In my jet-lagged frenzy to get my father home from hospital, a week passes before I realize fatigue bends Simi’s elegant neck and round face. She droops like a cut sunflower. My parents’ live-in caregiver hasn’t taken her usual time off in the afternoons since I arrived in England from Canada. It comes to me in a burst of gratitude; she doesn’t want to leave my mother alone. “Your mother’s a little lost bird without your father,” Simi says, scrunching up her dancer’s body to mimic a helpless baby bird.
Panic grips my temples like a brain freeze. Simi’s a young Indian woman—thirty-five, healthy, a vegetarian. She exercises daily before she starts work. But she’s drained, and if she becomes sick and can’t work, or quits from exhaustion—disaster. We couldn’t replace her in this world of infection and caregiver shortages. My family needs Simi. “Go for a walk,” I tell her, “get some fresh air. I’m here.”
Simi ventures out into the bright release of an English spring, but soon returns to my parents’ home, where the thick carpets and heavy curtains muffle sound and light. “Where do you walk?” I ask her.
“Oh, around the village,”
“Not outside the village, on the footpaths, across the fields?”
“The fields?” She gazes out the kitchen window, up to the sky painting a promise above the garden fence. “No, I don’t walk outside the village.” She shrugs, as if to say, “Why would I?”
“You’ve never been over the fields? But it’s so beautiful!” I flush with evangelism. For me, the most restorative thing you can do in England is walk in the country. What a shame Simi restricts herself to streets and sidewalks and doesn’t benefit from the rural landscape. My mother is fine for a couple of hours on her own. “Tomorrow,” I point to Simi, then myself, “I’ll show you the countryside. We’re going on a good hike.”
Simi beams, nods, then bustles into the enclosed garden to replenish the birdseed in the feeder. I’ve noticed she cares for the thrushes, starlings and robins as conscientiously as she looks after my parents, and the feeder is never empty. She’ll enjoy being in nature tomorrow.
We set off in the afternoon warmth. Simi’s been living in the United Kingdom for thirteen years. Incredibly, this is her first excursion into the English countryside. As well as introducing Simi to the joy of walking this land—my first homeland—I hope this outing will be a bonding exercise. Perhaps if we know each other better, the caregiver will feel more closely connected to me and my family, increasing the likelihood she’ll stay with us.
Simi strides with purpose along the sidewalk, swinging her arms, back straight. She raises her long neck and allows the sun to touch her face, then smiles. Spring is full-on splendid. The lawns in front of the thatch roof cottages and stone houses are strewn with daisies. Crowds of tulips and daffodils turn their faces skyward, as if listening to the birds’ chorus streaming from the blackthorn trees. Delight blips from my head to my heart in mad-hare leaps. I feel revived already.
As we walk, Simi describes a park in the city of Milton Keynes, an hour’s drive away. She lives there when she’s not with my parents. She tells me how much she enjoys strolling around the man-made lake there. Though I say nothing, I don’t share her enthusiasm. If I’m doing pastoral, I don’t want a city block lurking just beyond the trees at the edge of a park. Give me true countryside, like the arable land in front of us.
Past the last village house, fields of flowering rapeseed flow in swarths of primary yellow. Dense hedges separate them, and a footpath intersects the first field on a diagonal. I pause at the edge of the sidewalk to describe where we’re going and let Simi enjoy the view. Unbelievable—she’s never seen beyond the village except from the bus on the road to town.
But Simi’s scanning the rustic scene with a frown, tipped a little forward in her sneakers, ready to run. I would examine an unknown city centre like this if I arrived there alone at night. I would search for safe places in case of danger, like Simi is doing now.
From her first step onto the footpath, Simi’s pace falters and she falls silent, as if the uneven ground has sucked away her natural equilibrium, and she is afraid of stumbling. I want Simi to delight in this land, my land, so I push past her shakiness and keep talking as we cross the field. I list the hedgerow flowers, familiar from childhood: cowslip, sorrel, sweet violet. Just naming them fills me with nostalgic pleasure.
The open landscape in which I am so comfortable gives me space to be curious. I ask Simi about her country. Her home city is small by Indian standards, huge by mine, she tells me. Just her state of Punjab has a population of thirty million. I picture streets teeming with people, flashing colors: vermillion, gold, azure. Crowded buses and vibrant tuk-tuks pass under gaudy billboards advertising Bollywood movies. Raucous, restless, it would be the opposite of the bucolic scene before us.
A figure comes into view hurrying toward us, a wiry jean-clad man with a definite destination. He’s not out for a stroll. I sense Simi stiffen. She glances repeatedly at the approaching man and moves close to me.
“Is safe to walk here?” Her voice is low and guarded.
“Yes, very safe.”
“That man…”
“He’s just on his way between villages.”
The man passes us, head down, and tension strums off Simi. Where the countryside releases my anxiety and fear, it squeezes Simi into quivering silence. This walk was a mistake. Should we turn back? No, we’d be following the man she sees as a threat. Better to keep going.
