The Hero's Walk

by Anita Rau Badami

  “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.

  “What ma, how are you?” he asked gently, forcing himself to pat her bristly head.

  She groaned and jerked an arm, nearly knocking the bowl of food from her father’s hands.

  “See, she recognizes you,” laughed Raju. “Don’t you my child? Uncle Sri is here to play chess with Appu. So you finish your food quickly, okay?”

  “How are you, Raju?” asked Sripathi. He pulled out one of the chairs and sat carefully on the once-splendid seat which, like everything else in the house, was covered with a sheet of cloth to keep it from getting dusty.

  “How am I? Fine as ever, and ready to defeat you today, my dear fellow,” said Raju smiling at him. “I can feel victory in my bones! But aren’t you early? Took chhutti from work? Is everything all right?”

  “No, not really,” Sripathi said and paused. How could he put the dreadful news into words without damaging himself?

  Raju looked up sharply at the hesitation. “What is wrong?”

  “My daughter,” Sripathi said baldly. “She is dead. And her husband too. I received the news a few hours ago.”

  There was a stunned silence. Then he forced himself to repeat the details of that awful phone call. And as he unburdened himself, he felt a sense of relief that he hadn’t felt when he had told Nirmala and Ammayya, Putti and Arun. Perhaps he drew strength from Raju, who had managed to keep despair at bay, even though it stared him in the face every waking day.

  “How is Nirmala doing?” Raju asked.

  “She is very upset, she blames me for everything. Do you think it is my fault, Raju?”

  “No, how can you be responsible for something that
happened in another country?”

  Sripathi gazed consideringly at his friend’s thin, dark face, the sparse, grey hair neatly combed away from his forehead and the small moustache perched over a mouth now bracketed by deep lines. “But you also think, like my wife, that I should have written to her all these years, right? Come on, be honest, man!”

  “You know what I think. I have repeated it often enough,” said Raju, wiping Ragini’s mouth one last time before nodding to Poppu to take her away. “Yes, I think you were stupid and childish to cut off your daughter. Yes, I think you should have at least allowed her to come home when she had a child. Here I am, yearning to see my sons, to meet my grandchildren, and you …” Raju shook his head and stood up.

  “So, you are also against me?” demanded Sripathi, hurt by his friend’s words.

  “I am not for or against you, man. This is not a war. You asked me what I feel, and I am answering your questions.”

  “But she made a fool of me, don’t you see that? Do you know how humiliated I felt when I went to Mr. Bhat’s house to return all those gifts? Do you realize how much she shamed me? It was okay for her to do whatever she wanted, with no thought for her family, right?”

  Raju patted Sripathi’s shoulder awkwardly. “What is the use thinking about all that now? It is over and done with. Too late to dissect and examine. Tell me, what is happening to the little girl? How old is she? Tchah-tchah-tchah! What a tragedy this is for her.”

  They moved from the shadowy dining room to the more cheerful lounge, where Raju spent most of his time now, reading an assortment of newspapers and magazines that Miss Chintamani reserved for him. He told Sripathi, with a wink, that he was sure the librarian had a soft spot for him. “She gives me these languishing looks, you know. I don’t know why I can’t attract any of the younger chickadees! Only these batty old ones that come running after me, tchah!”

  Books rose in uneven piles from the floor next to Raju’s favourite chair, and on the walls hung photographs of his family in their youth. His sons sent pictures frequently, but they stayed in their envelopes, thrust haphazardly inside drawers. A Hallicrafter’s radiogram sat on a low cabinet, and Sripathi remembered how fascinated he had been as a boy with the lighted circular dial with its little markers for stations all over the world. Seychelles. London. San Salvador. French Guiana. USA. Australia. Ceylon. It was as if the entire world had somehow been stuffed into the pale brown body of the Hallicrafter and beckoned in so many languages to the listener. It seemed quite miraculous that the ancient machine still worked perfectly. On the shelf below sat Raju’s pride and joy, a Bang & Olufsen record player with stacks of LPs, EPs and a few 75-rpm records. He turned on some soft music. Neither of them felt like playing chess, so they sat in silence for a while.

  “What you need to do now,” said Raju finally, “is concentrate on the child. It will be like bringing up your daughter all over again, think of that. This tragedy has given you the chance to redeem yourself. Take it with both hands.”

  “Oh, so you do think I need to redeem myself?” demanded Sripathi.

  “Sripathi Rao, why are you bothered about what I or anybody else thinks? Ask yourself whether you did right or wrong by your daughter.” Raju gave him an exasperated look that made Sripathi bristle.

  He stood up in a huff and said, “I am going. I came here to get some rest from the tain-tain at home, but I only hear more of it here.”

  “Don’t be silly, man. At least have lunch, or hunger will make you behave worse than you are now.” Raju stood up as well and clapped Sripathi on the back. “I wouldn’t be much of a friend to you if I told you only what you wanted to hear. Come on now, Poppu has made some bisi bele bhath. Can’t you smell it?”

  Sripathi allowed himself to be pacified. “Okay,” he said gruffly. “But I will have to leave right after. Need to go to the travel agent and all. Lots of things to do. I am hoping that I can leave for Canada by the end of next week.”

