A Matter of Geography
Advance Praise for A Matter of Geography
“They were neighbours - Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus - till Bombay’s religious violence tore their community apart. What is the meaning of ‘home’ to someone who has emigrated? Can love conquer geography? A Matter of Geography elegantly explores the ever-changing human relationships within the cosmic framework.”
-- Sylvia Fraser, author of Pandora and The Rope in Water
“With a richness of details, Jasmine D’Costa, gently and insightfully, through the eyes of childhood innocence, lifts the veil on a tumultuous time period in India where violence and religious hatred swept through a peaceful, diverse and tight knit community, forever altering the lives of its inhabitants. More than ever and in difficult times, A Matter for Geography is a much-needed glimmer of hope.”
-- John Calabro, author of An Imperfect Man and The Cousin
“Jasmine D’Costa’s A Matter of Geography is a brave commentary on the place many of us carry in our hearts as home. It leaves us with the question, is there a true sense of shared belonging or are some Indians more equal than others?
-- Shagorika Easwar, Editor, Desi News and Canada Bound Immigrant
A Matter of
Geography
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
D’Costa, Jasmine
A Matter of Geography/Jasmine D’Costa
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77161-246-3 (softcover).--ISBN 978-1-77161-247-0 (HTML).--
ISBN 978-1-77161-248-7 (PDF)
I. Title.
PS8607.C68M38 2017 C813’.6 C2016-907568-0
C2016-907569-9
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote a brief passage in a review.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, and events is entirely coincidental.
Published by Mosaic Press, Oakville, Ontario, Canada, 2017.
MOSAIC PRESS, Publishers
Copyright © 2017 Jasmine D’Costa
Printed and Bound in Canada
Designed by Courtney Blok
Cover Photo: Maya D’Costa
Author Photo: Mary Perdue
We acknowledge the Ontario Arts Council for their support of our publishing program
We acknowledge the Ontario Media Development Corporation for their support of our publishing program
MOSAIC PRESS
1252 Speers Road, Units 1 & 2
Oakville, Ontario L6L 5N9
phone: (905) 825-2130
info@mosaic-press.com
A Matter of
Geography
Jasmine D’Costa
To my angels at crucial times of my life: My brother Bennet, Philomena, Avita and Fr. Zbigniew Kozar.
Prologue
Bombay slept in a soft collective snore that summer night of 1968, quite unmindful of the many homeless souls looking for a place to sleep; some foraging in bins, others just giving up and dying. In the National Park at Borivali, near the far north of Bombay, the trees wrestled with each other in tight-wooded abandon, their leaves purging the defiled city air that streamed through their flutter. An occasional roar from the Lion Safari enclosure disturbed the silence; and somewhere in the deep interior, a flying stag beetle noisily took flight in search of a mate. All seemed right with this world except for one young panther cub, lost, wandering in search of its mother, unafraid, its path through the brush defined by the chatter of monkeys and birds that warned of its approach. Finding a bus parked in the small clearing on the edge of the woods, it sauntered up the stairs, lured by the slow rhythmic snore so like the steady heartbeat of its mother, and lay close to the driver who used the bus as his little home.
Very early, around four a.m., a faint reddish dawn steadily diffused dark clouds into the horizon at the north end of the park. A cock crowed from somewhere over the hills where tribals lived, keeping livestock, chickens, and growing their own vegetables for sustenance. Crows cawed in response; monkeys chattered restlessly. An almost subconscious challenging clamour sounded all at once: The clanking of milk bottles being delivered to the blue wooden milk booths that dotted the sides of the roads; people lining up for milk, some dropping a stone to mark their place in the queue while they returned to bed for that extra five minutes; the loud clatter of pots and pans being washed in a million sinks around the city; cars, taxis, and trucks rushing downtown before it crowded. In that second of light, heat, and alien sounds, dewdrops slid down a million leaves heavy with dawn.
The bus driver stirred lazily, woken by a sharp ray of sunlight hitting his eyelids. It was a moment before he became aware of his companion. Eyes popping, he stared at the two-foot-long cat, his mouth opening and closing soundlessly as a fish—no bubbles, just spittle that had dried in a white pathway down the left side of his mouth. He sat upright and slowly stood. Mercifully for him, the door was on his side of the bus. He kept eye contact with the panther as he attempted to back slowly towards the exit, much like a moonwalker floating unaided by gravity, or a yogi on a magic carpet. It can hardly be said that he succeeded. The cat, now on its feet, kept a steady distance between them, advancing as slowly as he retreated. As soon as he reached the door, he turned and ran, frantic, towards the park gate, his hands waving in the air, shouting, “Vaag, vaag—tiger, tiger,” his heart jostling with the words in his mouth.
The panther stretched gracefully at the door, alighted too, and casually strolled in the direction of the city. Forest officials, now alerted, closed the main gate of the park—a meaningless gesture, as the gate was merely symbolic, more a way to prevent humans from entering without the ticketed fare than to lock the animals within. To be fair, 114 square kilometres of forestland could hardly be fenced in.
