The Hero's Walk (40 page)

Slowly the story emerged. She and the other girls were playing Through the Tunnel. When it was Nandana's turn to go into the tunnel, they had promised to wait for her at the other end, but had run away to Nithya's house instead. And when they came down ten minutes later, there was no sign of her.

“The ghosts took her away,” sobbed Ayesha, cringing at her mother's angry face. “I told Meena not to force her, but she said it was a test of friendship. Last time she went in and came out, and nothing happened.”

Mrs. Quadir glared at her daughter. “Is that how you treat children who are new here? I am ashamed of you. How would you like it if someone did the same to you?”

“Don't scold her too much,” said Nirmala, trying not to show her fear. “She is only a child.”

“I am so sorry that my daughter did such a bad thing, Mrs. Rao. Wait a moment and I will phone Nithya and Meena and ask them if they know where she went.”

Several phone calls to families in both blocks turned up no information, and Nirmala got up to leave. Mrs. Quadir accompanied her down the stairs, apologizing again for her daughter's role in the whole drama. The group of teenagers was still there, leaning against the wall of the building or standing with their hands in their pockets, laughing and chatting.

“Did you find her, Aunty?” asked the boy who had approached Nirmala earlier.

“No, I don't know where she could be,” said Nirmala.

“If you want, we can go from flat to flat and check for you,” one of the boys suggested. “She couldn't have gone far with our lion of a Gurkha guarding the gates.”

Nirmala nodded and smiled. “No, you are right. She must be sitting and playing somewhere, naughty creature.” She left the compound with a heavy heart. Should they call the police for help? Suppose the child wasn't anywhere in the block, where would they start to search for her? This was a crowded town, and not many people knew Nandana the way they did the children who were born here. Why, even then children could disappear. For a brief moment, Nirmala's thoughts turned to Mrs. Poorna's daughter, and she shivered.

Somewhere between Chamber's Road and Brahmin Street, Sripathi's scooter coughed a couple of times and expired. He waited for a break in the churning, relentless traffic and then, dragging his scooter, plunged after a cow that had languidly drifted through, forcing the entire road to slow down. As long as he stuck close to the cow, thought Sripathi, nobody would dare hit him. He pressed against it, allowing it to lead him, hoping that it would not decide to void its bowels on his feet. When he reached the pavement, he felt as if he had achieved something miraculous in surviving the wild rush of traffic. He patted the cow's flank affectionately and made his way to Karim Mechanic's shack, dim under the single street light that was still working on the road. A couple of Petromax lanterns flared on either side of the shack and lit up the piles of tires, spare parts, a dismembered car chassis. The first drops of rain thudded down, bursting against the dry road like transparent glass beads just as Sripathi reached the shack. The earth, like an eager lover, sent up a wet scent that at any other time would have exhilarated him.

The mechanic shouted at his assistants, two small boys not much older than Nandana, to cover the assorted debris of other vehicles with tarpaulin.

“What, sahib?” he greeted Sripathi, struggling to tie down one end of a canvas sheet that had torn loose and flapped in the wind. “This old lady is sick again?”

“Broke down in the middle of the road,” said Sripathi.

“I will have to check it thoroughly. If the rain stops I can do it tomorrow, otherwise I will send one of my boys as soon as it is ready. You might need to buy a new scooter, sahib. This one is old and tired, like me and you, eh?”

With the tarpaulin still draped around his shoulders, Sripathi walked carefully down the road. He didn't want to disturb his crazy body any more than necessary. It scared him now, terrified him. A fresh wave of shivers washed over him, leaving even the tough bristles on his chin standing in raised cushions of skin.

Nirmala was waiting for him on the verandah. Behind her the house was dark and gloomy, which took Sripathi aback. Nirmala never forgot the ritual of turning on the lights at dusk. She had always believed that a dark house was an invitation to evil spirits. Sripathi also noticed that the smell of incense and burning wicks dipped in mustard oil was missing, which meant that Nirmala had not even performed her evening prayers.

“Where were you?” she demanded as soon as she saw him. “I have been going crazy. Nandana hasn't come home. I told her that I would pick her up at six-thirty. I told her to wait for me. I sent her next door to play and now I can't find her.”

Sripathi sat down wearily in the cane chair on the verandah. As usual he perched at the edge, avoiding the frayed strands of bamboo in the centre of the chair that clung together out of sheer will power. He had acquired the chair more than twenty-five years ago and refused to get rid of it despite Nirmala's periodic threats to give it away to the raddhi-wallah when he next came to buy Ammayya's stolen newspapers.

“Stop screaming. Maybe she has run away again. You know she keeps trying to go somewhere on her own. Someone will bring her
back, don't worry,” he said, easing his aching feet out of the shoes. He shrugged the tarp off his back and shuddered as the cold air touched his exposed arms.

“It is one hour
more
than that now,” wailed Nirmala, holding her sari to her mouth to stifle the sobs. “And dark too. She hasn't taken her backpack, I checked in her room. When she runs away, she always takes that bag with her. I don't know what to do.”

“Don't be silly. How can she disappear from next door? Did you check with the other children?”

“Of course I did. And some nice boys checked in each and every apartment. And no, the Gurkha fellow didn't see our Nandana leave the compound. He says that he was sitting there all the time and would not have let her go alone. But he could be making that up just to impress.”

“Why do you send her here and there alone?” asked Sripathi putting on his shoes again. “Can't you let her play here in our house?”

“You are very good at giving advice. How can I lock up a child at home, with only old people for company? Always you find somebody else to blame. Why you don't take the poor thing to the beach to play, if you know so much about children? And your son is another nuisance. He also hasn't come home yet either. Two-two men in this house, but not one is around when there is trouble!”

