The Stolen Girl (10 page)

I
t has been
sixty days since Vani’s parents passed away, days in which she has gone from being the only child of loving parents to an orphan; from being a free soul going to school every day and dreaming of a future to being a servant, a nonentity, her future decided on the whim of her employers; from only having to take care of herself to trying to satisfy this notoriously hard-to-please girl she finds herself being at the beck and call of.

Even the smells are different here. No earthy scent of wet grass and freshly ploughed fields, the tang of cow dung, the tart spiciness of mangoes maturing in the mid-afternoon haze, the fruity whiff of jackfruit being sliced open on Charu’s veranda, the sizzling aroma of gossip and excitement, the laughter of women nattering in the meadows, the grumble of men as they urge the buffaloes on, the shriek of boys playing cricket, the shout of Gauri’s son as he is chased by Ganganna for stealing ambades, the yelps of Dhomu’s dog as he is whipped for stealing the scraps meant for the cows.

Instead the sandalwood air freshener scent of yawning emptiness, of bubbling anger and roiling injustice. The windows forever closed to keep the dust out. The chilled, artificial air inside the house seethes with the suppressed rage of servants who outwardly look biddable but inwardly fume with loathing towards their employers; it swarms with things left unsaid, little hurts which gradually grow into big wounds; it agitates with the absence of love and affection.

When Vani wakes – very early as she hasn’t been able to sleep, not really, since her parents died – she likes to stand on the landing and look out of the window at the garden. Dawn is only just staining the grey horizon the soft pink of budding hope, and the gardens are shrouded in mist, an ethereal cloud that she aches to touch, that she wants to live in, melt into. She fancies it is her parents come to say hello and she tries to make out their faces in it.

She does that sometimes in the middle of the day too, when she has a moment; looks at the sky and tries to identify the silhouette of her parents’ faces amongst the frothy clouds. She knows that they are looking down on her. She knows that there is a plan in all of this. She believes this because the alternative – that her parents are but a smattering of ash scattered across the village, breathed in and sneezed out by the stray dogs that roam the streets, that Vani is stuck here in this life of servitude for the fathomable future – is too hard to countenance.

And so she searches for signs – a fluffy white feather found while doing Aarti’s bed that has no reason being there, the sun parting storm clouds and bestowing a golden smile just as she looks out the window – and she believes it is her parents looking out for her, sending their love her way.

Some days when she is the recipient of an unexpected kindness, when one of the other servants puts her arm around Vani and says, ‘You all right? You are looking a bit peaky. Have a sit down, why don’t you?’ and the warmth of human contact after days of loneliness makes her want to heave, bend over with the effort it is taking to contain her grief, hold it in, she imagines her parents whispering, ‘Shh, it’s okay, it’s all right. Our darling girl, you will be fine.’ She hears them and that gives her hope.

Vani was in awe of the daughter of the house, Aarti, when she heard of her, when Nagappa described her. But after Vani nursed her back to health, after she saw Aarti at her most vulnerable, calling out for her mother and getting Vani instead, a mere servant paid to look after her, all she felt was an overwhelming pity. Vani noticed how, when Aarti came to after her illness, the light dimmed from her eyes when she realised it was Vani sitting beside her and not her mother. Vani heard Aarti call out for her parents in the depths of her delirium and her cries went unanswered. And sitting there tending to the ill girl, Vani understood how lucky she had been, how blessed, to have been loved so thoroughly and completely by her parents. Yes, she lost them and she would miss them forever, but they had loved her, celebrated her. She was the apex around which their lives gravitated, the sun to their earth. She had been adored, wanted, indulged. Even in the midst of her grief, the throes of her anguish, Vani had those memories to hold on to.

Aarti had the run of a huge house and myriad servants at her bidding; she was the darling of Karnataka and set to be the Face of India; her every material need was met, catered for. And yet, she didn’t have love.

