The Hero's Walk (17 page)

Now Maya started to write frequently. She had got over her initial anger and addressed her envelopes to Mr. and Mrs. Sripathi Rao, as before. At first Nirmala tried to get Sripathi to read the letters, but when he tore them up without opening them, she stopped. He knew when each one arrived, though, for everyone in the house would read and discuss it, stopping as soon as he entered the room. Even Ammayya was part of the conspiracy to keep Maya alive in the house. Sometimes there would be a new set of photographs on the windowsill or on the dining table. He never looked at those either. Only once more was he obliged to read his daughter's handwriting. And that was two years after her marriage.

A large, official-looking envelope had arrived, and out of it had spilled several photographs of a newborn infant. Nirmala had been delirious with joy. “I am a grandmother,” she told everyone. “My granddaughter's name is Nandana. Isn't it a pretty name?” Then tears followed the smiles. “She should have come home to me. How can a girl have her child without her mother to spoil her during her pregnancy?” She had turned to Sripathi and said, “Please stop being so stubborn, ree. How can you hold on to your kongu for so long? Be so unforgiving? I know why you are upset. It's your stupid ego. Maya did something without asking for your lordship's permission, and you can't stand that, no? Now at least you have an opportunity to forgive and forget. We are grandparents.”

And he had replied in his most sarcastic voice, “Oh, now we have a great psychologist in our house! Dr. Nirmala Rao knows what everybody is thinking and feeling! My goodness, I never knew that I was married to such a perspicacious woman!”

Nirmala stopped trying to persuade him, and he gained a remote pleasure from the knowledge that he had got under her skin by using a word she did not understand.

She had framed one photograph of the baby for the windowsill, and the rest she kept under her pillow for months. Sripathi had not been able to resist a quick look at Nandana's baby face. She didn't in the least resemble her mother, he told himself, and as usual placed the picture face down. When the child was about a year old, Maya had sent a sheaf of legal documents and a letter asking Sripathi and Arun to be the trustees and executors of her will. She also asked if they would be her daughter's legal guardians, in the event that it ever became necessary.

“Why is she writing such ill-omened things?” Nirmala wanted to know. “We are so much older and
we
don't have a will-shill, nothing.” But she had insisted that Sripathi read and sign the documents, even though he did not want to have anything to do with Maya. “It is your duty to that innocent baby. She is your grandchild, whatever you feel towards your daughter.”

When Sripathi maintained his stubborn refusal to even touch the documents, Nirmala went to Raju's house. “Please talk to your friend. He does not listen to me at all. Raju-orey, put some sense into his head.”

Sripathi was furious. He saw this trusteeship as an attempt by Maya to force herself back into his life. But he signed the documents nevertheless. As Nirmala had pointed out, it was his duty. He would never avoid doing his duty, even though Maya had no compunctions about ignoring hers.

On her last visit Nandana had crawled into her mother's closet. The clothes had smelled sweet: the white silky blouse that she wore
when she had a meeting; the special black pants and the regular brown ones; the sleeveless yellow cotton shirt that her father said made her mother look like a sun drop. She sat silent as a mouse inside the closet, hoping that Aunty Kiran would leave without her. She spotted a spider creeping across the floor, towards the door and the light outside. Stupid spider, she thought and crushed it under her shoe. Dead, she told it. You are dead. Then she waited for Aunty Kiran to call her name.

S
RIPATHI
WAS
SO
DEEP
in thought that he almost missed Raju's house with its large, scrolled gates that hung open on rusty hinges. This road, too, had changed a lot, although it still had the rows of gnarled caesalpinia trees. Here, too, were piles of sand, concrete, stones and bricks, and new apartment buildings squeezed into spaces that had previously been occupied by single homes.

Raju Mudaliar was Sripathi's oldest friend. The two of them had attended St. Aloysius School when they were small boys, and although their fathers were on opposite sides of the legal fence and therefore fierce adversaries, their own friendship had prospered. Sripathi always believed that Raju had a lucky streak running through his horoscope. It was always Raju who found the only seat in a crowded bus to school or came upon a twenty-five paise coin on the dusty street. In school, he seemed to come first in class without any effort. The evening before an exam, while Sripathi sat at his father's desk frantically memorizing tables and formulae, Raju would play cricket with the street boys until dusk, going home only when his mother sent a servant to call him for dinner. When Father Gonsalves conducted a surprise quiz in geography, Raju managed to score better than anyone else in the class, even though he swore that he'd spent the previous evening playing.

“Tell me your secret formula,” Sripathi had asked him admiringly a dozen times.

“I don't have any formula. I just don't take anything as seriously as you do. If you tell yourself it doesn't matter whether you come first or second or fortieth in class, you will end up a champ.”

“It doesn't matter to
me
,” said Sripathi glumly. “It's my mother who thinks I am the future prime minister of India and my father who wants me to be a Supreme Court Justice.”

“What do you want to be?”

“A loafer like you,” Sripathi had declared.

How ironic it was that for all the studying that his parents had made him do, he had ended up neither a prime minister nor a judge but a struggling copywriter, while Raju became the head of an important research organization. For a while it seemed to Sripathi that his friend had everything Ammayya wanted for her own son—power, prestige, wealth, a chauffeur-driven car, even a school allowance for his children in case he wanted to put them in one of the posh residential schools such as Lawrence, Mayo College or Rishi Valley.

