The Sleeping Dictionary (70 page)

“She’s good at sport. Maybe the doll I’ve bought for her was the wrong gift.” Simon sounded anxious.

“Well, there’s plenty we can do with games in the garden.” I was feeling optimistic. We would not be a typical family, but my happiness since telling Simon was not typical, either. He had listened to my life story over the course of three nights. At the end of it, he’d said that while many parts of my story broke his heart, all he felt was gratitude that I’d come into his life and stayed.

“Kabs! Your parents are here,” shouted an English girl, looking over her shoulder at us.

How did she know we were her parents? I wondered, before realizing that everyone at school knew Kabita as Anglo-Indian. Simon was white, and I was Indian; the three of us looked as if we belonged together.

As Kabita loped toward us, her eyes moved from me to Simon. And then she put her arms out to me, and I inhaled her delicious
schoolgirl scent of ink, coconut oil, and sugar. As I stooped to hug her, I smelled Bidushi and our shared past; but the aroma was all the sweeter, because this time there could be a happy ending.

“Kabita, thank you,” I said, my voice finally catching up to my breath. “Thank you for coming with us this weekend. I can hardly wait to bring you home.”

“Ma, what should I call him?” she whispered into my ear.

She had chosen to call me Mother; with my heart filled to bursting, I considered the question of Simon. “I don’t know, darling. Maybe Simon-uncle, or—”

“Father.” Simon had squatted so he was at our level, and his blue eyes looked deep into hers. “Or Daddy or Papa or Baba! You choose my name. I can never replace Hafeeza and Abbas, but I will treat you like my own.”

“Really?” She pulled away from me a few inches and looked at us with her beautiful, wary eyes.

In her gaze, I saw all the people who’d died or vanished from her world. Why should she believe that this home we wanted to give her could be a permanent one where she’d be happy?

“Yes,” I said softly, holding back the tears. “Your bedroom is right next to ours. It’s just been painted pink. There’s a teddy on your bed and a dollhouse set up on the carpet. Outside, the garden is full of flowers and a very large mango tree. Everything is waiting. You are the only part missing.”

Kabita shifted from one foot to another, as if deciding. Then she said, “I like pink.”

I looked at Simon, and he grinned. I’d been the one to insist on the rushed painting and decorating.

“Pink is a beautiful color,” Simon said, picking up her hockey stick “Well, then. Let’s all go home.”

CHAPTER

50

Hindus and Moslems, freely mixing with each other, are in Calcutta tonight wildly celebrating the approach of independence. The former scenes of communal battles are now happy meeting places for crowds of both communities who are shouting and dancing in the streets. No incident has been reported until a late hour tonight. Mr. Gandhi, Mr. Suhrawardhy, who ceases to be the Premier of Bengal at midnight, and a former mayor of Calcutta are beginning a 24-hour fast to celebrate independence.

—
The Manchester Guardian
, August 14, 1947

I
’d planned to serve our independence dinner by candlelight in the dining room laid on a silk tablecloth laden with all the favorite family dishes. But Simon was playing field hockey in the garden with Kabita and Pallavi, her new friend from Loreto House, the school just down the block. All afternoon and into twilight, the girls had run back and forth in the garden, chasing the balls he lobbed. In the end, they were
altogether too sweaty to sit inside on velvet chairs, so I shifted the meal to the veranda.

We began dinner at nine thirty, timed so that while we ate pudding—a trifle made with fresh cream, mangoes, and pistachios, the colors of the new Indian flag—we could listen on the wireless to Mr. Nehru addressing the Indian Constituent Assembly. I was happy to see the girls dig in, but inside I felt some private guilt at the feast because of the fasting by Gandhiji and Suhrawardy in North Calcutta. They were staying together as an appeal to Bengalis not to fight like they had eleven months earlier. To let the new borders of India and Pakistan stay, even though Bengal itself would be split apart like sisters separated by a flood, never to live together again.

“At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.” Nehru’s voice cut into my bittersweet imaginings. “A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.”

“Ma knows him,” Kabita said casually to Pallavi, whose mouth made a little O as she gaped at me.

“Not quite, Kabby. We’ve only just said hello!” It was true that I’d met him at Supriya and Pankaj’s wedding. When Pankaj had made introductions, he had praised my years of intelligence gathering, especially regarding the government’s attempts to catch Netaji. Nehru had nodded in approval, while I said what I always did: I had never heard from the Bose family that the information had mattered, but it felt right to help in anyway possible.

As Mr. Nehru’s address continued, I was filled with the realization that everything was linked, like the efforts Supriya and I had both made, as far apart as we had been. And while the political outcome I’d always longed for had come, it also meant the end of Simon’s livelihood, because the new Indian Civil Service would be staffed by only Indians.

Simon had packed up his office two weeks earlier. Reams of
documents and photographs were nailed up in crates headed for the East India Office archives in London. Simon was allowed to keep duplicates that were not classified material. I wondered how we would fit all these new books and pamphlets and folios into the library; but not as much as I wondered what he would do for his next job.

We had talked about his taking an administrative job with the British Civil Service in London, like so many of his colleagues, including Mr. Weatherington, were doing. Another choice was moving to West Sussex, where his family had a variety of business interests. But Simon didn’t particularly want to return to England. He’d considered taking his books to fill a shop in Bombay that he’d heard was being vacated.

I’d lobbied for staying put in Calcutta, selling books out of the library as needed to stay afloat.

Months earlier, I’d created a sales brochure about the most valuable books that Simon might be willing to let go. Mr. Sen spread the word to his collector customers throughout India, but their reaction was muted. The few inquiries that had come for the most valuable books were less than what Simon had paid to buy them ten years earlier. So he held on.

