LITTLE SHE

$5.40 – $15.00

He had not told his son he was adopted, or that he had a twin sister who hadn’t been handed over with him when they travelled from Melbourne to India to pick up both infants. Part of their silence was the guilt of being part of what was undoubtedly child racketeering for the sex trade or, unspeakably, for body parts. To explain to his wife with anywhere near the truth of what happened to her – and then brutally to his son -- he had to go to India himself and, there, to fight his way through the bland and blandishing face of India’s attitude to death, especially female infanticide.

He had to confront the fiercest of Tantric rites through the most grotesque mad wise man Nandi Baba, through police dismissal, through the ignominy of caste prejudice, and through the motiveless violence of local crime.
Smith was never going to succeed in learning much, but, for all the grace of him, he did find his Little She.
And to explain it all to his wife, he could only illuminate it all through himself – and only a sort of son et lumiere projection could go anywhere near what he had seen and felt.

APT