Rani Das loved to ask her parents about when she was born. Her mother (very white) painted colourful circles around the truth while her father (quite black), with his blunt scissor manner, cut straight to the point. The result was inevitable shades of grey, a messy collage of half truths and severed tales that Rani pinned to her chest: this is me.
‘I rubbed my belly one too many times and suddenly you popped out, just like a genie,’ Winnie winked at her. ‘But you still haven’t granted me my wishes, genie. Where are my three wishes?’ And then Winnie chased Rani through the concrete, square house on Elgin Road, her wiggling index fingers outstretched and ready to tickle the naughty genie once she was caught. When the giggles subsided and Rani had granted wishes to all who witnessed her punishment (Rani’s brother Robin and Aunty Mejsdi on this occasion), Rani went to look for her father. She needed him to finish the story.
Usually she found him in the study or propped up on his bed, inhaling words from a book. This time, however, he was in the bathroom. The door was closed but she imagined that he was sitting on the latrine, pen in hand and correcting all the errors in the newspaper.
She knocked on the door. ‘Daddy?’
Rani put her ear against the door and waited for a response but all she heard was the scrunching sound of a newspaper being folded. And perhaps a muffled sound of gas bouncing against the latrine walls. She persevered.
‘Daddy, Mummy says that I popped out of her belly like a genie.’
No response.
‘Is it true? Am I a genie?’
Another crackle of the newspaper. ‘No, Rani,’ he sighed in his red-pen voice, correcting the errors in Winnie’s story, ‘just a pretty little girl, not a genie. If you were a genie, my wish for you to leave me alone so that I can take a shit in peace would have already come true.’
Another time, some later time, some time when Rani was a number of days older, Rani asked about her birth again. A pungent Calcutta summer loitered in the air, sneaking into the folds of flesh and saris everywhere, dampening the resolve of Calcutta residents to do anything but sit and wait the summer out. Only beggars and children were undeterred by the heat, with beggars still shaking their tins and children still shaking their heads in laughter, often at the beggars’ expense. Rani was playing on the flat rooftop of the house, alternating between practising her Jharno Patare Pothe dance with her younger sister, Aileen, and spitting on the beggars over the side of the house with her brother, Robin. When she tired of her graceful dance moves and her less than graceful spitting prowess, she snuck back into the house.
Her mother and father were sitting, quite appropriately, in the sitting room. Saroj, in his pressed white dhoti and pants, sat neatly folded on the settee, while Winnie lazed on the concrete ground in a crumpled sari, her forehead bejeweled with tiny pools of sweat.
With her brother and sister still up on the roof, Rani, a typical middle child, took the opportunity to pretend to be an only child and revel in having her parents’ sole attention.
‘Mummy, tell me again about when I was born.’
Winnie patted her lap in agreement and Rani sat inside her mother’s skinny frame, her bottom filling the triangular space between Winnie’s crossed legs. She cushioned her back against Winnie’s breasts and belly, and rested her palms on each knee. Her own customised armchair.
‘Ready?’ Winnie asked once the squirms had subsided. Rani nodded.
‘When you were in Mummy’s belly, you became jealous of the sea. We were traveling by ship from England to Calcutta and you could smell the salt water and hear the waves. You wanted to create waves of your own and so you decided to come out three weeks early. Like a little fish, you swam out from between my legs and joined us on the boat’.
‘Like a fish?’ Rani’s eyes widened. ‘Did I make a splash?’
Rani’s father tutted under his breath. ‘You certainly caused a commotion,’ he said. ‘Because you came early, we were kicked off the boat at Bombay, on the west side of India. We had to catch a train across all of India to get to Calcutta. It took 15 days, three days longer than expected, and the family was most upset to be kept waiting for our arrival.’
This wasn’t exactly true. In fact, no one except Aunty Didi, Saroj’s eldest sister, knew that he was coming home from London. If they had known, they might’ve asked for British souvenirs, though not the kind that Saroj brought with him. A British wife and two half-caste children. There were already plenty of those in India.
