Daughter of the Ganges Read online

  That embrace was their blessing, to go ahead and make my journey of discovery. They gave me the energy, the strength, the drive, and the courage to stay the course. I was confident that, whatever happened, they would be there for me no matter what, in the same way they had been there all those years ago, on October 27, at Barcelona airport, waiting on the runway, full of uncertainties. Then too, with an emotional embrace we sealed the love that has sustained us until today.

  There are hours to go until we touch down in Bombay, but I have Mom’s diary to keep me company. She began writing it just before I arrived in Barcelona to be her daughter. On the day I told them I was going back to India, Mom went to her room and took the notebook out of her chest of drawers, and revealed that she had begun to keep the diary when I came into her life. There was one for me and one for my sister, Fatima. Over all these years she had been writing to ensure that there would be a record of how things had been. She was afraid that if her memory failed she would be unable to explain these things in detail.

  In giving me the diary, Mom had provided me with the tools to deal with the pain that might be waiting for me. This was my story. It wasn’t a tale full of terrible secrets, because we never had any secrets at home, but there were accounts of some quite intimate episodes. During the early days, months, even years, Mom wrote every day, even if it was only a few lines. She gathered up all the daily anecdotes, the day-to-day of our existence, how we adapted to the new house, new family, language, food, and customs.

  Going through the journal for the first time, I am struck by the love my parents felt for me before we ever met. All they knew of me was what Mother Adelina had written to them from the orphanage in Bombay, and the photograph that was on their sideboard for days and days. I am very moved to realize just how much they wanted me and how much energy they put into getting me to their home. I realize that my story has a logic to it. As always, however, just as in the country I came from, it all seems contradictory. On the one hand, I felt unsettled thinking about my parents who wished only to make me happy from the very first instant they spoke my name. On the other hand, there is the sadness I feel thinking of those blood-related parents who didn’t want me, for whom I was just a burden. And while it is also true that I tried to avoid feelings of dejection at the fact of having been rejected, I coped by thinking that there must have been a reason, some adverse circumstances that I knew nothing about. I don’t really believe that they didn’t want me, only that it was not in their power to take care of me. It had to be something like that.

  Monday, October 21, 1974

  Today I went to buy this notebook with red covers in which I am going to write down each and every detail of this story of affection which is about to begin with you, our daughter Asha. I have also bought another one for Fatima, our youngest daughter, who has already been living with us for almost three months and has made our lives complete. I shall note down the little details of day-to-day events in each of them. In this way, when you are both grown-up and my memory fails me, you will be able to know how it was for us, for your father as much as for me, when you arrived in our home.

  I will be waiting for you, my dearest daughter Asha, with unbounded hopes. They have told us that you will be arriving next Sunday, October 27, 1974, at eleven in the morning.

  I could have started this diary by telling you about the months we have spent being driven mad by all the paperwork, procedures, requirements, translations …. It would take ages to tell you all of that. For this reason, your father and I have decided to carefully store all the papers relating to your adoption. We went through so many unbelievable setbacks, though now all of that seems a long time ago. During the last few months we must have asked ourselves thousands of times why we chose to look in a place so far away … and it makes me laugh because there are things that you can’t really explain in so many words.

  We were always convinced, and as time goes by it seems even more clear, that at a certain point in our lives, four spirits coming from such distant places would grow together once and forevermore.

  I know that this is one of those stories I shall have to repeat to you countless times, because very soon you will become a part of it. Your father and I wanted to have the children which nature could not give us, and the two of you were clamoring for the parents you were denied by your own respective histories. Now we have come to the end of that page. It is time to turn over and start a new one, as much for you as for us.

  2.

  BOMBAY

  After traveling nearly halfway around the world in a matter of hours, I landed in Bombay—Mumbai, as it is now known—the Gate of India, the city where I spent the first years of my childhood. Despite the anxiety I felt about my personal journey, I was comforted by the fact that my work-camp companions shared the same hopes and aims as mine. Above all, we wanted to do something useful, to leave behind the ballast of our daily lives, lives that often seemed superficial, to feel ourselves reborn as new beings, each with all five senses keen to receive and to give.

  The airport is an immense space, uninviting. The pale fluorescent lighting provides little illumination. As I walk through I try to take myself back twenty years, but the only thing I manage to remember is the glass door. It is shown in a photograph, half blurred, that I have kept in a pocket for all these years. In it I am a tiny six-year-old, all dressed up, clutching the hand of the air hostess responsible for leading me toward another life. Mother Adelina is in the picture, waving good-bye, but I don’t see her because I am only looking ahead. I have eyes only for my path to Barcelona. I never thought of turning to say a last farewell. It was in the moment of crossing the threshold of that glass door that I began to feel certain that I was beginning a new life. I remember feeling a strange tingling inside, a powerful mixture of happiness and regret. I must have been granted the gift of living more than one life: a reincarnation, without the physical transformation.