Raju's first son was born a year before Maya, and two years later a second son arrived, at almost the same time as Arun. Nirmala and Raju's wife, Kannagi, had spent many hours comparing notes on their pregnancies and exchanging recipes for food to ensure that the child was healthy, grumbling good-naturedly about their husbands all the while. And then the Mudaliars had their third child, Ragini. How pleased Raju was when she was born—two sons and a daughter, what more could he ask? But within six months, Kannagi noticed that the child would not lift her head or turn like other babies her age. Her eyes did not focus and she did not respond to voices. Perhaps she was a bit slower than her sons had been, thought Kannagi, and kept her observations from her husband. But by the time the baby was a year old, it was obvious that something was wrong. Ragini had prolonged seizures that left her limp and exhausted.
Sripathi could still remember the day Raju had told him that the child's brain was damaged and could not be cured. Gone was his friend's smile and the cheerful assurance that nothing in the world could be so bad as to wipe that smile off his face.

“What can I say, Sri,” his friend had remarked suddenly over one of their weekly chess games. They had made it a ritual to meet over the chessboard each Friday evening in Raju's spacious home. “My poor little Ragini, all her life she is going to be like this.” Sripathi was aware that they had been making frequent trips to specialists in Madras, Bangalore and even Bombay, and although he was curious, he did not want to ask. If Raju needed to confide in him, he would, in his own good time. There were some things even the best of friends did not share. “Nothing is wrong with her body. It is her mind. There is nothing that can be done for her—no medicines, no operations, no magic cures. That bastard God up there must have decided: ‘This bloke is laughing and smiling too much. Give him a taste of something nasty.' I must have been a murdering rogue in my last life, and now I am paying for it.”

That was the first and last time that Sripathi ever heard his friend sound so dejected. Thereafter, with his usual energy, he had decided to deal with his daughter's disability as best he could. “No point grumbling,” he had told Sripathi the next time they met. “It isn't going to solve anything. This is our karma and we will have to live with it.” He had looked at Sripathi and smiled sadly. “Never thought you would hear me talk about karma and all, eh? Like that old crook Krishnamurthy Acharye? Remember how he used to make us put one rupee each into the plate at the temple, to avoid the weight of our wickedness landing on our shoulders? And of course the money went straight into his own greedy pockets.”

“And I used to be terrified, while you never cared. That crooked old priest is still going strong, you know. He runs an empire, from what I have heard. Still in his filthy dhoti and stained shirt, and stinking like a drain, but rich as Lord Kubera.” Sripathi laughed at
the thought of the temple priest who had predicted such a brilliant (and unrealized) future for him, and who now presided over a company of priests and cooks like some business tycoon.

Raju's wife died when their daughter was about fifteen years old. A succession of maids came and went, for the girl needed complete attention. She had to be fed, washed and cleaned at regular intervals. One by one, Raju's sons finished their education and left the house. The older son moved to California and the younger to Switzerland. Neither came back to see their father or sister. They wrote frequently, and Raju showed Sripathi his older son's letter informing him of his marriage.

“
Dear Appu
,” wrote the boy at the end of the letter, “
please understand that my wife knows nothing of our tragedy. I have told her that you are too ill to come for the ceremony and do not like visitors either
.”

“See, he is so ashamed of his family he cannot even refer to us by name. Ragini is his sister, not ‘our tragedy,' ” said Raju bitterly.

When Sripathi entered his friend's house he could hear Raju's voice murmuring gently to Ragini. It was almost noon, so probably feeding time. After a succession of maids had come and gone, Raju left his job and took over his daughter's care himself.

Sripathi took off his slippers and followed the old maid-cum-cook, Poppu, who had been a part of the family for thirty years, into the cavernous dining room with its huge teak table and carved chairs, made to seat at least twenty people. It hadn't been used for years, and half of it was covered with dust. Poppu didn't see any point in cleaning the whole thing when only two chairs and a quarter of the table top were used.

“Hello, hello, Sri. What a surprise!” Raju stopped feeding his daughter for a few moments. “What are you doing roaming around in the heat, and at this time of day? Shall I ask Poppu to make you some cold lemonade?”

As always, Sripathi felt faintly embarrassed, even revolted, by the sight of Ragini, a big woman like her mother had been, but with no awareness of her ungainly body, which had galloped into maturity at the expense of her brain. He hated himself for his feelings, as if he was somehow betraying Raju, and so he forced himself to look at the girl. She lolled in one of the chairs, her head drooping to one side, her fleshy mouth opening and closing like a sea anemone as her father spooned food into it and then gently wiped away the trickle of spit and food that escaped from one corner. Her hair stuck out in spikes all over her head, and Sripathi suspected that it had been sheared at home by Raju and Poppu. She wore a voluminous frock of the kind that Raju ordered from Tailor Nataraj on Theatre Street by the dozen every two years, all stitched from the same bale of red-and-blue-checked cloth. When her mother was alive, Sripathi remembered that she used to dress Ragini well, discussing patterns of frocks with Nirmala and going on shopping sprees to Bangalore to buy fabric and lace, buttons and ribbons. The girl's deep brown eyes fixed on Sripathi, and he felt uneasily that she was trying to communicate with him.