FREE IS GOOD

The journey started in Rotterdam, on Oudedijk, the Mecklenburglaan stop. Ashirwad kept looking to the left, waiting for the yellow number seven tram to appear in the distance. Around his neck he wore a rectangular travel purse. It held no notes, no coins with which to buy French fries or ice-cream. The purse was empty, save for one item: a pass with his name, date of birth, photo, and the following description: ‘Disabled person’s companion pass.’ This pass allowed whoever accompanied Ashirwad to travel on public transport for free, be it tram, bus, or train. My mother had applied to the city council for it, and the day the pass landed on our doorstep, our lives became even more circumscribed. From then on, we’d have to travel with Ashirwad if we were taking public transport, so one of us would be travelling for free. Free is good.

Sometimes (when Ashirwad was in school, or in bed with the flu), the pass alone sufficed. On those occasions, I’d wear the travel purse around my neck and look around in surprise when the ticket inspector turned up: ‘Ashirwad? Ashirwad, where are you?’ The conductor always allowed me to get off immediately to search for my brother.

The other scenario was that I’d be joined by my middle brother Johan (who, aside from asthma, is perfectly healthy). Whenever we had our tickets checked, I’d show the pass and Johan would pull a funny face. ‘He’s disabled,’ I’d often say, perhaps unnecessarily, to the conductor, who’d nod his understanding.

‘Nine,’ Ashirwad shouted. ‘Tram number nine.’ To the left, in the distance, a yellow vehicle appeared. My mother peered at the approaching tram, but her eyes weren’t good enough to distinguish between a seven and a nine. It wasn’t until the tram reached the stop that she said: ‘Well done, Ashirwad.’ And she let go of the handles of her suitcases.

It goes without saying that the journey had commenced earlier — at home, in my mother’s wardrobes. Whenever my mother travelled, she tried to transfer the contents of these wardrobes to the suitcases — or as much as possible, anyway. For example, when we went on holiday to the United States, we racked up a total of seventeen suitcases; fourteen for our midweek break to amusement park De Efteling. All I remember about some holidays is the number of suitcases.

That morning, the contents of the wardrobes had been transferred to four large cases. They were bursting with clothes, pots and pans, food, and items that might be of use while in transit. Those who had to buy something while travelling hadn’t really got the hang of life, weren’t really up to the challenge — if my mother was to be believed, anyway.

Suitcases, always these suitcases.

My father lugged them to the tram stop on Oudedijk. He’d become an accomplished porter and wouldn’t look out of place at Mumbai Central station. Perhaps he was even better than the average porter — nimbler and faster.

Ashirwad gave the driver of tram nine the finger. He did that sort of thing since he’d hit puberty. If something wasn’t to his liking, he could flip.

When the tram drove off with a chime, my mother walked over to Ashirwad. ‘You mustn’t show your middle finger,’ she said. ‘Don’t you know what it means?’

‘I want tram seven to come.’

‘It’ll be here in a minute.’

‘Mummy,’ my brother said. ‘Where are we going?’

‘We’re going on a long journey,’ my mother replied. ‘We’re going to France.’

‘With line seven?’

‘First we’ll take line seven, then the train, and then a coach.’

‘Where am I sleeping tonight?’

‘In a hotel.’

‘And how about Teddy?’ My brother had a soft toy, a stuffed monkey he called Teddy. He slept with it under his armpit. Since Ashirwad hit puberty, Teddy smelled like the changing room of a rugby club.

‘Teddy’s in the suitcase,’ my mother said.

‘So he’s also taking the tram, the train, and the coach?’

My mother nodded. Ashirwad had no more questions — either about the journey or about France. He felt reassured. He looked to the left again, eager for tram number seven to appear. That was my brother all over. One moment he’d lay into someone, the next he was worried about his cuddly toy.

At Rotterdam Central station, my mother accosted a police officer. She pointed to the four suitcases next to her on the ground, and then at Ashirwad, just like I’d point to Johan when we had our tickets inspected on the tram or bus. With this difference: my mother didn’t say ‘He’s disabled,’ and Ashirwad didn’t pull a funny face. The disabled person’s companion pass had to suffice. My mother pulled the pass from my brother’s travel purse and showed it to the officer. ‘We need to get to Platform 11,’ she said. That’s where the train to Utrecht was due to depart from in three minutes’ time. My father would pull it off easily — four suitcases, three minutes, eleven platforms — but he’d been sent back home from the Oudedijk tram stop without a tip. He couldn’t travel for free. And not free was not good.