The panther took the path that led out from the undergrowth on one side of the park gate. Weeds, tall and still green from the recent monsoons, twisted in the slight morning breeze but offered no resistance, bowing gracefully to let the panther through.
The crowds on the city streets, unconcerned about rubbing shoulders with each other—men, women, children pressed close—stopped in curiosity to watch the bus driver run, certain a drama was soon to unfold. And so it did. Toward the left side of the gates, someone on the outskirts of the crowd spotted the large cat emerging from the bushes. Mesmerized at first, they stared, their index fingers in some disco-like flash dance, pointing at the creature. A nervous businessman in the middle of the crowd, standing on his toes to see what was happening up in front, threw his hands upwards, screaming, “Hey Bhagwan, vaag, vaag—Oh God, tiger, tiger,” terror written in the tremolo of his delivery. This cry triggered a mad scramble, and in moments, wild masses of bodies tried to run in every direction. It was pandemonium. The screeching tyres of vehicles caught unawares sent up the smell of burnt rubber. The crowds now screamed in several voices, tones, and pitches, but mostly those of panic: “Vaag, vaag—tiger, tiger, tiger!” Those whose view of the panther was obstructed followed the direction of the dispersing crowd, joining in the chorus…” Vaag, vaag, vaag!”
The panther—who at first, just curious, stood there in wonder, never having seen such a large number of people in its own haven—blinked. It moved its head in all directions, and at one time even peered up at the sky as if to understand why these strange animals were fleeing like they had just seen a lion. The panther, now alarmed with the direction of its own thoughts, i
nstinctively followed the direction of the crowd and noise, bounding behind them though it did not know what it was running away from. In an inevitable consequence of one not understanding one’s strength, the panther knocked dead a child in its path. The frenzy stepped up several notches as people tried to break into shops that had not yet opened their doors, some of them shattering the glass windows in desperation, others running into open doorways of apartment buildings.
When the forest officers were finally able to get through this commotion, they took aim at the animal.
Weird, thought the panther as it felt the sharp prick of the arrow, and now quite sure about whom the crowds were running away from, I am only protecting myself, before it lost all consciousness.
“…(human nature being what it is) will, at some time or other and in much the same ways, be repeated in the future…”
- Thucydides
The History of the Peloponnesian War
Translated by Richard Crawley
Chapter One
Over a hundred stony meteorites hit the earth near Kirin in Northeastern China on 8th March, 1976, the day Anna was born. That is how I remember her birth. I went with Mother and Father to the hospital to see the newborn girl of our neighbour and friend Mr. Fernandes. There she, bundled in a flannel blanket, very white and pink, looked up at me, smiling—our own 6 lb. meteorite from some distant star, lighting up the room and, from that day, our lives. She lay blissfully unconscious of her narrow escape from the forced sterilisation campaigns sweeping the country in the year preceding her birth and the new, more rigorous birth control policies that had been enforced in India. They say extraordinary women are born in the leap year, as if the preceding three years’ extra six hours were cumulated and added to the leap year in expectation that it would need more time to accommodate the events written into its fate.
----
Sunday, the twelfth day of October 2008, I sat staring at the big china centrepiece in the middle of Mother’s oval dining table. Two white cherubs on either side of an intricately carved knob spat out recycled water, fountain-like, into the white collecting bowl at the bottom. The white silk dupion tablecloth had white cutwork embroidered corners and sparkled like new, though it had been part of her dowry. My mother, Isabel, knew how to preserve the pristine nature of all that she owned. She knew, too, how to send a message. Her eight-seater dining table was just one of Mother’s numerous ways of telling me she looked forward to the larger family that of course I would provide: wife, grandchildren, etc.
You know genuine bone china when, held against the light, you can see your fingers through it. And you know the sounds of nervous tension when you hear the clear, bell-like tinkle of cup playing with saucer. I set my cup down, fearful of doing Mother’s bone china severe damage despite its reputation of ‘high mechanical strength.’ Smells of delicious pulao, mingled with the curls of chicken curry being prepared, sailed forth from her kitchen.
Isabel silently pushed the chicken to and fro in the pot, frying the flesh in green coriander and mint paste and alternately whipping the bowl of curds to top it with. Her silence, unusual, meditative, almost nervous, made me wonder who was more affected by Anna’s pending arrival. I looked at her and decided it would be good for my nerves to go to the airport early and wait there, rather than in this contagious nervousness.
----
The news had come about a month earlier on 14th September 2008, a Sunday morning, just a little after eight, when all the world appeared to be bursting at the seams. Somewhere in the South Atlantic Ocean an iceberg had calved, bursting from a small fissure into two large islands of ice; no doubt, to be further calved into a hundred small icebergs and ice islands, pushing the waters, causing the waves to ripple and travel outwards, to burst ashore.
