When Asha was six Janiki went away to Madras to study, having persuaded her parents that she was not yet ready for marriage. Sundari, who had been keeping her eyes open for a suitable groom since Janiki was a child, had been sorely disappointed, as she was keen to send out feelers to the parents of several eligible bachelors; but Janiki was adamant. She wanted to continue her education.
‘There are so many other fish in the sea,’ she said, ‘and I will meet so many nice boys when I am a student. I am sure these boys you found for me will find nice brides! Don’t worry about it, Amma. I am only eighteen and if I meet someone I like I will let you know and you can have great fun chatting to his amma about marriage. Just a few years more.’
And so Sundari, trying to be modern and liberal, had agreed. Appa, being compliant to all of Sundari’s decisions, and anyway in favour of women’s education, also agreed; he was willing to maintain his daughter for a further four years, and so Janiki went off to Madras. Asha wept bitterly when Janiki left. Janiki embraced her and comforted her.
‘See, little sweetheart, I am not far away. Just a few hours. I will come as often as I can and visit you. And when you are a bit bigger you can visit me too. I will show you Madras. I will show you the sea! I will take you to Higginbothams Bookstore and buy you lots of English books. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’
Asha was an avid reader and that last suggestion comforted her somewhat, because Gingee did not have an English language bookshop, and she loved the stories of English children eating strawberries and cream and drinking ginger beer, and looking for treasure or going off to boarding school. Still, though, she was not satisfied.
‘Why you have to go, Janiki? Why you have to leave me?’
‘I am going to learn all about computers,’ Janiki said. ‘I am going to study at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. It’s a great honour to study there and I am so happy I got a place. And if you work hard at school you too can study there or somewhere else in Madras or Bangalore, or even in Bombay or Delhi.’
‘The Indian Institute of Technology!’ repeated Asha slowly. ‘It sounds scary!’
‘It’s not at all scary, baby!’ Janiki laughed. ‘It’s one of the best technology universities in all of India. It’s a wonderful opportunity, especially for a girl. Now come on, give me a nice long hug and a kiss and let me go – I have to finish packing. Run along now and remember Higginbothams! So many books. You will be in paradise!’
And Asha had to be content with that. Janiki would go off into the big wide world, and one day she, Asha, would follow.
Janiki kept her promise and came back as often as she could – after all, Madras wasn’t that far away from Gingee. And one day she even kept her promise and took Asha to see the sea. Asha frolicked in delight in the surf and went back home having made the firm decision that one day she, too would go to Madras to study. Asha showed her the Indian Institute of Technology Madras and the little room where she lived in a hostel for female students, which she shared with a girl called Naadiya.
‘It’s just a small room but it’s my home, and I love it!’ Asha told her.
Naadiya became Janiki’s best friend. And just as she had predicted, Janiki met some nice young men and it wasn’t long before she met someone she could love. He was an aeronautical engineering student at the same university, and his name was Gridihar. Gridihar’s and Janiki’s parents wrote to each other and eventually the marriage was arranged, to take place a year after Janiki’s graduation.
For Asha’s eighth birthday, which fell on a Saturday, Janiki came with a huge cardboard box.
‘Guess what’s in here, baby!’ she said with twinkling eyes. But Asha could not even begin to guess. ‘Just let me open it,’ she begged, dancing around the box in excitement. So Janiki gave her a pair of scissors and Asha cut through the tape holding the cardboard flaps together, and opened the box. There was a lot of paper padding, but underneath that there was…
‘Oh! A television! My very own television!’
‘No, sweetheart, it’s not a TV set. It’s something else that looks like a TV. It’s a computer! Look, let me lift it out, carefully. See, there you go. And there are some more parts to it. This is the hard drive, and this is the keyboard, see? And his little thing is called a mouse. See?’
‘A mouse? That’s funny! But it’s not a real mouse!’
‘No, thank heavens! We don’t want a real mouse in the house. But let me set it up for you. It’s not a new computer, darling, but it’s not very old either. You remember my friend Naadiya? You met her when you came to Madras. Well, her family is very rich, and her daddy bought her a brand new computer, the very latest model called Apple Mac, and so she gave me her old one. She just gave it to me, like that! Because she’s my friend. But I thought I’d give it to you, because after all, I can use the university computers. Naadiya didn’t mind.’
‘But what’s it for, Janiki? What can I do with it? Can I watch TV on it?’
‘No, Asha, it’s not for TV watching. It’s for something very special and very amazing, called email. I will show you how to use email. When you have email you can write me every day and tell me what you are doing and I get your messages that very same day, imagine! Now that you can write so well you must write me every single day. Then you won’t miss me so much.’
And Janiki set up the computer for Asha in a corner of the living room, and connected it to the telephone line, and set up an email address, which was ashabhandari@yahoo.in.
‘So, now let me show you how to send an email. It’s very simple. See, you just put in my address – mine is jiyeng@yahoo.in – and then you write something right here. Go on, write something!’
‘What shall I write?’
‘Anything at all. Just a simple message.’
So Asha wrote ‘I love you, Janiki!’
Janiki laughed, and kissed Asha on the cheek. ‘Thank you, dear, and I love you too! Now let me connect it to the Internet, which is an amazing thing just like a spiderweb in space.’
Janiki pressed some buttons and the computer began to buzz wildly, and then Janiki said: ‘So now it’s connected – see that little sign? That means it’s in the World Wide Web. Now all you have to do is press this button on the keyboard – Enter – and see! It’s gone, and it will be in my account and I can read it. If I were in Madras right now I could read it immediately, and here I can read it too, I just have to go out of your account and into mine, and hey presto!’
‘It’s like magic!’ said Asha. ‘So no more letters?’
‘You can still write me letters, of course you can. But it’s such fun to send emails!’
‘I’ll send you an email every day. I promise!’
And she did, though after the initial wonder wore off she tended not to write every day any more, but maybe once a week, or once every two weeks, and Janiki would write back and tell her what she was up to. She enjoyed her studies, she said, and was doing very well, and she had ideas and plans.
After her last year of university Janiki applied for, and won, a paid internship at a big company called Grant Reed IT in Silicon Valley, in California, and in great excitement she packed her bags and flew off to America.
‘But it doesn’t matter, baby. I won’t see you for a year but we have email, don’t we? We’re never very far away from each other. This is a great opportunity for me. America! Who knows: perhaps Gridihar and I will move to America later, when we are married, and you can come and live with us then – you will be near your mom!’
And so it happened that Janiki was in America when the terrible thing happened that ruined Asha’s life. Janiki hurried home in shock.