The Stolen Girl (28 page)

Aarti remains sitting on the uncomfortable chair in the Visits Hall, with all the other people waiting to visit their relatives, their faces needy, desperate, worried, expectant, and watches Vani approach hesitantly toward her and lower herself gingerly onto the chair opposite.

Somehow, it seems incongruous that this ordinary, slightly shabby woman who looks as if she has been whipped, battered by the years that have passed since Aarti last set eyes on her, has been the subject of Aarti’s rage, the target for her loathing, all the hate she’s harboured her whole life for the lack of love she’s experienced, seeping into the seething loneliness and becoming a toxic cocktail that has been brewing for thirteen years. A residue of that wrath, that hatred, that hurt flares and is doused almost instantly by a glance at the slight woman, weary and stooped sitting across from her. This ragged person is not accountable for all that angst; this woman is not to blame for everything that has gone wrong in Aarti’s life – well, not completely at least.

Superimposed in the time-ravaged features of the woman across from her, Aarti catches glimpses of the girl she had counted as family, the girl she once loved. Affection wars with hurt, anger with a yearning for the bond she had shared with the girl hiding within this strange yet infinitely familiar woman before her – a kaleidoscope of emotions.

Aarti wonders what Vani is feeling, what thoughts are coursing through her head. She used to be able to read Vani like a book, or so she had always assumed with the nonchalance of being the superior in their uneven relationship. What she knows now is that she knew nothing, nothing at all of what was going on in Vani’s mind, what she was feeling.

She wants to hug this woman in front of her. She wants to hit Vani, hurt Vani like she hurt her.

She wonders what expression her face is displaying; whether it mirrors Vani’s own one of wonder, that of waking from a dream and not being quite sure which world one is in, the dream one or the wakeful one. The years that have ensued since she waved goodbye to Vani and the baby and left for a weekend away in Mumbai sit between then, a shimmering screen of hurt and regrets and loss and what might have been.

Tears fall silently down Vani’s cheeks, snaking into her open mouth.

Aarti opens her own mouth and tastes salt and sorrow as she remembers the young girl feverishly sobbing for her parents whom she had held in her arms, Vani’s thin body shuddering as it convulsed with grief, reminding Aarti of the baby sparrow that had fallen out of its nest that she had rescued once, the ridged bones of Vani’s spine digging into her.

‘Aarti,’ Vani says, and that one word encompasses their friendship, and the screen of the years in between crumbles with a soft, melancholic sigh.

How they had laughed together late into the night, how Vani had held Aarti while she was being sick, how she had wiped her tears, plaited her hair, nursed her back to health. Her friend. Her sister.

This woman Aarti has loved more than she can imagine. This woman whom she has missed desperately over the years.

Aarti clears her throat of thirteen years of clogged-up sufferings and grievances. ‘You devastated me.’ She cannot help it. She thinks one thing and says something completely different. Years of habit. Of being the boss. Once again the haughty memsahib. Some habits are hard to break. Argumentative with Sudhir, domineering with Vani.
Stop this. She is not your servant anymore.

A glint flashes in Vani’s eyes, blue-black like oil on the surface of stagnant water, her face hardening like milk curdling. ‘You possessed me.’

Despite herself, Aarti is shocked. This is not the Vani she remembers, the meek girl who used to jump to do her bidding. This is the woman she underestimated, who took her child and ran, who has fought for her child even from prison.

‘I surrendered my freedom to you, permitted you to play me like a puppet. I allowed you access to my dead parents. I shared my past with you. I sacrificed my future for you. But I did not want you to take my child, the best part of me, the only part of me that was precious, unsullied,
mine
. I was not willing to sacrifice my innocent child on the altar of your whims and fancies, your bulimic delusions.’

Aarti is stung. She did not know Vani harboured such bile. ‘You destroyed my future,’ she manages at last.

‘No.
You
destroyed your future.’ Each word is a grenade, precisely aimed, flawlessly executed. ‘You had a choice. You could have stopped searching for us, chosen some other innocent girl to have a baby for you.
I
did not have a choice. You gave me no choice.’

‘You ran away when I asked you to have her, remember?’ Aarti’s voice is bilious orange, the colour of the flames causing havoc within her, lit by the ire in Vani’s voice, the vitriol of Vani’s accusations. Where is the Vani she knows? Where has that gentle girl gone?

‘And you made me come back. You trapped me. Bhoomi, the servant who found you when you overdosed on pills told me later how you asked her to come into the room at nine o’clock. Exactly at nine o’clock. You planned it all. You wanted to be found. You made sure I would come back.’

‘I loved you.’ Aarti does not recognise the cowed, flabbergasted whisper as hers.

