Jasmine Skies (25 page)

‘You know I have never cared for any girl before meeting you,’ Janu says, looking up at the stars.

Everything I was before, all the forever-things, are slipping away from me here under jasmine skies.

Burn Out

As soon as I see Priya’s flushed face I know something’s wrong. I walk over to her and touch her head. She’s burning up. I go to find Anjali, who comes and
sits beside Priya, smoothing her hair over to one side and feeding her water from a teaspoon.

‘Can we go to Nicco Park if I feel better later?’ asks Priya quietly, through parched lips.

‘I’m afraid that’s not happening today, Priya,’ says Anjali firmly.

Priya groans. ‘Sorry, Mira!’

‘It’s OK!’ I say but I do feel disappointed, as much for Priya as for me because I know how much she’s been looking forward to taking me there.

‘This bright candle burns itself out from time to time!’ Anjali sighs. ‘I’ll call Lal and ask if he can pop in on his way from the refuge. I promised him a meal
anyway.’

I get the feeling that Anjali might actually enjoy looking after Priya, who’s not exactly the sort of person who would ordinarily let you take care of her. Anjali kisses her on the
forehead and we go through to eat breakfast.

Janu wanders in wearing a cream silk kurta, the same one he wore the first day I met him. His hair is still wet from the shower.

‘Amazing news about the funders!’ Anjali smiles, holding Janu in a tight hug.

‘Mira had a big part to play!’ Janu says, grinning at me.

‘Not really!’ I mumble.

‘Yes! Really!’ he insists.

‘We’ll have to have a change of plan today because Priya’s not well,’ Anjali says as she pours glasses of iced mint tea.

Janu goes through to the bedroom, and I hear him and Priya talking.

He’s soon back. ‘She’ll be fine. She’s mostly upset about missing Nicco Park!’ He raises his eyes to the sky, sits down at the table and takes a pot of yogurt which
he eats slowly . . . thoughtfully. ‘I’ve been thinking – if she’s not going to Nicco Park – to take Mira home,’ he says, lowering his eyes as if he’s
nervous of Anjali’s reaction. ‘To meet Chameli and Ajoy properly.’

Anjali looks from Janu to me with a question in her eyes.

‘OK . . .’ she says cautiously. ‘This heat is becoming so unbearable. It might be good for her to have a break from the city.’ And then she chats on and on to Janu in
Bengali. It sounds as if she’s giving him a list of dos and don’ts.

Butterflies are dancing in my belly. It’s strange how I thought that all the great adventures I would have would be with Priya. Anjali was right all those years ago in her letter, nothing
is quite as I pictured it.

Haunting Eyes

‘Now you need to stay close!’ Janu tells me, wrapping one arm around my waist and taking my other hand as we walk under the metal grid that is the roof of Howrah
train station. It seems as if a whole world is living inside these red brick arches. It’s like someone has turned up the volume on all my senses: a woman’s voice is blaring train times
over a tannoy; a little girl with an infected-looking sore on her mouth is shadowing us: ‘Babu, babu, babu . . .’ she pleads, hand outstretched; now a family is settling down to rest,
spreading out thin cloths on the concrete floor, one for each child to lay their heads, right in the middle of all of this mayhem.

There are little kiosks and traders selling chai and hot samosas, seemingly plonked right in the middle of the station. Weaving our way through all of this we finally find our way to a queue of
shouting people clamouring for tickets. In front of us a blonde teenage girl wearing a rucksack and a tall thin boy in a grubby ‘Make Chai, not War!’ T-shirt are holding up the queue as
they try to work out which train they should be catching. They’re heading for Darjeeling. Behind us, people are stepping out of line to shout at them to hurry up. Janu turns to the boy and
asks if he would like some help. The boy’s worried expression twists into a grin, and for a moment I think he might hug Janu, who is calmly talking to the ticket man on their behalf.

‘Thanks, man. I’ve never been so stressed!’ He clutches his tickets as if they’re gold dust. His girlfriend looks at me.

‘Cheers!’ she smiles, wiping the sweat away from her brow. ‘Namaste!’

I find myself joining my hands together in response. She must think that I’m from Kolkata. Janu looks from me to the girl in amusement.

‘Cholo!’ He laughs, taking my hand and waving to the grateful couple.

‘That was the easy part!’ He glances up at the departure boards above our heads that clackety-click into place every few seconds. I wonder how it’s possible that from one
station you can get to so many destinations. Peering up at all the place names I’ve never heard of, I get the feeling that this is somewhere I’m going to come back to again and again
because I want to visit everywhere.

Finally our platform comes up on the board and we’re off again, weaving our way through bodies and backpacks. Around the train there are a hundred different wires connecting the power, and
between these lines tiny monkeys leap and play, looking down on the mass of ant-like humans. Now I see why Anjali was so fascinated by these monkeys when she was a little girl. They have crazily
human faces – some look bored, some look cheeky, one looks as if it’s broken-hearted. Janu checks the tickets once more and then climbs up the steep metal steps of the slightly rusty
blue and white train. He offers me his hand and pulls me aboard.

There is not a single spare seat all through the first carriage: there are mothers, fathers, babies, a tall man in a turban holding a briefcase and children playing a board game; the carriage is
bursting at the seams with people.

We walk on through the train until we come to some old-fashioned carriages with faded dusty curtains at the door. A woman is sitting on a brown leather bench with three children. As she sees us
peering in she moves a skinny boy of about six or seven on to her knee. She tells an older girl to put her toddler sister on to her lap and gestures for us to take the two spare seats. Janu thanks
her.