Now the police officer was expected to carry the cases. He read the text on the pass carefully, unsure what was expected of him. So my mother said: ‘Come on, Ashirwad, let’s get a move on.’

The police officer arrived at the train ten minutes late. My mother was standing in the doorway, having a heated discussion with the train manager. She was making a terrible fuss, shouting that the police were on their way, that she was being escorted by the police. There are times when I’m absolutely thrilled to be elsewhere. The police officer was sweating like a pig; his blue shirt was drenched, his cap askew on his head. He wouldn’t stand a chance at Mumbai Central station, but this was Rotterdam Central station; the two were a world apart. My mother opened one of the suitcases and began to rummage around in it. Finally, she felt what she was looking for, and from among the various odds and ends extracted a tin of cat food. It was mashed rabbit, bought on special, one of the last few tins. The whistle drowned out the police officer’s cries of surprise.

The train journey went well; that’s to say, without any tantrums. My brother looked out of the window, hummed songs he’d heard on the radio, and proudly pulled the companion pass out of his purse when the conductor entered the compartment. As the man inspected the pass, Ashirwad pointed to my mother and said: ‘She’s disabled,’ a joke my brother and me had taught him.

At Utrecht station, they were met by a nephew who helped them with the luggage. He was the son of one of my mother’s sisters and lived downtown. The previous day my mother had phoned my aunt in The Hague, demanding that her son come and collect her from the station. The conversation was in Hindi; the only Dutch words were Jaarbeurs Utrecht, repeated over and over. This was where my mother and brother would be boarding a coach. The nephew entered the exhibition centre car park and stopped beside the first touring coach he spotted. But this wasn’t the one that would take my mother and brother to France. A notice behind the windscreen said Cologne. My mother ordered the nephew to go ask the driver. Reluctantly, he got out and made his way to the coach. A moment later, he got back into the car and started the engine. ‘We need to be a bit further up, to the right,’ the nephew said. Several coaches were parked over there, so what followed was an interminable search. The nephew drove up to coach after coach, only to be told over and over again that my mother and brother weren’t on the passenger list. He didn’t give up; he couldn’t give up. A nephew has a duty to his aunt — this is how things are done in Indian culture. By now, my mother was seething and told her nephew off for failing to locate the coach. This is not how things are done in Indian culture; this is just how my mother does things. She swore at him and yanked at the steering wheel when she thought he was going the wrong way. Sometimes other people would be equally thrilled to be elsewhere.

At long last, the right coach was located, but my mother wasn’t on the passenger list. Ashirwad was.

‘What about Teddy?’ my brother asked the driver.

The driver scrolled down the list with his index finger. ‘Ted,’ he said. ‘And the last name is …?’

People often take Ashirwad seriously, because he looks perfectly normal: a handsome young man with a parting in his hair. It was impossible to tell, just from looking at him, that he couldn’t read or write. The only progress he’d made in all those years was that he could now tell tram seven from tram nine.

My mother stepped between the driver and my brother. ‘Teddy’s in the suitcase,’ she said. ‘He travels in the luggage compartment.’

‘People aren’t allowed to travel in the luggage compartment,’ the driver said.

‘Teddy’s not a person. Teddy’s a monkey.’

Confusion all around, but trust my mother to make things even worse. She pulled the companion pass out of the travel purse and handed it to the driver, telling him with a smile: ‘I travel for free.’

The driver looked at the pass, the way the police officer had done earlier, the way countless innocent people had done at one time or another: cashiers, swimming pool attendants, shoe sellers. My mother could have been a sister of Dimitri Verhulst’s mother. There’s a story in the Flemish author’s novel The Misfortunates about Mother Verhulst’s ‘pee pass’: ‘At a theatre or cinema box office she would fish all kinds of cards up out of her handbag and the pee pass trumped the lot. It stopped people in their tracks and they would often give her a discount to put an end to her moaning.’ My mother, too, would produce her pass wherever she went. If it didn’t give her free travel, she demanded a reduction: in entrance fees to museums and swimming pools, in prices in shops.

‘This pass is for use on public transport only,’ the driver said, and returned it to my mother. Two non-insulated wire ends in my mother’s head made contact. Her smile vanished instantly. ‘It doesn’t say so,’ she replied, and quickly slipped the pass back into the travel purse. ‘In India, I even get to fly for free with this pass,’ she said proudly.

