Page 41 of Six Days in Bombay

When I got to our street, Chameli Marg (an ambitious name for a street with no sweet-smelling flowers), a cluster of neighbors were gathered at the entrance to our building. My landlady was holding court. Even from a distance, I could tell by the tenor of her voice that she was angry or aggrieved about something.

As I neared, I heard her say, “…I had to pay for the doctor. Who is going to pay me back?” the landlady was saying, her underarm flesh jiggling with each movement of her hands. When she saw me, she said, “Here is the daughter. Well, Miss Fancy Nurse, you can clear out now. I don’t want theburree aatmain my house!”

I brushed past her, my heart skipping a beat. I sprinted up the stairs, rucksack flapping against my body. The door to our flat was open. There was no one in the room but my mother, laid out on our bed. Her eyes were closed. She was completely still.

“No, no, please, no!” I prayed out loud. I felt for a pulse on her wrist. There was none. I tried her neck, just under her jaw. Nothing.

“The doctor has come and gone.” The landlady was standing at the door. “He said it was a heart attack. No need to take her to the hospital.” She spoke as if it were my mother’s fault for dying.

“Get out!” I screamed. I flew to the door and slammed it in her face. I turned the lock so she couldn’t come in. With my back against the door, I regarded my mother’s body on the bed. How could this have happened? She’d had a weak heart but as long as she took her medicine, she was fine. Was it because of Mira’s death? She knew I would lose my job over it? I’d seen the resignation and the fear in her face.Oh, Mum. Did I do this to you?

From the other side of the door, the landlady shouted, “You need to get that body out of here. I won’t have it in my house!”

“Leave her in peace,” I whispered into the room. The person who cared for me most in this world was gone. Tears blurred my vision. Who would love me now? Who would ask about my day? Listen to my stories? What would I do without her? I wiped my nose with the back of my hand.

I eased my body away from the door toward the bed I’d shared with my mother for as long as I could remember. I lay down on the bed and nestled my body against hers on the narrow mattress. I whispered in her ear, “Remember when I was old enough tosit on the carousel horse by myself? I must have been four. You said it was time. Time for what? I asked. Time for you to do things by yourself, you said. But I like doing things with you, I said. I know, you said. But you have so many things you will enjoy doing, and I won’t always be there to do them with you.”

Water ran from the corners of my eyes, down my nose and into my mouth. I tasted salt and sadness and aloneness. “Mum, I’m still not ready to do all those things by myself. I need you. I need you to stay. Can’t you stay just a little while longer? Please? Please stay.” I wrapped my arm around her waist and held her tight. I sobbed wet, sloppy tears into her shoulder and her flower-print sari, the one I said made her look like a field of lavender when I was nine. I had so much to tell her: being let go at the hospital, Dr. Mishra’s promise of an opportunity, how I felt about him—really felt about him—how much I needed her, how much I loved her. None of that made any difference now.

***

I decided on a burial instead of cremation. I had the feeling that my mother thought herself more Anglo than Indian as she got older, and a funeral would be a better choice. Our neighbors across the hall—Fatima and her husband—and a wealthy matron, a client of my mother’s—attended the last rites. The matron wanted me to know how sorry she was and would her dress be ready in time for her daughter’s wedding?

I paid a priest from the nearby Christian church to deliver the eulogy, which I wrote for him. And then it was over.

Within one week, I had lost my mother, my friend Mira and my position at the hospital. I was an orphan without a friend.

Once I packed up all the fabric scraps and the few dishes we had, the flat was almost empty. I would give the fabric and my mother’s sewing machine to the school next to the Mohatta cloth market, where my mother sometimes tutored novice seamstresses. I had no need for dishes. I gave our bed, table and chairs to the couple who cleaned the building. To my landlady, I gavethe Primus stove in return for what she’d paid the doctor. The Primus was worth much more, but I preferred to overpay my debt rather than risk her returning for more.

My last task was to pack our clothes in the battered trunk we’d brought from Calcutta. Then, it had contained our clothes, sheets, towels, and a few pots and pans. I took stock of what was still packed inside. On the top was the evening gown my mother had made for me from the wedding sari she never had the chance to wear. I held the dress up so I could admire her handiwork. A heavy cloth pouch and a photo tumbled out. I picked up the black-and-white photo. Thick paper. Crinkled edges. It was the photo of a man around thirty years of age. White. He was in a military uniform. His hair was parted down the middle.

Him?I dropped the photo as if I’d been scorched.

Gingerly, I squatted on the floor to study the photo without touching it. There were my eyebrows that angled steeply toward my temples. Lips that were neither thin nor full. The hairline that cut straight across the forehead instead of forming an M.

Using my fingernail, I flipped the photo over.Owen Falstaff, Royal Garrison Artillery.

I sat back on my haunches. My mother had kept a photo of him all this time. Because she still loved him? After all these years? Even though he had betrayed her? Why didn’t she ever show it to me? I squeezed my eyes shut. Now that I had an image of him, could I recall any memories of us together? I waited. Nothing.

I opened my eyes again. Did my mother hide the photo in the green gown deliberately so I would find it after she was gone? But she wouldn’t have known when she would die, so that didn’t make sense. I contemplated tearing up the photo and throwing it away. He’d been a rotten father and a rotten husband. What did I owe him? Some small part of me though—perhaps the three-year-old me, the girl who must have felt loved before he left—wanted to keep it. In the end, I buried the photo in the suitcase.

I opened the cloth purse. Inside was the English money from my father. “You need to clear your name,beti,” my mother had said. “And for that, you’ll need your father’s money.”

The only thing I kept of my mother’s was that green sari—now the only evening gown I owned. I paid for three red roses, the petals of which I sprinkled among the folds.

She had no jewelry, no gold to call her own, no parents or in-laws who would have gifted it to her upon her marriage.

A week later, I was on the RMSViceroy of Indiasetting sail for Istanbul.

Chapter 8

I had reconciled myself to the fact that aside from Dr. Stoddard’s offer I had no options. My mother’s voice, encouraging me to take chances, to discover new worlds, had taken residence in the back of my mind. I was leaving the comfort of what I knew to explore foreign territory—foreign to me at least. It was frightening and exhilarating at the same time. The opportunity to go as far as Istanbul would take me: half the way to Europe. From there, I could use my father’s money to deliver the paintings to Mira’s friends in Florence, Prague and Paris. Of course, I would still need to find out where they lived from the clues in Mira’s stories.

The day after Amit left for Shimla, I’d received a note from Dr. Stoddard.

My dear Nurse Falstaff:

How delighted I was to learn that you would accompany a fossil like me to Istanbul. If you have never been, it’s a delightful place with the most divine baklava and the strongest coffee you’ve ever tasted. It will be jolly fun. And I’m so looking forward to our backgammon games. Meet me at the gangplank (gallows humor!) next Thursday at 10:00 a.m. I’ll be the one with a sour-faced (temporary) nurse in tow.

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