Valmiki's Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page B

that was still premature for the patient. Mr. Deosaran wanted to tell Dr. Krishnu the story of his life, as if Dr. Krishnu’s knowing this story would alter his prognosis and prescription. Accordingly, he had talked about when he was a licle-licle boy, so small’n’tin nobody ad a think he’d a make man, he so licle and walking two mile one way to reach he school barefoot in the heavy heavy rain, rain worse than that week’s rain, splashing up and duttying he clothes, and he holding his even licler brother by he hand — and the doctor’s mind floated out of the room. Mr. Deosaran must have sat there telling his story for another several minutes, but Dr. Krishnu had heard nothing of it.
    Mr. Deosaran had watched Dr. Krishnu’s eyes grow dim and saw that he had withdrawn, but he noticed too that Dr. Krishnuhad not risen, as he had in the past, to indicate that the visit was over. He spoke on some more, a little less certainly, but now it was to watch Dr. Krishnu. When he saw that he no longer held his audience, he dug his feet into the parquet tiling and shoved back the wooden chair in which he sat. The action made a sound like a car breaking a corner, but Dr. Krishnu seemed not to have heard that either. Mr. Deosaran lifted his khaki felt hat from his lap and rested it hesitantly on the desk in front of him. He leaned forward and his voice rose above the rain.
    â€œEverything okay, Doc? You look like you seeing a dead.”
    When he received no answer he became perplexed and rapped the table with his knuckles. “Doc!” he said, sharp enough to snap Dr. Krishnu out of his blankness but not so sharp as to disturb the balance of power between them.
    Only then did Dr. Krishnu catch himself. “Sorry, Mr. Deosaran. You took me back to another time.”
    A SIMPLER TIME, REALLY. VALMIKI MUST HAVE BEEN ABOUT TWELVE. For no reason other than to trouble him, his uncles, his father’s brothers, used to unleash their curled thumbs and middle fingers at his ears, flick the tips and make him run squealing. His own father was a soft but strict man, and had never hit Valmiki. So he couldn’t help but remember the first, albeit the last time, he got skinned by his father. Valmiki had been a fair and plump boy, with fat red cheeks and an insatiable taste for the desserts his mother, his aunts, and the servants made daily with milk from their own cows. He looked like the pampered child he was. His father was the area’s most affluent citizen, a man whose family had built up and passed down to Valmiki’s father and uncles a dairy business situated on the same property on which they lived, just south of the town of San Fernando. They were Brahmins,and so didn’t touch the cows themselves. They managed the business from an office in the main house and hired men from the village who did the manual work of feeding and milking the cows and cleaning the pens that were some distance from the house.
    Valmiki was his parents’ only child, and seen as the one who would one day inherit a good portion of this thriving business. From the workers’ point of view, Valmiki, even though he was a child, was their boss too. So when he took the three boys (he shouldn’t really have thought of them as his friends, but he did — they were classmates who jeered at him for his plumpness yet relied on him to help them with their homework, as he was the brightest boy in his class and they the dimmest) into the barn, the workmen who knew that he should not be going in there were not confident enough of their position to stop him. He had already changed out of his school clothes and wore short pants and a yellow, red, and brown striped T-shirt that his father had brought for him on a trip to England. His friends, as he would call them, wore the white long-sleeved shirts and the grey long pants of the school uniform. None wore the grey-and-white striped ties that were also part of the uniform,