Mumbai, India
The call came at six thirty in the morning on the seventh of October. Thomas’s BlackBerry was on the nightstand. He caught it on the second ring and put the phone to his ear, listening.
“We’ll be there in forty minutes,” he said and hung up.
“Is it time?” Priya asked, rolling over and looking up at him. Her face was bathed in the blue light of dawn. The sun had not yet risen.
He nodded. “She said an hour at most.”
They dressed hurriedly, he in chinos and a linen shirt, she in a red and black salwar kameez. They took the elevator to the garage where their Toyota SUV was waiting for them. Priya climbed into the passenger seat, and Thomas threw the truck into gear and headed out of the driveway, tossing a wave at the night watchman who was smoking his charas by the gate.
He drove north along the Bandstand until the road wrapped around to the east. Ten minutes on Hill Road to S. V. Road. Fifteen minutes on the Western Express Highway to Andheri, and then another five minutes to the ashram. Although it was a Friday morning, traffic was fairly light. The majority of vehicles on the highway were rickshaws, and Thomas cut through the pack with ease.
Priya took his hand off the gearshift and placed it on her belly.
“What shall we call her?” she asked him.
The week before, they had gone in for Priya’s twenty-week ultrasound, and their doctor in Breach Candy had announced the baby’s gender with unflinching certainty.
“I don’t know,” he said, glancing at her across the cabin.
She smiled. “I am leaning toward Pooja.”
“Absolutely not,” he said. “Every girl in Bombay is Pooja. She needs an original name.”
Priya began to laugh. “You are such an easy target. I have a much better idea.”
“Tell me,” he said.
“When the time is right.”
They lapsed into silence and his mind drifted to the events of the day before. After nine months of corruption-induced delays, Ahalya at last had been called to testify in the Sessions Court against Suchir, Sumeera, and Prasad. The brothel owner and his son had been present in the courtroom, which was unusual. But their strategy soon became apparent. When Ahalya stepped into the dock, her belly swollen beneath the fabric of her churidaar, Suchir and Prasad stood up and stared her down. At a distance of fifteen feet, their menace was palpable. The prosecutor objected, but the defense attorney spun some nonsense about their inability to sit for long periods of time. The judge, clearly irritated by the dispute, waved the prosecutor on and allowed the malik and his son to maintain their challenge.
From the back of the courtroom, Thomas saw the look of trepidation in Ahalya’s eyes. But she stood her ground, and in the end her testimony rang forth like a bell on a clear day. She told the whole story of her captivity, from the tsunami to Chennai to Bombay, first in eloquent English and then in equally articulate Hindi. She recounted her first rape at the hands of Shankar and her second rape at the hands of the birthday boy. Until then, Suchir and Prasad stood shoulder to shoulder. Ahalya, however, went on to describe the night Prasad came to her and the forced trysts that followed. Suchir’s expression didn’t change, but he turned his head slightly and muttered something to his son. Prasad’s complexion turned a shade paler.
Then came cross-examination. The defense lawyer mounted a scandalous attack on Ahalya’s credibility. He insinuated without a shred of proof that Ahalya was a promiscuous schoolgirl who had many amorous affairs with boyfriends. When she denied it, the advocate simply increased the pitch of his delivery, emphasizing the fact that the child in her womb was the product of consensual sex outside the brothel. Ahalya patiently explained that she had been a virgin when Suchir bought her and that the only men who could have impregnated her were Shankar, who paid a princely sum not to use a condom, and Prasad, who had been so feverish in his interest that the question of protection had never arisen. The defense lawyer pranced and gesticulated, and even shouted at her at one point, but the damage had been done. Ahalya stood victorious on the stand, and even the judge, who had started the hearing jaded, gave Suchir and Prasad a look of censure at the end.
It’s fitting that the call should have come today, Thomas thought, accelerating the SUV past a slow-moving rickshaw. They skirted the edge of the international airport and took Sahar Road into Andheri. When they reached the grounds, Sister Ruth swung the gate wide and allowed them to park in a lot inside the fence.
“Come,” the nun said, hurrying up the path. “It won’t be long.”
The rising sun painted the grounds in shades of gold and delivered the promise of another blazing Bombay day. The monsoon rains had been shorter this year, extending from late May to the end of August, and the heat and humidity had returned with a vengeance in September. It wasn’t yet seven thirty in the morning, but Thomas felt beads of sweat forming on his brow as he walked behind Sister Ruth.
