My family hails from the Bay of Bengal. The floods are so devastating there that if you can’t swim, you die. My parents wanted me to be far away from that life, so they studied hard, obtained visas, and worked as engineers in the oil sands on the great Canadian prairies, where there’s not a lick of ocean spray to be found.
I grew up among the tall grass. I never learned how to swim. But my parents couldn’t protect me from the perils of open water forever. At summer camp when I was ten years old, I waded further into a river than I should have, slipped on a rock, and was swept away. I kicked and punched, trying to keep my head above water, but it was no use. The camp counselor dove in and brought my rag-doll body back to shore. I had no pulse. She did CPR. After spitting out about a gallon of water, I could breathe, but it was faint and irregular, and I remained unconscious. I was flown by helicopter to the nearest hospital and lay comatose for a week. The doctors later told my parents that I’d barely avoided brain hypoxia. They had initially mistaken me for dead.
My skin, normally a stubborn shade of brown, had turned blue when I was brought to shore. The other kids had always teased me for not sunburning like them. After nearly dying, I was finally treated like everyone else.
The next week, my story was published in the local newspaper. I’d answered the journalist’s questions as best I could, but I’d clearly disappointed him. What did it feel like to drown? Did you see darkness? Did you see the light? Did you see God? I couldn’t remember; I had blacked it all out. In the years that followed, I was scared of water. I avoided pool parties and beach trips, especially after my newfound celebrity fizzled. Luckily, we were in Alberta, where there was nothing to see but dense bushland and open plains.
But a decade and a half later, the memory of drowning came rushing back in. It was the night I was forced into the back seat of my date’s car, after he’d held my mouth down to the perforated leather upholstery and boxed my ears until they were filled with blood. What little I could hear of my own voice in that moment was dull and ambient, just as it had been when I was screaming for life in the river.
I was named Lakshmi after the goddess of wealth. It’s meant to be pronounced Lok-khi, but when my name’s pronounced in English, all I hear is “Lack”-shmi. This only reminds me of how I always felt lack-ing, of how, though Lakshmi is meant to bring abundance, I was so cavernously hollow. This empty sensation grew tenfold after my assault. I was the discarded skin of a snake. A snail gutted out of its shell.
I’d believed that my parents named me Lakshmi because they were greedy and self-serving. They’d left their country and our family behind to chase the riches of the Western world, and they never took me to visit Bangladesh, saying that I’d get sick from the drinking water and wouldn’t be able to communicate with anyone. This left me to cope alone, without siblings, in a country full of people who didn’t want me unless I could mirror them perfectly. I had no idea who I was supposed to be. I had only vague references from pop culture, and even that was Bollywood and butter chicken.
All I knew about my heritage was that we came from a line of impoverished Hindu Bengali fishermen, a persecuted minority within a minority in a war-ravaged country facing modernization and depleting marine life. I was angry that my parents had broken the chain of generations who’d cast their nets into the sea, seeking sustenance and thalassic treasures.
Despite their Westernization, my parents had a confusing obsession with my hypothetical marriage. They assumed I’d marry Bengali and dreamed of giving me a Bengali wedding, but with no other Bengali families around, I had no clue how to make that happen. By the time I was in my twenties, I did want to get married, badly. I thought that if I started a family of my own, I could imbue a sense of identity in my children. I would take what I’d Mod-Podged of Bangladeshi culture, swaddle it in glossy gift wrap, and adorn it with a pretty little bow.
There were no jewels or gold in my bridal trousseau, only half a set of my grandmother’s shakha pola, a pair of ornately carved bangles made of milky-white conch and bright-red coral. Conch and coral were the humble artifacts of fishermen who couldn’t afford precious materials to woo their beloveds. There was something terribly romantic in imagining my grandfather diving into the sea in search of the coral and conch, then whittling them into jewelry.
In lieu of a wedding band and a cross, Hindu Bengali women wear two sets of shakha pola on their wrists and apply vermillion to their scalps to signify their marital status and religious identity. I asked my mother why she had half of the shakha pola set when my grandmother should have been their rightful owner. She explained that widows were supposed to destroy them after their husbands died, but my grandmother had refused to break them. She continued to wear half and gifted the other half to my mother when she left for Canada.