In Bombay, the weather, despite the pundits’ predictions, burst into a response, pushed somewhere from a distantly related rupture. Heavy clouds burst into thunderstorm. The footpaths suddenly expanded into a steady flow of umbrellas bursting into the street, spilling over from the sidewalks with mysterious people huddled beneath. I reluctantly watched from my bedroom window. The window had burst from its seams too, no longer fitting flush in the framework that had warped with the weather. And not so mysterious, the figure of my mother, bursting out of the seams of her blouse, hurried into the recesses of the building where I lived.
Tribes such as the Garos of Assam, some races along Lake Ashanti and the Gold and Ivory Coasts, or others such as the Iroquois in North America, are matrilineal societies where the women rule over namby-pamby men, urging students of social theory from the time of Bachofen to ponder this female dominance. I, however, with characteristic male assertion borne from a long line of patriarchal ancestors, had declared myself independent of my mother.
But for now, I gave up my Sunday with a sigh. Don’t get me wrong; I loved Isabel, but her attempts to coax me into marriage were sufficient cause for apprehension. On the other hand, if one had to be reasonable, what was one Sunday in the lifetime of a male when a beloved parent visits, braving the elements? No doubt an urgent appeal was coming my way, wrapped in a bio of the “very lovely girl who, though I have not met, seems so nice, look Peter, look at her photograph.”
“Peter,” she said, not stopping to gain her breath, “take this bottle of pickle and put it in the fridge.” She shoved a bottle of mango pickle at me as she wiped her feet on the doormat to remove the muck of the street before entering my apartment.
“And don’t put your fingers in the bottle, you will spoil the pickle—it will not stay,” she added as I opened the lid to get a whiff of the red, deadly looking thing, which I admit I loved.
“So Mum… Sunday morning? Must be important… Surely, not just to hand me pickle in the rain?”
“Peter, I wish you would exercise your manners towards your mother too. Get me a cup of tea and first, get me a towel.”
I guessed she was going to take her time getting to the point. I could see a long morning ahead of me, perhaps stretching into lunch.
“Tea.” She paused, her eyes scouring the ceiling and all the corners of my living room for that unwitting spider web, or the table cover of dust, or the stray fragment of paper on the floor, ready to critique Premibai’s housekeeping. She was still grappling with my independence though I had moved out of her apartment over ten years ago.
“Tea is the gift of God himself.” Sighing, she put down the cup I’d handed her and picked up the towel to dry her hair.
“Anna,” she said from behind the towel, “is coming from Canada. She has inherited some property in Mangalore—she’s there as we speak—but she will be living with me for a week. She arrives in Bombay a month from now.”
Pulling into the airport car park, it struck me that it looked like the big manufacturing unit of Toyota or some super-big Japanese car manufacturer, or just a giant bird’s nest, with flying aircraft landing and taking off in loud, thunderous whooshes overhead. It brought back a familiar feeling of excitement: Travel, the unknown beyond, and perhaps the excitement of seeing Anna, all a heady rush. I stood in full view of the arriving passengers and, a bit too late, wondered if I should have brought a placard like the ones the tourist operators stood with, pushing their way in front of the waiting crowd to pick up strangers they had contracted with but not knowing what they looked like. How much of travel involved resting one’s faith in strangers.
Her hair was curlier than when I knew her. That was my first thought when I spotted her. Taller, fairer, older, but still those loving, gentle eyes. I needed no placard. Her scent, familiar yet strange, disguised by some foreign perfume, her walk still the same, stopping a few feet away from me, looking at me direct, then smiling, walking slowly, building to a quick trot and she was here in front of me. Anna, Anna…
I had never hugged Anna. Young boys do not hug young girls. But right then it seemed logical as I held her, blowing into her hair, swinging her around and around and doing it with careless abandon. We laughed, ou
r hands sliding over each other’s, putting distance between our bodies all the better to take each other in, till our fingers hooked to hold our balance and we kept turning around, the laughter of our childhood bubbling through and not a thought of our separation…my anger…my resentment.
“Peter, Peter, you look so well, handsome as ever, and my dear friend…Isabel, where is she?”
“Where do you think, Anna? She is killing the fatted calf for you!”
She only smiled then, somewhat shyer than before. “I did not know what to expect after all these years.”
Lightly, our hands released each other and I grabbed Anna’s bags and led her out of the terminal. We drove along the highway towards home, Anna looking out the window, eagerly taking in the scenery, as if she needed to fill her body with its memory despite the squalor, the foul smells, the humidity that hit us. As we got out of the car, I could see Mother, pulling her head in after having stuck it out of her window for a good 30 minutes, I imagine, looking out for us. Anna jumped up and down, waving.
“Isabel, Isabel, I love you,” she shouted.
Isabel, who had wiped her face to take off the traces of snuff, now opened the door and opened her arms, engulfing Anna. Anna pushed her away, her hands on Isabel’s waist still. Jumping with almost childlike excitement she said, “Isabel, Isabel, my Indian mother.”
Isabel could hold it no longer. Over the years, Mother had become soft, and now she sniffed loudly and tears streamed down her face. “You know how devastated we were when you left. We spent a long time trying to get over the separation. We were family, Anna.”
“We are family, Isabel,” she said, kissing Mother.
Chapter Two
“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”