I forgive you

I FORGIVE YOU

It was a hospital visit which I had not anticipated but the Lord’s arrangements are always a mystery. I drove my Toyota Vios below the allowed speed limit of 80km/h on the Penang bridge recalling the conversation that lead to this visit. Chandravali, the temple busybody, called me aside two days earlier to tell an ‘important news’which I expected to be about her victorious bid in getting the man of her choice, her Panadol overdose story going from mouth to mouth. But instead she told me of how she met my biological mother in the Penang General Hospital when she was admitted for ‘food poisoning’.
“Please go and see her, she’s in terrible condition… pity her… she thought I was you… then she asked me if I was a Hare Krishna after seeing my neck beads, when I answered yes, she asked me if I knew Kavitha…which Kavitha I asked, and she told me Kavitha’s husband is a Chinese man and I immediately knew…oh Kavitha Shakhi..yes,yes, I said… I know her, I promised her I’ll make you go and see her…….. not many people married to Chinese in our group…..ha..hah..ha….. And she looked like she’s going to die at any time. Tell me how she is after you go and see her okay? Promise me you’ll go and see her.” She finally stopped her lengthy narration.
“Okay… okay, I promise,” I said.
“I took your nieces’ contact number too, in case you don’t have,” she said and gave me her cell phone. I wondered why of all people the Lord choose this girl to be the messenger of my past karma but then again, a not so nosy person would not have had such an ‘ either-you go-or-I’ll-tell-the-whole-world-what-a-scum-you’re’ impact on me. So the next day, I took a day off from work to visit the one who brought me into this world.

“Do you want me to meet you in the hospital? I can ask to come out early. I’m sure she wants to see me too,” my husband suggested when I called him to inform about it.
“Never mind, we can all go together next time,” I said
“I know why. I know I got nothing to do with your life, never mind,” he answered, as expected.
“There he goes again.”
“Do whatever you want…beep.” I knew my reply did not please him, but I really waned to go alone. I wanted to meet her without worrying about being ridiculed for anything I might say or do. I have never lived with her, not even for a day. As far as I could remember, she has always been my aunt, a far away aunt whom I was occasionally taken to meet as a child by my late Dad, till my teenage years even that, beyond that maybe I’ve been to her house once.
For the first time in my life, I was early in reaching a destination. I reached the hospital at 4.00pm, half an hour before visiting hours. There was a young Chinese girl with a small child and a Malay man holding a plastic bag of fruits waiting before me. As there were no seats near the grilled gates I just stood, leaning on the white washed walls of the ladies ward with my hands in the small bag which held my chanting beads. Even as I moved my mouth in chanting, monologues were running wild within my head. “Hi..hello…Hare Krishna!” How shall I greet her, will she recognize me…or will she be too weak to even talk. I had a lot of questions to ask, saved for forty years, some of it may have evolved with the years, but some remain fresh.

Ward C6 was easy to find. I walked up the spiral staircase instead of taking the lift to go up to the third floor. I found her name listed at the bottom of names list hanging on the wall outside the long ward. I stepped inside the ward, my footsteps breaking the silence. A few patients in dull green hospital uniforms turned to look before turning their eyes back again. I passed two beds and had not gone any further when I turned to my left and saw an old lady sitting up on the bed. I took a few more steps forward but stopped to look at the old lady again. Yes, that looked like her, like me, if I looked any older, she had a big smile on, I think she recognized me.

