The Hero's Walk (36 page)

“We should have taken this to a river,” he murmured. “That is the proper thing to do.”

“I don't think it matters. Maya would not have minded,” said Arun. “She never cared about silly details.”

Sripathi nodded, too full of feeling to say a word. Yes, she never cared about details such as her father's reputation, Mr. Bhat's anger, nothing. And he cared about nothing but. That was the problem. He had a sudden desire to see Raju, to borrow some of his calm strength, his good humour. “You go home,” he told Arun abruptly. “Tell your mother I will be back later.”

He stood by the water for a while, and then walked across the damp sand to the road where he had parked his scooter. He rode past Karim Mechanic's shop, the Ace Tutorial building full of young men and women anxiously cramming for the SAT and GRE and GMAT exams, and the video store reverberating with the sound of the latest film music. Raju's house, when Sripathi reached it, was a haven of calm, but his friend was strangely silent during their visit, distracted almost. He listened quietly to Sripathi's complaints about the possibility of losing his job. And he nodded when he heard about the ceremony of the temple. “Yes, you need to close down some parts
of your life without too much fuss,” he said. “Otherwise you will go crazy.”

But when Sripathi started grumbling about Arun, Raju gave him an irritated look. “Why are you always after that boy? At least he is with you when you need him. Look at me, my sons are strangers to me.” He stopped and gazed broodingly at his book before plunging into complete silence. Sripathi sipped uncomfortably at his tea, aware that something deeper than his sons' attitudes was bothering his friend.

“Is something wrong?” he asked finally.

Raju hesitated. “No,” he said. “I am okay, just a little tired.”

“There is something,” insisted Sripathi. “You can't hide from me, man. Come on, tell. I thought we were friends.”

Raju gave a faint smile. “Too much imagination you have, Sri. Nothing to tell.”

Poppu shuffled in with the tea and Raju shifted the conversation. “Why haven't you brought Nandana to see me?” he asked. “Am I not her grandfather too?”

“Yes, I will,” said Sripathi. He wondered whether to tell his friend that the child would not speak at all. That she didn't seem to like him.

“When? Tomorrow? I am fed up of my own company. Why don't all of you come and have tea here? I will ask Poppu to make her famous maddur vadais. What do you say?”

“I say that you are trying to change the topic. I know there is something worrying you, and I am not going home till you tell me what it is,” Sripathi said firmly.

Raju fiddled with the pages of his book. “I am selling this place,” he said. “I can't manage any more on my pension. I can't handle Ragini by myself, and Poppu is getting old. We need to keep a nurse and I can't afford it, unless I sell my house.”

Sripathi was too stunned to say anything for a few moments. “Why didn't you tell me?”

“What would you have done? You have troubles yourself.”

Sripathi felt too ashamed to speak. Here he was going on and on, full of self-pity, always borrowing strength from Raju, never stopping to ask him how he was managing.

“You know, sometimes I dream of killing her,” continued Raju. “I imagine how it would be to put a pillow over her face when she is asleep, how easy it would be to get away with it. Who will ask questions? Nobody. Why should people care about a retarded girl who has been abandoned by her own brothers?”

“Don't say things like that,” Sripathi remarked, unable to hide his shock.

“Why not?”

“You don't really feel that way, I know.”

“Don't be too sure of that,” Raju said, giving Sripathi a tired look. “Sometimes I sit here in the dark and think, Suppose something happens to me, who will look after my daughter?”

Sripathi wished that he could say without any hesitation that he would. He wished that he had the courage and the niceness to do so. But he was silent and after a while, when Poppu came in to remove the tea cups, he rose to leave. “If you sell this house, where will you go?” he asked.

“Oh, I will still be here in this same place. The builders are giving me one flat as part of the payment for my property,” replied his friend. “Are you leaving already? Don't forget, I want to see your Nandana. Bring her over the next time you come here. Yes?”

“I will,” replied Sripathi, “but on condition that you don't think such nonsense thoughts about Ragini.” Once again he trembled on the brink of telling Raju that he would take care of the girl should anything happen to her father, that he would always be there to help, but the words wouldn't come out. It was only after he was halfway home that he realized Raju had not said anything in response to his last sentence. This Friday, he told himself. This Friday he would talk to Raju again, assure him that he was there
to help in any way he could. Perhaps he could sit with Ragini for a few hours while Raju took a walk to the beach. Or maybe they could go for a picnic with the girl.

Just as he entered Big House, Sripathi spotted Mrs. Poorna sitting hopefully in her balcony on the look-out for her lost daughter.

“She will never return, you poor woman,” murmured Sripathi sadly. “The lost ones never do.”

He envied her her madness. In the secret corridors of her mind, Mrs. Poorna wandered around eternally hopeful. She had found relief in the delusion that her child had only gone out to play and would return any moment. He wondered whether it was comforting to be lost in madness. He longed for such oblivion from pain. Or for the strength to be completely detached from all creation, to achieve the state that the sages of the epics had attained through years of penance, fasting and meditation. As a young boy, Sripathi was warned never to stand too long in one spot on the wet sands by the sea. The sea would suck him in, he was told. But he would wait until that cunning mesmeric movement of sand began under his feet, a sense that he was sinking inch by inch, and then, with an enormous exercise of will, he would remove himself from the insidious pull of the sea and run across the sand kicking at the waves in an ecstasy of freedom. This grief that wrapped itself around him was like the sea. The longer he stood beside it, staring at the limitless horizon of it, the deeper he sank. It refused to let him feel anything for the child that Maya had left behind, refused to let him love anyone again. Perhaps he did not want to move away from that welcoming edge of darkness that yawned open every time he heard a shard of music beloved of his daughter, every time he heard a voice with the same timbre, saw a neat head (just like hers) turning in the marketplace, or a gesture reminiscent of her.

