Diversity

I can feel the sun’s rays on my face. I open my eyes and sit up on the small rug that serves as my bed. It is four-thirty in the morning. Time to begin my long day. I go out of my room and make my way to the building opposite to the one I live in, the building where the boys live. I want to wish my brother happy birthday, as today is his birthday, and he is going to turn thirteen. He works with the machinery in the tea industry, whereas I am a tea plucker—I pick tea leaves from the numerous tea plants on the hills of Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka. Although he is six years younger than I, he is paid more than I am since I’m a girl and he is a boy. We are greatly attached to each other because we are orphans. We always combine our salaries to buy food and to pay for our lodgings. We have to cook our own food, as the other tea pluckers are busy with their own concerns. I walk into the men’s building and go to the room where my brother is living. “Hi Raj!” I say in Tamil. “Hey Meena!” he replies. “Happy birthday, Raj! I’m so sorry that I couldn’t buy a gift for you, but I will try to buy you something special at the market today if I earn enough money!” I say hurriedly. “It is fine, Meena. I never expected any presents. We are obviously too poor for that,” he assures me. “Well then, I’ll see you in the evening, Raj! I must get going! I have a lot of plucking to do today!” “Goodbye, Meena!” my brother says cheerfully. Although my brother seems happy, I know he is disappointed that he didn’t get a present from me. What child about to become a teenager wouldn’t be disappointed about not getting a single gift for his birthday? The rows and rows of tea plants covering the misty mountains look so beautiful I turn and leave the men’s building and head toward my building. I go into my room and pick up my basket. I quickly slip the basket on my head and walk outdoors. I don’t stop to put on shoes, as I am too poor to buy shoes. But by now, the soles of my feet are so thick-hided and leathery that, except for a few occasional pricks from some sharp rocks, nothing bothers them at all. I look at the view from the top of the hill. The view never ceases to impress me. The rows and rows of tea plants covering the misty mountains look so beautiful. Suddenly, I remember that I must hurry if I want to earn enough money to buy a birthday present for my brother. I run down the hill to the place where I am supposed to be plucking tea leaves. I am paid 500 rupees (the U.S. equivalent of five dollars) per basket. If I manage to pick three entire baskets of tea leaves I will probably be able to buy my brother a small chocolate cake at the market. This was going to be a tough and arduous task. I didn’t have any breakfast today, since I had to hurry to work. If I am going to pick three baskets by the end of the day, then I will have to skip lunch as well. I decide that it will be worth skipping lunch to see my brother happy. Picking three baskets of tea leaves is going to be a record. The most I had ever picked was two baskets. I will have to hurry. I begin to pick fast. I am an experienced tea plucker because I have been working for five years, since I was fourteen. My brother and I were born in India, but since our parents had died in a car accident in India, we moved to Sri Lanka, since we had heard tales of people managing to earn a living by working in the tea industry. I had to support both of us through my wages until my brother turned eight and was legally allowed to work. Our life is actually quite happy, even though we live in our respective crowded huts made out of clay. Although the huts we live in are pretty bare we always keep them as clean as possible. I always pick a couple of the jasmine flowers that grow at the edges of the rows of tea plants and keep them in a vase in the hut to add a little bit of color to it. The huts have thatched roofs, and although it rarely gets cold in Sri Lanka, even on the mountains, it is uncomfortable to sleep when the night air creeps through the spaces between the pieces of straw and tickles us. My brother is my only joy, and he is probably the reason I always work hard at such a monotonous and tedious job. I look forward to seeing his brilliant smile when I come home from work every day. I work quickly, moving my wrists and fingers fast. In a couple of hours, I finish one basket. I hurriedly empty my basket at the big bin nearby and am paid my 500 rupees by the young man who is collecting the tea leaves. I glance at the sky. There are probably only six hours left to finish the job. I work fast, climbing slopes and slipping through the narrow walkways between the tea plants. At around lunchtime, I feel exhausted, but I know that I can’t stop if I want to give my brother a present. As I brush past a tea plant, I feel a sharp, pricking sensation in my thigh. I look down at my thigh and realize that a thorn has gone through my sari and pierced my leg. The wound starts to bleed. I need to bandage the wound fast to

