The Gurkha's Daughter (18 page)

Appa waited for a long time, his faith unwavering. He had little to do with his days. He'd go to meetings with other Gurkhas. There were so many of them—the Gurkhas and the meetings. Sometimes, they convened at our place. Hope and frustration mingled with song, dance, and alcohol, which Appa these days consumed more and more.

Several months of idleness later, Appa one day came home with the news that he had been offered a job as a personal security guard to a businessman, some Golcha man.

Aamaa smiled for the first time in a long while. To celebrate, we had chicken and mutton for dinner, and although I thought I'd want to stay with them, I found myself, more so when I observed Appa, hankering to retreat to my
bhara-kuti.

Today, there'd be some improvisation. Instead of Phantom cigarette sweets and a mustache, I'd use one of the two smaller knives from Appa's
khukuri
set. He had given me the knives only two days ago to decorate my room. He told me to be careful with them, not to use them for anything but decoration. I was ecstatic because Appa didn't allow anyone—not even Aamaa—to come near his
khukuri
set, even when it was sheathed. He always said that it was a part of his uniform and that nothing gave him more pride than cleaning it himself. When asked why he was giving me his favorite toy, his Sandy, he said he had no use for it.

“I'll take it,” I said in Appa's voice, and sliced the air with one of the knives. “He's paying me twenty thousand rupees. I will be his personal security guard.”

“That's great news.” I smiled from ear to ear. “We can finally add the floor upstairs. And it's prestigious.”

“Yes, very prestigious.” I stabbed the air with a knife. “He says it's a good thing I know how to drive.”

“Maybe he has plans of buying you a car.” I smiled from ear to ear.

“I think he might have me drive him around.” I steered an imaginary wheel with the knife.

My eyes popped out, the way I had seen Aamaa's when I lied to her.

“A Gurkha driving?” I said. “I don't believe it. Well, we can always keep the driving part away from the people.”

“Yes, they won't know.” I dug the knife in the mud. I tried cracking my knuckles. I couldn't.

I didn't like this knife prop. I'd have to change my game.

The red telephone, which was from Gita's set, rang.

“Tring, tring,” I sang.

“Hello, Mitini, but you didn't send me a letter.” My voice was back. “Never mind, never mind. Don't say sorry. You're my
mitini
—you shouldn't be saying sorry. Appa and Aamaa are smiling now, but I don't think Appa is very happy.”

I talked for some time and felt considerably better.

After Gita, there were Sunita and Monica at school—nice girls who wouldn't think of playing truant or fighting a street urchin—and after them there was a boy, whom I don't want to remember. He caused me a lot of pain, even called me names. Gita would never do that.

Sunita and Monica came to see my
bhara-kuti
collection one day after school. They were impressed at the size of the cylinder and the beauty of the glass set. I gave Sunita the red phone and Monica a gold-plated cup. When they left, I took a big plastic bowl left to dry by the sink and spat into it with all the effort I could muster. That day, I spat a little more than I had the day before.

I placed the bowl on Sandy's big, black mouth, counted to ten, asked her why she couldn't finish the drink in one gulp and emptied the bowl into the bushes.

I'd have to ask the pointy-nosed astrologer when he came next if sealing friendships in a different way—in ceremonies that were not the
miteri
—successfully transferred a girl's bad luck to her best friend. He would have something silly to say, but I didn't need to bother. Like Appa dismantling his
khukuri
set, I, too, had no need for Sandy anymore. Maybe I'd give her to Sunita. Or Monica. It didn't matter to whom. Or I could simply rip the doll's arms and legs apart and bury her in the ground. I could always use Appa's tiny knife, now useless to him, to dig the grave.

P
ASSING
F
ANCY

Her son Rakesh ended up going to America after all. The night they saw him off at the Indira Gandhi International Airport, both she and her husband cried. They hadn't done it before; they didn't even go all the way to Delhi to say good-bye to Sachin, their firstborn. Sachin maintained that having them accompany him would trigger a flurry of tears, and he wasn't prepared to let emotional upheavals get in the way of the start of an event as major as a new life in America. Latha had simply shaken their hands as she prepared to part ways. When her mother tried drawing her into an embrace, Latha moved back, and for a second they stared at each other, the hands unsure about their role in the hug. The wife had waited for her husband to either cry or say something deep when the sight of a bawling garland-clad young man, probably a student like Latha, surrounded by a bevy of sniveling middle-aged ladies drew their attention. Father, mother, and daughter stood around laughing, all secretly thankful that the farewell in their family was a relatively unemotional affair. It was a tension-free moment.

