The Hero's Walk

by Anita Rau Badami

  “Oho! Finally you remembered us, Raju Mudaliar,” remarked Ammayya from her chair. All around her were the week’s supply of newspapers stolen from the Gujerati couple in the opposite block of flats. “To what do we owe this honour?”

  “You know my situation, Ammayya,” said Raju politely. Sripathi remembered that his mother had never liked this friend, a dislike largely fuelled by the fact that Raju always did better than Sripathi at school. He led Sripathi back onto the verandah to avoid any further interruption from Ammayya, who had abandoned her papers to listen to their conversation.

  It was cool and wet on the verandah. Raju sat down on the solitary cane chair and Sripathi leaned against the door. “What a way to greet your old friend!” he said, smiling wanly. “Instead of giving me some hot coffee, you ask me why am I here?”

  “Sorry, sorry. I was just so surprised. This early, too. And your coffee is already percolating, don’t worry. Do you want some idlis also? Have you had breakfast?”

  “No, but I am not hungry. I just came to tell you something.” Raju paused and looked down at his hands. “Ragini died last night.”

  Sripathi stopped smiling. It seemed to him that the room had become very quiet, even though sounds came from everywhere else, magnified and unnaturally loud—Nandana’s chuckles, the water running in Ammayya’s room, even the thump of clothes being washed in the backyard.

  Raju did not look up from his studied contemplation of his hands. “She seems to have stopped breathing for some reason,” he added. “I called the doctor early today and he issued a death certificate. The cremation is at eleven o’clock. I came to ask if you will help me carry her to the burning grounds. You are like my brother. Can you take a day off from work?”

  “She died in her sleep?” asked Sripathi sharply. He remembered the despair in Raju’s eyes the last time they had spoken. And how he had said that he sometimes thought about ending the girl’s life. Had his friend finally crossed the thin, ambiguous line separating thought from deed? And if he had, was he wrong to have done so? One by one, thought Sripathi, all his stiff certainties were sliding, leaning over, falling. A year ago, he would have cut all ties with Raju on the basis of that suspicion. He would have accused him of killing Ragini, instead of merely speculating. He would have been unshakably righteous, sure that in the same situation he would never have done something so drastic. But now he was a man filled with doubt.

  “I don’t think she was in pain,” said Raju, still avoiding Sripathi’s eyes. “I did all I could for her, you have to agree with me. I looked after her better than anyone ever could. Right? Right?”

  “Yes, you are right,” said Sripathi quietly. “Nobody could have done any better.”

  “And you will be one of the pall bearers? You can take leave?”

  Sripathi realized that he hadn’t seen Raju since Nandana’s disappearance. “Don’t worry, I will manage.” He would have to phone Kashyap again. “I can take the time off,” he assured Raju. “I will not be missed.”

  By the time Sripathi returned it was two o’clock in the afternoon. The ceremonies for Ragini had been done very quickly at Raju’s request. The girl’s body had looked so thin and flat, and her face so calm, that for a hallucinatory moment, Sripathi thought that Raju had made a mistake. Surely this was not that large, ungainly creature with the flailing arms, the wildly mobile face, who had occupied his friend’s life for twenty-five years? The funeral van had taken them to the head of the small road leading to the burning grounds, where the bier was removed. Leaving their slippers in the van, they carried Ragini to the open field where a single smouldering pile of wood sent up a spire of smoke into the dull sky. Two of Raju’s relatives had offered to help as well, in this last rite.

  Back home, Sripathi waded through the slush to the rear door, shouting for Nirmala to bring a bucket of clean water. He had just returned from a place of death and needed to wash the sorrow away before he entered the house. He stripped off all his outer garments, shivering in the rain, and when the bucket was placed before him, washed himself down.

  In the few hours since his absence, the house had been transformed. It was cleaner than Sripathi had ever seen it. All the doorways had fresh curtains, and Nirmala had hung a fresh garland of mango leaves over the front door, reminding him that the Munnuswamys were arriving on this auspicious evening. Another of his certainties eroded. He had never thought that he might one day end up as that thug Gopala’s brother-in-law. Overlaying the odour of stagnant water were kitchen smells—of uppuma and bonda, vadai and laddo—delicacies that Nirmala had made throughout the day.

