The Elephant Chaser's Daughter Read online

  Grandfather smiled at the thought of lots of money. That was enough for him to forget his worries. He turned over on the mat, closed his eyes, and was soon fast sleep. Grandmother was assured by her husband’s consent. And yet she warned me not to speak to strangers, afraid that I might inadvertently reveal too much and the police would be pulling up in front of our hut. It would not have been the first time a child innocently caused a loved one’s arrest.

  One afternoon, I asked Grandmother to tell me about how my parents came to be married. ‘Was it love-at-first-sight or an arranged marriage?’ I asked, remembering the Bollywood films I had seen in school where the hero and heroine instantly fell in love in their first encounter.

  ‘It wasn’t either,’ she replied. I was confused. There had to be something more between my parents than the frequent fighting I had witnessed. Grandmother began to explain. It was a heavy narration told in bits and pieces over the next few years.

  Amma was very attractive as a young woman and accustomed to men staring at her. She was darker than her sisters, earning the pet-name ‘Karkie’ which meant ‘dark girl,’ but none of the others had her sharp nose, big mischievous eyes, or smooth skin. Amma told me Appa liked her because she was bold and had a mind of her own, unlike her friends who stayed obediently in their homes, never daring to talk or even make eye contact with men.

  This vision of Amma as a young woman was new and exciting to me. I thought of Miss Christina saying I was like a volcano. I thought of my boldness in asking questions in assemblies, asking visitors to the school about their lives. I wanted to be like Amma—daring.

  The first time Amma caught Appa’s stare, she found him looking at her ‘improperly’. She was marching in a procession to the village’s old stone church on the day of Aunt Maria’s wedding, imagining how she herself would look on her wedding day. Though some men had already asked her parents for her hand, Grandmother had refused them, as tradition dictated her eldest daughter had to be married first.

  A few days later, Appa went to Amma’s hut. It was the first time she acknowledged his presence, though they lived on the same lane and might often have seen each other. She was seated on a mat on the ground next to her parents when Appa announced, ‘I came to ask for your blessings to marry your second daughter.’

  Grandmother was furious. For one thing, she had no intention of letting Amma marry a man whose parents were known for being heavy drinkers with a habit of quarrelling nastily with their neighbors.

  Appa left that night without success and Amma had nothing to say in the matter. But if anyone had thought of asking her, she might have said she was impressed by the courage of this young man in coming and speaking so politely, bravely, and directly to her parents.

  Appa’s first visit would not be his last. The next time he came, he found her alone, winnowing rice. The sight of Appa was exciting, but alarming. She begged him to leave. Without being asked, he sat down before her. He placed his hand on the rice and said with a sincere expression, ‘Sarophina, I swear I will marry you. I won’t leave you.’ Amma slid away from him. It was wrong for an unmarried woman to talk or sit so close to a man.

  ‘Please go before Mother comes,’ she whispered with a frightened glance towards the door. ‘If anyone sees you—’

  Appa reached for her hand and placed it on the heap of rice grains she was cleaning, a gesture deemed to be sacred and often an element of Indian wedding ceremonies. His action—so solemn, so intimate—conveyed the most serious of intentions. Amma froze. She didn’t know whether it was her fear or the excitement of his touch that overwhelmed her.

  Covering her palm with his own hand, he asked, ‘Will you marry me?’

  It took a minute for Amma to say, softly, ‘Yes.’

  Appa grinned and, with his mission accomplished, swaggered out onto the lane and into a whole new world.

  But Amma was apparently unwelcome as a daughter-in-law because her family could not give a dowry. Appa had chosen her out of love, over his parents’ objections, and he would have to face the consequences. Joseph Thatha made it clear Appa was no longer a part of their family.

  Grandmother told me she did not fault Appa’s family for rejecting her daughter. ‘His family was struggling to make ends meet and a handsome sum of money would have been a great benefit. This foolish man got himself in big trouble by going against his father’s wishes.’