‘Your love, Aarti…’ Vani’s voice is pained, bleeding tears. ‘It was like feeding scraps to a dog. I did not want that for my child.’

‘I still do,’ Aarti says, her voice soft.

‘Huh?’ A question dances upon Vani’s face.

‘I have missed you, Vani. Yes, I treated you very badly. Yes, I blackmailed you into having a baby. I am sorry. So very sorry. You were my family. You are my family. I love you. I love your child. Your child…’

‘Are we quite decided on that then?’

Aarti does not recognise this woman. The sardonic tone does not become Vani. ‘Pardon?’

‘
My
child? You sure?’ Vani’s voice is shaking, threaded through with shimmering rage the fiery red of a stormy sky at sunset. ‘You always maintained that I was nothing without you, that you gave me everything. And I believed you, the fool that I was. But you…’ Vani’s voice stumbles, breaks and she gulps, recovers. ‘You took everything from me, everything. My freedom, of course – a given. After all, I was a mere servant, sister, pact notwithstanding. My past. You scavenged upon it. Did you think I didn’t know that you imagined my parents were yours? That’s where the sister idea for the pact came from, isn’t it? That is why you did not let me go to my village after that one time – you could not bear the thought of me communing with my dead parents without you.
They were
mine
, Aarti. Their memories were all I owned in the world of servitude I found myself in. But you wanted to claim those too. And, as if that was not enough, you wanted my future as well. How would I hope to get married once I had slept with a man who was not my husband, had a child out of wedlock, in a land where women are prized for their purity? Did you think of that?’ Vani pauses, takes a breath.

Aarti grips the sides of her chair, too stunned to speak.

‘Your love was a noose around my neck, pulled tight if I strayed too far. You took and took and are still taking. Thirteen years later and where’s my freedom? I am separated from the one person whom I wanted for myself, whom I was unwilling to share. Thirteen years later and you are still taking.’ Vani takes another deep breath, collapses into herself.

Aarti feels very small. True, everything Vani is saying is true.

‘She is yours, she always was. You weren’t mine to own and neither is she.’ And before Aarti can lose her nerve, she plunges right in. ‘I have met her.’

Vani looks up, her eyes shining with naked need, the look of a man driven mad by thirst about to be fed water, a look that says,
tell me more about my child
.

And in that moment, Aarti understands. Vani is a mother, like she, Aarti, never will be. Vani loves like her own mother must have done before her: absolutely, selflessly. In that moment, any residual anger, any residual rage dissipates. How can she grudge this mother her child? How can she deny her her daughter? What was she thinking?

‘She is lovely,’ Aarti says.

‘Isn’t she just?’ Vani’s face disintegrates in a flood of tears. ‘I miss her.’ She stretches her hands to indicate the prison. ‘I miss every minute spent away from her.’

‘I am sorry,’ Aarti says, feeling her face flush. ‘I will try my hardest to get you out of this bind. I will talk to my lawyer, see if there is something I can do. I am so sorry.’

Vani’s eyes shine. An expression of awe graces her face, shimmering beneath the deluge of tears. ‘You have changed.’

‘So have you,’ Aarti says and Vani smiles, the completely uninhibited, guileless smile Aarti recognises, and Aarti finally sees the girl Vani once was, the girl she loved, shining through this woman’s time-mapped features.

‘I just met Diya,’ Vani says, and her face beams like a car on a dark, deserted road on a blustery night. ‘She came to visit just before you. I do not get visitors at all except, occasionally, my lawyer, and then two very special visitors in one day.’ She laughs, slightly hysterically. ‘She… Diya’s grown taller in just a few days, slimmed down. She looks different. I…I want to hold onto her, to capture this moment in time, otherwise it will run away from me and she will be an adult and I will be thinking, where have the years gone? Like you must have thought when you saw her.’ A brief pause, then, ‘I stole her from you, Aarti, but you know what I wish I could do? You know what would be good? If I could steal time…’

Aarti is surprised by the snort of laughter that bursts out of her. She has forgotten the effect Vani has always had on her. With Vani she could be herself. They could talk about anything, anything at all. She could let her guard down. She could laugh like she did just now. Open-mouthed. Unmindful of appearances, unworried about being judged. And it is saying something, to laugh in these circumstances, in this mirthless room peopled with felons and their tearful relatives, to laugh with the person who has just put Aarti’s emotions through the wringer, who has shattered her, assaulted her with her words, her allegations.

She cannot believe that she and Vani are sitting here, talking, as if the intervening years never happened. She cannot believe how much at ease she feels with Vani, despite all that has gone before, despite all that has happened just now. She cannot believe the warmth creeping into her heart, which has been frozen by hatred and the desire for revenge for thirteen years. She cannot believe how light she feels now that she has dislodged the heavy yoke of hate and blame, how weightless, she who is always obsessing about weight and who always feels fat, never mind that her bulimia has been in check for years. She cannot believe how buoyant she feels, how…how peaceful, for the first time in what feels like forever.

