The Hero's Walk (35 page)

“Oho, my darling, there you are,” exclaimed a gentle voice, startling her.

It was the mad lady again. “Where did you go, child? I was so worried.”

Nandana backed away, although the woman looked kind rather than frightening. She did not have any sticks or knives that Nithya said she carried around. She was a stranger, though.

“Come here, look what I have made for you,” the lady held out something and smiled.

Nandana inched forward curious to see what it was that the woman was offering her. It was a much-folded paratha. “See, your favourite treat,” said the woman, reaching out to grasp Nandana's arm. “I know how much you like it with sugar.”

She looked frightening now, her eyes black and staring. So Nandana turned and ran out of the compound, past the Gurkha who dozed on his stool near the gate and leapt up when she hurtled past. “Ohey, missy-amma, ohey!” he shouted running after her. “Where you are going like the wind?”

He stopped following when Nandana entered the gates of Big House. As she ran in, she heard Mamma Lady's voice raised in song, and the tap-tap of her baton.

“Where are you going?” Aunty Putti called from the verandah where she was sitting, reading a magazine. But Nandana continued to run until she reached the back garden and the mango tree that her mother had told her about long, long ago, and she sat beneath it completely out of breath. For a change, she did not even bother to check for fire ants, killer bees or cobras.

P
UTTI
FINISHED
THE
MAGAZINE
she was reading and looked discreetly across the wall at Munnuswamy's blue house. There was nobody. Only the cow, and beside her, the dead calf. The hide of the calf had been draped over a stack of hay, tied together roughly to resemble an animal, and placed beside the cow. Mrs. Munnuswamy had said that this was what was always done. “The mother has to be fooled into believing that the young one is still alive,” she had said. “Otherwise the poor thing will be too full of sorrow to give milk, and her udders will be infected and she, too, will die.” Putti had thought how wonderful it would be if humans were as easily deluded. Or did the cow know that her calf was dead and willingly submit to the comfort of the illusion that Munnuswamy had created with hide and hay?

She decided to go up to the terrace and sit there for a while. Past the dancing girls she went, ignoring Ammayya who sat at the door commenting on the girls, on Nirmala's singing and teaching methods.

Her mother, too, did not look at her. She was angry with Putti. Earlier that day, they had searched the house down for Maya's red coat. Except for Ammayya's room. She had refused to let them in, or to open any of her cupboards and trunks.

“Insulting me in my own house!” she had screamed, hitting out at her daughter-in-law and the maid with her stick. “Accusing me of theft! Kali-yuga has indeed, arrived and I, unlucky one, am still alive to witness it! Oh-oh-oh!”

“Nobody is accusing you of anything, Ammayya,” said Nirmala, dodging the stick. “The child is really upset, so we are only looking just in case that coat got into your room by mistake.”

“Mistake? Mistake? Can a coat open doors and climb in by itself? You don't fool me one bit. Or that cross-eyed bitch of a Koti! You are all after my jewellery, I know.”

“If Maya's ghost can wander around the house, why can't a coat?” demanded Nirmala with some asperity. She wasn't going to let Ammayya off that easily.

“Ghosts? There are ghosts in this house?” asked Ammayya artlessly, opening her eyes wide.

“
You
are the one who told my granddaughter that there were,” said Nirmala.

“Me? I never talk to that brat. What use talking to a dumb thing?” She held her heart and allowed the tears to drown her eyes. “All my life I have done things for people, total strangers too, and now look how I am treated in my own house.”

After lunch, while Ammayya napped, Putti had stolen her mother's keys and found the coat wrapped in an old sari stored in a corner of the cupboard. She had quietly handed it to Nirmala. Now, up on the terrace Putti leaned against the wall and swept all her hair to one side. It was a Sunday and she had indulged in an oil bath. The combination of the thick mustard oil melting into her body and the hot water that she had used to wash it off made her feel soft and drowsy. A pleasant breeze cooled the back of her neck. Far below, in the garden, she noticed Nandana near the mango tree. The child had captured the cat and was playing with it.

“Like dark clouds her ringlets tumble,” called a voice from the neighbouring terrace.

Putti looked up startled to see Gopala standing there, in a singlet and striped cotton shorts. She knew it was indecent of him to expose his body like this to an unmarried woman, but she felt her belly flutter with excitement.

“Her face is a moonbeam shining through,” continued Gopala, leaning against the parapet and giving Putti a deep, meaningful glance. “Her eyes like twin stars beckon.” Now his own eyes touched her breasts decorously covered by the pallu of her sari, and to her horror she could feel her nipples harden inside the stern cotton Maidenform brassiere, which, like the rest of the lingerie in Beauteous Boutique, was built to last several decades. Putti blushed, embarrassed by her wayward body.

“Shall I come and carry you away my moonbeam?” called Gopala, and made as if to leap across the gap separating the two buildings, and Putti turned and fled into the safety of the house. She was so agitated she did not know what to do with herself. The last thing she wanted was to face her mother just now. She sat down at the top of the stairs, her heart thudding with fear and excitement—Gopala was like a film star, Putti thought. But, she reminded herself, he was also an unscrupulous, ruthless man. He was dangerous. Nevertheless, the thought of him tainting her safe, clean world was wildly exciting.

And to complicate matters, next week the mental asylum therapist was arriving to see her—the fellow who had been touted as such a marvellous catch by Gowramma. Putti did not know what she would do if he agreed to marry her. Could
she
refuse? Or would Ammayya find something wrong with the fellow as she always did with every prospective groom? Restlessly she went into her brother's bathroom one floor down, and splashed some cold water on her face. Then, having composed herself, she went to her own room hoping her mother would not be there.

