The Hero's Walk

by Anita Rau Badami

  Three weeks later, Sripathi had arrived in Vancouver dazed by the sensation of flying, of being unmoored from the earth after fifty-seven years of being tied to it. His back ached from sitting in the narrow seat for so long. His feet were blistered and exhausted from being enclosed in the new leather of his shoes. And he was afraid of what he would feel when he saw the child.

  When Sripathi tried to think back on that trip, his first one abroad, he recollected very little. He had been received by Dr. Sunderraj and stayed in his house for the first week. Then he had asked if he could move to Maya’s home and to his surprise, the child had insisted on going with him. All day, though, except on weekends, she went to day camp, and he was left alone in the blue house. He was relieved when Kiran offered to stop by every evening and help with the packing and with clearing the house of clothes and furniture and utensils. She had also stocked the fridge with food for a week—orange-lidded boxes with curries and rice dishes that he merely needed to heat in the microwave. He was grateful for the food because he knew no cooking, had never even boiled a kettle of water.

  During his month and a half in Vancouver, he had met no one, even though he might have at least got in touch with friends of Maya and Alan. He went nowhere, intimidated by the strangeness of the city, its silence and its towering beauty. He wanted no part of the place where his daughter had breathed her last. All that he carried back with him was a misty memory of rain and lush greenness, of things growing endlessly—enormous trees, brilliant flowers, leaves as large as dinner plates—a fecundity he found impossible to bear. He did remember, in painful detail, the blue house with polished wooden floors and large windows that Kiran Sunderraj had opened to let in the damp, clear air of the city. The air reeked of the life that coursed through the masses of plants outside, and the shrubs bowed down with the weight of their lacy, blue flowers. On his first day there, he had sat by the window and listened to a baby wail in the house next door. A young female voice had soothed it. A group of cyclists had gone by, laughing and chattering, their muscular legs encased in tight shorts, their arms bare and healthy. There were long periods when nobody passed, and all that he could hear was the sound of rain on the leaves. Sripathi had wanted to shut it all out, and as soon as Kiran left him and the child alone for the day, he had closed every single window, except for the ones in the girl’s room. She had shut herself in and didn’t answer when he knocked hesitantly.

  The walls of the house were painted in different shades of blue. Whose favourite colour had it been, he wondered: Alan’s or Maya’s? As a young woman in Toturpuram, Maya had favoured bright colours—reds, pinks, yellows, greens. In most of the photographs that Maya sent home, though, she appeared to be wearing either black or white clothes, or occasionally a red T-shirt. But people were like trees, they grew and changed, put out new leaves that you forgot to count, and when you weren’t watching, they even died.

  There were framed prints on some of the walls, a mask of some sort, small shelves full of knick-knacks. And photographs—dozens of them—of Maya, Alan, Nandana. A record of their lives, special moments, joyous ones: at Nandana’s school on her first day; on a long stretch of road graced by soaring mountains, Maya’s hair whipped into chaos by the wind, her smile caught forever in happiness; Alan, tall and friendly-looking, with Nandana perched on his shoulders, her small hands clutching his fair hair. My son-in-law, thought Sripathi miserably. Curly-haired, laughing, a student of philosophy, the man who had married his daughter and made her happy.

  This was the house where his daughter had once lived and that he had sold off to some stranger. The furniture was taken out by more strangers—the dining-table suite, desks, chairs, a computer, cupboards and a large chair that slid forward and backward like an opening drawer. The child had been upset when the chair left the house. She had sat on it, mute, and refused to get up. Dr. Sunderraj had lifted her off while Sripathi watched, helpless, not knowing the reason for her agitation. She had bawled, too—large tears rolling one after another down her face, her thin chest heaving violently, her fists clenched—when a buyer had carried a chest of drawers from her room. She was losing all that was familiar and beloved, thought Sripathi. He wished then that he could promise her that everything would be all right. He had even reached out to pat her shoulder, to tell her that she would be okay—he was going to take her home to India—but the child had shrunk away from him. What was going on in that small head? he wondered, observing the rejection in those dark eyes. Her mother’s eyes. Large, black, depthless. Did she hate him? She must have questions about him—a grandfather who had appeared out of the blue in a brand-new crumpled shirt, bought especially for the trip from Beauteous Boutique. Had she even heard of Toturpuram, a small town halfway across the world from Vancouver—a town particularly known for its spectacular sunrise—where her mother had been born, and several generations born before her? Did Maya ever speak about him, about Nirmala and Arun and Ammayya and Putti, and the ancient house on Brahmin Street?

