Chapter 1: The Trunk

The trunk arrived on a Tuesday, which was fitting because Tuesdays in Doiwala were the days when things: happened.

Not the dramatic happenings of cities — not the kind that made headlines in the Dainik Jagran or caused traffic diversions on the Dehradun bypass. Doiwala happenings were: smaller. More specific. The kind of happening that occurred when Kamla Aunty's goat ate the postman's register, or when the ancient banyan near the railway crossing dropped a branch on Sharma ji's Maruti, or when someone discovered something in a trunk in the back room of a bookshop on Station Road and the discovery set off a chain of events that would eventually involve three generations of women, a dead burlesque dancer from 1942, and a brassiere that was older than independent India.

The bookshop was mine. "Surbhi's Sahitya Sadan" — Surbhi's Literary House — which was a grand name for a shop that was, in reality, a narrow storefront wedged between Verma General Store and the abandoned tailor's workshop that had been abandoned since 1997 and that Doiwala had collectively decided would remain abandoned until the building itself made: a decision. The shop was twelve feet wide and thirty feet deep, with bookshelves lining both walls from floor to ceiling — the wooden shelves that my father had built in 1986 with sal wood from the Rajaji forest timber yard, the shelves that held everything from Premchand to Agatha Christie to the Amar Chitra Katha comics that the schoolchildren from Doiwala Inter College came in to read and not: buy.

The back room was: storage. Boxes of unsold books, a desk where I did accounts, and — since last week — the trunk.

The trunk had come from my mother's house. My mother, Ishwari Devi — "Amma" to me, "Ishwari ji" to the town, "that woman who knows everyone's business" to the people whose business she: knew — had been clearing the attic of the family house on Rajpur Road. The house that had been in the Rawat family since my grandfather built it in 1952, the year he returned from serving in the British Indian Army's Garhwal Rifles and decided that the only logical thing to do with his pension was: build a house and fill it with: things. Things being Grandfather's definition of "anything that existed and could be: carried." Brass lamps. Wooden carvings. Photograph albums. And trunks — the steel-and-wood trunks that every Indian family possessed, the trunks that contained: everything and were opened: never.

This trunk was: different. Smaller than the others. Not the regulation army-issue trunk that Grandfather had brought from the regiment — this one was: civilian. Wood with brass fittings. A lock that had been broken at some point and repaired with wire. And on the lid, in faded gold paint, the initials: F.K.

"It was in the back of the attic," Amma had said when she delivered it. Amma delivered things personally because Amma did not trust the delivery services in Doiwala, which consisted of Raju's cycle-rickshaw and a general atmosphere of "it'll get there: eventually." She had arrived at the bookshop in an auto-rickshaw, the trunk occupying the seat while Amma sat on the floor of the auto with the: dignity of a woman who believed that trunks deserved: seats more than people.

"F.K.," I said, running my fingers over the initials. The paint was: old. Not decades old — lifetimes old. The kind of old that you felt in the: texture, the way the paint had merged with the wood, becoming part of it, the way old things became part of the surfaces they: lived on.

"I don't know whose it is," Amma said. "Your grandfather never mentioned it. But then your grandfather never mentioned half the things in that attic. The man collected the way crows collect — indiscriminately and without: explanation."

I opened the trunk. The smell was: immediate. The smell of old fabric, old paper, the specific smell of time compressed into a small space — camphor and must and the faint, ghostly trace of a perfume that someone had worn: decades ago. Inside: fabric. Folded carefully. Silk, cotton, something that might have been chiffon. Colours faded but: present — red, gold, the deep blue of a midnight that had: aged.

"Costumes," I said.

"Costumes?" Amma peered into the trunk with the specific expression of a woman who disapproved of: theatre. Amma disapproved of theatre because Amma's father — my grandfather — had once attended a nautanki performance in Haridwar and had come home three days later smelling of: rum and: regret. Theatre was, in Amma's cosmology: the gateway to rum.

"Look." I lifted a garment. A blouse — not a blouse, a choli of sorts, heavily embroidered, the kind of embroidery that was: hand-stitched, the kind that required: hours and: eyes and: fingers that knew the needle the way a musician knew: their instrument. The sequins were: dulled but intact. The fabric was: red silk, the red of Rajasthani wedding finery, the red that meant: celebration in every Indian language.

"There's more," Amma said, reaching in. She pulled out: a photograph. Black and white. A woman. Standing in front of what appeared to be a stage — a proper stage, with curtains and footlights, the kind of stage that existed in 1940s India in the cinema halls and theatres of Dehradun and Mussoorie, the hill stations where the British spent their summers and the performers spent their: careers.

The woman was: beautiful. Not the arranged beauty of a studio portrait — the dynamic beauty of a person caught mid-movement, mid-life, the beauty that came from: being rather than: posing. She wore one of the costumes from the trunk — the red choli, the gold dupatta — and she was: smiling. The smile of a person who was: performing, who was: alive in the way that performers were alive, which was: more than the rest of us, because they burned: brighter.

"Who is she?" I asked.

Amma looked at the photograph. Her face: changed. Not dramatically — Amma's face did not do dramatic changes, because Amma's face was: controlled, the face of a woman who had managed a household, a reputation, and a town's worth of opinions for sixty-seven years. But it: changed. A shift. A recognition. The kind of recognition that came from: deep, from the part of memory that was: not conscious but: cellular.

"I don't—" she started. Then: stopped. Then: took the photograph from my hand and brought it closer to her eyes, the eyes that needed glasses but refused them because glasses were, in Amma's taxonomy: a sign of weakness.

"Where did you find this trunk?" she asked.

"You: brought it to me."

"I mean — in the attic. Where was it?"

"Behind the regiment trunks. In the corner. Under the: quilts."

"Under the quilts." Amma's voice had: shifted. From curiosity to: something else. Something that sounded like: calculation. The calculation of a woman deciding how much: truth a Tuesday could: hold.

"Amma. Who is she?"

"Make chai," Amma said. "This is going to take: a while."