With Rakesh, however, the tears flowed uncontrollably. It had been an agonizing couple of hours. Rakesh was leaving by a midnight flight, and the conversation at the eight p.m. dinner, extremely late by their standards, was already quiet and stilted.
They talked about the insipid daal, the harangued waiter, and the rudeness of Delhi people. No one mentioned America. No one mentioned Rakesh's leaving. When Rakesh finished dessert and asked if he could possibly have one of the gold rings his mother was wearing, to sell it should a situation sufficiently dire arise, she broke down first. The husband asked her to control herself, to be aware that their son wasn't going to war. He told Rakesh he was more than welcome to return if he didn't like it in America. He needn't think about the money spent, the year wasted, and what people would think back home. And he shouldn't ever worry about money. Yes, without doubt one of the reasons they were sending him abroad was for him to become financially responsible, but if he had difficulty finding a job to pay for school from the second year onward, he must let them know.

Rakesh told his parents to have faith in him and that he wouldn't ask them for more money no matter what. They had, after all, paid for an entire year's education in his case, as opposed to only a semester for his brother and sister. He was nervous, but wasn't everyone, even cocky Latha? He knew they thought he was slow, stupid even. And yes, he didn't have the best examination scores. He always was the slowest among all his friends to grasp concepts, but that didn't mean he was an idiot. He took a long time with his lessons but also took a long time to forget them. He still remembered all his fourth-grade poems he had spent hours memorizing—“Down in a green and shady bed, a modest violet grew”—along with a truckload of useless information he had always had trouble understanding.

This was a long speech, coming from someone like Rakesh. It was devoid of self-pity, and nothing he said insinuated that their parenting skills were lacking, but the wife, translating his words into their failing of him, sniffled. The son had known all along their doubts about him. He might have been the slowest
of their three children, but he was the most perceptive. He talked about one of his dreams of wanting to surprise them by doing well, maybe even better than Latha. When this only elicited a snuffle from his mother, he said he did not want them to think they had been bad parents. They had been excellent. He confessed he had been ambivalent about reassuring them that he would be okay, aware that when words came tumbling out of his mouth, he got excited, even aggressive, and often gave the wrong impression, and he had just succeeded in doing exactly that. He was sorry, he said several times, and every time he apologized, memories of the past came pounding in the wife's conscience—of multiplication tables gone horribly wrong for the fourteenth time, of never-ending family jokes generated out of something he said, and the exaggerated laughter when they hunted for the humor in his anecdotes. The tears lasted all the way to the airport, where Rakesh, trying again to inject some last-minute humor into a hopeless situation, said he was confused about whether or not to cry. It was said with absolutely no malice, and the sincerity with which he was trying to raise their spirits, when it should have been vice versa, was heartwarming, so both decided—the wife pressed by a pinch from the husband when she tried swallowing a sob—that they should stop until he left, two seconds after which the wife's eyes set to work again. They had never been that way.

“That's the third one gone,” said the wife when sobs gave way to words.

“You thought he wouldn't go.”

“I hoped he wouldn't go.” She watched the sky for Rakesh's plane.

“I am mighty proud he went. He'll learn. He'll see the world. It will do him good.”

“Some people survive and live without being battered and bruised by the universe.” Her tone was hostile.

“You talk like I had something to do with encouraging him to go. I just thought his life would be a lot better if he went abroad.”

“He once told me he'd be happy if he went to college in India.”

“He could have, but he chose not to.”

“You never know about the bettering of life. For all we know, he might be moneyed and miserable.”

“You wish I had stopped him from going, don't you?”

“You're always so manipulative.” She still saw no plane in the sky. “I thought you'd give it at least one shot. I know you've had as much doubt about whether he can survive the harsh world out there.”

“Didn't I say that would be a selfish thing to do? We'd be limiting his options. Let him first go see what's out there and make up his mind. He can always come back.”

“I can imagine his brother quitting his studies and coming back if he doesn't like it. I can see his sister returning midway if she feels like it. But we both know this one will not come back even if he hates his life. He'd feel too guilty. He's too simple.”

“Simple, slow, silly—that's all you think he is, we think he is.” The husband's exasperation showed. “That's one of the reasons he's this way. He has been protected all his life, and we are to blame. Our notion that he's too simple, too foolish, to experience anything, to fend for himself, to go out there and see what he wants out of life has already caused him enough trouble. At least let him be for some time now. Let him make his own mistakes and learn from them. The way you talk about him, you'd think he's an autistic child. Stop it. He's a nice, normal human being. He keeps getting compared to his brother and sister. That's it. He's less academically inclined than they are and not a retard.”

“Don't get angry. You're right, I worry needlessly about him.”

“Then let's drop the topic.”

“Okay,” the wife said quietly as a plane—was it Rakesh's?—ascended.

“I sometimes really wonder if you are actually afraid for him or for yourself. I understand that you feel more and more purposeless as each child leaves. I feel the same way. It feels like our children don't need us anymore, but I don't try to stop them from going after what they want.”

They stared at the sky until the plane diminished into a little ball of fire and vanished altogether.

