Jasmine Skies (26 page)

Janu stares at me as if I’ve lost my mind. Maybe I have.

‘I think she needed it more than me. And it just felt like the right thing to do!’

He shakes his head and frowns at me. ‘Her ma will find it, and she will sell it. You don’t understand the way things work here. You think your silver charm is going to change her
life?’ His anger gives a hard, cold edge to his voice.

Janu strides on, still shaking his head. I can hardly keep up with him as he goes towards a cluster of straw-roofed, earth-covered buildings with pads of cow dung drying on their sides. I feel
sick. Of course he’s right. What was I thinking? How could I have given away Nana Josie’s charm?! What good could it possibly do? Janu must think I’m an idiot, a silly girl who
thinks she can make things better. I’ll never see my charm again. I slump down on a large boulder at the side of the road and stare and stare at my empty wrist. I have never felt so far away
from home.

Janu’s walking back towards me and holding out his hand. I try to cover up my face as the tears spill over. He must think I’m always crying, which is funny because I usually make
sure I keep my tears locked safely behind my bedroom door.

Janu perches on the stone next to me and takes my wrist gently in his hands. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says.

But he’s right. I should never have given the bracelet away. I feel naked without it.

Jasmine Fields

Chameli sits under the shade of something that looks a bit like a bandstand. She’s stringing garlands of marigolds together. When she sees Janu she opens her arms wide
and he runs towards her. She places a bright orange garland around his neck and then turns to me and places one around mine too.

‘You have already met Chameli, my ma,’ says Janu, as she hugs him and starts speaking quickly.

I nod and smile, and she smiles back. The same gentle smile as Janu’s – the same eyes. Now that I see them together they are so obviously mother and son.

Women seem to appear out of nowhere with bowls of food, and before long there is a feast for us to eat and drink.

‘Visitor is like god at table!’ one old man says in English, smiling and handing me yet more matar paneer and a small clay cup of sweet lassi.

Janu’s treated like a king here. All the mothers of the village keep filling his plate with food. He thanks them and smiles at me from time to time. I think he’s a bit embarrassed by
all the attention they give him.

A sound strikes the air, as sweet and pure as birdsong. The tune starts slowly at first, like the note of a sitar meandering around before it settles into a groove, but there are no instruments
being played, only Chameli’s voice. After a while everyone joins in.

Janu turns to me. ‘She has a beautiful voice, na?’ he says, not even attempting to hide his emotion. ‘The song says . . . “Though I give you up, my heart will never let
you go . . . Where and how far you travel, your heart will always be home with me.”’ He smiles as he speaks, holding my gaze.

Chameli puts her arm around her son and kisses his cheek. She takes my hands too and holds my empty wrist in her soft palms.

‘My ma thinks she can tell fortunes.’ Janu smiles at Chameli. ‘She wants to know if you remember what she said at the flower market.’ I nod and Chameli lifts her hand to
my face and strokes my cheek.

We walk through the village, followed by a little gathering of children, who giggle at Janu and pull on his kurta top. Janu stops and hands out some pens (he has a pocket
full!) and then he kindly shoos them away. He takes my hand and we walk for a while longer. As soon as we leave the earth huts behind I know where we’re heading, because I can smell the
fields of flowers before I see them. The land dips down to a place where the river widens to almost a lake, and all along the bank, in a long, thin snaking row, are fields of roses, marigolds and
jasmine.

‘You should come here after the rains; the air is so full you can taste it. Pick some flowers . . .’ he tells me. ‘Anything you want but the stems must be long.’

I pick jasmine.

We sit down on the riverbank under the shade of a mango tree and Janu takes the flowers from my hands.

I can’t believe how fast he weaves and plaits the stems in and out of each other, using the jasmine vine to bind it all together . . .

‘Maybe one day I will come to live here,’ he says, looking across the river to the fields beyond. He lifts off my marigold garland and replaces it with the jasmine one he’s
woven for me.

‘Thank you,’ I say, inhaling the scent and savouring all the colours, smells and beauty around us. We sit in silence for a while, one of those silences that feels comfortable, not
awkward. I want Janu to know how much I appreciate his bringing me here and confiding in me. I get the feeling it’s not a story he shares with many people.

‘Doesn’t it make you angry – what happened to Chameli?’ I ask him.

‘There’s no point to be angry,’ he answers, quietly. ‘Now I perform my “dharma” – my duty – and I will progress. This is part of my samsara
– this life is many times, around in cycles.’

‘How can you think that what happened to Chameli and Ajoy was
meant
to be? You can’t accept that. Otherwise, how’s anything ever going to change?’

Now I’m the angry one. I know why I gave my charm away. It’s because I can’t let myself believe that it’s just fate that decides everything – why one girl’s
eyes should look so empty when mine are so full.

‘Your turn to be cross.’ He says. ‘I saw this fire when you were teaching at the refuge. I think you are a very strong-minded person, na?’

I’ve never thought of myself as ‘firey’ before. Janu is smiling and obviously trying to lighten the mood but I still don’t feel like backing down or agreeing with him, so
I don’t.

‘Look . . .’ Janu holds out his palms. ‘This is my left hand. Here is written my story.’ He traces his fingers along the lines of his palm. ‘On my other hand is
what I
make
of my story . . .’

‘And what if Ajoy and Chameli had never escaped? What would have happened to you if . . .’