“How is she?” Priya asked.
“It has been hard,” the nun said. “But it is nearly over.”
They were in such a hurry that they nearly passed Ahalya’s pond without noticing the change. Thomas, however, caught sight of it out of the corner of his eye.
“Wait!” he exclaimed.
Sister Ruth stopped so quickly that Priya nearly ran into her. The nun followed Thomas’s gaze and began to smile. There, suspended on the shimmering surface of the pool, was a star-shaped lotus flower. Its petals were cerulean like the sky, and it caught the slanting rays of the morning sun.
“This wasn’t here when I came last week,” he said.
“The flower opened yesterday,” Sister Ruth replied.
“Did she see it before the hearing?”
“Yes,” the nun confirmed. “I was with her.”
Thomas shook his head. The lotus was the reason Ahalya had been untouchable on the witness stand. She had interpreted the flower as a sign of divine favor and decided that her victory was inevitable. In believing, she had made it so.
They arrived at the hospital just in time to hear the wails of the child echoing through the main hall. Priya clutched Thomas’s hand. Sister Ruth led them to a small anteroom outside the delivery area.
“Wait here,” she said. “I will return when the child is presentable.”
A minute later, a different face appeared at the door to the delivery room.
“Thomas!” Sita exclaimed, running out to greet him.
She had grown in the six months since he met her. Before, she was a gangly girl, lovely but frail. Now she had begun to fill out in all the places that distinguished a woman. Her voice was surer, her confidence keener, and her round eyes brighter. The nuns would need to watch her with the boys. Then again, Thomas thought, will she ever want to marry, after all she has seen?
He embraced her and took a step back. “How is Ahalya?” he asked, finding Priya’s hand again.
Sita beamed. “She was strong and the baby is healthy. Come and see.”
Sister Ruth reappeared and beckoned them into the delivery room. The space was outfitted with a cluster of beds, a large washbasin, and a rolling cart with medical equipment. Ahalya was sitting up, her head resting on pillows. The baby was quiet in her arms, and two nurses were attending to her. Sita went to her sister’s side and took her hand.
Ahalya spoke when they approached. “Thank you for coming.”
“We wouldn’t have missed it,” Thomas replied. “Do you have a name for her yet?”
Ahalya smiled and her weariness seemed to retreat. “She is Kamalini, my little lotus.”
He smiled. “We saw your flower on the way in.”
“It is a rebirth,” she said with sudden strength. “A new beginning.”
The passion in her voice took Thomas by surprise. For months, she had treated the baby as an afterthought, a burden she had to bear. Her ambivalence had made sense to him. The child was a living reminder of her exploitation. He had detected subtle shifts in her perspective as the little girl had taken shape in her belly, but he had never really expected her to embrace the child as her own. Looking at her now, he began to understand. Confronted with the choice between bitterness and love, Ahalya had chosen love. And by that choice, she had turned little Kamalini from the demon seed of the rapist into the newest member of the Ghai family.
“Would you like to hold her?” Ahalya asked Priya.
“Can I?” Priya asked. Only Thomas detected the tremor in her voice. The last time she had held a child was the night Mohini died.
One of the nurses swaddled the little girl and handed her to Priya. She rocked the baby back and forth, and wet tears streamed down her face. She began to sing the lullaby her mother had taught her as a child. It was the song she had sung to Mohini on the day she was born.
“Could you be darling,
the crescent moon?
the lovely lotus bloom?
the honey that fills the flowers?
the luminance of the full moon?”
She handed the baby back to Ahalya. “She is beautiful. She looks just like you.”
Ahalya smiled. “Do you have a name for yours?”
“We were just discussing that in the car,” Thomas said.
Priya touched his shoulder and looked at the girls. “I think we do. With your permission, we would like to call her Sita.”
Thomas caught his breath and began to nod in affirmation. He had never considered it, but nothing could be more appropriate.
“It is a good name,” Ahalya said, her eyes shining. “What do you think?” she asked her sister.
Sita began to laugh. It was a musical sound, like chimes in the wind. After a moment, Thomas joined her, and then Priya and Ahalya followed suit, and before long even the nurses were laughing, though they knew not why.
“I always wanted a little sister,” Sita said, taking Priya’s hand. “Now I will have two.”