It was before the Western Province of India had been divided into Gujarat and Maharashtra and after the land had been freed of its foreign oppressors that mayhem started among the masses. Supreme sovereignty was a power these people had never enjoyed. They were always bound by the whims of the rulers and now they were bound by the whims of the law makers. In the recesses of rural India those influential law makers of India failed to peak and Rasikgadh by the bank of the Machhua River continued to be exploited by the men who once exploited the whole nation. In times of flood the Machhua served as an excellent means of transport for the exporters of the precious silk that was grown in the nearby fields, a form of silk so unique that emperors were draped in it. The lure had been so great that the exporters had explored these interiors generation after generation for the monopoly on the coveted exploits. The ancillary exploits included land and women. The women of Rasikgadh had never been safe, the men never strong nor willing to defend their pride. Imli was the result of such an exploit, a rape child of a man beyond her mother's reach and a mother who had forsaken her at birth for the sake of anonymity. Imli grew up in the shade of the same house where she was probably conceived, the British guest house in whose stable she found shelter due to a kind gardener who fed her goat's milk because no one wanted it. Goat's milk, the same delicacy that gives rise to the mozzarella of greater Tuscany loses favour in India to the milk of Cow, the mother. Goat's milk is harder to digest and so was Imli's life.
By the time Imli was walking a British gentleman took her under his wing. He was stationed there long after the British returned home. The fact that his wife died of cholera in the Indian forest had much to do with his seeking his grave there. Such romantics were rare and he imbibed in Imli the spirit of romance. The gardener had named her Imli which means tamarind. It was perhaps because of her sour situation or savoury gossip that her reputation brought on. The British Gentleman called her Tammy and she called him Dard which was short for Edward but as most foreigners in the house understood was a form of Dad. While the Gardener, Kittu Chacha taught Tammy to talk in the local tongue her proficiency remained in the language of her Dard.
A few years later Tammy had started to behave no differently than a proper British lady in the restricted facilities she had. It was difficult to place her as a half breed given her blue eyes and cream complexion. The only giveaway was a tender Indian heart that sought a sense of belonging that an almost retired British gentleman with no connection to her could not provide.
Tammy was sixteen and a blossoming flower when Edward passed away. An immediate replacement could not be found and so the owner of the export company sent his own son to try his hand at the business. George Mornington was a suave and sophisticated Londoner who had never witnessed a garden lizard with his own eyes; save for in books. Coming face to face with a live snake on his very first day had quite made up his mind for an early return before he met the caretaker of the guest house, a sixteen year old Tammy in all the fineness of her youth.
It was instant attraction on his part. On her part it required some wooing. Tammy was already in love with Edward, who was both her father and her friend in their years of togetherness. When George approached her the only way they could connect was through culture. George presented everything she had heard of or read about in Edward's books and stories. His manners, his ways, his words were more familiar to her than her own countrymen. In a few days they were stealing glances of each other. In a few more they were secretly holding hands. The affair reached its climax when one fine afternoon the almost blind Kittu Chacha thought that he saw Tammy boarding the train with the British exporter's son. Tammy returned alone a week later. There was no more gossip about her than there already was till she started showing. The fact that she started showing was no more scandalous than her birth. Perhaps her mother was among the women that discussed her lack of character at the river side while drawing drinking water. Tammy bore all the indignation silently. She did not despair for one particular reason. She had hope. Her George would return.
When a boy was born to her she refused to name him kaddu as all suggested. She named him Edward. To all and sundry she introduced him as Roop which meant beauty. Little Edward was beautiful. He had his mother's eyes and his father's hair. A year passed by and then two. Mornington Exporters closed down their office at Rasikgadh. Finally Tammy panicked. She had to reach someone who knew how to approach her George. The closest office of Mornington exporter's lay at Madras which was a few day's journey by train. Tammy had earned some money by working as caretaker of the Guest house. Using that money she bought a ticket out of Rasikgadh. It was the same train that she had boarded a few years back. The now completely blind Kittu Chacha heard the train whistle and wished her the best for her journey. He passed away a few breaths later.
They say that the dying take away their last prayer with them unto heaven. If that was true Kittu chacha's prayer had fallen into deaf ears. The closest to an official that Tammy met at Madras was the warehouse watchman who was not of much help. Tammy had already gone without food and rest for two days when she finally sought refuge in a church. It was the same church in which she and George had said their vows, took their license. Now she sat there praying for her child's safety and her own honour. The priest at the church recognized her because of her name. Apparently he had never before married a woman named Imli Edward. He informed her that their wedding certificate which was to be collected a week later was never collected. Seating Little Edward on a seat Tammy went inside to retrieve the certificate from the old record room so that she could prove her child's legitimacy. Armed with the certificate all she needed was a means to provide for her child who seemed impossible for a woman of her station and qualification.
