The Stolen Girl (6 page)

B
reakfast
: Cereal: Bran Flakes – 30g, with a dash of skimmed milk

Mid-morning snack: Why hasn’t she come to meet me? Why?

Don’t you want to meet your mother, eh, daughter? Why aren’t you here?

A
arti has taken
to sitting downstairs in the lobby with her food diary for company. She does not want to go out, walk down to the High Street. It is too cold, for one, the chilly air that tastes of ice permeated with the smell of frying chips and junk food, making her nauseous. And much as she likes the feeling of being sick, she’d rather do it in the comfort of her own bathroom or the bathroom of her hotel room as is currently the case, and not in a public loo reeking of other people’s urine.

And two, well… ‘Please do try and stay away from crowds. If it happens again, I won’t be able to get you out as easily.’ Her lawyer’s voice resounding in her ears.

And so she sits in the sofa in the lobby, breathing in the creamy scent of vanilla air freshener mixed in with a faint whiff of orange cleaning liquid, the crinkly leather squeaking in complaint every time she moves. From behind the cover of her diary, she peruses every face that enters: the tired families, the old couples, the new lovers. Hoping to find her daughter’s face amongst them. Hoping to recognise her instantly, even though all she has in her mind’s eye are hazy snapshots of a wispy-haired, dimple-cheeked, almond-skinned baby and fantasies of how her daughter might look now.

She needs to be careful, she knows; it is all too easy to slip into depression like she did after…those dark, ceaseless days after her daughter disappeared. It is monotonous, this waiting, this ache to see her child. Anger wars with hopelessness and she is tired of feeling out of control. At least before, when she was looking for her child, she was in charge,
doing
something. Now, she is waiting. And waiting. An interminable stretch of empty time gaping bleakly until she meets her child.

She had imagined that once Vani was in prison, she would be reunited – immediately – with her daughter. She had actually entertained the hope that she might be involved in the arrest, had imagined driving up in a police van, accusatory finger aimed at Vani’s chest, the look of utter shock on Vani’s face before it disintegrated into fear. She had pictured Vani begging her for mercy and she, Aarti, ignoring her, turning instead towards her daughter. She had imagined opening her arms and her daughter falling into them, their reunion as effortless as their separation had seemed endless. She would pat her daughter’s back and say, ‘There, there, everything is all right now,’ and they would walk away, arm in arm into a new life while a protesting Vani was led away in shackles.

She has to admit that Bollywood movies have had a big part to play in the origin and nurture of these fantasies.

Frustrating, this waiting. How bloody long is her daughter going to take?

A woman walks in the door; small, slightly stooping, weighted down by bags. Watching from the corner of her eye, Aarti does a double take. No, it cannot be. Vani is in prison, isn’t she?

She stands up, dropping the diary. Walks towards the woman. The woman looks up. Petite, wary, her eyes not the deep brown of pools of water sparkling in potholes after the rains that Aarti was expecting, but the stormy blue-black of the sky besieged by heavily pregnant monsoon clouds.

‘Sorry,’ Aarti mumbles, cheeks burning, and backs off from the woman’s puzzled gaze.

‘Excuse me,’ someone says and Aarti turns. A young man, holding out her diary. She thanks him, sits back down.

The years have a habit of folding back like the pages of a book, she thinks, chewing the end of her pencil. She blinks and she has lost her bearing, the book of her memories has opened out to another page; she is back in the days before. When she was a young girl living with her parents. Fawned over by the entire country and yet, alone. Friendless, unhappy. She was lost and drifting, she was bulimic and struggling, until…Vani entered her life.

V
ani is crying
, open-mouthed. She has been for a while. Her face is wet, her nose is running. She can taste salt and slime as the tears mix with snot and run into her open mouth. She doesn’t know why she is crying, the reason for her tears long forgotten, and yet she is unable to stop. She sits at the base of the hill, in the shade of the mango tree, at the very edge of the field, her legs dangling in the stream below.

