The Smoke is Rising (22 page)

Uma gasped and covered her mouth with her hand.

‘What happened? How did this happen?’

Bhargavi turned her head, her left eye blinking in recognition. She moved her swollen lips laboriously.

‘Come sit,’ she said, patting the edge of the bed.

Uma drew closer to the bed, her hand still locked over her mouth.

Bhargavi’s cousin lowered her voice: ‘It was on Thursday night. She had gone to the factory to talk to those girls as usual and a few of them went with her to the bus stand. She spoke to them there for maybe fifteen, twenty minutes and then she walked down to the other stop where she gets her bus.’

Uma listened while keeping her eyes on Bhargavi’s crushed face.

The cousin continued: ‘Then some woman called out to her and asked her to come with her. She said she was having a problem with the factory owners. Bhargavi had never seen her before but she went with her anyway. You know what she’s like.’

The cousin stopped speaking, her teeth biting down hard on her bottom lip. Uma took her hand in hers.

The woman had led Bhargavi through a warren of twisting lanes into a four-storey building that appeared to house another garment factory on its ground floor. They had climbed the stairs, the woman all the while looking nervously behind her as she told Bhargavi that she was desperately in need of help. There was only one vast room on the top floor, empty except for a few crates and bolts of cloth propped up against one wall. A moment later, three men had appeared from one corner of the room, slammed the door shut and set upon Bhargavi. She dropped to the floor. The last thing she remembered before losing consciousness was the strange silence in the room, broken only by the sound of their kicks, like the
muffled bounce of fruit falling on grass. A passer-by had heard Bhargavi’s groans in an alley later that night and found her under a pile of soggy cardboard boxes.

Bhargavi’s left eye blinked again, as if to confirm the story. She tried to speak but winced instead.

‘I’ll give her this tablet for the pain. It’s been a few hours,’ said her cousin, reaching into a brown paper bag. ‘I have not seen even one doctor on this floor for two days. You have to do everything yourself. Yesterday I had to bribe a nurse thirty rupees to change the bandage.’

‘But who was that woman? And those men? Had you seen them before?’ asked Uma.

Bhargavi shut her eye and opened it again in response.

Her cousin responded: ‘They were definitely people from the factory owner’s side. But who can tell where they are or who they are?’

‘Did you go to the police?’

‘I went to register an FIR day before yesterday. They said they would send someone here to take a statement but no one has come.’

Neither of them mentioned their virtual certainty that no one would come either today or the day after.

Bhargavi managed to whisper: ‘I didn’t think they would go this far.’

‘Don’t speak,
akka
, don’t speak,’ said her cousin, placing a hand on the only corner of Bhargavi’s forehead untouched by the bandage.

Uma shook her head slowly, looking from Bhargavi to her cousin.

In the bed opposite them, a woman shifted and turned to face them. Her face was a patchy yellow and drained of all expression. It was clear though that she had turned to better hear their conversation.

‘I think I should go. If it starts raining, the buses …’ said Uma.

‘Yes, you should go. It was good that you came,’ said Bhargavi, through almost closed lips.

Uma nodded, gently cupped Bhargavi’s elbow and then touched her cousin’s shoulder. She turned and walked quickly down the corridor, slowing down to negotiate the dark stairs and then quickening her pace again towards the main exit. The rain had started to fall already and a large pool had formed between the exit and the gates. Uma joined the throng at the main doors, all waiting for a short lull in the downpour. Beyond the gates, the fruit and vegetable vendors had pulled sheets of plastic over their carts and were taking shelter in the doorways of shops and in the porch of the nearby Health and Family Welfare Institute building. The rain poured over the roof of Bethesda Church and hammered away on the tops of the tin sheets that covered the rows of cobblers and key-cutters lining Puthli Park Road.

Uma and others at the main doors turned in the direction of a series of shouts and drumbeats. In spite of the torrent, a procession was making its way along Puthli Park Road and approaching the hospital. At the head of the group, a huge Ganesha idol mounted on a tractor rumbled past, its pink and purple hues blazing through the dreary slush. The group was probably on its way to the Shiva temple tank where the idol would be immersed in its dark waters. As the drumming grew louder, the men following the tractor leapt into the air, the heavy showers increasing their abandon.

The charge in the air was infectious. A man standing beside Uma tucked his fingers into his mouth and let out a series of sharp blasts in time to the drumming. Many in the throng began to clap and there were more whistles and shouts. The scenes inside the hospital were forgotten as the frenetic impulses of the procession took over. A couple of young men dashed into the pool of water in front of the hospital and began to kick up a fierce splash. Another burst of applause broke out in the group sheltering from the storm.

A roar went up from the men in the procession. The idol’s head was caught in the low-hanging branches of a tamarind tree. The drumbeats grew more urgent as the tractor driver, assisted by another man, tried to scythe away the foliage with a stick. A few more men ran towards the tractor from the hospital to assist in the release of Ganesha’s head. Around the tractor the dancing continued as the water beat down. When the idol was finally free, most of the stragglers sheltering by the hospital doors surged forward towards the road. Uma watched as the pounding and yelling managed to drown out even the sound of the rain. The tractor started up again and resumed its imperious progress towards the temple tank.

