From Obligation to Attachment: Custodial Grandparenting in Anita Rau Badami’s The Hero’s Walk

Abstract

This paper examines custodial grandparenting in Anita Rau Badami’s The Hero’s Walk (2000), focusing on the relationship between seven-year-old Nandana and her maternal grandparents after the sudden death of her parents. Drawing on attachment theory, child developmental psychology, and the intergenerational solidarity model, the study analyses how grief, guilt, obligation, and disrupted primary attachments shape the child’s responses to alternative caregivers. While Nandana forms an immediate secure attachment with her grandmother, her prolonged resistance to her grandfather reflects unresolved attachment-related trauma linked to earlier familial estrangement. The paper argues that Badami presents custodial grandparenthood as a complex, evolving practice marked by uneven bonding, delayed affectual solidarity, and moral reconciliation, thereby challenging idealised notions of grandparenting.