On this day in (fictional) history – Sixty-eight years ago.

On this day in (fictional) history – Sixty-eight years ago, Niki Agarwal was born — adopted by Kanta and Manu, but the biological son of Radha. He’s one of the characters from Alka Joshi’s novel The Perfumist of Paris. Funny enough, Niki and I actually share the same birthday — just 17 years apart.

 

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¨Paris

September 2, 1974

 

I pick up on the first ring; I know it´s going to be her. She always calls on his birthday. Not to remind me of the day he came into this world but to let me know I ´m not alone in my remembrance.

    ¨Jiji?¨ I keep my voice low. I don´t want to wake Pierre and the girls.

    ¨Kaisi ho, choti behen?¨ my sister says. I hear the smile in her voice, and I respond with my own. It´s lovely to hear Lakshmi´s gentle Hindi here in my Paris apartment four thousand miles aways. I´d always called her Jiji -big sister- but she hadn´t always called me choti behen. It was Malik who addressed me as little sister when I first met him in Jaipur eighteen years ago, and he wasn´t even related to Jiji and me by blood. He has simply her apprentice. My sister started calling me choti behen later, after everything in Jaipur turned topsy-turvy, forcing us to make a new home in Shimla.

    Today, my sister will talk about everything except the reason she´s calling. It´s the only way she´s found to make sure I get out of bed on this particular date, to prevent me from spiraling into darkness every year on the second of September, the day my son, Niki, was born.

    She started the tradition the first year I was separated from him, in 1957. I was just fourteen.

 

[…]

 

    Today, I´ll make it through Niki´s seventeenth birthday in a haze, as I always do. I know tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow, I´ll be able to do what I couldn´t today. I´ll seal that memory of my firstborn as tightly as if I were securing the lid of a steel tiffin for my lunch, making sure that not a drop of the masala dal can escape.¨

 

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I loved opening the novel and finding that the very first chapter mentions the exact date of my own birth. Literature has its delightful coincidences!

 

Happy birthday, Niki — hope you enjoy it to the fullest!