Free The Grammarian by Annapurna Potluri Page B

great old metropolis.
    Alexandre wondered: how many lost cities were there, nations buried or sunken? How many languages died up there in the mountains of Peru, or drowned under the torrents of terrestrial tide, our ancestors ill equipped against the sudden crashing down of water walls?
    A DIVI ASKED THE cook to make some coffee and later remarked that he would like to have gulab jamun for dessert. Dinner was Adivi’s favorite meal, a time for him to assert that paternal force as the head of the family that he felt his due and right. He liked the ritual of it, and the formality—that the whole family ate together, unlike the casual and scattered breakfasts and lunches. He liked the line made by his daughters and wife and mother from his position at the head of the table. He sat smiling at the table, calling to the cook to ensure that she was able to get good shrimp at the fish market. The cook called back, assuring him she had gotten to the market early and had gotten the best pick.
    “Good,” said Adivi, contentedly waiting for his family as he skimmed through the paper.
    The familiar feeling of his heart being squeezed set in when Adivi saw his daughter Anjali. The feelings of pity and fear aroused in him byhis daughter’s sickness and that absurd limp and the lack of beauty had his paternal love in a clawed grip. He tried to approach her again and again with love, after feeling awash in the guilt that his disgust aroused, but it always failed. His love was aroused always by pride, the kind of pride he felt in his wife’s grace and elegance or in Mohini’s beauty and that virtue that wore itself so proudly on her person. He felt it not vain but honorable that his clothes and family should all reflect a sort of virtuous propriety, and though he couldn’t fault Anjali for her deformity, any disruption in that appearance grieved him deeply, and this was an affliction he could not rid himself of, not even for his daughter.
    And Alexandre felt ashamed of Adivi, because Adivi reminded him of himself. Because when his daughter was a baby, she too had been very sick, and Alexandre had that thought that horrible thought that he was sure might keep him from heaven: when it was quite uncertain that Catherine would live, he thought simply, “We could still have another baby.” And he felt such shame that he had thought his baby replaceable. He might be able to have another child, and perhaps even another daughter, but if she had died, he’d never have Catherine back.
    A LEXANDRE CONTINUED TO write about Telugu nouns with a quick guide on forming the possessive:
P OSSESSIVE F ORMS IN T ELUGU
My tiger
Naa pulli
Your tiger
Nee pulli
Your (pl) tiger
Mee pulli
Our (incl) tiger
Mana pulli
Our (excl) tiger
Maa pulli
Their tiger
Vari pulli
His tiger
Athani pulli
Her tiger
Aame pulli
    A T NIGHT , THE home was like an island. From the outside in, it seemed as if it might have been the last salvation of a dying race, a sort of Hindu-Mughal Noah’s Ark; lights and guards with lamps illuminated it, a floating Atlantis in a sea of the dark roads and unlit alleys that surrounded it. Inside, it was safe. The marble floors cooled in the evening, the stucco walls remained warm, fireflies flickered in the garden.
    Weak with grief, it was through these corridors that Anjali raced in her awkward, aided gait, the skirts of her nightdress skimming the floor, toward her grandmother’s bedroom. Alexandre wasn’t meant to have seen her, of course. He woke, refreshed by a deathlike sleep; his body was still confused by the long journey, and it was the small hours of the morning. Alexandre walked through the house like a pale apparition, feeling invisible. He had meant only to fetch some drinking water from the clay pot in the kitchen. Weak grey light was only beginning to enter the home, the house full of shadows. He rose from bed, his body infantile in its first attempts to walk after so deep a rest. Disoriented and groggy, he moved about the home,