Kalyana Read online

  Manjula said she didn’t celebrate Holi or Diwali anymore; she hunted for chocolate eggs in the spring and threw silver tinsel on pine trees and sang Christmas carols in December. She said that she cooked a large turkey for both occasions and invited Peter’s whole family to their small condo. At their local church, they sat with friends every Sunday and the adults shared wine and bread.

  “Jesus suffered and died on the cross for our sins, Sister.” Manjula said this passionately and with absolute conviction. “His suffering brought us mortal beings closer to God.”

  My mother insisted that all gods were the same. But Manjula shook her head vigorously, saying that there was only one God, and he walked the lands of Israel and Jerusalem along with his Father and the Holy Spirit. “All three are one, Sister!” She glowed.

  Manjula tried to convince my mother to convert to Christianity. She said it was a sin to worship idols.

  This upset my mother greatly. “We don’t stop you from dipping your bread in wine. Why do you try to stop us from burning incense?” She shook her head. “Do you know, Manjula, it is this desire, the desire for religions to convert everyone to one belief, that causes so many problems? The only thing that results from one religion trying to dominate the entire world is pain and suffering. That’s all.” She sighed, looking a little defeated. “There are several paths that lead to the same river, many roads that go to the same endless ocean.”

  Manjula looked to the ground. She wanted them to frolic in the fields of Heaven together, she said.

  My mother sat back on the sofa, stubbornly. “I’ll frolic in the heavens as a Hindu. I was born a Hindu. I will die a Hindu. You go do what makes you happy, Manjula.”

  Manjula rolled her eyes mischievously. “I will pray for you, Sister,” she said, wagging her finger. Mother shrugged, and they both broke into smiles.

  Even though Manjula and my mother differed so strongly on their ideas of faith and life, they shared the same loving bond they had years before, when they had shared the work and gossip in my father’s house. During our stay in Toronto, I sometimes felt transported back to my old living room, to a time when the record player blared in the background and filled the house with songs of love, of heartbreak, of joy and suffering. Manjula and my mother, side by side, hip to hip, would be telling jokes and stories of neighbors and relatives. They would giggle and laugh as they rinsed dishes or pounded the masala in the stone pot. I remembered them chatting as they grated coconut on wooden boards, rolling rotis, washing drapes, and stirring dhal soaked in ghee.

  The playfulness of these two sisters made me yearn for my long-forgotten home. It brought back the memories of the sights and sounds and scents and tastes of the Fiji shores. I remembered strolling beneath the sinking sun under bright orange skies. I thought back to times when I took shelter from pelting rain underneath the banana leaves of a low-hanging tree. For the first time, I thought I might like to visit my homeland again.

  Several days later, Manjula drove us to the airport, looking heartbroken. Peter and I stood aside as the women said their goodbyes. We knew well that it might be the last time the sisters would be united. But just before we boarded the plane back to Vancouver, Manjula brightened. She hugged me tightly and said, “Thank you, Kalyana. Thank you.”

  “What for?” I was confused.

  “You know,” she said, smiling. “You know.”

  I shook my head.

  “For teaching me how to read Ingalish!” She smiled widely. “Without it, I would have never found Peter. I would have never found this life.” She locked her gaze with mine and grinned. “I am the princess of the house now!”

  With Manjula’s words came a sudden realization that my mother had been right: Education was the key to a woman’s freedom. Knowledge opened doors, broadened minds, and attracted opportunities—especially for a woman.

  After my mother flew away, I enrolled in a recognized online university and took my first semester of three-credit courses, studying South Asian History. I began to write and talk in a Canadian way: spoiled instead of spoilt; learned instead of learnt, dreamed instead of dreamt; and airplane instead of aeroplane. I chuckled when other students strove to be politically correct. They filled their essays with “his or hers,” “he or she,” and “him or her.” I wondered what my teacher from long ago would think of the world now, the teacher who had once accused me of starting a revolution. She had thrown my essay on the ground because I had written “she” instead of “he.” Life had certainly progressed. How strange that, even so long ago, my mother had tried to hand me the key.

