Dr. Menon ran his clinic from a hole in the wall of a dilapidated building on the street. The wall was plastered with film posters and political graffiti, so that the clinic seemed to be a part of the collage too. Women with beckoning eyes mooned at thick, muscled heroes on posters that announced in black letters: Super-action-packed chiller-thriller! Romance! Comedy! Tragedy! Spectacular Spectacles! And beside these flamboyant outbursts were the more sombre political messages: Vote for VKR. He Cares for Your Cares. He Will Wipe the Sweat from Your Brow.
People who weren’t aware of the existence of the clinic were startled by what appeared to be characters stepping off the pictures. Dr. Menon, almost a segment of this whole unrealistic scene, was so ancient that he had to be hauled out of his chair by his patients and supported to a shadowed corner of the clinic where he shakily mixed pellets and powders, screwed them into tight little slips of paper and handed them to his patients with garbled instructions on dosage. It was difficult to make out if the old man actually listened to his patients, made diagnoses and then decided on the medicine, for he always coughed through the entire recitation of ills and staggered out of his chair before the patient was done. When Sripathi entered the dark hole, he found the doctor lying motionless with his head on his desk, eyes shut, surrounded by a welter of papers and books. In one corner sat a small child, probably his grandson, reciting his times tables.
“One twoza two, two twoza four, three twoza six,” he droned, swinging forward and backward rhythmically to his own voice.
“Is he okay?” asked Sripathi anxiously, jerking his head in the doctor’s direction.
“Hoonh,” said the boy. “Just shake him a little and he will get up.”
A tentative tap on the shoulder of the good doctor evoked no response. Sripathi glanced at the boy questioningly. The boy jumped to his feet and grabbed his grandfather’s shoulder, pinching it a couple of times before putting his mouth against a ragged ear soft and crumpled as old velvet.
“Thatha!” roared the boy, still pinching the old man’s shoulder energetically. “A patient has come. Get up. Thatha!”
The old man sprang to his feet and looked around wildly. “What? What?”
“A patient is waiting for you. Thatha!”
The doctor swivelled his milky eyes towards Sripathi. “Good morning sir, good morning. And what is your problem?”
“My legs are feeling funny,” bawled Sripathi who knew that Dr. Menon was hard of hearing. And I might not have a job at the end of this month, he felt like adding.
“Funny legs. Hmm. Could be a stroke or maybe filaria. Or malaria. In this pigsty of a town there are so many types of mosquitoes.” Doctor Menon leaned back in his rickety chair and shut his eyes. He was silent for so long that Sripathi thought he had fallen asleep. He was thinking of shaking him awake when the old man jerked up and feverishly scrabbled through the desk drawers. He opened and shut several drawers before excavating a little jar of translucent paste.
“My son brought this for me from Singapore. It says on the leaflet here that it is a malam good for everything. Many ancient herbs and berries have gone into it. Rub some on your legs and if that doesn’t work, swallow a teaspoon with a glass of warm milk. If it works it works, if not nothing bad will happen.”
Dr. Menon leaned back again, exhausted by the whole interlude, and fell asleep. Sripathi dropped a five-rupee note on the desk and slipped out quietly.
On the way back to his scooter, he spotted a tired-looking woman crouched beside the road, selling a few flowers. He was reminded of his long-forgotten ritual of buying flowers for Nirmala. And of the fact that it was Putti’s birthday today. The flower-seller had just one withered string of jasmines in her basket and a few pink roses that had lost most of their petals.
“Seventy-five paise for all of them,” said the woman. Sripathi paid her without trying to bargain and she wrapped it in a piece of banana leaf for him.
The sign painter had stopped for a tea break when Sripathi returned to pick up his scooter. Once again he refused the money that Sripathi held out to him.
“Come on, take it, for your children. Buy them some toffees,” urged Sripathi.
“Okay, if you put it that way,” smiled the man, dropping the change into his shirt pocket.