But Nirmala's students had left, and Ammayya was regretting her quarrel with Putti. She looked up eagerly at her daughter.

“My darling, isn't it exciting, next week my new son-in-law will be arriving?”

“I am not married to him yet. We are only meeting for the first time,” snapped Putti sweeping past her into the bedroom.

“I have a good feeling about this one,” sang Ammayya, rocking happily on her chair. “A really good feeling. And I saw four crows in the backyard this morning. You know what that means?”

“No.”

“Of course you do, my darling. I only taught you the rhyme.
One for sorrow, two for joy, three for letter, four for boy!
Now do you remember?”

Putti settled in front of the Belgian mirror and brushed out her long hair tangled by the breeze.

“Why you are not speaking to your old mother, my pet?” begged Ammayya.

“I have nothing to say.”

Ammayya looked fondly at Putti who was staring at the mirror as if she had never seen it before. A small spiral of doubt unwound in her mind. Once again, she noticed, Putti was standing transfixed before the glass. The old woman moved closer and tried to see what her daughter was looking at, but there was nothing except the two of them in the corroded silver.

At six that evening, after the dance students had dispersed, the family went to the temple. Nandana looked unfamiliar in a long, green cotton skirt and matching blouse instead of her usual jeans. Nirmala carried the fruit offerings in a silver platter—fresh bananas, a single apple (as apples were far too expensive now), a small bunch of grapes coated white with some pesticide that wouldn't wash off, a coconut with its fibre still intact (it was inauspicious to get rid of that tuft before the coconut was offered to God). A couple of a garbatti sticks and a string of flowers completed the picture. When Sripathi's father was alive, the offering was much grander and
included out-of-season mangos, pomegranates, even a silver coin or two.

Now that the festival season had started, the temple was crowded with evening worshippers. Women swept by richly dressed in heavy silk saris, smelling of sandalwood, jasmine and incense. They, like Nirmala, carried platters of fruit and flowers. The men looked plain in comparison, as most of them wore white lungis wrapped around their waists and starched white cotton kurtas. There were rows of vendors outside the temple gates, shouting out their wares. More flowers, coconuts, fruit, betel leaves, piles of kum-kum powder in shades of crimson and pink, like mountains in a child's dream—every possible thing that one might need to placate, honour or flatter the gods inside that great stone building with its soaring pillars and dark womb where the chief deity resided in tranquil silence.

They left their shoes with a young boy who gave them a token in exchange. For a small charge, he would guard their footwear from the thieves and beggars who always hung around the gates, waiting for alms or an unguarded pocket. The temple was already full of evening worshippers—people singing, bending before the various idols scattered around the echoing stone enclosure, or simply praying silently with their eyes squeezed shut. One man lay flat on the ground and repeatedly banged his forehead on the floor, his murmured prayers rising and falling with each movement of his head. In a far corner, leaning against a pillar, sat an old man with neat clothes and sparse hair. He clapped his hands and shouted in a rich voice that seemed to emanate straight from his belly, “All gone! All gone! O Lord of the Cowherds, only you are left for me!”

Krishnamurthy Acharye, the old priest who had presided over the ceremonies when Maya was born, during the annaprashna when she had her first mouthful of solid food, on her first birthday, and who had blessed her before she left Toturpuram, was waiting for them. He recited prayers for her soul and Alan's, the latter in spite of Ammayya's objections.

“You and I are old enough to know better than to make a fuss over all this nonsense, Janaki Amma,” he had wheezed. The priest was one of the few people who had known Ammayya long enough to address her by her first name. “Our gods won't mind if we say a prayer for someone of another faith. I know, I have been talking to them for eighty five years.”

“But he doesn't have a gothra-nakshatra, nothing,” quibbled Ammayya. “What was his family name? What stars was he born under?”

“We shall do it in God's name, that will be enough,” said the priest. Ammayya had to content herself with eyeing the silver utensils that Nirmala had polished and brought along with the coconut, the flowers, the coins and the pieces of cloth that would be distributed to the poor after the rituals were observed.

“So cunning, did you see all the new-new things she has purchased? And she says that she has no money!” whispered Ammayya to Putti, who frowned at her.

“Those are her wedding things, Ammayya,” she said, disgusted with her mother for behaving so uncharitably on even this sad occasion.

It was a simple ceremony. Nirmala had insisted on that, and the family sat in deep silence for a few minutes after the priest had finished his incantations. The ancient rhythm of the words was profoundly moving, and Sripathi could feel the tears prickle behind his eyelids. He wouldn't let them fall, though. To do so would be to acknowledge the finality of Maya's death. To do so would be to absolve himself of all blame, and he couldn't do that. Like a penitent he needed the harsh bite of guilt to keep memory alive.

Later that evening, Arun and Sripathi rode down to the beach with Maya's ashes. It was full of people out for an evening walk, children racing through the waves screaming half-fearfully as the surf snarled at their bare legs, women with their saris tucked high between their knees, keeping a watchful eye on the children and shouting, “Be careful, be careful!” every now and again. Here and
there in the twilight, Petromax lanterns gleamed where vendors sold peanuts and green mango cut into lacy spirals, spicy bhel-puri and sugar-cane juice, their voices hoarse from competition with the endless crashing of the sea.

“Let's go farther up, over there,” said Arun, pointing to a narrow, deserted strip of sand hedged in by large, mossy rocks.

They emptied the urn, watching the flecks of grey float away on the foam and the breeze, or settle on the rocks from where they would be washed away as the tide surged higher. Sripathi could feel some of the dust settle into his hair, stick to the skin on his face. He brushed a hand across his hair, but could still feel the weight of those particles. His face, too, felt coarse, as if the ash had scabbed over it permanently.