  Disowned by his father, Appa had no place to spend the wedding night other than with Amma’s parents. They stayed with her family for the next three months, sleeping near the door, not far from my grandparents. The unmarried girls in the house slept in the next room. It was hardly an ideal situation for newlyweds.

  Soon neighbors began to criticize Grandmother for having the young couple spending nights where there was no privacy and with young girls in the hut. Moreover, Appa failed to be faithful from the very beginning of their marriage. Rumors were already circulating in the village that Appa was flirting with a woman who frequented the neighborhood lake to wash clothes and bathe while he brewed liquor in the woods close by. A lot of this Grandmother did not explain to me until I was a teenager. Finally, Grandmother told Appa that she could no longer allow him and Amma to stay in her house.

  With a little money he had saved, Appa rented a hut on the same lane that no one else seemed to want. Within its walls a woman had hung herself after her husband committed suicide by drinking poison, unable to repay the money he had borrowed from a landlord for his daughter’s dowry and wedding. The family that lived there last had fled, convinced the house was haunted by the troubled souls of the couple. No one else had dared to stay there since. Left with no choice, they lived in that house until one night Amma began to act as if she were possessed by the spirit of the dead man and the priest had to be summoned to cure her.

  Before long, Amma became pregnant. When her pregnancy ended in a miscarriage, everyone said she was cursed by ghosts and the wrath of Appa’s family. Appa blamed Amma for all his misfortunes and demanded that she follow his every command. Like his father before him, he believed his wife was his property. He did whatever he wanted, and that included heavy drinking, hitting her, and behaving as though it was his right to satisfy his manly needs with other women. Not knowing anything better of men, Amma concluded that he needed other women in his life to be happy, and she was prepared to accept it. After all, there was nothing she could do to stop him.

  ‘Perhaps that was why his desire for your mother became a different thing—not love but possessiveness,’ Grandmother said. ‘Once she came running to my house in tears. Your father had beaten her in a drunken stupor. It had become a daily ritual. Your mother sobbed in my lap and said, “Why did you marry me to him? I want to die.” I had seen this happen to young brides so many times before.’

  ‘What did you tell Amma?’ I asked Grandmother.

  ‘I told her this is the fate of women. We have to learn to live with our husbands,’ Grandmother said. ‘A woman’s place is always in the service of her man. I don’t want any of my daughters to live disgracefully, away from their husbands.’ So Amma returned to the leaky hut.

  I was stunned by how subservient Grandmother expected wives to be. There was no one to take Amma’s side. When I grew old enough to understand, Amma explained how she coped with all her troubles and managed to fulfill the duties expected of her as a wife, a daughter, and a woman. Her personal desires were of little concern to anyone in the family, so she seldom expressed them. Almost everything she did was dictated by her husband and she never complained about what she lacked. I couldn’t understand where she found joy. That was the woman’s world in which I began my childhood.

  Having learnt more about my parents’ life together, I understood why Amma agreed to work so far away for so long. Grandmother was devastated that Amma was not there to bring up her children properly. ‘My daughter had to leave because of that cruel father of yours.’ She would repeat those words countless times throughout my mother’s absence, sowing in me
the seeds of strong resentment towards my father.

  CHAPTER SIX: THE DIFFICULT DAYS

  It was the end of the holidays and time for me to return to school. Appa arrived at Grandmother’s hut at four o’clock that morning and knocked on the door so loudly that even Uncle Christraj who could sleep through a storm woke up with a start. ‘Can’t a poor man at least have his rightful share of a good night’s sleep?’ Grandfather grumbled. As the knocking continued, he scrambled for a matchbox and lit the kerosene lamp.

  Grandmother made her way towards the door, careful not to step on Kavya and Francis who were still fast asleep on the floor. I heard my father shout from the outside, ‘Please wake up Shilpa and get her ready. We must leave now or we won’t make it to Shanti Bhavan on time.’

  I sat up defiantly. ‘I want to stay here with you,’ I pleaded with Grandmother, burying my head in her bosom. She tried to calm me with kisses.

