An Obedient Father

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I needed to force money from Father Joseph, and it made me nervous. He had bribed me once before, for a building permit, soon after he became principal of Rosary School. Also, he had admitted my granddaughter, Asha, into his school without our having to make the enormous donation usually required. But Father Joseph was strange and unpredictable.

Several months ago, his school, in a posh part of Old Delhi, had given a dinner party to introduce him. Because of my work for the Delhi municipal education department, I was invited. During the party Father Joseph demonstrated his expertise in karate. The party was in the school's front field. A steel pole had been cemented upright several meters from the buffet tables. Father Joseph, short, and heavy with muscle, wearing the white robe of a karate teacher, beat at the pole for half an hour with his bare feet and fists while forty or fifty people watched and ate. Sometimes he would step a few feet from the pole and groan at it. Near the end of his demonstration, he became so tired that there were pauses as long as a minute between blows. Because this was so odd, and because Father Joseph had spoken to me in English when the party started, at first I thought the display might be an example of a foreign affectation. After he was done, still dressed in the robe. Father Joseph spent the rest of the night meeting his guests. He kept clenching and unclenching his hands from soreness.

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