Winnie groaned. ‘Saroj, don’t exaggerate. Your family didn’t know that you were coming.’ She turned her attention back to Rani. ‘And they didn’t know, Rani, that you or Robin or I even existed. Daddy never told them that he had a family.’ She squeezed Rani softly on the sides of her stomach. ‘Imagine how their jaws must have dropped to the floor when we arrived on the doorstep, suitcases in hand.’
Rani found it difficult to imagine anyone dropping their jaw to the ground, except for Aunty Didi, who kept her jaw in a glass bowl in the bathroom. ‘Those are Aunty Didi’s dentures,’ her mother had told her, ‘fake teeth. Aren’t they disgusting? I should throw them out one day when no one’s looking.’
Saroj raised his voice slightly, a diplomat in a sitting room renegotiating the truth. The red-pen voice. ‘No, that’s not true. Didi knew I was coming back to Calcutta and that my family was coming with me. I wasn’t going to send a telegram to every member of my family now, was I? Half of them live together in the same house.’
Together in the same house that we live in now, Rani thought. She liked having her uncles and aunties around, enjoyed their company and idiosyncrasies. Aunty Didi, who brought books from her school for Robin and Rani to read; Uncle Buro, who gave the children sweets and suffocated them with his enveloping hugs, their heads lodging between his stomach rolls; And Uncle Nanto, who often played with the children and kept Winnie company when Saroj was at work. Her favourite, however, was Aunty Mejsdi, who would lie on her back, put her feet over her head and do a somersault. All the time. The other adults paid Mejsdi no attention, but Rani and her siblings found it fascinating, particularly when Mejsdi’s sari opened up mid-somersault, exposing her private bits for all to see. Winnie had told the children that Mejsdi was the only one of their Father’s siblings who didn’t have a university education, and Rani wondered whether this was why Mejsdi did somersaults and no one else did. But Rani knew her mother didn’t have a university education (her Daddy had told her. Twice.) and she didn’t do somersaults either.
‘You only told Didi that you had a family when we got kicked off the boat at Bombay,’ Winnie said, raising her voice back at Saroj. ‘One would think that you were embarrassed, rather than proud, of having a British wife.’
Saroj got up from the settee and looked down at Winnie. Rani shifted uncomfortably in her lap. ‘I wasn’t embarrassed of having a British wife then,’ he said, before turning his back on them and walking out of the room. He walked down the hall, into their bedroom and closed the door. Closing the door on Rani’s story.
Rani looked up at her mother and saw colourful red dots spread across Winnie’s face and throat. Colours that she wished her mother would keep for her story.
Winnie maneuvered Rani off her lap and placed her on the floor. ‘I’m sorry, Rani,’
Rani watched her mother get up and follow Saroj down the hall, opening and slamming the bedroom door behind her. Closing the door on Rani’s story, too.
And the door remained closed for some time.
The children saw their parents less but heard them more and more. At first, they pressed their ears against walls and floors, strained their necks forward to hear the tense exchange of whispers. Saroj telling Winnie that her conduct was improper for a wife, that she was too proud of her colour (or lack thereof), too selfish to be a good mother. Winnie telling Saroj that he was simply cruel. Unkind. Cold.
Soon the children didn’t have to strain.
‘Stop controlling my life, Saroj,’ Winnie would scream. ‘You’re a bastard!’
‘Stop behaving like a British floozy,’ Saroj would yell back, ‘you’re in India. Have some self-respect.’
But their mother remained British. White, like a ghost, she would disappear to spend her time with other British expats. White and plain like flour, she raised her children less and less, leaving this role to the servants, and to Aunty Didi.
Their father, in contrast, was blacker than ever, his moods matching the colour of his skin; black as the new scuff marks that began to appear on his normally spotless dhoti when he returned from a day at work.
