Secret Daughter

Asha takes the train to the Shanti Orphanage. Asha heads inside and meets with the director of the orphanage, telling him that she has come there today to seek out information regarding her birth parents. The director tells her that they have hundreds of children that pass through the orphanage each year, and their records tend to be spotty. The director does a cursory search on his old office computer to look up Asha’s records, but does not find anything. Disappointed, Asha gets ready to leave when the director says to her: “Your eyes, they are so unusual. I have seen that color only once before on an Indian woman” (262). The director makes no promises, but he believes he may recall Asha’s birth mother, and he agrees that he will look through their records from 1984 once more to see what he can find, and that he'll contact Asha should he recover anything of use.

Several days later, the director contacts Asha to say that he did recover some information on birth parents. He gives her their names and information from the intake questionnaire at the time Asha was given up for adoption: “Only a few details, and yet they have already brought discoveries. Her mother was not unwed. Her parents were married, and she knows their names” (265). She also finds out that her name was Usha when she was born. Using the Times of India’s databases, Meena helps Asha search through listings for Kavita and Jasu’s address in Mumbai. After recovering multiple results, Asha narrows down her list to three addresses. 

Somer has begun practicing yoga, and the chapter opens with Somer in the middle of vrikshasana pose. Ever since her separation from Kris, Somer has been coming to this yoga studio two or three times a week. She has found that exercising has been helpful in re-finding herself: “Somer learned to reclaim the body she felt had betrayed her so many years earlier” (268). In this separation period from Kris, Somer has found ways to “combat the loneliness,” by attending Italian language classes, staying busy at the clinic, and practicing yoga. She also spends time with her new friends, hiking with Liza and going for Thai food with Sundari and Gail.

Somer has realized that she is to blame for her marital problems and that she didn’t understand Kris’s culture before marrying him. She also takes responsibility for not considering what adopting a child from another culture might entail: “Always so eager to achieve the next milestone on her path, she has neglected to question that path or to look ahead” (271).

Asha sets out to investigate which of the three addresses might lead her to her birth parents. The first two addresses, she learns, belong to other Jasu Merchants, and so Asha's only remaining hope is the third address. The third address is a “dilapidated tenement” where “cockroaches crawl busily in the corners” and the stairwell “reeks of human waste” (272). Inside, a young woman confirms that Kavita and Jasu lived in that apartment building, but they moved; they now live in an apartment on Vincent Road.

Thrilled to have found a lead, Asha hops into a taxi to Vincent Road. At the apartment building, the doorman tells Asha that yes Kavita and Jasu live there, but the apartment is in the name of their son, Vijay. Asha is shocked to learn of the existence of a son. No one is home at the apartment, so the doorman offers to take Asha’s name and let Kavita know when she returns, but Asha is so upset that she runs out of the building and jumps into the first taxi that passes by. She does not have enough money to pay for the fare to get all the way home to Dadima’s, so she goes as far as she can, which is the Mahalaxmi Temple, a popular Hindu destination in Mumbai. Asha weeps at the temple, feeling rejected by her parents, especially now that she knows they have a son: “Her questions are answered, the mystery surrounding her roots is gone. There is nothing left for her to find out. She doesn't need to meet her parents, just to be spurned again, rejected to her face” (278).  

Kavita’s mother dies. Before heading back to her village for the funeral, Kavita stops at the Mahalaxmi Temple to pray for her mother’s soul, and she also prays for the soul of her children: “Though today she is mourning as a daughter, her duties as a mother never cease” (281). When Kavita arrives in her village, her sister Rupa warns her that her father is not doing well; he has dementia and does not realize fully that Kavita’s mother, his wife, has died. He is also incontinent, and sometimes has trouble recognizing Rupa and other members of his family. Kavita feels a sense of “deep despair” at having lost her mother to death her father to dementia.

Sitting at her desk in the Times of India’s office, Asha feels “ashamed and confused” at the discovery she made that her birth parents have a son (285). Asha researches birth rates in India related to the article she is writing, and she learns that the infanticide of baby girls, along with bride-burning and dowry deaths, is common practice in India. The realization dawns on Asha that it is not that her birth parents did not love her or did not want to keep her, it was that their life circumstance made it impossible to raise a girl child. Asha realizes that, as opposed to infanticide, Kavita’s giving her up for adoption was actually the brave, humane, and loving choice.

Inspired by these thoughts, Asha decides that she will focus on mothers in the slum of Dharavi for her article. Asha works feverishly all night planning a new outline for the article, and when Meena comes in in the morning, Asha tells her that she is shifting the focus from the children of Dharavi to their mothers: “If you switch the perspective, and tell the children's story through their mothers, it changes everything. You see courage. Resilience. The strength of human spirit” (289). Asha returns to Dharavi to conduct interviews with mothers for her story. While there, interviewing so many women who have had to struggle, Asha feels gratitude for Somer and the life that she has given her; were it not for Somer, there is a high probability that Asha would have wound up just like her interview subjects—struggling and in poverty. 

Back in the United States after his visit to India, Kris is nervous to reunite with Somer: “The slow simmer of longing and remorse he has felt during their separation has increased to a full boil with Asha’s imminent return. Now, at the age of fifty-five, he is once again awkwardly courting his wife” (295). Over the phone, Somer reveals that she had an abnormal mammogram the week before; Chris offers to take her to the appointment to have a biopsy and then for dinner afterwards. Somer agrees.