  33

  One year later, on a rainy Wednesday morning, I received the dreaded phone call from Raju. My mother was gravely ill. Her last request was to see me again. “Tell my daughter that no excuses will be accepted,” she had said to my brother. “Over the years, I’ve collected enough money to pay her plane fare down here, if need be.”

  She had figured it all wrong; I had run out of excuses many years ago. My mother was living her last days, and I knew that to see her once again was what I truly wanted. I packed my bags the same night and boarded the next flight to Fiji. I was going home.

  Raju picked me up at the small Nadi airport at seven in the morning. iTaukei men, wearing printed sulus and frangipani leis, played guitars and sang traditional songs in the airport lobby, a gesture to welcome the new arrivals. I was surprised to see that none of the brochures lining the airport walls had pictures of the Indian population of Fiji. Even after centuries gone by, we were still an invisible part of the land.

  Yet in so many ways, Fiji had changed. The roads were smooth and free of potholes, at least for the most part. Tall buildings sprouted everywhere; beaches looked clean and welcoming; and stories of new million-dollar resorts and casinos were splashed across the front pages of The Fiji Times and the Fiji Sun. Coffee houses serving hot lattes and espressos and American desserts stood alongside McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and pizza franchises. Glass malls stood tall, dwarfing the palm trees far below. Raju said that it was all the doing of Bainimarama. He was for modernization and equality among all people. But what struck me the most was that women, young and old, walked around towns wearing halter tops and brightly colored pants.

  But despite these outward signs of Westernization, I noticed some familiar sights. Tall, muscular young men carrying machetes still walked along the side of the road, while island women sold fresh fruits and vegetables under the shade of green tents. Coconut trees still swayed in the warm, humid breeze, and the ocean stretched for miles and miles. Even after all these years, the sweet smell of curry hung in the air.

  Raju’s hands rested loosely on the steering wheel. He was still thin, but his skin was a few tones darker than before. How much calmer he seemed now than I remembered him! He no longer was interested in cracking jokes, and I wondered whether our mother’s illness had worn him down.

  He did not talk about her on the road, however, instead asking me about Aditi, Kirtan, and our life in Canada. What did we eat in that part of the world? Curry, rice and roti, what else? And what did we do for fun? What about Indian temples? Did I still pray? I hemmed and hawed, then quieted and looked ahead. Did I still do aerobics?

  “Of course not!” I said indignantly, and Raju laughed for the first time.

  I told him of our life in Canada, how for seven months out of the year we stayed huddled in front of the fireplace, waiting for either the snow to melt or the rain to subside. What about skiing? He wondered whether Aditi skied. I told him how it mostly rained in Vancouver, and how the ski hills were a long drive away, through the winding and icy mountainous roads. He frowned. I knew it was difficult for him to understand the vastness of the country that had become my home.

  Raju spoke of the political situation in Fiji. Houses now had iron bars across the windows and doors. “As if Indians were powerless birds living in cages,” he said. He then said that
the iron bars were there to keep out the burglars. Raju explained that home invasion had become a common occurrence in Fiji after the original coup. In fact, men had barged into our home twice, taking the laptop and iPod, along with some of Raju’s wife’s jewelry. Once they had broken in during the afternoon, while Mother was home alone and sitting on the porch.

  “Oh my God! Oh my God, Raju!” I clutched the seats. “What did she do?”

  Raju chuckled. “She followed them into the house, even though she can’t walk without holding onto the walls or the cabinets. She told them to get out of her house.” Raju shook his head. “And of course they didn’t. They locked her in the bathroom. She stayed there all day, until we came home in the late afternoon.”

  “Oh my God!” A strange panic had arisen in my chest. “Was she harmed? Was she scared? Why would she follow them into the house?”

  “She was a little bruised, but okay in the end.” Raju smiled. “Our mother was always a fighter, you know!”

