TWO SUITCASES

It all began with two suitcases. In 1969, my mother arrived in the Netherlands with two suitcases filled with bangles, necklaces, and earrings. She got a job as a nurse and moved into a room in a nurses’ hostel. She hid the suitcases under her bed, which is the best place to keep valuables — according to Indians, that is. My mother once confided in me: ‘Burglars never look under beds.’ Then my father whispered in my ear: ‘In India, hardly anyone actually owns a bed.’

The two suitcases remained under my mother’s bed for years, until my father, an awkward man with protruding ears and as Dutch as can be, fell in love with the exotic woman he thought my mother was. I don’t know the exact course of events, and to be honest I don’t really want to know either, but suffice to say that at some point the suitcases moved to a small house on Bloemstraat, where they ended up under a double bed.

My father was studying medicine and spent all day with his nose — and protruding ears — in a book. My mother worked as a nurse and brought home the bacon. Or in her case, the naan bread. As my mother confided in me: ‘Your father was as poor as a rat in Delhi.’ And my father whispered in my ear: ‘If only I were a rat in Delhi.’

The house on Bloemstraat had paper-thin walls, and was even smellier than my father’s armpits. That, at any rate, is what my mother tells me. It can’t be verified anymore. The houses on Bloemstraat have all been demolished. A colossal block of flats now stands on the site where my parents once lived. Time’s a terrible glutton, an insatiable omnivore. That said, the smell of my father’s armpits has never been gobbled up; it seems to be undying. My mother puts it down to his job. My father is a pathologist.

‘What’s that I smell?’ my mother would often ask at the table.

‘Mmm,’ my father would say. ‘Tandoori chicken.’

My mother: ‘I smell corpses! The stench of the dead is spoiling my appetite.’

My father brought his nose to his plate. ‘Delicious,’ he said. ‘Tandoori chicken.’

‘It’s coming from your armpits,’ my mother roared. ‘That cadaverous smell comes from your armpits! You ought to press your arms against your body!’

Whenever I think of the old days, I see my father sitting at the head of the table, his arms pressed tightly against his body, cutlery dangling clumsily from his hands. As a child, I never visited my father at work, scared I might find him up to his armpits in a corpse.

That noisy, subsided, smelly house on Bloemstraat wasn’t the kind where you want to hang around. Before long, my parents went in search of new accommodation. My mother found it on Jericholaan, in the upmarket Rotterdam neighbourhood of Kralingen. Number 81 was a three-storey townhouse with a spacious garden and a tenant, Mr Gerritsen. I never had the pleasure of meeting Mr Gerritsen, though. By the time I was born, he’d already fled the house, shrieking at the top of his lungs: ‘She’s the devil! She’s the devil!’

The house on Jericholaan cost a fortune, but my mother haggled over the asking price, the way she haggled over everything: clothes, furniture, whitegoods, and chicken fillets. Haggling was a hobby — a sport, even. I spent half my childhood in shops and department stores, waiting for the salesperson to give in and reduce the price. I remember a bed store where my mother told the salesman: ‘In India, you can buy a hundred bunkbeds for that kind of money.’ I didn’t say that there are no bunkbeds in India. I did as I was told. I lay stretched out on a mattress and wouldn’t get up until my mother signalled for me to do so. This finally happened at half-past four in the afternoon, more than six hours after we’d first entered the store. The salesman looked as if he’d just come out of a twelve-round boxing match. My mother had a triumphant grin on her face. She’d managed to knock 80 per cent off the original price.

The estate agent charged with selling the house on Jericholaan was brought to his knees, too. The story goes that my mother wanted to trade the two suitcases for the house. The estate agent didn’t get it. ‘You can only pay with money,’ he said, whereupon my mother flew into a rage. ‘You’re insulting me,’ she yelled. ‘In India, you’d be able to buy an entire town for these suitcases!’

As the estate agent looked at the cases, deep furrows appeared in his forehead, and he began to look more and more despondent. Maybe he was thinking of changing jobs. I reckon that people whose paths crossed my mother’s were bound to conclude they’d taken a wrong turn somewhere.

