Authors: Shilpi Somaya Gowda
A
SHA HEARS THE GUTTURAL PURRING OF THE PIGEONS OUTSIDE
her window and turns to see the morning light glowing behind the dark cotton curtains. She rolls over and arches her back into a long stretch with a corresponding groan. Despite the loud hum of the air conditioner, she can hear Dadima scattering birdseed on the balcony, as she does every morning. Dadima says the pigeons, in addition to being holy creatures, are her most loyal visitors, keeping her company every single morning of the fifty-some years she’s lived in this flat, ever since she married Dadaji and came to live here with his parents.
Dadima described her late mother-in-law as a gentle soul, a religious woman who visited the temple around the corner every morning. Her humility and tender nature made her a great deal easier to get along with than most
sassus,
and Dadima credits this fortune for smoothing over the early years of her marriage. After her in-laws passed away, Dadima inherited the mantle of matriarch of the Thakkar clan. Asha learned this bit of family history from her grandmother on the fourth day they took an early morning walk together.
It is the promise of these conversations that now motivates Asha to drag herself out of bed at such an early hour.
T
HE FIRST DAY, NEARLY TWO WEEKS AGO
, A
SHA HAPPENED TO
be awake early, thanks to fireworks that had disturbed her sleep the night before. In the morning, when she walked bleary-eyed into the living room, she was surprised to see Dadima sitting at the table drinking tea. “Good morning,
beti
. Care to join me on my walk today? There’s a lovely breeze this morning.” And so, with nothing better to do at that hour, Asha laced up her running shoes, donned her baseball cap, and walked with her grandmother along Marine Drive, the boardwalk that lines the harbor of Mumbai. It wasn’t a vigorous walk, since Dadima shuffled along in her light sari and
chappals,
so it took them almost an hour to get all the way to Nariman Point and back.
On the first day, Dadima pointed out a small white storefront with a green awning. “See there, that ice cream shop? That is where Dadaji used to take your father and his brothers on Sundays. It was their ritual, the one day Dadaji didn’t go to the hospital.”
Shuffle, shuffle
. Dadima’s worn
chappals
slapped at the soles of her feet as they walked. Every few strides, she would use her hand to shield her eyes from the sunlight that bounced off the water’s shimmering surface. “And here, there used to be a nursery school where the boys went. It was run by a lovely nun, Sister Carmine.” As they walked, they averted their eyes from the people defecating along the seawall and the half-naked children who held out their hands in hopes of a spare coin.
The second day, Asha convinced Dadima to try on her extra pair of running shoes, and by some miracle, they had the same shoe size. Once she got used to the feeling of her feet being completely enclosed, Dadima said, she appreciated the comfort of the shoes and agreed to adopt them as her own. She refused, however, to wear the baseball
cap Asha offered her, preferring instead to drape her sari modestly over her head, though it offered minimal sun protection. The shoes, Dadima pointed out, could at least be hidden beneath her long sari. If people saw her in that hat, they would think she had surely lost her mind. At her age, Dadima explained, people were always looking for signs of this, and she needn’t give them any more evidence. On that day’s walk and the next, Dadima asked Asha questions about her life in America. Asha talked at length about college, her classes, the newspaper, and her friends. She wasn’t sure how much Dadima understood, given their differences in language, culture, and generation, and the fact that she nodded along but didn’t ask any questions. But later, when her grandmother made reference to some small detail she had mentioned, Asha realized she had taken it all in.
On the fourth day, somewhere between the morning street vendors who hawk their roasted corn and those hacking the tops off fresh coconuts with machetes, Dadima shared the story about her mother-in-law. She described how the old woman brought her, as a new bride, into the kitchen to show her how to prepare roasted eggplant curry the way her son liked it. “It was too much for me,” Dadima said. “I had just said good-bye to my family, and here she was trying to tell me how to make
bengan bhartha
. As if I didn’t know! I had been making it with my mother for years. She made the best
bengan bhartha
in the neighborhood.”
“So, what happened then?” Asha said.