To earn bread in India you either need to be illiterate and uncouth, or hold a degree, or know someone in power. None of the three options were open for her. Still money she had to earn and she was considering her options when she could no longer find her child where she had left him. She searched under the seats of all the aisles and found him not. On the priest's suggestion she finally looked outside to find a western couple carry him off. Another boy a few years older lay dangling behind the man's shoulder. Tammy should have shouted for them to stop. They would have stopped for they were asking this way and that for the unknown child's family. But ultimately a mother's instinct gave in to need and Tammy held her tongue. She chose the life of an orphan for her son instead of a death out of starvation that loomed before them.
For the next one month Tammy begged and scavenged at the dock for her sustenance before an educated young man approached her. He offered her food, proper food, a warm bed and a change of clothes, in return of a one night's service on her part. Tammy looked at the ring she never took off, a cheap aluminium substitute for what was to be gold and threw it out into the sea. She never went hungry again but with every passing day her heart starved to death.
It was on one such errand that Tammy had met Ramakanta Mukherjee, a lawyer from Kolkata, a respectable man unlike the sailors who often hired her services. His crisp white shirt spoke of his education and his furrowed brows spoke of his desperation. Ramakanta Mukerjee was an ideal man, an ideal son and an ideal husband. His wife Damyanti had given him three daughters the last of which was born seven years ago. His mother wanted an heir and he was bound to provide her one. He did not wish to place his wife in a dis-respectable position and so hired her services.
Tammy had her second child a year later. The hair colour was different and so was the face. This child did not have her eyes. Tammy found it hard to part with him but she had to and she did, just as she had parted with her previous child. The first few days after the parting, she was devastated. The next few weeks she was distraught. She was set up for a few months with what the Mukherjees had paid. Before the money was up though Ramakanta came back. The child was sick and required breast milk, his mother's breast milk.
When Imli first placed foot inside the Mukherjee home she was treated like a Harijan. Imli knew why harijans were treated the way they were treated and she knew it was not right. When Imli faced such reactions she knew it was right. She deserved the same. Her services were required night and day and she stayed with them all the while as an alien or a vegetable. She neither understood their tongue nor their ways. The huge diversity between the east and the west was magnified in her as she not only represented Western India but a culture that lay far westward. Ramakanta's wife Damyanti was a simpleton and she feared that her husband would leave her for the woman who gave him an heir and so she made Imli promise that they would always live under the same roof. Imli promised not inderstanding a word of what she avowed. Ramakanta stood witness and decided that Imli needed to be taught the language and the ways of the land. The promise backfired on Damyanti when it was time for Imli to leave. She couldn't for she had sworn on the head of the heir to never leave the house. Imli stayed behind as the nanny and Ramakanta's unpaid secretary.
Work brought them closer till one day Ramakanta decided to give Imli the place she deserved. Damyanti welcomed her husband's wife with tears in her eyes. Imli and Ramakanta never shared a room, not in his lifetime. Their second son was conceived in the library where they worked together. By the time Ravi was born Imli was speaking as perfect Bengali as she once spoke English. She tried never to speak an English word ever again in her life, atleast not within the confines of what was then her home.
When Ramakanta died the finances of the household collapsed without an earning member of the family. Rahul was going through court cases after his wife committed suicide and Ravi was still in school. That was when Imli became the bread earner of the family taking the trade ethics Edward had taught her, and the legal tricks Ramakanta had taught her and turning the little property they had into a blooming real estate business. That was more than ten years back.
Imli had often sat and wondered about her first born through the years. When Rupert stood before her he was a splitting image of his father, only older and much matured. Rupert had demanded to know the reason she had abandoned him while she herself continued to live in comfort. It was difficult for her to explain the in-between years, the hunger, and the prostitution. She still wondered if there was a gate open for her to heaven but she couldn't leave it to the God who heard not her prayer in the so many years.
Do we chose our Gods or do our Gods chose us? Is our faith something of a divine intervention or are we influenced towards our own beliefs by material circumstance? Mostly all faiths converge at the concept of detachment? Is it really a road to nirvana or a foil to deny material pain? The thoughts though agnostic have an atheistic bent of mind. Is faith something of a human concoction to deal with mortal pain, sorrow and suffering or is there really a God that begets our faith? Is everything a child's fancy, an infant fantasy of a juvenile civilization? Imli hoped that her enforced detachment would win her some favour in the face of judgement. She let Rupert go without shedding a tear. She just hoped Shimonthini would really prove to be deserving of the second chance she had herself never truly got.