My mother interpreted the agent’s silence as interest. She started listing the jewellery that was allegedly in the suitcases: nose rings, ankle chains, bangles, earrings, necklaces, even a golden crown.

The agent glanced helplessly at my father, but he knew he had a speaking ban. All my dad was allowed to do was breathe and nod. (The latter obviously only in response to things my mother said.)

The agent plucked up the courage to mention the asking price. My mother shook her head, divided the asking price in two, subtracted 10,000, compared that price to rupees, divided the figure in two again, and then revealed the outcome.

My father managed to catch the agent as he fell, and whispered in his ear: ‘It’ll be fine, it’ll all be fine. Count yourself lucky: you’re not married to her.’

Many more viewings followed, and during each one my mother tried to bring the asking price down. The agent no longer fainted, but after each viewing he had to have a breather on the stone steps in front of the house. He, too, must have looked as if he’d just survived a twelve-round boxing match.

In the end, my mother sold the contents of the two suitcases to Rotterdam’s top jewellers. With the proceeds, she bought Number 81 Jericholaan.

Those who doubt this transaction had better have good reflexes. They can expect a clobbering with a rolling pin. It wasn’t uncommon in my childhood for roti to be off the menu because the rolling pin was broken again. Likewise, I remember my father with an ice pack on his head, muttering: ‘If only I were a rat in Delhi; If only I were a rat in Delhi …’

On Jericholaan, there were no more suitcases under my parents’ bed. They had made way for other valuable items, such as an inherited microscope and bales of basmati rice. By now my father had graduated and was earning an income as a junior doctor. His salary, according to my mother, equalled that of a porter at Bombay station.

Bombay (as it was then called): my birthplace. It remains a mystery to me why my two brothers were born in the Netherlands, whereas I was born in India, and why my father was in Rotterdam while my mother gave birth to me in Bombay. Personally, I think it may have had something to do with a special deal. Bargains truly are irresistible to my mother, like a red rag to a bull.

This is the scenario that comes to mind: Air India allows children to travel for free, making the offer for the outbound flight three for the price of one — and for the inbound flight, four for the price of one. But that meant my father had to stay at home. And so he did, quite possibly on my mother’s orders.

Shortly after I emerged from my mother’s belly, Uncle Sharma phoned my father. He ended up thinking I was a girl. ‘There were little birds on the line,’ my father whispered in my ear one day, shortly after my mother confided in me that my father is stone deaf and only hears what he wants to hear. ‘Deodorant is a word your father never hears. Soap is another word your father never hears. Could you please take a shower is a sentence your father never, ever hears.’

But I digress. Let us return to the two suitcases. They’d assumed the shape of an impressive townhouse in Kralingen. My parents lived on the ground and first floors, while Mr Gerritsen occupied the attic. This went well, until my mother discovered the concept of ‘rent control’. It slipped out of Mr Gerritsen’s mouth. My mother exploded. ‘Rent control?’ she exclaimed, making it sound like a nasty venereal disease. ‘Get out of my house. Quick, out of my house!’ But Mr Gerritsen stayed — for another three days, to be precise.

On day one, my mother burned black rubbish bags in the back garden. As the sky filled with thick smoke, she shrieked: ‘Be gone, spirit! Evil spirit of Mr Gerritsen, be gone!’ In addition, she got up at three in the morning to bang a broom against the ceiling while uttering a traditional text people in India recite when someone is terminally ill.

On day two, my mother went to the petting zoo in Kralingse Bos, on the outskirts of town, and stole cow manure. She was almost caught in the act, because she was determined to get the freshest manure. A child raised the alarm: ‘Mummy! Mummy! That lady is putting Bella’s poop into her bag.’ Back home, my mother donned her rubber gloves and began baking biscuits for the upstairs neighbour.

On day three, Mr Gerritsen suffered with diarrhoea and my mother switched off the water mains. She also banged her broom nonstop against the ceiling while reciting the aforementioned traditional text.

On day four, my mother prepared a festive meal to thank the Hindu gods for Mr Gerritsen’s sudden departure.

And so the value of the two suitcases increased to a townhouse minus a tenant.

