The long road home

by Shweta Ganesh Kumar

“Wake up, Roy. Wake up! You’ll be late for school.” Sister’s persistent voice rang through his dreams. With his eyes still stubbornly shut, he turned over from his side and lay on his back. He knew that he would have to wake up in less than two minutes. She would not stop nagging him otherwise. He lifted his left hand and wiped away the drool on the corner of his mouth with the back of it. “Royyy.”

“I’m up, I’m up.” he replied. He sat up with a jerky movement and willed his eyes open. Breakfast was in thirty minutes. He had to wash up, take his bath, pack his schoolbag and be at the table, in his uniform, except for his tie, she always helped him with the tie. Suddenly, he remembered that he had forgotten to shine his shoes. He scrambled off the bed and ran to find the shoe polish.

* * *

“Babe, where are my shoes?” Kabir yelled in the direction of Remya’s study.

“Which one sweetheart?” she replied as she walked out holding a bristle paintbrush. She was in the middle of an oil painting that had been commissioned to grace a film star’s new apartment.

Kabir smiled at his wife’s paint-sloshed apron and her piled up hair fastened on top of her head with a crush clip.

“Those new track shoes, I was just leaving to jog.” Kabir said rather quickly, as if he did not want to make a big deal of it. Remya who had started looking for his shoes in the shoe cabinet did a double take.

“Jog? You are going to jog? Since when did my husband become a fitness freak?” she teased.

He put his tongue out at her and replied, “Well, now that we’ll have someone looking up to us, we need to cultivate a few good habits around here na?”

Remya pulled his shoes out from the back and faced him with a wide smile. “Whatever you say sweetheart, just be back before breakfast.”

Kabir stopped mid-way through tying his laces. “Oh breakfast, right! What is for breakfast?” he said with a wide smile.

* * *

“Scrambled eggs, two pieces of toast and a glass of milk. I want a clean plate and an empty glass, Roy.” He smiled up at her with a wide smile. Scrambled eggs were his favourite. He did not need to be told twice to eat up. In ten minutes, he had happily wolfed down his breakfast. He washed his hands and ran back to Sister Rosalie.

“Thank you sister. That was the best. I’ll see you after school,” he happily muttered into the folds of her habit as he hugged her tightly. She ran her old, speckled fingers through his hair. As he picked up his school bag and walked towards the gate to catch the school bus, she knew that she would miss him. Roy skipped towards the gate. The school bus had arrived a minute ago and the driver was honking impatiently. He clambered onto it.

* * *

The radio was blaring some really bad songs from the eighties. Worse it was not even his station. Kabir reached over and changed the station. Not that the bad music was annoying him. Nothing would faze him today. He was too excited about tomorrow. He knew it would be hard to concentrate at work too. Kabir was an award winning Radio jockey at Radio Masala. He hosted a talk show about civic problems, but the debates were very tongue in cheek in style. He loved his job and had been living it for seven years now. He had started as a number crunching analyst and had left it after three years to pursue his dream of being a radio jockey. All thanks to Remya.

They had met at JNU where he was mastering economics and she was getting her masters in creative arts. They had met at a college festival debate on the left-brain versus the right brain topic. The debate had proven inconclusive but Kabir had taken Remya to the canteen to continue the discussion over coffee. After the first few minutes, they forgot the initial subject matter. While Kabir claimed that it had been love at first sight, Remya always maintained that it had taken her quite a few plates of samosas and cups of tea to fall in love. They had been together since then though. They had moved to Mumbai where Remya worked as a commercial artist for an advertising agency and Kabir joined a strategic intelligence firm. Though the profile was a great one, Kabir started his day reluctant to go to work and ended it frustrated at the thought of going the next day. It was Remya who had dragged him along for the Radio Masala auditions. He proposed to her the day he signed the contract. And they had gotten married in a small ceremony with just a few friends at a small temple. Remya’s parents had never liked Kabir. But then, they had problems with her wanting to be an artist as well.

