The Hero's Walk Read Online Free PDF Page B

from the foot of the stairs. “Better come down. The rice-seller is here and I won’t have time.”
    Sripathi put away his writing material. He hated water day, an event that occurred four times a week on Brahmin Street between six-thirty and seven in the morning. Because of the town’s dire shortage of drinking water, the municipal corporation regulated the supply by releasing limited quantities on alternate days. Each area had its own scheduled water days, when every container in the house was frantically filled to the brim. Sripathi had contrived a complicated network of pipes all over the ground floor of the house, as potable water flowed from only the kitchen faucets. Long trails of green piping scrolled like garden snakes along the edges of the rooms downstairs, some leading into a large cement tank in Ammayya’s bathroom, and others into an assortment of drums, buckets and pots in the dining area. Nirmala used the fresh wateronly for cooking, drinking and rinsing the dishes. The clothes were washed by Koti, the maidservant, in the saline water that gushed generously from the taps all day long. As a result, their clothes developed a yellowish tint and seemed always unwashed, even though Koti vigorously thrashed the dirt out of them every day on the granite wash-stone in the backyard.
    Sripathi peered into his son’s room, which was almost as large as his own. Arun had shared the room with Maya until she turned sixteen. Then Nirmala had decided that it wasn’t right for an adolescent girl to have a male, even her younger brother, in the room, so Arun’s bed had been shifted to the landing until Maya left the household. One wall had a large window that looked out onto the road in front of the house and was partially shielded from the raging afternoon light by the feathery shade of an ancient neem tree. The other wall had a door that opened onto a balcony exactly like Sripathi’s. A few years ago, Koti had gone out there to dry some clothes and had nearly fallen down one storey when the railing gave way. Now nobody opened that door any more.
    After Maya had gone, Arun had moved his bed back into the room and pushed it against the locked door. Frugal even as a child, he had grown into a hermit-like adult. He owned three white shirts and two pairs of trousers. He wore each shirt twice a week and the trousers three times. Every evening when he removed his shirt and trousers, he draped them carefully on a hanger and hung them from a hook on the wall. He then wrapped one of two cotton lungi cloths around his narrow waist.
    The room was otherwise full of books and files and newspaper clippings. Even Maya’s bed, with its bare mattress and uncovered pillows, was layered with papers and notebooks. Arun had been working on a doctorate in social work for the past five years, in between his involvement with various activist organizations.
    Sripathi surveyed the chaos of paper with irritation. He had never pushed his children the way his father had pushed him. Hehad believed that if he left them alone, they would do well. Maya for a short time—had proven him right. But this son of his had only ever been a disappointment.
    Arun lay flat on his bed contemplating a lizard stalking a moth across the veined wall. He willed the moth to fly away. As soon as the lizard came close, it fluttered forward sluggishly and then lay flat against the peeling whitewash, the patterns on its wings like staring eyes. Was it daring the lizard to catch it? Arun stretched his arms above his head and smiled. Watch out, he said softly, that lizard is no fool. But perhaps the moth was aware of its own mortality and was playing one last game with fate. The lizard slid forward suddenly and with a flicker of its tongue seized the moth, drawing it quickly into its mouth.
    He turned his head at the sound of his father’s footsteps.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” Sripathi demanded. “Come down and help me with the