My parents lived on Jericholaan for ten years, but the family wouldn’t expand any further. My mother had stopped working because she had her hands full raising three sons. My father had qualified as a regular doctor and now earned the salary of ‘a rickshaw puller in Bangalore’.

I had a happy childhood, but perhaps only because I didn’t know any better. Perhaps I was too young to grasp what was happening around me. I thought we were a normal family, that every household had a mother like my mother, and a father who muttered, ‘If only I were a rat.’ If not in Delhi, then in Rotterdam, Deventer, or Goes.

My eldest brother has learning disabilities. He’s the only one who still thinks it’s normal for fathers to sit at the table with their arms pressed against their body, for rubbish bags to be burned in the garden, and for estate agents to be attacked with a rolling pin. The latter happened when the house on Jericholaan was sold, a decade after my parents had moved into Number 81.

My mother had set her sights on a better place: a detached house with a garage, a patio, and a view of Kralingse Plas, a lake. ‘We can’t afford it,’ my father said, to which my mother immediately replied: ‘You can’t afford it.’

My mother’s plan was to sell the place on Jericholaan at a profit and invest the equity in the detached house. She’d engaged a new estate agent. The one who’d sold them Jericholaan probably worked as a librarian by then, in dead silence, among row upon row of books.

The new agent described the price my mother wanted for Jericholaan as ‘disproportional’. At first it appeared as if my mother was unfamiliar with the word, that when she disappeared from the living room perhaps it was because she went to look it up in a dictionary, but when she re-entered the room she had a rolling pin in her hand. ‘Disproportional,’ she shouted, as if this too was a venereal disease. ‘Get out of my house!’

My father added: ‘Run!’

The agent jumped up from his chair and fled to the front door.

My eldest brother chanted: ‘Go, mum. Go, mum!’

My other brother and I were shamed into silence. By now we knew we weren’t a normal family.

When the agent failed to return, my mother decided to sell the house herself. And so it happened that every week we witnessed another person fleeing the house. As a young girl, my mother had been a promising athlete. Her bedside table boasted large trophies. And while the cups had become dull and rusty, my mother’s legs remained quick as a bullet. At the age of 40, she could still sprint like the devil. Occasionally, she’d catch a potential buyer and burst into her usual lament: ‘For that money, you can’t even buy a sheet of corrugated iron in India.’

The carpet in the hallway was beginning to show signs of wear and tear when one day an elderly gentleman offered a price my mother could live with. Two different versions of that price have been passed down: my father’s and my mother’s. And since the latter was always right, the price was twice as high as the asking price. My mother has a lot in common with Willem Frederik Hermans. The celebrated Dutch author was always right, too, and he also had flaming rows about money, not with estate agents but with publishers. I remember reading his correspondence about an advance. Hermans’ publisher at De Bezige Bij, Geert Lubberhuizen, had written a letter saying: ‘I only removed one zero.’ My mother would have known what to do with that response. She’d have forced her way into the publisher’s headquarters in Amsterdam and beaten that zero back into Mr Lubberhuizen’s head.

The detached house was purchased. A friend of my mother’s moved us in with his blue van. Professional removal companies were too expensive; in fact, they didn’t even exist in India. And so a little old van made 37 trips between Jericholaan and Tiberiaslaan.

Over the years, my mother had become a compulsive hoarder. With the dedication of a Salvation Army major, she devoted herself to taking in bulky waste. The things other people dumped by the side of the road — broken radios, rusty bikes, tattered furniture — she dragged back to Jericholaan. One day she’d take it all to India and delight people over there; that was my mother’s dream. She was convinced that the poor, the pariahs, the people with nothing but their bodies, are happy with anything — even a television without a screen.

My mother’s distant past is a dark stain. I know little about it; shame keeps her mouth firmly buttoned. But sometimes she wakes at night from a dream about a beggar’s life, many, many years ago. As a scream breaks open her mouth, the darkness of the night provides comfort, a hundred times lighter than the dark stain of her early memories.

