A Long Way Home Read online

  Being the eldest, Guddu felt responsible for our survival, and he was always looking for extra jobs to bring in a little more money. He had been told it was possible to make money hawking things on the railway station platform, so when he was around ten, he started selling toothbrush-and-paste kits to travelers. That landed him in jail because of child labor laws. He was known to local police—as were Kallu and I, and many other young boys in our neighborhood—as a chancer, maybe a petty thief. For example, we had worked out how to cut holes in bales of rice or chickpeas stacked at the station for the cargo trains to collect some food for our table. Generally, we’d get away or get a clip over the ear, and weren’t considered great menaces to society. But for some reason, although Guddu was arrested under laws designed to protect kids, they kept him in jail.

  After a few days, a local policeman told my mother where he was. She took us all to the juvenile prison, an imposing complex of buildings packed with young boys, and pleaded with the officers until Guddu was released. I have no idea what she said, but it would have been clear she wasn’t leaving without her son. When they walked out of the office to where Shekila and I were waiting, all of a sudden it seemed as if the whole prison gave a big shout—as if to say, “Well done for getting out of this place! You are our hero!” To me it seemed as if he was a celebrity. We were relieved that he was free, but now he had to find new ways to make some money.

  Somehow we managed to eke out a subsistence, living day to day and hand to mouth. Everyone in my family used to go out in the morning and get whatever they could—be it money or food. At the end of each day we would return, put whatever we had managed to find on the table, and everyone would share. Sometimes my brothers managed to nab some bhuja, which was chickpea flour mixed with spices. My mother would send us out to borrow some oil, and then she’d deep-fry the dough.

  If my mother was able to bring home some yellow lentils, she made dal. First she washed the lentils, then placed them in a pot of boiling water with salt and turmeric, or haldi. When we could, we ate it with green chilis, roti bread, or boiled rice. The roti bread was made from whole wheat flour fresh from the mill. My mother would put a few handfuls of flour into a bowl and mix it with water that we kept in a large clay pot. She mixed it up well and made it into a dough. Then she took little bits from the mound, flattened it out on a board with a rolling pin, and placed it on the preheated iron griddle above the open fire. She cooked both sides of the bread until it started to rise and puff up like a ball, which meant it was ready to eat. But this meal of roti bread and dal was a luxury, and we didn’t have it very often.

  Once in a while my mother got her hands on some goat gizzards. We always watched her when she cooked, anticipating a rare taste of meat. I remember smelling the ginger and garlic sizzling, the sweet aroma making my mouth water. Then she would add more oil and turmeric, and last the gizzards. She divided up the food, taking less for herself even though she was doing hard manual labor. The savory taste of the garlicky meat exploded in my mouth.

  I remember feeling hungry most of the time. There was no choice in the matter; hunger was simply a fact of life, like the searing heat and the constantly buzzing flies. We were very skinny children, with blown-up stomachs from gas and no food. We were malnourished, but then so were other poor children in our village.

  As we got older, my brothers and I became more and more creative about finding things to eat. We would roam aimlessly about the neighborhood like vagabonds, hoping to come across a party where there might be some leftovers, or an unwatched vegetable patch or fruit tree. Sometimes it was as simple as throwing stones at blushing ripe mangoes high up in someone’s yard, trying to knock one down. On the other side of the village there was a tamarind tree, and I would try to shoot down the reddish pods with a homemade slingshot. Once in a while I might get a handful of the sweet-sour fruit, if other kids hadn’t gotten there first.

  At other times my brothers and I were more adventurous. One day while walking home, we decided to take a back way through the fields and came across a large henhouse, around fifty meters long. Armed guards were on duty, but Guddu thought we could safely get our hands on some eggs, so we made a plan to stay hidden until the guards went on a tea break. Then I would go into the henhouse first, being shorter and harder to spot, and Guddu and Kallu would follow. Guddu told us to roll up our shirts inside out so that they could serve as little baskets. We were to collect as many eggs as quickly as we could, then run out and go straight back home.

