The Lost Daughter of India Read online

  The Lost Daughter of India

  A heartbreaking novel of tragedy and secrets that will have you hooked

  Sharon Maas

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Epilogue

  Letter from Sharon

  Author Notes

  Acknowledgments

  The Sugar Planter’s Daughter

  The Small Fortune of Dorothea Q

  Of Marriageable Age

  Also by Sharon Maas

  Chapter 1

  Caroline. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1970

  Caroline snuggled deeper into Meenakshi’s lap, her favourite place in all the world. Meena’s whole body was a cushion, soft and yielding, and when you cuddled into her it moulded around you and held you safe. It was the best place for a five-year-old to spend a summer evening, swaying gently in the rocking chair on the back porch, Meena’s arms around her as she held the book.

  The backyard smelt of summer: of sun and moist earth from the water sprinkler gently waving to and fro. The sounds were of summer too. Birds twittered in the chestnut tree in the centre of the backyard, squirrels scampered across the branches, chattering among themselves. The sights and sounds and fragrances of a leafy neighbourhood in Massachusetts, America surrounded them. Meena didn’t smell of America. Meena had her own distinctive smell, and Caroline breathed her in. She smelt of India, sweet and spicy all at once, a thousand secret aromas all mingled together. It was in the fabric of her saris, in her hair, in her very skin, dark as a hazelnut and shiny as silk. It wafted, too from the pages of that book, which Meena had brought with her from India when she was a little girl, the same age as Caroline was now.

  It was a big book, the biggest book on Caroline’s shelf, with over a thousand pages. They had been reading it for months now, every day a chapter, and it might be a year before it was finished, and that was fine with Caroline. She hoped it would last for ever. It was that sort of a book, the kind that took you off on journeys with different characters to different places but sooner or later brought you back to the main story; and you would understand the main story a little bit better because of that little excursion. It was the sort of book that took you on a voyage far, far away and made you live in another place and another time and become another person while you were away. It was the sort of book that created vivid pictures in your mind so that you were actually there and then and among those people and even turned you into those people so that they weren’t foreign any more because you became them.

  Meena’s voice was perfect for the story. It was languid but strong; Meena was never in a hurry to get to the end of a story and close the book. She read as if she had all the time in the world, and probably she did; and she could put on a man’s voice or a girl’s voice or a demon’s voice or the voice of a god and make you believe that very person was speaking. She could give you goosebumps, and make you quake in fear. She could transport you into that person’s soul.

  Right now, Caroline was in India, a young prince disguised as a simple priest, and he was about to win the hand of the most beautiful princess in the world, Draupadi.

  ‘“Arjuna strode over to the bow, head held high,”’ Meena read, in her strongest book-voice – her royal voice, Caroline called it. ‘“As effortlessly as Karna had done before him, he raised it; the kings gasped. He picked up one of the glittering arrows, took aim at the fish spinning high above, released the arrow. With a silver streak almost invisible to the eye it pierced the eye of the fish, which tumbled to the ground. A roar as thunder filled the arena; furious, fuming, the assembled kings waved their fists and screamed insults into the arena; but Arjuna was unmoved.

  “With three wide springs he leapt onto the royal dais and stood before Draupadi, holding out his hand. Dhrishtadyumna helped his sister to her feet and placed her hand in Arjuna’s. Conch moaned and trumpet blared as Arjuna led his bride away: like a young celestial with a heavenly apsara…”’ (‘What’s an apsara?’ asked Caroline, and Meena replied in her normal Meena voice: ‘a heavenly dancing maiden.’) ‘“…like god Vishnu with his consort, the goddess Lakshmi, like the sun with the moon by his side, the two left the arena, flowers raining down on them from heaven. Brahmins cheered, kings raged. Karna fell to the ground. The four remaining Pandavas looked at each other and they, too, left.”’

  Meena closed the book. ‘And that, my sweet, is enough for today.’

  ‘No!’ cried Caroline. ‘I want to know what happened next! Do the Pandavas get their kingdom back? Do they come out of hiding? Does Draupadi have to go and live with them in the forest? What happens, Meena?’

  ‘Well, you will just have to be a bit more patient, because tomorrow I will read to you some more. Your mommy and daddy will be home from work any time now and they will want to see you and hear what you have been doing all day.’

  Caroline pouted. ‘I want you to read some more! I want—’

  ‘What! What are you telling me! What happens to little children who say I want all the time?’

  ‘“I want never gets,”’ replied Caroline, her bottom lip stuck out. ‘I know. But still. It’s not fair.’

  ‘Life isn’t fair,’ Meena said as she lifted her up and placed her on the ground. Laying the book on the porch table, she tilted the chair forward and slowly, with much effort, pushed her cushiony body to her feet, grasped Caroline’s hand and led her indoors, through the kitchen where Lucia was cooking the evening meal, into the hall and up the stairs to Caroline’s bedroom to get her ready for her parents’ homecoming. Her three older brothers were still outside, at friends’ homes, playing baseball on the street, climbing trees; the things boys do after school. They’d be in soon, too.

