I am almost speechless with shock when we go down a dusty mud path filled on either side with corrugated iron roofed huts. Kupu stops outside one of the shanty huts and calls out for Chitra.
She shuffles out wearing an old sari and is holding a dirty, folded-up cloth pressed to her mouth. Her gaze falls on Kupu and then flutters over to me. For a few seconds her eyes squint and her head cranes forward with disbelief. Then her eyes widen and she stares at me as if she is seeing a ghost.
We look at each other. Then she screams with joy from behind the cloth pressed to her and almost trips over the doorway in her rush to hug me. Tears pour down her face.
I hug her tightly and join her in her tears. She is happy to see me, but I am horribly saddened and frightened to see the state of her. She is a shadow of her former self. Her eyes are deeply sunken and her body is a bag of bones. That she is very ill is clear. I can hardly believe this is my Chitra. Wiping her tears with the ends of her sari she bade us to enter her tiny hut.
I look around at the bare, pitiful surroundings. There is only one plastic chair, a little stove, some cooking utensils, and some cardboard boxes with her belongings in one corner. It is like an oven in this small space and I actually feel claustrophobic and oppressed. To think that Chitra spends her whole life here is unthinkable to me.
‘What’s wrong with you, Chitra?’ I ask.
‘I have tuberculosis,’ she says, suddenly breaking in a hacking cough that causes her to double over with its intensity.
‘But tuberculosis is curable. Why are you like this?’ I ask when the coughing fit is over.
‘I’ve been treated for lung problems for more than a year now, but because the doctors have been making wrong diagnoses and prescription errors, they have made the disease stronger rather than curing it. Now my doctors keep changing the drugs, but nothing seems to work. The only thi
ng they have not yet attempted to do is surgery to remove the infected parts of the lungs, but I can’t afford it and anyway I am so weak now I don’t think I can even survive it. Because of all the wrong diagnoses I have hearing loss, terrible joint pain, you cannot imagine how they ache at night.’
That afternoon I call Shane on my new mobile and tell him exactly how I want his money for Chitra to be spent. I want her to have the best doctors in India to perform her surgery, and when she is better I want her to come and stay with us for a while. He says he will get someone to immediately start making the arrangements for her surgery and treatment. In less than an hour he calls back to give me the address of a private hospital to take Chitra to recuperate.
We admit her there and I breathe a sigh of relief. It is air-conditioned and clean and modern. The nurses there immediately take over. I stand at reception and cry from pure release of the fear and tension I had been holding ever since I saw the state Chitra was in.
I tell Chitra that I have to go to London, but I will be back for her.
She hangs on to my arm pitifully. ‘Go, my beloved daughter. I will always love you,’ she says, and both of us burst into tears.
When I tell my mother my plan to join Shane in London, a massive argument errupts. For the first time ever in my life my father takes my side.
‘Just let her go,’ he says.
‘Did you actually see the man she’s going to?’ my mother snaps.
‘No, but I trust Snow,’ my father says quietly.
‘Well, I saw him and he looks like the worst kind of player.’ She turns to me and demands. ‘What is he? Irish?’
‘He’s a gypsy.’
She clasps her hands and shakes her head in disbelief. ‘Oh my God! I can’t believe it. He’s a gypsy! They’re the worst. They’re just a bunch of thieves. What does he do?’
‘He’s in business.’
‘Business? What business? Stealing manhole covers during the night and selling them for scrap?’
‘Mum, please leave it. Even if he is poor, and he is not, I’m going to him.’
‘He’ll get you pregnant, break your heart, and he’ll leave, and then you’ll come running here with his bastard baby in tow.’ She turns angrily to my father. ‘Is that what you want for her?’
‘I want Snow to be happy,’ my father says stoically.
I look at my father and he quickly winks at me. My eyes widen with surprise. I swiftly look at my mother and thank God she missed the wink.
‘I’m talking to two brick walls here,’ she bursts out. ‘He won’t make her happy. She’s infatuated with his looks and superficial charm. It won’t last.’
‘I don’t believe that it won’t last.’ He turns to look at me. ‘Snow is special. It’s hard to leave her.’
I smile at my father. And he smiles back.