  We watched from a hideout until the guards’ break, when they went to sit with the shed workers, eating rotis and drinking chai. There was no time to waste. I was first inside and started grabbing the brown speckled eggs, still warm from the hens’ undersides. Guddu and Kallu followed and did the same. But the chickens became disturbed by our presence and started squawking loudly, alerting the guards. We dashed back out as the guards ran toward the shed, only about twenty meters from us. Guddu yelled, “Run for it!” and we split up and bolted. We were a lot faster than the guards, and luckily they chose not to shoot at us. Unfortunately, the act of running had not been kind to my eggs; of the nine I’d collected, only two remained intact—the rest were dripping down my shirtfront.

  My brothers had beaten me home and my mother had the iron griddle on the flame. Between us we had ten eggs left—enough to feed us all. My stomach rumbled as I watched my mother put two delicious-smelling fried eggs on an aluminum plate. I thought, I hope she gives me the first batch, but instead she gave it to Shekila. I couldn’t help myself—I nabbed an egg from my sister’s plate and ran out the door, ignoring her earsplitting cry of protest. I didn’t get punished, probably because my mother realized how ravenous I was.

  On another occasion I woke early feeling very hungry, but there was nothing to eat in the house. I remembered having noticed a field of ripening tomatoes nearby, and went out determined to lay my hands on some. It was cool in the early morning air, and I still had my sleeping blanket wrapped around me. When I reached the field, I squeezed in through a gap in the barbed-wire fence and within moments I was picking tomatoes, eating some on the spot, savoring their soft flesh. But then I heard a whistle blow loudly and saw a group of five or six older boys running quickly toward me across the field. I dashed back to the fence and, being little, managed to squeeze through an opening I knew would be too small for them. But my prized red blanket got snagged on the barbed wire, and with the boys bearing down on me, I had to leave it behind. When I got home my mother was happy I had brought some tomatoes to eat, but furious I had lost my blanket in the process. She didn’t beat me like a lot of parents did, though; she never raised a hand to any of us, instead disciplining us only by scolding.

  Our landlady, who lived in our building, often cooked kichery, which was rice and lentil curry. She would prepare all the ingredients and put them in a pot to cook, and then leave her house to visit friends for a while. My nose was very sensitive to the scent of food since I was hungry just about all of the time, and one morning it led me to an intoxicating spicy smell emanating from our landlady’s kitchen. I crept into the room and had a vision of heaven: a fresh pot of kichery, simmering away untended.

  I went up to the pot, opened the lid, and stared at the feast, my mouth watering uncontrollably. I put my finger into it to see if it was too hot, but luckily for me it was still lukewarm. Quickly I scooped up a handful and gulped the delicious cumin-savory lentils, taking several scoops until my belly was full. Then with my palm I flattened the top of the curry so it looked untouched, licked my hand clean, and snuck back out of the room. Apparently I got away with it, because our landlady never complained.

  Another run-in involving food almost cost me my life. I accepted a job ferrying ten large watermelons across the town’s main street for a man with a stall in the town market. He offered me a little money, and I hoped he might add a slice of watermelon when I was done. But the watermelons were very large and I was still
small, and struggling with the first one, I wasn’t able to keep track of the heavy traffic. The next thing I knew, I was lying on the tarred road, bleeding from the head, with the watermelon next to me crushed into crimson pulp. I was lucky my head had not been crushed in the same way, as I’d been struck by a speeding motorcycle and gone under its wheel. However, my leg was injured. The rider took pity on me and gave me a lift home, and I limped into my house. My mother was horrified and took me straight to a doctor, who bandaged my injuries. I don’t know how she paid for it.

