The Smoke is Rising (16 page)

The wind outside sounded like silk being ripped. Under the picture of Shiva, the candle’s flame shrank into a blue bead before leaping back to illuminate the unplastered brickwork behind it. The top of Shiva’s face was in shadow but Uma could see his palm raised in approbation. She forced herself to concentrate on the hand and its munificence. The flame’s rhythms grew less erratic and the dim light began to pull on Uma’s temples and cheeks, gradually drawing her into a murky delirium far beyond sleep.

It was a reverberation at the door that restored her to the darkness of the room. The flame had died and all she could make out were the sky’s distant pleats in the gap between the wall and the roof. The wind had dropped but a different sound had taken its place: what seemed like the leaden resonance of a man’s voice imitating the wind. Uma turned on to her side and faced the door. The sound faded. Moments later she started as something clattered against the door, perhaps a handful of gravel. She slowly sat up, her eyes shut, listening. All she could make out was the barking of a faraway dog, steady and mechanical. She continued to sit upright, her arms clasped around her knees, computing the textures of the night.

When the scratching at the door began, she recognised it
instantly. By now she was familiar with the long, uneven rasps against the grain of the wood that sounded like they were being drawn along her scalp. From her first few weeks in Mysore she had been the target of opportunistic advances and arrogant demands which followed the same sinister pattern, whatever their provenance. The sound continued for a minute or so before ending abruptly; a low cough followed and then some receding footsteps.

Uma opened her eyes and looked through the gap between the wall and the roof. A navy wash was leaching across the sky in an almost imperceptible advance. She closed her eyes again.

The quarterly general meeting of the Mahalakshmi Gardens Betterment Association (MGBA) was scheduled for seven in the evening at the function hall of the Erskine Club. The MGBA had been set up nearly fifteen years ago as a reaction to the municipal authorities’ steady indifference to the provision of essential amenities in the area. The objects of the Association were ambitious: once the local community’s activist potential had been harnessed to resolve the neighbourhood’s problems, the same faculties would be directed towards uplifting more disadvantaged localities and creating a sense of unity in Mysore. Unfortunately the last decade and a half had seen the pioneers of local welfare becoming mired in a swamp of issues very close to home. As a result, the more philanthropic aspirations had been postponed indefinitely.

Sunaina Kamath had recently taken over as the chairperson of the MGBA’s Executive Committee, in what the previous incumbent, Mr Nandakishore, regarded as a savage coup. She had sent out a memo reminding members that under Article 54 of the articles of association no officer of the Executive Committee could stand for re-election for a third term, a rule that served to terminate Mr Nandakishore’s excellent stewardship. He had grudgingly stepped aside but was determined to ensure that the MGBA would not be deprived of his years of experience in matters of civic importance.

The general meeting had originally been due to take place a week earlier but a violent downpour had meant that many of the MGBA members had stayed at home. In spite of the sparse attendance, Sunaina had been minded to continue with proceedings.
Mr Nandakishore, however, reached into the same constitutional arsenal that she had previously raided and introduced a point of order with regard to the conduct of general meetings. He was surprised to note that Mrs Kamath intended to proceed with the general meeting despite the inevitable violation of Article 14 of the MGBA’s articles of association. The provision required a quorum of thirty members for the transaction of any Association business. Mr Nandakishore’s careful calculation had arrived at a figure of only twenty-nine. After a hurried discussion with some of the Executive Committee members, Sunaina had adjourned the meeting in an asphyxiated voice. In the car park of the Erskine Club that evening, Mr Nandakishore strode through the stinging rain with his head held very erect.

The second attempt at the meeting was far more successful. It was a clear evening with a punchy freshness in the air and the car park at the Erskine Club was almost full. When Susheela arrived, most of the seats inside the Club’s function room were occupied, even though she was a good twenty minutes early. She walked to the front of the room, smiling warmly at fellow residents who were either currently in her circle or who had left it without causing offence. She sat down in the front row where a few seats remained and continued to look around the room, trying to make her scrutiny look as casual as possible. A tap on her shoulder made her turn expectantly in her seat.

It was Jaydev: ‘Hello again. It seems we only meet in situations of high drama.’

Susheela immediately looked embarrassed, not expecting to be reminded again, and certainly not at an MGBA meeting, of her strange vulnerability on that day.