“Have you finished the picture?” asked Sripathi. He shielded his eyes against the last rays of the sun and stared up at the huge cutout. The black nipples had been painted over, he noticed, and the chief minister merely looked coquettish now.
“I have finished. But tonight again those opposition party loafers will come and paint something which I will have to erase tomorrow. Big nuisance and waste of paint. I have told Madam’s office to please come urgently and pick up this thing, but nobody bothers,” said the painter sadly. “How long I can block up this street? People shout at me, as if it is my fault. I am just a poor man making my living.”
“Do you do many of these?” asked Sripathi.
“Three or four a month. It takes time to cut out and draw the portrait. I have to sketch the face in when the wood is flat on the ground. Then attach it to the rest of the body. The clothes and all are easy. The face can be a problem. Looks different when it is standing up, then you have to do it all over again.”
“Lots of work involved,” agreed Sripathi.
“You have seen the one over the Chettiar crossbridge? That also is mine. And most cinema posters near January Talkies. I am good at personalities. That is why I get enough work—every other person in this place thinks he is a personality, enh?” The sign painter winked and grinned at Sripathi.
He took the long, roundabout route to get home, mainly to avoid the street in which his father had died. In the dying light of the evening, everything seemed to him to be old and remote. Nothing was the way he remembered it. He lost his way a few times, even though he had lived in Toturpuram all his life. By the time he reached Brahmin Street, the sun had almost disappeared from the sky. In the gloom Big House loomed like an ugly monster. The front door was open and the back door would be as well, to release the malicious spirits trapped inside and welcome the good ones in. Nirmala would have lighted the lamps and finished her brief incantation to her gods. The gate was moving slightly, hitting against the latest pile of debris, and a small figure swung on it, propelling it back and forth with a foot. For an instance, Sripathi thought that it was Maya waiting for him to return from work. As he approached the figure detached itself from the gate and raced inside the house. It was the child, he realized.
“How are you, Sripathi-orey?” greeted Munnuswamy from next door. He was sitting next to the calf, stroking its heaving flank.
“Okay,” said Sripathi briefly. He had no desire to talk to the man, his heart still thundering with the sudden hope that had arisen at the sight of that little figure swinging on the gate. “And how about you?” he felt obliged to add.
“My calf is very sick,” said Munnuswamy. “She won’t live till tomorrow.”
There was nothing that Sripathi could think of to say to that, not even a few words of comfort. He locked his scooter against the railing around the verandah, took off his slippers and entered the house. The child was nowhere to be seen. Ammayya was sitting in front of the television, watching one of the three channels they received. It was a program with noisy song-and-dance sequences from old films. The heroine danced and wiggled around trees’ mountains, fountains and gardens, while the hero chased after her, entranced. The blue glare from the television fell on his mother’s rapt face, making her look haunted. Nirmala emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her sari pallu.
“Why you are so late?” she wanted to know.
Sripathi held out the crushed packet of flowers that he had purchased.
“For me?” Nirmala asked.
He nodded. “And half for Putti—it is her birthday, remember? They are a little dry. The woman did not have any more.”
She broke off a bit from the string of jasmines and tucked it in her hair, he
r eyes on him all the while, shy and a little puzzled.
“What are you doing phusur-phusur there?” asked Ammayya. She peered across the gloomy room at the two of them.
“Nothing,” said Nirmala. “He just bought some flowers for me.”
“Flowers? At this age?” Ammayya went back to her television program and Sripathi went upstairs. I will have to tell them about my job, he thought. The lights were on in Arun’s room and suddenly he was filled with a rage against his son. If the fool had a job, at least the burden of looking after the family would be shared. There was some money for the child, her parent’s insurance money. Sripathi had insisted that it be placed in a trust fund. For her future. He would take care of her present, he had told Dr. Sunderraj. He had refused to agree to a monthly allowance for the child’s education, clothing and other necessities. “I can manage,” he had told the doctor, resenting the man’s interference. “We people in India are not all paupers, you know.”