The stream is just as happy as Vani is sad. It babbles and coos, and deposits wet cuddles onto her bare legs. Birds warble and whistle high in the trees above and the air smells of bruised mango, a haunting scent that makes her even more melancholy, if that is possible. Her stomach feels hollow.

Silvery fish dart past her feet, scales iridescent, and she is beset by the sudden craving to catch one, tears momentarily forgotten except for the residual taste of salt at the corners of her mouth. She bends down to try and grab one as it swims past, tantalising, and her hand inside the water looks huge, broken, separate from the rest of her arm. She lunges at the fish, makes a fist and she is sure she has caught it. She can feel its slimy body flutter helplessly inside the prison of her palm; she can feel her lips moving upwards in a contented smile, even as the sun dries the few straggly tears on her face. She opens her palm gently, her heart in her throat, but it is empty, wet, water trickling down it in sorry, silvery drips.

She screams, she rants. A leaf falls into the water with a plop, a shimmering ripple, iridescent blue.

And then, without warning, the water is dark, no longer glinting. A monster, blocking the sun. She looks up, mid sob, heart thudding in the enclosure of her chest. And there is her father, standing in front of her, across the stream, tall as a giant, single-handedly obstructing the sun, casting the stream in shadow. He drops the tiffin box he is carrying beside him with a thud, not caring that the gleaming container is now tinged muddy brown. He bends down and ties his lungi higher, above his knees, and Vani watches transfixed as he wades across the water, mastering the stream in two big strides. And then he is beside her, his finger, cool, wet, on her chin. He lifts up a corner of his shirt and wipes her nose.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asks.

‘I want to fish,’ Vani sniffs.

‘That’s all? Why are you crying then?’ His voice is gentle, deep as the well in Charu aunty’s courtyard that Vani has been warned against. ‘Come, we’ll do it together,’ he says, rubbing his hands.

He puts his arms around her and hoists her up the hill, her legs dangling like the cat’s tail when it has stolen fish and escaped to the rafters. He sets her down gently by the loamy soil underneath the recently watered coconut trees.

‘First,’ he says, ‘we have to make a fishing rod. For that, we need a stick. Will you find one for me?’

Her tears forgotten, Vani flies around collecting twigs, showing them to her da.

‘Not that one, too small. Nor that. Ah, that one’s perfect,’ he says and she grins.

‘Next, we need some thread. I’ll get that, you wait here,’ he says, winking.

He disappears into the house via the front door so Vani’s ma, who is in the kitchen, doesn’t spy him. For a minuscule second, Vani is worried that he might not reappear again. Her chin wobbles, but before a sob can escape her lips he is out again, holding up a spool of thread.

‘Shh,’ he says, ‘I stole it from your ma’s sewing box, don’t tell.’

And she giggles happily, glad to be in on the conspiracy, sob forgotten.

Her da asks her to bite off a length of thread and when she does, he says, ‘How strong you are!’ His praise makes her chest puff out with pride, dries any straggling tears right up.

‘Next,’ he says, ‘we dig for worms.’

They dig and dig, the late afternoon sun plastering Vani’s hair, which has escaped the tidy plait that her mother had combed it into just that morning, onto her back in wet, lank strands. The worms wiggle and twist and when she pokes them with a stick, they curl up into Kannada alphabet shapes. Da finds half of a coconut shell and they lure the worms into it, the brown ropy interior writhing slimy pink.

Finally, when the shell is half full, Da declares them ready.

Vani and her da carry their makeshift fishing rod and the booty of wrigglies down the hill to the stream and position themselves on the bank. Da’s tiffin box lies forgotten in the mud on the opposite bank and Charu aunty’s stray comes up and sniffs it. Da shoos him away.

Suggi’s cow, tethered to the post for grazing, ventures as close as her rope will allow, looking askance at them with curious almond eyes. ‘We are fishing,’ Vani tells her, marvelling at her shiny brown nose, those liquid expressive eyes.