Mala’s phone began to shudder on the bed, the screen lighting up. She broke through the surface of her torpor and picked it up. It was Ambika.

‘What happened to you?
Amma
said you’re not well.’

‘It’s nothing. Just a bit of fever.’

‘Are you looking after yourself properly? You seem to be falling sick a lot more these days. Have you been for a check-up to see if you’re anaemic?’

‘I am not anaemic. Must be the weather change or something.’

‘You should have a blood test anyway.’

Ambika had begun to believe firmly in her own diagnostic abilities, acquired in the course of managing her husband’s nursing home. As her home and professional life prospered, her confidence in her opinions and pronouncements had grown proportionately. She now tended to begin sentences with the phrase: ‘I have very often found …’ A chronicle of Ambika’s astute observations would follow, accompanied by instructions to her listener on steps for the future. There had been early signs of these interventions. At the age
of twelve, Ambika had discovered that a group of students were operating an examination syndicate, receiving papers leaked by a teacher and selling them on for a sizeable profit. Her alertness led to prompt action by the school authorities, a Good Citizen award from the municipal council in Konnapur and endless recitations of the sequence of events for the benefit of family and friends, while her mother served plate after plate of lentil
vadas
.

As Ambika suggested various therapeutic alternatives, Mala felt a sudden and extreme restlessness swell her skin. She sat up and swung her legs off the bed, desperate for her sister to stop talking.

‘I’m fine. Tomorrow I’m going to the office, so there’s nothing wrong with me.’

Ambika sounded unconvinced but let the matter rest. Instead, she began to talk about the difficulties she was facing in finding competent staff, despite the generous rates she was willing to pay. Mala looked at the leaden sky through the window, making non-committal sounds at regular intervals. She was annoyed now, her primary impulse being to hurt Ambika in some way, confounding that voice into silence.

‘How is Girish?’

Ambika always asked this question as if she knew very well that Girish was exactly the way he always was, pompous and sneering, but she would not be the one to be accused of shirking her duty by not asking after his well-being. His superior attitude was a genuine mystery to Ambika and not one that she pondered in silence. She had observed to Mala more than once that Girish may have read a lot of books but he was still a
babu
in a small office in Mysore, living in that dark, airless house in Sitanagar, while everyone else in India was now ready to lock eyes with the rest of the world.

Ambika’s chatter continued. Mala responded with her set of stock responses, another accomplished performance designed to remove any doubts in the minds of her family.

‘So, what other news from your side?’ asked Ambika.

‘Nothing much. We’ll be busy the next few weeks, helping Anand and Lavanya when they shift.’

‘They are shifting? Where to?’

‘A huge house in a new complex. You should see this place. It has everything, two swimming pools, shopping mall, cinema.’

Mala could not remember the precise nature of the other attractions at Terra Blanca and decided to endow it with a few of her own: ‘I think there’s also a golf course and a waterfall.’

‘Have they sold their old house?’

‘No, I think they’ll keep that too. Why sell if you don’t need to, no?’

‘Have you seen the new house?’

‘Oh yes. It’s like a place from some movie. They even have their own school and fire department.’

‘Why do they need their own fire department? Who will be setting fire to their house every day?’

‘They have made it so that they can live with complete peace of mind.’

There was a pause as Ambika digested this information.

‘So how much did they pay for it? Any idea?’

‘I don’t know the exact amount. But crores. Crores and crores for anything in that complex.’

‘Why do they need you to help them shift? They can get some professionals, no?’

‘Yes, but they will need help supervising. And we had to offer. Especially since they are taking us to Thailand.’

Mala was enjoying herself now. She mentioned Thailand with a flighty nonchalance, like it was a neighbourhood attraction.

‘Thailand?
Why
?’

‘What do you mean why? For a holiday, why else?’

There was a further pause as Ambika tried to make sense of this new revelation.

‘But they are
taking
you?’

‘For the company,
na
? So generous of them. But they are lucky. God has really blessed them, not like you and me, having to count everything.’

Ambika huffed but made no other comment.

‘So how long are you all going for?’ she asked a few seconds later.

‘Nothing has been fixed yet, but I think three weeks.’

‘Three
weeks
?’

Mala searched for further colour that she could add to their holiday plans.

‘It’s so exciting for me, leaving India for the first time and that too all first-class air fare.’

‘But will you be able to be with Lavanya for that long? I mean, it’s not easy, no?’

‘I have come to know the true side of Lavanya.’

‘So arrogant, no? Whenever you see her, sleeveless blouse and cooling glass. Someone should kick her.’

‘No no, you’re
so
wrong. You just need to get to know her. We have become
very
close after spending so much time together and she really is
such
a wonderful person.’

Ambika became subdued and after a few more minutes discussing Anand and Lavanya’s new home she became aware of a few matters that required her immediate attention. In any case, she had only called Mala to find out if she needed anything; she would ring again for a proper chat some other time. Moments after she had ended the call with Mala, she dialled her husband’s extension. She intended to find out as soon as possible whether it was really conceivable that there were housing complexes in Mysore with their own fire departments.