  Tuesday, October 22, 1974

  In these last remaining days we are desperately trying to find a school for you, so that when you arrive you can start getting used to normal daily life. Your father, as you will soon be able to see for yourself, is good with his hands and quite particular about the details. He has made some colorful cards to send to all of our friends and parents to invite them here for your arrival and “birth” into our family. We can’t keep so much joy to ourselves!

  We emerge from the airport terminal. The sky is leaden and hangs heavily over us. The heat leaves us dazed and we accept as best we can the marvelous reception laid out by representatives from the NGO. They hold up a Welcome sign and present us with garlands of flowers. We manage to fit ourselves, along with all the rucksacks and bundles of equipment, into a minibus that will take us to the house where we will spend a couple of days until we are divided into groups and sent to stay with our respective local families. We make the journey in silence. The grayness, the stifling heat, hits us deep down, and we ask ourselves what we are doing here. I know that I can’t back down. I have a challenge to meet. When I see the menacing sight of a raven brushing against the vehicle, the only thing I feel like doing is turning around and going back.

  We cross the city and are struck by the poverty, the rats running along the street …. The impact of our first impressions is so powerful that we are unable to really make sense of what we are seeing. Everything seems to be infused with a belief in the continuous succession of life and death, in a cycle. Here, nothing carries the same kind of importance as we give it.

  According to this belief, life is simply one more step in the cycle. It will be followed by another and yet another, as long as you follow the correct path with respect to yourself and others and do not expect any material reward for your actions. Seeing how people manage to get on with their lives under difficult conditions, without breaking down along the way, helps me put a lot of things in perspective. Of course, it would not be easy to change my way of thinking. Ideas are one thing, putting them into practice is quite anothe
r.

  All of us feel a little perplexed. My companions keep an eye on me, and I feel their protective anxiety. They ask if I am all right and I reply yes, yes, of course. I don’t manage to convince all of them, but I don’t want them to worry. I watch the people in the streets, and it’s strange to think that I was born here. I don’t understand how I could have spent almost seven years of my life here. My thoughts whirl between past, present, and future, and I find it hard to admit that—in some way—I am a part of these people. Evoking the past makes me wonder what my future would have been had my life carried on as it started. My present life, and the fact that I don’t know how to deal with everything around me right now, reaffirms the feeling that I was lucky to have been chosen. The smells are so overwhelming …. From time to time a garden releases a delicious gust of air, but the next moment, I am hit by an unexpected stench. I have my heart in my mouth.

  Tuesday, October 23, 1974

  Today’s great joy has been that, thanks to a friend who works in the airport, I have managed to get a pass that will allow us to go all the way into the landing area. This way we can be waiting at the door of the plane to embrace you, receive you into our/your new family. And then all the months of waiting will be over, the worry we have felt at not hearing any news except by letter, or brief phone calls to the nuns. At last we will have our Asha home. I give thanks because little by little things are falling into place and everything that seemed so impossible is becoming real.

  It is a couple of days since I arrived and I am finding it difficult to adapt. At times I can’t avoid sinking low and thinking that I really don’t know if I am going to make it. Mealtimes are some of the worst moments. I’ve always been a fussy eater, but since arriving here I can’t manage to keep anything down, it all makes me sick. I find the food they give us too spicy and I am scared I might get ill. I feel no motivation and, since I am not eating, I can’t manage to get my strength up. After supper we go up to the terrace for a while.

  The stifling heat persists and the view from up there is not exactly the stuff of picture postcards: the gray sky, the sea—in the background—an even more dense gray, the semi-derelict state of the surrounding houses, the mud, the pools of water left by the last downpour.

  Despite the support of my companions who know about my fears, the process of adapting is proving to be a very steep climb. But I am not here to look at India from the rooftop of this fortress. So I gather my forces together and go to the room where Father Jordi Ribas is going to have a chat with us. I am keen to get to know him in person after all that I have heard about him. He is very charismatic and at the same time exudes a deep humility. In even tones, and speaking from his experience, Father Jordi talks to us about an India that I have been unable to see yet, of a people driven in pursuit of their desires, who are trying to find their way, of a people full of life. He gives us a sense of what really matters in all that we see around us. How, despite the poverty, we can really get something out of this journey if we allow ourselves to be immersed in the essence of the people. In getting to know them we will learn to value the pieces that make up their lives. He underlines the importance of looking, to see things in their fullness, rather than of judging. You should never judge any man until you have walked two moons in his moccasins.1

  The key point he makes is that we must keep our eyes wide open to grasp the exterior and arrive at the interior. There is pain, but no bitterness. His words open a window through which we are able to see our surroundings with new eyes.

  He has turned us upside down and shaken out the baggage we were carrying that prevented us from recognizing the harmony that exists in all things, in each person, in each gesture. First of all, no more wristwatches. We must change our way of thinking.

