Page 37 of Six Days in Bombay

I cycled on, passing a Parsi in a suit, a briefcase under his arm. Three Muslim men were chatting in front of a mosque. I stopped to watch a man on the side of the street teaching a crow to remove abeedifrom his pocket and put it in his mouth. No doubt the trick would earn both man and crow a meal or two. An ice-cream vendor plied his trade from a cart (the night may have cooled somewhat but a day of hard work still warranted akulfi). Next to him, a man sat on a small carpet carving a group of elephants out of ivory.

After a while, even the protesters and street peddlers failed to distract me. I veered away on my bicycle and found myself heading in the opposite direction from home, toward Marine Drive, where Mira had lived. The promenade curved around Back Bay and the beach. I stopped at her building and looked up at the apartment where I’d helped her pick out a dress for the Singh party only last night. It seemed like such a long time ago. I thought I saw a light in her apartment. Perhaps Filip Bartos was there, grieving. He’d looked at me so strangely when Amit led him away from Mira’s room earlier this evening.

I spun my bicycle around and headed west toward Victoria Terminus, an intimidating gothic behemoth designed by the British. So depressed was I that I found myself mourning for the tens of thousands of Indians who broke their backs building it with nothing to take home at the end of the day but a handful of coins that barely fed their families.

Three hours later, sweating and out of breath, having cycled through feelings of shame, despair and injustice and trying to outrun them all, I reached the flat my mother and I shared. The shift that should have ended at four in the morning found me home by eleven o’clock. I dreaded mounting the stairs to our landing and telling my mother about Mira’s passing. And that I seemed to be the one whom everyone was looking to for answers.

One look at my face and my mother turned, went to the Primus and served me a plate of dal andmakki kiroti, one of my favorite dishes. She led me to the table, as if I were an invalid, and sat me down. She pulled her chair from the other side of the table and sat next to me. “Tell me.”

It was the same when the girls at school bullied me for having a father who didn’t love me enough to stay. Or when the Matron of my Calcutta hospital called me a troublemaker. My mother knew when something was bothering me without my having uttered a word.

My throat felt so tight it hurt. I told her about Mira’s sudden death. What Matron said. Perhaps I’d been careless with the dosage? Why did I leave the room unguarded when there was a vial of morphine lying about? How could I have left it there?

My mother listened with furrowed brows, the crevices getting deeper the longer I went on. She put a hand on mine. “I am truly sorry about your friend.”

“Oh, Mum!” I reached for her, wrapped my arms around her. She knew how much I would miss Mira. For the past six days, I’d shared so much about her. Just the fact that Mum said the wordfriendunleashed something inside I’d been trying to contain. Mirahadbeen a friend. She’d let me see a side of her I imagined she shared with very few. Before she came to the hospital, she’d been busy with her painting and exhibiting and wandering in her own thoughts. Being bedridden had forced her to slow down, to reflect on her life and share confidences,regrets and memories about those closest to her. And I’d been there to listen, happily. The six days with her had felt elastic. As if we’d known each other for years.

My mother rocked me, the way she’d done when I was a little girl with a scraped knee, a loose tooth or a doll with a broken arm. I let myself be comforted until my body was empty of misery—for the time being at least. I knew grief came in waves, as it did for the families of patients we’d lost. Perhaps Mira’s husband would feel it that way too.

Finally, Mum released me. She rummaged among her fabric scraps on the table and found one to wipe my face. Then she broke off a bite of the cornmeal roti, dipped it in dal and held it to my mouth. “Eat.”

I forced down the food. I was an obedient daughter. I’d always obeyed. Somehow, after my father left us, I’d known she needed me to do as she wanted without raising a fuss. She couldn’t afford to enroll me in a convent school like the one her middle-class Indian parents had sent her to. Instead, I’d gone to a free government school. At home, she tested me on English, having me read aloud from her sewing books to make my speech sound less Indian and more British. I could pronounce words like welt pockets, palazzo trousers and backstitch before I understood what they meant. Ultimately, my mother’s tutoring had won me a scholarship at the private convent school. When she’d wanted me to enroll in a nursing course, I did.