A month after Rakesh left, the wife retired from her government job. She had hoped to extend the length of her service by another year, but her political leanings favoring the opposition party complicated matters. She had on many occasions told her family, her brothers, and cousins that she'd sleep until noon the first Monday after retirement. She'd then play cards with her husband—and any of her children still around—before eating breakfast or completing her ablutions. She joked that if she were a man, she'd grow stubble, never wear a tie again, except maybe at one of her children's weddings, and devour all the books that she had for so long had no time to read. She would hole herself up in her husband's cavernous library to revisit the Leo Tolstoys that she had purchased as a twenty-two-year-old and brought with her to this house when she got married but of which she hadn't gone beyond the first few pages. She wasn't going to travel for at least six months. As it was, her husband wasn't very fond of traveling—he said sitting in a cramped space with his knees going clang-bang-bang against the back of someone else's seat, even if the trip meant seeing all his children, made him claustrophobic. The wife had expressed interest in visiting America several times, and he had told her he wouldn't mind her going alone. She had stopped bringing up the subject these days.

The first Monday after retirement panned out differently. She woke up at five a.m. and went for a walk, her first in more than twenty-five years. Right next to the Titanic Park, before she took the overpass, she saw Mr. Bhattarai, her neighbor, greeted him, and stopped to talk. What did she plan to do after the walk, for wasn't it her first day of living like a queen, after all? Mr. Bhattarai teased. Oh, she'd probably go back home and watch TV. It wasn't like she had anything to do all day anyway. Mr. Bhattarai asked her about her travel plans as he unzipped his jacket and fanned himself. She described in great detail the time her husband, a nervous flyer, embarrassed her by repeatedly chanting the Gayatri Mantra, much to every passenger's chagrin, when they flew from Delhi to Bagdogra. She was in no great hurry. She didn't have a job to dress up for or Rakesh's early-morning slowness—exacerbated by the two-week-old sports section of the
Statesman
glued to his eyes while his roti got cold—to run home to. She wondered aloud if Mr. Bhattarai knew that Rakesh had left, too. Yes, he did know that, wasn't it England or Australia? No, America, like the rest. Didn't he find it strange no one wanted to study in India? Almost every household had at least one child abroad. That was stretching it, he replied with a smile. What was strange was the number of doctors in every household, thanks to the new medical college in town. Anyone could become a doctor, just about anyone, he said. She had to agree. Yes, he was right, going abroad for studies was yet to grip Sikkim the way it had the rest of India, but doctors . . . yes, students who could barely pass their high school exams found themselves in medical schools. A pity, he added, because he didn't trust his wife's young doctors. She wasn't comfortable talking about his sick wife, so she made some excuse about her husband's breakfast and walked home.

She felt restless. She had nothing to do. The servant didn't take very kindly to her being in the kitchen when she went to
see if he needed help. His territory, she considered. She played solitaire on the computer for some time—just three months ago, she had finished her basic computer classes—and checked her e-mail. Her children hadn't replied to any of her mails. That was typical. Did it cost them money to send replies? You never knew—after all, America was expensive. Or maybe they were just busy. Still, a one-line reply wouldn't hurt. Latha sometimes replied “ha-ha” to her mother's carefully constructed messages detailing the dogs' antics and her husband's cheating shenanigans at cards. If a big scoop found its way into her e-mails, like the time a relative's servant was found pregnant, Sachin would call immediately. It was Rakesh—gone for only a month—out of whom extracting a response was the most difficult. He never checked his Hotmail, he said. The one time he called, he had very little to say, worrying her endlessly about whether he was happy.

“Nothing from anyone?” her husband asked, standing behind her, the dogs at his heels.

“What do you expect?”

“Not even Latha?”

“No.”

“They must be busy.”

“All we want to know is that they're fine.”

“If they aren't fine, they probably will call us.”

“The others have been gone years. It's Rakesh I am worried about.”

“Didn't we just talk to him a week ago?”

“But he was quiet. We did all the talking.”

“As we should.”

“Yes, I am worrying needlessly.”

“You have more time to think now than you did before.”

“I should probably start reading again.”

“Let's play a round first,” the husband said, shuffling the pack of cards.

When the wife saw Mr. Bhattarai again during her morning walk, he waved at her. She had the dogs with her today, and they were pulling her in opposite directions. Two huge Alsatians stubbornly involved in a tug-of-war as she tried to control them must have made for a silly sight. Mr. Bhattarai ran to her and ordered the dogs in a loud, booming voice to sit down, and they strangely did as they were told. He asked her about her retirement. She knew she should keep quiet, but she confided it was depressing. There was nothing to do all day, and the robot—that's what they called a servant in the family, ha-ha—was impatient when she entered the kitchen. She had initially thought she'd read a lot but realized now how out of touch she was. She'd read page after page, and the words felt welcoming but barely registered. What books was she reading? Oh, Tolstoy. He suggested she start with a lighter book. She was always a reader when young, she replied. Then
restart
with something light, he reworded himself, a book whose lines she didn't have to go through over and over again. She asked for suggestions. He couldn't think off the top of his head, but there had to be something. How about Mills & Boons? She laughed at his idea and asked about his familiarity with romance novels. Oh, no, no, he began reading them when Manju was in the hospital—light and fluffy stuff, just the books that didn't require too much energy for him to become engrossed in. Once she was habituated, rehabituated, she could graduate to heavier material.