  For me, it is the start of a new challenge: to see India the way it is, leaving aside absurd prejudices and not looking to find fault in the most obvious things—the smells, the heat, the food …. I feel ready to try to understand this other India, behind which there is a whole philosophy, another reality. I needed a bit of a shove like this and it has arrived at the right moment, because it is now that the real journey of learning is to begin.

  Thursday, October 24, 1974

  Asha, our daughter, what a happy day. Thanks to a dear friend, Pau, I have managed to get you a place in a wonderful school. For days your father and I have been round Barcelona from school to school. We were getting a little desperate because they were all giving us a hard time.

  Like all parents, what we want is for you to be able to fit in, the sooner the better, and to be able to have the same kind of life as all the other boys and girls your age. We have no idea how you will take all of this. It will be difficult, as much for you as for us, but we feel confident that there will also be a good side to it all. We will learn as we go along, together.

  3.

  NINE INSTEAD OF FIVE

  Maria, who is the coordinator of the work camp, Núria, Gabriela, and I have been assigned to the neighborhood of Shere Punjab. The Patil family, with whom we are lodging, receives us with open arms. I don’t know who is more curious, we or they. Nadina comes out to bid us welcome. She is twelve years old and, because she speaks English very well, she is responsible for the introductions. Her father, Naresh, drives a taxi. He is a calm man of few words and exudes a great serenity. Later on, the elder daughter, Nanda, who is eighteen, arrives, and little Ibuthi, who is five, is so excited by our arrival that she runs in circles around her mother, Kamal. They all speak English, so at least there will be no problem with verbal communication. But they cannot hide their surprise at seeing me. Maria briefly tells them my story and they look at me with an affectionate smile of complicity, which makes me feel very good inside.

  The house is really tiny. The dining room is dominated by the television, which is always on. There are decorative elements of every imaginable kind on the walls. Calendars with thick pages and striking, colorful drawings with typical Indian patterns sit in fraternal coexistence with prints of the Virgin Mary. This is where the parents and the little one sleep. Life centers around the small kitchen. On the floor there is a stone on which the mother kneads the chapatis, and in one corner an altar dedicated to Ganesh, for whom incense is burned.

  Ganesh is the Hindu elephant god. He is represented as a man with a big belly and the head of an elephant. Ganesh is called upon to resolve problems and remove obstacles that come along in daily life. He is also considered a messenger between men and the gods. According to myth, Ganesh was the son of Shiva and Parvati. Shiva had to leave home when Ganesh was born, and he returned years later to find a stranger barring the way into his own home. Shiva, impatient to be reunited with his wife and son, cut off the head of the guard. Parvati began to weep at this tragedy, because the guard was none other than Ganesh, who had grown up. Shiva hastily tried to make amends by cutting off the head of an elephant and placing it on the body of his son. He promised his wife that Ganesh would be a great god and men would invoke his name first when seeking to be heard by the other gods. The family that took us in calls on Ganesh with serene conviction.

  We unpack our things in the room where the four of us are to sleep, with Nadina and Nanda. The room is tiny. A heap of mattresses comes out from underneath the big bed, and when everything has been arranged for us to sleep, Nanda shows us around the neighborhood.

  Shere Punjab is a humble quarter of huge contrasts. To Western eyes it seems a little chaotic, but now that I am ready to start seeing from scratch, having decided to free myself of the rigid aesthetic rules I came with, I am touched by a sense of beauty that is complete in itself. In late afternoon the streets are full of life, the cheerful stalls selling fruits and spices, the smell of incense, the clothes dyed in an infinity of colors, the men smoking their bidis in the square. Time passes with no rush.

  Mahakali is the name of the main street, which serves as a reference point, and Nanda shows us the route to the bus that will take us to the work camp, a school in Andheri. />
  Back at the house, the family presents us with what will be our very first authentic Indian supper, served with all the accompanying ritual. On the floor, on top of a mosaic of carpets and cushions, there are chapatis, rice, and lentils.

  It is all very spicy, but for the first time since being here I find it delicious. For the first time, I manage to eat it all up without qualms. It is much the same with having to eat using only my right hand—it’s all a matter of balance, but I manage pretty well, much better than my companions. When I first arrived in Barcelona my mother found my habit of eating with my hands very amusing. Perhaps the skill has been tucked away in some corner inside me and is now resurfacing. After supper we help the children do their homework against the background of an Indian film on television, a tearful drama of the kind that lasts more than three hours, complete with obligatory old-fashioned romanticism, strident music, and violence.

  As we are about to go to sleep, all six of us spread out on the bed and the mattresses on the floor, I sing a lullaby for them. It is a magical moment, like a prayer. I have always adored music; ever since I was a child, I can’t resist it. Then, in silence, my mind starts to go back over the day, thinking about all that happened to me. I always do this, every night, but this time there are too many emotions, and I am just too tired to think. My eyes close involuntarily. I can think tomorrow.