When I was eighteen I met a boy who told me a story of being kidnapped from his mother when he was four years’ old. He was taken to England by his father, never to see her again. In my mind I saw a room in southern India, gossamer curtains, a broad messy bed of white sheets, a mother sleeping with a child in her arms. I saw a man creep in, he was a pilot so I put him in pilot’s uniform, no jacket. I saw him lift the boy from his mother’s arms, the curtains stirring gently in the breeze, the mother waking hours later, her horror shock of emptiness. The boy and I were in our second year at Manchester university. He’d come over to the house in Withington, I’d opened the door and about two seconds later was going out with him. I remember the night he told me, we were in bed and as his story unfolded I unfolded my limbs from around him. His parents had been on their way to Brazil from Australia when their flight touched down in Karnataka to refuel. They got out to stretch their legs, the loud jungle calling them, and came upon the abandoned house of a colonialist, pidgins making the frightening cacophony of escape as they pushed open the door, holding vines aside. The shock of a man hanging in the hall, his last breath there. This was enough to make them stay, abandon their plans; she was a nurse and one place was as good as another to set up a village hospital. They never reboarded their flight to Rio. The house of the dead colonialist became their home. That was the story he told me. I said we have to go. It was too obvious. So we dropped out and bought flights to Mysuru, took buses and rickshaws, heading towards Srirangapatna, the village of his birth. We asked and asked and on the final day of searching a tuk-tuk driver said yes, he knew her. I remember feeling petulantly grumpy as we walked the last dusty mile, self-centred as the epic reunion took place – he knocking on the door, she opening it. I was hot and tired. It been all about him. I went for a swim in the river and slipped on stones and got frightened by giant, scuttling crabs. I crossed the unkempt lawn and shook her hand, sat on the wide veranda, gossamer curtains lifting in the breeze. We stayed for months, bought a motorbike and converted it for the long road north. The story of that journey I wrote into my first novel. It sits in a drawer, a great title but not much else to recommend it.
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Reread.
I need to know more 😂🤣