Authors: Shilpi Somaya Gowda
Secret Daughter (24 page)
“P
ICTURE YOURSELF AS A STRONG TREE, A MAJESTIC TREE, AND
breathe deeply into your lower belly.” Genevieve, the yoga instructor, has a soothing voice that trails her as she weaves in between the dozen people spread out in the studio. Somer stands absolutely straight, holding her arms high up above her head, palms touching. The sole of one foot is lodged firmly against the opposite thigh, and her eyes are focused intently on a small white speck on the brick wall in front of her.
Vrikshasana,
tree pose, has been giving her difficulty since she began taking this yoga class with Liza a couple months ago. Invariably, Somer wobbled on one foot and fell out of the pose while others in the class stood serenely. After class one day, Genevieve told Somer the key to the pose was to calm her mind and concentrate on the moment. What a difference this made, this one small change in focus, this slight shift in her perspective. Instead of fighting and struggling to stay balanced, she found a point to gaze at, and suddenly, all her energy was aligned and the pose was simple. Today, Somer stands perfectly still in
vrikshasana
, along with
the others, until Genevieve’s calm voice beckons them on to the next pose.
Somer has been coming to this yoga studio, ambitiously named Revolution, two or three times a week. When she woke up sore after the first few classes, she realized how long it had been since she had done anything really physical, since she had run until her lungs burned or swum until her muscles were happily tired, as she had during each of her short pregnancies. Twenty-some years ago, after her body stopped working, Somer ceased to think of it as an important part of her. When her back gave her trouble or her allergies acted up, she felt resentment toward her aging body for failing her again and again. Each new yoga pose she tried was a challenge, not only in the stretching and the twisting, but also because she had to get to know her body again, which muscles were tight, which joints inflexible. She had to be gentle with herself—understanding at first her body’s limits, and then how to push beyond them. In doing so, Somer learned to reclaim the body she felt had betrayed her so many years earlier.
The turning point came one day when Genevieve urged the class to pay attention to their breath. “Are you holding your breath?” she asked them. “Notice if you are holding your breath after inhaling, and if so, what are you afraid of letting go of? Or are you holding it after exhaling, and what are you afraid of letting in?” Somer realized she was doing both, and so, as Krishnan had accused her of many times, she was being governed by fear.
After three months of living by herself, she has found some ways to combat the loneliness. On Thursdays, she goes to her Italian class with Giorgio, who sounds much sexier than he is, a grizzled old Sicilian man whose white chest hair peeks out above his shirt. She’s been learning the language slowly, in preparation for her trip to Tuscany. During the week, when her days are busy at the clinic, and the streets of downtown Palo Alto are buzzing with students, she finds the pace of her new life tolerable.
The weekends are more difficult. The open hours stretch on and on, and she finds herself without someone to talk to for long periods of the day. She usually makes dinner or hiking plans with Liza, who has perfected the lifestyle of an older single woman. Still, it is the weekends when she misses Kris most. She longs for the lazy mornings they spent lying in bed, reading the paper. As the day turns to evening, she wishes she could walk arm in arm with him down to their neighborhood Thai restaurant and share a bowl of rich coconut curry. She misses his heavy arm across her body as she lies alone in bed. When she sees students around town, she tries to remember the carefree feeling she had with Kris back then. She lingers over the memories of their early days with Asha, when she was just a small bud unfolding in front of them, and everything she said or did made them laugh: going to the zoo and spending all their time in front of the monkeys, Asha beckoning both her parents to make monkey sounds and gestures before they could finally leave. The vacation they took to San Diego when Asha was six and she buried Krishnan up to his neck in sand when he fell asleep on the beach.
The time alone has made Somer appreciate how much of her life was built around Kris and Asha. For all she gave them through the years and the regret she sometimes felt over her career sacrifices, without them, her life was devoid of its meaning and fullness. Even now, what she most looks forward to each week is Sunday morning, when she goes over to the house so she and Kris can call Asha at their scheduled time. He and Asha do most of the talking, but this doesn’t bother Somer as much as it used to. Often, just the sound of Asha’s voice from miles away can bring tears to her eyes. It is a false premise, she knows, she and Kris are presenting, that of a happily married couple. But for those thirty minutes when she shares the phone line with them, and a cup of coffee afterward in the kitchen with Kris, it doesn’t feel false at all.