  Caroline’s father was a lawyer; he worked very hard and sometimes he didn’t make it home for dinner. But her mother, a doctor, always did; and it was her mother who, after dinner, would give her her bath and put her to bed and read her a story. But those stories were never as real as the ones Meenakshi told from memory, or read from books: stories of Indian kings and queens, heroes and villains and gods disguised as animals or beggars; cows who could fulfil desires and deer who could speak and monsters who could change shape at will.

  If you asked Caroline what she wanted to be when she grew up, she’d say, like many an American little girl, a princess. But Caroline would be no Disney princess. She’d marry a prince like Arjuna
, and ride to her wedding in a howdah on an elephant’s back wearing a fabulous sari adorned with real jewels; and her palace would be in India.

  Caroline was in love with India before she could even write the word. She could point to it on the globe, and she’d tell anyone who asked that that was where she’d live when she grew up. Adults would laugh indulgently, and pat her on the head, and tell her she was dreaming; but Caroline knew it was destiny. She would grow up to marry an Indian prince.

  Chapter 2

  Asha. Mumbai, 2000

  I am forever lost. No one can save me. Not one of my three mothers is here to rescue me from this hell. Not one of my two fathers.

  The mother who gave birth to me? I have no memory of her. I know her only through the letters she wrote to me over the years, the photographs of herself; she has yellow hair and pale skin, because she is a foreigner. She signs her letters Mom. She is so far away in a country called America, and does not even care. She can never save me.

  Amma is my other mother, the one who raised me. Mom gave me to her because she had no milk. She is the one who nourished me at her breast, the one I love. But she is dead.

  Janiki is my third mother, my chinna-amma, my little mother. She isn’t really my mother. She isn’t even really my sister. Janiki was thirteen when I was born and she has told me the story over and over again. How Amma placed me in her arms after the one called Mom left, and said to her, ‘Janiki, I have been given this little waif to look after but my hands are full with Kanaan and the next one to come. I give her to you; you care for her. She is yours. I will feed her, but everything else, you must do. You must be her chinna-amma.’

  And so, though I shared Amma’s milk with Kanaan, and later with Ramesh, Janiki became my little mother. But she too is far away now, in another country, another world, and she will never find me in this hell.

  Three mothers, and two fathers. The man I called Appa, Father, was Amma’s husband. He is also dead. Appa was headmaster of the English Medium School and so he was highly respected, and so were his children. He wore large thick glasses and he would peer at you over the top of them and smile. He was kind but distant, and could also be strict. As a headmaster you have to be very strict. Sometimes he even flogged some of the naughtiest children, but only the boys, never the girls. But then girls are never naughty. Why then is it always the girls who get the worst punishments? I would rather have been flogged a million times than endure the punishments I had to take later, because of being a girl.

  A father should find his lost daughter. But Appa is not my real father.

  There is only Him. The man I am supposed to call Daddy, but I cannot. Daddy is too ordinary. He is not ordinary.

  I’ve always known about Him. Always, as far back as I can remember, there he was, the man who was supposed to be my real father, but who for me was more like a god, up in the heavens somewhere along with Indra and all the other celestial beings, occasionally deigning to descend to us and bless me with his presence. He came seldom; the last time I was only about eight, and I never forgot that last visit.

  By then, Amma had told me he is really a prince. And that makes me a princess. Amma used to call me Little Princess. But I am not a princess. A princess does not live in such wretchedness.

  Whenever he came I was truly tongue-tied – I could hardly speak a word to him, and answered his questions with a yes or a no or even just a shrug of my shoulders, turning my face away so as not to meet his eyes, for I could not bear the way they seemed to see all the way through me, right down to the bottom of my being, and I would tingle with happiness. And when he left again the tingling would stay with me for a long time so I hardly felt like a human child until normal life seeped through me once again and called me back to earth. What I am saying is I really worshipped that man, and I didn’t think of him as a father but as my saviour, even as a small child. Yes, I worshipped him. But he never came again, and so I know he has forgotten me. Amma told me he lives far away, in another country, a country that is all desert. So he, too, cannot save me.

  I want to go home!

  I used to live in a big house in Gingee, with Amma and Appa and Janiki and our five brothers. At least, for me it was a big house, though I have since seen really grand homes and ours was a hovel in comparison. But compared to other Gingee homes it was certainly large. I had seen the homes of other children in my school class and ours seemed so much grander – though now I can only laugh at such innocence. I mean, I would laugh if I could, had I not forgotten how to laugh.