But my mother never wore the shakha pola or vermillion. She was a modern woman who preferred to wear a simple gold band on her finger like her Canadian coworkers. She dressed like them too. She’d straighten her bleach-damaged curls in the morning, wiggle into a sheath dress, and head to work with her mauve lips painted pink. After work, she’d jump into the shower and wash everything off. I wondered how she’d feel about herself if she allowed her colleagues to see her in her robe, facing the mirror with a tub of Nivea. But I loved seeing the purple undertones of her skin. I loved watching her hair kink and frizz.
I once found my mom upstairs with the shakha pola in her hands, a lost expression on her face. When she noticed me, her eyes refocused into sharp points. She waved her hand to shoo me away.
“Why’d you keep them?” I blurted.
“My father made them,” she replied softly. “He was killed. I was just a kid. She saw it. My mom did.”
I froze. My mom never spoke in an unfiltered staccato like this.
“Who did it? Did they find them? What did your mom do?”
My mom’s shoulders tensed up. I’d gone too far.
“Some things are better left in the past,” she said blankly as she took the shakha pola from my hands and tucked them back into her jewelry box.
An outdated eight-by-ten calendar of Hindu gods hung inside the door of our pantry — a forgotten souvenir from my mom’s colleague who’d spent her vacation in Varanasi. Each month featured a different god with a description. I most loved the image of Lakshmi smiling serenely from the calendar, draped in jewels and a coral-red sari, floating above a river on a lotus flower. An eye sprouted on her forehead, and she had four arms. One hand formed a gesture I couldn’t understand. Another held a conch. And flowers bloomed in her other palms.
The text explained that Lakshmi was born during a time when gods and demons were mortal and the world was on its way to extinction. Desperate, the gods and demons joined forces. They stirred the ocean to see if it might contain a solution. They churned until a bottle of wine emerged from the waters. The demons consumed it, mistaking it for ambrosia, but the liquid killed them all. The surviving gods continued churning, using their energy to agitate the waters. Just when they were about to give up, treasures emerged on the water’s surface. Among them was the moon, which illuminated the pitch-black sky, and a conch, which restored the world’s prosperity. Reinvigorated, the gods kept churning until a lotus emerged from the murky waters of the ocean floor. It bloomed, revealing the goddess Lakshmi inside. She rewarded the gods with the elixir of immortality.
I didn’t understand the myth at the time, but I’ve come to see it this way: when the metaphysical ocean of the mind is agitated by trauma, you will come face-to-face with demons. You will see darkness. You can drink the poison of fear and stay trapped forever, or you can push yourself to keep going. The more you push against the resistance of the ocean, the stronger and more resilient you become, and the more likely you are to discover yourself, to transform, to see — or even be — the divine.
The only photo I had seen of any relative was of my maternal grandmother, who still wrote letters by hand to my mother in a script I couldn’t read. The photo showed a dark, wrinkled woman with a stooped back and a nose hooked like a scythe. What struck me most about the image was the colors. Her vermillion-smudged middle part against the stark white of her wiry hair. The crimson fabric on the border of her ivory sari. The burgundy of her bindi, between two unruly white eyebrows on the sunbaked brown of her forehead. The chipped red polish on her nails, painted over fingers stained yellow with turmeric. Her sparse and crooked teeth discolored mud-red from years of betel-leaf chew. Her overexposed sclera contrasting sharply with the deep red of her bloodshot eyes. The repetition of reds and whites was hypnotic, especially with her bangles, whose red and white contrasted like chastity and fury, like virginity and the taking of it. Like blood and bone.
I had of course inquired about the contents of the letters, but my mom said that they were boring. I asked if we had any other surviving relatives. She remained silent. After a long time, she said, “Apart from your grandmother, no.” She never told me more.
I would take out my grandmother’s letters from my mom’s bureau while she was at work. Save for the addresses and names, I couldn’t decipher a thing. Still, I liked feeling the foreign blue paper in my hands, the way it folded neatly in half on its seam, the alternating red and blue along the border, and the stiff Bangladeshi stamps. The paper was crumpled and flimsy, but it was also fibrous, strong enough to withstand the journey from one end of the world to the other.