  “Our house might not be as good as Munnuswamy’s,” she told Sripathi proudly when he praised her efforts, “but our hospitality cannot be faulted.”

  The rotting sofa was draped in a bright new bedsheet, and the chairs in the living room had been drawn away from the wall, dusted and grouped around the rosewood and ivory coffee table. The air of excitement in the old house reminded Sripathi of the times when Maya had received her university admission letter, got engaged to Prakash, or when Arun had passed the college finals with a high first class. Even his son looked transformed somehow, and it took Sripathi a few minutes to notice his haircut and cleanshaven face.

  In her room, Putti dithered before the Belgian mirror, anxiously draping one sari after another across her shoulder. Pink? Green? Navy blue? The last one, with its discreet pattern of magenta and green flowers, made her look older than the others. She liked it, though. She was old, why hide that fact?

  “Ammayya, is it okay?” she asked her mother timidly, who sat in raging silence in her chair, her stick beating a sharp tattoo on the floor. Ever since Nirmala had broken the news, she had been like this. Putti hated that sound—tap-tap-tappa-tap—fracturing her happy thoughts, creating an unpleasant tension in her chest. She badly wanted her mother to give her blessings to this alliance. “Ammayya?”

  Her mother pressed her lips together tight and glared at her daughter. “If you really cared about my opinions, you wouldn’t allow that pariah dog from next door into this house,” she snapped finally. “You are breaking my heart, I tell you. If I die tonight, it is on your head.”

  “But they are nice people, Ammayya,” begged Putti.

  “Yes, even our toilet cleaner is very nice, no doubt. Why you don’t marry her son? Henh? Why not throw some more shit on our family name? Nice!” She coughed violently, a prolonged, choking bout calculated to fill Putti with guilt. When her daughter did not respond with her usual anxious queries, Ammayya said bitterly, “And don’t think I will give you any jewellery to wear. From today you and I are strangers. You are a piece of dirt that my womb voided and that I kept by mistake, idiot that I am!”

  “I don’t want anything from you,” replied Putti with equal bitterness. “You only said that if somebody really wants to marry me, he will not want any jewellery or dowry. Keep everything.”

  She swept out of the room and behind her Ammayya shouted, “Who do you think gave you that sari you are wearing? Or the blouse or petticoat? Who do you think gave you life in the first place? ‘Don’t want anything,’ she says!” She hit the floor viciously with her stick. “And who else will marry an old spinster like you but a low-caste fool?”

  An hour before the Munnuswamys were scheduled to arrive, the power failed, plunging the entire street into darkness. Ammayya was delighted, taking it as a sign that the gods were as furious as she at this unholy alliance.

  “Inauspicious beginning, wretched ending,” she chortled, swaying from one room into the other, getting in the way as Nirmala hurriedly lighted candles and kerosene lamps. In the kitchen, she found a tray full of laddoos and crushed a few of the perfect, golden, hand-rolled sweets. She found a tin full of fresh, crisp chakkuli that Nirmala had slaved over all morning and, under cover of darkness, stole the whole thing. She held it close to her stomach, draped her sari over it and hurried to her room, where she hid it under the bed. Nobody would look there tonight for sure. By the
morning, she would have concealed it inside her cupboard. She settled down again in her chair to think of something nasty to do when the visitors arrived, so that they would be frightened off the match altogether. Or better still, to insult them thoroughly. Yes, that Munnuswamy milkman’s son was too arrogant by far—offering for a Brahmin girl’s hand indeed! As if there was a shortage of decent men for Putti. And as for Putti, Ammayya cringed to think how her daughter’s shameless behaviour might have led to this. Too much television, no doubt, corrupting the poor innocent. Then all of a sudden, Ammayya felt sorry for being so harsh on Putti. She would have responded better to kindness, to good advice given away from the corrupting influence of Nirmala. Yes, she had been tainted by the denizens of this house, influenced by that Maya, by her shameless marriage to a foreigner. Couldn’t Putti see where that had led her? Straight to Lord Yama’s kingdom, that’s where. Uh-huh!