“How are you? Can recognize me? How’s your leg?” I greeted her in Tamil.
“Kavitha! Really you?” her surprise broke into a big, toothless smile. “Like that too, they have cut off my big toe, very painful,” she replied, pointing to the bandaged foot. “You’ve gone down, why? A lot of work?” How did she know I’ve gone down? Maybe I looked thin in that pink Punjabi suit or with the shawl across my chest as I don’t usually wear it like that or maybe she was comparing me to her other daughters, my biological sisters.
I placed the fruits and Milo packets on the food trolley. “Yeah.. a lot of work, no time to rest I think,” I pulled a chair from the neighboring patient’s side to sit down. The Chinese old lady was asleep and wouldn’t need the chair for now.
“No one from my family comes to visit me. They are all around but nobody comes, even you….I thought you’ll never come to see me,” she said, grinning wide. I’ve never seen her family members, her brothers and sisters, even the faces of my natural siblings were quite vague.
“Vasugi, Vasanthi?” I asked, I knew these two names but wasn’t sure which one was the elder or younger of my sisters.
“Vasanthi comes, not Vasugi, she’s angry with me. I was staying in Vasanthi’s house when they took me to the hospital. Don’t know how long they’re going to keep me here, the doctors are not telling me anything.” She talked very clearly, no signs of someone very ill with diabetics. She insisted on sitting up on the bed though I tried telling her she could lie down and talk. I took this as a cue to ask her more, about her family.
“So both your parents were Malayalees?” I asked.
“Yes,” she replied nodding her head profusely, still grinning. I smiled at her. She has got a nice smile; some people say I’ve got a nice smile too.
“You speak Malayalam then?”
“A bit…I used to speak when my father was alive, after that no…now I don’t speak anymore, forgotten I think,” she adjusted her sarong so that her feet was able to dangle freely as she sat on the edge of the bed.
“So you are from Penang? You have many brothers and sisters? Appa told me before that you have a big family.” I asked.
“Batu Ferringhiii..” she dragged the last syllable long that the Malay word sounded more Tamil. “My Accha worked there…my family, they’re all still living around there only…. Those days every worker gets a quarters…my family…my father got one…over the hills…hills are not there now, they cut down the hills”
“Yeah, they’ve built houses there…condominiums” I quipped in.
“All cut down,” she continued. “rubber estates those days, my Accha was a mandor, we lived up in the hills…my family always tortured me…my father and mother never liked me…people used to tell them they won’t get their last drop of water before they died for the way they treated me…and that’s how they died.” I saw her wide grin turn to a solemn sulk as she spoke of her father, called accha in the Malayalam language. “I got one elder brother, two elder sisters, two younger sisters. One younger brother and sister died. Nobody come to see me….. look at my condition but they don’t care.” She told me a few names that did not register in my brain, some dead, some alive, but her repetitions on how her parents had mistreated her caught my curiosity. What could have her parents done, why and how would someone torture their own daughter 60 years ago?
“My elder sister came to see me last week. I don’t think you know them. They are all living nicely…only I’m like this….all have nice houses, children have nice jobs. They are wealthy but they never help me.” I nodded and tired to look at her closely. I had her looks, especially the big eyes and maybe the dark circle below the left eye. She had been the same since the time I was small. I remember her and the sandy beaches of Teluk Bahang. A tall and medium built lady, holding a young child in her hips, coaxing me as a four year old to come inside her wooden house which had dark beams, pillars and unpainted plank walls. The other children, my siblings, will call me, “Come…this is your mother, this is your mother…come in Kavitha,” to which I’ll reply, “No my mother is in my house, not this one.” Then I’ll hurry back to my adopted mother, Mum, to tell her. Mum will then tell me they were just lying and not to believe them. Well, Mum died when I turned six, and Dad told me that I was actually from the other family and I could go back to them if I wanted to or I can follow him to another town.
“What did they do….what makes you think they hated you?” I asked, in sort of an interview tone.
“Not even one piece of chicken on Deepavali, everybody will get new clothes, new shoes, good food on good days…..my mother will dress them nicely with topi suits , when I looked at them I will feel so much desire to have those too but they will not buy anything for me. They will shut me out of the house so that I don’t see them wearing the new clothes.”
“What’s a topi suit?” I asked. I didn’t understand when she said the others got topi suits.
“A gown suit that comes with a matching hat” she said. “I really liked those suits… they looked so beautiful, my mother will lock me out of the house so that I don’t see them.” A gown that comes with a matching hat which girls wore with long socks and shiny shoes, like the English girls. That wasn’t too much to ask for.
“I used to run out from the house, go sleep in the drains, wait outside whole day without food and then come back in the evening when it gets dark. They used to say there are spirits in the hills which come out in the dark, so I don’t stay there after dark.” She must have tried to run away from her fears, like she said, being the black sheep of her family, she had to run away from being hurt even more, I’ve done that too.
“How old were you then?” I asked.
“About twelve.”
We are talking about the time when people were getting married at thirteen, I reminded myself, not the twelve when I was still wetting my bed or twelve when you still cry to sleep in the same bed with your mother like my son. Twelve at that time meant more maturity.
“Sleep in the drains, really?”
“Yes.”
The drains in the hills, I suppose, would be dry unless it’s raining, if she was to sleep in it. I see the green hilly jungle by the sea of Batu Ferringhi fifty years ago. Waves come crushing over the giant black rocks, drift away in foams to calm down into clear blue water on the white sandy shores. The hills rise, right beside the seashore, the narrow, winding road built by the British colonialist running parallel to them. Bungalows fashioned after English homes peep from the coiling green hills, sunshine dance with the sea breeze as it carried the mist from the rocky white beaches. Inside the bungalows, Indian amahs, servants, serve the last of their white masters tea in cups and saucers made of fine china, while a little girl slept in a drain in the hills surrounded by rubber plantation.
She said she was seventy, but I doubted it. I made some mental calculation, let’s say she got married at 16 or 17, she had three children before me, assuming I was born when she was 21, then 21 plus 39 would make her around sixty or sixty-two the most. The firmness of her calves and hands indicated she was not that old though her hair was whiter than the last time I saw her. She was fair, almost as fair as a fair Malay, evenly toned fairness, unlike me. Her nose was exceptionally flat especially in the middle, like it had been pressed hard against something for a long time. She had no teeth left other than the few molars protruding out from the side of her mouth. She had the innocence of a child in her eyes. I looked at her amputated toe. The big toe on her right foot was only left half, the second toe looked like it had been dug out and a bandage dressing covered the hole while the third was waiting for its turn, reddish black. The left foot was also swollen and had turned black with gangrene in some parts. If only I could relieve her of her pain.