  Only once did I ever see food being given away to a large group of people off the street. I’d been trying to beg something from a man. He refused but told me that a laundry shop fed the poor once a month. “In fact, if you go there now, you might get some,” he said. I hurried to the shop and sure enough, there was a line of people waiting to be served. However, the woman ahead of me told me that you had to have a bowl. I could see that the steaming curry would be too hot to hold in my hands, so I frantically searched for a container, but to no avail. Finally I found a plastic bag lying on the side of the road. I resumed my place in line, and when I reached the shop owner, he gave me a big spoonful, which made my pangs recede for a while.

  Harsh as all this sounds, we learned to live with hunger. We had to; it was always there, like the dirt under our bare feet. The one thing I craved—other than a full stomach—was to attend school as the other kids did. Often, first thing in the morning, I would go and hang around by the gates of the local school as the uniformed children marched in. I would stare inside, wishing I could be a pupil there like them. But in India school isn’t free, and we couldn’t afford to go. It made me a bit shy, because it was obvious I had no education. I couldn’t read or write, and didn’t know many words—I spoke poorly and had trouble communicating.

  • • •

  As we grew up, my brothers spent more time away from “Ginestlay,” in search of new hunting grounds and sleeping away from the house in railway stations and under bridges. Sometimes the holy man, Baba, would look after Shekila and me at the mosque, or he would take me fishing in the river with his long bamboo stick and line. I always looked forward to being with Baba; he was closer to a father than my real one, whom I never saw. We would walk together to his favorite fishing spots, where he’d put a worm on the hook and cast it into the water. We caught a type of small fish that had black scales, and he always let me bring a few home. Whenever my mother returned from work, she’d cook it in a delicious curry that would make me drool with anticipation. On other days Baba let me watch him clean and decorate the holy place at the tomb. During special festivals, he would choose two boys to be dressed up as tigers. I always wanted to be a tiger, and was disappointed when he didn’t choose me.

  Sometimes it felt as if the world had forgotten about us and our problems. But then we would meet someone from the neighborhood who treated us with respect, like Baba, and who fed us just because he felt sorry for us. When Baba gave me a snack and asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, he wasn’t just nourishing my mind but also my spirit. He gave me a sense of being normal for a few moments, and helped me to believe that I had a future. He gave me the luxury to think about what I wanted to accomplish with my life, either working in the construction area or being a laborer in a shop.

  The other person who was a father figure to me for a brief time was one of the supervisors of the young men’s military school camp. He noticed me hanging about, and would call me over in the morning to share some of the porridge that was made in vast quantities for the boys at the camp. The porridge was such a delicacy to me, as only well-off people could afford it. To this day I can still taste and smell its comforting flavor. The supervisor was very kind and took an avuncular interest in me, asking me what I’d been doing the day before and teaching me how to whistle. The highlight was when he gave me and some other kids a ride in the back of his jeep to pick up someone at the train station. I was sad when he moved away and I never saw him again.

  • • •

  Another bright spot in my existence was the cinema, but the only way I could get into it was to sneak through when no one was watching. Sometimes I’d make it inside, only to be chucked out because they could tell just by looking at me that I hadn’t paid. Occasionally my brothers and I got to see an entire movie, and I fell in love with the drama and music. My favorite actor was Mithun Chakraborty, and the best song I ever heard was “Lambi Judai.”

  Since Guddu and Kallu were spending less and less time in our neighborhood, Shekila became the person I was closest to. When she was around a year old and I was a certain age, probably about four, I was responsible for her welfare. My duties were to wash and feed her, and watch over her. Shekila and I used to sleep in the same bed, and when we woke, I would fetch her whatever breakfast I could find. We used to play together: peekaboo and hide-and-seek. Shekila was so tiny and beautiful. She had short, curly hair, and was usually dressed in a dirty white frock. She loved being with me and followed me everywhere, and I protected her and was always on alert to hear if anyone had mistreated her. Shekila was my main priority, as much as a very young child can have a sense of that sort of responsibility.