One day, I took one of my grandmother’s letters and punched the return address into Google Maps’ satellite view. I zoomed in, further and further, but the inverted teardrop hovered stubbornly above the ocean. Assuming that the photo was taken during the monsoon floods, I bookmarked the page and periodically checked to see if new photos were added. I never found any. It was as if the ocean had swallowed the house up, taking with it all I would never know.
After attempting to break my jaw and ribs, my date kicked me out of his car, drove off, and left me for dead. When I came to, choking on blood and remnants of semen, all I wanted was to bury myself deep in the prairie dirt. I used what little energy I had to cling to the ground; I dug until I couldn’t feel my fingertips; I jammed my face into the soil until all I could taste was grit. Then I passed out again. Hours later, a woman who was jogging alongside the highway found me. I was taken to the hospital and placed on life support. I survived again.
The police told me not to worry about my assailant. He was already locked up. There would be a trial. The important thing was for me to recuperate. I told them all I could remember. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to potentially keep him incarcerated for a long time.
I should have called my parents from the hospital, but I didn’t want to face their lectures about girls getting into cars with strange men they’d just met on the internet. I knew they would say that I was now damaged goods, and that no amount of beauty, brains, or personality could undo the shame brought on me now that I was ruined.
Ignoring the need for follow-up appointments, I boarded the first flight to Bangladesh once I was discharged.
Three flights and thirty-seven hours later at Dhaka’s airport, semi-high on painkillers and desperate to redress my wounds, I had no energy to do anything other than try to find my grandmother. Navigating the airport was a breeze, since the signage was in English. I made my way to the currency exchange and ordered fries at the airport’s dining facility without any problems. But as soon as I stepped out of the airport’s frigid interior into the heat of the taxi zone, I froze. How would I get anywhere without even knowing a word of Bangla?
“Apni kothai jaben?” A middle-aged man in a white uniform interrupted my thoughts. He stood by a yellow car with “Toma Taxi” written on its side.
I looked at him blankly, not registering what he’d asked me. Pulling my grandmother’s address from my bag, I asked, “Can you take me here?”
The driver took the paper from me and frowned.
“No, too far,” he said in English and returned the address to me. I walked away brusquely to find another cab, but the driver trailed behind me.
“Ma’am, ma’am! You are at the wrong airport. Why not fly to Shah Amanat International instead?”
I stopped, turning to face him. His puzzled expression mirrored my own. “Where’s that?”
“Chattogram. Fly to Chattogram instead.”
I felt my throat dry up as I whispered the familiar name to myself. Chattogram had always shown up on Google Maps when I scrolled out from my grandmother’s southern village. I had landed in the central capital of Dhaka instead. How could I have been so stupid? When I had bought the plane ticket, some foolish sense of self-assuredness possessed me to believe that I’d figure everything out when I got to Dhaka. But now that I was actually in the country, I realized how helpless I was. I sat down on the pavement with my head in my lap. A sharp pain stabbed its way through my scalp. All I wanted to do was catch the next flight back home.
“Ma’am? Ma’am? Please, do not cry!” the driver exclaimed.
I rubbed my nose with the back of my hand and looked up to see the man staring at me.
“Oho, there you are!” he said. He sat down next to me and handed me a tissue from his pocket.
“You remind me of my daughter,” he said. “I cannot stand to see her cry. Where you want to go is too far! But I will drive you closer and tell you how to go from there. Everything will be okay.” He gave me a thumbs-up.
“Okay,” I said, forcing a weak smile.
“Not just okay! A-okay!”
I breathed a sigh of relief as he took my luggage and opened the cab door.
My mother’s limited descriptions of Bangladesh had been of huts and boats everywhere, but as we drove through the streets of Dhaka, I saw a boisterous modern-meets-ancient city. Contemporary sky-rises soared alongside roads swarming with sedans and auto-rickshaws. We drove by women holding woven baskets of vegetables atop their heads by the curb of a luxury hotel. I caught a glimpse of a dust-colored macaque swinging from one hotel balcony to another. My mouth watered while I watched a street food vendor pull plump golden shingaras from a vat of screaming-hot oil. Outside the city, green farmland stretched for miles.
