1913issue6online

204    Years before, or generations later, depending on who you are, my mother hit her head and said “na karma!” which means “my fate!” It happened when I was watching the Discovery channel and she was frying samosas. What do you mean? I asked. When she was at a loss for the right word, or tired, or had doubts about her son, she spoke in Telegu. The burden of what lay between us would become mine. The samosas were almost ready; I entered the kitchen and listened to what she said. Behind me, a bald eagle fed her young on a cliff somewhere in America. You know your tattaya was a fool. He never worked a day in his life, and look at us now, all of us have to work hard. All he did was gamble away his money, and when he needed to pay for some- thing, like putting his kids through school, he sold a house. Now look, he has nothing, not even his own house. He’s been renting that for a year now. A couple of years ago he took all the money he had left and built the only three star hotel in Markapur. It cost him twenty lahks! Yesterday mammaya called and said that tattaya got really drunk with his partner, someone he trusted. He had him sign a paper saying that it was a government document for the hotel, to keep it under regulations. It turned out that your grandfather had signed away the whole hotel to this man, twenty lahks! Now he has noth- ing! But when his father died there were bad omens. It’s a custom to put rice outside overnight as an offering to a father’s spirit, to make sure that his soul is content. The black- birds never ate the rice. They didn’t even touch it. -Amarnath Ravva

1913issue6online

Pages