  His daughter’s daughter. An orphan. What an ugly word that was. A child bereaved of parents. “Bereft of previous protection or advantages,” to quote The Concise Oxford Dictionary. Sripathi had looked up the word soon after Dr. Sunderraj’s call in July.

  “She has stopped talking,” Dr. Sunderraj had told him on the evening of his arrival. His soft Canadian voice retained no trace of India. He had yielded to a new citizenship, thought Sripathi. First you change the way you dress, then your hair, your manners, your accent. Abracadabra, zippo, zippa: a new person stands before you. Had Maya’s accent changed as well, from Madrasi spice to Canadian ice? Sripathi cringed at his play with words. Long years as a copywriter could reduce even sorrow to a jingle.

  “We think it is the shock and only a temporary thing,” continued Dr. Sunderraj.

  “What?” Sripathi had been unable to remember where the conversation had begun. It seemed to be happening to him all the time, this distracted state, as if his mind had decided to stop listening altogether, to stop responding to any kind of stimulus.

  “Nandana does not say a word, as you might have noticed,” repeated the doctor patiently. “She is normally a very talkative child, you know, so this silence is unusual. However, these things are to be expected. Such a big shock. And one never knows how children may react.”

  He stayed in the blue house for a week, packing the things he thought he should take back to India—Maya’s books as keepsakes for the child, photographs, letters, papers, a pair of gold bangles and two pairs of earrings. Another pair of tiny gold bangles that he recognized immediately. They had been a gift from Ammayya to his daughter when she turned one. Nirmala must have sent them somehow for Nandana’s first birthday. He discarded the clothes last of all, his heart breaking at the sight of the neat shelves and drawers full of shirts, trousers and underwear, the three saris with their matching blouses and petticoats in plastic covers. He remembered the dark green, Mysore-crêpe silk sari with the edging of gold mangos—he had gone with Nirmala to the big new emporium in Toturpuram to buy that for Maya’s sixteenth birthday. How astonished he was when his daughter wore it for the first time, her slender figure suddenly taller and more grown-up in the softly draped material, her face shy and expectant. He had not known what to say, his throat suddenly blocked by a surfeit of emotion—joy at her youthful beauty, and sorrow that she was almost an adult. “Appu, how do I look?” she had asked, holding out her thin arms, and the illusion of maturity had disappeared. She had gone back to being a gawky teenager dressed up in a pretty sari.

  “Your mother should have listened to me and bought the pink one,” he had said.

  Her face had fallen, and she had dropped her arms. “I don’t look nice?”

  “Did I say that?”

  And she had turned away and run down the stairs clumsily, lifting the sari high so that it bunched around her knees.

  Later on Nirmala had scolded him. “What is wrong with you? She says that you told her she didn’t look nice in that ne
w sari. How beautiful she looked, why you told her things like that?”

  “She is too young to wear saris. And that colour makes her look like Miss Chintamani,” he had said, feeling guilty.

  “Rubbish. You are the one who is like that library miss—always finding fault with everything and everyone.” Nirmala had turned her back and refused to speak to him, and Maya had never worn that sari again.

