SOMER SITS ON THE BENCH, SIPPING HER WARM SWEET COFFEE and watching Asha hang from the monkey bars in the playground. In the last year, Asha has become adventurous—climbing, hanging, and swinging from everything she can. All of her little-girl caution is gone, and she has the scabbed knees to prove it.
She loves bringing Asha to this park. They moved to this neighborhood a few years ago, when she was two. It was hard to leave San Francisco, the place where they learned to be a family together. After years of pain and estrangement, she and Krishnan enjoyed the novelty of their family time—going to Baker Beach on the weekend, where Asha would tiptoe just up to the water’s edge and then run away screaming when the next wave came. Somer and Krishnan found a way to relate to each other again. Their conversations didn’t center on medicine anymore: they rebuilt their tattered relationship, and did it around Asha.
They hadn’t planned to join the exodus of their friends out of the city, but as Asha became more active, they began to lament their tiny backyard and the quality of the local schools. When Kris got a lucrative offer to join a practice in Menlo Park, a neighborhood with a good school district thirty minutes south of San Francisco, they started looking for houses nearby. Somer found a position at the community medical clinic.
“Asha, five more minutes,” Somer calls out, noting the sun’s position.
“She’s lovely,” says a woman sitting on the bench next to her. “I think I’ve seen you before. We come here almost every day.” The woman gestures to a little blond boy digging in the sandbox. “He loves it, and I’m always happy to get out of the house.”
“Yeah, Asha loves it here too. I’ll have to pry her away soon.” Somer laughs.
“You should come by here at noon on Fridays,” the woman says. “I get together with some of the other nannies from the neighborhood every week for a picnic. The kids have fun together, and we get some grown-up company.”
Nannies? After a polite moment, Somer stands and collects her belongings. “I’m not her nanny,” she says, “I’m her mother.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry. I just assumed…I mean, I thought because—”
“It’s fine,” Somer says, in a tone that indicates otherwise. “She looks more like her father, but she has my personality.” She strides toward Asha. “Have a nice day.”
On the way home, Asha rides her bicycle while Somer trails behind, reflecting on why the incident at the park bothered her so much. It’s easy for people to assume she and Asha aren’t related. She should be used to it by now. When the three of them are out together, people often look twice at Somer. Even she can see how natural Kris and Asha look together, when she rides on his shoulders or they sit side by side in a restaurant booth. At these times, Somer has to resist feeling she’s the one who has been adopted into their family.
At an adoption seminar they attended years ago, they were told that adoption only solves childlessness, not infertility—a distinction Somer has come to understand. Asha’s arrival into their lives brought many things—love, joy, fulfillment—but it didn’t erase all the pain caused by the miscarriages, nor did it completely eliminate her desire for a biological child.
When they are together, just the two of them, Somer feels like Asha’s mother and loves her as if she’s her own child. She doesn’t tell people Asha is adopted. Not only does it not seem pertinent, but she doesn’t want to make Asha self-conscious about it. She doesn’t see the dissimilarity evident to everyone else in Asha’s dark hair, her tan skin. Now, when she sees Asha waiting at the corner, it is through the eyes of the nanny at the park. One of Asha’s thin brown legs is perched atop a pedal, while the other barely touches the ground. Her thick black ponytail is peeking out from the back of her pale blue ladybug helmet. Somer looks at her daughter, who looks nothing like her daughter.
22
GOLD SPOT
Bombay, India—1990
KAVITA
KAVITA INHALES DEEPLY WHEN SHE FINALLY CLIMBS DOWN FROM the open-air bus. For the past four hours she, Jasu, and Vijay have shared cramped passage with dozens of sweat-drenched people, most utterly disinterested in the scenery they passed along the way. Many of them make this trip every week to sell their wares in the city. Despite the fact they purchased three tickets, only Kavita could find a seat on the bus. She held Vijay on her lap the whole way, numbness slowly spreading through her thighs. Jasu was forced to stand for the duration of the ride next to a man and his wire cage of chickens, which swung repeatedly into Jasu’s knee. Neither of them complained, for some passengers hung out of the door and others clung to the roof of the bus.