‘Now, Vani,’ Da says, ‘first we have to bait the fish.’

He picks a worm with his finger and ties it to the end of the thread. It wiggles its pink body at Vani, pleadingly. ‘You are fish food,’ Vani tells it, ‘fish food.’ She grins. Sweat dribbles down her back and collects in the waistband of her knickers. The air smells orangey red, of dust and worms and excitement.

‘Now,’ Da says, ‘once you have tied the worm, hold the stick like this.’

Da helps her cast the rod. And they sit there as the afternoon fades to evening, trying and failing to catch the fish slinking past.

But Vani doesn’t mind. Her heart is full, despite her stomach growling, despite her arms sticking to her sides with sweat, slick and slippery, and later, years later, she will identify that warm, replete feeling as happiness.

They sit there until the sun travels down the sky and dips behind the trees flanking Chinnappa’s house at the edge of the village. They sit there until Vani’s ma calls out for them, saying she will come and whip them, even Da, with the fat stick she uses to scare the crows that steal the grain meant for the chickens, if they don’t come to the house
at once
. They sit there until blue-grey wisps from kindling – burning as water is heated for their evening wash – stain the darkening sky.

The air tastes of wood smoke. It smells charred with a spicy undertone. With all their worms gone and no fish to show for it, Da takes the coconut shell and tries to scoop up fish with it.

And just when Ma starts coming down the hill, stick in tow, just when she yells, ‘Where have you been? I’ve seen neither hide nor hair of either of you. And is that my spool of thread lying half-buried in the dirt? And what on earth is your tiffin box doing there, Ganesh?’ Da lets out a victorious cry of, ‘Vani, I caught one.’

Ma stops mid-rant to squint at the cloudy water overflowing from the brown shell. Vani watches the silvery scale streaking around the muddy orange water and she screams with joy. She jumps on the bank and loses her footing, falls into the stream, and Da drops the coconut shell and bends down to pick her up.

She is wet, soaking, yelling, ‘We caught one, we caught one!’ and there is a rueful look on Da’s face as he mumbles, ‘Um…we did, but…’ and Vani spies the coconut shell lying upturned at the bottom of the roiling stream and Ma starts her yelling all over again, just as Da picks up his tiffin box with one hand and Vani with the other and they race up the hill to avoid Ma’s stick.

Later, after washing themselves in hot water scented with coconut husks, red rice and fish curry warm in their stomachs, they squat beside each other as Ma tries to scrub the tiffin box free of grime by the light of the lantern.

The trembling light casts shadows on Da’s face and dances patterns on his body and Vani says, ‘Tell me stories, Da.’

And he does, stories of princesses and giants and ghosts and monkeys.

Just before she drifts off to sleep, a thought occurs to Vani. ‘I think the fish smelled the curry bubbling and thought they would be in it,’ she mumbles. ‘Tomorrow Ma is not making fish curry so they will not be wary and I am sure we will catch loads. Shall we try again tomorrow?’ and Ma looks up sharply and Da laughs.

In the coming years, whenever events threaten to get the better of her, when the hard bumps of life make her stumble and trip, Vani will pull out this particular memory from the recesses of her mind and it will soothe her, tide her through the difficult times. And this is what she will remember most: the infectious crackle and boom of her da’s laugh like the fizzing fireworks lighting up the night sky at Diwali, the salty taste of drying tears, the silvery water gleaming rose and gold as the afternoon faded to evening, the coconut shell full of worms writhing muddy pink, elusive fish glinting like sequins, the smell of kerosene from the flickering lamp colouring her dreams and painting them all the hues of the rainbow.

A
arti runs
through the endless rooms of her house, populated with irreplaceable artefacts and dime-a-dozen servants who address her as ‘Madam’ and look at the floor while talking to her. She is calling for her mother. She suspects her mother is in her room, but the door is shut and she will not come, even though Aarti knocks and knocks. Frustrated, she flings a statue onto the floor and watches dispassionately as it shatters. It is expensive, she knows. Everything in her house is expensive.