Prime Minister Nehru’s address finished at midnight. Over the wireless came thunderous roars of joy that were soon drowned out by honking horns and fireworks on our street. India was free.

“It’s come! Independence!” Simon said. I leaned over and kissed him, feeling a surge of elation that I was celebrating this day with him and my daughter. We were different from any other family in Calcutta, but no less happier. I turned to give hugs to Kabita and Pallavi and found them already standing by my chair.

“Ma, please! Listen to me; may we be excused?” Kabita shifted from foot to foot in an impatient dance.

“But why would you go off? It’s Independence!”

“Yes! Jatin wants to set up fireworks in the road and give away
all the leftover cake!” Kabita said, pointing to the vast expanse of mango-cream confection that was left.

“Giving it away is a good idea.” I hesitated for a moment, considering whether her going into the street was a good idea. I escorted Kabita everywhere, even down the block to school, because deep inside—even though Simon had brought me immigration information proving Rose Barker had left India and settled in Brighton—I still feared that my daughter would vanish.

“Kamala-di, all of us will be with them. Just in front of the house, with the Mitra family,” Jatin said, mentioning a Parsi family I’d grown to know and like. “They are serving refreshments also.”

“Yes,” said Simon to Kabita. “But remember, darling, you may only hold sparklers. And stay right with Jatin and the others. Ma and I will be along shortly.”

After they’d skipped out of the garden, I asked Simon, “Will it feel strange to you to be celebrating on the street, an Englishman amongst Indians?”

“Why should I?” Simon poured a little more Darjeeling in my cup. “I worked for the transition, just as you did.”

“I never dreamed that I’d live to see independence,” I said, taking the cup with a smile. “When I was a girl at Lockwood School and then in Kharagpur, it seemed the British could put down any attempts at freedom.”

“So when you found out about my work, you hated it,” Simon said. “It took me some time to understand that I wasn’t being helpful to anyone. But I know that I love India. Just as I love you.”

I studied the man I’d come to love improbably but so deeply. “For a while, I thought I hated you. But the feeling inside me was—too strong. All along, it must have been love—mixed with disappointment at what I learned.”

Simon pressed his lips together. “I fear I’m going to disappoint you again. I don’t think any bookselling business could bring enough to support us. And then there’s the question about you—how you’d like to spend your life.”

I had been thinking about this, too. I wanted to do more than keep house, volunteer, and take care of Kabita, because in less than a decade, she’d be off to college. Slowly, I said, “I don’t want to be a memsaheb. I wish I could afford to enroll somewhere and get the Cambridge certificate I always wanted. But a twenty-seven-year-old lady can’t sit down at the desk with her daughter at school. It’s too odd. You know how sensitive Kabita is; she’d be humiliated.”

“I often forget you don’t have that certificate, and it means so much to you.” Simon paused. “I don’t suppose you’d—no, you’d find it too cold.”

“What’s too cold?” I looked at him, thinking, Darjeeling?

“Someone invited me to apply for a position in Canada,” Simon said. “The University of Toronto is seeking a lecturer on India’s politics and modern history. If I did get the position, I would teach there—in that country.”

I caught my breath, because I could tell he felt differently about this than the proposed government job in London. “I gather you’d qualify to teach the politics and history based on your Cambridge degree and your career experiences here?”

“Yes. And do you remember the essays I sometimes wrote about the books in my collection? Well, a few of them were published. People are interested in understanding how England treated India over the years. And how, in turn, India responded to the British.” A flash of pleasure crossed Simon’s face, an excited happiness that I’d never seen when he spoke about his ICS career. “If I became a lecturer, it would allow me—allow us—to return to India occasionally. And to further your personal interest in education, the University of Toronto might be just the place. A private tutor can help you with prerequisites. The academic system is different in North America, not as rigid as India or England.”

But Canada was a dominion of the United Kingdom, just as India would remain for a few years before becoming a republic. I asked, “How English is Canada, really?”

He smiled wryly. “Well, most of the people there are supposed
to sound like Americans, but there are quite a few Brits who’ve emigrated. Supposedly it’s easy to find crumpets and marmalade.”

“Many Anglo-Indians are leaving for Canada,” I said, recalling a conversation at some recent Loreto House mothers’ gatherings. “We might know people in Canada.”

“There is a large Asian community in Toronto,” Simon said. “Indians have been there for many years. They say that one can buy spices there. And real Indian rice.”

I considered the myriad customs and words that the British had brought to India. Could Indians scattering throughout the world spread their own culture, too? And if I worked there, and had a profession of real value . . .

“Sailing by ship is relatively inexpensive, but it takes so long,” Simon continued, not knowing the questions racing scattershot through my mind. “This is the way the government will send us out. But if we are careful with money, we might be able to return for our first visit by airplane.”

“If
we
earn enough,” I added. “After some of my experiences over the years, I feel called toward—becoming a doctor. Maybe if college goes well, I might qualify for medical school, although I always thought I would teach. I can’t say which I’d prefer right now.”

“Whatever you choose, I will support—and just think how proud Kabita will be.” Simon’s voice dropped; there was a catch in it. “But that doesn’t take away the question of leaving India now. Would it break your heart?”

Once again, a wave had come and swept away the life I knew. This time, the wave was freedom. Children born into the new India would grow up in a nation where no foreign power could seize their rice or keep them out of hospitals and train compartments. Women would vote freely, and the caste system would be officially abolished. I would have preferred to linger in the new free India. But I could still witness India’s growth from wherever I moved and feel proud.