a novel by Anita Rau Badami
EXCERPT
WHEN HE WAS a young man, Sripathi had discovered that writing letters to the editors of newspapers and magazines was the perfect way to vent his spleen and express his deepest thoughts—those blatant, embarrassing emotions that he was so reluctant to display in speech or action. He could write about anything under the sun and occasionally his views found their way into print. In the past few years, Sripathi felt that his writing had matured considerably, and to his delight, almost every letter he dashed off to The Indian Express, The Hindu, or The Toturpuram Chronicle was published. So it was with a delicious sense of anticipation that he opened the paper each morning. And only after he had read the first page and the second and the third, postponing the moment as long as he could bear it, did he turn to the editorial section and feel a thrill when he spotted his byline—Pro Bono Publico—at the end of a missive. He would reread his piece, surprised at how different and removed from himself it looked in print. Then he’d scan the other letters, his long upper lip curling at a particularly weak piece of prose or an ill-argued point of view.
Sripathi was pleased with his pseudonym. He had found it in an old American legal journal that his father had pinched from the public library on Moppaiyya Street. Pro Bono Publico. On behalf of the people. Like his boyhood heros—the Scarlet Pimpernel, Zorro, Jhanda Singh the Invisible—he was a crusader, but one who tried to address the problems of the world with pen and ink instead of sword and gun and fist. He wrote every day on anything that caught his attention, from garbage strewn on the roads to corruption in the government, from lighthearted commentary on the latest blockbuster film to a tribute to some famous musician whose voice had filled his soul with pleasure.
Sripathi reached for a large wooden box on the table before him. Like almost everything else in Big House, the box had been in his family for as long as he could remember. He loved the smooth edges, the solid weight, the thick key that locked it. He opened the lid and removed the upper layer that held his collection of pens, a few unsharpened pencils, some erasers and a penknife. Below it was another compartment for paper. There was also a secret drawer that could be opened by sliding a rod out of the side of the box. There was nothing in that drawer. A long time ago, when Maya—or perhaps it was Arun—had asked him why he kept nothing in there, he had replied, “Because I am too ordinary to have secrets.” The box sat under his side of the bed and emerged every morning when he settled down on his balcony.