When the driver refused to budge, my mother decided to change tack. She placed one foot on the bus and declared in a loud voice: ‘I get to accompany my son for free because he’s mentally handicapped.’ My mother never normally said this in Ashirwad’s presence, but the short-circuit in her head overrode this rule. She was determined to travel to France for free. And she knew Ashirwad would get angry, furious, livid. He didn’t like people calling him handicapped. Not long ago, he’d started throwing shoes about in a shop when my mother explained to the salesman why she had a right to a discount.

Ashirwad raised both middle fingers to the driver and shouted: ‘Lesbian dickhead!’

Dickhead was my brother’s favourite insult. Some days we were all dickheads at home: my parents, my brother, me, the guinea pig. The addition of ‘lesbian’ was a new thing. Ashirwad must have learned it from some of the local children. The woman at Number Nine was a lesbian. Although my brother didn’t have a clue what the word actually meant, that didn’t stop him from using it.

‘Do you want to take him on his own?’ my mother asked the driver, and placed her other foot inside the bus, too.

Not much later, the driver hoisted four large suitcases into the luggage compartment, moaning all the while. (The nephew had already been sent home without a tip.) Nobody could stand up to my mother. In a different life she might have been a dictator, a despot who’d make the history books. In this one, she was my Indian mother, and Ashirwad’s, too.

Unlike the train journey, the coach trip didn’t go off quite so smoothly. In front of, behind, and next to Ashirwad sat people who were wearing white caps and singing songs. Ashirwad only liked one type of song: the hits on Radio 538. The commercial station was always on in my father’s car. Other stations and other songs weren’t conducive to his good mood, and even less so to that of the people around him. The songs the people on the bus were singing were cheerful and all about God: ‘Do you know your Father knows you? / Do you know he cares? / Do you know you’re a treasure / A treasure in God’s hand?’

My brother stuck his fingers in his ears and began to sing the latest big 538 hit: Fatboy Slim’s ‘Fucking in Heaven’. Who Fatboy Slim was or what ‘fucking’ meant — or ‘fucking in heaven’ for that matter — was all a mystery to Ashirwad. But the people around him took him seriously because he looked normal. They tried to drown him out with: ‘Clap your hands, for the Lord is good / Stamp your feet, for the Lord is good.’ Ashirwad pressed his fingers deeper into his ears and roared the words ‘fucking in heaven’ over the clapping and stamping.

And then my mother, who’d been snoring all this time, woke up. She has the great gift of instantly falling asleep in all moving vehicles. And deny it though she will, she snores like a chainsaw. Confused and alarmed by the din around her, she asked: ‘What’s going on?’ But Ashirwad had his fingers in his ears and kept shouting. The woman in the seat in front of my mother turned around to say that the young man next to her was singing Satanic songs.

‘Ashirwad,’ my mother said. ‘Stop it, please stop shouting.’ She grabbed hold of his trembling hands and caressed his forehead while whispering in his ear: ‘You’re my darling, my firstborn, my pride and joy. I love you so much.’ And when he was finally calm and quiet again, my mother took the companion pass out of the travel purse and handed it to the woman in front of her.

‘Could you hand this around?’ my mother asked her.

And so the document was passed around the coach, from hand to hand, from front to back. People read the text, looked at the photo, and nodded to my mother to convey their understanding. It turned out that the pass served to broker peace, too.

At the rest stop, one of the passengers gave Ashirwad a white cap. God is Good, it said on the visor. ‘And free, too,’ my mother added, but that was lost on everyone.

The rest of the journey passed quietly. There was no more singing; instead, everybody watched a film shown on two small television sets. Unlike radio, my brother liked all television. It didn’t matter what was being broadcast: wildlife documentaries, sport, soap operas — anything was interesting. That said, things didn’t get truly exciting unless there was kissing involved, or Baywatch was on. In that case, Ashirwad would giggle loudly, and every time a breast appeared on screen, he’d say: ‘Whoa there!’ The film on the coach gave little cause for giggling. It was the story of Jesus, from cradle to grave. My mother was asleep, her eyes closed. Every couple of minutes, Ashirwad woke her up, because her snoring bothered him.

‘You’re snoring through the film,’ he kept saying.

‘No, I’m not,’ my mother replied, getting angrier by the minute. She even began to swear in Hindi. Unlike Fatboy Slim’s English profanities, Ashirwad knew perfectly well what these expletives meant. The fruits of one’s mother tongue …

At some point, other people began to take offence at the snoring, too. Having woken my mother for the umpteenth time, only to hear her deny the snoring again, my brother received the backing of a fellow passenger.