With three bags containing all their possessions, they now stand outside the bus depot. Vijay leans against her leg, eyelids drooping. Their plan is to make it to a settlement in the center of the city, where they’ve been told they can stay for a night or two for very little money. Right now, they need a good night’s rest. Tomorrow, they will see about finding a real home and jobs. Jasu leads them on foot, carrying a suitcase in each hand and stopping periodically to ask directions.
Kavita follows him, holding a bag in one hand and Vijay’s hand in the other. As they move through the darkening landscape of Bombay, she is startled by how much it has changed since she was here six years ago. Defying all possibility, there seem to be even more people crowded into the same space, more vehicles on the roads, more noise and fumes filling the air.
Two thoughts keep entering her mind: how much she already misses the village, and the bitter memory of leaving Usha at that orphanage. These two ideas vie for prominence in her head, and Kavita fights a rising sense of resentment toward Jasu. He forced me to give up my baby. And now he’s forced me to come to this city, to leave everything I love. For a moment, she loses sight of Jasu up ahead in the crowd and hurries to catch up with him. They only have each other in this strange new place. She hears her mother’s soothing voice. You must trust in him. You must be brave for them.
By the time they arrive at Dharavi, the place about which they have been told, night has fallen. They are shocked to find not a building as they expected, but an enormous shantytown, occupying the space between a highway on one side and railroad tracks on the other. There is a long row of shacks, shoddily constructed from corrugated tin, cardboard, and mud: little one-room houses made of garbage. They walk slowly, to avoid the river of raw sewage that runs alongside the huts. Kavita clutches Vijay’s hand tightly as she pulls him out of the way of the small children running around naked. A beggar with stumps for legs stretches one bony arm out toward her. Another man, obviously drunk, leers at her and runs his tongue over his lips. Kavita keeps her eyes on the ground, where the main dangers are discarded trash and scurrying rodents.
“You need place to stay? You need home?” A man dressed as a woman in a garish yellow sari starts walking alongside Jasu. He has a pretty face, and when he smiles, two gold teeth are visible. Jasu exchanges a few words Kavita cannot hear, but soon they are following the man down the lane. He stops in front of a small mud shack draped in plastic sheeting with a rusting tin roof. When he tries to push open the crooked door, something inside blocks it from opening. In the dim light, they see it is a white-haired dog, so gaunt that each of its ribs can be easily counted. The sari-clad man briefly betrays his feminine persona to kick the dog out of the way, then gracefully holds out his arm to usher them in.
“Other family left just this morning,” says the man. “You can stay here, if you please. Only a small donation is requested.” He turns over his outstretched hand so that his palm is open, and smiles coyly at Jasu, who turns to Kavita.
“It’s only one night,” she says, to make the unavoidable choice easier for him. It is already dark outside. They have been walking a long time, and Vijay looks ready to fall asleep on his feet. Jasu puts down the suitcases, takes a couple of coins from his pocket, and drops them into the waiting hand without touching it, then shoos the man away. Jasu steps into the shack first, crouching down to pass through the doorway. Kavita and Vijay follow him. The
small, windowless room is nearly bare, with nothing on the packed dirt floor but rotting food scraps. Kavita is suffocated by the stench of human waste, and fights her reflex to gag.
Kavita slips her arm into Jasu’s. “Come, why don’t you take Vijay to get some food, and I will fix it a little?” Jasu takes Vijay down to the nearby street stalls. Kavita steps outside to take a deep breath of the comparatively clean air, then covers her nose and mouth with the end of her sari. She props open the door to let in some light. Inside, she sets to work, gathering the food scraps and waste into a small plastic bag she finds balled up in the corner. When she takes the garbage outside and stops for another breath, she spies a broom leaning against the neighboring shack. She looks around, darts over to wrap the broom in the folds of her sari, and returns to the shack.
Working as quickly as she can, she squats down on her haunches and traverses the small room, banging the broom forcefully against the dirt floor. Her efforts create a dust cloud that makes her cough and her eyes water, but she continues anyway. If she can just remove this top layer of filth that carries the memory of other people’s food and garbage and urine, if she can just sweep it outside, there will be fresh earth underneath, the kind she’s used to. When her throat burns so much she can’t continue, she sweeps the pile of dirt outside and returns the broom to its place. She waits outside for her lungs to clear, and the dust to settle inside. She steps into the hut again and inhales. Yes, the air seems cleaner, or could it just be she has become accustomed to the odor of this place? Finally, she takes out the bedroll they have brought with them and lays it out, along with their three bags.
