Narrative

L: T found an old silver hammer, and he put it over his shoulder like an axe and said he was Parasuram, and walked up and down the house like that! It was so funny! (begins to laugh.)

T: (takes the hammer, which he has gone to his house to fetch, and holds it against his right shoulder - in a false, booming voice) I am Parasuram! I'll use my axe to tear out everybody's entrails! (waves the hammer.) Ow! My hand! (wincing and making a terrible face. He has pulled a muscle in his shoulder. Rubbing it, he resumes his normal voice.) In the morning I was Parasuram, and at night I decided to call myself T Nayak, because I saw a very nice Telugu movie yesterday, about the Vijayanagar kings. My family are Nayaks, and we may have royal blood.

My necklace is made of tiger claws. My mother made it for me when I finished my law. (Removes it from his neck, wipes it with his handkerchief and hands it to me. I see two curved objects that look as if made of toenails, surrounded by a thin gold case, with a bar across the top with his name etched on one side, and a flower design with six good-sized diamonds on the other.) There was an emerald hanging down from the centre here, but L took it, because she wanted to make it into a ring with two diamonds. Then she decided to use the diamonds for something else, and she forgot about the emerald, and our jeweller, he's a very honest fellow, he called up and said, 'Don't you want to take your emerald?' It's very valuable, old-fashioned, very dark green. I have a pair of cufflinks, each one has one tiger claw.

L: (proudly) It has the claw on one side, and an arrow on the other.

T: I also had a big tiger skin, with the head, for a rug, with teeth and all, and I took the skull and kept it for a while, and it had the claws, and I kept them, and I kept the teeth. I have them, too. They make jewellry with tiger's teeth, a row of teeth set in gold.

In Bangalore a man wanted to sell a baby tiger paw. He wanted Rs. 500 for it, then he came down, and finally we paid Rs. 35. L wanted it for the claws, but I said, 'It's not a tiger's paw, it's a baby bear's paw, that they've chopped off,' so she threw it away.