Ravan and Eddie by Kiran Nagarkar

Author:Kiran Nagarkar [Nagarkar, Kiran]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-59017-651-1
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2012-12-10T16:00:00+00:00

Shishupal.

He knew what Shishupal felt like when he had committed his quota of a hundred crimes. He could have gone down on his knees, wept and begged and apologized and sold himself and the next hundred generations of his children and their children as slaves but it was doubtful if that would have loosened Mr Furtado’s grip on his wrist. Mr Furtado had thin long hands to match his body, the bones stuck out at the knuckles as if they had been broken. And though he was slight and had looked as if he was about to pass out a little while ago at the discovery of the infamy of the Coutinho family, he was a new man now. There was colour in his face, almost a rosy hue. He had got his breath back and though Eddie was a deadweight he was taking the steps three at a time.

There was no need to knock, the door was open. It was dark in the common passage and even darker inside. Mr Furtado groped for the electric bell and then rang a little too long. Eddie could see the trinity waiting inside the darkness. Not the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost but his mother, Granna and Pieta. They sat still like Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, who Lele Guruji said always sat at the very end of the sanctum sanctorum, the black garbha-griha of the temple. Shiva, the destroyer got up and came forward to perform the dance of death on Eddie’s limp body. Granna was wearing a silk dress with red roses printed on it. She smiled but Eddie knew that the end of the universe was no cause for sorrow to Shiva.

‘Come in, Mr Furtado. I’m so glad that Eddie came to receive you.’

Furtado stepped in but the blade-like grip of his fingers did not relax. ‘You must forgive me for this delay. I was held up by none other than your grandson.’

‘This is my daughter, Violet, and my granddaughter, Pieta. Won’t you sit down, Mr Furtado?’

‘It is my great misfortune that I have been introduced to the whole family by the wrong person. I owe you all the gravest apology.’

‘Won’t you sit down?’

‘Not until I’ve revealed all and whipped this viper in the breast of your family till his skin and soul have fallen off in shame.’

‘What did he do?’ Violet’s voice was low but steady.

‘Ask him.’

As someone long dead, Eddie was incapable of speech.

‘He lied. For half an hour, the half-hour that I was delayed, he told me the most deadly and dastardly lies about you, madam and you, his most revered grandmother and this innocent child.’

‘My son never lies, Mr Furtado. It does not reflect well upon the listener that he stood and listened for a full thirty minutes to all manner of lies and stories.’

‘I had no choice. He called you a fast woman and a loose one. He would have called you even worse names if I hadn’t stopped him. He said I was to earn money while all of you lived off me.

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