Jasu and Vijay bring back hot pau-bhaji and cold bottles of Gold Spot. Vijay is intrigued by his first taste of the orange soda, trilling it over his curled tongue, letting the bubbles tingle there, then slide down the back of his throat. So taken is he with this new experience that he is completely unfazed by their dismal surroundings. As they eat, they hear, from somewhere outside, the crackling sound of a radio that quickly turns to blaring music. An old Hindi film love song comes on, and Jasu begins singing along, making up the lyrics he doesn’t know. He takes Kavita’s hand, pulling her up to dance in the small, dank space. Kavita goes along, grudgingly at first, until she sees Vijay clapping and singing as well. Then a genuine smile comes to her face, and soon they are all laughing and dancing together. They spend their first night in hell closely bound in one another’s arms until they all fall asleep.
THEY ARE AWOKEN EARLY THE NEXT MORNING BY THE LOUD honking of trucks outside their door. Kavita hears them first and cannot return to sleep. Jasu wakes up soon after she does. After a few minutes of lying together entangled, eyes open, they both rise quietly from the bedroll. Kavita steps outside to find the latrine. She sees a long queue of people gathering, but when she inquires, she learns they are waiting to get water from the public standpipe. There is no designated latrine area. With as much modesty as she can manage, she does her business by the railroad tracks and quickly returns to the shack.
“There is a long queue already for the water—over there,” she says to Jasu, pointing. “But we don’t have anything—a vessel or a pail—to collect it.”
“You will need water today. It will be hot. Here, how about these?” Jasu says, retrieving the two empty Gold Spot bottles from the night before. “I will go. You stay here,” he says, gesturing to the sleeping Vijay. When Jasu returns, nearly an hour later, he looks shaken.
“What is it, jani? Why did it take so long?” She uses the term of endearment infrequently outside of their nighttime intimacies, but the vulnerable look on his face compels her to.
“This place is crazy, Kavi. One woman thought another one tried to jump the queue, and started yelling at her to go to the back of the line. The first woman refused to go, and they started fighting with her—pushing and kicking her until she left. Women, fighting one another. For water.” He shakes his head, still distraught over the memory. “Tomorrow, I will go earlier.” He gives her the filled soda bottles, then sets out for the day, promising to be back by nightfall.
When Vijay wakes up, Kavita decides to take him out of the basti for the day, already feeling the hopelessness of the slum descending upon her. She takes their most important belongings and hides the rest beneath the bedroll. Kavita grips Vijay’s hand while they walk through the streets of Bombay—broken pavement underfoot littered with garbage and animal droppings, people pressed in close to one another, with no choice but to move together like a flock of birds. Street hawkers call out, selling their wares.
“Hot chai! Garam garam chai! Hot tea!”
“See, madam. Salwar khameez! Only one hundred rupees. Many colors!”
“Latest films. Two films, only fifty rupees. Very good price. Your choice.”
Kavita is reminded again of that day years ago when she walked these streets, being pulled by Rupa, just as she now leads Vijay. She finds herself searching for familiarity on every corner. Have I crossed the street at this bus stop before? Doesn’t that newsstand look familiar? Is this the same fruit market I recognize? In the midst of this mad place where she has only been once before, this city bursting with over ten million people, Kavita tries to make some sense. Through the crowd of bodies and limbs, she glimpses a face that looks familiar, a little girl who looks just like the image of Usha she carries in her mind. Two glossy braids tied with ribbons, a round face, a sweet smile. The little girl holds the hand of a woman in a green sari. Is it her? Could it be her? She looks about the same age as Vijay. Kavita pushes through the crowd, following the couple, ignoring Vijay’s protests that she’s pulling him too quickly. The green sari fades from view, lost in a swirl of people and colors. Kavita stops in the middle of the footpath, breathing heavily, looking in every direction but finding no one left to follow.
“Mama?” She feels Vijay tugging on her hand and looks down at his questioning eyes.