  Carefully, he removed the three saris from their plastic bags and placed them in the suitcase. Those were the only items of clothing that he would take back with him. He decided to wash a pile of clothes abandoned in a laundry basket, even though Kiran had told him she would do it on the weekend. He felt small enough taking so much from the Sunderraj family. Surely he could wash a pile of clothes himself before adding them to the bags meant for the Salvation Army? It took him a while to figure out the washing machine, and when he asked the child for help, she looked sullenly at him but did not reply. She also refused to let him give away two jackets belonging to her parents. She snatched them from him and raced up the stairs, dragging the heavy red and grey jackets behind her, tripping over them as she went. When Sripathi followed her, cautioning her to be careful, she turned around and glared, her eyes as wild as a cornered animal’s, and he had backed down the stairs. She wouldn’t let him pack her things either, stuffing them into garbage bags that she lined up against one wall of her empty room. In the end, Kiran Sunderraj had persuaded her to transfer all those toys and clothes and books into suitcases and boxes. But the child continued to regard Sripathi with suspicion, even hostility, and he gave up any attempts to make conversation with her. For the entirety of his stay, there was nothing between them but a deepening silence.

  A month after his arrival, the Social Services Department gave him permission to take the child to India. Her visitors’ visa had been acquired from the Indian High Commission on Homer Street in one miraculous week, thanks again to Dr. Sunderraj’s innumerable contacts. He and Kiran had done more than most people would have. They had taken over all the legal formalities concerning the deaths, or as many as they were allowed to deal with. Dr. Sunderraj had also completed most of the preliminary paperwork concerning the child.

  “Nandana is officially a ward of the state in the absence of any close relatives,” the man had explained over the phone before Sripathi’s trip. “However, I have some contacts in Immigration and Social Services. They have agreed to let us keep her, as we are longtime family friends and as Alan’s parents are no longer alive. We placed an ad in the papers, but apparently he was an only child. Just an aunt in Idaho who doesn’t want the responsibility. Some cousins also, but they thought that it was better for Nandu to be with us—we are familiar faces, you see. Your granddaughter is welcome to stay as long as necessary. But she needs her own people, and the sooner you arrive, the better.”

  At the airport, where they waited to catch their flight back to India, the child continued to be taciturn and silent. In one hand Sripathi carried a small red suitcase. He had deliberately kept the other hand free, assuming that the child would hold it the way Maya used to when she was seven years old. She did not. He offered to take her backpack that bulged oddly and seemed heavy, but she ignored him. And she looked with deep suspicion at a Mars bar that Sripathi held out to her. Sripathi decided to humour her, although he could feel his temper rising at her intractability.

  He glanced down as she trotted silently beside him, her arms folded out of reach behind her back. The child had drawn an unsteady line of kohl under her eyes and looked like a raccoon. She chewed steadily on something. Munchmunchmunchmunch. A bubble grew out of her mouth like a swollen membrane. She wore ragged jeans and a sagging black T-shirt with the word WHY? inscribed on it in hot pink. Kiran had laid out a different set of clothes for her, he remembered, but the child had decided to be difficult, it seemed. Sripathi noticed that her knees, which protruded through holes in her ragged jeans, were scratched and dry, bony childlike hillocks absurdly at odds with her swaggering look. Earlier on, Sripathi had seen a drawing on one knee, a man with a wild moustache and a large mole on his forehead. Had the child done it herself, or was it a tattoo like the ones on the arms of those wandering, dirty Lambani women who lived on his street in Toturpuram? Sripathi had heard that tattooing was fashionable in these foreign countries. And her hair, what on earth had she done to it, for God’s sake? A mass of fierce black curls surged out of her scalp, with beads strung in rows here and there. A few strands were inexpertly braided. She had not allowed Kiran to comb her hair either. It must have been something that Maya used to do for the child. Like Nirmala had done for her. Sripathi had a sudden memory of Nirmala seated on the verandah, Maya held firmly between her knees, grumbling and squirming as her mother braided her thick tresses—Nirmala with her mouth full of pins and ribbons, her muffled voice telling Maya to stop fidgeting, as her hands swiftly combed out the knots and snarls.

