The Golden Son

  DEDICATION

  For Anand—

  My best decision, then and always.

  EPIGRAPH

  When you counsel someone, you should appear to be reminding him of

  something he had forgotten, not of the light he was unable to see.

  —BALTASAR GRACIÁN

  CONTENTS

  DEDICATION

  EPIGRAPH

  MAYA THE HARELIP

  PART I CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  THE DISPUTED WELL

  PART II THE SHARED MANGO TREE

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  DILIP THE LOYAL SERVANT

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  PART III CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  THE UNBOUND MARRIAGE

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  THE SUSPICIOUS ENGINE

  PART IV CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  THE FARMER’S SONS

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALSO BY SHILPI SOMAYA GOWDA

  CREDITS

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  MAYA THE HARELIP

  ANIL PATEL WAS TEN YEARS OLD THE FIRST TIME HE WITNESSED one of Papa’s arbitrations.

  Children usually were not allowed at these meetings, but an exception was made for Anil since he would, one day, inherit his father’s role. As the only child present, he made himself as invisible as possible, crouching down in the corner of the gathering room. The meetings always took place here: the largest space in the largest house in this small village nestled into an expanse of farmland in western India. This room was the beating heart of the Big House, where the family ate their meals, Papa read the paper, Ma did her mending, and Anil and his siblings raced through their schoolwork before going out to play. The centerpiece of the gathering room was an immense wooden table—its top four fingers thick, its carved legs so wide a grown man’s hands could not reach all the way around—a piece of furniture so substantial it took four men to lift it, though it hadn’t been moved more than a meter in generations.

  On this day, Papa sat at the head of the magnificent table, with Anil’s aunt and uncle on either side. Relatives, friends, and neighbors stood a respectful distance away. The room was filled with people, but the subject of the day’s arbitration, Anil’s cousin Maya, was not among them. Maya had been born a harelip to Papa’s sister, and her husband believed this to be a curse of the family into which he’d married. That Anil’s uncle had agreed to come here, to hand his family dispute over to the arbiter of his wife’s clan rather than his own, was significant but not surprising. Papa had a reputation for fairness and wisdom that extended well beyond their land.

  Anil’s uncle argued he should be released from his marriage, to be free to seek another wife, one who could give him normal, healthy children. Maya’s deformity, he said, was proof his wife’s womb was tainted, and that she would bear him nothing but more bad fortune and unmarriageable girls who would remain a burden. Papa’s sister sat nearby, weeping into the end of her sari.

  Papa’s face remained impassive as he listened. He then consulted the astrologer for whom he had sent, asking him to read Maya’s birth charts. The astrologer found nothing untoward: Maya was born under a good star, no eclipses had occurred during the pregnancy. Finally, Papa turned to his younger sister. Did she love Maya? he asked. Was she dedicated to her husband? Would she give whatever was needed for their health and happiness? To all of these questions, she nodded yes, still weeping. Her husband stared down at the table for so long that Anil worried he might notice the initials he and his brothers had recently carved into its edge.

  “This is a very difficult matter,” Papa began after everyone else had spoken. “Obviously, no one would wish for what has happened to Maya. But as you’ve heard from the astrologer, the problem did not come from the pregnancy or the birth. In this case, we can no more lay the blame for Maya’s condition with her mother than with her father.”

  There was a gasp from the crowd. Anil held the last breath he’d drawn. Even at the age of ten, he understood the danger of threatening another man’s pride. Yelling matches had erupted among his relatives over far less. Every pair of eyes in the room turned to Anil’s uncle, who looked shocked by the suggestion he could be at fault for Maya’s affliction. A deep crease appeared between his eyebrows.

  “So then,” Papa continued, “we must turn to the child. What do we know about Maya?”

  Anil was momentarily lost. What was there to know about an infant, one who wasn’t even present? Looking around the room, he could see that the others were confused as well.

  “Maya,” Papa repeated. “Her name means illusion. What is an illusion? Something that tricks our eyes? Something that is not as it appears? Bhai,” he turned to his brother-in-law, reaching out a hand to his forearm, “you’re too smart to be tricked, aren’t you? You know your true daughter is not this harelip. You know your daughter, your true daughter, is beautiful and loyal and will bring you years of care and happiness, don’t you?”

  Anil’s uncle stared at Papa for several moments. The furrow between his eyes softened, and very slowly he nodded his head. It was such a slight movement, everyone waited until he nodded again, then the crowd began to murmur agreement. Anil’s aunt stopped crying and sniffled sharply a few times. Papa smiled and sat back. “So what we must do is uncover your true daughter. It will take a strong and clever man. Are you up for the task, bhai? Yes? Very good.”

  Three weeks later, Anil’s father and uncle took Maya to the charity medical clinic traveling through a nearby town, where she underwent an hour-long free surgical procedure to repair her cleft lip. Nobody else was aware of such an option; Papa was one of the few people in the village who could read the newspaper from town. A few months later, Maya had healed completely from the surgery. When the bandages came off, the illusion was gone. In its place was a smile as beautiful and perfect as those with which Maya’s three younger siblings were later born. Every year thereafter on Maya’s birthday, her parents brought Papa an offering of blessed fruit and flowers.

