One month after I gave birth, I sat on the floor, waiting for my plan to happen. I had pictured it over and over, willing it into action. I heard the banging first. It sounded like an earthquake. I started crying for my baby: “Mera bachcha.”
By pure grace, Madame had taken Janaki with her that morning. She had to go early for testing before her lung surgery and had found a free HIV clinic near her appointment, but even in her sick way of loving Janaki, she said she’d add the medications to Janaki’s tab.
Sajana arrived in my doorway, clutching my naked baby in her arms. She handed her to me. She had witnessed the power of my birth, had seen what a mother is capable of. She had once longed for such protection herself. I motioned for her to come with us. We locked eyes, but she just walked away to her room.
I understood. Sometimes it’s hard to leave behind what you know.
Jai dashed in. That was my cue to hurry down the stairs.
It felt surreal, how we walked out. The students standing there, almost one hundred of them, set my baby and me free. The large signs in their hands: Free Asya; Let Her Go; Poetry Is Power; Babies Don’t Belong in Brothels. The two gundas on duty stepped aside. Later, when Jai imitated the gundas’ expressions of shock, it sent us all into giggles.
I’ll never forget what it felt like, to hold my baby to my chest and walk away forever from the place that had covered me in blood and rags. I felt the energy of the group of students surrounding me in protection as the other mob marched on. One girl wrapped her dupatta around me, and another gave me her scarf for my baby. My plan had actually worked.
As we got into the car the professor walked me to, he said, “I am finally meeting our Tagore.”
His words reminded me of Shiv’s. The tears started to flow, and I smiled. I was free. Jai was my angel.
The boy
Angel from above
Late mother to
Bring her daughter
The soma of humanity
•••
When we arrived at the university, I learned the students had raised funds for me and volunteered to help with the baby, meals, and to give me a place to stay until I could get on my feet. They arranged for me to meet with a nonprofit counseling group as well.
I stayed with a friendly student named Neela. I confided in her, telling her that I wanted to find my sister, and she started researching right away.
Neela reminded me of Amla. She was graceful and kind, sure of herself, and smart. She was studying accounting, but her passion was journalism. “My father says I need to study accounting, but whatever, yaar; I still write for the paper,” she said with a grin.
The students wrote about my story in their newspaper. It was a miracle, they said. They interviewed Jai and called him my brother. I didn’t mind: he was. The freedom felt miraculous to me, and I drank in every minute of it. I took in the sounds of students laughing, cars honking, and got used to sleeping at night. Being outside in sunlight. The normalcy of life that I had missed.
Neela helped me read the news and tried to trace stories back to when Amla left the brothel or when Shiv didn’t return.
“What if she wasn’t rescued? What if someone took her somewhere more horrible?” I would ask Neela these questions at night, and she’d say we would find the answers, to just sleep on it. I’d nurse my baby, and we would all fall asleep that way, in one bed.
“Do you want to find Shiv?” she asked me one night.
We were eating masala fries on her floor as she studied for her next exam. By this time, baby Amla was lifting her head up and smiling at us.
“I want to forget Shiv,” I replied. The only family I wanted was my sister and my daughter. Jai, too, I mentally added. He was family now. He had started putting all his earnings in a tiffin box on the kitchen counter. “This is for our home,” he’d say.
Neela’s parents were diplomats. They sent her money routinely for things like groceries and school supplies. When Neela asked for more funds, they didn’t question her, and she put it towards my baby’s diaper cloths so we could stay with her. “Don’t worry,” she said when I protested. “They won’t notice.”
My poetry book had sold well, but there were many fees, the professor told me. Fees required to print and distribute the book from the university publisher. There was money left, but it was not enough to find my own home yet. I kept writing more to enter poetry contests so I could contribute to Neela, who always refused, yet I told her it felt good to contribute to my own freedom that way.
I was reciting a poem to the baby one evening, and when she fell asleep, Neela looked up from her textbook and whispered, “Your voice is mesmerizing, Asya.” I thought of how Shiv had said the same thing.
After the article in the college paper, my book received more attention, and the college bookstore started getting more traffic. Neela and I walked to the bookstore the next morning, and I met the owner, Rajiv, a small man who seemed to be always smiling.
“Namaste,” he greeted us with his hands together. He agreed to host a book reading and signing. I needed to let my voice be heard, and if I sold more copies, I could save more for my own place.
“Asya, beti, you will be famous, like Tagore,” he said.