As Caroline grew into womanhood her childish dreams faded, along with the comforting memory of soft-bosomed Meena with her never-ending tales of swarthy kings and queens and the eternal battle between Good and Evil. Swept up in the dramas and emotional roller-coaster rides that greet every American girl on entering her teens, Caroline learned that the world stood open to her; that she already was a princess of sorts. Indulged by wealthy parents, spoiled by older brothers, folded in the safe and cosy arms of Cambridge high society, she wanted for nothing. She dated boys, fell in and out of love, dressed up for Halloween parties. Visits with Grandma and Grandpa Mitchell on Cape Cod, family gatherings around the Christmas table, weddings and christenings, vacations in the Caribbean, trips down to Florida every now and then to see Great-Aunt Janey: that was Caroline’s life, and she loved it.
Yet as the years passed something happened, something changed. It started with a boyfriend, Samuel, who didn’t quite pass muster with her parents: Sam had an untidy beard and he came from less than prime stock. She was seventeen when she met him, he nineteen, in his first year at college, and not at Harvard either, but at Boston U, and studying politics; and his parents were one-time hippies. He had been born on a farm in Ecuador while his father was on the run from the Vietnam draft, had grown up on a series of alternative-lifestyle farms and communes in South America and, later, in Vermont, California and Arizona. She liked him a lot; she didn’t love him. But she loved his mind. Sam put new, revolutionary ideas into her head.
Sam told her about the world Out There: about the Amazonian Indians whose habitat was being eroded by greedy corporations tearing down the rainforest. He told her about the rape of Africa: about apartheid. He opened her eyes to the plight of blacks on their own continent; right next door, in fact, in Boston’s South End and Roxbury. About the Boston busing crisis of 1974, about racism and oppression and crime caused by poverty and lack of opportunity.
‘You’re a white princess,’ Sam scoffed, ‘living in dreamland in your pretty Queen Anne mansion!’ He made her feel guilty; it was a good and healthy feeling, so she listened. Feeling guilty made her feel, incongruously, noble.
He told her about the oppression of women in the Middle East, and Pakistan, and India—
‘India!’ interrupted Caroline. ‘I used to have an Indian nanny – Meena was her name. She practically raised me when I was a little girl – like a second mother. Oh, I loved her so much! I love India so much! It’s so romantic!’
‘India, romantic?’ scoffed Sam. ‘I’ve been to India. My parents took me when I was just a kid. They took me along the Hippie Trail: through Europe and Turkey and Iran, Afghanistan, Nepal. We lived in India for a year. India is a basket case, Caroline. Millions of people in abject poverty, hardly scraping together enough to survive. They are exploited and downtrodden. The women are nothing but chattels. India is anything but romantic.’
And so Sam opened her eyes to the misery of millions, billions of human beings who shared the planet with her, but did not have the almost random – it seemed to her – good fortune of being born to privileged white parents in America. Caroline began to think, to explore. And even when the relationship with Sam broke down – deep down, he resented her privilege, and mocked it just a little too much – she continued on the trajectory he had launched her on.
The seed Meena had planted so long ago, hidden in the depths of Caroline’s soul, stirred, and yearned for nourishment. India called. And though she was not ready to go there yet, she decided to flout her parents’ will and, instead of studying law at Harvard so as to join her father in his practice, or becoming a doctor like her mother, Caroline chose a different path altogether: anthropology, at Boston University, specialising in South Indian tribes and family structure. Because India still fascinated her. One day, she swore to herself, I will go there and see for myself.