  ‘Say good-bye to everyone,’ Grandmother said after she managed to wash my face and get me into the dress I had worn to come home from Shanti Bhavan. Leading me to the corner of the dark room where two framed photographs of my great-grandparents hung on the mud wall, she said, ‘Take their blessings. They are always with you.’ I stared at the photos for a minute, unsure what I was to ask of them. Then I prayed to them to grant my wish to stay home with my family. I could not hold back my tears when Grandmother took my hand to draw me away.

  My brother and sister were sleeping through the commotion I was creating. Sobbing, I quickly kissed them both on their cheeks, feeling terrible about leaving them. My uncles, Christraj and Naresh, advised me to study well, not get into fights, and obey my elders. I promised them that I would be a good girl, and that was enough to satisfy them.

  I was still wailing when Appa picked me up in his arms and walked out of the hut. Grandmother insisted that she accompany us to the bus stop, but Appa said it would make it harder for me to leave. I clenched my fists and hit him hard on his shoulders to free myself but he wouldn’t budge. I just couldn’t win this battle with him.

  I was wailing for Grandmother as we made our way through dark streets thick with morning mist. The shepherd living across the lane was already at work, filling his bullock cart with the cow dung strewn over the road the previous night. He didn’t even look up at me to watch a child being carried, screaming through the village streets. No one seemed to notice.

  After hours of bumpy travel in the bus, the road smoothed into clean, even tar as we neared the brightly painted signboard that read ‘Shanti Bhavan Residential School’ in bold blue letters. From a distance, I could see the school’s water tower and the red tiled roofs of the dorms rising above a line of tamarind trees. My stomach tightened.

  The bus stopped some distance away from the wide gates of the campus. As Appa gripped my hand and led me down its steps, I had no idea this would be the last time he would ever escort me to Shanti Bhavan. Ever afterward, he relinquished that duty to Grandmother; he had no time for me. Appa would slowly recede into a world of his own, making liquor, later chasing wild elephants from sugarcane fields and, in his spare time, running after local women. The distance between us would grow so wide over the years that even during school vacations he would rarely come to see me at Grandmother’s house or bring me surprises from the woods like the tiny white birds he had caught or the wild berries I loved so much.

  As third graders, we’d moved into a new dorm, the only two-storey building on the campus. It stood like a lighthouse overlooking a sea of green lawns and thick stands of bamboo alongside the winding stone payments. Ms. Ruth who had looked after my class from pre-school through the second grade handed us over to Aunty Shalini and we braced ourselves for changes. I was jealous that Ms. Ruth was now tending a new set of twenty-four children.

  Nevertheless, in no time my heart filled with affection for Aunty Shalini. She was a loving young woman in her late twenties with luscious black hair that flowed down her back. A small, maroon bindi always sat perfectly at the center of her forehead, and her eyes sparkled with warmth when she greeted every child. Her skin was lighter than mine and she accented it with a coating of talcum powder every morning after her bath. At times, I thought she was even prettier than Amma. But there was a sad look in her eyes that she tried to conceal behind her cheerful smile. Soon I came to understand why. Though married, she didn’t have children of her own.

  Aunty Shalini gave us all pet names, usually those of birds and animals, and addressed each of us as ‘my child’. As time passed, I came to think of her as our amma in school. Many of my classmates began to call her ‘Mummy,’ which brought immense satisfaction to her, and she’d respond with a loving kiss or a hug.

  In the Big Dorm, life had a new rhythm and new demands on us as slightly older children. We were now expected to follow the set daily schedule without constant reminders and guidance from the aunties. Every morning I woke up at six and went to play soccer, basketball, or baseball on the large field a few yards behind the dorm. In the evenings after bath, Aunty Jyothi, an unmarried woman young enough to still have trouble with pimples, turned on the CD player for us to dance to Tamil and Kannada songs—songs that brought memories of my home. Every Saturday after lunch all the boys and girls gathered in their respective dorms for the hygiene hour. We trimmed our nails, washed our muddy shoes, and dusted cupboards and cots. Old newspapers were laid out on the ground in the small backyard lush with jasmine and tall rose bushes. The aunties called us one by one to comb our hair, letting lice fall onto the newspaper only to squash them instantly with bare fingers. Most of us carried lice from home and whined about how much we itched. I had often complained to Grandmother that sleeping next to Kavya gave me the bugs and tried to get my sister to keep her hair short like mine. But Kavya was proud of her long, thick hair and would not entertain the thought of losing it.