  THE NIGHT Papa returned from the clinic, after Ma and Anil’s four younger siblings had gone to sleep, Anil sat with his father in the gathering room, across the great table from one another, the chessboard between them.

  “I’ve never seen them like that,” Anil said. His aunt and uncle had both been in tears as they left the Big House with Maya.

  One corner of Papa’s mouth turned up in a weary half-smile. “Your uncle is a good man at heart. He just needed some guidance to find the right path.”

  “You helped him?” It came out as a question, though Anil hadn’t intended it that way.

  Papa wobbled his head and held up his thumb and forefinger a centimeter apart. “It was really the doctor.”

  His father’s eyelids were beginning to flag, but Anil was eager to keep him talking. “T-tell me about it,” he stammered. “Please?”

  Papa rolled the pawn he was considering between his fingers before setting it down on the board. He leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands toge
ther over his belly. “There was a big tent set up outside the market, right across from the coconut stand. Fifty people were lined up outside. Inside were rows and rows of cots. The doctor came over and explained what he would do to fix Maya’s lip. He showed us pictures—before and after—of other children he had treated.” Papa shook his head once. “Magic. A miracle, really.”

  He looked up at Anil, his eyes moist. “You should be a doctor,” he said. “You will do great things.”

  PART I

  1

  ANIL COULD NOT FIND THE RIGHT WORDS, NO MATTER HOW many ways he rearranged them in his mind. “Ma, please, you don’t need to do all this,” he blurted, regretting the words as soon as they left his mouth. Not because of the look of scorn they brought, nor because it was a futile request, but because the plea made him sound like a child rather than a man of twenty-three embarking on the journey of a lifetime.

  His mother glanced over to acknowledge him before she turned back to the task of directing his two younger cousins to hang marigold garlands over the double doors. Anil knew there was no way to stem the flood of activity well underway. He had awoken this morning to the aroma of a feast being prepared, had fallen asleep late last night to the sounds of the servants struggling to lash his two enormous trunks onto the roof of the Maruti.

  People had begun to arrive in the late morning after the cows had been milked, the chickens fed, and the fields tended. The rhythm of every day in Panchanagar started at daybreak, but only after the early chores were completed did anything else take place. Now, without a trace of morning dew left and with the sun blazing overhead, the dusty clearing in front of the Big House was crowded with family and neighbors. They circulated into the house for hot chai and the elaborate lunch buffet, each one seeking out Anil to wish him well. Some had familiar faces; with others, Anil struggled to find a hint of recognition behind the stooped shoulders and thinning hair that had befallen them in the six years he’d been away. He had been back in the village for only a week, but already the yearning to leave had set in.

  From the edge of the porch, Anil scanned the crowd and spotted his younger sister, Piya, in the clearing below, speaking to a woman with a thick waterfall of hair down her back. As Anil approached them, Piya reached out to wrap a slim arm around his waist. “As I was saying, this whole celebration is bigger than my wedding will be.” She smiled up at him and raised her eyebrows in mockery before turning back to her friend. “Of course, yours will probably come first.”

  The other woman tilted her head to one side, smiling barely enough to reveal a narrow space between her two front teeth, and Anil recognized her with a jolt of surprise. “Leena.” He hadn’t seen her in years, and never without the two long braids she’d worn as a young girl. She was now a grown woman, her nose chiseled and cheekbones high, her eyebrows arched over warm brown eyes. He cleared his throat. “It’s been a long time . . . How are you?”

  “She’s going to leave me too,” Piya said with an exaggerated sigh, “to get married.”

  Anil smiled at Leena. “Really?”

  Leena shrugged in response. “Congratulations to you, Anil. Your parents must be very proud.”

  “Yes, we are all very proud, big brother.” Piya squeezed herself closer to him. “This has been a long time in the making. Do you remember that little bird? The one in the coconut tree?”

  “Yes!” Leena said. “We were racing to climb to the top.”

  “You got there first.” Anil pointed to Leena. “And started throwing coconuts down at us.”

  “Not at you, to you. I’ve never seen such bad catchers. Terrible! You scattered like ants.” Leena laughed, her fingers flying up to her lips. “And that poor little bird. Oh, I felt so bad.” She shook her head. “Thank God you knew to bandage up its leg until it could fly again. It would have been very bad karma for me if you hadn’t saved him.”

  “You kept that bird in your room for weeks, no?” Piya said.

  Anil nodded. The other children had been sad when it was time to let the bird go, but he had felt a swell of pride at seeing the small creature push off from the windowsill and fly away. “Yes, I fed it by hand—mashed yogurt and rice.” He smiled and shook his head once. “Ma wasn’t too pleased when she found all that food I’d hidden in my room.”

  “Okay, all this talk is making me starving hungry.” Piya linked her arm through Anil’s. “Come, let’s go get some lunch.”