  In the living room, candles sent long, wavering spires of light all over, shadows swung out from behind shelves, cupboards, the television and chairs, even the ancient hat stand that was now used to hang umbrellas and raincoats. Outside a guttural chorus of frogs had started up, interrupted now and again by the thin wail of a nearby child. And the rain still poured out of the heavy sky.

  The Munnuswamys arrived at six sharp, all of them with their clothes hitched up to avoid the brown water surrounding Big House. Koti had been posted in the verandah to offer the guests water to wash their dirty feet and towels to mop them dry. Putti, lurking in the shadowy living room, got her first glimpse of Gopala’s large feet and went coy and shivery all over at the thought of those feet sliding over her own. She ran into the kitchen as they entered the house, overcome with shyness. Only after Sripathi had welcomed them, asked after their health and made sure that they were comfortably seated, did she emerge again.

  “Ah, daughter-in-law!” exclaimed Munnuswamy with heavy good humour. “When can we carry you away with us?”

  Ammayya snorted loudly from her room at the sound of that coarse voice. “Cheek!” she said. “Insolence! Low-class crooks. Taking our homes and our daughters and all.”

  There was an embarrassed silence.

  “Beat up my grandson and steal my daughter. Think that will make you any better than you are? Only fit for collecting dung!”

  Nirmala got up and shut the door on her mother-in-law, ignoring her indignant shouts.

  She smiled at her visitors. “Please don’t mind, she is old and doesn’t know what she is saying. Such a problem it is, you know, but what to do? We will all grow old sometime or other, no?”

  “I know what I am saying,” bawled Ammayya from behind the closed door. “Putti, if you marry this loafer you will be dead for me for ever. My curses will be on your head. A mother’s curse is the blackest of them all. Your children will be born deformed. They, too, will abandon you. And that evil fellow will beat you every single day!”

  But Putti heard nothing. She was lost. Utterly. She and Gopala gazed at each other, transfixed. Her heart drummed rapturously in its curving cage of bones. She allowed her eyes to rest on his fierce, dark face, made fiercer and darker by the lack of light. And on his wide shoulders and muscled chest. She wanted to lick his nipples. Suck on his long, hanging earlobes that had been pierced as a child and still showed faint indentations. Miss Chintamani, with much giggling and nudging, had shown her a magazine article that enumerated erogenous zones in men and women. The article was particular about ears and nipples, remembered Putti. She wanted to squeeze his bunched, ropy muscles between her own tiny fingers. Once they were married, she would oil that wonderful manly body with mustard oil every morning, she vowed. Give him a head bath and then he could oil and bathe her. They would live in the steamy heat of the bath for the rest of their lives. Lost in her lascivious thoughts, Putti heard not one single word being shouted by her mother, and when Gopala’s mother handed her a tray full of fruit to welcome her as her son’s future wife, Putti could have swooned with joy.

  21

  THE FLOOD

  THE RAIN FINALLY STOPPED the next morning. When Sripathi emerged from his room into the balcony, he was cheered by the sight of the sun, a yellow smear in the pale grey sky. He opened his box of pens and selected one at random, not sure what he wanted to write about today. The newspaper had yielded nothing worth comment.

  The muted cacophony of the street swelled forth. The temple bell pealed continuously, and the long, wailing call of vegetable vendors, the clackety-clack of the knife sharpener on his ancient bicycle, the honk of buses, cars and scooters all seeped into the house.

  “Ammai, flowers, ammai!” called a sing-song voice from the road. It was the young flower girl, Naga, with her basketful of fragrant jasmine and champa, roses and marigolds. Sripathi heard the front door being opened, and shortly after, his sister appeared near the gate. “Akka, do you want flowers today?” shouted the girl. “Nice and fresh they are.” Her thin, bare arms raised to hold the basket on her head, gleamed in the morning light.

  “Don’t I buy from you every morning?” She had her sari bunched in one hand and hitched up to avoid the dank, squelching filth that covered the yard. “How much for a single mana?”

  “Seventy paise, Akka.”

