Mother Ocean Father Nation Read online

  Dedication

  For Emily

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Part Two

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Part One

  1

  “IT IS ANNOUNCED with sadness that Ram Maharaj was burnt alive last night,” the broadcast began. Bhumi looked at the red digits on her clock radio with a sense of dread. The South Pacific University had set a curfew earlier that day, and now Bhumi felt paralyzed by the evening’s emptiness. A few hours ago she had tried to find Aarti, but she wasn’t in her dorm room, so Bhumi had gone back to lying on her bed, finding patterns in the foam of her drop ceiling. And now, at seven in the evening, a bell sounded three times on FM 93.6, Radio Zindagi.

  Radio Zindagi was the background hum of daily life for the island’s Indian community. Growing up, Bhumi’s weekday evenings were organized by the seven o’clock bells, and looking back, it was one of the few things they did together as a family. Bhumi; her brother, Jaipal; and their parents gathered around to listen to the radio announcer, elegant in his use of pure Hindi (as opposed to the patois of the street). He would begin the program by announcing, “Dukh ke saath suchit kiya jata hai ki . . .” It is announced with sadness that . . . Then he would list the quotidian deaths of Indians throughout the country: farmers, schoolteachers, and politicians alike were featured when they passed on. After every name and summary of a life and family left behind, Bhumi saw her parents nod their heads, as if, on this small island, they knew each and every person the announcer mentioned.

  Brevity was the single rule of broadcast. The announcements tended to focus on the sum total of a life’s accomplishments: He was a good husband, she a dutiful mother. Loved by all. Survived by so-and-so.

  For the past few days, instead of reading out the obituaries, the announcer had been talking about the missing: the ones the government said had been arrested yet couldn’t be found in any jail. It was a jarring change, but everything had all gone to shit in the past couple weeks. Bhumi had arrived on the South Pacific University campus in August 1983 and now, at the end of her second year, it had all begun to fall apart.

  Tonight, the announcer didn’t even list the names of the missing.

  “Ram Maharaj was killed when one woman and three men—all native—emerged from their late-night Bible reading and went to his store on Hamilton Street. He was burnt alive!”

  The group of native Christians had been looking to make a point about who this country belonged to, the announcer explained. After the General had seized power, the leaders of various churches had put out a joint statement in the newspaper appealing for peace and empathy.

  While the leaders said one thing, their parishioners wanted something else: to restore godliness by cleansing the country of vulagi. Foreigners. The first thing to do was to destroy vulagi businesses.

  Bhumi shuddered at this and, for the first time, felt a fear for her family. She was cut off from them: the university was a four-hour bus ride from Sugar City.

  Witnesses reported that the prayer group had brought supplies. First, they lit their scrap wood wrapped in a kerosene-soaked rag. Then, they threw their stones through the shop’s front window, shattering its panes into long knives. In silent unison, they threw their torches through the broken window.

  The torches had, by a grotesque chance, landed adjacent to three tin drums of coconut oil. The heat of the flames had caused one of the drums to explode, leaving its accelerant smeared across the shop floor.

  From there, it took only a few minutes for the entire shop to surrender to the flames. As it did, they dropped to their knees, clasped their hands together, bowed their heads, and prayed.

  Unbeknownst to the four, the shop’s owner had decided to buck the rules and stay in his store overnight. He had heard rumors of looting during the curfew and thought he could shoo off any criminals if he slept near the back of his store, cricket bat in hand.

  “Where was the fire engine?” the announcer pleaded. “Some say it took its time to get there, that they knew it was an Indian in trouble, and this did not merit haste. Some others say that it arrived in time to save Ram Maharaj, but the firemen simply joined the crowd and watched him die.”

  In her mind’s eye, Bhumi could hear it, smell it, taste the sour odor of burning hair as the man staggered out the door. The announcer said that his cries were so loud, they masked the rumble of the burning building behind him. He whimpered and shrieked and fell to the ground, where he writhed until he didn’t.

  “They are not satisfied with taking the government!” The announcer’s exclamation was so loud it crackled in her radio’s speakers. “Sisters and brothers! Leave if you can. Our fathers and grandmothers left their homes to come here. Now, it’s our time.”

  Bhumi felt a shiver grow from her shoulders to her spine. She raced into the dorm’s empty common room. The women’s dormitory for scholarship recipients housed only four students, and Bhumi rarely ever saw the other three. In a far corner of that spartan space was a black rotary phone placed next to an old corduroy chair she’d often sunk into between classes.

  That was before.

  For the past year, Bhumi had been swept up into the wave of activity on campus surrounding the lead-up to the national election. Students held debates, the youth parties leafleted, and finally, in April, a left-leaning Labor government led by a handful of Indians won the election. Most of them were young, too, only a few years out of university themselves. It was Bhumi’s first election, and when Aarti joined the Labor Party’s campus wing, Bhumi listened to her arguments with rapt attention. “We can join together, native and Indian, and build this country better,” Aarti had earnestly told Bhumi. Bhumi felt a sense of infectious possibility: she cast her ballot down the party line.