Now, much too quickly it seems, it is time for
shavasana,
the rest
ing pose that takes up the last ten minutes of class. At first, this was the part Somer used to dread, lying there with nothing but the anxious thoughts swirling around in her head: thoughts of Asha leaving, her daughter’s anger toward her, fighting with Krishnan, the promotion she’d lost, the uncertainty of her future.
Shavasana,
corpse pose, meant to relax the mind and body, was her enemy—the one time she was forced to confront her darkest thoughts. And once the thoughts came, there was no confining them. They infiltrated her time alone, when loneliness ached in her heart, when quietude engulfed her apartment. It was a Sunday morning, as she lay in bed counting the hours until her phone call with Asha, when it occurred to Somer that all her efforts to protect her daughter had backfired. It was fear that kept Somer from letting her go, but by holding too tight she’d produced the opposite effect. She had driven Asha away. Just as in tree pose, her constant struggles had knocked her off balance.
One morning before work, standing in the shower until it ran cold, Somer realized first that she had used all the hot water, and then that there was no one left to save it for. It was then that Somer admitted to herself that she had, at some point, stopped giving to her marriage. She had always expected Kris to be the one to assimilate to her culture, as he had in the beginning. Even after they adopted an Indian baby, even when he missed home, even when he asked her to go with him. Somer felt she had given so much to their family already. But her mother always said the key to a successful marriage was for each spouse to give as much as they thought they possibly could. And then, to give a little more. Somewhere in that extra giving, in the space created by generosity without score keeping, was the difference between marriages that thrived and those that didn’t. Every time Sundari asked one of her many questions about India and its culture, questions Somer couldn’t answer and had never asked herself, it made her think there could have been another way. She could have
embraced what she had tried to push away. A slight shift in perspective, one small change in focus, might have made the difference.
Now, as she allows her limbs to relax into
shavasana,
her fingers to curl up, Somer thinks of Asha and Krishnan, together on the other side of the world. For the first time, she is separated by an ocean from the two people who have formed the fabric of her life. When they each announced their departure for India, she thought they were rash decisions, designed to punish her. But now, Somer can see, those decisions had been coming for years. It was she who had acted out of anger and fear, she who had walked out on her family without considering the repercussions of this choice. Just as she had married a man from another culture without understanding what it meant to him. Just as she had adopted a child from India without thinking through the implications. Always so eager to achieve the next milestone on her path, she has neglected to question that path or to look ahead.
T
HE FIRST TWO LISTINGS PROVE TO BE FRUITLESS, BELONGING TO
other J. Merchants. It was a struggle for Asha to communicate enough to learn even that. On her way to the third address on her list, she wishes Parag were there to translate for her. She begins to feel as if this was a foolish idea, to think she could find her parents in this city of twelve million people, if they’re even in Mumbai at all. What if they’re in one of those villages Deshpande mentioned? Could she go out there? How would she communicate? When the driver stops in front of a dilapidated tenement, Asha is reluctant to get out. But he confirms with more incomprehensible language and vigorous hand gestures that this is the place she is looking for. There is no listing of residents downstairs, so Asha begins climbing the stairwell, which reeks of human waste. She covers her nose and mouth with her hand. Cockroaches crawl busily in the corners, and on the first landing, she carefully sidesteps a man sleeping on his bedroll. She averts her eyes but cannot avoid the sinking feeling in her stomach. Her mind hovers between the equally distasteful
thoughts that her parents might live in this place, and if they don’t, she doesn’t know how else to find them.
On the second floor, most of the apartment doors are open. Small children run freely through the hallways and chase one another in and out of doorways. Through one of these doorways, Asha sees a young woman squatting and sweeping the floor. “Excuse me, do you know where I can find the Merchants? Kavita Merchant?” Asha says. The woman shakes her head from side to side, scoops up a crawling baby, and motions for Asha to follow her. They walk across the floor and directly into another apartment without knocking, where another young woman beats a rug on the balcony. The apartment is oppressively small—a single room from the looks of it—and barely furnished. The paint on the walls is peeling, and one bare bulb hangs from the ceiling. The smell of simmering onions and spices wafts out from the tiny kitchen. The two women speak, watching Asha curiously. They aren’t much older than she is. If it wasn’t for the difference in language, their conspiratorial talking could pass for Asha and her friends back home. Yet here these women are, living with husbands and children instead of roommates, their days occupied by household chores rather than textbooks. Asha feels claustrophobic at the thought of living in a space this small.
“Kavita
ben
? You want Kavita
ben
?” the second woman asks in halting English.
“Yes, Kavita Merchant,” Asha says.