  “Rubbish! The temple woman sells for ten paise less, do you know that? Come on, you are charging too much.”

  “What Akka,” protested the girl. “My flowers are so fresh you can smell the wind on them still. Picked at two o’clock this morning. That old hag at the temple plucks them the previous night.”

  She planted one foot on a large rock near the gate and lowered her basket onto her cocked knee. The jasmine, strung together with thin threads of banana fibre, alternated with coral flowers and fragrant herbs and lay neatly coiled in the leaf-lined basket. The roses, champa and marigolds were divided into separate heaps of pink and white, cream and gold.

  “Well, how many lengths do you want today? One or two?” asked the girl. She drew out a string of jasmine for Putti to see how tight and full the buds were and how closely they were strung on the banana fibre.

  “Two. And make sure you measure it all the way to your elbow. No cheating. I am watching with both eyes,” Putti warned.

  The girl held one end of the string between her index and middle fingers and allowed it to unravel until it reached the crook of her elbow before doubling it back. Then she carefully snipped it off with a small pair of scissors, folded it into a slice of banana leaf and handed it to Putti.

  “You don’t want champa or rose today? Very nice white roses, see. Smell and see,” offered the girl, handing one to Putti.

  “Silly girl, who smells flowers before offering them to God?” Putti dropped a few coins into the basket and turned away. There were rumours that the flower girls raided gardens before dawn for their baskets, but Sripathi could not imagine this delicate child thieving.

  The Burmese Wife emerged on her balcony, her hair wound up in a thin cotton towel. “Girl, come up here also!” she shouted.

  More women appeared on their balconies to summon the flower girl, and soon the world was awake. Sripathi put down his newspaper and writing material and made his way down the stairs. To his surprise, his mother was still lying in bed. Usually, she was up and ready for breakfast before he came down.

  “Sripathi, will you go to Dr. Menon and get me some medicine?” she asked as soon as he came down. “I am feeling dizzy and sick.”

  “Just take a spoonful of the syrup he gave you the last time,” he said. “I will be late for work again.”

  “Anyway, you are leaving that stupid job, so what does it matter when you go? I am really not well,” whined Ammayya. She emerged from under the mosquito netting and shuffled slowly to the door of her room.

  Sripathi looked at his mother, her shorn scalp silver with a dusting of new hair, her skin haggard and yellowish in the early light. She did look unwell. With something approaching sadness, he gazed at her, and saw beyond the craggy features the hope and beauty that
had once been there. “I’ll send Arun,” he said gruffly. “You can tell him exactly what is wrong. But if you are really feeling bad, maybe we should take you to the hospital.”

  “No,” said Ammayya flatly. “I want to die in my own home.”

  “Don’t talk like that, Ammayya. You will be okay. It is probably all those laddoos you ate yesterday.” Or because you cannot swallow the idea of Putti and that crook’s son, Sripathi thought.

  When he left to catch the bus to work he found a group of men clearing the debris in front of the house.

  “Hello, brother,” called Gopala from across the wall. “You won’t have problems with my truck fellows any more.” He smiled cheerfully. “You have any other problems you want fixed? Tell me, we are kin now.”

  “Your trucks? Those truckers work for you?”

  Gopala smiled proudly. “My father owns six of them. Goddess Lakshmi has showered prosperity on us.” He folded his palms and piously touched them to his forehead.

  Sripathi did not know how to respond. He had never been crooked in his entire life so far, he had always followed the rules. He had plodded down the straight line of duty and honour, and here was this rogue clearing the mess with one wave of his violent hand. The mess that his own people had created, probably at his orders too. Come to think of it, the Munnuswamy house was the only one on the street that had a spotless stretch of road before it. Perhaps he and Arun were the fools in this world and Gopala was the wise man who used any means to survive. Did he ever feel a twinge of conscience? What if Sripathi asked him about the beating that Arun had received? Would he just smile his white, radiant smile and say, “We are kin now, and your son is like my nephew,” and send his goondas out to fight Arun’s hitherto unarmed battles with knives, broken bottles and sticks? And Putti, his foolish, loving sister, how would she live in that house, her own goodness compromised by the knowledge of her husband’s villainy?