Shirley's Story: A tale of strength, courage, and hope

PROLOGUE

Tuesday, April 22, 2003 7:00pm Suva, Fiji

Startled, I jumped as the phone rang for the third time in as many minutes. I didn’t want to answer it. No way. I’d already told the caller to get fucked. Twice.

It had been a tough few months—or should I say years—in the Singh household. Threatening phone calls were common in our family. As were cheating, blackmail, and assault. And that was just the start of it.

Our children’s lives had been threatened before, as had mine and that of my husband, Vijay.

But this was different. It felt different.

I knew my children were dead.

CHAPTER 1

BLOOD LINES

OPERATOR: Police Emergency

CALLER: I’ve got three dead bodies in a bathtub

OPERATOR: Do you need an ambulance?

CALLER: No, they’re underwater

A phone call made to emergency services from outside our family home in Brisbane, Australia, on April 22, 2003. It was 2:34 pm. Autumn. Blue sky. Maybe 22, 23 degrees.

It was the second call made to emergency services that day. The first, a minute earlier, was cut off.

My husband, Vijay, and I had built our home at Grass Tree Close, Bridgeman Downs—a relatively affluent suburb 16 km north-west of Brisbane city, one year prior.

Our son Kunal chose the block of land.

‘It’s perfect,’ he’d said. ‘We can have parties, a tennis court. You can sit with my future children in the gazebo …’

We chose the home’s layout from a display package but extended the size of the house to include a rumpus room on the lower level.

We loved entertaining and wanted to make sure we could fit a bar and pool table.

Kunal had been particularly interested in the build, helping us choose everything from the terracotta tiles to the beige paint, our black and gold kitchen bench, and the cooktop. He also drew plans for a pergola and water feature, which we planned to install later.

Homes were large in Bridgeman Downs; brick and mostly double storey. The suburb was close to schools, churches, retirement villages, and the local cemetery, which was one of the biggest in Brisbane.

We moved into the home on April 11, 2002, with three of our four children: Neelma, Kunal, and Sidhi.

Archana, then 26, lived nearby with her husband, Kavin, an IT hardware accountant whom she’d met at an Indian grocery store six years earlier.

OPERATOR: How long have you been there, sir?

CALLER: *Indistinguishable*

OPERATOR: It’s okay, take a deep breath

The man making the call was Massimo ‘Max’ Sica.

I remember when I first met Max; it was 1996. Tall, well dressed, and well spoken, he had an air of arrogance about him. He was standing with his wife, Sara, and their two children, Daniel and Brittany, out in front of his parents’ house at Trouts Road, Stafford Heights, a working-class suburb about 20 minutes’ drive from Brisbane’s CBD.

Max and Sara lived in their own house nearby but started visiting regularly.

We had moved into a neighbouring property three years prior, our first home in Australia, after moving from Fiji. We’d considered Melbourne and Sydney but settled on Brisbane as it was green and clean with plenty of new houses. My two brothers lived in Brisbane and it felt like a nice place to call home.

Our home had a double front door in peach paint, and a balcony with ovular cream pillars. The backyard had a pool for the children to keep cool in summer.

Max was the son of Carlo and Anna Maria Sica, Italian immigrants who’d arrived in Australia in 1970, living in New South Wales before moving to Brisbane in 1984. Max had three siblings, Rosanna, Anna, and Claudio. Max was the youngest, born in 1970.

Carlo was an electrician by trade but later opened Naples Pizza Restaurant in Ashgrove, an upmarket inner-city suburb, where many of his family would work. His pizzas were super tasty, and he’d regularly bring them home for his children to enjoy. He was a kind man and popular with all the neighbourhood kids.

Anna Maria Sica, on the other hand, was harder to engage with and a regular grump.

‘I hate cleaning, there’s always so many children around,’ she’d complain.

I enjoyed seeing the kids have fun. Their squeals of laughter were music to my ears; cleaning was the least of my worries.

In the early days we didn’t speak to our neighbours much. However, as the years went on, the contact become more frequent. We’d stop for a chat when taking the rubbish out or cleaning the yard.

Carlo also played in a band and they soon started inviting us to his gigs.

At the start, I knew nothing about Max and had no concerns about him. When Sidhi started kindergarten at Stafford Heights in 1996, Max and Sara offered to drive her to school. Their son Daniel was in the same class as Sidhi.

Sara was a pretty lady, with short brunette hair. She was well spoken, friendly, and always had a smile on her face. She would knock on the door to pick Sidhi up and Max would help buckle Sidhi into his two-door grey Honda Prelude. We’d engage in minor chitchat before I’d wave them goodbye.

Then one day in 1997, Max disappeared.

Sidhi later offered an explanation.