Now, on an impulse, he entered his son’s room. He looked around for the child, but she wasn’t to be seen. Arun was sitting on his bed, studying some sheets of paper in the dim light of the 20-watt bulb that Ammayya had forced them all to use. Sripathi looked at the short body, the ragged hair, the unshaven visage, and allowed it all to fuel his building anger.
“Where is the child?” he asked stiffly.
“Under the bed,” said Arun looking up at his father, his eyes hidden behind his glasses.
“Under the bed?”
“She goes there when she is scared.”
The child was scared of him? What had he ever done to her? Did she, too, blame him for her mother’s death?
He stepped backwards until he was in the doorway. From there, he could see the child’s thin elbow where it stuck out from under the cot. He also noticed that Arun’s face was swollen and bruised.
“What happened to you?” Sripathi asked. “You look as if you fell down or something.”
Arun touched his face tenderly. “I got beaten up by Munnuswamy’s thugs.”
“What?”
“Oh, he doesn’t know, probably. He just issues the orders.”
“What are you involved in now? Henh? Some other saving-the-world project? Why are you wasting your time trying to be a big hero instead of getting a job? Here I am, head full of grey hair, going to work everyday like an ox, and my son sits at home dreaming useless dreams.”
“Appu,” said Arun, “I am not trying to be a hero or anything so grand. I just don’t have the patience to wait for the government to take care of my future for me. They are all crooks and thieves, lining their own nests.”
“I know, you don’t have to tell me that,” said Sripathi. “But what kind of future will you make for yourself by wasting time waving flags and banners and shouting slogans? At your age I was earning a living and looking after a family of four.”
“You won’t understand, Appu, so why don’t you leave it alone?”
“But I am trying to. Your mother also keeps telling me that I don’t. But why doesn’t anybody tell me what it is I don’t understand?” demanded Sripathi, slapping his hand on the door to emphasize each word.
The child under the bed whimpered. “Don’t shout, you are frightening her,” said Arun. “And I will try to explain. See, you had your independence of India and all to fight for, real ideals. For me and my friends, the fight is against daily injustice, our own people stealing our rights. This is the only world I have, and I feel responsible for it. I have to make sure that it doesn’t get blown up, or washed away in the next flood, or poisoned by chemicals.” He looked awkwardly at his father and shuffied the papers on the bed. “I mean, look how it is already, no water to drink, electricity keeps getting cut off, you can’t even play on the beach without getting all kinds of rashes on your legs. It wasn’t like this when I was small, was it? Appu? Was it?”
Sripathi didn’t reply. He knew deep down that his son had a point, but still, all that talk about duty, what about his duty towards his family? And tomorrow he might get married and have children, and how would he support them?
“I knew you wouldn’t see things my way. You never have,” said Arun bitterly.
Sripathi glowered at his son. He wanted a quarrel, he realized with a shock. He wanted to shout and scream and rage at someone, and Arun was handy right now. Why are you fighting all these useless fights? he wanted to yell. You idiot, I, too, dreamed of being a hero and look at me now. You will lose all that crusading innocence as your hair turns grey, and you find yourself responsible for lives other than your own. It will all slip away, one by one, your dreams vaporized by the fierce sun of reality. A house, a scooter, your child’s education, the doctor’s bills, food and clothes and shoes … All these will drown you, and before you know it you will, like me, sit at the edge of your youth and ask yourself, Why did I let it all go?
A shuffling movement beneath the bed reminded him of the child’s presence, and with an effort he stopped himself from exploding. “You are a fool, that is all,” he said finally, in a quiet voice, before heading off for a bath.
At dinnertime that night, Ammayya glared at the child. “It’s evil to play with your food,” she said finally. She had slurped her way through large quantities of each dish on the table as if they were in the middle of a famine, managing to tuck a chapatti in the folds of her sari for later consumption.