‘I can hear it, too,’ the man behind her said. ‘You’re snoring very loudly.’

‘No, I’m not,’ my mother replied. ‘I’m not snoring at all.’

‘Like a chainsaw,’ someone else chipped in.

My mother shook her head angrily, before erupting in a barrage of Indian swearwords that continued for at least five kilometres. The entire coach looked over, a sea of God is Good caps.

My mother really ought to have her own pass, featuring her name, date of birth, photo, and the following warning: ‘Run if you want a happy life.’

Just before they arrived in Lourdes, one of the passengers walked to the front and began to address the coach through a microphone. She made a few announcements of a practical nature: rubbish in the bin, applause for the driver, which groups were sleeping where, and what time dinner was served. She concluded with a prayer. Ashirwad asked my mother which group they belonged to. ‘We belong together,’ my mother said. What she meant was that she’d only booked the coach journey; once in Lourdes, they’d have to find their own accommodation.

It was the same story on family holidays — we always did it without any planning. The region in France, Germany, or Luxembourg would have been chosen, but we never booked a hotel or an apartment in advance. My mother had no faith in travel agencies. She preferred to do everything herself. I remember a holiday in Baden-Baden in Germany, when we spent the first four nights in the car, a red Lada 2000. All the holiday chalets were too expensive for my mother’s liking.

‘I’m a professor,’ my father said after yet another chalet had been rejected. ‘I earn enough to buy this house.’

‘You don’t even earn enough to buy a dog kennel,’ my mother replied, and started the car. The faster we got out of this place, the better. Free was good; too expensive was evil.

‘It’s a great place for the children,’ my father tried. But my mother was unrelenting. And unreasonable, too. She converted the chalet prices from Deutschmark to Dutch guilders, and then from Dutch guilders to Indian rupees. Without adjusting for inflation, out of all proportion.

In the end, we found shelter in a shed rented out by an old lady. The place reeked of dung.

In Lourdes, my mother had a choice of 300 hotels. I have no idea how many receptionists, hotel owners, and bellboys my mother spoke to, and how many people were shown the companion pass. As my mother knows I’m writing a book about our family, she’s stopped answering my questions, and to Ashirwad, eight is just as many as 80. But if you ask him if he’d like to go back to Lourdes, he’ll shake his head furiously.

In the end, my mother opted for Hôtel les Rosiers, because the following week the washing line at her house boasted two yellow towels with the name of this hotel woven into them. The material was thick; the font, elegant. To my mother, the price of a hotel room is all-inclusive. That’s to say, it’s inclusive of breakfast, service, towels, linen, and everything on the wall. We once took a pair of antlers from a German guesthouse.

That evening, my mother and Ashirwad joined a candlelight procession. Thousands of people holding candles, on foot, in wheelchairs, or in beds on wheels, formed an iridescent parade that snaked along the Esplanade du Rosaire, behind a large statue of the Virgin Mary. My mother had tears in her eyes and never let go of my brother’s hand. She prayed the Rosary, even though she’s a Hindu, and isn’t familiar with either the Hail Mary or the Lord’s Prayer. She just muttered along, the way Ashirwad mutters along to new songs on the radio — songs he hasn’t heard before but still wants to sing.

In the hotel room, Ashirwad cuddled up to Teddy in bed. My mother tucked them in, and sang the Indian lullaby she used to sing for me and my brother Johan: ‘Chandaa maama door ke, puye pakaayen boor ke. Aap khaayen thaali mein, munne ko den pyaali mein …’ Even though it was never on Radio 538, it was a song Ashirwad liked to hear. My mother had been singing it to him for 20 years now — an eternal lullaby.

In the other bed, my mother had trouble falling asleep because Ashirwad’s snoring was possibly even louder than her own. But she didn’t wake him up. My mother stared at the hotel room ceiling, at the spiderwebs, the stains and the cracks — the sinuous cracks that many before her had gazed at in the almost-dark while saying their prayers. She thought about her firstborn, her pride and joy; about a large car he would be driving in the future and a princess who would kiss him. Then, finally, she fell asleep.