“I left the kitchen and sat in our room. For hours. I could be a very stubborn girl back then.” She chuckles. “Anyway, she came to me after some time. She told me to come into the kitchen and show her how I made
bengan bhartha
. She said this was my kitchen now and I was free to cook however I wanted. That’s the kind of woman she was. So full of generosity toward others. No ego at all.” It surprised Asha to hear her speak with such fondness and respect for her mother-in-law after hearing so many people complain about this relationship.
“This is the temple she went to every day,” Dadima said as they walked past a nondescript white façade a few blocks from the flat. “Come, I’ll show you.” Asha had never been in a temple before, so she followed Dadima’s lead, removing her sneakers outside the entrance. Inside was a plain room with a few statues of various Hindu gods. In front of one statue with the head of an elephant, Dadima stood for a few moments, her eyes closed and palms pressed together. “Ganesh,” Dadima whispered to her, “remover of obstacles.” Then she stepped forward, moved her open right palm over a steel plate that held a small flame, took a small handful of peanuts and crystallized sugar, and offered the same to Asha.
Outside, Dadima explained further. “In my family, we did our daily worship at home, and only went to the temple for the big occasions. Mahalaxmi Temple—you must see it while you’re here—lovely temple, very big, people from all over Mumbai go there. In any case, after I married and moved here, I started coming to this little
mandir
with my
sassu
. There’s one of these in every little neighborhood. People stop by here for a few moments in the morning or on their way home. I find it brings a little bit of peace to my day.”
“Dadima? I hope this isn’t too ignorant of me,” Asha ventured on the fifth day. “How did you learn to speak English? Most of the other people your age in the building don’t seem to know more than a few words.”
Dadima chuckled softly. “That is my father’s legacy. He was a real Anglophile. When everybody else was busy blaming the British for India’s problems, my father insisted I take English lessons. He was a progressive man, my father. He wanted me to finish my college studies before he would let any boys look at me for marriage. He was ahead of his time, my
bapu,
” she said, with a wistful smile. “He really understood the value of a woman. He always treated my mother like gold.”
And so it went. Dadima doled out her stories in small doses,
reaching further back into her memory as the days went on. Asha learned to navigate the delicate balance of being a good listener: asking just enough questions to keep Dadima going without disturbing the flow of her memories. After one week of their morning walks, Dadima began to speak about her family’s migration during Partition, the division of the country into India and Pakistan that accompanied its independence from the British empire in 1947. Dadima’s family had lived in Karachi, capital of the northern Indian state of Sindh. Her father owned a thriving grain export business and traveled often to the Middle East and East Africa. They had a beautiful home, two cars, and several hundred acres of land, on which Dadima and her sister and brothers played freely. All of it, they had to leave behind when they were forced to move.
Karachi was named the capital of Pakistan, the new Muslim state. The British drew their new lines on the map of South Asia without regard to those people who lived on the wrong side of them. And so people were forced to shutter their homes, close their businesses, and uproot their families to make the journey to the right side of the line. Dadima’s family, like many Hindus in Karachi, moved to Bombay. Her father stayed behind to wrap up their affairs and salvage what he could of their assets, while Dadima traveled with her mother and siblings by sea to Bombay. They were lucky to afford ship fare, as she told it, since those who traveled by bus and train suffered the most bloodshed in skirmishes with travelers of a different faith going in the other direction.
“My brother was only fourteen then, five years younger than me,” Dadima explained, “but he was the oldest boy in the family, so he stepped in for my father. He looked after us on the journey. When the ship drew close to the harbor, they put us in a small dinghy to go to shore. There we were, my mother and the four children, floating toward the lights of this city where we knew not a single person. Suddenly, my brother stood up and started yelling and waving back
to the ship. He had counted our trunks—we had brought ten with us—so he had counted them, and there were only nine on the dinghy. My brother wanted to go back to the ship and get the last one. He would have to go by himself.
