Part One

One

It was noon in Hong Kong. Lailin was reading. For a minute she took her eyes off the pages of a book by Assamese writer Arunabh Bora, and looked out vaguely through the window.

On the twelfth floor of an apartment in one of many skyscrapers standing close together sat middle-aged Lailin. Her straight, shiny, shoulder-length hair was tied into a ponytail. She was wearing a cotton top and pants. This was her mother’s apartment. It consisted of a drawing-cum-dining room with a sofa-bed, a bedroom, a tiny kitchen and a bathroom.

A few years ago, Lailin’s mother had got this flat by way of a government scheme for people with low income. A few months after her mother’s relocation to the flat, Lailin had moved to Canada. Since then, her mother had been living here alone. Lailin often came to visit and every time her mother would return with her to Canada for a few months.

This time, after a long gap, Lailin had come with her entire family. While she stayed back at her mother’s place, the kids had gone with their father to their grandparents’ house in Kowloon. They would return tomorrow. A community festival for the Chinese Indians was going to be held, and this was where the Chinese translation of Arunabh Bora’s novel was to be released. This book was about the Chinese Indian community itself. Lailin and her family had come to take part in the festival and attend the book release as well. Arunabh would arrive the next day. As soon as the book had been published, Arunabh had sent a copy to Lailin’s mother. Even though her mother hadn’t said a word about it, Lailin knew she had already read the book. She could clearly see the emotions playing on her mother’s face.

Lailin, too, began to feel overwhelmed as she turned the pages. As if the pain and anguish that had lain heavy as a stone on their hearts all these years had converged to take the form of a book. A past lay scattered across its pages, a past that not many knew about. Amidst its ruins pulsated a present that too had gone unnoticed.

Lailin returned to the page she had been reading.

I was in Toronto to participate in a writers’ meet, organized by an international forum of writers. Lailin, too, was present. She had not travelled from China; she had come from a town not far from Toronto.

On the very first day of the meet, she was shockingly discourteous. Someone – I can’t recall who – introduced me to Lailin at teatime. She openly ignored my extended hand and quietly passed me by. The writers around me were surprised, as was I.

After a polite pause, some people in the group commented:

‘That was really rude.’

‘Why did Lailin Tham behave like that? She is normally very polite.’

‘Have you two met before? Has there been any misunderstanding?’

I was surrounded by a group of people and almost everyone was either irritated or baffled. Unable to explain such behaviour, I felt both humiliated and angry. It made me curious as well. There had to be some reason; why would a writer of her reputation behave in that manner? I remained distraught throughout the tea break. I should have been able to move on from a matter so petty. But I couldn’t. Perhaps it was because of what I had glimpsed so fleetingly in her eyes: not only hatred and anger, but something more, something I could not understand. I was drawn to Lailin. But she remained extremely composed and impenetrable whenever I tried to approach her.