The following morning at eight, breakfast was served. Each table had a basket with bread and various toppings. It didn’t take my mother long to see that there was one croissant, one roll, two small tubs of jam, and a tiny packet of butter per person. She complained even before she got to her seat. The French lady who walked around with a coffee pot fobbed her off by saying she didn’t speak English. She clearly hadn’t counted on my mother’s tenacity. While Ashirwad devoured the rolls and all the toppings, my mother snuck off to the kitchen. The coffee lady couldn’t believe her eyes. She’d seen many pilgrims in her lifetime, but none of them had ever stolen bread and tubs of jam from the kitchen. Not that it was stealing to my mother. She never stole — she had a right to these things, she’d paid for them. And so, brazenly, she actually returned to the kitchen a little later so she could prepare sandwiches for lunch. Because let’s face it: a half-decent hotel breakfast also covers your midday meal.

On Thursday 11 February 1858, the Virgin Mary appeared to Bernadette Soubirous in the Grotto of Massabielle in Lourdes. Bernadette, fourteen years of age and the daughter of a poor miller, was collecting wood and bones with her sister and a friend. As the girl was about to cross the stream in the grotto barefoot, she spotted a lady: ‘She was wearing a white gown as well as a white veil, a blue girdle, and a yellow rose on each foot.’ Together they said the Lord’s Prayer, and then the Virgin Mary disappeared again.

Seventeen more visions followed. On one of those occasions, the stream turned into a well, and Bernadette drank the water: ‘She told me to drink from the well.’ Less than a week later, the first miracle occurred: after 38-year-old Catherine Latapie from Loubajac stuck her paralysed arm into the water of the well, she was able to move both her arm and hand again.

The Catholic Church confirmed the authenticity of the apparitions in 1862, and in 1873 the first pilgrimage took place. Since then, Lourdes has been visited by countless pilgrims from around the world — some five million a year these days. The water from the well is now thought to have brought about more than 60 miracles: restoring sight to the blind, curing cancer patients of their tumours, and giving the mentally ill their peace of mind again.

My mother visited the grotto with Ashirwad by the hand. Despite the early hour, there was already a long queue. They were mostly elderly, with groups of young people here and there. Somewhere halfway down the queue, my mother spotted a group wearing white caps on their heads. She briefly considered putting Ashirwad’s God is Good cap on his head to jump the queue, but she had a better idea. There was a separate queue for the disabled. People on crutches, in wheelchairs, or in beds on wheels got in almost immediately.

‘What are you doing?’ my brother asked when my mother stepped out of the line of shuffling pensioners.

‘Chup ho djao,’ my mother said, which means ‘be quiet’ in Hindi. But more than that, it’s a kind of secret agreement, a pact between her and Ashirwad. Whenever my mother spoke those three Indian words, or just a succinct ‘Chup’, my brother knew she was up to something.

Five minutes later, my mother returned with a wheelchair. She told Ashirwad to sit down, but he shook his head.

‘You want tikkie?’ my mother asked and raised her hand.

Tikkie, or slap, was another one of those secrets words. I was familiar with it, too — and with the dire consequences if you didn’t obey.

After some grumbling, my brother sat down in the wheelchair. The people in the queue watched it all in bemusement. Ashirwad had no mobility problems — in fact, he had no physical disabilities whatsoever. Several pilgrims shook their head; some reacted angrily. The miracle was supposed to make people get out of their wheelchairs, not have them end up in one. My mother took no notice of the protests and wheeled Ashirwad to the front, to the grotto where the Virgin Mary had appeared before Bernadette. My brother kept quiet. Maybe he was trying to avoid a scene, the way I’d spent my childhood trying to avoid scenes.

But while it may have been in my mother’s nature to try and get one over on others, always and anywhere, she was also doing it for Ashirwad — first and foremost for Ashirwad. He’d waited long enough for a cure.

Inside the grotto, people touched the rock face with their fingers, or with their lips. Some pilgrims even rubbed photos against the wall — of a sick grandma, or of a baby in an incubator. Again, my mother’s eyes filled with tears: waxing seas, tidal waves of sorrow. She pulled the companion pass out of the travel purse and pressed it against the grey rock. Softly, very softly, she said a prayer, chanting the words, as she did in the prayer room in the attic.

That’s when Ashirwad got up. He’d become curious and wanted to touch the rockface, like the others. Suddenly, people began to applaud, and joyous cheers rang through the queue. A Japanese woman fainted. My mother got angry and gestured for Ashirwad to sit down again. While swearing in Hindi, she wheeled him out of the sacred grotto.

