The Hero's Walk (37 page)

On the other side of the cubicle wall, he heard Renuka Naidu discussing the latest movie running at the Galaxy Theatre. “Superb acting,” she said in her confident voice. “The female role is quite strong. But I adore Shahrukh Khan. He is such a dreamboat, and he acts so well in this flick.”

She would definitely be moving to Madras. A dull envy filled Sripathi, flooding into his mouth so that he could taste its bitterness.

“You females just go for that body of his,” laughed Mohan, another of Kashyap's young recruits. He was good at hustling business, Sripathi had noticed. He had an easy charm, a way of making you feel as if you were the most important person in the world. “I prefer the dame, Madhuri Dixit.”

“Oh, of course, and I am sure you like her only for her acting.” There was the sound of a chair being scraped back. “I have to go meet the big boss now. See you later, okay?”

Their voices faded away, and Sripathi went back to scribbling numbers anxiously on his yellow pad—loan payments, money to be returned to Raju, house tax, repairs to the roof before the monsoons, food, water, electricity—the list was endless. Finally he slapped his pen down in exasperation. With a sort of irrational perversity, he decided to leave the office early and go to Galaxy Theatre to book tickets for the movie. So what if there were bills to be paid? It was years since he had seen a film, since he had allowed dreams to drown him in their luminous sweetness. Perhaps he could pick up some tickets and surprise Putti? Poor thing, he had
not even taken her out to a restaurant to celebrate her birthday this year. And Nirmala. It would do her good to get out of the house with him, and a movie with all those thick-thighed women dancing around trees would make her laugh. The child could come along as well, her first experience of an Indian movie. Sripathi was so pleased with his idea that he forgot about the mental hospital therapist who was supposed to meet his sister that evening.

He hurriedly scribbled a few more lines of copy, dropped off the sheafs of paper at the typist's desk and strolled into Kashyap's office. By a stroke of luck he had just left for a client meeting and wasn't expected back until late afternoon.

“Could you please tell him that I had to go home? Not feeling well,” Sripathi said to the secretary.

Jayaram gave Sripathi a critical look from under his sweeping eyebrows. “You look all right to me.”

“I am feeling dizzy,” lied Sripathi, trying to look like a man whose head was spinning. “My doctor told me to go straight to his clinic if I felt like this again. Blood pressure might be very high, that's what he said. Too much tension recently.”

Jayaram's eyes softened and he nodded. “How is the baby doing? Must be finding it so funny in this country, enh? So dirty and noisy after those clean-clean places she has lived in? My nephew who is in Australia holds his nose from morning to night when he visits me. Poor boy.”

He handed Sripathi a few forms to fill, glanced over them and allowed him to leave the office. Sripathi felt guilty and relieved, all in the same breath.

From the ticket counter, down the theatre steps, looping around the bicycle stands and puddling outside the gates of the theatre, was a river of people patiently waiting for the clerk to arrive. Sripathi parked his scooter on the pavement that had been turned into a make-shift parking lot already crammed with vehicles. A gigantic
billboard loomed up from the wall of the theatre. There was a violently coloured scene of a man in tight leather pants standing over a bleeding body. His arm stuck right out of the billboard, his fist clenched triumphantly. From the lower right-hand corner emerged the cut-out of a naked leg that was attached to a flamboyantly curved woman, bright pink and nude, save for a bikini made of sequins that shimmered in the breeze. She appeared to be dancing, her hips swinging in a wide fleshy arc, her breasts aggressive in their shining sheath of sequins.

“Deadly, eh?” chuckled a voice right behind Sripathi. It was Shyamsundar, a clerk from Advisions. Damn the man, now he will go and tell everybody that he met me here, and then I am in trouble.

“Hello, Shyamsundar, you also took time off today or what?” Sripathi asked.

“Yes-yes,” said the man bashfully. “Today my daughter is having her maturity ceremony. She became a woman last week, so big celebration we are having in the house for that reason only.”

“So why are you here?”

“It is a ladies' function, no? What I will do in the house with my better half, her mother, my mother, and sisters and all?”

“Then why did you take a day off?”

The man looked offended. “Suppose my family needs help with preparation? I am helping them all morning, getting flowers, organizing food, the priest and such things. Now I am having some time to myself, so my better half said, go and see a movie, so here I am.” He gave Sripathi a curious look. “How come
you
are not at work today?”

