Akhil Sharma - An Obedient Father

ner and suddenly she would have to wash her eyes. This reminded me of myself at my mother's death, and made me realize that although I had thought I loved Baby, because I was not crying as I had before, I obviously did not have deep feelings for him. Sometimes I went up to Radha and held her. Other times I got angry and left the flat.

I was so unhappy myself that I could not have taken care of anyone. I must have been at least partially unhappy about Radha and Baby, but also because I believed I was heartless, I thought I was just unhappy about being blamed.

Baby's death exhausted me. I used to sleep twelve or fourteen hours a day About this time, by providing crates of mangoes from Beri to my principal and his supervisors, I was able to switch from teaching to administration. The new job had longer days. Soon after I got home, I would eat and go to bed.

I began drinking regularly for the first time. Until then, I had drunk only with friends. Even in company, drinking depressed me. Now, once or twice a month, I went to a saloon and sat in the back with fried peanuts and a liter of beer. When I first started drinking by myself, I cried loudly, hoping to attract attention. After a young boy who was a waiter there whispered in my ear, "Shut up, fatso," I began holding my tears till I got home. When I returned to the flat and Radha became angry at my drunkenness, I would shout, "Do you think you're the only one with a heart?"

Radha lost interest in my foolishness and I, embarrassed by her clear-sightedness, avoided her.

Radha found a guru and began to pray three times a day, an hour each time. I returned to visiting prostitutes. After a while I thought of Radha only when I wanted something. Even then, she left few traces in my thoughts. Still, Anita came a year after Baby Kusum followed two years later, and Rajesh after another two years. I remember how Radha would stare up at me expressionlessly as I struggled to climax and to make myself come I would say, "Mine, you are mine. What do you think of that?" I only went to her when I had not had time to go to the brothels on GB Road and my lust had

begun nagging at me so much that I could not sleep. By the time she was thirty, Radha had stopped oiling her hair and changing her clothes regularly Also, when Rajesh was born, Radha clenched her teeth so tightly they all shifted, and within a few years they had splayed out. Radha became, like my children, only a reminder of all the things I had done wrong.

Sometimes, as if seeing my children for the first time, I noticed their tiny hands and mouths and I would feel the responsibility of protecting them. Then I would want to be a good husband to Radha and might try for a few days to look at her when we talked.

I justified my resentment toward the children by saying that at least I took care of them. After seven years in administration, I knew enough people in education and was well known enough that I could nearly double my five hundred rupees a month by arranging admission for children into particular schools or meetings between businessmen and bureaucrats. This was during the second of Nehru's five-year plans, when it was common knowledge that since corporate donations to political parties were illegal, the Congress Party was selling monopolies to raise campaign money. There had always been corruption, but it was so much in the open now that people began viewing it as natural that they could offer me money for favors. My family did not live well, but we drank milk each day.

I never felt any guilt for accepting bribes. And the tremors of remorse I felt for going to the prostitutes on GB Road were so slight that I brushed them aside like cobweb strands.

The prostitutes I went to ranged from sixteen- or seventeen-year-olds to some in their mid-thirties. I preferred the younger ones because, even though I used a condom, I thought they would be less likely to have diseases than older whores. I also found their bodies, so firm that they seemed superhuman, attractive, and I liked the unevenness of our strengths.

I visited the brothels only during the afternoon, when the wide GB Road is crowded. People buy light switches, generators, bathroom fixtures, and such things from the narrow shops on the ground

floor of the three- and four-story buildings in which the brothels, sometimes stacked on top of each other, are located. No matter how often you have been to a particular brothel on GB Road, there is always a sense of physical danger when you are in one. In the GB Road brothels, you have sex in wooden closets. They are arranged in a row against one wall of the long room that is the brothel. These closets are so narrow you have to climb onto the plank bed, making sure not to step on the whore, before closing the door. Adding to the claustrophobia is the distraction of the brothel's life going on a few inches from you. Women and children are sitting on the floor. "I'm hungry. Anybody want food?" "Dev Anand is much better than Rajesh Khanna. If I was in a movie and had the songs from Anand, my movie would be a hit, too." Sometimes pimps get into loud arguments a meter from where you are in the closet about how much of a commission they should get for bringing in a customer. Outside the room, in the doorway to the hall or stairwell that connects the brothel to the sidewalk, whores sit shouting at a possible customer who stops on the sidewalk to peer at them. "Come, my dream!" they yell, flashing their breasts. The seediness and the fear usually make the sex sad, difficult, abject. Occasionally these very qualities will make the orgasm astonishing.

So the years passed, far more quickly than I could have imagined. My father died and Nehru died, and I cried for both, surprising myself with the earnestness of my tears. India fought Pakistan, China, Pakistan. I used some of my new wealth to start a small restaurant, but there was little money in it and my workers cheated me. I bought two rickshaws with a cousin and leased them out. I did this for a year and a half, till my cousin was murdered, stabbed in the throat by a rickshaw driver over a dispute involving less than forty rupees. Once, Radha developed a habit of eating very little, and after a few months she had to be hospitalized because she was waking up at night screaming from stomach pains. When she got out of the hospital, she told her guru that she wanted to leave worldly things and take sanyas, and travel from pilgrimage site to pilgrimage site. Her guru then came to our home for the first time and berated

Radha in front of me. "You have three Httle children, faithless woman. Your home is your temple." To guarantee his help in the future I went to him for several weeks to learn yoga for my back pain. To strengthen my spine he recommended I drink water while lying flat. Anita, Rajesh, and Kusum grew into odd children who played only with each other and who were so quiet that strangers at first thought they were slightly retarded. Even when no one was around, they spoke quietly. When I heard the children murmuring to each other, I often wondered whether they were speaking of me. All those years gone so quickly that even describing them does not take long. Big things do not happen to you and so you think time is not passing. You jiggle the years in your pocket, thinking you are a rich man, and suddenly you have spent everything. I was thirty-eight and an old man overnight, and Anita was twelve and so young that seeing her was like looking down from some great height into a misty valley and wondering what will be revealed when the sun arrives.

One afternoon, Anita fell asleep beside me while we listened to the radio announce that Indira Gandhi had become Prime Minister for the first time. The room was dark and the quilt that covered us heavy and warm. I was dozing off as well. In her sleep, Anita rolled over and put her hand on my penis. I woke immediately. I started to remove Anita's hand, but stopped. There was something mysterious and erotic about lying beneath the warm quilt with Anita's light touch, listening to her breath and feeling her weight against my side. I became hard. After a few minutes, Anita rolled over once more and removed her hand.