‘From beating up all the British soldiers who look at your mother the wrong way,’ Aunty Mejsdi, with her head between her legs, giggled to Rani one day before Aunty Didi told her to mind her own business. Although, with her head so close to her bottom, that seemed to be exactly what Aunty Mejsdi was doing.
Rani missed hearing stories about how she was born. Aunty Didi tried her best but in her headmistress tone, her stories sounded too factual, too true. There were no genies, no fish, no mermaids. ‘Do you know that the ship you were born on was called the SS Narkunda? And that the Captain of the SS Narkunda, Captain Frederick Sudell, is your godfather?’ Rani nodded, her glum face watching Aunty Didi’s dentures chomp the air around her mouth. ‘He christened you while you were onboard: Rani Narkunda Das. And so you are, by definition, Queen of the ship.’
Rani shook her head. ‘But Daddy said that the Captain kicked us off the ship after I was born. How could he kick a Queen off a ship?’
‘Because you were a very little baby, he was afraid that you might fall ill while at sea. He was worried that they might not have the facilities on board the ship to take care of you. And because you were his goddaughter, and also a Queen, he didn’t want that to happen.’
Rani watched Didi’s white dentures smile at her and decided that her mother was right – they were disgusting. She didn’t want them to tell her another story. And so she never asked her Aunt Didi to tell her a story about when she was born again.
Another time, a much later time, a time when Rani was many days taller, she attempted to ask her mother about her birth once more.
Rani, along with Robin and Aileen, had returned from school to find their father quietly beating Uncle Nanto outside the front of their house. Mouths gaping, they found a space amongst the crowd of servants and beggars to sit and watch the fight. The beggars asked them if they wanted to bet their pocket money, or their watches, on who would win. ‘And what would you give us if we won the bet, eh, Uncle? Robin said to them, in big brother mode. ‘Your rags, your empty tins? You have nothing; you’re not worth our spit.’ And he and his sisters laughed and spat on their hands, extending them out for the beggars to shake. As the beggars muttered obscenities and moved away from the rude children, Saroj caught sight of them. ‘Rabindra, Rani, Aileen Das, go inside at once,’ he yelled between punches. ‘Don’t listen to anything those dirty beggars say.’ Their Uncle Nanto, also between punches, agreed.
Robin and Aileen stayed fixed to their place on the ground but Rani decided to go and look for her mother, to tell Winnie that Daddy was beating Uncle Nanto, making him redder than black and blue.
Her mother was crying in the bedroom; Aunty Didi was by her side, holding a rag to her face. ‘Rani, not now,’ Aunty Didi said, trying to shush her away.
‘No,’ said Winnie, ‘let her stay. She deserves to see what her Daddy is like, how horrible he can be.’
At the mention of her Daddy, Rani piped up. ‘Daddy is fighting with Uncle Nanto outside.’
‘Good’ said Winnie, between sniffles. ‘I hope he pummels him.’
‘Winnie!’ reproached Aunty Didi, looking at Rani as if to say ‘don’t listen to her’.
‘I don’t care. Nanto doesn’t love me; he was supposed to save me, rescue me from Saroj.’
Rani watched as Aunty Didi peeled away the wet rag she was holding to Winnie’s face and dipped it in a bowl of water sitting on the chest of drawers nearby. On her mother’s left cheek was a huge bubble with a fiery perimeter, like someone had drawn around the bubble with a bright red felt pen.
‘What happened to your face, Mummy?’
‘Mind your own business, Rani,’ said Aunty Didi as she squeezed water out of the rag and reapplied it to Winnie’s cheek.
Winnie ignored Didi’s remark. ‘Your father decided to make your mother ugly by throwing boiling oil on her face. So no one else will ever find her attractive.’ As if by speaking in third person, Winnie could distance herself from the truth, pretend that she was merely an onlooker providing commentary on the soap opera saga, on the red bubble pulsating on Winnie’s face.