‘Mum, Aunty Anna’s grandson Daniel has no friends at school; no one talks to him. They say his dad is in prison,’ she said.

I never asked Anna Maria, or Sara, where Max was. While I was curious, it was rude to pry in another’s affairs. Besides, I figured it would be pretty tough without a husband and father around.

‘Make sure you look after him, Sidhi… that’s what we Singhs do,’ I coached her.

Soon after, we found out the truth.

On May 27, 1993, when he was 23 years old, Max was sentenced to nine years imprisonment for 83 offences. He was part of a gang that burned down a police station and attempted to burn down another. He was also done for wilful damage, breaking and entering, stealing, unlawful possession of a firearm, and unlawful use of a motor vehicle.

The judge described the acts as, ‘… a display of lawlessness on a grand scale.’

Assessed during sentencing by a prison psychologist, it was noted Max had ‘significant personality problems and significant signs of psychopathy.’¹ According to the report, ‘This man quite clearly produces most of the symptomatology of a borderline personality disorder, mixed with some features of Italian family loyalty.’

He was released on parole in 1996 after serving only three years. On October 15, 1997, Max threw a Molotov cocktail at a flat in inner-city West End and was returned to prison.² It was this same man that called police to report the deaths of my children on April 22, 2003, ‘three dead bodies in a bathtub.’

CHAPTER 2

ORPHAN

1961: Suva, Fiji

I sat in the front row of my Year 5 classroom at Vatuwaqa Government Girls School in Suva, Fiji, staring at the blackboard.

Scrawled across it, in big block letters, was the word ORPHAN.

In front of me, a 20-something student teacher paced back and forth, deciding on her next victim in today’s spelling lesson.

‘Shirley,’ she announced, gesturing with her hand for me to stand up.

I loved hanging out with my friends at school, but my preferred class was ‘play’ and my preferred location was far away from the school yard, standing on the roof of my family’s double-storey home in Suva, Fiji, flying my kite. I was a cheeky girl, always talking, always mucking around. Spelling lessons certainly weren’t top of my agenda.

‘Do you know what orphan means?’ the teacher queried the class, positioning me at the front of the room for everyone to see.

Along with the rest of my peers, I shook my head.

‘Shirley is an orphan,’ she announced, quite matter of fact. ‘An orphan is someone that doesn’t have any parents, whose mother and father are dead.’

I stared at her intently, processing her words. They definitely didn’t make any sense.

I knew my father, Ram Dutta, had passed away. I’d watched him get carried away in a coffin when I was five years old. But my mother, Gayatri Dutta? She was at home. Probably washing or cooking or cleaning.

How dare this silly teacher say such a thing!

Angered by her statement, I picked up the blackboard chalk duster and threw it.

As it spiralled end over end towards her head, I hightailed it out of there. Out the door, through the school gates, and down the street.

I ran toward my three-bedroom home that I shared with my mother and my six brothers and sisters in Flagstaff, an upmarket suburb of Suva, around 4 kilometres from the city centre.

* * *

Our home sat high on the hill, its concrete foundation topped by a silver corrugated iron roof and its front garden overflowing with an assortment of colourful roses. Mango, grapefruit, and coconut trees, along with a vegetable patch with taro leaf, cabbage, tomatoes, carrots, eggplant, and cucumber, filled the rest of the yard.

My father had built the concrete home for us after a hurricane on January 28, 1952, flattened most of Suva, killing more than 20 people and injuring countless more. The winds ripped the roof right off my parents’ timber home; almost everything was destroyed. Apparently the winds in Suva were clocked at more than 240 km per hour—before the meteorological department’s anemometer was blown away.³

Our home was one of the first concrete homes to be built in the area. A decade later, there were concrete homes everywhere.

I shared a large room and a bed with my mum while two of my brothers shared a fancy iron bed with a brass backboard in the same room. I moved into mum’s bed after I outgrew my cot and my father passed away.

Back in those days, it was very common for families to share rooms and beds. I actually have no idea how anyone made any babies with so many children around!

One of the windows had a beautiful view of our gardens, as well as the streets and shops of Flagstaff.

Like the rest of the house, the front stairs—around 20 of them—were concrete. I’ll never forget those stairs! If I ever wanted to go to the movies, mum would give me chores which usually included scrubbing the footpath and stairs with a bucket of water and raking the backyard. Even though my brothers were more interested in playing soccer than going to the movies, they would always help me complete my tasks.

* * *

‘Ma, Ma!’ I squealed, skidding through the front steps of our house in Vesi Street.

I ran up the stairs, taking two at a time, and down the timber hallway, throwing open doors to my left and right as I moved.

‘Maaaaaaaa!!’