“Hahn, beta. Challo. Let’s go.” She worries about losing Vijay in the throngs of people that push past them, and about the toothless beggars that follow them. Kavita keeps searching for the green sari and recalls Jasu’s words about the baby girl. She will become a burden to us, a drain on our family. Is that what you want? Perhaps he was right then, even wise. It is hard to imagine having two children now, when it isn’t clear they can properly care for one. They walk all day until Kavita is tired enough for sleep to come quickly tonight. After just one day, she feels stifled by this city, throbbing with its people and activity and noise. Her lungs, accustomed to the clean air of the village, struggle against this smog. Her feet long for the damp packed earth of the fields back home.
They walk back along the length of the settlement, passing hundreds of shacks like theirs. She navigates around a dirty goat pushing its nose through a large heap of smoking garbage on the corner. Every shack they pass has the same things out front: a cooking fire fueled with cow dung patties, a bucket of water to be rationed all day, and tattered clothing hung on lines. A few ingenious residents have devised ways of stringing up antennas for televisions or have transistor radios, around which more people gather. Kavita longs for something to soothe her: her mother’s comforting hand, Rupa’s bubbling laughter.
By the time Kavita and Vijay reach their shack, Jasu is inside already, sitting on the edge of the bedroll. He rubs the sole of one foot with his thumbs. When he hears them enter, he looks up and smiles. “What happened?” Kavita asks.
“I must have walked ten miles today in those old things.” He nods at his worn chappals by the door. Kavita sits down next to him and takes his foot in her hands.
“I visited three messenger offices today.” He closes his eyes and lies back on the bedroll. “They all said they had no work for me. They only want men who know the streets of Bombay—rickshaw drivers or taxi drivers. Tell me, if I was already a rickshaw or taxi driver, why would I need a messenger job?”
“Hahn, why?” Kavita speaks slowly, concurring but wondering what this means.
?
??Then, I went to see about a dhaba-wallah job,” Jasu continues, “and as I suspected, it is very good money to carry those tiffins across town. One hundred rupees a day—can you believe? But there is a long list of men who want to become dhaba-wallahs. They told me to check back every week. They said it might take three, four months until they have a job.”
Kavita, uncertain how to react to this news, watches Vijay draw circles with his finger into the packed dirt floor. You must trust in him.
“But good news—I met this fellow outside the dhaba-wallah central office. He knows the big boss and can help my name come to the top of the list. It should happen quickly with his help, two to three weeks. Only two hundred rupees I gave him.”
Kavita looks up at her husband with alarm. The sum total they brought with them was one thousand rupees—their entire savings, plus gifts from their families.
“Don’t worry, chakli!” He grins. “It’s fine. This man showed me his papers, he is a good man. And also, he will help me get a bicycle to use for the job. He will let me use it straightaway, no money. At first, my earnings will pay for the bicycle, but after I own it, I will get to keep all my earnings.” Jasu sits up and grabs her shoulders. “Don’t look so worried. This is good, chakli, very good!” He wraps his broad palms around her head and kisses the top of it. “It’s happening quickly, just as I thought. In no time, we’ll have our own flat, with lots of space and a big kitchen for you. Heh?”
She finds it impossible not to smile when he is like this. Now it is her turn to exhale. “Okay, Mister Dhaba-wallah, let us have dinner then.”
ONE MORNING TWO WEEKS LATER, KAVITA WATCHES FROM THE bedroll as Jasu carries a small basin of cold water to the corner of the room. Methodically, he washes himself and shaves. He has been going back to the dhaba-wallah office every day, but still they have not had a job for him. The man who took two hundred rupees from him has not been seen again either. Still, every day, Jasu rises early to stand in the water queue. He insists on doing this himself, though it’s usually women from the basti standing in line. Today, he brings back reports of a typhoid outbreak on the north side of the settlement. Three children dead already, many more sick. “Keep Vijay away from the dirty water,” he tells her. “These people do susu and kaka anywhere, like dogs they are. No shame.” He dresses carefully and combs his hair. He hurries, as if someone expects him at a certain time. Each morning, he departs hopeful; every evening he returns to their temporary home dejected again.