‘If I could steal time,’ Vani says, ‘I would do so many things differently. I comprehend, fully now, how you and Sudhir must have felt, to have Diya…Rupa grow up without you. I understood while I was in here, missing her dreadfully.’ Her eyes are iridescent with the mascara of tears; glittering with remorse. ‘Back then, I was young and felt trapped. I…’

Aarti surprises herself by reaching across and putting her hand on Vani’s. This is the other thing she has forgotten – how when with Vani, she always did things out of character, things which amazed her. If Sudhir brought out the worst in her, then Vani always, without question, brought out the best. Her heart thaws completely and the words she has come here to say spill out. ‘I
am sorry,’ she says, ‘for what I asked you to do.’

‘Without you, I wouldn’t have her.’ Vani swallows. Then, her voice barely above a whisper, ‘I know I hurt you and Sudhir. Not a day has gone by that I haven’t regretted the pain I caused…’

‘I am the one who has been selfish, Vani, I know that now. I have known for a while but refused to accept it, preferring to wear the veil of hatred, point the finger of blame at you. My motives in searching for Diya weren’t exactly pure… I persevered mainly because I wanted to punish you.’ The words stick in her throat but she forces them out. ‘Truth be told, I wouldn’t have been a great mother or a suitable role model for Diya. She is amazing. You have done a good job.’

‘She is.’ Vani’s whole being lights up so that, despite her worn face that appears older than her years, she looks beautiful. ‘I was angry with you for a very long time, Aarti. But Diya…she healed me. I thought I had got rid of the anger, the hurt, but seeing you here… I was harsh with you just now, Aarti, but the words have been brewing within me for years. They had to be said.’

Aarti nods once. ‘They hurt like mad,’ she says. ‘But I suppose I deserve them.’

Vani’s face is transformed by incredulous amazement, her mouth open in a perfect O of surprise, tears snaking into it.

Aarti reaches across and puts her arms around Vani and they hug, awkwardly at first and then they are laughing and crying and comforting each other like they did once before when it all began.

Later, much later, Vani asks, ‘Is Ram still your driver?’

‘Yes. The only one left in my employ. Why do you ask?

Vani is smiling weirdly as she says, her voice slightly shaky, ‘No reason. Just remembered him, that’s all.’

‘You once asked me to make peace with my parents before it was too late,’ Aarti says, ‘and I have.’

Vani nods, ‘I am pleased.’

‘They did love me; they just didn’t know how to show it.’

‘Yes.’

‘The same with me. I did love you, you know, Vani.’

Vani nods, her eyes overflowing again. ‘I know,’ she whispers.

H
ome

Noun:
the place where one lives.

Related Words
: blood, kin, family.

H
ome is
the cradle of my mother’s arms. Her voice whispering sweet nothings in my ear. Her head resting on mine. Her tears baptising my hair. Her body propping me up. Her smell of fruit ripening in weak summer sun and sweat. After floundering for so many days, after being lost and lonely, a directionless compass, I have found my bearings. I am home.

‘I am sorry,’ she whispers, over and over. ‘I am sorry you had to undergo this trauma. So very sorry.’

Afterwards, she hands me the letters. Her words to buttress me, keep me company while we wait for the machinery of the law to chug into place, to release her to us – or not for a while, as it may be.

I take the letters back to Farah’s, read the words my mother has penned, and I understand. I understand. I know now why she did what she did. I know why she felt she had to run. I know why she worried about telling me. Her guilt. Her fear. Everything makes sense. I am angry at that woman, at Aarti. I am horrified at what she asked my mother to do, what she made her do.

‘I hate her,’ I say when I see my mother next.

Her eyes widen and she looks at me with all the love in the world. ‘Hate narrows a person, Diya. You have a gentle, giving heart. Don’t layer it with hate. It makes for a very bitter lining. It will eat you up inside, make you into a smaller person than the one you are capable of being. Forgive her. Let go. It will set you free. Trust me.’

I clench my fingers into fists.

My mother takes my hands in hers and very gently opens my fingers one by one. She cups my chin with her palm, lifts my face up to hers. ‘Look at me.’

I do. I look into eyes that are as familiar to me as my own. Eyes that I have woken up to every day of my life except the last few nightmarish days. Eyes bursting with love, the melting chocolate-button gaze.

‘She was not in her senses, not completely herself. She had abused her body so much that it messed up her mind. But…if she hadn’t asked what she did of me, you wouldn’t be here. I am, I will always be grateful to her for giving me you.’