Beyond the fields, we enter the shadow of beech trees. The light dapples, the breeze dies, and Simi is still uneasy. While I enjoy the crisp scent of new leaves and the musk of damp bark, she presses her arms tight into her torso.
But when we emerge again into the sun, Simi’s expression ignites with joy. She’s spotted a herd of black and white cows in a pasture. Pushing ahead of me with arms outstretched, Simi strides through the animals’ heavy heat and moist breath to reach them.
“See what be-au-ti-ful animals, so, so be-au-ti-ful. How can—look—do you see them? Do you think it’s right to kill these animals? How could anyone do that for meat? How could they?”
She stands near a handsome cow, hands on hips, challenging all animal-killers. The cow stretches out its neck and rolls its eyes. It emits a low moo of agreement. Grinning, Simi opens her palm to me. “See?”
I love eating beef, so I’m relieved to point out that these are dairy cows. But Simi knows this. Her family business back in India is milk production, she says.
“In the city, though, you farm cows there?” I ask.
“Yes, we have milk production facility. Big business in India.” The cows have released something in Simi. Like a jack-in-the-box, a multi-dimensional version of her pops up and replaces the cardboard cut out she’s presented before. She’s become as chatty as the garden thrushes. “Do you know, India export lot of dairy, lot of fruits and rice?”
I make an encouraging murmur and shake my head no, I don’t know.
“Yes, India have fastest growing economy in world. Food products, IT, chemical…” The peaks and valleys of Simi’s speech get further apart as we race through the highlights of India’s economic performance. Statistics bounce from highs to lows; her arms rise and fall like a conductor’s.
Simi’s abrupt change of demeanor fascinates me. Who knew this would come from meeting some cows? The animals have released a part of Simi she’s kept private before. I want to know more. “So, are your parents still involved in the business, or retired?” I ask.
Simi looks at me sideways as if I’m an idiot. No such thing as true retirement for the self-employed in the Global South. “They work less now, but it very hard for them…” She stops, regards the abundant pastures, the muddy farm path rutted with tractor marks, the swaying grey-green alder trees lining the crop fields. She tuts, then breathes in and spills out, “It my sister-in-law, my older brother wife. She evil, horrible—greedy. My parents have five properties, and she want them all!” Simi claws her hands in the air to show the woman grabbing. “She take my mother best ring! Always more, more.” Simi gathers the riches into her arms and imitates her sister-in-law’s grotesque face.
“Difficult,” I say, startled by Simi’s disclosure. This is more than I bargained for. “Does your family all live together?”
“My older brother yes, in same house. My younger brother in other house, with his wife and little girl. He good, that brother.” Simi turns her head away from me.
Simi’s not in a field in the heart of England. She’s seeing her family and home. Her gaze is filled with her little niece, who she has never met, and her wicked sister-in-law, who I imagine as bossy, with big teeth and all jangly with bracelets and stolen rings. Simi sees the parents she abandoned to her new country, now stooped with age, disappointment and bullying.
And I too have often been sick for home. I left England at twenty-two, the same age at which Simi migrated from India. After forty years, longings still appear unbidden: to embrace a family member, to hold a solid British coin in my hand, to hear a shopkeeper say, “Alright my love? Gorgeous day, innit?” To have this—the land alive under my feet and the hawk above watching, waiting, working the wind. The magnificent hunter soars overhead and Simi shudders in its shadow. I have an urge to hug her.
“That’s horrible your sister-in-law treats your parents badly. They can’t do anything?”
Simi thrusts her chin forward and swallows hard. “I tell them to come here, to England. Just leave that nasty woman behind and all their problems. I can look after them.”
Her words are just words. It won’t happen. Because they didn’t want her to leave India, Simi has minimal contact with her parents. What drove her to leave a prosperous life—an unwanted arranged marriage, perhaps?
“What about your younger brother? Can he do anything?”
“He try,” Simi says, “but in my culture the parents live with older son and wife, and they control the business.”
“You couldn’t work in the business too?”
Simi gives me a lopsided smile. “In law, yes. But really, the girls are nothing in India. Everything for the boys.”
A new respect for Simi settles in me. She had guts to migrate alone. And this walk was not a mistake. The caregiver cannot enjoy my offer of my place, anymore than I could benefit from her city in Punjab, but she’s reciprocating. The path to bonding with Simi is not her walking in my world; it’s letting her lead me through hers.
We turn for home. Surefooted now, Simi picks up the pace. When we enter the cocoon-like house with its muggy smells of curry, cleaners and ointments, we both return purposefully to caregiving. I check on my mother and call the hospital. Simi heads straight to the kitchen to start dinner, rapping the window glass when the crows try to dominate the birdfeeder.
Outside, the sky still hovers a hopeful blue above the garden fence. “Leave the seed for the little birds!” I hear Simi shout at the crows, “Go. Fly away. Go!”