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

home and give me the milk.”
    She had never indulged in baby talk; the unformed words that sounded unbearably cute in other children had never appeared in his daughter’s vocabulary. Always such a precise little creature. She had carried that fierce precision right through to her adult years, along with an ambition that Sripathi had never entirely understood to be the best at whatever she took on.
    He turned a frozen face to Arun and said, “Your sister is dead. There was an accident. She and her husband are no more.”
    In a detached sort of way, he watched the shock wash over Arun’s face. Your sister, he said again mentally. The child who came six years before you. He looked away before he blurted out something unforgivable. Such as, “Why your sister and not you?” Arun flirted with danger every other day in his efforts to change the world, but here he stood healthy and breathing and shabby in faded green.
    â€œNandana too?” asked Arun.
    The child.
    â€œNo, she wasn’t there.”
    â€œThe child is okay? Where is she? Poor thing—what will happen to her?” Nirmala cried.
    â€œHow did it happen?” Arun asked.
    Sripathi felt forced to reply. “An accident.”
    â€œWho was driving?”
    It hadn’t occurred to Sripathi to find out, and now that Arun had brought it up, he was filled with an urgent desire to know. Was Alan Baker to blame? Was he drunk? Was he careless? Yes, most certainly it was that man’s fault. The same fellow who had taken Maya away from her family, her duties, her home—that same bastard must have taken her life, too. He scrabbled for the tattered phone directory on which he had jotted Dr. Sunderraj’s number. It was important to know right away who was behind the wheel. Who was to blame.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” asked Nirmala. “Who are you phoning?”
    â€œThat doctor who called just now,” explained Sripathi. “To ask who was responsible.”
    â€œDoes it matter?”
    â€œOf course it does. We have to punish the person who did it. The one who murdered our child,” said Sripathi calmly.
    â€œWhat is this nonsense you are talking? Punish, how you can punish somebody all the way there from all the way here?” Nirmala demanded.
    â€œSue them, that’s what I will do. Set our lawyers on them.”
    â€œWhat lawyers? Why are you babbling like this?”
    Sripathi ignored her, and with a trembling finger he dialed Dr. Sunderraj’s number. I am not the one you should be blaming, he thought; it is somebody else. As soon as he heard it ringing, though, he lost heart and dropped the receiver. Nirmala was right. They had no lawyers, and even if they did, he had no money for legal fees. Besides, how could he, Sripathi Rao, a man of no consequence in this world, sue somebody thousands of miles away in another country? And so, to hide his lack of worth from his own cruel gaze, he turned on his wife, as usual.
    â€œWhy you always have to tell me what to do, what not to do?” he snarled at her. “Is this my house or not? Did I ask you for money to pay lawyers? Did I ask you for anything at all? You came like a pauper to this house, and you talk as if you are some maharani.”
    Nirmala stumbled away from him, down the stairs, and he watched Putti and Koti lead her away into the familiar warmth of the kitchen. Arun pushed roughly past him and followed his mother down to the kitchen. Sripathi was left alone on the landing with the silent phone. He struggled to control his inchoate feelings—rage and despair, sorrow and guilt. He cursed himself for the way he had behaved with Nirmala. He had destroyed what should have been a moment of mourning together for their lost child. But then, he reminded himself, she was the one who had attacked him. From the bedroom downstairs, he could hear Ammayya’s voiceagain. “ H 2 O has stopped. Only my tank is full. No drinking