said nothing to those around us.

My mother was annoyed at me, saying that I should not have accepted such gifts and that I should have tried harder to give the sari back to Thampurati. She said that I looked too good and asked if I had protected myself against the evil eye. I laughed at her and she got very angry and mumbled that she would not look after me if I caught a fever in the night. Then, just before we went to bed, she burnt some red chillies and muttered that it was just as she had thought: ‘too many eyes.’ We went to sleep, protected from watchful green envy who was responsible for so much misfortune.

The next day, my mother came running into the area where I was sleeping and told me that we would be very busy over the coming months. Raul was getting married. Married! No, he wouldn’t, he couldn’t, I loved him. I felt a loathing, a sense of unworthiness. Was it all in my head? Had I misinterpreted the signs? All I could do was cook. I spent the day cooking and when my mother went out to run her errands, I hit the pots and pans so hard that they left marks on the floor. I garnished the dishes with an excess of hot chillies so that at lunchtime, for the first time ever, those who ate became sick. I went for a long walk.

Contradictory thoughts battled in my head. How stupid to think that I, a cook, could marry into such a family? But then the astrologer always said that a call that goes out never returns unanswered. ‘No matter how strange the request may seem, someone is always listening,’ he maintained. I waded through paddy fields, my feet drenched in water as they splashed angrily. Undoing my hair, I ran through the clearing and then sat under a palm tree and cried. I cried until I fell asleep and awoke to darkness. Then I sensed him and laughed at the fact that the mind still played such cruel tricks. I turned my head and he was there. I ran my fingers through my hair and adjusted my pavada.

‘It is a bit late to be out,’ Raul said.

‘I was sent to get some provisions,’ I replied, looking at my empty hands.

‘Come, I’ll walk you home,’ he gestured, helping me to my feet.

Why? I wanted to scream. Why are you getting married? Why did you make me fall in love with you when all along you knew I couldn’t have you? All I could say, though, was, ‘Congratulations, I hear you are getting married.’

‘It’s not how it appears, Nalini. I had to see you once again,’ he continued.

I looked up. His smile came beaming back at me, melting any doubts or resentment that I held. As we walked back, he told me he had been able to think of little else but me. The marriage, he said, was arranged by his mother to someone he barely knew. He took my hand.

Raul Kathi, I thought, Why are you doing this to me?

The hour passed quickly as he walked me to the tree, our tree, and squeezing my hand, he told me he would come back for me.

He returned the next day and the day after that and somewhere I chose to forget that he would be getting married and I allowed myself to completely love him.

Our house became suffused with uncertainty and my mother and I began to argue as we never had. Food rotted after just a day. She sensed that Raul had something to do with it and warned me to stay away. She pleaded, saying that love was fleeting and that the constants in life came from the sense of self and not from another. Nearly every cell in my body begged me to stay away. I knew that this person would take me away from who I was and I did try to keep away from him but the more I attempted to avoid Raul, the more intense the longing became and the more persistent he became. I just wanted him, to touch him, to hold him, to be with him.

Two weeks before his wedding, Raul came to me and asked me to go away with him. I agonised over the scandal and the anguish that this would cause my mother. I did not want to leave her and she would not want to leave her home, but I desperately wanted to be with Raul and if I had told her, she would not have let me go. So the next evening, with an overwhelming sense of grief, I packed a few things and left with him. We married and then we went to the station.

The train arrived at Mumbai. The platform was crowded with people: coolies with red turbans, competing for custom; sellers with fruit on their head bombarding descending commuters; tea boys shouting ‘chia’; contortionists making their way over to families and blowing up balloons which they bent like their bodies. Some of the children cried, afraid, others cried because they wanted to buy the balloons and their parents hastily dragged them away. I stood in amazement. Raul held my hand as we walked through the chaos to find the driver.

As we drove through busy streets, I gazed in wonderment at all the women wearing brightly-coloured clothes, some of whom wore make-up and had handbags. Fast-moving cars sped randomly in front of us and rickshaws, bullock carts and bicycles followed far behind. People urinated on street corners or squatted by food stalls. Colourful buses passed them, covering the food with a thick, black smoke. A policeman stood on a box and was trying to manage the traffic with his whistle but nobody took any notice. Even dust seemed to have a life of its own and participated, flying with the noise of engines and following people who were shouting and running or waiting, wearing their best clothes, in long cinema queues. I felt a strange sense of excitement, I wanted to participate, to learn Hindi properly so I could understand it all. The noise, traffic, people and animals eventually subsided and were replaced by lime and mango trees, fields of them. We arrived at Anajaba, sixty kilometres from Mumbai.

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