  I waved aside his comment. “It was silly to follow them into the house. She should have stayed out on the porch. She could have been seriously hurt. Why did no one tell me about this!” I grunted in frustration.

  “I think she feels that she and Dad worked hard for all their material things, and nobody had a right to just walk in and take them.”

  “Where was she the second time the robbers came in?”

  “We were all sleeping, actually. They cut the iron bars and burst in. They went to her room first. They ransacked the room, looking for jewelry and cash. One went through her drawers and stuffed his pockets with the cash. Over a hundred and fifty dollars. She sat quietly on the bed and watched him do this. Afterwards, he looked her straight in the eye and said, ‘Where’s the money, old woman? Where is it?’ She told him that it was in his pocket!”

  I had to laugh in spite of myself.

  “At this point they started yelling, ‘Don’t be smart, old woman!’ This awoke Yashna and me. Yashna ran to the neighbor’s, barefoot, shouting for help. I came out of the room and tried to take one down with a baseball bat. The other two fled at the sight of the stick.” Raju paused. “It was quite a night!” My brother sighed. “So many of the good, talented people have left this country,” he said. “Even the educated iTaukeis are leaving. Only lots of criminals are left now. But under Bainimarama’s rule, maybe the good people will come back.”

  “Isn’t Mom afraid of challenging them like that?”

  Raju shrugged. “She was always a fighter, our mother.” There was a long pause. I opened my mouth, but Raju spoke first: “Kalyana, that was not the first time our mother lost her mind. It all started on that clear day. The skies were blue like the Fiji flag. Not a hint of storm or wind or noise.”

  Then Raju said something that would shake my world. On a bright, sunny day, he said, a few months after our father passed away, Uncle Baldev had come to visit her. She had stared at him with intensely dark eyes, and after a few moments of quiet contemplation and silence, she rose from the chair on the veranda, grabbed the cane from my uncle’s hands, and beat him with it. She broke not only his fragile, arthritic arm, but his knee, too.

  “Blood splattered everywhere as he crawled out of our yard and onto the street,” Raju said. He had not been home at the time, but the villagers talked about Rajdev’s wife’s insanity for months. They said that five men couldn’t stop the crazy woman from inflicting pain on the old man that day. The villagers could only conclude that it must have been the loss of her husband that had caused her so much sorrow as to turn her mad. For from what else could a woman draw the strength to beat a man?

  I was speechless.

  Mother had beaten Uncle Baldev, in broad daylight, in front of villagers and strangers, in front of relatives and friends. She had roared and screamed and inflicted pain upon the man who had once inflicted pain upon me. The woman who claimed the gods determined a man’s punishment had dealt a punishment of her own. This anxious and troubled old woman, who had collapsed in a Toronto elevator, who feared villagers’ scrutiny and relatives’ harsh words, had had the courage within her all along to take a stand against ill-doers. If necessary, she had possessed the strength to crush the shackles that bound her hands in links of propriety and expectation. In the end, she had emerged like Goddess Kali, victorious and strong, dancing upon her oppressors, and like the bird in the elephant story, mighty, powerful, and free.

  Raju continued slowly, drawing me away from my thoughts. “What was strange,” he said, “was that at the same time that our mother was beating Uncle, villagers say that a whirl of wind, like a twister, arose from nowhere. The veil covering the face of the auntie-without-a-name, who had been standing totally still nearby, gently slipped away. And the villagers noted a small smile, almost invisible, erupt upon her face.” He paused. “I even heard that she delivered a kick to the old man herself.” Raju eyed me for a moment, then shrugged and gazed out over the road. “Well, good for her if she threw him a kick,” he said. “She sure took a lot of beatings from him in her odd life.”

  I sat limply in my seat. It was true, as my mother had once said, that nobody knows the future. Nobody knows where one could end up if one did not give up the fight. And so my mother had found her courage, her voice. Auntie-without-a-name, quiet and subservient, had taken back her power. Even Manjula had discovered her happiness, her self-worth, and Tulsi had flown away to pursue her freedom. How life can change!