  Although Guddu was the oldest, Kallu played a similar role with him. As Guddu worked a few jobs at different times to help with the family income, Kallu took care of him because he was one of our breadwinners—the younger brother would ensure that the elder was getting enough to eat and that if they both stayed away from home, the elder had a safe place to sleep. So with no father around, and our mother often away working, we took care of each other.

  For the most part, while the other kids my age were in school and I was watching Shekila, I stuck to the boundaries of the house and its courtyard. I spent long days sitting on the earthen floor alone while she slept inside, idly listening in on conversations and watching life go on around me. Sometimes the neighbors kept an eye on her and let me go off and find wood for cooking. I would haul it back and stack it by the side of the house.

  I also earned a paisa or two—enough for a lollipop, some sugar cane, or another small bit of food—by helping the local storekeeper with his deliveries of wooden planks. He’d have me stack them in the pen by the store’s front door. I had to place each piece of wood neatly so it didn’t overflow and fall into the walkway. It took two hours to get the job done, and I’d wind up with a few splinters. At the end I had to clean the entire area right down to the small chips. Sometimes other kids would show up and the job would get done more quickly, but that meant I only got a third or a quarter of the payment.

  But most of the time I simply sat alone in our courtyard. We had no TV or radio. There were no books or newspapers, although I couldn’t have read them anyway. It was a simple, basic existence, and much of it was spent in trying to find something to put into my and Shekila’s ever-complaining stomachs.

  When she was two, Shekila discovered an unusual and unhealthy way to appease her constant hunger pangs. At times I caught her eating charcoal from our fireplace. She would hide small chunks of it in the hem of her dress and furtively gnaw on it, her face blackened by the dust. She became addicted to it, and I’d know she had been eating it when I found black poo in back of our house. It had a terrible effect on her digestive system, and several times we had to take her to a woman who had some special knowledge about how to fix the problem. Then my mother would carry her home wrapped in sheets. I followed behind, feeling relieved that she would be all right.

  In the afternoons after school, kids would run around in the streets. Sometimes I’d leave Shekila napping and join them, playing cricket on whatever patch of bare earth we could use. I also loved to chase butterflies, and glow bugs when it got darker. Flying kites was another favorite pastime. The kites were simple—sticks and paper—but to own even a basic kite required a little money. The rich kids had amazingly big, patterned ones, some even with colorful bows on the tails. I was mad for a kite like the
irs, so I’d try to spot one stuck in a tree and climb up and get it, no matter how dangerous it was. Guddu showed me how to make my own; you just laid two sticks in a cross on a piece of paper and sewed it together with cotton string. We conducted some exciting kite dogfights, for which we would stick crushed glass to our kite’s string, giving it an abrasive cutting edge. We would try to cut the string of the other’s kite as it flew. Kids played marbles, too, but again you needed money to get a marble to start with.

  I didn’t really have any close friends—maybe it was because of our being Hindu in a Muslim neighborhood. I also had the sense that some kids had been told not to associate with us because we were so poor. In addition, society held my mother in disgrace because her husband had left her. For these reasons and also perhaps from being chased away so many times while begging, I had a general mistrust of those I didn’t already know well—so I hung out as much as possible with my brothers, whom I adored.

  As I got a bit older, I was given more leeway outside the house and was allowed to start playing farther away. To begin with I stayed close to home, so that if anything bad happened I could run down this or that street, take a quick turn, and be home. Eventually, though, I started venturing as far as the town center; or my brothers and I would go down to the river below the dam wall, a long walk away, beyond the edge of town. We’d watch fishermen using their nets to catch fish.

  One memorable day a helicopter landed near the field of the nearby military school, and everyone ran over to see what was going on. I didn’t know what it was, but I was intrigued by the fact that something that big could fly. From that time on, I was fascinated by anything in the sky. I tried to figure out why large birds could soar yet I couldn’t. I’d see a vapor trail, tracing a thin white line among the clouds, and hope that one day I’d get to see what created it.