The wheelchair was returned to an Indian man sitting on the ground. My mother offered him lunch, consisting of a croissant and a small tub of jam.

Next up, my mother and brother visited the seventeen baths. Into these baths flowed the water from the well that Bernadette drank from, water that was said to have healing powers. It was the water for which my mother had come all the way from Rotterdam, for which pilgrims kept coming from all over the world.

If anything, Ashirwad thought the water was cold.

There was a Dutch nun beside one of the baths. She wore a white robe and introduced herself as Sister Johanna.

‘Ashirwad,’ my brother said. ‘Number Three Tiberiaslaan, 3061 BJ, Rotterdam.’ Since he’d learned his full address, including postcode, by heart, he told it to everyone to whom he introduced himself. Sometimes he even added his favourite food: ‘Snakies.’ But not this time.

‘Mrs Van der Kwast,’ my mother said. This is how she answered the phone; this is how she introduced herself. Her passport said Veena Ahluwalia, but we’d never heard that first and last name. It was an untold story, a mystery.

Sister Johanna accompanied pilgrims to the changing room and helped them in and out of the water. She was about to take Ashirwad by the hand when my mother stopped her.

‘We belong together,’ she said again, and walked with him to the changing room.

It was true. If there were two people in this world who belonged together, they were my mother and my eldest brother: the snoring twosome, the inseparable mother and son who had an implicit understanding. All children want to come along to the baker or the bank, but even though Ashirwad had long ceased to be a child, he still asked ‘Can I come, too?’ every time my mother left the house.

My mother was the first to enter the water. She dipped her head under for ten seconds. Those with enough faith in the water’s healing powers would be cured, just like Catherine Latapie, Antonia Moulin, Vittorio Micheli, Leo Schwager, Cécile Douville de Franssu, and so on and so forth. The list of names kept growing. Anna Santaniello was the most recent one to be added to the inventory of miracles. In 1952, she paid a visit to the baths and was cured of severe rheumatoid arthritis. When the Church recognised the miracle half a century later, on 9 November 2005, Anna Santaniello became the 67th pilgrim to have been officially healed in Lourdes. It happened in the nick of time, because the old lady wasn’t much longer for this world; only another three weeks and two days, to be precise.

Sister Johanna helped my mother out of the bath. My mother was shivering, and her lips were blue. Water dripped onto the tiles.

Then it was Ashirwad’s turn. He dipped one foot into the bath. No sooner had he done so than he squealed.

‘And now your right foot,’ Sister Johanna said.

Ashirwad shook his head. ‘Cold,’ he just about managed to utter.

‘It takes a bit of getting used to.’

This was followed by giggles. Ashirwad’s eyes had wandered to an image on the wall of the bathing area: Maria holding Jesus in her arms, one of her breasts bared. ‘Whoa there!’ my brother exclaimed. ‘Whoa there!’

My mother lowered her eyes. It was high time for a miracle.

Sister Johanna whispered a prayer, the way she’d done when my mother got into the bath. Ashirwad was still watching the icon, as though it were a television screen — Baywatch without sound.

‘Your other foot,’ my mother ordered.

The only thing Ashirwad moved was his head. He shook it.

My mother raised her hand. ‘Tikkie? You want tikkie?’

Moaning and groaning followed, but then my brother’s right foot did disappear into the water.

‘Well done,’ the nun said.

Ashirwad just stood there in the bath, like a statue with chattering teeth. He didn’t know where he was or what was happening to him; why his mother was looking at him with bated breath or why the woman in the white robe was whispering. And who can blame him? It was incomprehensible, even for someone capable of reading, writing, arithmetic, and telling time.

My mother folded her hands — she’d never been this close to a miracle before. Perhaps the son who’d been born to her, her gift, would finally be returned to her.

‘You need to lie down,’ the nun told him.

‘Oh boy, oh boy!’ Reluctantly, Ashirwad sat down in the bath, his knees sticking out of the water.

‘Freezing cold,’ he commented. Then he stretched out his left leg, followed by his right one, before slipping completely underwater — his face, chest, knees, and toes.

The most recent cure dates back to 1987, when the Frenchman Jean-Pierre Bély was cured of multiple sclerosis. Eleven years earlier, twelve-year-old Delizia Cirolli from Italy got out of her wheelchair, and would never need it again. ‘Those with enough faith will be healed,’ my mother’s inner voice said. ‘Those with enough faith …’

Suddenly Ashirwad leapt up. His eyes were closed, and goosebumps covered his arms and his belly. With the water gushing over his body, he gasped for breath.

