Chapter 29

Janiki. Mumbai, 2000

The sign on the gate read Tulasa Nilayam in washed-out red paint. It was a crumbling grey building a stone’s throw from the sea, protected from the street by a man-high hibiscus hedge. A forbidding metal gate, bars pointing skywards in rusty spikes, delayed her entry by some five minutes, as a thick chain bound the two wings together, tied in a complex knot that had to be unravelled. Janiki undid the chain, swung open the gate. She entered.

A few yards down the drive a man stepped into her path. He wore a khaki uniform.

‘Good morning,’ Janiki said. ‘I have an appointment with Dr Ganotra.’ She repeated the words in broken Hindi; she knew barely enough to get by.

Several mails had awaited her in the Internet shop she had found last night, but the news was bleak and Kamal could offer little support at present. He and Caroline could not arrive until tomorrow, he said, on the earliest available flight from Madras to Bombay.

After checking her mail Janiki, with nothing left to do, took to Yahoo to find out all she could about the industry that had trapped her little sister. Her search had led her to this Dr Ganotra, who, apparently, ran an NGO, the Bombay Safe Haven, whose main focus was underaged prostitutes in the city. She had emailed Dr Ganotra; he had replied almost immediately; he would help. She was to come to this place, this Tulasa House. ‘I’ll meet you there when I have time,’ he’d said, and that was the last she heard from him. He was her only contact in this behemoth of a city; a starting point through a dark labyrinth that terrified her, the very thought of which caused her to shiver with anxiety for Asha, caused her mouth to dry up and her stomach to churn. This Dr Ganotra, though – he would help.

So here she was. The guard shrugged and replied in rapid Hindi.

‘Dr Ganotra.’ Janiki spoke louder this time, as if it was volume that prevented the guard from understanding.

He frowned, looked threateningly at her and said something that she interpreted as ‘Stay here, don’t move, or I’ll shoot.’ He turned away, walked up the steps leading to the front door and disappeared.

Taking his warning literally, Janiki waited, using the time to inspect her surroundings. The house before her was more in the category of villa – large and rambling, built of stone that must once have been red, since this was the colour that here and there showed through the layer of black mould growing up the walls, enclosing the building in a patina of neglect and dereliction. Wooden shutters hung from all the windows, awry where a hinge was broken, the paint peeling away, almost all with one or more louvres missing. Looking up, Janiki thought she saw a face at one of the windows, but she couldn’t be sure – her uncertainty sent a shiver up her spine.

The guard’s voice broke the chill. He was standing at the top of the entrance stairs, gesturing for her to come. She did so, stepping up the wide, crumbling stone staircase. The guard stood in an open doorway, speaking again in Hindi and emphasising his words with gestures.

Janiki followed him into the house, stepping over a threshold, a line across the floorboards where darkness sliced through the sunlight. A cloak of musty gloom closed in and wrapped itself around her, cool and dismal. After the glare she could see only blackness. Seconds later her eyes had adjusted and she made out a wooden staircase against the wall of a long, narrow lobby.

Several doors left and right suggested that the lobby cut the house into two halves. The doors, the walls, the staircase, the floor: all was of unadorned wood, not a carpet under their feet, no pictures on the walls, and the paint so old it peeled. A faint background smell, pungent and familiar, told Janiki that somewhere termites were at work, building their underground tunnels, hollowing out the boards.

She gathered these impressions in a matter of seconds, following the guard along the corridor to the last door on the right. He knocked curtly, called something and gestured to her to follow, all simultaneously.

It was a large kitchen, sparsely equipped. A two-burner kerosene stove stood on a stone counter along one side, and an old green refrigerator, patched with rust in the shape of a giraffe, rattled noisily beside a dirty-paned window. There were lines of shelves with cooking utensils below and above the counter, and foodstuffs – large jars of rice and dhal, smaller jars containing spices, a battered pot of limes – stood on shelves on the other side of the refrigerator. A line of half-green tomatoes basked in the sun on a windowsill, above the dripping tap of a rusty sink. A branch of green bananas hung from the ceiling.

In the middle of the kitchen stood an oblong table with two straight-backed chairs. Against another wall was a planked bed-frame, like a long, low table. At the foot end of it sat a woman, cross-legged; she was stringing beans. She looked up as they entered, and smiled. At the other end of the bed-frame lay a heap of sundry articles: a pile of folded towels, a basket of onions, two coconuts, several chilli peppers and, somewhat incongruously, a battered alarm clock and a rusty saw.

The woman was stout, in her mid-forties. She wore a faded, threadbare red sari, and under it a blouse, which looked painfully tight, pinched in at the waist and at the sleeves, where tyres of fat bulged out. Her smile was warm, welcoming, echoed by her eyes. She spoke, but in rapid Hindi, too advanced for Janiki. She shrugged and spread her hands, showing that she didn’t understand. ‘Do you speak English?’ she asked. The woman shrugged.