“This girl, first she refuses to become an engineer or a doctor, and now she finds this boy with such a bad background,” they said of her when they discussed her. Her father, an orthodox Hindu disowned her when she informed them about her wedding.

Remya and Kabir had flown down to Madurai to meet them and make amends. But in true cinema style, her father refused to open the door and banned the rest of the family from talking to her. After two years of trying to communicate, Remya gave up. Kabir was her only family now. And she, Kabir’s. This was literally true in Kabir’s case as he had been abandoned in an orphanage as a six-month old baby. Life had not always been fun and there were times when he had wondered about the point of it all. But Remya had changed all of that. Now tomorrow would be yet another turning point in his life.

* * *

“My jeans pant and that blue T-shirt Sister gave me for Christmas. That’s what I’ll wear tomorrow,” Roy thought as Annie Ma’am wrote sums on the blackboard.

“Roy, have you taken down all the sums? If yes, then why aren’t you doing them yet?” Annie Ma’am’s voice rang through the classroom a tad sharply.

Roy’s head jerked upright. He nodded quickly and tried to concentrate on the sums. Annie came over to his desk. She bent down and said in a much gentler voice, “I know that tomorrow is a very important day for you. But the half yearly exams will be up soon and you need to do well, right?”
Roy looked up at Annie Ma’am and smiled. He liked her. She always took the time out to talk to every child in the class and to help them through the difficult problems. She had a wide smile and pretty brown eyes. Kind of like Remya, but Remya’s were prettier. They were bigger and her eyes smiled when she smiled.

* * *

Remya’s eyes were tired. She had been working for six straight hours on the commissioned oil painting. It was the Queen’s Necklace by night and the actress wanted a lot of minuscule details. Remya spared no effort and worked tirelessly. She decided to take a break when Kabir’s show came on. But she ended up painting with Kabir’s cheerful voice in the background. Even though the show was on the potholes in the city, it still made her smile. It was his voice, his passion came through and each time she heard him conduct his show, she remembered him enthusiastically debating the superiority of the left-brain. She was glad that she had gone with the debate team as a replacement for one of the members who had fallen ill. Remya believed in destiny, and tomorrow would bring yet another testament to her faith in fate. She splashed some cold water on her eyes. She had till mid-week to finish the painting but she wanted to keep her weekend clear. She still had to add finishing touches to the charcoal sketch she was making of Roy, she knew he would love it.

“Wowww! This is so beautiful,” he had exclaimed in a voice filled with wonder. It was an oil painting depicting a mother with a child holding onto her hand sitting at Juhu beach. There was a male figure that was advancing towards them balancing three ice creams with a wide smile across his face. Though the three figures formed a part of the multitude on the beach they stood out as a cohesive unit, as a family. It was one of Remya’s favourites too and was inspired by people she had seen at the beach. She had observed the boy looked pensively at the portrait. The rest of his classmates had moved on to complete their tour of the Jehangir Art Gallery.

“I’m glad you liked it,” she smiled down at the boy.

“Do you know who drew this Ma’am?” the boy asked her, briefly looking at her and then quickly returning his gaze to the painting.

“I did,” Remya simply replied.

She had his full attention now. “Really Ma’am? This is so beautiful! I don’t even feel like looking at the other paintings.” His eyes sparkled as he spoke.

Remya sat down to talk to him eye to eye and said, “Well, much as I love it that you love my painting, it would be quite a shame if you didn’t look at the other artists today.”

He seemed unconvinced. Remya chuckled at the half stubborn look that passed across the young boy’s face. She stood up and said, “Let me make a deal with you. I will come with you and take you through all the paintings exhibited here and you can come back and stay here till your teacher calls you, ok?” He took a long minute and then grinned and nodded.

