Jasmine Skies (7 page)
Authors: Sita Brahmachari
‘Are you OK in there?’ calls Anjali through the bathroom door.
‘Fine!’ I shout back, jumping up and shoving everything back into my bag. I turn on the taps to pretend I’m washing my hands, hang the bag on the hook on the back of the door
and then step out into the bedroom.
‘I’ve just got to pop down to the refuge. Won’t be more than an hour. It’s very safe here. Manu’s wife is only downstairs and Bacha’s guarding the door!
Unless you want to come with me?’
‘I’ll be fine here,’ I reassure her. All I can think about is getting back to the letters.
I climb on the bed to look out of the high window and watch Anjali walk quickly down the stairs, appearing and disappearing, until she reaches the street below, where the
golden-brown cow is still ambling around. It’s so strange that in the middle of a city like this, with all the cars and shiny glass buildings and technology, cows still wander the
streets.
Now that I’m here I’m starting to feel closer to the stories Grandad used to tell me. Like the time he talked about Partition, when the British left India and there was so much chaos
and bloodshed that all the medical students were sent to treat the wounded passengers fleeing their old homes and coming in off the trains to Howrah station. I’ll never forget the way he
described helping a woman in one of the carriages to give birth, and there were people around her already dead, and then she died and Grandad carried the baby out into the city to an orphanage. He
said that the pavements smelt of blood. He remembered everything in so much detail it was as if it had happened yesterday. ‘I often wonder what happened to that baby,’ was the way that
Grandad always used to end that story.
I know that it’s really gruesome of me, but knowing that my Grandad was connected to that moment in history made me want to read everything I could about Partition and Indian Independence
from the British. I wouldn’t have known so much about it otherwise, because it’s not like they teach you about it in school. Sometimes I think about what it must have been like for his
family in India, when Grandad married an English-woman and stayed in Britain instead of coming back home.
Nana Kath’s told me all sorts of stories about how difficult it was for them to marry in Britain, how the priest wouldn’t marry a Hindu man in a church and what a shock it was for
her parents at first that she married a ‘foreigner’. She also tells me that gradually Grandad charmed everyone. I can believe that.
I think these stories about where you come from and the history of your own family help you to see where you stand in the world. I suppose it’s because of Jidé telling me about what
happened to his family in Rwanda that made me understand him better. I think I have a right to know about what happened in my own family and reading these letters seems the only way to do it,
seeing as no one will tell me the truth.
As Manu’s Ambassador turns the corner I step off the bed, lock myself in the bathroom again and open a thin pale blue airmail envelope addressed to:
Uma Chatterjee
2, Mill Lane
York Way
York
North Yorkshire
UK
I didn’t even know Mum had ever lived in York. It sort of jolts me into a place that always makes me feel a bit weirded out, thinking of my mum as a
‘Chatterjee’ not a ‘Levenson’ – her life before Dad, and before me. I would
never
give up my name. It would be like giving up half of myself.
6 October 1980
Dear Uma,
I can’t believe that you’re actually coming to see us, after all this time. Ma’s gone crazy preparing for your arrival. I’m
telling you, if ABBA was touring India and coming to stay at our house, there would be less fuss than my ma is making of you!
Dida has ordered Ma to buy a silver service of knives and forks in your honour. You know, she just sits on her bed now at the top of the house like a queen and waits
for the daughter of her ‘shudurer putro’ (her ‘faraway son’) to arrive. She says it will be the highlight of her older years to see the daughter of her beloved son
Bimal sit on her bed beside her and sing.
Sorry! That’s my fault. I told her about your voice, and you’d better be prepared because you are not going to get away with visiting your Thakurma unless
you sing to her! (In answer to your question, that is what you, as the son’s daughter, should call her, and I call her ‘Dida’, because I’m her daughter’s
daughter.)
I didn’t even know Mum had a good voice. With all the singing I’ve been doing recently, why wouldn’t she have told me that she used to sing too? I’ve
never heard her, not even in the shower!
If it’s any consolation at all, I have to dance for her every day, so you and I can be the all-singing, all-dancing act together! You won’t believe the
pleasure it will give her. She has photos of you all around her bed, like a little puja (prayer).
We’ve been painting the walls, a mint-green colour, Ma chose it; she said it would make you feel cool in the heat. On every single surface Ma’s placed a
fan, and when I came in from school yesterday I couldn’t hear what anyone was saying to me, over the noise!
So I guess we’re just about ready for your arrival. You’ll find everything that I’ve described to be more or less exactly as I told you, but I want
to warn you about something.
You and I have been writing for so long that, in some ways, I feel like we know each other so well, but there are a few things that maybe I haven’t described
exactly as they are. You see, I’ve always felt free to say anything I wanted and occasionally I’ve told you things that I wanted to be true. You must realize by now that those six
wise monkeys jumping in through my bedroom window every day were a creation to entertain you! I don’t remember Baba dying (I was only two), but Ma says the monkeys arrived soon after
that. So, what I’m trying to tell you is that nothing will be quite as you pictured it.