And there, like always, in a timber outhouse that had somehow survived the hurricane of 1952, was my mother. Stooped over a tin bucket and board, scrubbing the family clothes.

‘Munia!’ mum squealed, using my pet name. ‘What are you doing home?’

‘My teacher told me you were dead … that I was an orphan!’ I spluttered, grabbing at her arms and cheeks as I spoke. ‘But you’re not, you’re still alive! You must come to my school to show them!’ I insisted, snatching her hand in a tight grip and dragging her towards the door.

She stopped suddenly, pulling me towards her.

‘They are lying, Shirley, don’t listen to them,’ she said. ‘You hear me, they don’t know what they are talking about.’

‘You have to tell them, Mama, you have to tell them you’re alive!’

Upon our arrival at the school, the principal, Mrs Deoki, looked concerned. She apologised profusely for the error.

I was very relieved Ma was alive and the school was sorry for their mistake.

However, it would be another five years before I realised the true meaning behind that day.

It was day one of high school, 1966; I was 15 years old.

I’d sat my entrance exam—a prerequisite for Fijian high schools at the time—and enrolled in my subjects, including my favourites of history, biology, and geography.

The principal, Mr Shah, started calling students’ names, in order for them to collect their enrolment papers and head to their first class.

I stood, waiting for my name.

‘Shirley Dutta, father’s name Shiri Kissun Maharaj,’ he called, glancing up from the clipboard as he spoke.

‘Shirley Dutta, father’s name Shiri Kissun Maharaj,’ he repeated.

The group of students dwindled in size, as students collected their materials and walked off.

Eventually, I was the only one left.

‘Shirley Dutta?’ he asked.

I was hesitant but nodded approvingly.

‘Yes … however, my father’s name is Ram Dutta, not Shiri Kissun,’ I explained, pointedly.

Confused, the principal took me to the office, where he said he would call my primary school for information.

‘Okay, okay, I get it,’ I could hear him saying. ‘I’ll speak with her mother.’

Later that night, in a conversation with my mother, I queried her. ‘Why are people saying my pitaji is not my pitaji?’ I asked, referencing the name for one’s father in Hindi, my native language. ‘Why are they saying Shiri Kissun Maharaj is my father?’

From there, my world unravelled.

My adopted ‘mother,’ Gayatri Dutta—sitting in front of me—was actually my aunty, and my adopted ‘father,’ Ram Dutta, was actually my uncle, my mother explained.

I had two half-sisters and five half-brothers from my biological mother’s and father’s first marriages.

My birth mother, Karam Pati, had died from blood poisoning six days after my birth at the Colonial War Memorial Hospital in Suva, and my biological father—Shiri Kissun Maharaj, a farmer—was unable to look after me.

Given the circumstances, a decision was made by my uncles and aunties to adopt me, and my chosen parents were my mataji (the Hindi word for mother), Gayatri Dutta, and my pitaji, Ram Dutta.

I was the youngest of seven in the Dutta family, and from very early on, my brothers and sisters—Virendra, Trishulla, Ashok, Girlie, Jayant, and Bhagwan (nicknamed Turbert by the family)—loved me as their own.

Virendra was like a father figure. The oldest of my siblings, he worked two jobs to look after us. He was very handsome, with shiny black hair. He was such a hardworking man and so respected by my younger brothers. We were devastated when he passed away on October 29, 1995.

My sister Trishulla treated me like her little baby; she cared for me so much. However, when I was three or four she married and moved to the western side of Fiji, about 140 km away, and I didn’t see her often.

My second oldest brother, Ashok, was popular, good-looking, and smart. He once sat a maths test and scored the highest mark in the colony. He was also very loving and caring. He would give me shoulder rides while running up the hill to our house; I would grab onto his hair so I didn’t fall off. He also taught me how to dance to rock’n’roll. He sadly passed away on January 28, 2018, at his home in Vancouver, Canada.

Girlie kept to herself a lot but was very close to mum. She was a cleanaholic who constantly wiped the windows and polished the floor. One time, Virendra slipped and fell because the floor was so polished; he was very mad! Like all my brothers and sisters, Girlie always looked after me.

Jayant was nicknamed Lala by the family. He was kind and gentle. When we went out mum would tie my hair tightly in two plaits with the ends sticking up, like Pippi Longstocking. ‘Don’t do it that tight, it’s hurting her,’ he’d say, loosening the plaits and combing my hair.

Turbert and I were only a few years apart and would play together often. He was just like our pitaji, and always looking out for me.

Dad treated us girls like angels. To him, we shouldn’t be washing clothes, scrubbing floors, or cooking. Turbert and Jayant felt the same way.

Turbert made my first kite out of bamboo, which he later taught me how to fly. He also taught