For my family
Sara could hardly believe they were there at last. She had been on deck since dawn, not being able to endure the agony of waiting any longer.
At first she was unmoved by her earliest glimpse of India, except for a deep sense of relief at having survived the journey, and the curious feeling of being inside a picture book.
She stood transfixed, as parched of life as a dried flower pressed between the pages, till, all at once the breeze shifted, and carried towards her the elusive tang of the distant shore.
Her past returned with an almost magical clarity, and memories, long forgotten, crept out of the shadows to taunt and provoke her.
She remembered the sickly-sweet smell of flowers turning brown in the sun, trampled offerings, scattered and rotting on the steps of forbidding temples dedicated to fantastic and unlikely gods. The stench of open drains fused with the heady and seductive scents of sandalwood and patchouli. Patchouli! She mouthed the word almost with reverence as she breathed in a hint of the musky, ancient fragrance. There was no other perfume that spoke the essence of India with as much power. She could almost feel the touch of a thin dry hand, grasping her own, as she followed behind the hurrying figure, tottering along on her little legs, her starched muslin skirts rustling through laneways crowded with stalls and people, her eyes fixed on the bright sari as it swayed ahead of her. Her mouth watered with the memory of forgotten tastes. Mango, thick, creamy yoghurt and freshly ground nutmeg, sweet sticky rice on a banana leaf, a dish made as a special treat by her ayah, Malika.
Sara hadn’t thought about Malika for years; now all at once she was flooded with sensations threatening to unbalance her, and unravel her tightly held self-control.
Malika! Sara strained to remember her face but could recall nothing of her features, only her cool touch, deft and reassuring, her fine wrists and arms encircled with a hundred shivering and tinkling bangles, and when she walked a cloud of patchouli followed in her wake.
Malika! Who had slept at the foot of her bed, and had wailed inconsolably in her grief when she had been taken away, tearing at her thick black hair and rubbing the oil from it onto Sara’s bright curls, as though giving something of herself: a talisman, to protect her.
Sara reached for her handkerchief but could not stop the tears. All those years in England and she hadn’t cried. But the tears came fast now, choking her with deep silent sobs. Soon they subsided into a sniffle and then, with a flush of shame, she remembered where she was. She looked around and was relieved no one had seen her outburst except a dusty seagull with one leg taking a rest on the ship’s rail.
A new smell separated itself from the others, but this time Sara pressed her handkerchief, now a damp and salty rag, to her nose, though it was not possible to stifle the horror. There was the stench of death nearby.
She shaded her eyes against the rising sun and, there on the hills in the distance, she could see the skeletal outline of the Towers of Silence, tall sticks of rotting bamboo where the Parsee dead lay, on beds open to the elements and to the mercy of the scavenging birds. Against the white sky, the ragged shapes of vultures floated on the air current, too lazy and well fed to hunt for live prey.
She closed her eyes, and relived again the peculiar sensation of being inside a child’s skin and chattering to her dolls in the garden of her childhood home in Madras.
Everything there had been cool, lush and fragrant. The only sound birdsong and the soft laughter of the servants as they moved on silent feet over the marble floors of the faded mansion sheltering amongst the trees.
Within the compound of her old home, the giant figs and magnolias had hung like canopies, protecting the delicate English flowers from the burning sun. At times, even roses and lavender were coaxed into bloom and, for a moment, it was possible to imagine it was England after all.
She recalled looking up, shading her eyes against the hazy sky, distracted by the sound of fighting vultures above her head. Then, as wild as the imaginings of a nightmare, the remains of a human arm had dropped with a sickening soft thud on the ground near her feet.
They should have known it wasn’t possible to keep India out, despite the high walls surrounding the house.
Sometimes, homeless widows who had banded together for protection, or cast off wives bearing scars left by cruel husbands, came to the gates to beg for food, knowing they would never be turned away without a decent meal or a moment’s comfort from their brutal and pitiable lives. Or an emaciated holy man, exhausted from constant travel but lit with a strange inner fire that seemed to sustain him through every human trial, would beg sanctuary in the cool garden in return for blessings on the household.
Then, again, they would be reminded that, outside their ordered and tranquil oasis, there was India: the real India, desperate, hungry and passionate.
Her mother’s face rose before her, the features hazy but idealised to perfection, an image fixed forever in her mind, as no picture of her survived to tell the truth of her loveliness.
She recalled the sensation of being lifted to sit on her mother’s lap, the rustling of silk, the fleeting fragrance of Attar of Roses rising from her clothes at her every movement, her high gay laugh, childlike still, as she ran barefoot across the lawn to join her little daughter in play.
To Sara she seemed to have always been a wraith, a fairy, with no more substance to her than a dream. Her father was a stronger memory, as she wore a miniature of his likeness in a locket around her neck.
The shape of his face was like her own, the full mouth and thick chestnut hair, but more real to her than his image was the faint memory of a pleasant aroma of sandalwood and tobacco, and how he had read his newspaper to her, and encouraged her to read books well above her age. It was he who’d encouraged her to speak Hindi, and to play with the village children so she could learn their ways.
He was kind to everyone, especially the servants, and spoke to her often, even as a tiny child, on the need to remember that all humans were created equal, at least in his home. And, even from the distance of time, she could recall a hint of bitterness in his voice as he spoke those words.
It was a message that had stayed with her throughout her life, and she had clung to it, as a gift he had left her, even though she was often reprimanded by her aunt for being too familiar with the servants.
Then, without warning, there were dim shadows and pain, a blurred image of a crouching figure by her bed, forcing bitter liquid through her clenched teeth. The hallucination intensified with the sounds of strange indistinct chanting, a fierce brown face close to her own, rising and falling through the mist.
Then, later, only six years old and an orphan now, dazed and frail still, being led away from the prostrate and weeping Malika.
Then a long sea voyage to England with an unknown English nanny, who held her hand in a tight grip as she waited on the doorstep of her Aunt Maria’s home, till the door opened, and she was brought inside to be taken care of.
No one knew how painful it had been to be uprooted from everything she had loved, to be left to find her way in a cold country, in the cold house of indifferent people.
There was rarely any discussion about her dead parents or the home she had left behind. It seemed there was an unspoken decision to put the whole episode out of her mind, and all memories must die with her parents. She recalled her aunt’s words whenever she dared to broach the subject. “Your father had a wild side … somewhat like you at times …” she would say with a reproving sniff, “and it was hoped India would bring him to heel. But things went from bad to worse … We knew little of your mother, only that he said she had some Spanish blood, which would