Akhil Sharma - An Obedient Father

Rajiv Gandhi had always struck me as sly and somewhat stupid. He had dignity only in relation to his opponents, because they were completely shameless. Yet by eleven, when the body was placed on the back of the army truck and carried to the crematorium at five kilometers an hour, bereavement had overcome me.

When the funeral pyre was lit, I felt such a sense of ending that I opened my door and walked into the living room, where Anita and Asha sat silently together on the two love seats watching television. It was about three-thirty.

"Are you better?" Asha asked.

"I'm still sick," I said immediately and without thinking. I sat down on the bed. When I did not say anything else, Asha concentrated again on the screen. Anita's eyes never left the television.

The pyre shook smoke into the sky. I covered my face with my hands.

"Nanaji," Asha said to me.

She must have touched her mother, for Anita screamed, "Let go."

I removed my hands and saw Anita glaring at me. Asha now faced the television. "When Rajiv Gandhi was collecting his mother's ashes from the pyre, he kept finding bullets," I said, wanting to hide the fact that we were causing each other's misery. "She'd been shot so many times the doctors couldn't remove all the bullets." Asha sobbed. Anita pinched the back of Asha's neck and Asha began crying with her shoulders pulled up.

"What are you crying for? Who is Rajiv Gandhi to you? Would you cry for me if I died?" Asha looked up at her mother. "Lower your

shoulders." Anita twisted the skin she gripped. When Asha dropped them, Anita let go. Her actions were so extreme, I wondered if Anita was merely out of control or whether she wanted Asha to be afraid of her so that Asha would obey her and not come near me and my contagion.

I continued to watch television. Asha had to keep wiping her eyes. "Wash your face," Anita said to her, and the child ran from the room. She did not return.

After a while I said to Anita's back, "Forgive me for what I did." My heart was beating so fast I wanted to stand.

Anita turned and looked at me. "What did you do?" she asked slowly, but in a voice so high it sounded like the end of a long, screaming fight.

The words wouldn't come. "I touched you."

"Touched?"

"Raped you."

Anita stared at me expressionlessly. "Is that all you did?"

I did not know what she wanted me to confess, so after a moment I said, "I did everything."

"Yes. Say more."

"I'm a rabid dog that should be beaten with bricks." Anita watched me. "Forgive me."

"How do I do that?" When I gave no answer, she asked, "Do I forget?" She kept looking at me. "Do I think it was just a mistake you made? Or am I a saint and I forgive, knowing you are a devil?"

"I did everything bad that is possible."

"Yes." She again waited for me to speak.

"I will go to hell."

"I forgive you." Anita held up her hand as if endowing a blessing. I knew she was being sarcastic, but her voice was so high it lacked all inflection.

"What I did. ."

"I forgive you." Perhaps she noticed that she might not be sounding ironic, for she added, "Snake."

The word sounded so awkward in her mouth I wondered if she

had experienced a thrill at breaking the taboo of cursing a parent. "I am a snake."

"What kind of a snake? A cobra?"

Anita watched me for a few minutes and then stood and left.

The phone rang at a little after one in the morning. I heard it immediately because I was awake. The low buzzing rrrs must have repeated ten times before Anita picked up. A moment later she knocked on my door.

Mr. Gupta spoke as soon as I said hello. "Mr. Karan, Sonia Gandhi will say no to Congress. Congress has to win the elections by itself now."

I was relieved at being able to talk with someone. "How do you know?" I asked, not believing him. To reject such easy power appeared to go against biological laws. Also, after learning about his family, I could not treat Mr. Gupta as seriously as I had before.

"From someone in Congress," he said.

"A reliable person?"

"Like the sun." I did not say anything. "Come to my home in the morning, by ten. The BJP is having a prayer for me. Bring all the bankbooks."

After he hung up, I sat on the sofa in the dark living room for several minutes. Admitting my sins had brought no relief Now having to cope with Mr. Gupta began to fill me with self-pity. I had not done anything to Asha, and Anita was twenty years ago. In twenty years a destroyed city can be repaired or buried.

Dressed in a coat and tie, I left half an hour after Asha went to school. The twenty-three bankbooks and Father Joseph's cash were in a cloth bag. I had my wrist through its strap and held the bottom with the other hand.

The Sikh whose family had nearly been killed was washing his sidewalk with a bucket and a broom. He wore shorts and rubber

slippers. I wondered what he felt at having things return to normal. I could not imagine him feeling forgiveness for the men who had threatened his children. Seeing him reminded me that criminals who confess are still jailed.

He waved to me and I crossed the road.

"How are you?" I asked. The grille of his shop was down, despite the road having nearly returned to its old busyness.

"Without you my world would have ended," he said. His stomach stuck his red shirt straight out.

"It was nothing."

His voice shook. "More than nothing. My wife, my babies, my mother."

I wished I could have used the credit from here to diminish the damages from other parts of my life. "How is your family?"

An old woman shouted, "Move," at us, and then hurried past.

"My sons don't want to come back. They're in Morris Nagar."

"They'll forget."

"They shouldn't forget."

"Thank God the killers were Tamils."

He looked around and angrily said, "I don't even want to sell them shoes. Watching from the roof Like a circus."

My guilt made me possessive of this one good deed. I squeezed his shoulder.

"Tea?" he asked.

"Not today"

"You're a hero."

"Hero zero," I said, because I wanted him to protest.

"One hundred percent hero. Gold hero."

As I left, I thought, I've saved lives.

Before going to Model Town, I stopped to eat at a dhaba near the Old Clock Tower. After a few bites it was as if my mouth got bored with chewing.

The radio was playing. Sonia Gandhi had announced that she would in no case accept the Congress Party's presidency. Congress was now discussing who else might be selected. Sonia Gandhi's action

appeared inhuman. In the autorickshaw, my thoughts kept turning to her. She was so different from me that I could not enter her thoughts but could only imagine her physically: the long dark hair, the straight-featured face that had lost its beauty over the years and become merely a face.

Mr. Mishra was in front of Mr. Gupta's house, supervising men who were unloading chairs from a truck. He was also wearing a coat and tie. His presence made me feel that the secret of Mr. Gupta's ambition was out and some irrevocable step had been taken.

"When did Guptaji call you?" I asked.

"His son did. This morning."

The fact that Ajay, who had been drunk at his own wedding reception, was involved made me nervous. There were sixty or seventy chairs on the truck, and once these were carried into the house, the men began passing down fans which were bolted onto two-meter-high steel poles. They were working without talking, which made me wonder how much quality labor such as that cost.

"To know a Member of Parliament would be strange, huh?" Mr. Mishra said. A ten- or twelve-year-old boy in blue shorts and a white shirt came and inquired if I wanted tea. "You don't even have to ask for anything," Mr. Mishra said. "Money is being spent."

We began talking about Sonia Gandhi. Mr. Mishra was also amazed, but he thought the explanation was that Sonia Gandhi feared further assassinations in her family. As we spoke, two elephants rounded the corner of the road. They were enormous gray beasts with shaved tusks. Each had a teenage boy sitting on its neck holding a short spear that had a hook just below where the blade began. The boys stopped the elephants across the road from us, next to the iron bars of the park fence, by catching folds along the neck skin with the hooks. The elephants knelt and the boys got off Mr. Mishra began laughing as soon as he realized they would be part of