“I saw him from the movie theatre. He was marching in a procession,” said Sripathi. He lowered his voice, “There were police involved, too.”

“Movie theatre? You went for a movie while I was sitting here worrying?”

“Which movie?” Ammayya wanted to know.

“I didn't want to see it. I just wanted to purchase the tickets for Saturday, but your wonderful, planet-saving son started his protesting. There was a temporary curfew. Didn't you hear it on the news? We were locked inside the theatre.”

He went inside the house to fetch a sweater with Nirmala following.

“Where is your scooter?” she asked as they climbed the steps.

“Broke down. Had to walk all the way home. It is sitting with the mechanic,” said Sripathi. “Where have you kept my sweater?”

Nirmala was completely puzzled. “Why you suddenly require a sweater? This morning only you were grumbling hot hot hot, and now you behave as if you are going on a yatra to Gangotri, to Mount Everest! The sweaters are inside a box on top of that shelf in the kitchen. Too heavy to remove now. Wear something else.”

“What?”

Nirmala thought for a moment and went into Arun's room. From the cupboard she drew out Nandana's father's jacket and handed it to Sripathi.

He looked at it without touching it, shocked by Nirmala's seeming lack of sentimentality. “You want me to wear
this
?” he asked. The shivering overtook him again and his voice shook. “Are you mad?”

“What is so mad about a coat that nobody uses? You are feeling cold, so wear it,” replied Nirmala giving him a frosty look. He had never seen her like this before and it frightened him. Nirmala was the one person in the house that he could always take for granted, always depend on for her simple wisdom and goodness, but now she seemed to be changing before his very eyes. He had always been grateful for her stolid practicality, her ability to carry on with the business of daily living without breaking down. What a horrible parody of that practical nature this was.

“But this is
his
coat,” said Sripathi.

“So what? You never bothered about him when he was alive, so why do you care now?”

He turned away from her hard-eyed, tearless gaze and went back to his room. He took out a thick flannel shirt from the cupboard where it had languished unworn for years. “What do you want me to do?” he asked without turning around.

“Ask Munnuswamy to help. He has influence. His Boys know everybody in this town. Surely they will be able to find her.”

“I am not going to that crook for anything,” said Sripathi. “I will walk down the road and check her school. Maybe somebody saw her. If she isn't back in half an hour, contact the police station.”

“But you aren't going to Munnuswamy,” Nirmala said. She was still holding the jacket, her fingers tight against the thick grey material.

“No. He is a rogue.”

“Then I will go. I am fed up with always listening to your nonsense. This is not right, that is not okay, what will people say? You have ruined my life because of all this nonsense. You go to Nandu's school, and I will ask our neighbour for help.” Nirmala went swiftly down the stairs.

“Where are you going? Shall I come with you?” asked Putti, trailing after her.

“Next door,” said Nirmala briefly before leaving the house, her bare feet flashing defiance from under the flapping edges of her sari.

“You are going to that milkman's house?” screeched Ammayya. “Low-caste people!”

“Shut up, Ammayya!” said Putti, surprising even herself. There was a moment of silence while her mother digested this unexpected response, and then the floodgates opened. Ammayya wailed and beat her chest, she hiccupped and wheezed, turned blue in the face and declared that she was about to faint. Finally, she smacked her cane petulantly on the floor and whined, “Sripathi, did you hear the way your sister spoke to me? And you just stood there and listened like a wet mop? While I was insulted left and right?”

Sripathi followed Nirmala out of Big House, not bothering to reply. It was raining even harder now. He hailed an auto-rickshaw but it whizzed past. Another one stopped but refused to go in the direction of the school. Sripathi found that he could not even summon up any anger against the auto-wallah. He hurried down the road, past the gypsies huddled under television cartons on the
pavement, past the vegetable vendors with their produce covered in plastic, and the brightly lit video parlour with its flashing neon sign. The rain, which had thinned to a drizzle, began to drum down again heavily as he reached the huddled shape of Karim Mechanic's shop, now shrouded completely in tarpaulin. He spotted his scooter lying on its side like a wounded animal amid the mechanic's debris. It was sheeted in plastic and tied with heavy ropes to a tree. Thunder rolled across the sky. Sripathi shook open his umbrella and increased his pace. A wind started up, shaking the branches of the ancient caesalpinia trees lining the road like old warriors, and the umbrella strained and bucked in his grasp. He pressed his body against the wind and continued to walk down the road that stretched out before him, long and dark and strangely unfamiliar, even though he had spent his entire life travelling it.

T
HE DOOR CLICKED OPEN
and Mrs. Poorna entered the room with a plate piled with parathas. “Here my darling, I have made these for you, exactly as you like them. With lots and lots of sugar,” she said, sitting on the bed beside Nandana. “Shall I feed you?”

Nandana shook her head violently. She wanted to go back to the old house next door. She hated this crazy woman, this smelly apartment and the room full of blue dresses. Everywhere there were pictures of a little girl, big and small, framed or simply tacked to the wall. A naked newborn, a wide-eyed infant, a six-year-old in a starched uniform, her pinched face solemn and unsmiling. Memories of a little girl who had disappeared from everywhere but her mother's heart and confused mind. She shifted uneasily on the bed, moving away from Mrs. Poorna who was gazing at her with shining eyes.

The woman giggled and pinched Nandana's chin. “Sweet paapu, teasing me, making jokes. Of course you will eat my parathas. And while you are eating, you will say your favourite poem. Do you remember it? You won a prize in poetry elocution for it, remember? ‘
The boy stood on the burning deck
…' And see that picture there, that is you on your first birthday. You took your firststep that day. I thought my heart would burst with pride.”