“That’s all we had left in the whole world, those trunks.” Dadima shook her head at the memory. “My mother was so frightened. She didn’t want him to go. It was dark, and it was a huge ship. There was no certainty he would find the trunk, or even make it back to us. But he went. He was only fourteen, but he knew our father had trusted him to be the man of the family. My mother cried and prayed the whole time he was gone. I started wondering what would happen if he didn’t come back. We had already left my
bapu
in Karachi, and—”
“What happened?” Asha asked.
“Oh, he made it back, a little shaken, but he found the final trunk. And we made it safely to the harbor, of course,” she says, gesturing to the water.
“And your father?”
“Bapu joined us here after a few weeks. We all came together again after Partition. We were luckier than many,” she said softly. “But my father was never the same man after we left Karachi. I think his heart ached to leave behind the city he loved and the business he had worked so hard to build. He was never quite the same.” They walked in silence the rest of the way.
T
HIS MORNING, AS SHE LACES UP HER SHOES
, A
SHA HOPES TO
hear some of her own history. Her parents rarely spoke about her birth or adoption in India, and when they did, it was the same few details over and over. She was given away at birth to the orphanage, a place called Shanti. She stayed there until she was one year old, at which time her parents came to India, adopted her, and took her to
California. This is all Asha has ever known about where she came from. She’s not sure if Dadima will tell her anything more, but she’s summoning the courage to ask today.
“Good morning,
beti,
” Dadima greets her as she walks out to the living room. “I am ready to keep up with you today,” she says, smiling. “That bothersome knee pain is completely gone.”
Asha notices her grandmother looks younger when she smiles. Sometimes she forgets she is with an old lady, but then Dadima mentions something like her family getting the first icebox in the building, and Asha realizes again how much this woman has lived through. “Good, I’m ready too. Is this for me?” Asha asks, removing the saucer from atop the cup of hot
chai
. She never liked Indian tea before, finding it too heavy and sweet. But something about Dadima’s
chai,
with a hint of cardamom and fresh mint leaves, makes it the perfect way to greet the day.
I
T IS A BEAUTIFUL MORNING
. T
HE AIR IS UNCHARACTERISTICALLY
crisp, with a slight breeze blowing across the ocean’s surface and onto the boardwalk.
“You are seeing India for the first time at twenty,
beti,
” Dadima says. “What do you think of her?” Without waiting for an answer she continues. “You know, your father was not much older than you when he left for America. Oh, he was so young then. He didn’t know the hardships he would face.”
“I know. He always talks about how hard he studied in medical school. He thinks I don’t study enough,” Asha says.
“Studying was not hard for him. He was always smart. Top of his class in school, captain of the cricket team, best marks all the time. No, that part I never worried about. I knew he would do well at school. It was the rest of it. He didn’t know anyone there. He was homesick. He couldn’t find any good Indian cooking. People couldn’t
understand his accent at first. His professors asked him two, three times to repeat his answers. He would get embarrassed. He started listening to audiocassettes to learn how to speak like an American.”
“Really?” Asha tries to picture her father listening to tapes, repeating words to himself.
“
Hahn,
yes. It was very difficult for him. At first he told us all these things when he called, but over time he said less and less. I don’t think he wanted to worry us.”
“Did you? Were you worried?”
“
Hahn,
but of course! That is a mother’s burden to carry her whole life. I will worry about my children and grandchildren every single day until my deathbed, I am sure of it. It’s part of being a mother. That is my
karma
.”
Asha ponders this and is silent for a while.
“Is something wrong,
beti
?” Dadima says.
“I was just thinking about my mother. My, you know, my biological mother. I was wondering if she ever thinks about me, if she worries about me.”
Dadima takes her hand and holds it firmly while they continue to walk. “
Beti,
” she says, “I assure you. There is not a day in her life your mother does not think about you.”
Tears fill Asha’s eyes. “Dadima? Do you remember when I was a baby?”
“Do I remember? What, do you think I’m already some crazy old lady who’s lost her mind? Of course I remember. You had one little birthmark on your ankle, and another on the bridge of your nose—yes, that one, it’s still there.” Dadima brushes it lightly with a finger. “You know, in our tradition, if you have a birthmark on your forehead, it means you are destined for greatness.”