by Radhika Malhotra

My throat closes, my breathing becomes heavy. I look out of the car window. All rushes by in the night sky, too fast for me to gasp. Nothing but sandy expanse on each side, cables hanging loosely from poles, small lights guiding the way. I roll down the window, the warm air hits my face as I grip the handle hard. The stabbing pain in my chest becomes stronger. There are shouts, fear in their voices, as my knuckles turn white. Then I don't hear them anymore. They stop the car and rush to open the door. They pull my legs, I slide onto my back. I lie there, my hand on my heart, my gaze directed upwards. This is how it feels, the final goodbye. Tears run down my face, and I give in.

Our flight arrives late at night. The terminal is crowded with people holding signs, calling, pushing. My eyes move frantically until I see my father standing calmly in the middle of it all. His shirt and pants neatly pressed, his hair and face freshly groomed; he confidently stands out. A quick greeting before being delegated through the people into the car. We had just graduated, moved cities, and into an apartment together when he asked my friend if she wanted to join me on my trip to India. India is beautiful, he said, nothing you have ever seen. He was good with words; he knew how to tell a story, how to play his charm just right, to be deliberate and still put the right emphasis. She said yes.

We arrive at the house, all terracotta and marble. It’s newly built and there has been no monsoon yet that could have brought its shortcomings to light. My suitcase is filled with all he asked for, the things you couldn’t get there, but which make our lives more convenient and somehow better. After all, he was an Indian who spent the majority of his life in Europe, and who now grows old, seeking the care and admiration of his Indian family. My father changes into his lungi, turns on the TV, shuffles in the kitchen as we start to unpack. When we were kids, we used to come for the summer holidays to Goa. We spent the entirety in the pool, and in between the screams of happiness were the cries of sunburns and blisters. Children from a German wife, very white, very English. Twenty years have passed since the summers in Goa, and we went from a tight family by the pool to a family split between two countries. Three children boarding flights with neck pouches, entertained by toys from stewardesses, dropped off wherever our destination was.

Most of the days pass by with us working on the marble floor, trying to build something from an overheating laptop and a Wi-Fi that keeps dropping. And when he comes by and sits with us for some time, he shares his wisdom of decades in the industry, and we listen. When he calls us to come to eat, he tells us about the restaurants he visited, the people he met, and we listen. When he tells me not to dress like a tomboy, I talk. When he tells me how to behave in front of relatives, I talk. When he tells me everything is my mother’s fault, I talk. My parents divorced when we were young, and if my mother had been an Indian wife, they wouldn’t have. But she wasn’t. She made a choice on what she could bear and what she couldn’t. She packed a container that was our house in England and met him again at the courthouse in Germany. Before she made a choice, he had made a choice, but he kept on blaming her.

The common ground we have is being father and daughter, and being father and daughter sometimes feels like no ground at all. He passes by less frequently. There is less listening, less talking. The fine dust from the streets keeps covering the floor, and on these long days and some nights, I feel like I can’t even wash it away anymore.

My father flies back to Europe for some time, attending business. We keep on spending our days on the marble floor. Sometimes we take walks to the night market. The kids keep running up to us, asking for money, but we only carry candy in our pockets, as my mother taught me. We save to buy toast and imported cream cheese in a supermarket, go to watch a movie we don’t understand, but the audience is ecstatic about it. He used to buy us gifts we never asked for, booked us on flights we didn’t know about. He used to leave us at his house in England with a stash of cash or none to see friends, go for business. He disappeared from our lives, sometimes for years.

Our bags are packed, the flight back home leaves later tonight. We have cleaned up our rooms, swept the floors. It was a borrowed floor, never meant to be ours. My father throws me a bundle of cash and brings the last twenty years to the table. My mother, my siblings, and I are all there at this table while he gives us lessons on respect. He rants about how ungrateful we are. The mistakes we have made. And I speak. Loudly. And he doesn’t listen. And when all is said and done, he chooses for me not to be his daughter anymore. He chooses for me to disappear from his life.

We get into the car; none of us speaks. Night has come fast as we leave the houses behind. I can see how the driver nervously looks at me through the rearview mirror. I stood up and left that table; it was never mine to sit at. And when my throat closes and my breathing becomes heavy, I know what is happening. And when the stabbing pain in my chest becomes stronger and I press my hand on my heart, I know what is happening. I lie there, tears running down my face. Two decades; this is a long time for holding together what keeps breaking. So I don’t, and I let go. And as it shatters, I feel it all, until today.

We board the plane and as the distance between us grows, I whisper to myself: “I never betrayed you, I am proud of the woman you have become.” My heart aches for myself. A tear runs down my face. “What shattered today was what we could have been.” I wipe away the tear as we land in Berlin.