The friendly driver, Tahnir, drove me to a bus terminal that was an hour and a half away. He also taught me a few essential Bangla words. Some were easy to learn, like na for “no” and naam for “name.” But others, like dhanyabad for “thank you,” got me tongue-tied. He gave me a quick lesson in haggling and told me which street foods to eat and which to avoid. Tahnir recommended that I stay overnight at the small roadside hotel next to the bus station before continuing my journey. He estimated that I’d reach the village by midafternoon the next day. By the time I reached the bus stop and waved goodbye, I felt like I might be all right on my own. He had given me the theory, and it was up to me to practice.
Though there was no direct route to my grandmother’s village from where I had arrived, I was able to pass through cities, across muddy rivers, and over sprawling farmland using buses. The last leg of my trek was on the tail of a flat-backed rickshaw that hauled sacks of rice and caged chickens. The fragrant aroma of basmati contrasted with the stench of chicken excrement. When the driver pedaled his feet to start the rickshaw, I could feel each bump on the unpaved road rattle through my aching bones. I found my bearings by lying facedown on the coarse rice sacks and digging my fingers into the fabric so hard that I pierced the mesh, sending grains of rice spilling through the perforations like water flowing from a faucet.
After an hour, the driver motioned for me to get off at a market. I stepped down, brushed myself off, and dumbly watched him unload the contents of the flat-backed rickshaw into an empty stall. The woman behind the stall yelled at the driver, and he shouted back, pointing at me. She marched up to me, her mouth spreading into a line. I held out a worn envelope with my grandmother’s return address. There. I need to be there. She pushed my arm aside and pointed at what needed to be unloaded into her stall. Her gesture said it all. It was the end of the ride. I was on my own.
I looked around to orient myself but couldn’t. Bunches of okra were being exchanged for a bundle of hand-rolled cigarettes. Stray hounds swatted flies with their tails. Trilling bicycle bells pierced through the words I couldn’t understand. I looked around, but I couldn’t see the sea. Was I even close to my grandmother’s village? I walked on, passing unnoticed through crowds of people. The thick heat pushed my wounds against my bandages. The more I thought about my discomfort, the more intense it became, so I redirected my attention to the market. I found myself among fishmongers, who sat row after row, displaying silver platters of fish that glistened in the sunlight. Each fish eye was its own orb-shaped prism, scattering light. The eyes were like gemstones caught under a jeweler’s lamp. Blue sapphires. Green emeralds. Rubies from the earth’s crust, split open.
I stopped near a vendor who was arm-deep in a vat of water. His slick forearms tensed as he caught hold of something that fought against his grip, then slapped down a live fish onto a plate. It thrashed and gasped in an explosion of panic. I couldn’t watch. How long can a fish survive out of water?
Then, a crackled voice carried, high and shrill, above the cacophony of gulls and horns and hawkers: Lok-khi. It was my grandmother. She looked exactly as in the photo, right down to her chipped fingernails. My grandmother had recognized me right away too. It wasn’t hard, given that I was my mom’s doppelgänger, with my wide-set eyes and my widow’s peak that sprouted wild strands of black hair.
She approached me in awe, emitting a slew of words I couldn’t understand. I tried to say something, but I was stunned into muteness. When she reached me, she pulled me down into her arms. She was unexpectedly strong; I felt dense, wiry muscles through her embrace, as she squeezed so hard that the shakha pola jabbed painfully into my ribs.
When she let go, she held my face with both hands and began speaking again, touching my bandages. I nodded and smiled to ward off her concern, then said my name. She laughed and pulled me in for a second hug, realizing that I didn’t speak Bangla. When she let go, she pointed at herself and said, “Dida.”
As my dida walked me away from the market, I wondered if my mom knew that the dilapidated village she’d left long ago was now officially a town. We passed several dine-in restaurants with air-conditioning that attested to a growing affluence. A few minutes into our walk, I finally caught a glimpse of the water. Stately brick houses and whitewashed apartment buildings appeared among the brightly painted shops that dotted the coastline. As we walked, the buildings and shops gave way to rectangular sheds of corrugated tin and mud huts with thatched roofs.