How must it be to have parents who do not care for you and to live with that knowledge? No wonder Vani hears her retching in the bathroom after every meal. Aarti is trying to disgorge that knowledge, Vani knows, but she cannot regurgitate it out of her body, however hard she tries. It will be there in Aarti’s mother’s empty eyes the next time they sweep over her, not really seeing her, the next time she makes a casual, cruel comment, ‘Are you wearing that? It makes you look fat. Go change.’ In Aarti’s father’s complete indifference to her except when someone else has won a contract he thinks Aarti should have.

And so, despite Aarti’s ordering around of Vani, despite her vitriol and her impatience, Vani feels sorry for Aarti, understands where she’s coming from. Despite Aarti’s superior status, she and Vani are not that different – they have both lost their parents, albeit in different ways; they are both denied the love they desperately yearn for.

On the second month anniversary of her parents’ death, Vani cries herself to sleep. The sobs keep on coming. She smothers them with her pillow, glad that her room is at the very end of the attic – which has been given over to servants’ quarters – and quite isolated. She mourns and heaves as she lets it all out. All her regrets: not remembering much of that morning, how she is beginning to forget the contours of her mother’s face, the sound of her father’s laughter, how she cannot for the life of her remember where exactly the mole was in her father’s face. She does not have any photographs of them, no one in the village owned a camera and the notion of paying Sumesh the photographer to have their picture taken when there was no occasion for it – no wedding or other celebration – was preposterous when they couldn’t afford to buy fish and meat, milk and eggs.

She is giving herself over to the tears when she feels a cool arm on her shoulder. For a minute, a brief, joyous minute, she wonders if it is her mother, come for her, come back. She turns, not bothering to wipe her streaming eyes, her mouth open and gasping, shuddering for breath.

It is Aarti!

Vani blinks and sits up in shock. Of all people, Vani did not expect her.

Hurriedly, she wipes her eyes and manages to speak between heaves, ‘Sorry, sorry, did not mean to disturb you, ma’am.’

Aarti’s eyes harden briefly; there is a flicker in them. Even in her desolate state, Vani understands that Aarti is deciding what persona to wear – the impetuous mistress, the concerned girl? How does Vani know this person so well? How can she read the workings of Aarti’s mind?

The hard look disappears. Vani sees that Aarti has given up affecting and decided to be herself, to give in to the same impulse that made her walk into Vani’s room. Didn’t Vani lock the door when she retired for the night?
Fool,
she admonishes herself, even as her breathing struggles to calm down, remembered sobs bursting out of her in occasional hiccups.

‘I hear you every day you know. Your room is directly above mine.’ Aarti’s voice is wry but there is something soft in her eyes, an expression Vani has never seen before. It makes Aarti look even more beautiful than she does when she dresses up to go to her shoots, Vani thinks. Her hair is down, she is wearing a nightie and no make-up and she looks so much younger, a lost little girl. Like Vani herself.

‘I am so sorry for disturbing you, ma’am. I did not realise,’ Vani manages between hiccups.

Aarti fiddles with the end of her nightie. ‘What is today? It is something, right? Normally your sobs stop after a while. Today they just...’

‘I am sorry,’ Vani says again.

Aarti stamps her foot, clicks her tongue. She is used to people doing her every bidding, answering her every question, anticipating it even before she opens her mouth to query. ‘What is today?’ She asks again.

‘Two months since they died.’ Saying it out loud makes it more real somehow. It is out there now, the knowledge that Vani has lived two whole months without her parents, absorbed into the miasma haunting this room, smacking of grief and whispered secrets.

Aarti comes and sits at the edge of Vani’s narrow, hard cot. They could be two girls talking about ordinary things – movies, boys.

‘How? How did they…?’

Vani is surprised by a sudden burst of affection for Aarti because she is sensitive enough not to say ‘die’, even as fresh waves of grief assault her.

‘Drowned,’ she manages, and the bloated visions of her parents loom before her eyes. She tries to blink them away, to will the smiling faces of the parents she knew and loved to grace her head instead.

Aarti’s slender, perfectly manicured hand snakes along crumpled bed sheets seeped in sorrow and reaching Vani’s scuffed, work-callused palm, rests on it. ‘I am sorry.’

The tears start again, Vani cannot help them. It is all too much.

