Finding Arun by Marisha Pink

‘How long do you think you’ll be gone for?’
    ‘I have no idea, a few weeks at least. It might take
a while to find her; the address on the letters is only a post
office box address.’
    ‘Perhaps you need to spend a little more time
researching here then?’ enthused Arthur, badly disguising his
delight at the prospect of a delay in the proceedings.
    ‘Don’t you have the adoption papers, Arthur?
Wouldn’t they have that sort of information on?’ enquired Aunt Ruby
innocently.
    ‘I’ve never seen any,’ he responded, seemingly irked
by his sister’s question, ‘if anything, Catherine would have filed
them away in her study, but I’ve cleared it out completely now and
I didn’t find anything.’
    Aaron regarded his father suspiciously, the idea
that he might be concealing something a fleeting thought in his
mind.
    ‘What about the refuge? They must keep records of
all the people that stay there. I’ll bet they have a copy of the
papers,’ Aunt Ruby ventured.
    ‘Do you know the address of the refuge?’ Aaron asked
hopefully.
    Arthur looked absent-mindedly around the room,
blatantly pretending not to have heard the question.
    ‘Arthur,’ said Aunt Ruby curtly, administering her
brother with yet another disapproving look.
    ‘Yes? Sorry, I was miles away,’ he said.
    ‘Aaron is asking if you have the address of the
refuge where Catherine worked?’
    ‘Yes, I do … somewhere.’
    Aunt Ruby grimaced at him reproachfully while Aaron
looked on expectantly.
    ‘It’s in a place called Puri,’ Arthur sighed
petulantly, glaring at his sister like a sulky teenager forced to
do something that he didn’t want to. ‘It's the same city that the
letters were sent from; somewhere on the east coast.’
    ‘Well,’ said Aaron, the excitement building in his
body, ‘I guess that’s where I should start then.’
     

 
EIGHT
     
    AARON tossed and turned in his bed, unable to sleep
for more than twenty minutes at a time. In part this was due to the
fear of sleeping through his alarm and missing his flight, but for
the most part his restlessness could be attributed to nervous
excitement. His whole body tingled with an electricity borne out of
anticipation for the journey that he was about to undertake but,
stealing a glance at the clock, he sighed deeply at the realisation
that it was only three o’clock in the morning. There was still at
least an hour before he would need to get up and though the past
few weeks had flown by in a flurry of activity, time now seemed to
be moving painstakingly slowly. Between making the necessary travel
arrangements, packing and constantly reassuring Arthur that he
would only be gone for a short spell, he’d barely had the time to
dwell on the enormity of what he was about to do. Yet there in the
darkness of his bedroom, it suddenly felt like he had all the time
in the world.
    It was hard to imagine being in a place that he knew
virtually nothing about. He had read enough to know that India
would be nothing like London, but the conflicting accounts of
tourists and natives had painted a unique picture in his mind, such
that he no longer had any expectations at all. There were those
that had loved its frenetic pace and searing heat, captivated by
the myriad flavours and cultural traditions, and those that had
been unimpressed by the overcrowded bazaars and filthy streets,
frustrated by the ubiquitous poverty and bureaucracy. It was
perhaps fitting that such a precarious reunion should be set
against such an unpredictable backdrop, and though he was unsure
where he might find Kalpana along such a vast spectrum, the
uncertainty filled him with fear and excitement in equal
measure.
    It was impossible to know how he would feel when he
saw her, or indeed to guess at how she would feel when she saw him.
Would she recognise him from the pictures that his mother had sent?
Would she be surprised that he had come at all, after her letters
had gone unanswered for so long? And what would she