“Oh, I took half-day off. I have to go to the doctor for a checkup. On the way I decided to buy tickets for the evening show.”

“Why doctor? You are not well or what?”

“Oh, nothing much. Just high blood pressure.”

“Blood pressure, eh?” smirked Shyamsundar. “And after watching this sex bomb going tingi-tingi, finished, your blood-pressure
machine will burst itself!” He jabbed an elbow into Sripathi and continued. “And thunder-thighs Madhuri, giving all those kissies to hero with her wet sari sticking everywhere … Ayyo! Where will your blood pressure be, saar?” He winked and dug Sripathi in the ribs again.

Idiot, thought Sripathi, but smiled instead. There was a small pause and then Shyamsundar leaned close to Sripathi and whispered, “Ever seen one of
those
?” He jabbed a finger at a less conspicuous sign on one wall of the cinema. It was a shadowy poster in grey tones. In one corner a woman looked coyly over her shoulder and unhooked her brassiere, while a bare-chested man lay spread-eagle on the bed. He looked like he was dead.

Many Nights. Extremely for Adults. Uncensored XXX Scenes
, proclaimed the poster.

“Once, when I was in college,” admitted Sripathi, remembering how guilty he had felt, certain that he would be recognized by someone in the crowd, certain that his mother would find out and die of shame.

“How was it?” asked Shyamsundar.

Sripathi shrugged. “I don't remember, it was such a long time ago. And those days, the film quality was not very good either, very dark, couldn't see anything.” Ahead of him the crowd inched forward minutely and he wondered whether he ought to abandon the attempt to buy tickets and go home. A man wearing a loud yellow shirt nipped in at the waist and bell-bottom trousers slid along the edges of the queue muttering in a low monotone, “Two for fifty, two for fifty, two for fifty.” He reminded Sripathi of a rat—his beady eyes lined with kohl, his razor-thin nose that quivered every time he spotted a gullible face tempted to pay black-market rates for tickets.

He sidled up to Sripathi and grinned ingratiatingly, exposing rows of teeth corroded by paan juice and tobacco. “Two for fifty?” he asked, expelling a gust of garlicky breath. Sripathi stepped back quickly.

“Why you should waste your time standing here in this heat? That's what I feel bad about,” continued the tout sympathetically. “First you have to work all day, and then you have to stand in a long line just to buy tickets for a movie. You are here for more work or for relaxation? I feel so sad about it. That is why I thought I will help my fellow brothers and sisters a little bit, is all.”

“Rogue, cheating honest people and telling big stories,” grumbled Shyamsundar, turning to Sripathi who nodded agreement.

The tout shrugged and moved on, leaving in his wake a cocktail of odours—garlic, hair oil, stale sweat—laced with some sugary perfume. It was now three o'clock and the theatre compound was swarming with people. After a minor commotion in the front of the queue, people started to drift away.

“Oho, ticket counter is closed,” said Shyamsundar, mopping his forehead and the back of his neck. He checked the money in his wallet and pushed through the milling crowd to get to the black marketeer, who was now doing brisk business. Sripathi hesitated and then followed him. Since he had waited for so long, he might as well buy the wretched tickets, even if they were three times as expensive. It wasn't as if he did this every day.

“What, gentlemen,” smiled the tout, slicking his greasy hair back with a palm. “Tired of standing in the sun?”

“Two tickets, please.” Sripathi held out a fifty-rupee note. Given the sudden enhancement in price, he decided to purchase the tickets only for Nirmala and Putti.

“Seventy-five rupees,” said the man.

“What? Rascal, you said fifty rupees!”

“What I can do? Prices are going up every minute in this country. Yesterday a loaf of bread cost two rupees, today it is five. Tomato was three per kilo, this morning my wife bought for seven! And please, saar, I beg you, stop this name-calling. I am educated, respectable person, doing a service for my fellow ladies and gentlemen. You want ticket, you pay the going rate. Many people are
willing to give me a hundred rupees even. But for you I am making a special concession.”

All of a sudden he leaned forward and pointed at a five-rupee note that was sticking out of Sripathi's shirt pocket. “You should be careful with your money, saar,” he said solicitously. “Lots of thieves and pickpockets and all here.”

“As if I don't know,” said Sripathi.

“Just doing my
duty
, I am a God-fearing man just doing my
duty
,” huffed the tout.

