Free The Hero's Walk by Anita Rau Badami Page B

Narasimha Rao would say. The slum-dwellers were so accustomed to seeing the big, dark-skinned man hauling his thin son by the ear and pointing to them as examples of wasted lives that they did not even look up. Idlers clad in nothing other than striped and grimy underpants continued to lounge outside their huts, smoking beedis or gazing at the ground in despair. Women continued to scrub listlessly at aluminum vessels around the tube-well that had recently been installed by the Lions Club of Toturpuram, or to spread out ragged clothes to dry on flat stones beside the festering drain. Naked children played with tops and marbles on the dusty road. Some of them squatted near the drain, next to the women drying clean clothes, grunting with concentration, their bums hanging over piles of worm-ridden feces.
    His father would make a sweeping gesture with the hand that wasn’t pinching Sripathi’s ear and say, “Do you see that loafer there? You want to end up like that?” And just when Sripathi thought that his ear was going to tear away, his father would release it and slap the side of his head hard. Once. Twice. So that it snapped backwards and forwards. Then, casting a look of disgust at his son, he would stalk back home. Sripathi would cross his thin arms over his head and, bawling loudly, run after his father.
    Sripathi had never dared to ask his father how an intimate knowledge of the mating habits of kangaroos would help in the pursuit of a career—or how familiarity with the exact dimensions of the Hope diamond, which he was never likely to possess, would assure success in life. But by the time Narasimha died, both Ammayya andSripathi had a stock of esoteric and wholly unnecessary information in their heads. The chemical composition of salt. The botanical name of every tree on Brahmin Street. Who invented the radio. Who invented fountain pens. Why leaves were green. When Brahms wrote his first symphony. The first person to cross the Karakoram ranges. The name of Queen Victoria’s dog.
    Slow, heavy steps came up the stairs, across the landing, and into the bedroom behind Sripathi. He knew it was Nirmala by the sound of her toe rings on the floor.
    â€œWhat are we going to do?” she asked, her voice still thick with tears. “Why you are sitting here by yourself? You can’t come down and be with the rest of us?”
    â€œOh, now I can’t even sit quietly and think, is that it?”
    â€œOur child is dead, and you can’t share in the sorrow? What hard kind of person are you? I want to know every word you and that man spoke on the phone. You didn’t tell me what is happening to the baby. Our Nandana.”
    â€œYou didn’t even let me open my mouth. Hitting me like a crazy lunatic.” Sripathi turned around and glared at her.
    Nirmala looked down and pleated her sari pallu between the fingers of her left hand. She sniffed, wiped her nose with the end of the sari and said, “Okay, but you also hit me, no?”
    Sripathi did not reply and Nirmala continued. “What will you do about Nandana? What did that man say? Where is the child? Poor thing, how she must be feeling, God only knows.”
    â€œI am her legal guardian,” Sripathi said. “The child will come to us. I will have to make arrangements to go to Vancouver, stay there for a few months, lots of things to do.”
    â€œShe is coming
here
? I will see my grandchild? Ah, what wickedness is this, that I have to lose my own child to see my grandchild!” Nirmala started to weep again.
    â€œIt is all going to cost a lot.”
    Nirmala gave Sripathi an angry look. “Cost. Always you think about unimportant things. Our daughter and her husband are dead, and this is all you can say to me? It will cost a lot?”
    â€œDon’t talk to me like that. If I don’t think about cost, who will? Your dead grandfather? Henh? Maybe you should ask those stupid gods of yours to give me a