Now I’m writing this by candlelight because we’ve had another one of the electrical power surges I’ve never told you about. They can happen at any
time of the day or night, and if they happen at night the city blacks out, but there’s something I like about the way the darkness shrinks the whole city into one room; suddenly the
birds go mad, as if to say, ‘You humans have switched off all your noise. Now it’s our turn to take over.’
There will be no more time to write again before you come, so instead of waiting for your letters, as I have done for all these years, now I am waiting for
you.
Your cousin,
Anjali x
I could read these letters over and over again, just taking in every detail. I love the feel of the thin airmail paper, almost like material, and the sound of Anjali’s
fourteen-year-old voice, which is so full energy and excitement, like Priya’s . . . These letters have so much history in them that I’m starting to understand why Mum wanted to keep
them safe.
I take out the final letter.
6 March 1981
Dear Uma,
Thank you for your kind letter about Dida. We will all miss her so much.
What I want you to know is that I will never tell anyone, not your family or mine, that it was your idea. No matter how much they press me for the truth. And even
though you ask me to tell you, there’s no point in dwelling on what happened after you left.
It’s awful. I don’t want to upset you, but I just want you to know that we should both have thought more carefully about what we were doing. I should have
made you understand how it is here . . . that some things are unjust and some people have nothing . . . and, even though we don’t like it any more than you do, it’s not easy to
fix. In many ways I feel responsible, because it was such a crazy, spur-of-the-moment act – I suppose I just wanted you to know that I care as much as you do. But how we tried to help
was foolish and thoughtless and wrong.
I can’t tell you, when I remember the sadness in our grandmother’s eyes, how sorry I am for what we did, but I have not written to you to cause you
pain.
I just don’t know what there is left to say to each other at this moment in time. Of course, I will always hold you in my heart. I’m not blaming you
– we are both equally responsible for running away with our imaginations.
I think we should stop writing to each other for a while.
I hope that one day we will meet again when the pain of this has passed.
Anjali
I search through the pile again, but there is nothing else until the condolence letter for Grandad in 2011. I read this last letter over and over, trying to work out what could
have happened to make them stop talking for thirty years. There’s no way the silence between them could have been ‘just losing touch’, and I feel terrible now because it’s
obvious that the reason why Mum was in such a state before I left has something to do with what happened between her, Anjali and my great-grandmother. I know Grandad went to Great-Grandma’s
funeral but then never returned to India after that. I feel like a thief stealing into someone else’s house of memories. I suppose it serves me right for taking the album in the first place,
because now I won’t be able to let things lie until I know what really caused that silence. And I can’t ask Mum or Anjali for the answers.
I stand up, go over to the sink and stare into the mirror. I didn’t notice before that the frame is decorated with hand-painted cheeky-faced monkeys. I wonder if this mirror once belonged
to little-girl Anjali. I look into it at the deepening rings of tiredness under my eyes and wonder if anyone else will be able to read on my face how guilty I feel. I take Mum’s earrings out
of my bag and push them through the half-closed-up holes in my lobes. It hurts, and I think maybe that’s right, it should hurt, because I was so vile to Mum before I left, and she obviously
felt bad about the argument . . . What if me coming here is all part of Mum’s sorry to Anjali for whatever it was that happened between them all those years ago. What if . . . without even
knowing it,
I’m
the olive branch?
I unlock the bathroom door, walk over to Priya’s bed and lie down, looking up through the great arching branches of the tree . . . All the images from Anjali’s letters and a stream
of questions bombard my mind as I read the letters over and over again.
When I can’t read any more I take out my iPod and listen to Jidé’s playlist and it makes me wish more than ever that he was here with me . . . ‘Summer Breeze’ . .
. I’ve never heard this song before. Jidé spends hours trawling through old stuff on YouTube, and he always finds the perfect song for my mood. Lately he’s been picking out songs
he thinks I could sing. I think it’s his way of encouraging me to write and sing my own stuff. He’s always going on about what a great voice I have and that I should record it, so that
I’m forced to believe that I’m good. But he would say that, wouldn’t he?! I close my eyes and let the music wash over me, feeling the whisper of a breeze through the window,
wafting that sweet smell towards me again. The tune is really pretty. I sing along to the refrain. It’s catchy, the sort of thing that keeps floating through your mind.
My Lips Are Sealed
Dust falling.
Dust through light,
Dancing glitter.
I try to catch the tiny specks, opening and closing, opening and closing my hands, reaching up towards a distant light. I look down. My hands are full of ash pouring between
my fingers. Sand sifting through time. My head is numb and empty; the thoughts have drained out of me and all that’s left is colours, hundreds of silken rainbow colours spiralling through the
air, cascading towards me, length after length of coloured silk shining through the darkness.
‘Mira, is that you? Climb up!’ calls a voice from above. That gentle lilting voice I know.
I climb and climb the lengths of cloth from pink to green to red and gold, up through turquoise blues and mustard. My arms ache so badly I stop and try to catch my breath, but the air is full
of ash, filling my lungs.
‘Only a little way to go!’ says the voice in the darkness
above my head, so I reach out for it and find myself clasping Grandad’s hands.
‘Be careful where you place your feet!’ he says, pulling me to safety.
I nod at him and look down, down, down to the crater below, swirling with dust.