‘Hello, what a surprise to see you here. What brings you to our neck of the woods to witness our little dramas, as you say?’ asked Susheela.

‘Sunaina and Ramesh have promised to take me to a new Italian restaurant by Tejasandra Lake after the meeting. Being an old man with far too much time on my hands, I have followed them here to make sure that they don’t give me the slip.’

‘I certainly hope the food is worth it, if it means you have to sit through discussions about our garbage and traffic lights and so forth.’

‘Let me just move forward instead of leaning like this. Is that seat free?’

The seat next to Susheela was usually free these days.

At that point Vaidehi Ramachandra gently squeezed Susheela’s elbow on her other side.

‘How are you Susheela? I haven’t seen you for such a long time,’ said Vaidehi morosely.

‘That’s true, how busy we become without even knowing why,’ said Susheela, with as much regret as she could marshal.

‘I’m glad that I’ve seen you here,’ said Vaidehi, cheering up and rummaging in a Shanta Silk House plastic bag. ‘I have been meaning to give you this for a long time but kept missing you.’

Susheela watched the ominous movements being made by Vaidehi’s hands, all the time conscious of Jaydev looking on.

Vaidehi pulled out a pamphlet and presented it to Susheela with a flourish. Under an image of a coastal sunset, the front page read: ‘The Twilight Terrain, A Guide to the Final Paths to the Almighty by the Mokshvihar Spiritual Trust’. If the unequivocal wording were excised, on the face of it, the pamphlet could just as easily have been a guide to honeymooning in Goa.

Susheela scanned the inside pages, which offered vignettes of rudderless pensioners who had eventually discovered the Mokshvihar lecture programmes and trademarked MokshDhyana group meditation techniques. The rest of the pamphlet was devoted to an extensive biography of the Trust founder, a
charismatic humanitarian who frequently toured the world with his message of sanctity and salvation.

Susheela glanced at Jaydev, who appeared to be spellbound by some object in the vicinity of his knees. Around them, even more people had arrived and the pre-meeting chatter echoed loudly through the hall. To one side of the dais, two young men in waistcoats and bow ties were setting out more cups and saucers on a long table.

Susheela looked up at Vaidehi, whose face had settled into an expression of beatific encouragement.

‘Don’t say anything about it now. You need time to go home and reflect on what is said there. If you have any questions later, please come and ask me,’ said Vaidehi, turning to face the front again, satisfied but with an air of modesty. She was, after all, only the messenger.

Susheela thanked her and put the pamphlet into her handbag.

She had never really questioned the complexion of her spiritual fibre: she believed in God, knew she lived a principled life and performed the correct rituals on festival days with an undeniable precision. She would no more have considered becoming an atheist than she would the cultivation of marijuana on her front lawn. But the truth was that she found it difficult to entrust other beings, mortal or celestial, with the business of running an organised existence. Even when Sridhar had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, she had not sought relief in appeals to the divine. Her natural instinct had been to throw herself into finding the best oncologist, keeping an unfaltering watch on the hospital staff, ensuring the maximum possible comfort in his daily routine and communicating regularly with those who needed to be kept informed of his progress. When her sister-in-law had suggested a special
pooja
for Sridhar’s well-being, Susheela had quickly slotted it in on an auspicious day free of other commitments and made
brisk enquiries on acceptable rates for caterers.

Vaidehi Ramachandra’s overtures did not offend her from the point of view of scripture or orthodoxy. What Susheela did not care for was the presumption that there was a space in her life that needed to be filled or that she was adrift in a sea of moral doubt. The fact that Vaidehi felt entitled to give Susheela advice on her spiritual nourishment was no less irritating: she was hardly a friend, habitually wore her sari two inches above her ankles and her husband had made his fortune selling steel utensils in an alley behind Shivrampet.

Jaydev leant in towards Susheela and said under his breath: ‘So when are you off to the
ashram
?’

‘Please, not now. She might hear you.’

‘I don’t think so. She looks like she is in some sort of trance.’

‘Please Mr Jaydev, here is not the place.’

‘All I am asking is that you allow me to wish you all the best on your journey to salvation.’

Susheela could no longer stifle her smile, but persisted in looking straight ahead at the bowl of chrysanthemums on the Executive Committee’s table.

At that point Sunaina and her colleagues on the Committee took their seats on the dais, the Treasurer stamped on the floor a number of times and the assembly was called to order.

