An Obedient Father Read Online Free PDF

back tomorrow night."
    "He could stay in Beri. People might come and there'd be no pundit." Anita's body had become stiff and the lines on her forehead were sharp and deep. "Think of the shame." Although Anita had most of the responsibility for the ceremony, the strength of her response made it appear affected.
    "I can get someone else," I said softly. "Don't worry." It took a moment for Anita's body to loosen. When the lines on her forehead had eased, I said in a light joking voice, "You're like me. Under pressure we stop thinking." Anita didn't reply.
    Asha came back with the glass of water. "How was school?" I asked.
    "Good."
    She looked at me as I drank and I could tell that already our morning conversation and this gift had shifted our relationship. I put the glass on the ground and asked, "Your teachers don't bother you, do they?"
    "No. I have good teachers."
    "It's bad to hit children." I felt silly for saying something this obvious, so I tried hiding my inanity with more words. "When I was in higher secondary, the untouchables sat in the back of the class.

    The teachers couldn't slap the untouchables because then they would be touching them. The untouchables knew this and would always be talking. Sometimes the teachers became very angry, and to shut up the untouchables they threw pieces of chalk at them. And the untouchables, because all the students sat on the floor, would race around on their hands and knees, dodging the chalk."
    When I churned my arms to show how swiftly the untouchables crawled, Asha laughed and said, "My teachers only hit with rulers." She was quiet for a moment and then spoke eagerly: "I had something happen. There's a girl in school who last week got one of those soft papers you blow your nose on. Those papers that rich people use instead of handkerchiefs in advertisements. She's been using it all week. She doesn't have a cold, but she keeps putting it in her nose. I told her today the paper was ugly She said, 'If I throw it away, you'll take it.' I said I wouldn't, so she threw it onto the floor and waited. Two girls tried grabbing it. The one who got it blew her nose in it all day"
    I laughed at Asha's attention to detail and tried tickling her stomach. Asha jumped away, smiling. "Do you want to come with me to a wedding reception tonight? Since I can't eat much, I should bring someone who can." I said the last sentence because I felt I had to wheedle Anita's permission to do this. The possibility of taking Asha out of the sadness of her life and showing her all the people who knew me had come to me as I left Rosary School with the bag of money
    "This is Mr. Gupta's?" Anita asked.
    "I can show her off to everybody I know"
    "Will there be ice cream and Campa Cola?" Asha said.
    "You can just eat ice cream if you want."
    Asha giggled at the idea.
    "How is Mr. Gupta?" Anita inquired.
    Mr. Gupta's son had eloped with a Sikh and this wedding party was coming after many tears and curses. "He keeps wanting to know what he did wrong." Anita sat down on a chair across from me. "I tell him it's all written in the stars."

    "It'll be late when you come home. Asha has school tomorrow."
    "We'll take an autorickshaw."
    Anita looked at Asha beating the air with a badminton racket. Asha was moving from side to side and talking to herself as she played an imaginary opponent. "You can't beat me."
    The sun had set forty minutes earlier, and the sidewalks and road were soaked in the same even gray light. I had been so afraid of having nothing to say to Asha that ever since we got in the autorickshaw I had been unable to stop talking. "Mr. Gupta's son had gone with a friend to look at a used car and the man selling it had a daughter who gave them water. Ajay fell in love immediately," I shouted over the beating of the engine. The boy driving the three-wheeler ground gears as he sought the narrow channels of movement which kept appearing and disappearing in the traffic. "I've never seen her, but Sikh women are