Servants stop what they are doing, the mopping and the polishing, the sweeping and the dusting, to gawp, flabbergasted at the waste, thinking, she knows, that the statue – before it was smashed to smithereens – could have fed their entire family for two days at least. The smell of shock and fear permeates the air-conditioned, sandalwood air freshener spiked air.

The servants look away when Aarti catches them staring. They think she doesn’t know what’s going on behind their meek faces, their servile demeanour, and that makes her mad. Do they take her for a fool?

One scurries up with a dustpan and brush to sweep the sorry remains at her feet. The taste of anger in her mouth, flaming orange.

‘Leave it!’ she yells and flings another statue right at his face.

He flinches.

Blood erupts, bright red droplets oozing out from between lips of bruised brown skin and she bursts into tears. Loud, frantic sobs.

The door to her mother’s room flings open and she strides outside, her face like a
Rakshasa
, a monster, all scrunched up and scary, her hands squeezed into fists. Aarti knew her cries would bring her mother to her. Her mother hates the sound of Aarti’s sobs like nothing else.

‘What is this racket?’ her mother yells, her face contorting, morphing into something even more frightening.

Aarti feels warm, wet liquid oozing down her thighs, forming a dark creamy puddle on the floor. The dirty yellow smell of urine and shame rends the air.

‘He did it,’ she says, surreptitiously pulling her legs together, feeling her bare feet slipping on the mess, pointing at the servant with a wavering finger, wanting to draw her mother’s attention elsewhere.

The servant has tried to wipe away the blood with the back of his hand, scarlet drops staining the light russet skin of the inside of his palm, but more droplets keep on coming, oozing out of the wide-lipped gash on his face in horizontal slashes.

Aarti is transfixed; she is repelled. She wants a wash, she wants her mother’s arms around her, telling her it’s all right, it’s okay, even though she cannot recall her mother having ever done that to her in her life.

‘How dare you?’ her mother is screeching at the servant while he cowers silently, fearfully, dustpan lowered, the debris of the statues around him. ‘Get out. Now. And don’t come back.’

The other servants are pretending to work, but from their too-straight backs, the way they cringe ever so slightly at every word her mother utters, Aarti knows they are listening, paying heed.

Her mother turns on her heel and goes into her room without a second glance at Aarti and the door slams shut, the loud bang reverberating in the horrified, doleful silence with the finality of a chapter ending. The servant who has just been sacked slinks away, blood still pouring out of the wound on his face, dustpan left behind, forlorn amidst the ruins of the statues, like relics left behind after an earthquake. The other servants avert their eyes.

Aarti steps away from the puddle of her own urine, the bitter green aftertaste of guilt and hurt and fear and yearning in her mouth, the tang of ammonia assaulting her nostrils, inducing nausea. She walks away, gingerly at first, her wet feet slipping on the cool mosaic floors, and then she is running. She is running from room to room, her damp thighs stinging, her sodden knickers chafing, her face wet and her heart heavy from the weight of her tears. She is running the length and breadth of her huge house and she is alone.

I
t is
the evening of the party. Aarti’s seventh birthday celebration. A festive atmosphere invades the house, the rich smell of frying spices and condensed milk, coconut roasting in ghee and gulab jamuns doused in golden syrup. She is laughing excitedly, shouting, ‘Come! Come!’ to the woman who looks after her – Tara – tugging at her hand and trying to drag her along. Tara is laughing as well, the sound like bells tinkling, and Aarti knows somehow that Tara is just as thrilled as she is.

The rooms of the mansion are polished and sparkling, speckled mosaic floors so clean that Aarti’s naked feet slip and slide on them and she can see her reflection smiling up at her from within the mauve and ginger spotted depths. Some servants are putting up fairy lights which twinkle and shine, others put up banners, yet more bring in platters of samosas and spiced nuts, poppadum and aloo bhujia.

