The Smoke is Rising (11 page)

Susheela stepped over a pile of magazines dumped at the entrance to the alley. She made her way slowly between the decaying walls on either side, streaked with ancient seepages and faded strips of film posters. Every few seconds she turned around to look back at the entrance to the alley, a rectangle of metallic light at the end of the desolate passage. The soles of her feet felt smooth and slippery, as if her sandals would slide off her feet at any moment. Small gaps between the buildings led to even narrower alleys. They were all empty. There was no sign of Ashok and even the stray dogs seemed to have disappeared from their haunts. She caught the acrid edges of the stench of burning rubber and looked up at the sky. A channel of brilliant blue wove its way above the upper stories of the shabby offices and warehouses on either side of the alley. Her eyes began to play tricks on her as the windows studding each floor began to vault and reel along the walls.

Susheela made her way back to the main road, once again stepping carefully over the stack of magazines. The heat was intense and she could now see smoke pluming over a nearby building. She leant back against a shaded section of the wall outside Great Expectations, her eyes shut, the windows now little blazing squares, swirling uncontrollably behind her eyelids. She was ready to believe the worst: that Ashok had abandoned her on this empty street, pulsing with unrealised violence and fully consummated fear. In Mahalakshmi Gardens a silent dread dragged
its train over polished floors and stairs, through lush verandas, along driveways, past borders of coleus and lantana, under the pergola by the southern gate to the Gardens and into the latticed pavilion that gave on to the lotus pond. Now that dread had stalked Susheela into the centre of Mysore, trampling its veil on the hot asphalt.

‘Excuse me.’

Susheela’s heart lurched and she opened her eyes.

A man in his late sixties, or perhaps early seventies, stood before her, a look of concerned enquiry softening his brown eyes.

Susheela stared at the man, unable to comprehend this chain of events.

‘I’m sorry, but are you okay? You know about the trouble in the city?’

Susheela nodded but her throat was too dry to speak.

‘Please, it’s not safe to stay here.’

A moment later he added: ‘I’m sure we have met. If I’m not wrong, you’re a friend of Sunaina Kamath’s.’

Susheela nodded, although she was quite sure that she had never seen him before.

The man obviously decided that he needed to be a little more firm.

‘Are you waiting for someone? Because, believe me, you should not be here by yourself like this.’

Susheela was explaining her predicament to the man when Ashok returned, jumping neatly up the few steps to where they were standing.

‘So sorry, madam. I’m ready now. Shall we go?’

Susheela did not respond. Ashok continued to look at her sheepishly.

The man turned to him, his voice curt: ‘Thank you for the offer but I will see the lady home.’

Turning to Susheela, he said: ‘My car is in the basement of Prithvi House. If you don’t mind walking with me just till there, I can drop you home. I am sure the roads on our side will be clear.’

Susheela nodded again, still tightly clasping the bag of
kaju pista
rolls from Plaza Sweet Mart.

The trestle tables had been covered with floral paper, the steel plates and tumblers wiped dry and the first batch of guests were patiently waiting for the servers to bring the food around. Uma had left Janaki reapplying her make-up and stood at some distance from the guests under the canopy. Particularly distinguished relatives, the elderly and the children would eat first, and once they had vacated their places, the young married couples, Shankar’s business contacts and bachelor friends would take their seats. After their plates had been cleared, more distant family members and latecomers would be served before the final round of stragglers and community flotsam.

Janaki would have been appalled to see Uma alone, waiting out her turn in front of a pile of broken concrete slabs, a diffident and courteous half-smile fixed on her face. But Uma was not one to cultivate controversy by breaking established norms. She knew that she was already marked in the neighbourhood as someone requiring scrutiny, a woman living on her own with no apparent family ties. She had arrived at the row of tiny rooms with a history firmly laced up and stowed in some obscure compartment. Her guarded responses offered no clues and when the rumours began to uncoil around her, their frequency and intricacy were not surprising.

According to some local gossipmongers, Uma had arrived in Mysore from one of Bangalore’s satellite towns where her lover had savaged her husband with a machete, most probably at her
instigation. The lover was now said to be awaiting trial at Parappana Agrahara jail while Uma tried to create a new identity for herself elsewhere. Another account that had percolated through the narrow alleys was that Uma had been compelled to leave her husband’s house in disgrace after seducing her father-in-law. Her apparent attempts at wringing cash and property out of the old man had failed and led to her exile in this bleak corner, below the network of sidings at Mysore Junction. There were other stories too: narrations that elicited spiky comment and drawn-out deductions.

Uma kept her counsel. She woke early and left for Mahalakshmi Gardens six days a week, returning only after seven in the evening. On the days when she had no packet of leftovers, she would stop at the provision store on the main road and buy a quarter-litre packet of yoghurt and, on occasion, some greens from one of the carts. She spoke to no one on the short walk past the Muslim cemetery and the coin-operated telephone clamped to a pole on the corner. As she walked down her row, she kept her eyes lowered and only lifted them once she had closed and bolted the door of her room.

