The Hero's Walk Read Free Page A

powder for the packs of felt stickers that came in a huge variety of shapes, sizes and colours. Ever since, Sripathi hadhad a running argument with her about the bindis that she left stuck to the bathroom mirror like chicken-pox marks on the glass.
    She handed him a stainless-steel tumbler of steaming coffee. “Why didn’t you answer the phone?” she wanted to know.
    â€œWhy didn’t you?”
    â€œI was busy emptying out the vessels in the kitchen. Today is water day, remember? In between I was trying to make breakfast before your mother started shouting that she was hungry. And you want me to run up to get the phone also? Enh? What were
you
doing that couldn’t be stopped for one moment?”
    She began to remove the towels from the balcony wall, where they had been spread out to dry the previous night. Sripathi caught a glimpse of her bare waist as she leaned forward and the sari pallu fell away. There were extra folds of soft flesh there now, although he remembered how, when Nirmala was young, that waist used to arch deeply inwards before joining her hips. He couldn’t resist pinching a fold of her waist gently, and she jumped, startled, before slapping his hand away.
    â€œChhee! Old man, doing such nonsense first thing in the morning!” she exclaimed.
    â€œWhat nonsense? I was just administering the pinch test.” He had read in the Thursday health section about a test that fitness instructors used to determine the amount of fat their clients had to shed.
    â€œI forgot to tell you,” Nirmala said, ignoring his teasing, “yesterday evening at the temple I saw Prakash Bhat and his wife. So uncomfortable it felt. They pretended not to see me. Can you imagine?”
    Tilting his tumbler, Sripathi poured a stream of milky coffee into a small bowl on the table, stopping just before it frothed out. Then he poured it back into the tumbler. To and fro he went, expertly, until he had created a hillock of foam over his coffee.
    â€œMaybe they really
didn’t
see you,” he told Nirmala. “You imagine all sorts of things.”
    â€œI don’t imagine. I know they ignored me. I’m not a fool, even though I don’t have big-big degrees in this and that. That Prakash used to call me Mamma, do you remember? He was almost married to our Maya and now see how little respect he shows me. And I thought that he was a decent boy!”
    â€œOkay, so they saw you. Now leave me alone. I have work to do.” He didn’t want to be reminded of old troubles. And why should she expect Prakash to show any interest in the mother of the woman who had discarded him like a used banana leaf? Why did Nirmala persist in bringing up these memories? The unpleasantness of the incident would stay with him like the bitter taste of kashaya.
    Nirmala carried the towels into the bedroom but continued to talk to him. “Prakash’s wife is very plain-looking,” she said. “A potato nose and tiny eyes. Lots of jewellery, but. As if shining stones can blind one to her face. She was wearing the diamond necklace. Do you remember how lovely it looked on our Maya? And now that lumpy creature has it. Tchah!”
    Sripathi scowled at Nirmala’s back. She was bent over the bed now, straightening out the wrinkled sheets. “I told you, stop going on and on about forgotten things. I don’t want to hear them.”
    She patted the pillows briskly and stretched, her palm pressed into the small of her back, rubbing the tension away. “Yes-yes, it is all right for me to listen to your boring office stories every day,” she protested. “But the minute
I
open my mouth, you tell me to keep quiet. Anyway, what I wanted to say was that the girl is pregnant, and they were talking to Krishna Acharye about performing the bangle ceremony.”
    â€œWhy do you have to listen to other people’s private conversations? Eavesdroppers never hear anything