“Excuse me, may I please have those two doves?” Running to the market, my father clutched the bagful of coins to his chest. On the leather bag was sewn “,” horse, in Chinese, the only gift that his father had given him before the war. He hurried across town, walking under the wood sign with the words “Tai City” etched on it and following the path, which he knew by heart. He finally arrived at the center of town, full of street vendors selling fruits and other goods, with gray-uniformed soldiers at every corner. The coins were clanking against each other inside the bag as if clamoring to break free. My father lowered his eyes from the glaring of the men and shuffled to the doves’ area. He spilled the coins onto his calloused, rough hands and spoke to the salesperson. “Excuse me,” he said in a steady voice, “may I please have those two doves?” My father pointed to the two slender spotted doves perched inside an angular metal cage—the doves which he had admired for so long. The man glared suspiciously at him. “Do you have the money?” “Yes, sir,” replied my father, trying to look confident despite the fluttering inside his stomach, “here are the four yuan for both of them.” The salesman quickly grabbed the money out of my father’s hands as if afraid someone would steal it and counted the coins four times. Just as quickly, the salesman shoved the two doves into my father’s arms and dismissively waved his hand for my father to be on his way. The doves were really his now. He had imagined this moment for quite some time, though in his daydreams, his father would have been there with him, negotiating with the bird seller, cracking jokes with those he knew, and maybe even stopping for a small treat for both of them once the doves were safely in their hands. But he was alone, and even finally being the owner of two beautiful doves did not lessen the hurt of missing his father. Will I ever see him again? he wondered. As my father held the doves, he felt the anxiety disappear. He could hear the piping of the magpies fluttering from tree to tree. The sky broadened deeper blue, and the sun’s rays shone among the few trees, whose shadows lightened. The city no longer smelled of failure and sweat, but now of hope and persistence. My father reached an apartment building plastered with old advertisements and newspaper postings that had disintegrated into the walls. Though dirty flies swarmed his hair, trying to bite his skin, he paid no attention. My grandmother came out to greet him. In my mind’s eye, I can almost see her now in her ragged apron, though she was younger then and her hair was still inky and brilliant. She hugged him, with the hands that supported the family, the ones that sewed the clothes and cooked the food. My grandmother looked at him with hope and love, the smile smoothing out premature wrinkles that had already started forming on her face. The doves chirped around at the home, preening themselves and each other. They flew about, occasionally gulping down a fly that got in their way. They are so useful already, my father thought. My grandmother watched my father’s visible admiration of the doves, and smiles settled onto their faces for the first time since his father had gone to war. *          *          * My father remembered the day. The sun shone brightly and cheerfully, and he had just been invited by the headmaster himself to write an article in the school newspaper. He wanted to tell his family right away. Though he was mocked and jeered by some of his classmates who viewed him as a teacher’s pet, he felt so proud to be the first nine-year-old in the history of the school to have been given this honor. He understood that an honor like this came with a price. The neighborhood boys had teased him and refused to let him join in on their games. He hadn’t asked for this, but it had happened, and he felt happy. He had skipped up the cement steps, for once not seeing them in their true state—dirty and hard, but imagining them as black onyx gemstones leading up to his family’s small apartment. As soon as he opened the door, he recoiled in surprise. His mother was weeping, her head hunched down, her usual tightly coiled chignon now a messy bun with strands sticking out. My father was shocked; he had never seen his mother cry before. She glanced up with her red, swollen eyes and pointed with a trembling finger to a piece of white, clean paper printed with gold, beautiful symbols. Even without reading the characters, my father immediately knew what it was. The paper was too bright and clean to be from anyone other than the Chinese government. His father was going to the civil war. He was already gone. *          *          * My father tried to manage his usual routine. But, without his father, he would rush home after school, almost afraid of the world now and its control over him. He had memorized the way to his apartment, and his feet could trace it without him even looking up. The truth was: he didn’t want to look up and see the real world anymore. He didn’t want to acknowledge what it had become. My father wanted a miracle. He had started spending most of his time with his doves, flying them in the abandoned woods outside of town and talking to them in the dark quiet of his home. My father had heard about amazing animals that could do things normal ones couldn’t—things such as play fetch, or jump rope, or be able to find hidden people and explosive material. Because his doves were special, he saw them as being almost magical and felt that they