‘I want to see Dr Ganotra,’ Janiki said. This was ridiculous. What would she even say to this Dr Ganotra, should she be fortunate enough to meet him? She felt a fraud. ‘Dr Ganotra?’ she repeated, and made a questioning gesture.

The woman seemed to understand. She spoke several words, gesturing and pointing outside the house. She repeated some of the words, and Janiki guessed at their meaning.

‘He’s not at home?’

But the woman did not understand. Janiki could only surmise that this was the case: that Dr Ganotra was out; but when or if he would be back could not be ascertained. The woman laid down her knife beside the heap of unstrung beans and, with some effort and deep breathing, rose from the bed-frame, talking all the while.

She pulled out one of the chairs, dusted some crumbs from its seat with the end of her sari, rattled it, verified that one of the legs was loose and would fall off at the slightest weight, pointed to this flaw so as to excuse her lack of seating arrangements and cleared a place at the other end of the bed-frame: she placed the heap of towels on the floor, the onions, the peppers and the coconuts on the table, the alarm clock on a shelf next to a jar of rice and the saw on the fridge. With a damp rag she wiped once over the bare planks, dried the area with the end of her sari and gestured with her open palm for Janiki to take a seat. She did so.

All this time the guard had been standing in the doorway, picking his teeth with his fingernail and watching silently. Now, hospitality established, the woman spoke brusquely to him and shooed him away. The man shrugged, stepped backwards into the lobby and closed the

door.

The woman was still on her feet. She stood in the middle of the room, looking inordinately pleased with herself. She patted herself on her voluminous breast and said, ‘Subhadai, Subhadai.’

Janiki pointed to herself, saying ‘Janiki’.

‘Leetle English,’ the woman explained. ‘Koppee? Koppee?’

It took a while before Janiki could figure out that the woman was offering her coffee. She nodded and smiled. The woman busied herself with boiling water and coffee powder, which she served in a mug on a saucer with three biscuits on the side. Only then did she return to stringing beans. And all the while she talked. Janiki did not understand a word. She was impatient, eager to be out there searching for Asha; she felt that each passing minute, each second accepting the hospitality of this woman and waiting for a mysterious Dr Ganotra, was wasted. She should be wandering the streets again. Futile as such a search would be, it would at least make her feel useful, unlike sitting here with this woman.

After an hour Subhadai had finished stringing the beans and chopping the onions: she had placed a pot with rice and water on a kerosene flame; the coffee and biscuits had been digested; the morning was drawing to an end, lunchtime loomed near and Dr Ganotra had not put in an appearance. Janiki decided to find out if there was a chance of meeting the good doctor today; whether he would be returning and, if so, when. If not she might as well return to the streets.

Her carefully worded, slowly enunciated questions to this end produced only a further waterfall of words. Janiki interrupted, repeating, ‘Dr Ganotra coming? Today?’

She gestured as she thought appropriate, moving her fingers like walking legs, patting the table to signify ‘here’. She pointed to the alarm clock and spread her hands in an open question.

Subhadai understood.

Excitedly she began to explain; Dr Ganotra, it seemed, was indeed coming. She pointed at the clock, at the cooking food, at her own mouth, made eating gestures. Then she moved her fingers like walking legs, pointed again at the clock and held up one finger.

‘Ek, ek, ek,’ she said.

Janiki understood. He’d be coming at one o’clock, for lunch.

Subhadai suddenly stopped talking. She placed a finger over her lips and cocked her head, gazing into space. Janiki, too, listened; and she heard. The sound was unmistakable; somewhere in the bowels of the house somebody was crying. Subhadai nodded and stood up. At the doorway she hesitated, as if making a decision, and then she gestured for Janiki to follow her. She led her into the lobby and up the creaking stairs. The crying was louder in the lobby, and grew louder still as they walked upstairs: the forlorn lament of a soul that has lost all hope of solace and every right to happiness.

On the second floor there was another lobby, but less gloomy than the one below, for it was lit by a large window at the front of the house. Subhadai opened a door and entered a room. Janiki followed.

The cryer was a girl, sitting on a charpai, leaning against the wall with knees drawn up. She might have been twelve years old, or a year or two older, a year or two younger – it was hard to tell, for her body was tiny and emaciated, the body of a young child, whereas the expression on her face was ancient. Her hands lay limp, palm-up, on the mattress; her uptilted chin was half turned to one side, her lips trembled as she wept, her eyes were vacant. She sat immobile, weeping apparently not because of any specific cause but because that was all there was left to do in all the world and in all of life. She did not so much as turn her face to look at the newcomers.

Janiki felt like an intruder into some intensely intimate experience, unwelcome and inopportune. She backed towards the open doorway, but Subhadai took hold of her upper arm and stopped her.

Subhadai walked over to the charpai, taking Janiki with her. She was speaking to the girl, and though the words were unknown Janiki could tell they were words of comfort. The girl did not react.