‘But why would Daddy do that?’
Aunty Didi clenched her dentures. ‘Because your Daddy found your mother and Uncle Nanto doing something that they shouldn’t have been doing.’ She suddenly clapped her hands, the way a headmistress does to indicate the end of a discussion.
‘I think that’s enough for now’ she said, gently pushing Rani out the bedroom door. ‘Leave your mother to rest.’ As she closed the door, Aunty Didi flashed her dentures at Rani, a sad smile to say she was sorry. And it gave Rani an idea.
The next morning Rani rose very early before anyone else in the house had woken. She went to the bathroom first, and then she went and knocked on her Mummy’s bedroom door. ‘Mummy, I have something I have to tell you.’ She walked up to the bed and tapped Winnie lightly on the shoulder. ‘I did something for you.’
‘What, Rani, what is it?’ Winnie asked, a fog (or maybe a frog) of sleep croaking her voice. Aunty Didi had bandaged the rag to Winnie’s cheek overnight, and tears of blood and pus had soaked through it.
‘You mustn’t tell anyone though, Mummy,’ Rani said, sudden panic rising in her voice. ‘Promise me you won’t tell anyone.’
Winnie sat up in bed and focused her eyes on Rani, while lightly poking the rag on her cheek. ‘Okay, Rani, I promise. Now tell me.’
‘I took Aunty Didi’s teeth,’ Rani said, a slow, unsure smile tiptoeing across her face, ‘and I flushed them down the toilet.’
‘What?’ Disbelief followed by dismay covered Winnie’s pale face, or at least the bits of her face that weren’t already obscured by the rag. ‘Oh, Rani. No, no.’
‘You mustn’t tell Mummy, you mustn’t tell!’
‘Shhhh. Calm down, Rani, I won’t tell anyone. But why on earth did you flush Aunty Didi’s teeth down the toilet?’
‘Because I wanted to make you happy, Mummy. And I wanted you to tell me a story again.’ But Rani already knew that she wasn’t going to get a story, and that Winnie wasn’t happy. She might as well have flushed everyone’s teeth down the toilet that morning because no one was going to smile in the Elgin Road household for a very long time.
Another time, a much later time, when Rani was many years older, Winnie attempted to tell her a story about her birth once more.
Winnie had long since left their father, and India, to return to England. Before she left, Winnie had kidnapped Robin one day after school on her bicycle (although, in fairness, Robin enjoyed and was very helpful in, the role of abductee) and he had moved to London with her. While Winnie had asked both her daughters to move to London as well, Rani refused to leave her father all alone. Aileen, ever the loyal younger sister, refused to leave Rani behind. And so they stayed.
Rani never asked to be told a story about her birth again. But one day, Aunty Didi, by way of an old newspaper clipping, did tell her one more. The story was about how the ship on which she was born, the SS Narkunda, had been requisitioned as a troop ship in the Second World War. The ship was bombed and sunk by the Germans in 1942, and 31 Allied troops had lost their lives.
It was a fitting story, Rani thought. That ship had more than sailed, it had sunk to the bottom of the ocean. The stories about her birth could never be told the same way, anyway – with the extravagance of her mother, pared back by the modesty and control exercised by her father. They were no longer a team, an overenthusiastic storyteller and a ruthless editor, each a necessary evil for the other. Rani had to make up her own stories.
So when her mother penned a letter from England that began with the line, ‘once upon a boat, there was a little baby bump,’ Rani found a black marker pen and scribbled out all the words to the story. Once they were blacked out, she resumed reading the letter, delighting in her mother’s news. When she finished, she folded the letter, put it safely away and forgot about it, much like she forgot about the SS Narkunda, and forgot about Aunty Didi’s old teeth.
Lying somewhere at the bottom of the sea, a forgotten smile and a rusted-out ship, half truths and severed tales pinned to its mast.
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