Her tooth came out on Wednesday morning, just before she got out of bed, in a great gush of blood that wet her pillow and frightened Mamma Lady. Nandana was pleased, though. There would be some money under her pillow for sure. Now she could buy herself one of those bottles of green juice that all the other children purchased outside the school gates. Or the pink and black marble-shaped candy, so huge that it made your cheek bulge out and spit drip down your chin.

“So much of blood for such a little thing,” marvelled Mamma Lady, washing Nandana's face and pushing her lip upwards to peer at the pink gap between two other wobbly teeth. “Ayyo! My baby, so small and sweet you are.” She leaned forward, her warm smell of pickles and sweat and talcum enveloping Nandana, and kissed her on the forehead. “Now a fine new tooth will grow and you can eat your food double-quick, no?”

She switched off the electric immersion heater that she had put into a bucket of water for Nandana's bath, pulled it off and hung it from a hook high on the wall. It sizzled dry, the coil turning from a warm pink to white. Nandana had never seen anything like it. She was told not to ever-ever touch it while it was in the water or out of it. Now Mamma Lady mixed some cold water from another bucket and tested it with her fingers until she had it just right.

“Okay, today you can have a bath by yourself,” she said. “Don't take too long.” She picked up the tiny, sharp piece of bone that Nandana had handed to her and waddled out of the bathroom. Nandana looked at the bath water. She watched from the bathroom door as Mamma Lady stripped away the blood-stained pillowcase and re-made the bed before leaving the room. She didn't slide anything under the pillow, and so Nandana ignored her instructions to have a bath and followed her out, skipping excitedly. Maybe in this India place they
gave
you your money. Maybe there were no tooth fairies here to leave it under your pillow. Mamma Lady trundled slowly up the stairs to the terrace, out into the bright sunlight, and
with one quick movement of her arm, flung the tooth on to the roof of the house. “There,” she said, “now the crows can take it away, and the evil spirits won't know whose it is.”

She had
thrown
away the tooth? She hadn't kept it in a special box like Daddy did? Nandana couldn't believe her eyes. But still she stood there, expectantly, close to her grandmother who was now touching the clothes on the line, left out overnight, pulling off the ones that were dry. In a minute or two she would take out a rupee note from that wet place between her breasts and give it to Nandana. For
sure
. She trailed around after Mamma Lady, the sun warm on her bare arms sticking out from the thin cotton slip, sucking a strand of her hair.

“Enh? What are you doing here still, child?” demanded Mamma Lady, noticing her all of a sudden. “Again you will be late for school and all that rickshaw confusion will happen. Didn't I tell you to have your bath? Go inside now, quickly.”

My tooth money? Nandana stared hopefully at her grandmother. She opened her mouth wide and pointed at the vacant spot in her upper gum. “What is it, child?” asked Mamma Lady wearily. “I told you no, a new tooth will come soon. A stronger one, don't worry. And why don't you say something? I am getting very tired trying to understand you.” With a sigh, she shifted the clothes onto one arm and propelled Nandana out of the terrace and down the stairs to the bathroom. She sat on the bed and folded the clothes stiff with salt and soap solution and old starch, while Nandana sulkily poured mug after mug of the tepid water over her head. This was cheating, she thought. Her tooth had come out for nothing at all. She wanted to go back home.

S
RIPATHI
DOODLED
ON
HIS
PAD
and wondered whether he could get away early. Before rahu-kala, the evil time, started. Otherwise he would have to stay until six o'clock. He had nothing to do except the aluminum tubing advertisement. It was the smallest account Advisions had ever got, and the client wanted nothing more than a picture of a girl in a low-cut blouse, posing against a pile of tubes. He had said as much at their first meeting. Nevertheless, Kashyap had asked Sripathi to write something—they both knew that it was a formality, an unnecessary exercise that would later be dropped. While he made up his mind about moving to Madras, tried to negotiate new loans with banks for the move, rounded up new clients in that city, Kashyap allowed Sripathi to remain at his desk, throwing him a few unimportant campaigns to work on. He did not summon him to the office again, and neither did he send his little notes through Kumar, the peon. Sripathi wondered whether the others in the office had also been told that they would be redundant soon. Neither Victor nor Ramesh mentioned the move to Madras during their lunch breaks, both continuing to joke and gossip and banter as they'd done for so many years. Perhaps he was the only one who was being kicked out? He was fifty-seven. Next year he would have had to retire anyway, so it wasn't too
bad. The company had a provident fund plan to which he had been contributing all these years, and he would have that at least, calculated Sripathi. The notepad with its ruled yellow paper was full of such anxious notations—numbers, calculations, accounts. In his head there was no room for aluminum piping or Mangalore Jewellery or Ace Tutorials, who guaranteed admissions into foreign universities with their SAT, GRE and TOEFL coaching.