The Hero's Walk (15 page)

“Long engagements are not good,” said Mr. Bhat, slightly annoyed, although he gave in when he saw that his son did not seem to mind. “Too much time allows bad things to happen. But it is their decision, so why should I say anything? These days parents are there only to pay bills and keep quiet. What do you say, Sripathi-orey?”

Sripathi had nodded happily, still overwhelmed by the shower of luck that had rained on their family. Maya was born under a fortunate star, he had known that the minute he saw her in that bleached hospital nursery twenty-two years ago. Ah yes, he thought, the gods were fond of her, that was certain. She must have been a virtuous soul in her previous existence and was reaping the rewards now. Although Sripathi was bursting to tell the whole world about their happiness, he controlled himself, suppressed his elation. Suddenly he became mindful of Nirmala's warnings that evil spirits were
always around, waiting for an opportunity to creep into lives that were too perfect. He would make a quick detour to the small Devi temple on his way to work and break a coconut at the deity's feet. Not that he believed in such superstitious nonsense, Sripathi had told himself, but for the sake of his child he was willing to do even the most ridiculous things. Then, afraid that his insincerity might somehow transmit itself to the goddess and invite her spiteful rage, he quickly mumbled an apology for his thoughts to the air. But he stopped when he realized that Mr. Bhat and his sister were looking at him oddly. They must think I am mad, talking to myself, he thought, feeling stupid. And so, to divert attention from himself, he frowned and snapped at Nirmala.

“Mamma, what are you doing sitting there? Can't you see our visitors' plates are empty? More snacks, more coffee. What will they think of us? Eh, Bhat-orey? You will think we are such a rude family!”

The engagement ceremony was shaping up to be an elaborate affair. Mr. Bhat was insistent on inviting every last relative and most of his office colleagues, too, as this was his only son's engagement, and it wasn't every day that it was performed.

“Don't worry about expenses, Sripathi-orey,” he declared, patting Sripathi on the back. “We will both split it, fifty-fifty. We are not the dowry type, as I told you. All I want is a daughter for our home.” He paused, moved by his own eloquence, and wiped the tears from his eyes. He summoned Maya and gave her a large jewellery case. “This is my dear departed wife's. I kept it for my daughter-in-law. My sister advised me to wait for the wedding, but now itself I wish to give it to you. So my dear child, wear it with my blessings.”

Sripathi was startled by the magnificence of the gift—sparkling clusters of diamonds for the ears and a matching necklace.

“I wish he hadn't given it to her,” he said to Nirmala when the visitors had left and they were in their bedroom. Nirmala was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed, closely examining the jewellery her daughter had just received, caressing the bright stones in
their nest of purple velvet. “Now we will have to give something grand to Prakash, otherwise it will not look good. And so many people Bhat is inviting to this engagement—it is going to cost more than the god of wealth can afford; even if he shares the cost, it is too much. What will he expect for the wedding if the engagement itself is to be so big?”

“What kind of man are you? Aren't you happy for our Maya? Our first child and only daughter,” Nirmala had argued. “What a nice family she is going to, and you are worrying about small details. Of course we will have to spend a little bit now—a good quality watch for Prakash, a suit, a shirt and shoes—otherwise, what will people think? We must do things in the proper way.”

“Don't you understand what I am saying? We cannot—C-A-N-N-O-T—afford it,” said Sripathi. “Already I have so many debts to pay off—father's bills, the house mortgage, Maya's airplane ticket. Do you know how much that costs? Foolish woman, just to please other people we must push ourselves into the poor house? Stretch your legs only as far as your cot goes! From tomorrow we will all sit with wet towels over our stomachs to shrink the hunger, and do you think anybody will help? Oh no, they will be too busy digesting the food we fed them at this stupid engagement!”

“Why don't you ask your mother? She has all that jewellery under her bed. She can give a gold chain for our future son-in-law. It's her first grandchild's marriage, after all. And take a small loan from the bank. Once Maya gets her scholarship, she will surely send some money home. She is a good child. She knows to do her duty by us,” argued Nirmala.

Ammayya refused to part with any of her jewellery. She clutched at the necklaces strung around her wrinkled throat and said, “My mother gave me these, and your father—this is my sthri-dhanaa. They are for my Putti. You have the house, Sripathi, and all that your father left. I will give Maya a pair of bangles for her wedding. Not now.”

Sripathi did not want to remind her that Narasimha had left him only debts. It would lead to a scene. And so he went to the Canara Bank for another loan. He had cringed at the thought of meeting Balaji, the loans manager, of listening to his supercilious voice going over the details of other unpaid loans. But it was marginally better than facing the trustees of the Toturpuram Trust Company to whom he owed far more.

“This time I can sanction only five thousand rupees, Sripathi-orey,” Balaji had said, leaning back in his chair and tapping his fingers together. “And only because you are my neighbour and acquaintance. For anybody else I would have said no. You have defaulted twice already on past loan payments, so it is not in bank's interest to advance another loan, you understand?”

“I didn't default, Mr. Balaji,” Sripathi objected. “The bank was closed for three days in a row. What could I do? And the second time I came in, you were on holiday.”

“Look, sir, I am doing you a favour,” Balaji said in an injured voice. “Some people don't appreciate the problems I will have if you do not return the loan in time. It is my good name that I am endangering for your sake, and you want to argue!”

“No, no,” said Sripathi humbly. He would grovel for his children if necessary, but the man's attitude set his teeth on edge. “I didn't mean any disrespect at all. I know how much I am obliged to your good offices, so please accept my apologies if I said anything to offend you. But what to do? There are so many expenses, one after another, and I am the only earning member in my household.”