‘But, Mum…’

‘Diya, she’s suffered for it. She has. And she loves you.’

An involuntary snort escapes me. But then I think of the doll sitting in the wardrobe in Farah’s house. Aarti’s needy face, her gaze fixed on me, drinking me in like a man in a desert who’s stumbled upon an oasis. The biscuits in that room soaked in her desperation, reeking of her loneliness. The prison of her scrawny arms holding me captive. The leathery skin stretched like elastic, the silvery bones that ripple just underneath, that play peek-a-boo when she moves.

‘She does, Diya.’ Mum knows me, knows when to press her advantage. ‘She did not know love, did not experience it growing up. And so she loves in the only way she knows how.’

‘Mum…’

‘It is easy to hate. Much, much harder to forgive. Forgive her, Diya.’

‘Have you?’ I ask and she smiles.

‘I was angry with her for a long time. It soured me inside, the anger. It shrivelled my heart. You saved me, you healed me. You filled my heart with love, chasing away the loathing, the rage. I would look at you, innocent, happy, and think, God has given me this precious gift and instead of thanking Him, I am hating one of his creation, the very person via whose insistence I had you.’ She takes a breath. ‘When my parents died, when I first went to live with her, I would wonder,
what is the plan in all of this?
Then you came along. And I knew. You are perfect; you have a beautiful, loving, giving heart. And you were created out of all that madness, that discord. I learnt from you, took my cue from you. I threw away the hate, darling – and look, I am so much the happier for it.’ A pause. ‘She came to see me,’ her eyes shimmering.

‘She did?’

‘I finally spoke my mind after so many years of subservience. Told her how I felt. We cleared the air, apologised to each other.’

‘You have nothing to apologise for,’ my voice indignant. The prison guard looks our way and I lower it again, bashful.

‘She has suffered, my lovely, because of what I did…’ A pause, then, ‘She said she would speak to her lawyer, use her contacts to try and get me out of this…’ Mum lifts her arms to indicate the prison.

‘She got you in this situation in the first place!’

‘I have you, Diya. Who does she have?’ Mum smiles at me, her expression full of love. ‘And despite everything, in her own way she loved me, she still loves me. And she loves you. Go to Aarti, make your peace with her.’ She looks at me, her eyes glowing, and I revel in her gaze; I bask in the familiar warmth, the comforting fortress of her arms.

And after, I go to visit the woman because of whom I came into this world, the woman because of whom my mother is in prison.

I go because I do not want to hate for the rest of my life. I go because I am too happy to harbour grudges, too happy to feel upset, angry or sad for too long. I go because, even though I am angry with Aarti, for lying, for causing all this, she is also the reason I exist. I go because even though my mother is in prison and Aarti put her there, it has been proven that Vani is my mother and no one can separate us anymore once she gets out after serving her sentence. I go because my mother asked me to and I do not want to deny my mother anything. I go because, despite everything, the overwhelming feeling that skeletal, needy Aarti arouses in me is pity.

Her face lights up when she sees me, naked hope shining out of her eyes like the lone lamp in a dark courtyard, glowing so brightly it hurts to look.

‘Why did you lie to me?’ I ask and her face crumples.

She sobs and she sobs, the sobs tearing through her bird-like body, rendering her even more fragile, even more breakable. And I hold her and I pat her back. And she looks at me through her tears as if she is memorising me, storing my every feature in some secret corner of her mind for use later.

‘Would you like a biscuit?’ she manages in between sobs.

And we both smile.

She says she is going back to India in two days, that she will stay with her parents while the court case against her, for claiming me as hers, for not including Mum as the birth mother in my birth certificate, for wasting police time and resources, takes place.

But my mother is in prison for forging documents. Why don’t you have to go to prison?
I think.

As if she can read my mind, she tells me that things are a bit different in India. She tells me she has contacts in high places, as do her parents. She tells me that with the right amount of money changing hands, she will be able to stay out of jail. She tells me that is how she managed to get the staff in the private clinic where I was born – a discreet establishment where the very rich and very famous go to have their babies out of wedlock or recover from their addictions – to conveniently ignore the fact that the woman who had actually given birth to me was not the woman mentioned in the birth certificate, to sign it and make it official.

She tells me she has spoken to my father (whom she is no longer married to, which is why she goes by Aarti Kumar now and not Aarti Shetty). She tells me he loves me very much and sends all his love. She tells me I have a half-brother who would love to meet me.

‘Will you come and visit sometime?’ she asks and the need is there again, bright as a lighthouse on a stormy night, guiding wayward ships to shore.

I think of my mother, serving a sentence for living illegally in the UK and for being in possession of false documents. I do not know what is going to happen, what is written in my future.

But I do know this: I will be where my mother is.