A Bad Character Read Online Free

everything will be OK. When he turns up he brings gifts, all the latest electronic goods, kitchen things. They put on a big party for him—the family lays out all kinds of food on a long folding table, they put out the drinks in plastic cups, they blow up balloons, and everyone comes to meet him. He likes the crowds, my father, he likes the parties, he’s a natural showman—handsome, a charmer. He shows off some magic tricks. I stand in the room watching him, watching my mother waiting. Now and then he passes by and runs his fingers through my hair, and when he puts me on his shoulders I hold him tightly, smell the Brylcreem with my eyes closed.
    When the food is finished, the music played, when everyone has drifted back home, he takes my mother into thebedroom, he pulls her by the arm. I recognize that look on her face. He doesn’t go to sleep when they’re done, he watches TV in the living room and I slip out my door to crawl beside his chair. He never sends me back to bed. Instead we watch TV together for hours, until I’ve fallen asleep. In the day when there’s no one there I go and lie on their bed, dwarfed by it as my mother is, watching the folds in the sheets turn into vast mountain ranges, tracing the caravan through the passages, laden with Arabian gold.
    He’s gone as quickly as he came, the thief.
    Later I learned of his own father, my grandfather, the godman. He ran away too when he was young. Barefoot from village to village performing miracles, reciting the ancient texts by heart, sometimes speaking in tongues. From where he learned these no one knows. I met him several times when he was already old, but I understood nothing of him then, and by that time God had already left him in the corner of the room, like a lamp without a bulb, gathering dust.

    It’s the first year of college and the pleasant shadows of dreams have been banished by the spotlight of Aunty’s world, where everything is good and right and clean. In this world there are no moments to yourself, for what’s the need? Why do you need to keep your door closed? What are you hiding in there? It makes no sense at all to Aunty, this simple demand from the girl to please be left alone.
    No, she’s expected to be the same as them, to smile the right way, to say the right things, to be grateful at all times, to be seen and not heard. She sees this very clearly, in cars, in apartments, in homes, in pujas, in the same words and ritual learned by rote.
    It’s in this desperate life of preservation that death is held. Holding on to life only to die unblemished, to make it to the end, untouched by sin. And for what? What then? The girl sees this, and yet there’s nothing to be done, nowhere to go. Nothing for her to do but grit her teeth, calm the voices inside.
    Aunty knows the resistance in her, her reluctance. She chides her for it, calls her a snob sometimes. Says she only wants the best for her, that’s why she says these things, because she cares. But she can’t understand the behaviour of this girl.
    On Diwali night she talks to me, after a rare drink, on the balcony watching the fireworks. The freezing shawl of smog envelops the city, makes the explosions flash like the synapses of a dying brain.
    She says wistfully, In college your mother was a shy girl, a person I would describe as too shy, too quiet, a good girl, too sweet, everyone was very fond of her, everyone wanted her to do well. But every so often she would shock us with some strange words, she would say something completely unexpected, which took us all by surprise. She really lived with her head in the clouds.
    She smiles apologetically, clears her throat, tugs her dupatta over her heavy breasts. From the balcony we watch the sky on fire and the city bombarded with light.She gets nostalgic; she says, Life has been good to me. I’ve had all the advantages in this world. I’ve married well. I planned ahead. I have security now, though I’ve had my setbacks like anyone