‘But they did. That is what they made of their life,’ He sighs. ‘It will take me much longer time to explain how I feel about these things . . . what I believe.’ I feel
my anger melt away – after all, I don’t even know what I believe in.

‘We have only little time left,’ he says, looking at his watch, ‘so let us not argue.’

He stands up and pulls a mango from a branch, which is being weighed down by the heavy fruit. He takes out a penknife, peels away the skin and then offers it to me. I bite into the soft sweet
flesh of the most delicious piece of fruit that I have ever eaten.

‘Shhh!’ Janu whispers, holding his finger to his lips and pointing with his other hand towards the river.

A jewel-bright kingfisher lands on a piece of gnarled driftwood, its turquoise feathers and amber breast are the most stunning combination of colours I have ever seen in nature. I remember
Grandad Bimal pointing one out to me on a river in the Lake District once. ‘Like a messenger from home,’ he said with a faraway look in his eyes.

There’s something about seeing this plump little bird out here in the wild that fits perfectly against this sky . . . It’s not the same colour as an English blue sky, more a sort of
hazy turquoise-grey.

The kingfisher looks straight at us with its dark piercing eyes. As it turns its head this way and that, from us to the river; now peering into the water; now diving for a tiny silver fish, it
has a fierce intelligence about it, as if it knows what we are saying and thinking. Of course I don’t tell Janu any of this, because I’ve just declared that I don’t believe in
fate or that things are ‘meant’.

‘It was my Grandad’s favourite bird – the kingfisher,’ I whisper, taking my camera out of my pocket slowly, not wanting to disturb it, but as soon as I have it in view it
shakes its wings, revealing the full glory of its markings, and flies away.

‘Did you catch it?’ asks Janu, looking over my shoulder, but the little screen shows nothing but a blur of colour.

‘Some pictures belong only to the memory,’ he says. I nod and delete the picture.

‘So, what are you believing about you and me?’ Janu smiles, looking straight at me with those great liquid eyes of his. ‘Is
this
not fate?’

I feel my heart beating fast and I daren’t answer him. I suppose I’m still trying to work out what I believe, but if I’m honest, despite what my head tells me, in my heart I
feel like fate’s been bombarding me since I landed in India . . . and sitting here with Janu definitely feels like it was meant to be. It’s so peaceful here. So right. I watch the
silhouettes of the wide winged storks glide over the river as the sun sinks through the sky, casting an amber wash over everything.

Janu walks down to the water’s edge and I follow him.

As I approach his side he bends down and lifts my foot so that I have to lean on his back to keep my balance. He removes my sandals and neatly lays them on the river bank, slipping his own off
too. He takes my hand and we step into the cool water of the earth-brown river.

‘This is my wish,’ he says with a smile. ‘Is it yours too?

‘Yes.’ All my butterflies have flown away and I have never been more certain of anything. I close my eyes and feel the softness of his lips, the smoothness of his skin against mine,
the coolness of my feet, the perfume of jasmine and roses and the taste of mango on our tongues. We stand in the river, gently swaying backwards and forwards, and I wish, I wish, I wish I could
stay here, in this perfect moment, forever.

The horn-blast of a train approaching pulls us apart.

‘We’d better go. Mosquitoes are biting,’ Janu sighs, swishing his arm above our heads.

We slip our wet feet into our sandals. He takes my hand and we walk back towards the station together.

My Lips Are Sealed

‘Interesting day?’ Anjali asks, popping her head around the bedroom door.

I smile and yawn all at the same time.

‘You look exhausted! Have you eaten?’

‘We ate loads of food in Janu’s village. How’s Priya?’

‘She slept most of the day. Lal says it’s most probably exhaustion. He thinks she’ll be fine by tomorrow, but I’ve moved her in with me so she’s not tempted to get up and party! Sleep well
Mira.’ Anjali smiles at me and then gently closes the door.

I’m glad I’m alone in here tonight because I can’t help going over and over what happened today, and I keep picturing Janu upstairs on his balcony, lying looking up at the sky.
I wonder if he’s thinking of me too.

It’s 5 a.m.

At least at this time of the day you can feel a tiny trace of a breeze on your skin. The bedroom door opens, letting in a chink of light.

‘I didn’t expect to find you awake at this time?’ says Priya, tiptoeing into the room.

‘Feeling better?’ I ask.

She nods and wiggles her shoulders as if to ask her body the question. ‘Yep, all well again. There’s only a certain amount of catching up on sleep a girl can do!’ She springs
on to my bed and stares out of the window.

‘I love this time of the morning, when everything’s waking up! I’m telling you, the monsoon is definitely near.’ She smiles and blows a flattened spike of hair free from
her forehead. ‘I can always tell. I’ve got a radar. Ma says it’s because
I’m
like the monsoon, always building up to something and then breaking.’

Priya’s tummy rumbles loud and long, making us both laugh.

‘Told you!’

She lies next to me on the bed, her hands tucked underneath her head, elbows wide.

‘It’s not long till you go home,’ she sighs. ‘Have you seen everything you wanted? If you could go anywhere in Kolkata, where would it be?’ she asks.

‘The old house in Doctor’s Lane,’ I answer without a second’s hesitation.

‘Thought so!’ Priya grins and leaps back up. She wanders into the front room and returns with a plate of sweets, fish chops, chutneys and naan bread.

‘Dawn fridge feast,’ she grins, offering me the plate. I take a sweet.

‘Well? What did I miss?’ she asks through a mouth stuffed full of curd.

‘Can you keep a secret?’ I whisper.