As Girish had told Mala that he would pick her up in the evening, she had left her scooter at home and had got a rickshaw in to work. When she left the main gates of the Mysore Regency Hotel at half past five, she saw him across the road, standing by his motorbike, reading the evening paper. The rain had been heavy the night before and she had to skirt around the pools of water in the road, avoiding the onslaught of cars and rickshaws that splashed their way through.

Their first stop was a sari shop near Hardinge Circle, crisp pleats of turquoise and mauve silk fanning across the bolsters in one of the window displays. In the other, the mannequins appeared to be about to launch into a martial routine, their arms slicing at the neon air around them. Despite Mala’s protests, Girish had insisted that she should at least have a look. She was bound to see something irresistible.

It was wedding season and the shop was busy. Impassive matrons consulted lists scribbled on pages torn from their grandchildren’s exercise books and huddled conferences were breaking out on the little stools provided for customers. Shop girls circulated with steel
lotas
of intensely sugared coffee and cold
badaam
milk, made from a cheap packet mix, as noted by the more discerning clientele. Here the service was still steeped in the traditions of canny servility; the haughty appraisals and polished merchandising of the new boutiques at the Tejasandra Galleria were a world away. Sari after sari was rapidly unfolded,
pallus
shaken out, borders smoothed flat: a ballet of drapes and furls. Despite the small size of the store, the offerings seemed endless. A teenaged boy leapt about barefoot on bales at the back of the shop, locating additional stock, although to the untutored it simply looked like the crazed caper of a Nilgiri mountain goat. Nothing was deemed unavailable; runners were despatched to nearby warehouses or convincing alternatives were seamlessly conjured up.

Girish was always an enthusiastic participant in such an environment. He thrived on the theatre of transaction and grasped eagerly at his roles. These were the occasions where Mala relaxed and fed off his enthusiasm as he became the disappointed fiancé or the outraged bystander. She ran her finger over a
zardozi
leaf on a sari, the embroidery scratching against her skin. Girish’s face was flushed in the crowded room, a film of moisture spreading above his lips and across the back of his neck. His eyes flashed at Mala,
an intimate connection made in the shop’s thick air, over the heads of two sisters who were examining a length of printed crepe. He was leaning on the counter, his fingers resting on the rounded steel edge, a tiny pulse thrilling in the soft dip under his thumb. Mala noticed that his belt clasp was hanging loose between the sharp creases at the top of his trousers. She smiled at him as he narrowed his eyes at the salesman whose hands were acting out a livelihood being wrung dry.

‘We can always try Srinivas and Sons,’ she said, on cue.

A refreshed scene of offer and counter-offer, declaration and protestation, finally culminated in them leaving the shop with a plastic bag containing two saris wrapped in brown paper.

They wandered past one of the many electronics shops on the same street. A stack of DVD players in their boxes stood on the pavement outside the shop. A buck-toothed boy in a baseball cap urged them to go inside to take just one look at the rest of the stock. Girish ignored him and walked on towards Sheethal Talkies.

‘Where to now? Do you want to look at some jewellery?’ he asked Mala, twisting around in the throng on the street.

‘No, I think that’s enough for today. What do you want to do?’

‘Are you hungry? Let’s go to the food court.’

Mala was not hungry. The smell of fried garlic from nearby food carts and the brawny wafts of kerosene from their stoves were making her feel nauseous. A muted ache was taking form somewhere behind her temples.

They made their way across the busy intersection to Sri Harsha Road, walked past Woodlands Theatre and Maurya Residency, turning towards the new shopping centre that had leapt into the centre of old Mysore. The giant hoardings outside the mall advertised a new range of teak furniture, heavily discounted as a result of a condition termed ‘Monsoon Mania’. In front of the metal
detectors, girls with fresh jasmine in their hair were aggressively thrusting flyers for cut-price home cinema systems into the hands of shoppers.

Inside the mall, Girish and Mala trawled up a series of escalators, negotiating pyramids of non-stick cookware, bins of cheap towels and bed sheets, racks of crumpled shirts and a display of framed landscape prints. A remix of a Hindi film song bore into Mala’s head as they reached the fourth floor. The food court was partially screened off from the shop floor by a set of cardboard palm trees. Under paper cut-outs of pizzas and burgers, which hung in dense clumps from the ceiling, a couple of dour security guards circulated around the tables, trying to spot anyone who had smuggled in eatables from outside.