Jackals' Wedding
A Memoir of a Childhood in British India
by
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I close my eyes and, after awhile, recapture the view of Mount Everest and its sister peaks floating in silken clouds before daybreak; the postcard villages and fields seen during the bus trip winding down to Kathmandu; the crowds at Trivandrum Airport, and the hours of queuing and being frisked and frisked twice more. To prevent another highjacking during the re-entry flight to Delhi, they said. And none of us complained. I can’t escape the reek of these urinals, but I can pretend I’m breathing in the clean, cold air of the hills. And I can conjure the faces of our traveling companions, safely winging their way back home to the good old USA. And here we are, trying to get to Dehra Dun. What a stupid idea, I think. What a stupid quest. How could I ever have thought I could return? You can’t recapture what has been; everyone says, "You can’t go home again."
I succeed in convincing myself that home, unlike my memories, will have changed or may have disappeared by the time the conductor returns. He clears his throat and flicks invisible crumbs off his navy blue uniform. "I have found your names on the passenger list," he says, "but one berth only." No argument. We grab our packs and follow him like prisoners receiving an unexpected reprieve. As he ushers us into our compartment, a youth in the upper bunk gives us a shy smile, and the man we assume is his father nods hello. Dee and I give in to our exhaustion. We work out a system where we can fit in the one narrow bunk if we lie like spoons in a drawer, me on the inside. While this is going on, we ignore their spying on us through lowered lashes. Dehra Dun, Dehra Dun, the night train clacks along the rails in a reassuring monotony. I haven’t quite stopped trembling from the flow of adrenaline that started in the station and increased with each confrontation, and willingly give over to the train’s rock-and-sway. We are on our way. I breathe in the comforting scent of my husband’s skin, a smell like green tea and citrons, and my shakes begin to lessen. Dee reaches back with a love pat and I raise up enough to lean over and kiss him. At that moment our neighbor turns toward us, sighing loudly as he draws the blanket up under his chin, and proceeds to introduce himself as a railroad man from Bombay. He and his family have been traveling with another family since early morning, not of this day, but the day before. They are eight people, he says, with five bunks.
I nudge Dee, whisper, "That explains it." "What?" he whispers back. "Why our berths were appropriated."
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About the Book
Jackals’ Wedding, my story within a family story set in India, the land of my birth, tells of a past of puzzling opposites. "Tigers, and oil, and tea are all I remember," I once blithely answered an Indian professor who’d taken me for a whirl. When he stopped dead, held me at arm’s length and searched my eyes, I had to think twice about the superficial untruth I’d blurted. There were many parts of my early life I’d locked away in the dark, just like my mother, and my grandmother before her. The good things that surfaced were idealized, airbrushed into scenes worthy of Kipling, or The Little Princess. I knew the romantic version, but what was the truth? What had really happened during those years in India? How had my mother and father became ensnared in a storm and sun relationship, a "jackals’ wedding," with my sister and me dragged along unwittingly? How had the exigencies of wartime prevented them from dealing with their own blow-ups? What was the big taboo within our family? Why so many secrets locked away, as my mother’s heart had seemed locked to me? I was hungry to know the truth, so I began to dig down to the beginning through my first memories that are entwined with the unrest of the times. With a stroke of serendipity, my husband convinced me I must return to India, the land of my birth, and my childhood home in Dehra Dun. During this trip together, time spans were erased. People stepped forward to help. Images and voices and feelings came flooding back, and I was ready to examine them as I’d examined the belongings that had traveled half the world in battered leather cases. Brought to light, the joys of my childhood flashed vivid and fragile as glass bangles. Fears that had lurked large as nightmare lions and scary as snakes dissolved like thunderheads shrinking and fading into a quiet sky. In Jackals’ Wedding, the stories of the child I was and the woman I’ve become are braided with my mother’s story and the stories she told. Many times during the writing, it seemed she was back, whispering in my ear what she wasn’t able to tell, in life. I am still searching for my father.
About the Author
Dawn Fraser Kawahara is a gypsy by nature, perhaps because of her family’s adventurous streak, the seeds sown in early travels, and because of the interest she continues to develop in people and their cultures. She has lived in India, Burma, Australia, and five states of the United States and traveled in each area. Her most recent travels with her husband took her to Alaska and the Pacific Northwest and to connect with family in Colorado and Ohio. Past travels have taken the Kawaharas to Japan, Peru, Portugal, Spain, Thailand, Cambodia, Belgium, Holland, Greece Italy, Central America, Jordan and Egypt, Croatia, Montenegro, Slovenia and back to Italy, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, the Cook Islands and French Polynesia, and five Hawaiian Islands. A return to Burma and an exploration of south India, the lands that drew her forebears, and England, Scotland, and France, where they originated, are now fulfilled wishes. Jackals’ Wedding is the author’s first book, one of a planned trilogy. Book two ("Tales Under the Tamarind Tree: Burma Sojourn")is in progress. Dawn has also authored Behold Kaua`i, Modern Days ~ Ancient Ways, nominated in two categories for consideration in the Hawai`i Book Publishers Assoc. best-books-of-the year awards. She has won numerous national and international awards for her poetry and writing. You may check out her prize-winning true story, "In the Eye of a Fish", at www.kauaibackstory.com (First Place, Nov. 2012). Dawn founded TropicBird Press, Wailua, Kaua`i, through which she writes, edits and designs books. She is the originator of the annual Garden Island Arts Council Poetry Fest and promotes fine and cultural arts in her community. She and her husband pursue a shared interest in travel to ancient sacred sites. They make their home on the farthest of the main inhabited Hawaiian Islands–Kaua'i-living "with birds and books." The author has led Elderhostel(now Road Scholar) travel groups throughout the South Pacific and teaches course lines of Hawaiian culture subjects on Kaua`i since 1998 for Hawai'i Pacific University.