Tara knew what the emergency in Amma’s life was. It was the poop that was accumulating in her balloon belly. Also, perhaps this gloomy antiquated house was growing more real to Amma, as it was to Tara.
From down the dirt road leading up to Morgan Hill, Shanti Nilaya had looked like an imposing castle—the kind that fairytale princes and princesses lived in. But now it was just a large old home with a moss-ridden compound wall and narrow blue front gates. Its ample front yard was thick with coconut palms, mangos, and jackfruit trees that formed a thick canopy and kept the sun out. The semicircular verandah was large, but the many inner rooms were small and dark. The kitchen was dungeon-like, and the flames from the wood stoves danced and leaped like dragon’s tongues. At night, the incandescent bulbs threw strange shadows upon the walls, and biscuit-colored lizards with bulbous eyes lurked on the wooden beams of the ceiling.
All of yesterday, Tara had latched on to Amma, clutching a fistful of her sari like a handkerchief. At night, the family had slept in an ornate teak bed in Daddy’s childhood room upstairs, and the wooden floorboards had creaked like in a haunted mansion when Tara stepped on them.
Daddy said he had happy memories of his room, which smelled of dusty old books, because bookshelves filled with hardcovers and paperbacks lined almost the entire far-end wall. But Tara couldn’t help but focus on the rickety fan that rotated slowly, as if burdened with age and secrets, and wonder if it would come unhinged and crash over them. Back at home, they had large air-conditioned bedrooms. Their living room was flush with sunlight and furnished with beautiful colonial-style furniture, and their garden was a profusion of colors. If only she had Pinky in her arms, she could make her new surroundings fade away from her mind.
After the unnecessary, endless flutter created by the voice on the radio had died down, Amma finally swayed up the stairs, her breath a series of whistles, to unpack the trunks. In their room, Tara hopped from foot to foot and clasped and unclasped her hands.
“Amma, Pinky!” she cried every now and then, lest her mother forget the most important thing in the trunks.
“Stop whining. You are not three years old, Tara.”
“I’m only six.”
“I am trying to find her, no?”
Soon, both the trunks and the suitcase were empty, Amma’s peacock-blue-green-yellow sari—the one with the whirls—was in the pile on the bed, and Pinky still had not been found.
Amma’s eyebrows furrowed. She turned to Daddy, who was lolling in bed with the Hindu newspaper.
“I don’t understand it. Are you sure you put the doll in one of the trunks?”
“Positive,” Daddy replied.
“Strange. I don’t understand it,” Amma repeated, pulling Tara to her bosom. She sounded too anxious to be reassuring. Daddy must have made a mistake, she said. Instead of packing the doll in the suitcase, he had dropped her in one of the boxes that were being shipped into Mangalore. The boxes would arrive by ship next month. “That’s not very long, is it? That’s less than thirty days.”
What? How was it possible? How?
For a moment Tara was bewildered. Then she was shaking like a boat in a sea storm. When her wails, loud and piercing, drew Grandmother Indira and Uncle Anand into the room, Tara buried her face deep in Amma’s sari and continued her howling.
“What happened?” asked Grandmother. “Did she hurt herself?”
“I cannot find her doll,” said Amma, stroking Tara’s hair.
“Make her stop crying,” Daddy said to Amma. “You’d think she hurt herself or something.”
“She hardly got to play with the doll, poor thing.” Amma turned to Tara. “Shhh, now. Good girls don’t cry.”
Tara stopped sobbing and cleaned her running nose on Amma’s sari. She didn’t feel like a good girl, but she was afraid of upsetting Daddy.
Uncle Anand stooped down and wiped the tears from Tara’s cheeks with the pad of his fingers. “It’s only a doll. Come, let’s go to the barn. I’ll show you a real baby. Amba delivered her new calf only last week.”
Uncle Anand was tall and lean like Daddy, but his face was younger and kinder. Also, his voice wasn’t commanding like Daddy’s voice usually became when she cried. Tara let go of Amma’s sari and allowed Uncle Anand to lead her to the barn.
They watched from the barn door—and it was fascinating—Amba fawning over her newborn, Appi, and Appi, her soft black coat twitching, trying over and over again to stand, as if her legs were on slippery ground.
That night, Tara dreamed that she had morphed into a calf. She struggled to stand, bounced about in the barn, then dropped on her fours, palm-hooves deep in dung, searching, desperately searching for Pinky.
Chapter 2
The calf emerged before her eyes now, a quarter century later, as she gripped the handrail and steadied her feet on the escalator. It was easy to feel lost in this enormous gleaming airport, even for an adult. The sudden burst of people who emerged into view at the top of the escalator crowded her mind. She blinked a couple of times. She had finally made it to the arrivals lounge after walking through a labyrinth and riding a train. She scanned the crowd—past people holding placards and others waiting for their loved ones—for the brown face among the different shades of humanity.
She was relieved when she spotted him finally, but her chest heaved involuntarily at the sighting. He stood—as broad shouldered as she remembered him—one hand in his pocket, a flip-top cell phone in his other, looking dapper without trying. He wore faded jeans, a blue-and-white-plaid cotton shirt that was open down to the second button, and a faraway expression on his face.
Tara knew him as an enigma, the stranger she had married three years ago. She felt lightheaded with apprehension as she waved to catch his attention, to see a glimmer of recognition in his lost eyes. He pursed his lips into a straight thin line when his eyes fell on her. She tried to read his smile—if it was a smile at all, because it fell short of reaching his eyes—but a fresh bout of nervousness impeded her deduction abilities. He motioned her to walk toward baggage claim, then caught up with her in a few giant strides. She was tall, but he was many inches taller.
She wondered if she should give him a hug. She didn’t.
“Hi,” he said. “You had a good flight?”
“Hi, Sanjay,” she said self-consciously. “Yes, it was comfortable.”
“Was it smooth sailing at immigration?”
“Yes. They even welcomed me to America.”
“Good.”
“This is a huge airport.”
“Hartsfield–Jackson airport is the busiest in the world,” he said. “I hope you took the train?”
She nodded. “I followed the others.” She left out the silly details, like feeling weak-kneed as she stepped out of the aircraft into the looming unknown, or her anxiety at the immigration line, or her fear of not being able to get into the right train to get to baggage claim.
His American twang seemed even more pronounced now, after three years. It made her acutely aware of her own convent school English accent. He said her baggage would arrive at Aisle 5, so they walked up to it and waited. The bags were slowly being loaded on to the conveyor belt; the early ones traveled in an elongated circle, waiting to be picked up. She wondered who the bags belonged to. Were they people like her, on the cusp of a new life? Not one person seemed nervous—tired and sullen maybe, but not nervous. They looked like they were eager to get home—to love and warmth, to comfort and cheer. She didn’t know what awaited her.