head – her mother and father, her two brothers, her aunts and uncles, Ronnie and Gwen and Dee. Where were they now? Could they feel her thinking of them? Was this how it was going to be from now on? One foot in, the other foot out . Would it always feel like you never belonged no matter where you went, who you found to love? And Babo, lying next to his wife, felt all this. Felt her blue-green veins fill up with a certain kind of sorrow that hadn’t been there before. It was something to do with time and distance, love and separation. It spread through her transparent skin and shone through her like snow.
‘You know what?’ she whispered to Babo. ‘My father bought me a round-trip ticket to India and back. He said, “If that young man isn’t there to pick you up, you get on the next plane and come right home.” He called you that – young man .’
And Babo, understanding it all, held her and said, ‘I’ve got you now, Charlie Girl. I’m never letting you go again.’ He knew if this was going to work, they’d have to make a world of their own together, because Siân couldn’t begin to understand this world right now – all the millions in it. The beggars who went about with slippers on their palms because they had no feet to walk on. The young men – brown and black-bodied, like ribbed horses – ready to fall upon their destinies like torrents of rain. And most of all, these women of Ganga Bazaar who were like jungles – dark wombs from which all life seemed to have emerged. How could Siân hope to gain entrance to their world of renunciations and wanderings? When they watched from beneath wooden beams with the keys to their houses gently pressing against their hips – ka-chink ka-chink ka-chink – which secrets would they agree to share with her, and which would they keep?
8 All I Want is a Room Somewhere
In the early days, Siân poured her life into letters. She wrote every week, telling her parents the things she was slowly discovering about herself and this country, about Babo’s peculiar neighbours and extended family. She steered clear of religion because she knew it would upset her father. So she said nothing of how Selvam, on Prem Kumar’s instructions, pasted a poster of all the Jain symbols on the godrej almirah in their bedroom so they could contemplate it every morning. Nothing of how she accompanied the family to the Jain temple in Kilpauk every Sunday and joined them with folded knees and hands to pray for the purity of their souls. Nothing of how she was learning to be the perfect Gujarati daughter-in-law from Meenal, who had been in training for years: wearing saris, rolling faultlessly round chappathis, knowing when to be silent and when to speak.
On the first Sunday of every month Siân booked a trunk call to her parents in Nercwys. Then she waited for Bryn’s measured voice and Nerys’s barrage of questions. It was the only way for her to pass through the bubble, to reach out and touch a life that used to belong to her. She never allowed herself to cry, never told them about the fear that continued to live in her, that it might have been a mistake after all, because here, in this country with its own raggedy beauty, there were times she could barely find herself, barely pick through the complicated layers of her young life and find the beginning which began, not here, but there – where they were. Elsewhere.
How different it is to live in a city by the sea. The air is filled with salt, with comings and goings. There are no fields, but cows everywhere! And people, thousands of them! Babo and I have claimed the second floor of Sylvan Lodge, which lies at the end of an avenue of yellow, holly-hocked portia trees. We have a large bedroom with bath attached, and there’s an adjoining terrace where I often go to watch the sunsets. It’s strange to be surrounded by people all the time, and still experience a kind of loneliness; different from my London existence, at any rate
‘You know what?’ she whispered to Babo. ‘My father bought me a round-trip ticket to India and back. He said, “If that young man isn’t there to pick you up, you get on the next plane and come right home.” He called you that – young man .’
And Babo, understanding it all, held her and said, ‘I’ve got you now, Charlie Girl. I’m never letting you go again.’ He knew if this was going to work, they’d have to make a world of their own together, because Siân couldn’t begin to understand this world right now – all the millions in it. The beggars who went about with slippers on their palms because they had no feet to walk on. The young men – brown and black-bodied, like ribbed horses – ready to fall upon their destinies like torrents of rain. And most of all, these women of Ganga Bazaar who were like jungles – dark wombs from which all life seemed to have emerged. How could Siân hope to gain entrance to their world of renunciations and wanderings? When they watched from beneath wooden beams with the keys to their houses gently pressing against their hips – ka-chink ka-chink ka-chink – which secrets would they agree to share with her, and which would they keep?
8 All I Want is a Room Somewhere
In the early days, Siân poured her life into letters. She wrote every week, telling her parents the things she was slowly discovering about herself and this country, about Babo’s peculiar neighbours and extended family. She steered clear of religion because she knew it would upset her father. So she said nothing of how Selvam, on Prem Kumar’s instructions, pasted a poster of all the Jain symbols on the godrej almirah in their bedroom so they could contemplate it every morning. Nothing of how she accompanied the family to the Jain temple in Kilpauk every Sunday and joined them with folded knees and hands to pray for the purity of their souls. Nothing of how she was learning to be the perfect Gujarati daughter-in-law from Meenal, who had been in training for years: wearing saris, rolling faultlessly round chappathis, knowing when to be silent and when to speak.
On the first Sunday of every month Siân booked a trunk call to her parents in Nercwys. Then she waited for Bryn’s measured voice and Nerys’s barrage of questions. It was the only way for her to pass through the bubble, to reach out and touch a life that used to belong to her. She never allowed herself to cry, never told them about the fear that continued to live in her, that it might have been a mistake after all, because here, in this country with its own raggedy beauty, there were times she could barely find herself, barely pick through the complicated layers of her young life and find the beginning which began, not here, but there – where they were. Elsewhere.
How different it is to live in a city by the sea. The air is filled with salt, with comings and goings. There are no fields, but cows everywhere! And people, thousands of them! Babo and I have claimed the second floor of Sylvan Lodge, which lies at the end of an avenue of yellow, holly-hocked portia trees. We have a large bedroom with bath attached, and there’s an adjoining terrace where I often go to watch the sunsets. It’s strange to be surrounded by people all the time, and still experience a kind of loneliness; different from my London existence, at any rate
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