  At Hansa Travels on Pyecroft Road, Sripathi realized that he didn’t have a passport. He had never needed one in all his fifty-seven years of existence. Why would he when he had never left the country or even needed any identification in this town of his birth? Once, not long before Maya’s departure, Sripathi and Nirmala had visited Mr. Bhat in Madras to talk about the details of the engagement ceremony. Later that evening, they had gone to the beach, and Sripathi had watched ships outlined against the seamless sky. He had wondered at the lives sailors led, unmoored, restless as the waters they sailed, always somewhere other than where they were born. What led those people to leave the familiar? What was it that had pulled his own daughter into the unknown world beyond the protective walls of home and family? Then, with some wistfulness, Sripathi had thought of his own rooted existence, and he had imagined visiting his daughter some time after Arun, too, was settled in a job, and when he had paid off his debts.

  The travel agent, a thin, patronizing young man with a geyser of shiny black hair erupting over his forehead, refused to get down to business immediately. He was an inquisitive, officious man. On the narrow desk before him, a tray bristled with pens and pencils that he kept fondling continuously. Every now and then he stopped fiddling with the pens to snatch up the telephone and speak for a few minutes.

  “Nateshan here!” he would bark, twirling a pencil or a pen between his fingers, his eyes fixed on something behind Sripathi’s head. “Yes-yes. No problem, no problem. I am a very busy man, okay? I will phone afterwards. Okay.”

  All his conversations sounded the same. Sripathi suspected that he might only be pretending to speak to someone, just to give the impression of being busy. As soon as he hung up, he turned to Sripathi and gazed at him with what appeared to be astonishment, as if to say, Where did you turn up from?

  Once again Sripathi explained his case, reiterating that he had no passport and that it was urgent that he leave as soon as possible.

  The agent wagged his head and shook his legs. He ran a delicate hand over his quiff of hair and looked severely at Sripathi. “Nobody should be without a passport,” he said finally.

  “I didn’t realize,” admitted Sripathi humbly. He knew this type. You had to grovel a little to get help. “If you can help arrange a passport, I will be grateful.”

  The agent contemplated the mysterious spot behind Sripathi’s head for a long moment. “Work-related or pleasure trip?” he asked suddenly.

  “My daughter and her husband passed away.” Absurdly enough, Sripathi was filled with the need to tell this stranger all about the long silence between him and Maya. “They were in a car accident.” He heard his own voice as if it were scraping its way out of a rusty tin. His legs started to shake. He crossed them quickly, alarmed by the sensation, by the fact that he couldn’t seem to stop the quivering movement that had taken over his lower limbs.

  The travel agent gave Sripathi his full attention now. “I am so sorry to hear. Very sorry. But I have heard about similar sudden deaths in foreign countries many times. Very sad and sudden. You know Mr. Jayaram on Car Bridge Road? His nephew was simply driving home from work on a highway in Pasadena, and suddenly a plane landed on his car. Can you imagine? Instant death, of course, what else? But the pilot of that plane survived. She was on all kinds of television shows, telling people that God had taken care of her. What about the poor fellow on whom she landed, that’s what I want to know? Then there was another case … But why I am wasting your time? I will get you a passport, no problem. Extra charge, but.”

  Then the Canadian visa, which the agent said he could arrange for a further sum of money. He busied himself with the telephone again while Sripathi waited, trying to control his impatience.

  “No problem. All correct and above board, okay?” he assured Sripathi, who gave him a doubtful look. Nothing these days was legal, as far as he knew.

  “I don’t indulge in hanky-panky, sir,” said the agent, wagging his finger piously. “Honesty is the best policy.” He blew out the h in honesty in a great gus
ty breath that made the papers on his desk flutter.

  An hour later, after Sripathi had filled out an endless number of forms, he left the travel agency, relieved to find that his legs felt normal. He decided to stop at the Toturpuram Trust Company to see if he could borrow more money for the trip. The trust had been started by his grandfather and some of his friends to help out indigent Brahmin families and to give scholarships to their children, so that they could get that most precious of commodities—an education. Sripathi could remember the first time he had had to approach the trust with begging bowl in hand. It was soon after he had found a job. Large damp patches had developed along the edges of the ceilings in the upstairs bedrooms of Big House. The roof needed to be waterproofed immediately, and there was no money to do it. The humiliation of that visit to the trust would live with him for ever, he thought then, but that was before he became accustomed to begging.

  “We hope that you will be more responsible than your father,” the oldest of the trustees had said with a severe look at Sripathi from under his white eyebrows. He had never liked Narasimha Rao very much and relished this opportunity to take it out on the son. “If he had no earnings, we would have understood. Everyone in the world can’t have Goddess Lakshmi sitting on their shoulders. But your father … tchah, tchah, tchah! He deliberately squandered all that God gave him.”

  The trust had given him the loan in memory of his grandfather, they had made that clear. But the interest rates were high—the burden of his father’s follies were now on Sripathi’s back. “You will collect punya this way,” another member had told Sripathi, patting his back comfortingly. “Your children will benefit from your accumulation of good deeds.” That old man was the one who had persuaded the rest of the trustees to extend more loans to Sripathi, and he was no longer alive. There was a new, youthful set of trustees now, not quite as willing to postpone his monthly payments. “This is a bank, sir,” one of them had said, smoothing his trim moustache with a confident forefinger, “not your personal treasury. We cannot keep giving you extensions. This is a business, not a charity, I am sure you understand that.”