During Somer’s biopsy, Kris paces in the waiting room and frets over the possibility that she may have breast cancer. He considers former patient families who kept their loved ones on life support while they were in a vegetative state, which he never understood: “But now he does [understand]. Because it happened like this, in an instant. One moment you were laughing in the car with your wife, and the next, you heard a terrible diagnosis in a hospital waiting room” (299). After the procedure, they have dinner at Red’s Java House, one of the cheap diners they would frequent when they were first dating. Over dinner, Kris tells Somer how wonderful she looks, and they end up spending the night together for the first time in months. 

When Asha returns to Dadima’s home after a long night writing at the Times of India office, Dadima reveals that her husband, Ashes grandfather, died that morning. Dadima asks Asha to light the pyre at her grandfather’s cremation ceremony, a tradition typically reserved to the eldest son, who is Kris. However, because Kris will not be able to attend given that he is en route to India from California, Dadima wants Asha to perform the ritual. Asha agrees.

The morning of the cremation ceremony, Asha thinks of how her grandmother is both traditional and contemporary, which she would’ve found hypocritical previously, but she’s learned in India that the world is complex. Hundreds of people attend the cremation ceremony for Asha’s grandfather. The wooden pyre is almost as tall as Asha, and her grandfather’s body is encased in a white cloth resting on top of it. To perform the ritual, Asha uses bound branches ignited with the flame of an oil lamp to set pyre aflame. Asha holds Dadima’s hand as they watch the pyre burn, both crying together. 

Kavita and her sister Rupa sort through their parents’ belongings, trying to discard as many unneeded possessions as possible. With their mother deceased and their father quickly losing his mental faculties, the two sisters must make sure their parents’ household is in order. Later that day, Kavita and Rupa take an urn with their mother’s ashes out to sea, where they scatter them. After the last of their mother’s ashes are scattered into the ocean, Kavita and Rupa embrace each other and weep. 

Asha goes to lunch with Sanjay for one last meal together in India before she returns to the United States. She reveals that she learned the identities of her birth parents, but she was unable to meet them. She tells Sanjay that they had a son after her, which she interprets to mean that they simply did not want her; Sanjay reminds her that they cannot know what is in “another person’s heart,” and there are other explanations as to why they might have given her up for adoption (314). Asha she feels at peace now that she knows more about where she came from and feels that her birth parents loved her. Asha asks Sanjay if he will accompany her tomorrow to the Shanti Orphanage so she can drop something off.

With Kris’s father’s passing, Somer and Kris fly to India to be with Dadima, Asha, and the rest of the family. When they arrive, Kris goes off with Dadima to take care of paperwork and other administrative matters related to his father’s death. Meanwhile, Asha takes Somer to visit the Time of India newsroom. There, they run into Meena, who tells Somer what a talented and exceptional journalist Asha is. Afterward, Somer and Asha go for lunch at a traditional Indian restaurant, and they have a heart-to-heart conversation, reconciling after their fight upon Asha’s departure. Somer says: “I'm sorry too. I can see this year has been good for you. I'm so proud of what you've done. You seem to have learned so much, grown up so fast” (322). Asha reaffirms that coming to India has been an incredible experience. 

Kavita visits her former home with Jasu, where she gave birth to her first-born and then Asha: “Though it has been over 20 years since she shared this house with the Jasu, the soles of her feet remember it as if no time has passed at all” (323). Kavita says a prayer on the dirt floor of the home, and as she does so, she feels “a deep mourning for all the things she’s lost” (324). She reflects on how she lost her mother, and now she is losing her father; how Vijay has been lost to a life of crime; and how she lost both of her daughters. 

Asha and Somer return to Dadima’s home after a morning jog, where Kris and Dadima are having their morning cup of chai. Asha begins to pack her things, getting ready to return to the United States. Dadima comes into her room and gives Asha two parting gifts: An old copy of the Oxford English Dictionary that belonged to Asha’s grandfather and a set of emerald jewelry that Dadima wore as a young girl.

Somer and Kris are also packing for their return trip to the United States when Dadima enters the room. Dadima tells Somer that she has some things she would like to give to her, and she places a bundle of objects on the bed where their open suitcases lie. In the bundle, there is a stack of “rich jewel-toned saris,” which used to belong to Dadima (333). For Kris, she gives him the stethoscope that used to belong to his father, along with a small portion of the ashes from his father’s cremation. Dadima asks that Kris find a “nice spot” on the ocean along California where he can scatter the ashes (333).

On the flight back to the United States, Somer’s family feels a sense of peace and calm: “He [Kris] extends his hand to Somer, and she takes it. They rest their interlocking hands on Asha’s sleeping body between them, just as they did the first time they made this journey” (335).

Continuing where the prologue of the story left off, Jasu heads to the Shanti Orphanage to ask the director of the orphanage if he knows anything regarding the whereabouts of Usha. The director of the orphanage reports that she was adopted many years ago by American doctors and re-named Asha, and she is now a successful journalist who visited India some years ago. The director even gives Jasu a clipping of one of Asha’s stories, even though Jasu is unable to read.

Jasu takes the clipping to Kavita, who is severely ill and bedridden. Kavita cries happy tears when she learns that Asha has done so well; Jasu compliments Kavita and says that she did “such a good thing” by risking her life to put Asha up for adoption. Jasu also has a letter from Asha, which he recites from memory to Kavita.