“Kavita
ben
no live here anymore. Move to Vincent Road. You know Vincent Road?”
A
SHA RUNS DOWN THE TWO FLIGHTS OF STAIRS AND OUT OF THE
building.
Someone knows where my mother is.
At last, she knows she’s on the right track. The first taxi driver she approaches does not know where Vincent Road is. The second one does but is unenthusiastic
about driving there at this time of day. Asha pulls some cash out of her pocket, but this does not seem to convince him.
Damnit.
So close. She’s going to get to Vincent Road if she has to hijack this man’s taxi and drive there herself. She empties her money belt and waves all its contents in front of him. Finally, he gives a slight nod and opens the rear door from the inside. Her mind races during the entire half-hour drive in the backseat of her fourth taxi of the day. The various revelations of the last twenty-four hours swirl through her mind. Her name was Usha. She has her mother’s eyes. She has a cousin. She has parents living on Vincent Road, right here in Mumbai. Her heart is pumping so hard, it feels it’s going to burst through her chest.
Vincent Road turns out to be a short street, only two blocks long with three tallish buildings that look like apartments. She pays the driver everything she promised him and only briefly considers that this leaves her without any money to get home. The first building lists no Merchants as residents. She enters the second building and sees a uniformed man sitting at a table in the lobby. “Can you tell me if a Kavita Merchant lives here?”
The uniformed man shakes his head. “Regular doorman on break. Come back later.”
Asha sees a binder on the table in front of him. “Can you check, please? Kavita Merchant?”
The uniform, who looks as if he’d rather be on break himself, flips open the binder and runs his finger down the list of names. “Merchant…
Hahn
. Vijay Merchant. Six-oh-two.”
Vijay?
“How about Kavita? Kavita Merchant? Or Jasu Merchant?” she says, looking around to see if the regular doorman is anywhere in sight.
“
Nai,
only Merchant here is Vijay. Vijay Merchant.”
She feels her pounding heart plummet all the way into her feet.
How can this be?
There’s only one more building on Vincent Road. She turns to leave.
“Ah, here he is,” the uniform says to another similarly dressed man, who must be the regular doorman. “This girl wants Kavita Merchant. No Kavita here on list. I told her only one Merchant here. Vijay Merchant.”
“Heh? Stupid idiot. Do you know nothing?” the doorman says, then babbles something she can’t understand, except for the names
Kavita
and
Vijay
. The doorman turns to her and explains, “Please, this man is confused. Kavita Merchant lives here, yes. Only the flat is in Vijay’s name. That is the reason for confusion.”
“Vijay?”
“
Hahn
. Vijay. Her son.”
What?
“No, that can’t be her. She…she doesn’t have children. I don’t think this woman has children. Kavita Merchant?” she says again, consulting her notebook for clarity. “
M-e-r-c-h-a-n-t
. Her husband’s name is Jasu Merchant.”
“
Hahnji,
madam,” the doorman says, looking directly at her and speaking with complete confidence. “Kavita and Jasu Merchant. And their son Vijay. Flat six-oh-two.”
Their son.
The word reverberates in her head as she tries to make sense of it. “Son?”
“
Hahn,
you know him!” The doorman mistakes her repetition for recognition. “Must be about your age. Nineteen, twenty years old.”
My age?
“Are you…sure?” The words and numbers bang around in Asha’s head like billiard balls. Suddenly, the facts arrange themselves in an unmistakable order. It finally makes sense, and then again none at all. Her real parents had a child, another child. One they’d chosen to keep. Her mouth tastes of sour acid. They kept him. Their son.
They kept him instead of me
.
From somewhere in the distance, she can hear the doorman’s voice but catches few of his words. “Kavita…gone away for some time…back to her village…return in few weeks.”
The ground buckles under her feet. She stumbles and somehow finds the step beneath her to sit down. It wasn’t that her mother wasn’t married. It wasn’t that they didn’t want a child. It wasn’t that they couldn’t afford one.
It was just me. It was me they didn’t want.
She is vaguely aware the two uniforms are watching her now, but she can’t stop the tears from rolling down her cheeks. “I’m sorry…it’s been a long day. I’m not used to the heat,” she tries to explain. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.” Even as the words come out of her mouth, she realizes how absurd she must sound to these two strangers. They won’t worry like Dadima, probably waiting at home for her with a cup of
chai
. Or her father, who called her before she went to the orphanage to wish her luck. Or even her mother, who mashed her bitter malaria pills into fruit smoothies so she could stomach them before she left for India.