  Leena excused herself, saying she had to get home; she and Piya embraced and made plans to see each other the next day. Anil became aware that his momentary lift in mood was dissipating again as Leena walked away.

  AFTER ANIL finished eating, both the modest serving he’d given himself and a larger one from his mother, Ma leaned in to clear his plate and whispered, “He is awake now, you can go.”

  Anil stepped into the doorway of his father’s bedroom. Papa was sitting upright in bed, gazing out the window. His hair, once thick and black, was thinning to the point where his scalp was visible. The white whiskers sprinkled like flour over his face could not camouflage the sagging folds of skin.

  Papa turned at the creak of the door. When he saw Anil, his eyes filled with light, rendering his face recognizable again. He cleared his throat and patted the bed. “Come.”

  Anil sat and took Papa’s hand, casually draping his fingers across the pulse point. “How do you feel, Papa?” He gauged his father’s heartbeat as normal, same as the last several days.

  “First class.” Papa’s smile widened. “It’s only a pesky flu. I’ll be on my feet in a day or two.” He patted Anil’s hand. “But your flight will not wait.”

  “I can change—”

  His father waved his hand in front of his face as if swatting away an invisible fly. “Nonsense,” he said. “This is the proudest day of my life, son. Don’t make me wait any longer.”

  Anil began to speak, but his voice caught in his throat, so he simply pressed his hand on Papa’s. His father’s gift for words was not one he had inherited.

  “Before you go, son, please send in Chandu.”

  “What is it, Papa?” Anil’s youngest brother, Chandu, had still been a child when Anil left home, but his personality was apparent even then. He was often scolded for chatting in class, and had been sent home more than once for a schoolyard brawl. With seven years and three siblings between them, Anil felt more like an uncle to Chandu than a brother.

  Papa shook his head. “Lately, he’s fallen in with a bad crowd, putting wrong ideas into his head. Chandu is smart, but he’s stubborn. He wants to find his own way. He thinks there’s no room for him here. I’m trying to find him a role in the farm operations. Your brother can be successful, I’m sure of it.” Anil didn’t know if this was true or if his father simply lacked the ability to be objective about his own son. He rose, leaned forward to embrace Papa, then touched his feet.

  “And, son,” Papa said as Anil reached the door. “Take care with your mother today. This is hard for her.”

  HAVING SAID good-bye to his father, Anil was eager to leave. He caught a glimpse of Ma, in her parrot-green and orange sari, one of the fine silk ones she saved for special occasions. She was ambling through the crowd, holding a platter of sweets. His mother moved through life as if she were never in a hurry, unconcerned about things like train schedules and appointments, a trait Anil found maddening.

  “Ma.” He reached for her elbow. “We should leave soon. It’s getting late.”

  She insisted on first performing a proper Ganesh puja ceremony to bless Anil on his journey. With everyone watching from the porch outside, he crossed the Big House threshold for the final time, ducking under the string of fragrant marigolds. The pandit recited prayers to remove any obstacles he might face on the road ahead, and Anil stepped barefoot between the red and white chalk patterns decorating his path across the porch and down the steps.

  He watched as Ma orchestrated the distribution and loading of people into various automobiles, standing off to the side with h
is brothers Nikhil and Kiran. Nikhil was only two years Anil’s junior, but his spindly frame always made him seem younger. “Where’s Chandu?” Nikhil asked, looking around.

  “Papa asked him to stay behind,” Anil said.

  “Well, he can’t foul up too much in one day,” Nikhil said. When Anil had left Panchanagar, it was Nikhil who’d become Papa’s apprentice in the fields, and he was the right sort of person for the role—serious and responsible, nearly to the point of being humorless.

  “Papa’s wasting his time.” Kiran shook his head. “No use trying to straighten a crooked branch.” Kiran, who’d just finished school, had never considered doing anything other than joining the family farm. He was well suited to the physical nature of field work: strong and fast, unquestionably the best cricket player of the four brothers.

  Anil glanced over at him. “Come on, you don’t believe that?”

  Kiran raised an eyebrow. “He’s been cutting school to spend his days with a group of older louts, racing scooters and drinking toddy made from palm-tree sap.”

  “It’s bad,” Nikhil said. “I don’t think Papa even knows how bad. One of Chandu’s friends grows bhang on his grandfather’s land. A bit of bhang lassi on Holi is one thing, but this guy adds something to make it stronger and sells it in town to tourists as some sort of herbal path to enlightenment.”

  Nikhil leaned down and yanked up a prickly weed encroaching on the porch. “It’s just a matter of time before one of those tourists wakes up after being robbed and sends the police after that hoodlum. Not sure if Chandu’s involved, but I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “God.” Anil removed his specs to wipe a smudge from one of the lenses. He knew his brothers resented Chandu for his duty-shirking ways, though this sounded more serious. Even so, he knew Papa would be able to handle it.

  Finally, after Ma had successfully accommodated no fewer than thirty-one people in four cars, it was time to go. Dozens more guests were staying behind, not for lack of desire but for lack of vehicle space. Most families had sent a delegate so Anil would feel the collective weight of their good wishes as he left home.