“My Accha was really very bad…I don’t know why they don’t want me…..here’s where he cut me with a parang” she showed me a fine scar about four centimeters long which still visible on her left calf. “He cut me with a parang when I was twelve”. God, what kind of a person was my grandfather I thought. She seemed to be living in her childhood, somehow trapped in that age. After all these years, she has not forgiven them, those who dressed up her siblings and made her feel useless, those who hurt her till the scars were deep in her heart, too deep to be healed for a person so naïve. My sister Lilly often told Aunt Saroja was so naïve that everyone in her own family bullied her until she was married to Uncle Muthu, who was my biological father.

I moved my chair closer to her as the ward was getting now noisier with the flood of relatives visiting their sick. “Don’t think I hate you for giving me away, I don’t hate you….it’s just fate. We were fated to be like this. It’s not your fault.” For thirty-nine years I waited to tell this. After the death of Mum, who was my paternal aunt, Dad took me into his first family who lived in the mainland, bigamy being part of life. There I tried, desperately, to fit into the new family, turned to religion as a teen to be labeled as rebellious. There were times when I hated everyone who brought me into this situation but that was then. My refusal to become part of my biological family was not my choice but rather that of destiny.
“I don’t blame you…really. I think you told the girl…my friend…. I never came to see you because I was angry with you for giving me away but that‘s not true. I’m working, have my family…”
“He’s the one who did it….always drunk... He gets some money, he goes to drink. Friends and drinks….all his pay was gone on drinks. Then he…I didn’t want to give you away but he made me….she was his sister.” I saw some teardrops running down her cheeks, mine was just peeping, though I had expected it to be very emotional. She was a strong woman. It was at this juncture that I began to compare the similarities between my life and hers.
“How did you get married to him? You fell in love?” I was not sure if that’s what my sister Lilly had told me, here’s a chance to clarify.
“No.” she grinned, shaking her head. “My Accha..made me what else. All drunkards… drink together, got me married off to save him the trouble.” I presumed her father wasn’t dead yet when she got married.
“How did your father die, did he get any water in the end? I asked. For the Indians, the last drop of water or milk given at the time of death signified the fulfillment of one’s destined life cycle. Logically too, when you have someone beside you, tending to you as leave the mortal body, you must have meant something to the other person.
“He fell into a ditch and could not get up. He was very big sized,” she put her arms up to demonstrate how big he was. “It was night, he was drunk, no one knew when he fell. The next day they found him dead in the hill slopes…..they couldn’t carry him out…..so many people went down to pull out the body. ”
“How about your mother?” I asked.
“She also never got water,” she said with a sigh. Not wishing to talk more on her parents, I flipped open my shoulder bag and took out the cut fruits which I had brought with me.

