The Hero's Walk Read Online Free PDF Page A

is.”
    Putti sighed and went back into the dark, old house. If she did not respond to her mother right away, the old woman would start a scene, weeping and smacking her forehead with her palm and accusing her of being an unfeeling daughter.
    She entered the kitchen and smiled at Nirmala who was now busy chopping vegetables for the afternoon meal. “Do you need any help, Akka?” she asked.
    â€œNo, you’d better go to Ammayya,” said Nirmala, grimacing at her sister-in-law.
    â€œWho was that on the phone earlier?”
    â€œI don’t know. You could have answered, no? You were doing nothing.”
    â€œAyyo, I never know what to say.” Putti shuddered.
    Nirmala snorted. “What is this nonsense excuse? Are you a small baby, or what? Your brother sits up there like a god in heaven writing big-big things to this person and that, your nephew sleeps till ten o’clock, and you say you are afraid of a plastic dabba. I am the only one running here and there like a madwoman!”
    Putti looked guiltily at her. She was fond of Nirmala. “Okay, Akka, if it rings again, I promise I will pick it up. Do you think it was Maya?”
    â€œNo, she would not call on water day.”
    â€œPutti! Are you building a house, or what? Come here quickly,” called Ammayya, her voice thinly edged with petulance.
    â€œGo, go,” whispered Nirmala, her bangles clinking vigorously as she diced a large eggplant, “otherwise she will say we are talking about her. I don’t want any trouble first thing in the morning.”
    When Putti entered the dimly lit room that she shared with her mother, she found Ammayya seated at the dressing table. As soon as her daughter’s reflection joined hers in the floor-length Belgian mirror, the old woman swallowed a spoonful of some dark liquid from one of the many bottles before her. “Unh!” she said, scrunching up her mouth. “Can you see it, my darling?” She leaned forward and examined her face, wrinkled as a crushed paper bag, as if expecting to see some miraculous change wrought by the medicine she had just swallowed.
    â€œSee what?” asked Putti.
    Ammayya pulled down the skin beneath her right eye with her index finger and rolled her eyeballs around. “Chintamani told me that one should always watch the eyes. If they are yellow, then it is jaundice or some other liver trouble. If the skin inside the eyelid is pale, it is leukemia. Mine is too-too red. My blood pressure is high, that’s why. I can feel it going ghash-phash in my veins, my pet.”
    â€œI can’t see anything,” said Putti.
    â€œSo I am telling lies, or what? Look properly.” Ammayya yanked her eyelid down again. “Any time now I could explode. Chintamani’s father died of high blood pressure. He had red eyes like mine, do you remember? But everybody just thought it was an infection. Conjunctivitis or some such thing. Poor man.” She allowed a few tears to gather in her eyes and sighed heavily. “Nobody cares for old people. Such is this modern world. My mother-in-law was blessed, truly. Because of me she stayed alive till she was ninety years old.”
    Putti didn’t remind her mother that she, too, was eighty and in fairly good health for her age.
    â€œYou and I will go to Dr. Menon’s clinic today,” decided Ammayya. “Maybe the library also.”
    â€œWhy do we have to go all the way to that crazy old man?” grumbled Putti, her lips pouting over her twisted front teeth. “Why not Dr. Pandit’s son, where Sripathi used to take the children? At least he has all the latest devices to check heart and blood and everything.”
    â€œPah, these modern doctors are shameless. They make you take off all your clothes, I have heard. Even your knickers. Why should I go to those perverts?” Putti refrained from reminding Ammayya that she wore no knickers at all.
    A door flew open in a