And Aarti, her mistress, the notoriously hard-to-please girl, the one all the servants have warned her against, does something even more out of character than entering her servant’s room to check if she is okay, more out of character than sitting on Vani’s bed and laying her hand on Vani’s, something so out of character that Vani almost chokes on her tears.

Aarti opens her bony arms and holds Vani as she shudders and sobs. She comforts Vani like Vani comforted her when she was ill, nursing her like she nursed Aarti through her fever. Aarti holds Vani as she exhausts her grief, the back of her expensive nightie getting soaked just as much as the back of Vani’s tattered one. She cries right along with Vani, until Vani doesn’t know who is comforting whom, both of them giving in to the exquisite release of tears, both of them wishing the other holding her was her mother.

A
arti doesn’t know
what she was thinking but once she hugs the servant girl, comforts her, a line is crossed. She cannot go back to treating Vani like a servant again, she cannot keep her distance.

And now, the two sides of her are at war. One side desperately wants Vani for a friend, someone to share with, someone to talk to. The other thinks,
Why her? She is nothing. A servant. Remember Tara and the vow you made not to get close. If you must have a friend, why not a fellow model, someone the same class and status as you?

The side of her that wants friendship with Vani counters:
I could never make myself so vulnerable as to admit my loneliness to a fellow model. But Vani… Vani knows. She understands. She is going through the same thing.

And what would your parents think if you got so pally with a servant?

What do they care? All they want is for me to be the top model in India and once I achieve that they will want me to conquer the world. Even then, they will not be happy. Even then, they will not be satisfied.

Aarti has never felt the need for friends before. She is above all that. She sees girls talking, laughing, sharing secrets and she is apart. Alone. Always. She doesn’t
want
to be one of them.

One of her classmates at the ridiculously expensive school populated by the children of Bangalore’s elite that she used to attend had accused, once, ‘You think you are better than all the rest of us, don’t you? You look down your nose at us.’

‘I do,’ Aarti had replied, ‘and I am. Better than all of you.’

She’s always been single-minded in going after what she wants. She’s always been ruthless. But now, for the first time in her life, she feels protective towards this servant girl. Why? She cannot explain even to herself why she feels compelled to treat Vani differently, to talk to her as a friend would. She wants the camaraderie she experienced briefly the previous night, the sense of some weight she did not even know she carried easing when she comforted the servant girl.

And so, the two parts of her are at war until finally the one tells the other,
The fact that she is your servant is to your advantage. It is her duty to please you. She can be your friend if you so wish. It will be on your terms. After all, you can sack her at any time. It’s entirely up to you.

And so it begins. A friendship that shouldn’t happen, a relationship that is doomed from the start.

In the evenings, after all Vani’s other work is done, while she brushes Aarti’s hair, they chat. Aarti drinks in the stories of Vani’s parents, the love they showered on their daughter, the love Aarti wishes she had had. And then, Vani goes upstairs to bed and Aarti listens for the sobs that do not come. And something blooms in her heart, a little nugget of joy. Talking to her is helping Vani sleep. For the first time in her life, Aarti discovers the joy of doing something for others, instead of it being, always, the other way round.

One day, she asks Vani to answer her phone. She watches Vani blink, once, twice, then pass the phone to her.

‘What’s the matter?’ she complains, irritated. ‘I asked you to take it.’

‘I don’t understand it, ma’am.’ Vani says, softly. She still calls her ma’am, even though Aarti has asked her not to, several times.

‘You don’t understand English?’

Vani is briskly cleaning the dressing table, putting lipsticks and mascara back in their containers. ‘No, ma’am. Never learnt it.’

‘I’ll teach you,’ Aarti says, surprising herself once again. She seems to be constantly doing things she’s never done before in Vani’s company. The girl has that effect on her.

And so, in the evenings, after Vani’s jobs are done, Aarti teaches her English. They laugh, and they gossip, Aarti filling her in on the latest antics of some of the more notorious models as Vani practises her letters, and over the ensuing months, they morph into friends, sisters even.