The cornmeal roti was delicious, even though I didn’t have an appetite. My mother’s cooking was a reflection of how she was feeling. When she was happy, her curries were exquisite. When she was angry or bitter or had been upset by a client, her dishes would be overcooked or too spicy or too sour. Tomorrow’s dish would be unbearably spicy.

She prepared another bite for me and held it to my lips. “What about the allegation that you’re overworked? Are you?” she asked. The timbre of her voice held the slightest hint of fear.

I waved her hand away. “You’re against me too? You think I’m guilty?”

“Not at all.” She cupped my chin with her free hand. “I’m on your side, always. I’m asking how you will prepare for the fallout. A decade ago, I would have thought you’d be safe. You’re half English. But now…there is such an outcry for the British to leave. Many are afraid; they’re going back home.” She rubbed the scarred table with her palm. “Now, it’s not so easy for Britishers to treat Indians badly or turn their nose up at people they’ve been ruling for two hundred years. Eurasians are a reminder of past times, not happy ones for Indians who have lived under British control for so long. I sometimes wish that I hadn’t insisted on making you so British. Insisting you wear dresses instead of saris. Speaking fluent English instead of fluent Hindi. I just thought that the advantages would outweigh any drawbacks. While that may have been true when I was born, it certainly isn’t true now.”

She raised her eyes to see if I’d understood the danger. I had. Here in Bombay, we saw the civil disobedience rallies, but in other parts of India I’d heard about riots erupting against oppression, quashed quickly by the colonists. At work, I’d noticed the delay in receiving supplies I’d requested. I’d felt the hostile stare of Indian nurses who were paid less than me; I earned more because of my British blood and because I didn’t have reservations about touching patients who were strangers to me the way Indian women were forbidden to. Nearby, Grant College was trying to recruit more Indian women for nursing, but progress had been slow. Patients at Wadia had started to make oblique references to my imminent departure fromtheircountry. Walking home, I’d heard whispers aimed at me.Half-half. It was my country too, I wanted to say. I didn’t choose my parentage. India was my home. I was born here. And I wanted to stay.

Was Matron’s implication that I had miscalculated the dosage a convenient excuse to get rid of me because my mixed bloodmade the staff uncomfortable? She was an Englishwoman who would retire to Cornwall where she was from. Amit was Indian. He would stay here, where independence would return the country to Indians like him. I was part Indian, part British, a half-caste. I belonged nowhere.

“I don’t know any way to clear the doubt hanging over my head, Mum. All the signs point to an overdose, which only I could have administered. I’ve gone over every minute, every second of my shift. I don’t see how I could have miscalculated the morphine I was supposed to give her.” I told her about seeing Rebecca leave the room and the conversation I overheard between Matron and Dr. Holbrook. Might the morphine have been tainted? Throughout, my mother listened attentively.

She tapped my plate. “Eat.” She pointed her chin at the roll of paintings I’d brought with me. “What is that?”

I’d been so lost in my grief that I’d merely laid the tube on the edge of the table. I looked at it wearily. “Would you please unroll it, Mum? I need to show you something.”

She cleared the table of everything but my plate. Using her shears, she removed the rope fastenings and unfurled the paintings.The Acceptancelay on top.

I fished Mira’s note from my rucksack and showed it to her.

She read the note, a puzzled look on her face. Then she picked up the first painting and held it in her outstretched arms. One by one, she studied the others. I watched her face closely.

“Mira left you these?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“And the people in the note? Jo. Petra. Po. Aren’t they the ones you said Mira talked to you about?”

I nodded. “Petra is her girlhood friend from Prague, someone she went to school with until she left for Italy. Po—Paolo—was her painting tutor in Florence. They were together before and after she married Filip. Jo is Josephine. From Paris. Her art dealer. Whom she had a falling-out with.”

My mother arched an eyebrow, glancing my way, but said nothing. To her credit, she had passed no judgment on Mira’s life. She turned the paintings over. “These letters on the back…”

“I think they signify who each painting is for.”

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