“Want some oranges?” I gave her the plastic packet of oranges which she immediately took. She then dipped her fingers into it and popped the oranges into her mouth. She refused the apples which I gave next too hard to munch. As she chewed the oranges, I looked around her side table. It was untidy, sort of like the way I kept things, that not so neat and meticulous way. Her comb was on the table with some hair still sticking to it, cups, nut shells and medicine caps here and there. I took out the hair, cleared up a bit and wiped the table with a tissue.
“Do you bathe everyday? I asked her.
“In the morning, I can’t walk but they force me to walk, it’s really painful.” I don’t want this to happen to me I tell myself, Lord please help her go through this pain, may you give her a better birth in her next life.
“How are your children?” she asked.
“They are okay. The eldest one is in Form Three this year.”
“All of them going to school?”
“Yes” I answer.
“How is their study? Make sure they study well”
I knew none of my siblings went to school, she was widowed at 37. The last child was just around three or four when I came for my biological father’s funeral. Sometimes I worry my children may turn up to be like my biological family because studies were not their priority most of the time except for my elder one.
“Here’s my picture taken for my convocation,” I showed her my graduation photos.
“They’re all very tall, like the father.” She looked very pleased, the children’s photos brought out a lot of smiles. The Chinese old lady on the next bed waved her hand, gesturing to take a look at the photographs.
“ Anak?”
“Saya,” I said as she showed a picture of myself in graduation robes.
“Lu punya anak? Wah…very fair!” she said in broken Malay as she looked at the other photographs .
I contemplated between telling my husband was very fair or was a Punjabi as in a Sikh.
“Her husband is Chinese” my mother said, in Malay, “four children… all boys.”
“Wah! Very good- loh,” the old lady gave the usual response I’d get from anybody.
“How’s your husband? He gave me some rice that day during the floating-chariot festival, he is a good man.”
“He’s fine,” I said. “Karma working fine,” I thought to myself of the fights and arguments that were my daily routine.
“Does Lilly call you? Is she alright…pity her…your mother Maree got her married off so far…..she was a very good girl.”
“She’s fine. I call her sometimes, I write her too….e-mail…we write on the computer… you know computers?” I asked to which she replied with another broad smile. “Her children are all grown up now, working, staying on their own, she doesn’t want to come back here. She’ll always ask about you… a lot.” That brought another big smile to her, my sister Lilly whom I’ve not seen 33 years.
“You can keep the photographs,” I said, as she put the photographs under her pillow.
“Hi Saro, you in here? Not out yet-ah? We came to see Miah, she’s also in this ward, there…behind there. Tomorrow she’s going back…..you….what you trying to do, stay in the hospital forever? Maybe that will be good for you too-ah because once you come out, you go around walking to the shops, buying food for your grown up sons with your hanging foot, pass oozing out also you don’t care…better you stay in hospital…let them take care of themselves for once..” Two Malay ladies, I presume them to be her neighbours from Teluk Bahang, notice her just as they were leaving the ward and decide to drop by her bed. I judge them to be close friends from the way they talked
“I’ll be out shortly, look after them if you see them anywhere near your shop, Ahcop will come to your shop,” my mother said.
“Yes, to buy keropok… like a small kid” the plump Malay lady said.
“Yes he likes the keropok, everyday must eat, miss one day and he goes crazy,” She spoke fluent Malay with the Malay ladies, the prefect kampong Malay slang. I spoke Malay fluently too, the educated town Malay, very well so much so that once a Malay lecturer in the university commented that if they didn’t see me, people would easily judge my voice to be that of Malay native speaker’s.
“Now you’re in the hospital they never come and see you. You never learn Saro, you give them everything and yet they don’t know how to be good to you, sometimes they are so ungrateful and you still want to be good to them,” one of the ladies continued. They went on for another ten minutes, every now and then looking at me to confirm their point about raising children without spoiling them.
Was I doing the same thing to my children? My children scorn at the thought of doing some simple chores for me. Never a time something gets done without me yelling and threatening them. Have I been Saro-like in bringing up my children?
Suddenly the other lady turned to me and said, “Children must take care of the mother…Saro, you want to go to old folks home ah? I sent you there after you come out…you’ll be better off there, got people to take care of you, give you food on time. Okay-lah I go first now,” Then they left. I wasn’t sure if the lady knew who I was, but the message was strong and I was not prepared for such big responsibility.
.
I put away the cup which she used to wash her hands on the trolley and opened the drawer of her side table to look for a hand towel or something to wipe her hands with only to be greeted by packets of M&Ms, Nips, Oreos and more sweet stuff. She was in hospital for diabetes, gangrene and foot infection and had a drawer of candies to keep her company.
“Who buys for you these things? How are you going to get well and live long if you eat these things?” I said.
“Only little bit, when I can’t eat anything, sometimes they don’t give me anything to eat.”
“Sometimes they have to put you on fast to check your blood, that’s why they don’t give you anything to eat, but if you keep on eating these, no one can find out what’s wrong with you.” Though I know my advice is not going to stop her from eating the sweets, I find myself doing it anyway.
“Think of God whenever you can, think of Krishna….say Hare Krishna.. Ha…Re Krish..na..” I make her repeat after me the Hare Krishna maha mantra which I’ve been chanting for more than two decades now, both of us laughed as she stammers and says it all wrong when I ask her say it on her own. “You are old and at anytime you may die, after all that you’ve gone through if you can think of God at the time of death, you’ll be in peace” I make her repeat after me in between the laughs.