  One afternoon as we were singing songs in an animated chorus, Aunty Shalini walked in looking pensive. ‘Children, today we have with us a new pre-school boy,’ she said. We were all aware that the screening process for selecting the new class of preschoolers had been going on for months. Every now and then Mrs. Law, after returning from her house visits in the villages, would give us an update on how many girls and boys had been selected. This little boy was different. He was handed over to us by a family who had found him in a large garbage ditch and taken him into their care. Having heard about Shanti Bhavan, an elderly woman from that family brought him for admission in the hope that the school would accept him. I couldn’t help but compare his fate to mine; I, too, was to be discarded in a pit at birth and was saved only by my grandmother’s defiance against the wishes of my father. The girls in my dorm said a special prayer for him that night. We were all glad that he had passed the selection process and was now a part of us.

  The next morning Avinash and I ran to the pre-school dorm, anxious to see the boy. It was easy to identify him; he was sitting alone in a corner of the room watching a small group of girls and boys playing with wooden blocks. A couple of children were bringing the roof down with their wails for their mothers and fathers, reminding me of my own first days at Shanti Bhavan. Walking up to the boy, I tried to lift him up and cradle him in my arms, but he stiffened and kicked out at me. Avinash tried to talk to him in Telugu. At first the boy would not speak or even smile but slowly he began responding to Avinash’s questions with quick nods. Soon Avinash was able to pick him up and raise him high, and the boy broke into loud laughter. We were just beginning to become friends when he caught sight of the housemother bringing breakfast. He quickly freed himself from us and ran to follow her. From now on he would no longer be hungry, cold, or alone, I thought to myself, happy that he finally had a home. And I saw the children who a moment before had been crying for their parents being gently guided towards their breakfast.

  Come evening time, when rains often poured down without warning, the aunties would frantically herd us back to our dorms from the playground. Once inside, we would sit on the
concrete veranda encircling the backyard and watch the beauty of the falling water, like little frogs awaiting their chance to jump into the pond. I was confident that nothing could take away the dizzying freedom surrounding me.

  Despite all this, I was not doing well in my studies or relationships with friends and teachers. I couldn’t stop thinking about my family, especially my mother. Lying awake at night, I’d picture my mother singing lullabies and telling bedtime stories to the children she looked after in Singapore. What language did they speak in that country? What food did Amma eat? What clothes did she wear? I would fall asleep with one question relentlessly chasing another.

  There was no one to answer my questions. Amma had left me without a word and she hadn’t spoken to me since. I began to doubt whether she loved me anymore. The anger towards her spilled over to everyone around me. I transformed from a cheerful, friendly, and curious girl to an enraged, rebellious, and defiant child. In the dorm, I often fought with other girls over simple matters like having a seat right in front of the television during video classes or insisting that I get to wear every Sunday the clothes I liked best. My temper became impossible. Former friends didn’t want me on their soccer teams or in their debate groups. No one did.

  Keerthi, an unusually thin and tall girl, was one of the best students in my class and others looked up to her, but I resented her for finding fault with me. ‘She’s like an animal. So badly behaved,’ I once heard her whisper to the others, making sure to speak loudly enough for me to hear. At first I was frightened and confused by my own actions, but with time I accepted what everyone was saying about me—that this was who I really was.

  Even as warm and motherly as she naturally was, Aunty Shalini’s affection for me was sorely tested and she began to show a much harsher side. What bothered her the most was my habit of striking out and hitting anyone who crossed me. Ms. Ruth was surprised to hear the teachers complaining how difficult I was to control in class. ‘She wasn’t like this in second grade,’ she said. ‘She was so obedient and smart.’