“All right, all right, here's seventy-five.” God only knew what Nirmala would say when she found out how much he had paid, but it was far too late for regrets. Transaction concluded, the tout disappeared into the milling crowd, which seemed to be concentrated near the theatre gates. Sripathi found himself being propelled slowly by the surging crush of bodies towards the gates as well. He tried to get a glimpse of the road outside, his eyes scanning the sea of vehicles on the pavement for his battered scooter. On the road, all traffic had come to a halt to make way for a winding procession of people waving banners and flags, flanked on either side by policemen.

“What's going on?” he asked, tapping a man in front of him on the shoulder.

“Some kind of protest march, I think,” said the man, shrugging.

“Big trouble, I heard,” offered a roadside vendor, emptying his basket of peanuts into a large plastic bag and folding up the cane table on which he had set up shop. “Better not to get involved. They burnt a bus on Margosa Road for no reason, I heard.” He slung everything over one shoulder, balanced his basket on his head, shifted to get everything settled into place, and started walking away.

Sripathi wondered whether he ought to risk leaving the relative safety of the theatre compound and make a dash towards his scooter parked outside. It would take him a while to extricate it from the mess of vehicles there, and by that time anything could
happen. These people were always on the edge, a word could set them off and chaos would spread like a kerosene fire.

“Leave our fish alone!” the crowd shouted in unison. “Stop starving the poor!” Some of them carried placards and posters with more slogans:
Foreign Ships Go Home! Thieves and Robbers Go Home!
and,
You Have Taken Our Fish and Left Behind Only Blood!

By now the crowd around him had squeezed Sripathi forward so that he found himself pressed against the gates of the cinema that had been locked by a pair of burly guards. He gazed at the procession and his eyes fell on the familiar figure of Arun, bedraggled as always, furiously shouting something that Sripathi could not catch. He stretched a frantic arm out of the gates, simultaneously filled with anger at his son's recklessness and a sneaking pride at his defiant courage. “Arun!” he shouted, but his words were swept away by the rising wave of voices on the road. Another glimpse of his son, his cotton shirt ripped clear off his shoulder. His head bobbed up and down a few times before being obscured by the crowd. Sripathi shook the gates, hoping that he could get out and perhaps drag the idiot boy away from all those policemen, take him back home where it was safe. One of the security guards prodded at his arm with a baton and said politely, “That's enough. Inside, please. No trouble or I will break your head.”

“But that is my son there,” protested Sripathi. The guard ignored him and whacked harder at his arm, forcing him to withdraw it. “I
said
, I will break your head.” Some more burly men from the cinema pushed through and lined up with their backs to the gate so that Sripathi's view of the procession was almost completely blocked.

“I want to go out,” he shouted, struggling forward against the tide of the crowd that was now being prodded back towards the theatre by the baton-waving guards.

Somebody tapped him on the shoulder, and he turned around to find Shyamsundar at his heels. “What is happening now? Do you know?” gasped Sripathi, relieved to see the dark, familiar face.

“No idea.” Shyamsundar shook his head. “Come on, let's go inside the theatre and buy something to drink. Who knows how long we'll have to stay here, might as well be comfortable.”

“I saw my son outside in that procession,” said Sripathi. “I hope he doesn't get hurt.”

“Your
son
? What was he doing with those khachda people? Is he in the police service?”

“No, he was one of the protesters.”

“Why you allow your son to protest and get involved in all these dangerous things? I would never let my children do this.”

Sripathi shrugged uneasily. Now the tiny bit of pride that he had felt earlier on was replaced by anger.

They pushed their way into the cool, dark lobby of the cinema, with its faded green Rexine sofas, ash-bins full of sand and cigarette butts that hadn't been cleared for days, large posters of Hollywood stars from the fifties with corrugated hairdos—all enveloped in the thick, sour odour of old coffee and popcorn. Sripathi hurried to the telephone booth in one corner of the lobby and dialed home. The phone remained mute in his hand. He pushed a rupee coin into the slot and dialed again. Nothing. Just the distant hum of static echoing in his ear. He slammed the phone down, jiggled it a few times in the receiver and tried again. This time, it swallowed his coin but gave him another stretch of silence in return. Damn thing.
Now
what to do? By six they would be wondering where he was, and starting to get worried if he didn't show up by seven. Sripathi thumped the phone a couple more times and wandered back to join Shyamsundar in the queue for coffee.