Nandana continued to toy with the rice and sambhar that Nirmala had mixed for her. Around the edge of her large, steel dinner plate she had arranged neat piles of mustard seeds, chilies, curry leaves, beans and other things that she had fished out from the puddle of food.
“You, girl, did you hear me?” continued Ammayya, knocking on the table with a spoon. “God put food on our plates to eat, not to push around here and there. What would your mother think of this kind of wasteful behaviour?”
The child’s head shot up. Nirmala frowned at her mother-in-law and then at Sripathi for his silence. “There is no need to scare the little one,” she protested. “She is not used to our food.”
“Pah! Her mother was such a gem-child. No fuss about eating food or anything.”
“Ammayya, that’s enough,” said Nirmala.
The old lady surged on, inventing as she went. “With my own hands I used to mix her food for her. I only used to feed her. Ammayya, she used to say to me, I feel so bad for the poor hungry orphans in the slums. Can we take some food to them? And my eyes would fill at her generosity. Although—and I don’t like boasting—I am the one who taught her to think about the less fortunate in this world.”
The child chased a pea around the swimming brown mess of food on her plate. “Look at her, so stubborn,” continued Ammayya. “These days children are spoilt, that’s all.”
Nirmala stroked the child’s head and cheek tenderly. “You don’t like our food? This was your mother’s favourite dish. Shall I feed you?” Without waiting for a reply, she took up the spoon and ladled small amounts into the little girl’s mouth.
“Do you know what is the capital of Argentina?” Ammayya quizzed Nandana. “Who is the president of America? Look at her, she knows nothing, this girl.”
“Leave her alone, she is too young for all this,” Nirmala said.
“At her age I knew everything. Even her mother was so bright, thanks to me,” argued Ammayya. “What was Oscar Wilde’s full name? Who can tell me?”
“Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde,” Sripathi replied. This used to be one of the answers that he could never recall when his father quizzed him years ago, and now it was burned into his memory. “Now that is enough, Ammayya.” He pushed his food around his plate, unable to taste anything. He had no desire to eat. His legs were feeling odd again. He had ducked his head under the table a few times to check if they were still there. It seemed to him that his left foot had dissolved into a translucent, amorphous shape.
“What’s the matter with you?” Ammayya asked him suddenly. “Something is down there? That wretched cat? It
should be killed, inauspicious thing. Tomorrow I will ask Koti to catch it and throw it in the drain.”
Nandana pushed her plate away and ran up the stairs.
Nirmala banged the spoon down and glared at Ammayya. “Why you have to say such things in front of the child? You know she likes playing with the cat. Why you are always doing these things?”
Before Ammayya could respond, there was a scream from upstairs. “What happened? Did you hear that?”
Another scream, followed by loud, hysterical weeping. “Nandana, something happened. Maybe she is hurt,” Nirmala struggled to her feet and went up the stairs as fast as she could, followed by Arun.
They found the child in front of the open cupboard, screaming and crying alternately. “What is it? You are hurting somewhere? Tell me? Something bit you?” Nirmala tried to hold the little girl in her arms, but Nandana pushed her away hard and cried even louder.
The cupboard door gaped open and Nirmala peered in uncertainly. What had frightened the poor thing, she wondered. If she wouldn’t speak, how could they know what to do? She shuffled the clothes hanging in the cupboard and realized that the red coat was no longer there. So that was what had upset the child. By now, Nirmala was familiar with Nandana’s habit of hiding in the cupboard when she was angry or sad.
“Oh, my little one,” she sighed. “Your coat is not there, is that the problem?”
Nandana nodded, her sobs subsiding into hiccups. “Don’t worry, where can it go, tell me? Must have fallen down.”
Nirmala knelt before the cupboard and rummaged about in the darkness. Her fingers encountered nothing other than the suitcases that she had stored there. “Must be here only,” she murmured. “Where else it will go?” She sat back with a sigh and looked at Nandana’s tearful face. “Don’t worry, chinnu-ma. Tomorrow we will ask Koti to search the whole house. Maybe she kept it somewhere by mistake.”
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