Vats of curries in varying shades of orange, turmeric and cream bubble in the kitchen. Harassed-looking cooks – sweat pouring off their faces like water from a tap, their aprons tinged the deep red of curry powder – stir and chop, fry and boil, with the panicked frenzy of people on a deadline.

Aarti stuffs a samosa in her mouth and continues with her exploration. She stands on tiptoe and peeps out of the window on the landing. Gardeners have strung lights all along the drive and onto the jacaranda trees. The garden looks transformed, a multicoloured, twinkling paradise, silvery blue, green and orange lights winking and dancing, blinding and dazzling. A gazebo is being erected on the lawn near the fountain which dispenses first turquoise, then emerald, then vermilion water. Excitement bubbles up inside Aarti, an excitement so huge that it bursts out of her in giggles that she cannot control, and her hands start clapping of their own accord.

She skips downstairs and stops short on the bottom step in amazed wonder. A veritable feast of balloons in all hues of the rainbow flood the hall, nearly taking over the huge space. She blinks once, twice, unable to believe the miracle of the floating, colourful world in front of her, unable to accept the evidence of her own eyes. One servant is stringing some balloons onto a banner. The other is blowing up even more.

‘Give,’ she says imperiously to the servant blowing, unconsciously imitating her father’s tone, knowing even at such a small age just how to speak to the servants, how to put them in their place. ‘One blue and one pink and one yellow. I want them now.’ She stamps her foot.

Her parents come in at that moment, just as she holds the coveted balloons in her hands, the rubbery, magical feel of them, all weightlessness and light, inundating her heart with colour.

‘Aarti, what are you doing? Why are you not ready yet? Tara, why haven’t you dressed the child? The guests are arriving soon. Put her in that pink choli, it highlights her fair skin. We want you to be on your best behaviour, Aarti. Mr Ramlal, a scout for Divas, the leading child modelling agency in Bangalore, is coming.’ Her mother scrutinises her closely, ‘What’s that in your mouth? Not eating are you? Do you want to end up fat? No modelling for you then. You’ll ruin all your chances.’

Aarti’s stomach feels hollow. She rushes to the bathroom and rinses the remains of the samosa from her mouth. She tries being sick but nothing comes. The balloons are dropped on the carpet and forgotten, the air escaping them in a hopeless sigh as they lie there reduced to mere deflated skins. Blue, pink and yellow tongues that have lost their puff.

Tara washes her; she scrubs Aarti’s face until it glows. She dresses her in the pink choli that emphasises the fairness of her skin. At the party, Aarti glides amongst the adults with a poise she didn’t know she possessed, instinctively imitating her mother. Even though this is a celebration for her birthday, there is no other child present. She is not sure which of the men she is introduced to is Mr Ramlal, but she is polite to everyone, answering all their many questions. She laughs along with the adults, she says amusing things which make them smile, she clinks her glass of soda against their glasses filled with wine and beer.

At the table, she is so tired that her head is in danger of falling into her plate a couple of times. Her mother pinches her lightly both times and she startles awake, smiles at the guests. She pushes the food around on her plate, not eating a thing. She talks slightly louder than normal to hide the rude noises her hungry stomach makes. She thanks everyone graciously for her gifts.

And she thinks it has all gone splendidly, but when the last guest leaves, her father turns to her and the look on his face tells her she has done something wrong. ‘Mr Ramlal said to wait a year,’ he huffs.

Her mother is assessing Aarti, her expression grave. ‘You really must stop eating between meals, Aarti. I will have to tell those servants to stop feeding you.’

Her father’s voice is tight, clipped. ‘We’ll find another agency. We’ll prove him wrong.’

Aarti retreats into her room, allows Tara to take off her clothes, dress her in pyjamas and tuck her into bed.

‘Am I fat?’ she asks and Tara looks startled for a brief minute and then her face softens.