She buries her head in her hands and cries helplessly in front of these two men, who don’t know her any more than Kavita and Jasu would if they walked into this lobby right now. With this thought, Asha feels her stomach tighten. She panics at the thought of further humiliation.
I have to get out of here.
Sniffling loudly, she stands and scrambles to gather her bag. The pressure builds in her lungs, and all she can think of is the need to get outside. “I have to go.” She turns for the door.
“What’s your name?” one of them yells after her as she runs out of the building. “I’ll tell her you came.”
The air outside is thick with smog, but it is still a welcome change from that building and its revelations. She needs to get far, far away from there. A taxi driver pulls up to her. “Need ride, madam?” He grins at her with his mouthful of crooked, stained teeth.
She climbs into the backseat and says, “Churchgate,
jaldi
!” She has picked up Priya’s habit of automatically telling drivers to go quickly, but never has she meant it this much.
He pedals off and says, “Where you go, madam?”
At that moment, she remembers giving the last taxi driver the rest of her cash. She has no money left. She desperately searches in her backpack, unzipping all the pockets and fumbling around. She feels something unfamiliar in the bottom and pulls it out. A bag of chocolates. Ghirardelli mint chocolate squares. Her favorite.
Mom.
She must have slipped them into her backpack at the airport, just as she used to put a single chocolate square in her lunch bag. Asha lets out a cry, and the driver turns around. She waves him off and keeps looking through her bag. There’s no telling what he’ll do if she can’t pay him. Behind her notebook, she finds a worn envelope, the one her father gave her at the airport. A small laugh erupts through her tears. Her father’s afterthought will help her get home. She opens it and counts out the rupees. She taps the driver on the shoulder and shows him the money. “How far will this get me?”
He spits on the road before answering. “Worli.”
The driver drops her off and she steps out of the taxi into a large crowd of people, who all seem to be climbing to somewhere. She looks up and sees an enormous ornately carved building at the top of a long flight of steps. “Excuse me.” She stops one of the passing climbers. “What is this place?”
“Mahalaxmi Temple.”
She blinks and looks again at the building. She hears Dadima’s voice echoing in her head.
It brings a little bit of peace to my day
. Asha slowly climbs the steps. The narrow walkway leading to the temple is lined with tiny shops selling bright flowers, boxes of sweets, small Hindu idol figurines, and other souvenirs. During her long ascent, raindrops begin to speckle the ground, coming faster and harder, imploring her to quicken her pace. As she nears the top, a breathtaking view of the Arabian Sea spreads out in front of her. She slips her sandals off outside the temple to join the hundreds piled there already. Inside, the floor feels cool beneath her bare feet. At first it seems silent, compared to the noisy bustle of outside, but once her ears
adjust she can hear the low murmur of chanting, and waves crashing on the rocks outside.
The temple features three gold statues of Hindu goddesses, each in its own nook, decorated with jewelry, flowers, and offerings of coconuts and fruit. Yellow, white, and orange floral garlands are draped from the center of the ceiling and wrapped around the pillars. Asha sits down on her knees in the middle of the open space, looking around at others for guidance. Standing in front of the middle goddess, a priest with a shaved head and white loincloth is conducting a ceremony with a couple wearing floral garlands. Several heavyset middle-aged women in saris are singing together in one corner. A young man about her age is sitting next to her with his eyes closed, rocking forward and praying.
About her age. She has a brother. Vijay. A brother she’s never known about, and one who certainly doesn’t know about her. He could be anywhere in this city. He could be here.
The scent of incense reaches her nostrils. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. All these years, she’s been longing for her parents, dreaming of the moment she would meet them and finally feel complete. She always thought they would be longing for her too. Her face burns with shame at how foolish she’s been. The tears flow again. Her parents haven’t been longing for her. They don’t miss her. They just discarded her.
And in that moment, the dreams she has carried in her heart and in her white marble box are gone. They vaporize into air like the smoke rising from the incense in front of her. Her questions are answered, the mystery surrounding her roots is gone. There is nothing left for her to find out. She doesn’t need to meet her parents, just to be spurned again, rejected to her face.
All around her, the singing and chanting engulf her and crowd out the angry voices in her head. The silver bangle slides easily off
her wrist. Asha turns it over and over between her fingers. She squeezes, and the soft metal bends under her touch. It is warped in shape, dull with age, imperfect. This, apparently, is all she will ever have from her mother. She holds it between her palms and closes her eyes. Then she puts her forehead to the floor and weeps.