He prattled on and filled her with his details. His name was Roy, he was eight years old and was in the fifth standard in Saint Ignatius, Santa Cruz. This was his class’s first trip to an art gallery. Last year, they had been taken to the Gateway of India. Art was his favourite subject and English his second favourite. He always came third in class. Sister Rosalie wanted him to come first, but he found mathematics difficult. He loved the oil paintings and after the initial hurry took his time to appreciate the paintings pointed out to him by Remya. At the end, he maintained that Remya’s painting was the best amongst all in the exhibition. As he rejoined his batch, he held her hand and said, “Thank you Ma’am. I enjoyed it. ”

“Me too,” she replied with a smile. As he skipped across the road to get into the school bus, his teacher came to Remya and thanked her for giving him a special tour.

“My pleasure,” Remya said, “we rarely get such young people with an eye for art. What do his parents do?"

His teacher smiled rather sadly, “He’s from the Mother Alva Home for boys. He’s an orphan. But the head of the Home, Sister Rosalie has always taken special care of him. He’s the oldest orphan in the Home.”

Remya nodded wordlessly. It was destiny.

“Fate, why else would Roy be the only boy who has not been adopted in the last seven years?” Sister Rosalie said in a wheezy voice to Remya and Kabir. They were sitting across the desk from her at the Home. “Sometimes they said he was too thin, then that he had curly hair. Sometimes that he did not look like them and sometimes no reason at all. And then he grew up and the Home became his home. Since he was five, we started believing that he was… maybe… meant to be brought up by us. Praise the Lord.”

Remya looked at Kabir, he reached for her hand and held it tightly. “Sister, does that mean that you would not want him to be adopted at all?”
Sister Rosalie cocked her head, her habit moved to the side and wisps of grey hair escaped from the side. . She considered Remya’s question and asked slowly, “What do you mean my child?”

Remya took a deep breath. “My husband and I have only each other. We have no other family. My family… um… we had problems. I conceived once seven years ago, just months after our marriage. I…I miscarried soon after and the doctor - several doctors advised us against it. We’ve never looked back, but after meeting Roy - I think that he was the reason why I was not destined to have a baby. I …” She did not know what else to say or whether her words seemed logical at all. Her eyes welled with tears and she looked away.
Kabir squeezed his wife’s hand and spoke up, “Sister, I’ve never had a family before Remya. We...”
Sister Rosalie held up her hand. She took off her thick black glasses and wiped her eyes. She looked at the couple and smiled. “If that is the Lord’s will,” she said in a voice that slightly shook with emotion. “Roy will now have a family.

Eight months of paperwork later, they were ready. It is Roy’s last day in the Home. Sister Rosalie and the other nuns got a cake baked. His things were packed and ready. They would have a tea party when Kabir and Remya came to pick Roy up. Remya finished the sketch. She would start a new one once Roy moves in. Roy, Kabir and she would head to the beach; she would then make a painting of the men in her life. .

Kabir bought track shoes in Roy’s size, so that he can jog with him in the mornings. He has also been reading up on sixth standard mathematics. He has started to see why Roy had been having problems. They seemed almost as complex as his graduate textbooks had been.

Roy packed his satchel with the knick-knacks he had collected over the years. He peered down the stairs. None of the sisters were in sight. He slid down the banister with a flourish. He hopped off it, just before the last step.

He heard a car honk as it entered the grounds. Roy’s face lit up. It was time to go home.

Shweta Ganesh Kumar is a writer and a freelance travel journalist who is based in the Philippines with articles frequently appearing in the New Indian Express. Prior to this she was a Communications Officer for Greenpeace India and a correspondent with CNN-IBN (CNN’s Indian sister concern). She has contributed articles for ‘Chicken Soup for the Indian Spiritual Soul’ and ‘CBW’s India’s Top 42 Weekend Getaways’. She has written columns for publications like the One Philippines and Your Story. Her short fiction has been published in literary journals like Australian Women online, Single Solitary Thought, Pothiz and the Asia Writes project. She writes a column for The NRI, an online magazine and is also a guest blogger for Pratham Books, an Indian NGO that works to provide children with affordable books. You can read her blog on life as it happens at http://simplyspeaking.blogspot.com/

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