The Smoke is Rising (3 page)

This time the conversation had veered into local politics. The constituency’s MLA had recently succumbed to his injuries following a disastrous attempt at skiing in Kufri. A by-election had been called and the opposition was taking full advantage of the district authority’s failure to construct a bridge at Suvarnadurga, four kilometres away. In fact, plans for the bridge had been stewing for nearly a decade. Opinions had been canvassed, engineers had been consulted, funds had been allocated, contracts had been awarded and invoices had been raised. The bridge, however, remained unconstructed: a footnote in the life of the late MLA for Suvarnadurga.

Girish waved at Mala, gesturing towards the tea stalls. She shook the water off her feet, slipped on her
chappals
and walked heavily up the dune again, the coarse sand cleaving to her toes. Girish was seated at one of the few shaded tables. She had felt his gaze all the way up the dune but had kept looking down at the little gullies her
feet were making in the sand. She sat down opposite him, wiping her neck with her
pallu
.

‘So do you know about the myth?’

‘No, what myth?’

‘About the temple.’

When Mala looked blank, Girish continued: ‘It seems that there was a just and responsible king who ruled this area in times of yore. He always looked after his subjects and made sure that they did not start filing public interest litigation cases.’

Mala flashed a hurried smile in response.

‘The king was looking for a bride and began praying to the river god to assist him. Using the river god as marriage broker, you could say. So, after the king had prayed for many months, the river god was satisfied and offered him his daughter’s hand in marriage. The daughter, it seems, was a very beautiful creature. And also very entertaining.’

The coffee and
vadas
he’d ordered arrived and Girish broke off to examine them. Satisfied, he popped half a
vada
into his mouth with a smudge of chutney, shuffling the hot mouthful around with his tongue until it was cool enough to swallow.

‘Yes, so this daughter could tell amazing stories, dance beautifully and play lots of instruments. The king was completely bewitched and married her with no delay. But then what happened is that the king became obsessed with his new wife. He began neglecting his state affairs and all his subjects began to suffer. You could say that he was the model for our politicians today.’

A girl appeared at the table, holding out calendars for sale. Girish looked around impatiently for the tea boy. Within a few seconds, the girl darted away, her skirt billowing behind her.

‘Anyway, neighbouring kingdoms began to make plans to attack this state and the subjects began to starve so they begged the river god to make the king come to his senses. It seems the river god
appeared before the king and scolded him for his dereliction of duties. The king was very arrogant, thinking that he did not need the river god any more, now that he had his beautiful daughter. So the river god punished the king by making his daughter invisible.’

A fight had broken out between two stray dogs in the parking area and it was a minute or so before their ferocious barking receded into a series of cartoon yelps.

‘Some people, I think, will question whether making a wife invisible is real punishment.’

Girish smiled at Mala and then continued.

‘But the king was highly distraught. He began to pray again to the river god, agreeing to any kind of penance as long as his wife was returned to him in visible format. The river god agreed to return his daughter, but only on condition that the king pray non-stop for forty days, restore the good fortunes of his subjects and also build a temple where the river god could always see it.’

Mala’s eyes ventured a glance at the next table as Girish spoke. A couple were holding hands across the table’s ringed surface. The tea boy set down two bottles of cola, flimsy straws capering at the top. Red and green bangles clinked on the woman’s lower arms as she traced little circles on her husband’s palms with the tips of her fingernails.

Mala stole another look. The woman was wearing a white
salwar kameez
, the fitted bodice showing off her contours. She stretched out her arm and turned the two pens poking out of her husband’s shirt pocket so that they would be correctly ranged for any impromptu drafting. Her hand moved upwards and her fingers swept through her husband’s hair, brushing it away from his side parting. Spotting a crumb at the edge of his mouth, she flicked it away and ran her thumb across his bottom lip.

Mala turned back to Girish and their eyes locked. She looked
down at her lap and then across at the spread of the sluggish river below. Girish reached out for the sole paper napkin sitting in a plastic tumbler on the table and began to wipe his hands meticulously.

The doorbell rang at a quarter past eleven, spooling out a joyless version of ‘Edelweiss’.

‘Actually on time,’ thought Susheela as she smoothed down the front of her
pallu
and walked towards the door.

Sunaina Kamath made her usual entrance: she walked into any room as if expecting to interrupt a vibrant conference. Her apparent disappointment at being confronted by only Susheela and a potted philodendron was quickly swept away as she took off her sandals.

‘How are you, Sush? This heat, I can’t tell you. It gets worse every year.’

Behind Sunaina, Malini Gupta smiled woodenly as she took in her surroundings.

‘I don’t know whether it’s the global warming or getting older or maybe both. But I definitely seem to feel the heat a lot more these days,’ sighed Susheela. ‘Please come, Malini. First time you’re coming here, no?’

Sunaina sank into a brocade sofa.

‘Oof, I think I’ll just stay here for the rest of the day and not move.’

Slightly rested, she let out an abrupt chuckle. Her dimples gave her face a softer, more pliant aspect as she dabbed at her neck with a man’s handkerchief. Sunaina’s hair always looked as if she had walked into it quite by chance, the unyielding bob anxiously perched over her face. She stuffed the handkerchief into one of the many pouches in her handbag and looked ready for business.