  Almost immediately after the ballots were counted and the results were certified, the protests started.

  One week after the election, two thousand native-borns had gathered in the streets of downtown Vilimaji—just across the street from the Parliament building—to protest that the Indian minority, numbering about 10 percent of the country, had gained too much power in the government. The protestors scrawled phrases onto cardboard signs: “We Hate This Vulagi Government” and “Left Party Worst in World.” The remaining signless protestors thrust their fists balled tight in the air. The protest was only a half-hour walk from campus, yet Bhumi dared not get close. Growing up, Bhumi had heard cautionary tales from family and friends about how the natives could get jungli—wild. This was one of those times. It was safest to keep a distance. She, along with the handful of other women in her scholarship-program dormitory, watched the news report on the televi
sion in the common room in silence. She could make out more signs in the crowd: “Our God, Our Land,” “Vulagi go home to India.”

  The country had been us-versus-them since the Empire brought the Indians to till the island’s cane fields. In a fit of benevolent paternalism, the Empire had sought to protect the old ways of native society, and in doing so, forced them to stay in their villages under the power of their chiefs. The colony needed to make money, so the Empire took tens of thousands of Indians and moved them here, to labor in sugar fields. In time, they were considered to have enough of a work ethic to be placed right in the middle of a clear hierarchy: White, Indian, Native.

  Kept separate, the natives saw the Indians as permanent foreigners. The only time the two groups truly interacted was in the marketplace, where Indians seemed to own it all. Bhumi herself had no interest in India, even though she spoke Hindi and was called Indian. Most of her Indian countrymen had never seen the place their ancestors had left a hundred years ago. If Bhumi was to leave, it was going to be for shores that offered her a measure of opportunity: a country with a respectable graduate program in botanical biology—the dream.

  In the post-election chaos came one claiming he alone could bring peace back to the island. He, beholden to no one, could stop the protests and find a solution amenable to all. Bhumi had never heard of the General—without any wars or real foes to speak of, armies in a country as small as hers were made available for parades, national pride, and not much else. At first he showed up to the protests, making grand speeches to rapt audiences of native-borns. Perhaps it was the old colonial mentality: when someone with a gun and a uniform began to talk, the country stopped to listen. Then he took a few meetings with the Indians who controlled the businesses across the island. And finally, he had a meeting with the prime minister.

  Then came the day he appeared on television. He arrived in the Parliament building with four men behind him, jet-black semiautomatic rifles slung from their shoulders, index fingers just inches away from the triggers.

  For Bhumi, politics had always been distant: men in the capital argued, and potbellied fathers in Sugar City repeated these arguments over drinks. At university, it was Aarti’s interest, and Bhumi loved the way her friend leaned into political conversations with a look of focus, a fast-paced clip to her words. But as the General explained his takeover—he kept calling it a transition to peace—Bhumi felt a true sense of the powerlessness that came with the political. For the first time, this country felt like a strange place to her. She, and the rest of her people, were being singled out for who they were. She hoped the General knew what to do to make things right again.

  This sense of being off balance remained as she settled into the worn cushion and dialed home, all the way across the island in Sugar City.

  “JAIPAL!” SHE EXCLAIMED. HER NERVOUS ENERGY SENT HER FOOT tapping, and she drew a finger along the scar on her neck. “How is work? Did the hotel have to shut down because of the curfew?” she asked.

  “The hotel is still open, but last night there were only five tourists by eleven. Five! They told me to close early.” Bhumi could feel the lazy saunter of her brother’s voice working itself into the frenzied pace of worry.

  “They’re thinking of closing the gift shop,” Jaipal went on.

  “Hey,” Bhumi said. “Remember, the sea turtle is out there, somewhere . . .” Perhaps what had always reassured her as a child could be turned back onto him.

  “You forgot. The chickens came first.” She could hear him slowing down again.

  “And finally there’s the man selling coconuts.”

  “And if they’re all there, we’re good.”

  Bhumi laughed. She couldn’t remember the last time they had snuck down to the water and seen all three signs, but the memories of those comforting moments were the frayed twine that bound them close, and what she could use to bring him back.

  “How’s Papa and the shop?” Bhumi asked.

  “It’s probably fine, Papa too. No curfew here. They’ll kill us in the capital. They probably won’t kill us over here, in front of the goras,” he said, a macabre joke. He cleared his throat and began again. “Listen, the campus is safe, right? You’re not running a shop, don’t worry. Remember what the General said: ‘The transition to peace is not anti-Indian.’ He’ll bring it all back. They’re saying he might call new elections soon. Those people went jungli, and they killed that guy. It was a one-time thing. It won’t happen again.”

  Bhumi wanted to believe her brother, but the country’s newfound peace had been filled with arrests of opposition political leaders and trade unionists.