By the time Vani finishes practising her reading, it is very late, so Aarti asks Vani to sleep in her room, on a mat on the floor and they talk late into the night, sharing experiences and stories. Aarti learns of love, the self-sacrificing kind. She hears of how Vani’s father was bitten by a rabid dog and rushed to the hospital in the nearby town because he stepped in front of Vani to protect her from the dog. She learns of how Vani’s parents scrimped and saved to buy chicken once a week and how they made sure she ate it all, only sucking on the bones after. She hears of how Vani’s parents bought ‘damaged’ eggs – eggs with cracks and blemishes on them – and watered-down milk, which was all they could afford, so Vani could have the requisite proteins and nutrients. She listens to how Vani’s father walked everywhere without sandals so his feet were forever blistering and sore, so Vani could have textbooks for school.

Aarti looks at this plain young girl, her dishevelled hair, her salt-stained face, her sorrow tainted eyes, her thin body hunched with pain, her perfectly ordinary features transformed into something special by the glow on her face as she talks about the parents who had loved her, adored her, for whom she had been their world. She looks at this girl who has nothing, who is beholden to Aarti for her food, her bed, the clothes she is wearing, and
envies
her.

Over the course of the next few months, it gives Aarti immense satisfaction to see Vani’s face light up as she learns to read, to spell, to speak English, first hesitantly, then passably fluently. When Aarti’s phone rings and Vani answers in English, ‘Yes, of course, I will give her your message,’ and puts the phone down, beaming, Aarti is blindsided by the surge of sheer joy that courses through her.

‘Don’t get ideas into your head,’ Aarti jokes, trying to tamp down the emotion bubbling in her.

‘I won’t, ma’am,’ Vani laughs. She has long since dropped the ‘ma’am’. She is teasing.

Somehow in this little orphaned servant girl, Aarti finds a kindred spirit, someone she doesn’t feel threatened by, someone she can share with, be herself with. And as her friendship with Vani develops, she is no longer beset by the need to please her parents, to court their approval like before.

One day while Aarti is at breakfast, her mother says, squinting at her suspiciously, ‘You look too happy for this time of the morning. Have you been drinking? Are you in love?’

Normally, Aarti would have been thrilled beyond belief that her mother had condescended to speak to her instead of perusing the society pages of the broadsheets for pictures of herself. She would have been grateful that her mother had
noticed
her instead of looking right through her like she usually did, so much so that Aarti used to wonder when she was very young whether she was invisible. This time, though, Aarti just smiles secretly to herself and says, ‘None of your business.’

The look of shock that crosses her mother’s face like a fleeting shadow before it is masked by cool indifference and her mother’s trademark shrug and an icy, ‘Suit yourself,’ gives Aarti immense pleasure for days afterwards.

Vani is almost like a little sister to Aarti. She bosses over Vani, orders her around, like she imagines an older sister would do. Almost. Their relationship is unequal, of course it is. Vani will always be deferential to Aarti; her livelihood depends on Aarti, however much they both delude themselves otherwise.

‘I need someone who will tell it like it is,’ Aarti says to Vani often, but she knows that Vani won’t. She wouldn’t dare.

Truth be told, Aarti likes this inequality, she enjoys this relationship because the balance is tipped in her favour; she is smug in the knowledge that Vani is her friend, but it is according to
her
rules,
her
say.

Sometimes, late at night when her stomach yawns with hunger and she cannot sleep, it occurs to Aarti that her relationship with Vani is very much like her parents’ is with her but she immediately banishes the thought. How could it be so? She
cares
for Vani. Her parents do not care for her, only for her achievements.

And you, don’t you care only for what Vani can give you?
A little voice asks.

No, of course not,
the other part of her protests.
Vani is my friend. She holds my hair while I am being sick and…

She holds your hair when you are being sick,
mocks the first voice
. She combs your hair. She listens to you talk. She laughs when you want her to, she doesn’t when you don’t. Exactly my point…

I am teaching her English.

So you can feel happy, feel good about yourself.

At that, she quiets the annoying voice in her head, denies it entry even late at night when she is at her most vulnerable, when unappeased hunger chases away the blessed oblivion provided by sleep, when visions of food goad her empty stomach into rebellion and thoughts like these are a welcome relief. Even then.