Malini Gupta sat straight-backed on a leather and bamboo stool
despite Susheela’s attempts to navigate her towards the more comfortable corner armchair. Susheela saved herself some trouble and focused her attentions on Sunaina, it being widely known that Mrs Gupta’s only interests were the cave paintings of Ajanta and the arthritis in her big toe.

The social call slid into its characteristic rhythm. More on the hot weather, children, other family, traffic, general health, specific health, completed building works, anticipated further building works, weight gain, weight loss, cooks, maids, drivers and gardeners.

Sunaina dragooned her way through topics like a seasoned politician, mindful of all reasonable views but keen to move on to other more significant issues. She was convinced that her uncompromising sense of community responsibility and benevolent participation gave her a nose for what mattered. If questioned, she would have been hard-pressed to define the community for which she toiled so industriously. In fact, the question would probably only have served to irritate her: the kind of mindless prattle that got in the way of people setting agendas and achieving objectives. Nevertheless, she recognised the importance of weighty nomenclature. Sunaina had always believed that if one invited gravitas, patronage and influence would automatically follow.

She was therefore an indispensable member of the Association of Concerned and Informed Citizens of Mysore, the chair of the Mysore North Civic Reform and Renewal Committee and the secretary of the Vontikoppal Ladies’ League. No less impressive was her record in the inner circles of the Mahalakshmi Gardens Betterment Association and St Theresa’s Humanities College Alumni Society. She also gave freely of her time to any number of spontaneous causes and supplicants.

In some quarters her tireless public efforts were viewed as a
deliberate counterpoise to her husband’s cantankerousness. A canny property developer, he seemed to relish his renowned irascibility, picking fights with even the
paan
seller outside Mindy’s. The most recent outrage had been an ugly scene involving an overturned basket of chrysanthemums outside the Chamundeshwari temple. During her early married life, Sunaina had appeared to have a firm grip on her husband’s unpredictability. She had regarded her handiwork with the pride of a dog trainer who had made a success of a particularly idiotic mongrel. But over the years the cur had reverted to form and ever more florid notes of apology had been required to appease her relatives and neighbours.

Susheela wondered when exactly Sunaina had begun to call her Sush. She was certainly the only person in the world to do so. Uma appeared briefly to serve the chilled juice and some light mid-morning snacks. Sunaina greeted the
malai chum chum
and the cashew
pakoras
with protestations, grudging acceptance and then a cheerful zeal. The air-conditioning system rattled away in the background.

‘Oh Sush, you’re really trying to finish me off,’ Sunaina groaned, biting into another
chum chum
. ‘Just after scaring us with all these health stories, you serve us these heart attacks.’

Malini Gupta had barely touched her plate. A corner had been nibbled off just one
pakora
. Susheela made a mental note.

Talk turned to Sunaina’s nephew, whose disinclination to find paid employment troubled her like an ingrown toenail.

‘At least he doesn’t gamble or, you know, conduct himself in loose ways,’ said Susheela.

‘Birdwatching,’ said Sunaina with disgust. ‘That’s the only thing he’s interested in. Always leaping up to tell you that he spotted some crested crow with three legs.’

‘But I suppose it doesn’t do any
harm
.’

‘It doesn’t do any
good
either. He may be comfortably off, but as
a life, what does it amount to, all this lying around in puddles, gazing at hens?’

Malini Gupta seemed to cheer up a little at the thought of the dismal prospects of Sunaina’s nephew.

The morning’s paper lay folded and pressed flat on the coffee table. The front page revealed that the High Court had granted a fresh stay order on any construction at the site of HeritageLand. The saga of the proposed theme park, one of Asia’s largest, seemed almost immemorial. Every call of support or protest was eagerly absorbed into the civic ether as if the pitch for construction was the real entertainment envisaged by the park’s creators. Almost every aspect of the project was endlessly debated in the local press, the choice of site and acquisition of land being the most controversial. The editor of the
Mysore Evening Sentinel
was unequivocal in his warning: ‘If we don’t hurry up and build the damn thing, the Chinese will do it, like they do everything else.’

‘As for this so-called HeritageLand, I don’t think we will ever see it in our lifetimes,’ said Susheela.

‘I am just sick and tired of hearing about it,’ said Sunaina, her hands fluttering to her temples.

‘Every day there is another press release, another exclusive. The park will only have five-star hotels, it will have five thousand fountains, it will be seen from space.’

‘Apparently we will be able to experience a day in the life of Tipu Sultan there.’

‘Didn’t he spend his days flinging Britishers off a cliff?’

‘Maybe that’s what they intend, although I hope not. Think of the mess. Just when street cleaning has improved in our localities.’

Sunaina gulped the last of her juice like a stricken heroine.

A bee had somehow made its way into the dining room and its dull drone was interrupted by the thud of its deranged lunges at the closed window. Malini Gupta glanced at the moulded ends of
the curtain rail, shifted on her stool and once again examined her uneaten
chum chum.

‘So, what made you late this morning?’ asked the
mali
, as Uma carried a basin of dirty utensils to the outside washing area at the back of the house.