Shashi Warrier - The Girl Who Didn’t Give Up

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tranquebar press

the girl who didnt give up

Shashi Warrier was born in 1959, and, after completing a Masters degree in economics, tried his hand at many professions that had nothing to do with economics. After progressing in fits and starts through journalism, consulting, computer software, project management, and so on, he settled down to write novels. He likes yoga, motorcycles, Hindustani music, and good thrillers, and is learning to cook. His most memorable achievement has been a solo 40-day 11,000 km motorbike ride around India. He now lives in Mangalore with his painter-writer wife Prita, their three dogs and a cat.

the girl
who didnt give up

Shashi Warrier

TRANQUEBAR PRESS

An imprint of westland ltd

61 Silverline, Alapakkam Main Road, Maduravoyal, Chennai 600095

93, 1st floor, Sham Lal Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110002

First ebook edition: 2015

First published in India in TRANQUEBAR by westland ltd 2015

Copyright Shashi Warrier 2015

All rights reserved

ISBN: 978-93-85152-07-8

Typeset in Electra LT Regular by SRYA, New Delhi

The author asserts his moral right to be identified as the Author of this work.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, circulated, and no reproduction in any form, in whole or in part (except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews) may be made without written permission of the publishers.

For my parents, who knew the beginning of the tale but didnt live to see its end.

prologue

Death was no stranger. It had taken my parents, one by one, and my two siblings, together. All those times, it sneaked quietly in, taking everyone by surprise.

Not so for Allie. It came for her early on a spring morning, with birdsong in the air and the sun rising to a soft clear fragrant day at our riverside house in Iowa City. It tiptoed in and took her away, leaving a wasted body in the hospital bed by the window from where, on sunny afternoons in the winter just past, she had watched the mallards gather about the benches by the river for breadcrumbs tossed them by passersby.

She had fought off ALS for three years, in the last year entirely from that bed, kept alive by willpower, a hissing ventilator and an array of other gadgets. It was a spirited battle that left us bankrupt but hopeful right until the last month, when it became clear that she had nothing left to fight with. So, that morning when I called her doctor to tell him Allie was gone, there was little else to say. I sat by her until he came, and then her sister, Katie, followed by their parents, Dan and Karen.

Afterwards I wandered the sunlit rooms of the house, wondering, as I whispered her name, why they were suddenly so dark. I buried myself in detail work, with the mortician and with feeding visitors, with the paperwork and with the eulogy, in an exhausted daze. I thought I was all cried out by then, and, afterwards, as I sat dry-eyed and aching in my study in the quiet before the dawn, sleep came, though briefly and lightly.

At the funeral next morning, there were many more people than Id expected. Allie had been popular, and had many, many friends and well-wishers. I looked around and saw them everywhere. But there were others, too.

They were my students. Most of the current lot were there, quiet in the morning sunshine, their chatter muted, their regular bright garb exchanged for sober dark colours fit for the occasion. They were quiet, and grim, as people are at funerals, but they were there. Few of them, I realized, had known Allie.

With a lurch I understood they were there for me. Something broke inside me and I found myself weeping in the bright sunshine, in front of all those people on the lawn, unutterably, unbearably forlorn at having lost her.

As spring turned into summer, I ran. Before she fell ill, I used to run five miles every day, a half-marathon every summer weekend. With her illness getting worse, Id cut down on that, wanting to be at her side every possible moment. Now I returned to the jogging paths with a fierce determination not to let grief get the better of me. But every morning I looked in the mirror and wondered at the greying, dead-eyed, sunken-cheeked stranger who had taken my place in it.

chapter one

The rusty iron gates stand wide open in the rain. Beyond them, at the end of a short muddy driveway, is a long yellow single-storied building with a small bare veranda and six barred windows looking out onto the gates. North of the building, amidst patches of wild grass, resting on flat tyres and gathering rust in the rain, are a few odd cars and trucks.

I tell myself there is nothing to fear. I am a solid citizen, a teacher, and a visitor in an economy fuelled by tourists. All I have to do is walk in, place my complaint before the appropriate people, and walk right out again.

But fear and memories die hard. This is a police station, and I am wary of anything to do with the police. I remember their laughter from two decades ago. If I close my eyes, I can hear it now.

One long-ago summer, as a boy of fifteen, Id been beaten bloody by five schoolmates. They were all larger than me, all well-fed and well-dressed. And all, I might add, from the landed gentry, very high-caste families, all related. The previous day, the smallest of them had shoved me away from a well as I drew water from it: Id had to, for the one reserved for people of the lower castes my caste included had run dry. Id pushed back. When he advanced with fists raised, I fled. Being thin and fleet, and used to running, I got away. He promised hed catch up, and here he was, keeping his promise. The large cousins at his side had come along to make sure I didnt get away this time.

No one came to my assistance. My five assailants, large, fair, and straight-haired, were from families that had pull. Their victim, small, thin, dark-skinned and curly-haired, obviously from a lower caste, had none. The few people around melted away before the five began operations.

Faced with five well-fed and vengeful upper-caste lads, I curled up into a tight little ball. Most of their blows landed on my arms and legs and shoulders, where they did the least damage. But one of the five had steel tips to his shoes, and drew blood. He was also inexpert, which was why I got away with only a few bleeding cuts.

My parents, besides being low-caste, were poor, law-abiding, god-fearing, and ill-connected: not a formula for success in India. Theyd drummed it into my head that the police, and the other arms of government, were for the upper castes, the well-off, and the well-connected. We... Well, we served, we licked our wounds in silence, we wondered what we had done to deserve whatever happened, and we waited quietly for the good days, which came rarely, if ever.

But this was different. I looked at the bruises and the blood on my dark limbs and thought that the police might help. We were in the 1990s already, and the world, I thought, was changing. The open wounds were evidence if shown to a doctor, and I was sick of being beaten for no reason at all. I got to my feet, and ran, then hobbled to the police station, some four kilometres away, to see what theyd do.

They only proved my fathers point. They laughed me out of the police station, the group of constables on duty telling me Id be crazy to file a complaint against the sons of some of the richest people around. As they shoved me out of the station, they even gave me some friendly advice, half of which I took to heart: Learn to bend, they said, and to run. I could already run, but I worked on it and eventually got to outrun most people over a long enough distance. I learnt also to hit back, to defend myself against hooligans like the five, but that was many years later. Bending with the wind... Well, I do some of that, too, when common sense or cowardice prevails.

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