It would be hard for anyone not to stare at this family, because if you saw them on a train in London, the children would probably be signed up by some modelling agency and make a fortune, with
their grey-green eyes and their beautiful skin. But the whole family are dressed in frayed clothing and their eyes and thin limbs speak of how hungry they are. The woman catches me looking from one
child to another and she sits up straighter, holding her son to her proudly. She glances from Janu to me. I think she’s trying to work out who we are to each other.

As we pull out of the station I start to feel the mass of the city fall away from us. The windows in our little carriage are open, and as the train picks up speed the breeze cools us slightly.
Something about the atmosphere has lifted, as if, as the fields open out, the air becomes less confined too. Janu leans back on his seat and sighs happily.

‘I always love going home.’

The woman and children look up at us with new interest at the sound of Janu speaking in English.

‘Isn’t Kolkata your home?’ I ask.

‘It is . . . but a piece of me always stays in the village. Look!’

The train slows to a stop as a small herd of cows wander across the track ahead of us. ‘This is why we are calling this the cow-belt!’ explains Janu.

I look across a vast earth field and watch a man pulling a plough through the dusty soil. You can see in the sinewy muscles of his legs how much strength it takes for him to pull the heavy cart
along each furrow. As the train speeds up again he disappears into a golden haze, whipped up by a gust of wind blowing across the loose, dry earth. I’ve seen so many tiny moments of
people’s lives since I’ve been here, moments that I don’t think I’ll ever forget. I will always be wondering what happened to School Girl and Dust Boy, and Sunil and Kal,
just like Grandad always wondered what happened to that orphan baby boy he carried out of Howrah station all those years ago. ‘What would you like to think he grew up as?’ I once asked
Grandad. ‘A doctor of course!’ laughed Grandad, clapping his hands together.

I’m looking out of the window but I can’t help glancing at the family sitting with us. The girl about my age has long, perfectly curled eyelashes, and when she lifts her head I try
my hardest not to stare at her eyes. They are also an amazing grey-green, like those of the rest of her family, but she has an ‘I will not be defeated’ look, which reminds me so much of
my Nana Josie. I know it’s nothing more than an expression, but it’s as if she’s challenging me not to look away, to
really
see who she is. Those eyes could haunt you.

The little girl starts to moan and her mother picks up a metal tiffin tin and begins to unpack the tower of bowls, handing a layer of watery dhal, a tiny portion of rice and a quarter of a
chapatti to each child. They eat slowly, savouring every mouthful. The woman is just about to take a bite of her chapatti when she changes her mind, placing it back in the tiffin tin and offering
it to Janu and me instead. Janu smiles at her and shakes his head. She shrugs before biting into the flatbread hungrily. I can’t believe that she can be this generous when she has so little
for her own family.

When the little girl has finished eating she jumps off her sister’s knee as if this tiny bit of fuel has got her going again. She leans on Janu’s legs to stay upright as the train
jerks along, and he gets her giggling by taking a coin from his pocket and making it appear and disappear in his palm. She squeals every time he makes it reappear. Everyone in the family laughs,
except the girl my age, whose haunting eyes follow my every move. I wonder if she’s thinking the same as me – what makes
me
lucky enough to be born into
my
life? If that
is hatred in her eyes, I wouldn’t blame her.

Janu has handed over the coin and now the little girl is tugging at my charm bracelet . . . she’s taking the artichoke heart and rubbing the silver metal against her gums. She must be
teething. Her sister pulls her back to stop her, but she clings on to the charm in her mouth. My arm is outstretched halfway across the carriage now as her sister tries to prise the bracelet from
the child’s mouth. My little sister Laila once put this charm in her mouth and wouldn’t spit it out. It’s like tiny children know how precious it is. I figure the easiest way to
end this tug of war, without the little girl choking on it, is to take the bracelet off and let her sister deal with it. She nods at me as if she’s understood my plan, and starts to tickle
the little girl under her arm. As she falls about laughing, she opens her mouth and out pops my charm.

The older girl glances down at the charm for a moment and then hands it back to me before staring out of the window. I follow her gaze along the meandering path of the river. Great storks are
nesting in the trees, and a family is washing and drying great lengths of sari cloth on giant rocks.

‘Come on, Mira!’ Janu says, suddenly standing up.

Just as I’m about to leave the carriage the girl reaches towards me and squeezes my hand tightly. I look deeply into her eyes and try to understand what she is saying to me. I feel I have
to look at her, that it would be cowardly to look away. I’m still holding Nana Josie’s charm. I wonder if she thinks that my charm can bring her luck. I drop my bracelet and my precious
artichoke-heart charm into her hands because I have everything and she has nothing. As I stand on the platform, the girl pushes her face up to the window and mouths the words ‘thank
you’ her haunting eyes seem to soften.

The girl is waving to me as the train moves off. She opens her hand and my charm glints, catching Janu’s eye. He starts to run towards the carriage door, but the train is already going too
fast. She smiles. Forget all the models you see in magazines. I think she might be the most beautiful girl in the whole world.

‘Pickpockets! You have to be careful – of course they have to find whatever they can.’ Janu shrugs. ‘Was it valuable?’

‘Not in money. It belonged to my grandmother. But the girl didn’t steal it. I knew she wanted it, so I just sort of
gave
it to her,’ I explain, still trying to make
sense of what I’ve done as a sudden heaviness enters my chest.