  Sripathi found their gate and took a seat. Nandana drifted slowly away, looking once over her shoulder at him, and stopped near the far window of the lounge. She pressed her nose to the glass, her rucksack pulling her shoulders backwards and stretching out her thin neck like a chicken’s. Too thin, thought Sripathi, her collarbones barely covered with flesh, her skin a pale translucent brown, like milk with a dash of honey. He was sure he could even see the faint tracery of blue veins beside her eyes. She didn’t eat properly. Was she afraid of putting on weight? Did children care about those things? He couldn’t remember how it had been with Maya. Had she been fussy about eating food because she thought she would get fat? He realized he had not known his daughter’s inner life, the secret world of dreams and fears, the complexes and affectations that follow children through their youth, eventually hardening into dead weights. How had she grown up in the same house for twenty years, right under his nose? She had turned from a beloved child—who held his little finger while crossing the road, who wept with worry if he did not come home at exactly six in the evening—into a person he did not know.

  The intercom in the airport lounge came alive, and everybody sat up. The elderly and people with infants were invited to start boarding. Sripathi gathered his bags and glanced at the child, hoping that she had heard the announcement as well. She was still glued to the window, her nose pressed against the glass, her breath a damp halo around it.

  Another announcement that sounded as if the speaker were inside a tin. This time Nandana reluctantly began to make her way back to Sripathi. What was Nirmala going to think of her? he wondered. How would they deal with her?

  The child stooped to tie a shoelace that had come undone. She looked like a turtle under the weight of her backpack. In the face of her hostility, Sripathi was afraid even to ask what she had inside it.

  “Don’t rush her,” Kiran Sunderraj had advised. “Nandu will come to you when she is ready. Remember that she has lost all that is familiar and beloved to her. It is a shock, poor baby. You must be patient.”

  Sripathi kept a wary eye on her as she performed a slow, ambling circuit of the lounge before drifting towards him. She was doing it deliberately, he was sure—pushing against his authority, his patience, testing it. All the way from Madras, through Frankfurt to Vancouver, he had imagined another little Maya whom he could easily love again, who would help him wipe out his guilt and anger. This child was too self-possessed, though, too unlovely and unwilling to be loved. She was not pretty or appealing. What had he expected? A sweet storybook creature in a neat little frock like the ones Nirmala used to make for Maya when she was a girl, hair braided and doubled up in ribbons?

  The child reached his side and stood there silently, one hand fiddling with a strand of beaded hair.

  “Do you need to use the bathroom?” asked Sripathi, feeling awkward.

  Silence.

  “Something to drink before we go into the plane? Have you been inside a plane before?”

  She shrugged, inserted a finger and thumb into her mouth, and drew out a long, sticky length
of pink chewing gum. She shot Sripathi a quick look to see the effect it had on him. He hoped that Nirmala would know better how to deal with her. Women always seemed to have the exact words for any situation. And yet he was the wordsmith, the man who persuaded strangers to buy beauty cream and Ayurvedic cough paste, coir mats and tooth powder, coconut hair oil and gingelly cooking oil.

  He stooped with a grunt to pick up the small red suitcase bruised by time and covered with faded, peeling stickers. It had a new-looking leather strap holding it together. He would have known that suitcase anywhere. He and Nirmala had bought it for Maya from a warehouse on Second Line Beach Road two days before she left for a trip to Ooty with her undergraduate class. The entire family had caught the No. 16 bus because it took a scenic route. This was a special occasion. Maya would be away from home for five whole days—the first time in their lives that such a thing had happened. No daughter in Sripathi’s family had ever left home on her own before her marriage. The suitcase was to be an acknowledgment of Maya’s new status as a person in her own right, an almost-adult. It was also Sripathi’s nervous first step into a modern world where daughters went away from home to study and worked to support themselves.