At around 6.30p.m the nurse came in with a tall trolley of food trays. She put a tray of rice with some pale cabbage and a small piece of fish and a bowl of clear soup with a piece of squash floating in it on my mother’s trolley and said “Makan-ah Saro,” before moving on to the next bed with the same words. Maybe I’ll bring her a guarantee letter the next time I come to visit her, being a government servant I, as well as my immediate family members were eligible for free First Class facilities in government hospitals. I’ve never used these facilities, maybe she can use them.

“Look at Amma smiling all the way showing her gums, she is so happy by seeing you, Kavitha. Kavitha being here means it doesn’t matter if anyone else is here or not for her. No one can stop her from smiling now.” That was from Vasanthi, my biological sister, who came in just as I got up to leave. My mother’s smiles were evident of her happiness. I overcame a lot of my fears that day, my heart was much lighter. I don’t know if she’ll be around for me to meet her again, I think there will be no quilt if I left the job of taking care of her to her other nine children. They have a debt to pay her. I’ll pay mine by being a good devotee so that she can be spiritually favored by Lord Krishna at the end of her life.
I did ask her if she ever enjoyed anything in her life, at anytime of her life. Any happiness at all, maybe it had to do with my own feeling of misfortune.
“Never” she had answered.
“Never at all? Never even when you were married…… after you came out of your family....not at all?” I knew she must have had some enjoyment which she had forgotten.
“No….maybe…yes…in dressing,” she finally said. “I like dressing nicely, they bought for me clothes, I used to wear nice clothes, dressing…. maybe what I enjoyed most, and that’s all.”
Somehow hearing that from her mouth made me happy, it didn’t just bring a smile, it made me laugh out aloud. I was glad I went to see her that day. Though I can’t show much of daughterly feelings for her, part of my life semed perfected.

Put things together, I saw how perfectly karma worked. I never grew up with her though she gave birth to me, yet just in an hour or so I saw so many similarities between us. The thoughts, the troubled childhood, the feeling of being unwanted, the sweet tooth, the language, the troubled marriage, the messy ways, it all made sense. These were the same things I would have had even if I had I not been given away at birth. I had all these even as I grew up with another family at a completely different place. Yet the effect was the same. Even if I had followed my sister Lilly to Germany after Mum died, probably I would have married a man of another race and had kids of mixed parentage, who spoke in a language which was not their mother tongue, who ate cereals for breakfast and spaghetti and pizzas for dinner just as my kids do now.


I attended her funeral two months after my second visit, seven out of ten children beside her at the time of departure. They held a simple ceremony on the open space at the ground floor of her low cost flats. All her siblings and their families were there, looking just as she had said, and her sisters looked much younger. Their names didn’t register with me. And they told me she was 59.
“Now your mother is gone, come and visit your siblings more often,” they told me again. I wondered if they knew their sibling had once longed for them. I see her standing behind the rattan furniture and the showcase with the stainless steel wares which she was saving as wedding gifts for her daughters in the small, wooden house which I refused to enter as a child, the house I was born in, which had the blue sea and white sandy shores of Teluk Bahang hanging as a portrait in its opened windows. Here’s a woman who had nothing in her life, she made it this far still smiling. I think I should be more like her.

----- Shakti-----------