Reborn, my mother thought. He’s been reborn.

Then Ashirwad’s eyes opened. The first person he saw was Sister Johanna in her white robe. ‘Lesbian dickhead,’ he yelled at the top of his lungs. ‘Filthy lesbian dickhead!’

The nun quickly crossed herself. My mother tried to calm my brother by wrapping a towel around his shoulders. But Ashirwad wouldn’t be calmed. ‘Lesbian dickhead,’ echoed through the bathing area again. Even his ears were covered in goosebumps.

The nun crossed herself again. Every time my brother yelled at her, she crossed herself. She’d never crossed herself so many times.

Ashirwad shivered with cold. Intent on revenge, he began to splash the water about with his hands and feet. The nun’s robe got drenched.

‘Ashirwad!’

My mother screamed his name with all her might. It drowned out the splashing and the swearing, the anger and the devotion. In an instant, all was quiet.

Ashirwad looked shamefaced as he glanced over at my mother. Her cheeks were wet. It was impossible to tell whether they were wet with tears or holy water.

That afternoon, the coach returned to Utrecht. There was just enough time to buy a souvenir, or to have an ice-cream at an outdoor café. But my mother had something else in mind. The bellboy of the Hôtel les Rosiers followed her with the four suitcases. They were on their way to the taps beside the grotto. Ashirwad asked: ‘What are we doing?’

‘Taking water home,’ my mother replied.

Ashirwad nodded. He didn’t ask any more questions; he felt reassured. The bellboy, however, didn’t know what was about to hit him.

The arrival of a water meter in our house had imposed yet another limitation on our lives. The meter registered use; instead of a fixed sum, we now had to pay for every litre consumed. In other words: every little drop cost us money. My mother had managed to keep the water company’s installation engineers at bay for months. When someone rang the doorbell, we weren’t allowed to make a peep — as if the Gestapo was at the door. But one day our number was up, and the water meter was attached to our mains. From then on, there was no more wasting water — not even a droplet. We weren’t allowed to shower for longer than one minute a week; the toilet flush mechanism was dismantled — we’d now flush by emptying a bucket of rainwater; there were pots under the taps to catch water that would otherwise be lost — water that would then be boiled for tea or used to do the dishes; all our plants were thrown out. And, last but not least, we smuggled water home: from school, from work, from the athletics club, from pretty much anywhere.

The bellboy put the four suitcases down on the ground. My mother opened them one after the other and took out six blue jerrycans. It was a magic trick. In the next town, she would conjure up a herd of sheep from these suitcases.

Other pilgrims bought Lourdes water in a bottle shaped like the Virgin Mary and took it home as a souvenir. My mother filled six large jerrycans: 180 litres of water. For the foreseeable future, our water meter wouldn’t budge.

Again, pilgrims shook their heads; again, people voiced their disapproval. These were noises that surrounded my mother like a swarm of insects, that went wherever she went.

While the second jerrycan was filling up under the tap and the bellboy was biting his nails, my mother tried to neaten Ashirwad’s hair. The bath had messed it all up. But my mother couldn’t reach his head. Ashirwad was nearly six foot six; my mother over a foot shorter. Holding a comb in her left hand and water in her right, she clambered on top of one of her cases. And so she combed Ashirwad’s hair into a parting, the neat, perfectly straight parting of a film star and the captain buried deep in her memory.

I don’t mind telling you that I too get tears in my eyes sometimes.

As soon as the six jerrycans were full, my mother ordered the bellboy to take them all to the coach.

‘Impossible,’ the bellboy replied.

Nothing was impossible to my mother. And so, a moment later, the bellboy ferried the luggage over in the wheelchair belonging to the Indian man who’d helped them earlier that morning. It required seven trips. The coach was delayed by half an hour. The bellboy wouldn’t hack it at Mumbai Central station either.

The driver was waiting in front of the coach with the passenger list. It was a different man this time. He put a squiggle after Ashirwad’s name. My mother’s name wasn’t on the list.

‘That’s right,’ my mother said, and urged Ashirwad to get on board ahead of her.

‘So what about you?’ the driver asked.

My mother looked over her shoulder one last time: at Lourdes, at the location of so many miracles — but not for her, not for her Ashirwad.

There was one consolation: the companion pass was still valid. With a smile on her face, my mother showed it to the driver.