‘Of course not, madam, you are perfect,’ she smiles.

Aarti’s stomach rumbles loudly in the soft silence of the room and Tara asks, ‘Have you not eaten, madam? Shall I get you something?’

Aarti’s mouth waters as she imagines eating the paneer kurma that she loves – the sweetness of coconut mingling perfectly with the delectable richness of the cheese, with rasgullas for afters, juicy syrup oozing and dribbling down her chin. Her mother’s face floats before her eyes, her expression hard: ‘You should stop eating between meals.’

‘Can you sleep here tonight?’ She asks Tara instead, holding her hand, not letting go.

Something crosses Tara’s face, an expression that Aarti cannot name but has seen before, on the security guard’s face when he shoos away the beggars who congregate at the gate, their worn lungis and concave stomachs, their scrawny hands poking through the bars, palms outward. The security guard lifts his stick and says ‘Shoo’, but Aarti can see that his heart is not in it. And the beggars know it as well. It is the expression on his face, like he is about to cry, like he is hurting deeply inside, hurting on behalf of the beggars.

Aarti has seen the security guard sigh and dig in his own pockets for change to give them.

‘Listen, I shouldn’t be doing this, encouraging you lot. I could get into serious trouble,’ he has said, looking furtively around and Aarti has surreptitiously squeezed deeper into the rose bush from whence she is spying on him, the sharp tingle of being pricked, blood sprouting as red as the roses on the shrub, the heady fragrance mixed in with the tang of rust filling her nose and reminding her, longingly, of rose water flavoured Rooh Afza, making her already parched throat sting more than the naked skin of her arms which is being punctured in a thousand places sporting tiny, perfectly conical droplets of blood, like she is wearing polka-dotted sleeves, red on brown.

Aarti knows somehow that whatever Tara is feeling for her now is the same feeling the beggars arouse in the security guard. A flush of shame blooms scarlet on her food-starved skin. A servant feeling like that about
her
, the mistress of the house. How dare Tara have the temerity, when Aarti has everything! Everything.

Rage bubbles inside her, briefly, blessedly pushing aside the hunger pangs she has kept at bay all evening which are even now gnawing away at her insides, making her yearn for another samosa, a ladoo, a piece of her birthday cake: chocolate and cream, so light and melt-in-the-mouth, it is like eating chocolate-flavoured air. She pulls her hand away from Tara’s.

‘Get out,’ she says, coolly, imperiously, using the same tone of voice her mother uses on her, Aarti, most of the time.

And as she watches Tara leave, Aarti makes up her mind to never again put herself in a situation where a servant feels anything at all for her except envy.

The next morning, after a night spent tossing and turning, equal parts hunger and anger warring with a roiling shame, she goes downstairs and informs her parents that she doesn’t like Tara anymore. She does not give a reason and her parents do not ask for one. Tara is sacked, another servant brought in her place. Aarti does not allow herself to get close to this woman and after six months she makes sure she is replaced.

Aarti forces herself to eat nothing at all between meals and the bare minimum at meal times. She gets used to the aggravating pangs of her stomach, the growling and the complaining, grows to welcome it. She is snapped up by the second best modelling agency in Karnataka barely weeks after her seventh birthday and, thanks to her success, this agency shoots straight to the top, displacing the agency that rejected her.

Aarti’s face is everywhere, smiling down from billboards, grinning from body lotion tubes and baby powder cartons, cough medicine bottles and posters advocating fairness creams. She is voted the cutest child in Karnataka, the best, the most loved. She haunts the rooms of her silent house, stopping at mirrors to check her reflection for any offending ounces of extra fat, assessing herself, critically, like her mother does. She pauses at the steadfastly shut door to her mother’s room, willing it to open. She dares to enter her father’s empty study to which she’s denied entry when he’s present, and breathes in the musky, officious smell that lingers, a phantom presence in lieu of her father. She has servant after servant replace Tara until of course, until…Vani.