It was almost a miracle that she and Janaki had ever spoken. At the time, Janaki had just moved in to Shankar’s small house on the periphery of the squalid sprawl. Their paths had crossed a few times while Uma was looking for work and Janaki had taken a liking to Uma’s sedate poise. Janaki had never probed into Uma’s past but she felt duty-bound to support a lone woman who was refusing to choke in the neighbourhood’s hostile smog. Janaki herself had been the target of malevolent gossip from a young age and had seen the dirty edges of everything that it touched. She knew that it was up to her to make the effort; if not, Uma would probably allow herself to fade away, bleaching back into the dirt-streaked walls around her.

‘Uma, not eaten yet? Please go ahead, the next batch is just starting,’ said Shankar as he brushed past her, weighed down with a pail each of
ghee
rice and
sambar
.

‘I think I’ll wait for Janaki.’

‘No no, you better eat. She says she wants to eat inside later, away from the crowd. Actually what she said was a lot ruder than that,’ Shankar lowered his voice, before heading towards the tables.

Janaki emerged from the house, led by Shankar’s mother and aunt. A chair was quickly found for her and placed in the middle of the front courtyard. As she lowered herself into the chair, Janaki caught Uma’s eye and beckoned her over.

Uma made her way past the canopy, through the thronged courtyard and leant down towards Janaki.

‘What are you doing standing over there by yourself like a police constable? How was the food?’ asked Janaki.

‘It was very good.’

‘You should tell Shankar; he has hardly been able to sleep. He was sure the caterers would ruin everything today.’

‘So what time are you leaving for your mother’s house?’

Janaki’s voice became a throaty whisper: ‘No idea. They have to make sure the sun, moon and every single planet are in the right position before I am allowed to fart, let alone leave here for six months.’

‘They only want to make sure nothing goes wrong.’

‘So you have my mother’s address; make sure you come and see me next week or the week after. I will have nothing to do there but eat and sleep so plenty of time to talk. You’ll come, no?’

‘I’ll definitely come.’

‘Also, I’ve told Shankar to come and see you now and then. If you need any help for anything, you just ask him.’

‘What help will I need? Really, there’s no need to trouble him.’ Janaki’s face took on a picture of theatrical outrage: ‘After all the
trouble he has given me? Look at me sitting here in this heat like a buffalo.’

Under the shade of the canopy, a teenager was pointing his camera at the servers, having assigned himself the role of official photographer of the event. Patches of sweat had made his white shirt translucent and an agonising concentration invaded his face. Among the seated guests, hair was hurriedly tamed,
pallus
were straightened and noses wiped: preparations the photographer chose to ignore as he made his way along the tables.

A mother said to her child: ‘
Ai gube, channag
smile
maado
. Face like a
kumbalakai
.’

In the washing area set up for the caterers, Shankar had just finished giving instructions to some young boys. He turned round and, seeing Janaki sitting in the courtyard, made an exaggerated bow in her direction, a saucy grin animating his features.

The car made its way out of the Prithvi House basement and sped along Sayyaji Rao Road where a couple of police barriers had been dragged to the side of the road and then abandoned. Angry discs of smoke wheeled up into the sky from a point behind the bazaar that lined one side of the street. A few cars were still on the road, all moving out of the city centre in the direction of Tejasandra Lake. A man lay on the ground in the shade of a mimosa tree at the Nelson Mandela Road junction. The position of his limbs gave no clue as to whether this was just respite from the heat or something more sinister.

Susheela had managed to ascertain that Sunaina’s friend was called Jaydev and that he lived only fifteen minutes away from her in Yadavagiri. After that she had retreated into the air-conditioned chill of the car’s interior, her temples throbbing and her throat sore. Jaydev’s gaze moved from the mirror to the deserted road
ahead and back. It was only when they were finally moving along the southern edge of the lake that he spoke.

‘There is some water on the back seat if you want.’

‘No, thank you.’

It occurred to Susheela that her response might have come across as brusque, so she added: ‘I am just so relieved to be nearly home.’

She thought her voice sounded strangely loud and high-pitched.

Jaydev shook his head: ‘Even Mysore can be a scary place these days.’

Susheela noticed that Jaydev’s leather watchstrap was loose and that the watch had slid a third of the way down his arm. His hands, settled firmly on the steering wheel, had a prominent network of veins that crowded their way into his knuckles. The cold air circulating in the car had made the silver hairs on his arms rise. All of a sudden Susheela became aware of the fact that this was the first time since Sridhar’s death that she had sat in the passenger seat of a car, being driven somewhere by a man. The car’s low croon weighed heavily on her as the forced intimacy of the moment began to make her feel restless. The car’s interior smelt of clean seats and a hint of jasmine. A CD of Carnatic violin music lay on the dashboard.

‘I must thank you once again. God knows how long I would have been stuck there or what would have happened,’ she said, needing to fill the space with words.

‘No, no, please. It’s just lucky I was passing. I actually got delayed waiting at my accountant’s office while he was stuck somewhere and couldn’t get into the city. Must be the same story everywhere. Anyway, at least we managed to escape from the mob. Just like in a movie.’

Jaydev turned to smile at Susheela.

She kept talking: ‘The trouble is these days there is no community spirit. If you are a farmer or whatever and you want to agitate for something, there is no concern for how your actions will affect
everyone else. Your aim needs to be achieved at any cost and the rest can all go to hell.’

Jaydev looked like he was listening to her intently but did not respond.