Dida chattered to me as we strolled along, though I understood nothing. Every so often, she’d pull passersby to look at me, beaming with pride as she spoke to them. I became uncomfortable with the attention, so I focused on the shakha pola dancing noisily on Dida’s right forearm. They were even more beautiful than the ones gifted to my mother. I couldn’t blame Dida for not being able to destroy them.
We ventured further south to the foot of the bay. Miles of blue-green water kicked up white spume at the edges. Men in narrow wooden boats bobbed along the water, casting weighted nets from the shore all the way to the horizon. My heart beat out of my chest at the sound of crashing waves. Dida grabbed me by the elbow and led me to a trailing line of ancient-looking homes teetering on stilts. This was where my grandmother still lived, where my mother had been born.
After climbing up the bamboo ladder to my grandmother’s house, I steadied myself on the narrow wooden veranda and ran my fingers along the hut’s jute-stick walls. I touched the cracked window shutters and low thatched roof, then walked through the thin wooden door to find one long, undivided room. Tacked along the walls were colorful illustrations of Hindu deities. Rickety shelves lined either side of the room, filled with trinkets, clay idols, cups, metal dishes, and clothing. The far end of the room housed two cane stools flanking a brown table next to two shelves stacked with bottles. A thick rectangular mat with a rolled-up blanket lay to my right.
Dida chuckled as I took in the contents of her home. She brought me over to one of the stools and made a gesture of drinking. I nodded quickly, registering my suddenly intense thirst. She brought over a tumbler and a bottle from the top shelf and poured me a cup. “Eyta tal-er-rosh,” she said. Mistaking the opaque white liquid for milk, I took a slow, uninterested sip and realized that it was a refreshing juice. It was so good that I drained the rest of my glass. I attempted to pour myself more, but Dida stopped me. She smiled and scurried back to the shelf, getting a new bottle from the bottom shelf. Undoing the stopper, she poured me a second glass. As I brought the tumbler to my lips, Dida stopped me and whispered conspiratorially, “Eyta tari.” I sipped from the freshly poured contents and quickly spat it out — cloying, sour, funky. Dida shook her head and laughed at me as I wiped my face with my hands. It was unmistakably alcohol.
“Bhalo lage na?” She cackled through tears. “Thik ase!” she said and downed the rest of the cup. After she wiped the tears from her eyes, she showed me the stack of bills and coins stowed away in her sari’s anchal and pointed at the bottles with a wink. It was a well-known secret, I later learned, that my grandmother supplied the fishing villagers with her signature tari, which was homemade traditional Bangladeshi palm wine. People would come in throughout the day to buy a bottle or share a drink and a laugh with her. She started including me in these impromptu conversations, and though I understood nothing, I nodded and smiled when it seemed appropriate. Over the weeks, my grandmother and I used made-up sign language to communicate. When I gestured, she taught me the Bangla word. I babbled like a toddler, not knowing how to string together sentences. My favorite words were those related to the food my grandmother and the other village women cooked in the community kitchen. I learned more Bangla words for seafood than I did any type of food in English: chingri, kakra, bhetki, rui, shutki, katla, magur, shol, mrigel, and the local favorite, ilish maach.
The seasonal rituals in Canada were so different from the ones in Bangladesh. It had always seemed tedious to prepare for the snowy winters back home, but it was a cakewalk compared to the rainy season in Bangladesh. From the time I arrived in Bangladesh at the beginning of April until the end of May, life revolved around the imminent monsoons. Everyone busied themselves making repairs to their boats, which would become the predominant method of transportation once the oncoming rains flooded the roads. One day, I watched a dozen men carry long bamboo poles and coils of rope. A week later, they had assembled temporary bridges linking the fishermen’s houses, including my grandmother’s, to the latrines and the communal kitchen. Dida and I made several trips to the market to collect sheets of tarp and rope to affix to the hut’s shutters and doors. I helped her fill jugs of water and transfer food into airtight jars. We carried them with the other villagers to an emergency storage shed on higher ground.