From behind their blinds, the residents of Tiberiaslaan watched the moving-in process anxiously. To them, the blue van must have looked like an inverted refuse truck. Again and again, new loads of household effects were dumped outside the house. Before long, a mountain of electronic equipment, bicycles, and furniture had sprung up — a mountain that was still there the following day, at the crack of dawn. By now, the move had gone on for more than 28 hours. And after each trip my father roared: ‘I’m never moving house again.’

My parents would move a further three times, or two and a half, to be precise.

On the day my debut novel came out, 24 February 2005, my parents announced they were emigrating to Canada. My father had been offered a job in Toronto. According to my mother, the salary was considerably better — average, by Indian standards.

My parents travelled to Toronto royal-family style: on separate planes. Not that royalty had anything to do with it, though. It just took my mother three months to pack everything. While my father was living and working across the ocean, my mother spent day and night preparing to move her hoard. During the day, she’d cycle to supermarkets around Rotterdam and pick up empty boxes. At night, those boxes were filled. What had once contained jam, coffee, or fruit now held an accumulation of rubbish, ranging from discarded phones to worn bike saddles.

My mother had left India with two suitcases; for her move to Canada, she couldn’t even make do with two containers. The relocation had all the hallmarks of a massive provisioning process, of an army being supplied with provisions.

My father welcomed my mother in their new but temporary home: an apartment in a neighbourhood populated predominantly by men in leather trousers. My father hadn’t been allowed to buy a house himself. My mother didn’t think he was capable of it. And so he’d sought refuge in rented accommodation.

‘Among the homosexuals,’ my mother exclaimed.

‘It’s cheap,’ replied my father, who’d come to think of himself as dirt poor. It was the easy version of his life. Once upon a time, his wife had arrived from India laden with jewels. She bought a house, followed by another, and yet another. Meanwhile, he earned the salary of a tailor in Bhopal … This version provided peace and quiet, so my father, like other men, could sit on the couch and read his paper without getting assaulted with a rolling pin.

In next to no time, my mother found a new house, on Bloor Street, in the grand Rosedale condominium complex (complete with swimming pool, fitness room, and library). The move caused congestion in front of the four lifts that were used all day to ferry boxes up to the 23rd floor. An elderly lady asked my mother if she was opening a supermarket. The caretaker was less naïve and immediately recognised what type of woman my mother was: the type you want to get away from.

George was a little old man with horn-rimmed glasses, who spent the livelong day behind the reception of the condominium complex. His job was to greet the residents (‘Good morning, Miss Henderson!’ ‘Have a nice day, Mr Glennon!’), and answer the phone once in a blue moon. It was George’s dream job. He could remain seated all day, and so time would pass and take him gently towards retirement. But then my mother entered George’s life. Like all Rosedale residents, she paid a service charge, but she was alone in concluding that this made the caretaker a servant, of the kind you might find in well-to-do households in India. In other words, a kind of glorified slave.

‘Georrrrge,’ my mother would bark non-stop. ‘Could you pick up those banana boxes and bring them to my apartment?’ Or: ‘My flowers are dying; don’t forget to water them today.’ Or: ‘Please, my husband really needs deodorant.’

And so George would hide as soon as my mother’s voice boomed through the marble lobby. There were other caretakers, but my mother would only ever ask them, ‘Do you know where George is?’ To which those caretakers replied that he’d be back in the afternoon, or the evening.

Harsh winters and long summers passed. And then George received what may have been the best news of his life: that my parents were moving house. George was hiding under the counter when he heard my mother tell a neighbour: ‘We’re moving.’ She listed the benefits of the new condominium: two bathrooms, higher ceilings, a sunroom. George leapt up and tears came to his eyes when my mother said: ‘Of course, we’ll miss George terribly …’

After three years in Rosedale, my mother thought the time had come to move again. She’d spotted a luxury condominium under construction, not far from Mount Sinai Hospital. My father would be able to walk to work. Right now, he cycled 20 minutes to and from work every day, braving the traffic of a metropolis — even in snowy conditions or at –15 degrees Celsius. (My mother had stolen the bike from the Rosedale garage. Parked there were two abandoned bicycles, their saddles covered in a thick layer of dust: one for my mother, one for my father. With my eyes closed, I can picture a lock being opened with a file. My father is keeping a lookout, muttering, praying to all the Indian gods: ‘Please restore my wife’s common sense.’ My mother pays no notice and carries on filing. She’s not doing anything wrong, just taking care of two bikes. And when I open my eyes again, I see these words written down. I hope I’m not doing anything wrong either; I’m just taking care of my parents.)