  But had it changed for me? When would I discover my freedom from the shackles of silence that my mother had bestowed upon me in that cold room where the nailpolishes were lined in perfect rows? When would I find the courage to scream from the mountaintops and tell my tale to the world, without shame, without prejudice, without blame?

  I felt a surge of emotions stir within me, but it was not of anger or sadness over what had been lost, or fear of what was yet to come, or even of the pleasure that came from worshipping the Goddess Kali as she trampled upon her enemies. It was of pity. I pitied Uncle Baldev. For there were two kinds of people in this world: those who knew how to give and receive love honestly and courageously, and those who did not. To go through life without learning how to love was the greatest tragedy of all. And perhaps that was Uncle Baldev’s greatest punishment.

  I followed Raju into our house. It hadn’t changed much from what I remembered, although the large front doors were unfamiliar. They now extended across the front of our house and gave it a more modern appearance. A skinny boy, about seven years old, burst onto the small porch. I remembered how my mother used to sit there on a bench, combing her hair and complaining to Roni about all the things that were wrong in this world.

  “Daddy,” screamed the little boy. “You’re home.” He paused and stared closely at me. “Ha,” he said. “You’re from Canada. Aji—grandmother—told me about you. Aji says that in Canada people fry three pigs, one goat, five chickens, and a dozen eggs and eat it for breakfast. And Aji says they eat a pound of potatoes fried in oil and covered in curds and thick brown sauce made from gobs of flour. Powtine.” He wrinkled his nose, yet his eyes were bright and eager. “Aji says that’s why in Canada, where you come from, people are so fat. Is it true?” He didn’t give me a chance to respond before shouting out, “I don’t believe Aji. I think she’s making up stories again!”

  He shook his head and dashed away, disappearing into his parents’ room. I chuckled. I gathered the little boy was Rakesh, the youngest of Raju’s three sons. He certainly favored his father, and not merely in his bright-eyed appearance.

  Roni met me at the door of my mother’s room. Age had not touched her; she looked as charming now as she had when I first met her. Even now she wore a brightly blooming hibiscus tucked behind her ear. It seemed to flash in the dim light of the room. “Kalyana. Little Kalyana—all grown up,” Roni said gently.

  “Kalyana,” my mother whispered. She was sitting up in her bed, propped against
a few pillows. I offered a slow, forced smile. Mother. She was so frail, so different from the years when she had ruled the house while pretending not to.

  “What are these stories I am hearing about you, Momma? I heard you stood up to the thieves like you were a young, strong man.” I blinked back tears. As ever, she smelled of coconut oil.

  “Kalyana,” she said, “my daughter.” Her eyes filled with moisture as she kissed my forehead. “I can let go now that you’re here. I’ve seen your face again.”

  I placed my head on my mother’s chest and listened to her heartbeat, holding her hand. Roni reached over and rubbed my head gently. “Don’t talk like that, Momma,” I said. “Don’t talk rubbish.”

  “This is the cycle of life,” she said. “Before, I used to order you around. Now, you get to tell me what to do, what to say, what not to say. If I last any longer, I’ll be back in diapers and a nurse will have to be hired to wipe my ass.”

  “Momma.”

  My mother sighed. “Cycle of life,” she whispered.

  I slept soundly and deeply for the first few days, trying to recover from the jet lag. When my mother was sleeping during the afternoon, I sat in my old room and explored the boxes of memories stacked away under the bed my things rested upon. Old poems I had written in primary school, short stories I had written to pass the time; drawings of animals, faces, and trees; the frilly dress I wore right after I was born; and my Enid Blyton books, The Magic Faraway Tree, The Famous Five, and The Secret Seven. The books, now banned from most Canadian libraries and schools, captured a slice of the past, a changing era; they served as a documentary of attitudes and perceptions. Above all, they had meaning to me personally, for they had stirred my maturing imagination. I put these aside. I wanted to take them to Aditi, even though she was far too old for them now.