In the first week of June, clusters of gray clouds hung low in the sky. We still hadn’t experienced a torrential downpour. It felt like everyone in town was on edge, waiting for the sky to fall. By then, I had slowly gathered enough words to ask my grandmother the questions I needed answered. We were sitting on a reed mat on the floor after dinner when I asked what had happened to cause her rift with my mother. She sat for a while, then carefully set aside our dishes and retrieved a bottle of tari. She poured me a cup and drained hers several times while I stared at the turbid liquid. After a moment of silence, she pushed my glass to me and ordered me to drink. Reluctantly, I pinched my nose and kicked the wine back. I asked my questions again, but she didn’t answer me. No matter how hard I pleaded, she wouldn’t tell me about my mother. I was up against a brick wall that I couldn’t scale. The mystery of my family would never be revealed. Crestfallen, I poured myself another cup, swallowed, and stared at my grandmother through the finger-marked glass. She sipped from her cup in silence, growing smaller and smaller, a drooping frame bowing lower to the ground.
I waited until my grandmother had fallen into a deep sleep before collecting the tumblers and the empty bottle of tari. I was just about to unroll my blanket next to her when a gust of wind raged around the house and sent thin streams of water inside. I ran about to tighten the tarp around the windows and patch up the leaks like Dida had preemptively shown me, but the rain still spurted in. I shook her awake, but she brushed me off. “Ghumao,” she said, rolling over to face the wall. She had just ordered me to go to sleep. Deflated, I unrolled my mat next to her and fell asleep to the sound of the season’s first monsoon.
That night, I sleepwalked into the sea.
It’s dark, onyx-black. The roar of the ocean pulses through me. I dive, scattering bubbles to the surface. Completely submerged, I find that I have no bones. I sprout new limbs that elongate and trail like ribbon. I dive deeper, into the pitch black, an upside-down medusa washed in my own phosphorescent light.
I woke in the darkness and felt waves upon my legs. I was too scared to scream, and I ran back to my bed. I lay wet and trembling until daylight, when my grandmother found me, drenched and feverish. She scolded me for not knowing how to swim while she tucked me in and applied a cold compress. I slept until nightfall. When I awoke, my grandmother had gone to bed. I rummaged until I found rope and strapped my legs down to the bed. Finally, I fell asleep.
My limbs twitch fluorescent blue in the inky night. I dive deeper, sending another cascade of milk-white bubbles above me as I make my descent. I cast my light beneath me to see a spiral whirl into a point, sharp as a knife. It’s the shell of a sea snail. I dart away, making a break for the surface, but find myself trapped in a wall of coral.
I woke neck-deep in saltwater. I struggled back to shore. The rope had done nothing to stop me. My body was willing itself into the sea. I spent another day in bed. That night, I tried staying awake as long as I could, throttled by blankets and rope, but I knew I would eventually succumb to sleep.
Bubbles pop in a swirl as the coral polyps hook and drag me down. They form a million hungry mouths. I watch the fluorescence drain from my body and transfer onto the reef. I sting back. Jewel-toned flashes break through the water as I summon a bolt of lighting from sky to sea. The ocean is electrified. The reef lets go. I float weightlessly to the surface like a cloud. Buoyant. Feather-light.
I woke up completely submerged in water. I kicked and flailed my arms until I broke the surface, gasping and panting. Somehow, for the first time in my life, I managed to tread water. As I took in deeper breaths and my jackhammer pulse slowed down, I laughed. I moved my arms and legs through the water. I returned to shore, climbed into bed, and slept the remainder of the night, then well into the next afternoon.
Now that I didn’t fear the water, I couldn’t get enough. The resistance of the sea built up muscles that I didn’t know existed. I wanted to stay at the Bay of Bengal forever and let my grandmother’s love wash over me, but the longer I stayed, the clearer it became that I needed to get back to my old life. My court date was coming up. But now I knew that when it came time to provide my testimony, I would stare my assailant dead in the eyes.
I no longer hear the “lack” in Lakshmi. Now, when someone mispronounces my name, I correct them. It’s Lok-khi. I demand that they repeat it over and over until they get it right, making sure to exercise the new musculature on their tongues. I refuse to be called anything other than what I am. And I feel like I could answer some of the journalist’s questions now: What did it feel like to drown? Did you see darkness? Did you see the light? Did you see God? Yes, I had seen it all, the plummeting darkness and its opacity, the allure of the brilliant white light, and yes, I saw God, emerging from the waters, but wait, on second thought, maybe it was just an extraordinary reflection.