  “Ma wants to talk to you,” Jaipal said. “Just stay away from everything, okay? Just stay on campus until this all ends.”

  Bhumi rolled her eyes at her brother’s worry. She hated being told what to do, even if the command was made of hopes and best wishes. “I’ll be fine, Jaipal,” she muttered. She heard the muffled sounds of a receiver being handed over.

  “Beti? Is everything all right? Are you okay?” her mother asked in rapid-fire succession. “You know, yesterday, I saw one of the jungli kill a snake on the side of the road. Who can kill a snake? A dead snake only brings misfortune.”

  “Ma, I don’t believe in that,” Bhumi said, her patience already running thin with her mother’s nearly infinite supply of superstitions.

  “You should take this seriously,” her mother said. “Our beliefs will keep you safe from them. Have you thought about leaving?”

  “Maybe after exams finish in a month. I wanted to stay to work with a professor in his lab. If that is canceled, I’ll come back to Sugar City.”

  Bhumi could hear her mother take a deep breath. In the silence that followed, the call filled with static and the low murmur of a conversation from crossed wires somewhere in the distance.

  “You’ll be safer away from here. It’s been so long since I’ve seen you. What can this country offer someone like you? This is your chance: America? Australia? I want you to be safe, beti. I want to see your success.” She paused, letting out a small cough. “My mother—your Nani—had to leave India to come here. It’s written in your blood—you can leave too.”

  “Come on, Ma,” Bhumi said, shaking off the gravity of her mother’s warning. “I have two years left for my studies. And there’s you and Jaipal,” she said, purposefully omitting her father. “I can’t leave you behind.”

  “God willing, this won’t get worse. Just promise me you will think about it?”

  Bhumi let out a long sigh. “Okay, Ma. Aarti said that her papa says this will all get better soon. Just a little bit of time and we’ll be back to normal.”

  “I hope he’s right. Jeeti raho, beti. Stay safe.”

  2

  JAIPAL WAS ALREADY ten minutes late, and it would take another fifteen minutes to get to the hotel—he breathed a sigh of relief when he saw one lone taxi operating at the taxi stand up the road from home. Portia couldn’t be mad, he reasoned to himself, not on a day like today. Not after what had happened with the greengrocer in the capital. Plus, she was always the one who let slip dates and times (“I’m not here to remember what time it is,” she would snap).

  For now, everything seemed to be normal on this side of the island. All that happened in the capital may as well have been in another world. His sister’s world. He hoped she took his advice and was staying put.

  As far as he knew, the bar at the hotel was still going to be open later that night. He hadn’t heard anything otherwise from management.

  Salim leaned out his window and waved at Jaipal from the taxi stand. Salim’s younger brother, Maqbool, had been one of Jaipal’s close friends back in school.

  “Going to the hotel?” Salim asked as Jaipal settled into the backseat.

  “Same as always,” Jaipal said.

  The taxi first cut through downtown Sugar City. From the window, he watched the storefronts pass by on Queen’s Street: Brij’s Books, Shiv’s Travel Agency, Red Fort Resta
urant. Above the stores were apartments. From below, all he could see were small balconies. Sometimes, he could catch sight of a bit of a man or woman: a head, a neck, a wisp of smoke floating upward from the red-hot glow of a cigarette.

  Onward and north, toward the airport, the city began to thin out, only to be replaced by fields of green sugarcane, still young and looking like thick leaves of elephant grass. They passed the airport, which had the feel of a bunker: a long concrete building fronted by acres and acres of empty blacktop for parking.

  “You think the goras will leave?” Salim asked from the front seat.

  “I’m not smart enough to predict shit like that. The guys who own the hotels, they supported the General,” Jaipal said, pointing outside. “They’re as loaded as the rich gora families in Australia.”

  They had reached the island’s resort belt. There were four large beachfront hotels, each of them five or so stories tall and facing the water, their glass windows gleaming with the setting sun. In between these multinational chains were smaller hotels and resorts, each owned by the same Indian families who owned everything else.

  Because the Indians were right in the middle of the Empire’s racial pyramid, they had been given a chance to make some petty cash: small shops here and there. The moment the Empire left, the families who had a knack for business married into one another, and the rich were born. They were like an octopus: one arm in real estate, another in hotels, another in supermarkets, another in the buses.

  “These rich-ass Indians didn’t want to pay the higher taxes and shit that the Labor people were talking about,” Jaipal continued, “but they probably wouldn’t say yes to the General if he would fuck them over. What do you think?”

  “That’s a good point. And yeah, nobody is setting goras on fire. They just relax at the hotels. For them, everything feels the same here in Sugar City. It’s not like the government is stupid enough to let anything happen to them,” Salim said. Sugar City had the country’s only international airport and was near all the country’s tourist resorts. It seemed like the General wanted to at least try to keep the violence of the coup from white eyes.