While George was starting to feel better by the day, my parents spent time with the project developer, selecting the marble for their bathrooms, the wood flooring, the colour of the walls. Likewise, the kitchen could be designed to their specifications, to include anything from a granite or a metal kitchen counter to red cabinets or cupboards the colour of lemon. Four months later, when their brand-spanking-new apartment on the fortieth floor was completed, it would all be installed.

But the move never happened. The various reasons given were that the living room was too small, the swimming pool in the complex had no windows, and nearly all the neighbours were Chinese. Not that my mother has any particular issues with Chinese people. She only has issues with people who don’t understand her — a number that easily surpasses the entire population of China.

The real reason was that my mother deemed the move too expensive. The transport exceptionnel from Rotterdam to Toronto had been paid for by my father’s employer. The move within Toronto was at their own expense. My mother couldn’t get rid of the keys to the new apartment fast enough when she saw the prices of several accredited removal companies. The expression ‘penny wise and pound foolish’ perfectly captures my mother’s practices — and only deepens my father’s tragic fate.

Luckily for my parents, their apartment in Rosedale hadn’t yet been sold. George, however, was inconsolable. He collapsed when my mother told him: ‘I’ve got such good news. We’re not moving, after all.’ George had to stay in hospital for a week before he was declared fit to go back to work. That said, he never became his old self again.

Meanwhile, my mother went in search of a new estate agent. She refused to have anything more to do with the agent who’d been tasked with selling their apartment in Rosedale. There’s no such thing as Indian logic.

It didn’t take her long to find a new estate agent; not so a buyer. In the United States, the first few newspaper articles started appearing about people unable to pay their mortgages, and my mother’s asking price was 100,000 Canadian dollars above the original. ‘It’s the only condominium in this complex that’s for sale,’ my mother argued. The agent gulped and then looked at my father, but his speaking ban remained in place.

Miracle of miracles, the apartment was sold after seven months. A millionaire from Shanghai bought it for his daughter. In the not-too-distant future, she’d be walking across the walnut floor that my parents had chosen, open the red kitchen cabinets that matched pots and pans they’d never use, and drip water onto the grey marble of the bathroom of which my father had always dreamed.

And so the value of the two suitcases rose yet again — by 100,000 dollars, this time.

There followed one more condominium viewing — a solo viewing by my mother. While in Europe for work, my father came to visit me in Italy. He held his grandson in his arms for the first time. And the grandson was sick all over his grandfather for the first time. ‘It’s the smell of corpses,’ my mother said over the phone. My father whispered in his grandchild’s ear: ‘Never marry an Indian woman, and you’ll live a long and happy life.’

My son — six weeks old and with hands like starfish — was all eyes. In his innocence, he’d forget everything he heard and saw. But one day I’d tell him about his grandma, who thought a plane ticket to come and marvel at her first grandchild was too expensive, but did go and view a penthouse with an estate agent. ‘She’s got her eye on something new,’ my father said over dinner. His arms were relaxed, but the cutlery still dangled clumsily from his hands. ‘The asking price is three million dollars.’

I closed my eyes and pictured my mother, parking her stolen bike against the wall of a condominium complex before bending down to remove the elastic that protects her trousers from the chain. Inside, in the gleaming entrance lobby, the estate agent is waiting for her. She quickly slips the elastic into her coat pocket and shakes his hand. A little later they’re in the lift, whizzing up. The agent opens the door to the penthouse, revealing a sea of space. My mother enters. And at the very top of the condominium complex and at the height of the credit crisis, she views the bathrooms, the bedrooms, the designer kitchen, and the living room with a view across Lake Ontario.

Much has been said about the contents of the two suitcases — the gems, the bangles, the necklaces, and the earrings — but nobody ever laid eyes on them.

‘Gorgeous,’ my mother says.