“Madam, you are off-duty stewardess?” he asked, his eyes appearing red and watery through his scratched bifocals.
“No, sir,” I replied.
“But you are unmarried?”
“That is correct.”
“So how you are gallivanting to so many countries all by yourself?”
“For my work,” I said, taking the passport back and squeezing past his desk before he had a chance to ask me any more questions.
I went through at least four other checkpoints after that, each officer rubber-stamping the same stamp that the previous officer had given me, slowing down a process that shouldn’t have taken more than five minutes and making me yearn for the smooth efficiency of Zurich, the pristine airport halls of Singapore. I had barely been back thirty minutes, yet I was starting to feel frustrated. “I’m in India now,” I had to remind myself. “Get used to it.”
At customs, they barely glanced at me. It appeared as if the more affluent a person seemed, the higher the likelihood of being singled out for a full luggage inspection, the assumption being that expensive electronics and velvet pouches of jewelry were probably lurking somewhere between folds of underwear and cotton shirts. But in my average outfit, my face free of makeup, my ears and fingers and wrists unadorned, I was nobody, an uninteresting, average woman who was arriving back at her homeland as anonymously as she had left it.
Nilu was waiting outside, pressed against the metal railings that divided arriving passengers from the people there to greet them. She looked happy to see me, almost relieved, but she also couldn’t hide the surprise on her face.
“You made it!” she said, throwing her arms around me. “I was thrilled when you called to tell me you were coming back, but for some reason thought you might chicken out at the last minute. But,” she said haltingly, “why do you look like this?”
“Like what?” I asked, glancing down at myself. “These are my clothes.”
“Yes, I remember that outfit. You wore it when you came to my house to say good-bye the afternoon you were leaving. But I guess I thought you would return in your full regalia, you know, with the sunglasses and the high heels and those skinny-type pants and that sexy blouse you were wearing when I saw you in New York. Remember? I thought you’d come back looking like a movie star. But you look just like you.”
“I am me, Nilu,” I said softly as we maneuvered my squeaky luggage trolley through the crowds and to where rows of waiting vehicles were lined up. “Which one is your car?”
Chapter Twenty-nine
Our household, like every household in the world, had a routine. And no matter how long I’d been away, or where I might have gone, I would never forget it. There were nuances to my daily life in Mahim that seemed to remain the same day to day, year after year, times when everything would happen concurrently-phones ringing, servants shouting, radios blaring-and then again when everything was suddenly quiet. As mundane as my existence had been, there was a rhythm to it.
I glanced at my watch and worked out where, exactly, my family would be in the cycle of trivial events that made up their days. Dinner was probably over and, this being a Wednesday night, was most likely chicken cooked in masala spooned over saffron rice, a dal, a bhaji. In my previous life, Nana would be standing up, flicking the grains of yellow rice off his white kurta onto the table to be swept up by the servant’s wet rag, and then he would strap on his black leather sandals for a quick walk around the building.
“Good for digestion,” he would say, standing up to go. “Helps with emptying of stomach in the morning.”
Sometimes I would go with him. We would stroll around our floor first, glancing in through any doors that might be open, willing to nod and say a quick hello to any of the neighbors who might be in the middle of their own rhythm. Then we would make our way up the staircase and walk around subsequent floors, Nana repeating that climbing up and down stairs was good for the heart. Mostly, he and I would walk in silence, taking in the slow buzz of activity-of babies crying and children playing and televisions turned on too loud-that marked a day in the life of Ram Mahal, of just about any middle-class building in India that evening.
If Nana could still walk, that is exactly what he would be doing right then.
“I can tell; you’re thinking about him, right?” Nilu asked. She was sitting in the back next to me, her hand pressed into the spongy leather seat. “I haven’t been to see him since it happened. But the whole neighborhood is talking about it. It’s very good of you to come.”
“How could I not?” I asked, trying not to cry, trying to hold it all together. “Who knows when, or if, I might ever see him again?”
“It was pretty bad when it happened,” Nilu continued, although I partly wanted her to stop. “It was right there, you know, next to that electrical shop with the owner who is always drunk, opposite that place where your mother bought you the rose pink hair clips. We’ve gone past that area a million times you and I. That’s exactly where it happened. The auto-rickshaw was such a put-put that it just stopped, right there, in the middle of traffic. There was no way the bus could have stopped in time. The rickshaw-wallah died, there and then.”
“Please, Nilu, stop,” I said, now crying. “It’s too horrible to hear.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. She paused. “But there’s one other thing you should probably know. After the police and ambulance came, when they were putting your nana onto a stretcher and taking him to the hospital, they were gathering his things. He had been on his way to the post office to mail a letter. Tanaya,” she said, staring at me, “the letter was addressed to you.”
As we approached the neighborhood, it felt like I had never left. Mrs. Mehra’s School of Domestics sat on the same corner, its billboard a little more faded than I recall, the cheerful face of a woman in a sari holding a teacup and a platter of cookies two shades duller than I remembered it. All the shops were shuttered for the night, but the street activity remained: young men pedaling by on their bicycles, ringing their bells as they went, children chasing one another around big colored sheets that flapped from clotheslines. The slum dwellers squatted on the pavement, begging for coins from passersby, or rummaged through the big open bags of trash for dinner scraps.
I stared out of the car window, Nilu silent by my side, as we pulled up outside the building. A couple of lights were on in our apartment, but there was no sign of anyone, although I was certain that both my nana and my mother would be home. They were always home.
“I’ll come in with you, make sure everything is OK,” Nilu said as she was about to instruct the driver to wait. “You never know how they are going to react after everything that’s happened.”
“I appreciate the thought, but I should go alone,” I said. “I got myself into this, and I’ll have to get myself out.”
Still, I was immobile, silent and staring for a few minutes, almost waiting for a sign that I was supposed to step out of the car, down the narrow entryway into our building, then knock on its blue painted door.
“I wonder what was in that letter,” I said to Nilu, both of us knowing I was stalling for time.
“Me too. After telling you repeatedly that you were dead to him, he goes and writes to you. And on the day he decides to mail it… oh, it’s just so sad…”