  Our home, in fact, was just a gathering of rooms, and mats laid out where we slept – inside in winter, outside in summer – and some shelves where we kept our clothes and utensils. That’s all, though we did have electric lights and a radio that blared filmi music all day long; Amma liked this music, and she sang along with the radio.

  So we had comforts, and our home in Gingee was no hovel either – for now I live in a real hovel. The very worst kind of place, a hole in hell. The only escape is in sleep. I sleep as much as I can. But when I open my eyes again and remember where I am my heart beats faster and I feel the panic rising in me like vomit, panic that is trapped inside me and can never leave the body, like vomit that lurches up but falls back down again. I would give anything to be able to vomit but I cannot. It is trapped in me for ever and when I pray it is for healing from that sickness in me.

  Looking back, I think of my Gingee home as paradise. And I would exchange all the palaces in the world and all of paradise to go back there – or better yet, never to have left. But my destiny said otherwise.

  We were all so happy, but didn’t know it. We lived in a quiet part of Gingee. When we finished our schoolwork and our household chores we children could play in the street outside our door as much as we wanted, because there was not much traffic, not like in the busier areas of town where the whole street would be filled with all kinds of vehicles with stinking exhaust fumes, as well as rickshaws that would appear out of nowhere and pounce on you if you tried to cross the street. I used to be terrified of streets like that and always grabbed Janiki’s hand when we went anywhere in the town. Janiki was always there for me.

  But of course now I know that that those terrifying Gingee streets were really nothing more than quiet lanes; because now I have seen the world and I know the terrors the world holds are worse than any terror on the main streets of Gingee.

  I have read about hell, and the demons that live there, but I can assure you, this hell I am in now is a million times worse. That is the truth. And because I was happy with Amma and Appa and Janiki and my brothers I can compare, and so I can say my childhood was pure heaven. That is how it seems to me now.

  Looking back, I cannot see much of the details. I see our home, a house with a large veranda at the front, where Amma used to sit cleaning rice or stringing beans and things like that, because she liked to see who was passing by and sometimes have a little chat with the other ladies who lived on that street.

  I cannot believe I was fortunate enough to have parents like them, even though they weren’t my real parents. And Janiki. How I long for Little Amma! When I think of them and that time before my twelfth birthday tears come to my eyes because a good family is so rare. I know that now, and when I close my eyes I can see Janiki’s beautiful face and those eyes brimming with love.

  I am sure there were unpleasant things in Gingee as well, but I don’t remember them because they are nothing. I only remember the good things. It is as if my life back then, the life I lived from day to day, was nothing more than a film passing before my eyes, insubstantial pictures of no lasting value, so there’s no use at all in describing them to you. The important thing was the feeling I had, the feeling of being embedded in this wonderful cushion of love where nothing could touch you and nothing could ever hurt you. I suppose that is the essence of my childhood, not the individual events that followed each other in a chain – because those things

  pass away, passing pictures in a cinema. What rem
ains at all times is the thing behind it – the screen of my being, you could say, over which those pictures passed; a backdrop of goodness. Because that is what has stayed with me, what keeps me alive: the remembrance of goodness. Of what goodness was like. That memory is what really keeps me alive when everything else is

  dying, crumbling into a dark abyss and swallowing up my soul. That is what has sustained me in my journey through hell.

  Because I am able to say to myself, if the events of my childhood are nothing more than passing pictures, then so is this horror. Everything else is a passing picture.

  That is the secret of my survival. I don’t mean my physical survival, for my body, though often injured, was never even near death – though often it felt that way, and often I prayed it could be dead, and I know that one day it will be dead. I mean the survival of my soul, which has been so much in jeopardy these past weeks or months or even years. I have lost count of time. I have stopped counting the days. My life now is from breath to breath. The only one who can save me now is Bhagavan, God. He could but he won’t. My prayers go unanswered.

  I said I don’t remember the unpleasant things of my past life; well, that’s not quite true. I do remember the day when Amma and Appa never came home.

  That was the beginning of the end. Now I am in this monstrous city, a single grain on a beach full of sand. No one can find that single grain. That is what it means to be lost. But my name is Asha. It means hope. In her last message my sister Janiki said never give up hope, Janiki. Hope, and faith, will keep you safe. Even just a spark of it. And so, though I know I am forever lost, I cling to that one spark of hope.

  Chapter 3

  Kamal. Moti Khodayal, Gujarat, India, 1972

  Kamal tried not to breathe; he was sure they’d hear him if he did. He could hear his own breathing and the drumming of his heart, loud and erratic, and it seemed to him the whole world must be listening, watching for him. He crouched lower in the hamper, hugging his knees, curled into a ball with his head tucked in, exactly fitting the circular shape of the basket. For the first time in his life he was glad that he was so small, so supple, like a cat, they said, loose and limber and able to crawl into the smallest spaces and jump from the highest windows, landing like a coiled spring and sprinting off before they could blink twice.