Letting go of Janiki, Subhadai sat on the edge of the charpai in front of the girl and reached over to stroke her cheek. The girl showed no reaction, did not look at Subhadai, did not pause in her weeping. Janiki stood awkwardly watching, the urge to flee struggling with compassion and curiosity. She stayed.

She stood before an abyss of misery so deep and so dark it filled every space in that child’s soul. Janiki needed no explanation – she knew it. The blankness in those dull black eyes, the downward pull of the trembling lips, the wretched whimpers: all spoke of unimaginable woe, too awful for words. This child was lost.

Is grief contagious? It had to be, for an involuntary trembling took hold of Janiki. She tried to control it, but couldn’t; her hands shook, her heart raced, a feeling of dread spread through her entire being, the fear of being drowned and destroyed by whatever agony possessed this child. Again, the desire to flee – to turn her back and never return to this terrible place – took hold of her, to be immediately superseded by its opposite: compassion, love even, the need to enter into the jaws of despair, defy its power, deny its existence. The trembling stopped as suddenly as it had set in.

Subhadai stood up and gestured to Janiki, who sat down on the charpai, directly before the girl, and took the trembling hands in hers.

‘Ratna,’ Subhadai said, pointing to the girl.

Janiki looked into eyes that saw nothing. Not even a flicker of acknowledgement. It did not matter. She leaned forward. She placed both hands on the girl’s shoulders, drew her away from the wall. The child did not resist. She was passive, a rag doll. There seemed not a remnant of human will left in her. Janiki spoke to her, knowing she would not be understood, but it did not matter.

‘Hello, Ratna. I’m Janiki,’ she said. ‘I’m from Tamil Nadu and I came to look for my sister. My sister is the same age as you. I hope I can find her. Her name is Asha and I’ve lost her. I think she too is sad. I think she too is crying. I really want to find her.’

She instinctively lowered her voice, softened its edges; knowing the words themselves could not be understood, she filled them with feeling, with heart, knowing that somewhere, deep inside this child’s being, was someone who would receive that feeling and understand it. She spoke on a level of communication beyond thought, beyond speech, and superior to both. The girl, whatever was still alive in the girl, would understand. She brushed a strand of hair away from the little face, held the little head in both her hands, centred it so that the eyes were directly in front of her. The child wept on. The eyes stared, not seeing. Empty. Dead.

She is dead, Janiki thought. Dead inside. But no. She can’t be. If she were dead she would not cry. Somewhere, deep inside, there is a last spark of life. She has heard, she has understood.

Suddenly a door flew open; not the door into the corridor, which still stood open, but a second, leading to the next room. Looking up, Janiki saw another girl, this time older, perhaps fifteen or sixteen, standing on the threshold.

This new girl was entirely different. She looked first at Janiki, then at Ratna, then at Subhadai. A short exchange of words took place between her and Subhadai, and then her gaze returned to Janiki and she acknowledged her with a curt nod. She walked to the window and stood there for a while looking out before turning swiftly, walking to the connecting door and leaving the room without speaking another word, slamming the door behind her. This girl was angry.

The first girl had looked up at the newcomer, and then slumped back against the wall, and so she remained, her whimpering the only sign of life.

Janiki stood up, and gestured that she wanted to go. She could not bear it. She wanted to be alone, to grieve, to gather her thoughts. Subhadai indicated that she would stay, and Janiki left the room and found her own way back to the kitchen.

Meeting the girls upstairs had at the same time given her hope and plunged her into a morass of despair. It seemed fairly obvious, now, what this house was about. A sort of refuge, a safe house. The girls upstairs had been rescued from some kind of terrible fate; they were being provided for, supported; this Dr Ganotra would be involved and might, somehow, be able to help in the search for Asha.

But where was he? When would he come? She looked at the clock. The hands crept slowly forward towards one.

At twelve-thirty Subhadai finished cooking. She prepared a tray of food and took it to the girls upstairs; Janiki went with her, and helped serve it. Then she and Subhadai ate, a simple but tasty meal of rice and vegetables on a stainless steel platter in the dining room across the lobby from the kitchen, a room bare of any furniture save a long wooden table with six chairs around it.

After lunch and washing up, Subhadai spread a cloth on the kitchen floor, lay down on it and fell promptly asleep. Janiki could not dream of sleeping. The girl upstairs nagged at her; that face! Those eyes! She made her way back up to her and entered the room. The girl was now, blessedly, asleep, the tray with the empty plate on the floor beside her. Janiki bent down, stroked her cheek, took the tray and returned downstairs.

At two Dr Ganotra still had not yet arrived. Janiki waited, leafing through a pile of old magazines. Time crept forward.

Subhadai woke up, but seemed to have lost interest in her; she clattered around in the kitchen, went up and down the stairs a few times, swept the floor for the third time. The house was full of sounds; the crying had gradually subsided, but the background drone of a radio or a television set from upstairs was persistent. At one point Janiki heard the clatter of the chain on the front gate and ran to the open window, expecting to see Dr Ganotra, but it was only a very dark old man in a turban, depositing a sack of something round in the garden. The waiting continued.