“If I were you, Sripathi—and I am saying this only as a well-wisher, so take no offence please—,” said the bank manager, appeased by Sripathi's abject apologies, “you should not be living in such a big house. Why don't you sell it and move into a flat? So convenient. You could wipe out your debts in one stroke.”

Sripathi's blood boiled at Balaji's words. How dare he presume to advise him? Suppose I tell him to mind his own business? he
thought. But once again he had to control himself. He needed the money and Balaji's goodwill. The house loan was coming up for renegotiation, and in a few years he would need money for Arun's college tuition. Soon Maya would complete her studies and be earning a salary. He knew she would send money home. He felt wretched at the thought of taking money from his daughter, but what else could he do? From a son it was acceptable; in fact, he expected Arun to share the burden of running the house and getting his sister married—these were his duties as a son and a brother. Once the boy was earning, they could return the money to Maya, thought Sripathi, happily planning the future which suddenly looked so bright.

In the months that followed Maya's departure, Mr. Bhat visited Big House frequently. He was a widower who lived with his sister in Madras and thought it important for the two families to get to know one another. Sripathi liked the man immensely. During the many long discussions they had over hot tea and Nirmala's delicious up-puma or other snacks, the two men discovered that they had much in common. Mr. Bhat, like Sripathi, did not subscribe to rituals. But in spite of his loud condemnation of those rituals, he managed to ingratiate himself with Ammayya by bringing her a box of her favourite jalebis from the famous Grand Sweets store in Madras. When Sripathi told him, with some embarrassment, that he could not afford a very lavish wedding, Mr. Bhat waved his hand and said, “Sir, wealth does not make a man rich, but good name and character do. I believe in honesty, loyalty, duty and honour. These are my gold and silver, sir, and these give one dignity. Like I said, what you do for our Maya is your business. We ask for nothing but her as a daughter.”

Sripathi wrote frequently to his daughter. He was punctilious about it. The poor child must miss her home, he thought, and this is one way I can make her feel better. Every two weeks he sent her a detailed bulletin of family, relatives, friends and the country in
general. He always used his marbled blue Japanese Hero for Maya's letters. This pen had a thick nib that he thought gave his writing a fatherly authority, showed the full weight of the love that he could rarely express in words.

The first year Maya replied just as frequently, sheets of paper crammed with the minutiae of student life in a foreign country, detailed descriptions of her roommates, her professors, the long hours she had to put in. She worried about her assignments, and she was amazed by the library system. She grumbled about the food she had to eat and wished that she had listened to Nirmala and taken a few extra bottles of pickle because she yearned for her mother's spicy cooking. She was lonely in the beginning and didn't like the smell of meat when her roommates cooked in the shared kitchen. Her letters were events, and the family discussed every detail for weeks, until her next letter arrived. Nirmala kept them under her pillow to reread at night, aloud so that Sripathi could share her feelings of loss or wonder or amusement. Sometimes there were photographs, too, taken with an old Agfa camera that Sripathi had purchased from a colleague at work and given to his daughter as a surprise.

Maya's letters slowed to a trickle in the second year, a fact that dismayed Sripathi but that he excused nevertheless. Let her concentrate
on her studies, he told Nirmala, who worried incessantly about Maya's increasing silence. She must be very busy; she has to do everything for herself—studies, cooking, laundry. There is no Koti there for her. Where does she have the time to write? And so he continued his long, methodical letters, penned as he sat on his balcony, staring out at the changing landscape of Brahmin Street, where he had been born and his father before him. But soon even the meagre replies had stopped, and all they received was a New Year's card with a few hastily penned lines, and increasingly rare telephone calls.

Three years into her studies, shortly before she was to graduate, there came another letter from her. Sripathi did not see it when it arrived and learnt about it only after five days, even though every evening when he returned from work he asked Nirmala about the mail. He remembered the morning that he read those words in precise detail even now.

He was on the balcony as usual, reading his newspaper and making notes for his letters to the editor. The warm, rich aroma of boiling milk in the kitchen downstairs mingled with the smell of percolating coffee and teased his senses. Soon Nirmala would grumble her way up the stairs with a tumbler of the steaming beverage. At that hour, with the soft sea breeze wafting a farewell to night, the sound of Maharajapuram Santhanam's voice soaring in song from somebody's cassette recorder in the apartment block next door and the inky smell of the newspaper in his hands, Sripathi Rao was an entirely contented man. The tumbler of coffee would merely complete the sense of harmony in his being. It was the full stop at the end of a perfect sentence, the last note to a flawless melody, the dessert that crowned an exquisite meal. But that day, his sense of harmony was completely upset. Nirmala had come onto the balcony wearing a guilty expression. She had placed the coffee on the aluminum table, already crowded with his writing
material, and settled down with a small sigh on a foot stool that Koti used to reach and clean cobwebs.

“Unh, this climbing up and down is too much for me. From tomorrow on, you come down and drink coffee there,” she remarked and, as usual, peered at the sheets of paper in front of her husband. He covered them defensively. “Who are you writing to?” she asked. “If it is to your daughter, wait till you hear what she is doing now. Your precious Maya obviously doesn't care about your news and views and lecture-vecture. We will have to find a place to go and hide our heads at this rate.”

“Why, what happened?” Sripathi smiled.

He knew his wife of old. Any little thing convinced her that the sky would drop on their heads, like the frightened chicken in the children's story he used to read to Maya and Arun. How those two used to giggle and fidget and lean against him impatiently as they waited for the line about the chicken running frantically away from a leaf that had landed on its head, screaming that the sky was falling! And when the moment came, they would jump up and down, clutch at each other, kick up their plump legs and laugh as if they had never heard anything funnier. While he, to prolong that moment of sheer joy, would flap around pretending to be the chicken, clutching his head and moaning, “The sky is falling! Oh, the sky is falling!” Those days it was so easy to make them happy.