The Smoke is Rising (23 page)

The rain had been coming down for a few hours now but the skies still seethed. Shankar was sodden, the water running into his shirt, down his torso and dripping from his jeans. He had peeled off his light windcheater and shoved it under the seat of his motorbike, finding its clammy grip oppressive. He wheeled the motorbike into the shelter of an abandoned lean-to and, tucking a small package under his arm, began to trudge through the mud churned up by the side of the road. He always found these rows difficult to negotiate, with nothing to distinguish them, apart from perhaps a tangle of wire or a damaged bicycle left at the entrance. Today matters were much worse. The rain was sweeping into his eyes and some of the lanes were hidden under a foot of water. He thought of turning back but decided to brave the conditions. It was the last box of sweets and Janaki would be furious if she found out that he had come this far without going on to see Uma.

Janaki had given birth ten days ago. The baby boy had arrived two weeks late, weighing in at eight pounds, with a full head of hair and a breathtaking disdain for his new surroundings. Luckily the birth had not matched the terrifying scenarios that friends had described to him, although he had chosen not to point this out to Janaki. The last few days had been overwhelming: a culmination of ambitions; an indication that dignity and gravitas had finally claimed him. He was now a man.

Shankar needed to finish distributing sweets to friends and family and he had picked the week’s most inhospitable day. As he descended into the flooded sprawl below him, he placed his feet on anything that looked solid: a brick embedded in the sludge, a partially submerged plank, the top of a section of pipe. There was hardly anyone around. It was only when he reached the phone box clamped to its pole that he realised the extent of the flooding in the area. The stench of sewage clawed at his nostrils. Three children were splashing hysterically outside their home in the first row, the
water reaching their knees. He made his way along the gummy slope to the next row, his feet sinking into the brown ooze. Here too the water was rising. A twist of clothes, some plastic basins, a palm frond and then a curled
chappal
drifted idly along in the current.

Shankar tucked the package into his waistband and rolled his jeans up to his knees. He took off his
chappals
and strode into the water, telling himself he was mad. But his conscience would not allow him to turn back. He knew that Uma lived here alone and he could not simply return home without seeing if she needed any help. His toes sank into the moiling sediment as he pushed against the water, past a drenched mattress propped up against a smoke-stained wall. The doors of most of the rooms were closed but he could see that the water was flowing straight in to Uma’s room through the open doorway.

As he approached the room, he caught sight of Uma sitting on the tin trunk, her legs folded beneath her, a framed picture lying face down in her lap. She was completely wet, her hair clinging to the sides of her face and the turquoise from her blouse leaching on to her skin. The trunk was marooned in a fuscous pool, a layer of scum lapping against the back wall of the room where the rain was running down the brickwork. Every particle in the room seemed liquescent, caught in a state of chemical collapse.

Shankar rapped loudly on the open door.

Uma looked across at him in amazement.

‘I can’t believe it. It’s like an ocean in here,’ he said, taking a large step into the room.

‘In this rain, what are you doing here?’

‘I didn’t know it was this bad. I came to tell you something. I have some good news.’ He heard the incongruous ring of his words and his features creased into an embarrassed smile.

‘But first you have to get out of here. You’ll get sick and who knows when this rain will stop.’

‘What good news? Janaki?’

‘I’ll tell you, but first just come with me.’

‘Where?’

‘Somewhere dry. Or do you want to sit here in this gutter all night?’

‘But where will we go?’

Shankar paused as he looked around the room.

‘Look, I’ll be back in five minutes. Just wait.’

Uma watched him wade across the room and disappear to the right of the open doors. In front of her, a plastic chair, the only piece of furniture in the room, bobbed about idiotically. The clouds continued in their inexhaustible convulsions, wrapping the room in ribbons of water. Earlier that evening, moisture had begun to seep into the room through the floor, its crevices filling up and foaming malevolently with the liquid disgorged by the saturated ground below. The rain had then begun to pour down the walls as the rising channel outside beat at the door. The rows of rooms had been illegally constructed over a storm water drain at the bottom of the hill leading down from Mysore Junction. Every monsoon they were doused and sluiced, mercilessly beaten for a few weeks by the force of the storms. The torrents had nowhere else to go in that dense maze of battered structures; so they surged onto unmade beds, spouted up around rusting cupboards and spewed over shelves of aluminium pots.

Shankar returned to Uma’s room, his head lowered against the lashing blasts, brandishing several sheets of dirty blue plastic.

‘Where did you get those?’ Uma asked.

Shankar ignored her and stumbled through the water to the back of the room. A smell like curdled milk was everywhere. Tucking the ends of the sheets of plastic into his jeans and grasping the top of the back wall, he hoisted himself up, his caked feet seeking a purchase against the exposed bricks. Leaning one arm against the
top of the wall, with his free arm he began to twist the sheets of plastic into tight rolls that he then stuffed into the gap between the roof and the wall. One section completed, he moved further along the wall and rose up again, his feet manically seeking a cleft in which to lodge themselves. As he tried to plug the gap, the room darkened further, the gloom and the dankness meshing into a miasma that swept to the edges of the room.

Shankar jumped back into the water, turned around and shrugged.

‘The water’s still coming in but it’s better. We’ll see. Come on, let’s go.’

‘But where?’ she asked.

‘It’s too far to go to Janaki’s mother’s house in this rain. We’ll go to my house and then I’ll take you to Janaki when the rain stops.’

Uma had no desire to go anywhere. She felt like a creature thrown up by the deluge who bore a natural obligation to witness the waters recede. But she also lacked the energy to protest. She slowly lowered her legs into the water, still clasping the picture of Shiva with one arm. Shankar did not offer her his hand. She followed him towards the doorway, taking tiny steps through the turbid pool, as if her feet had been manacled. Shankar waited for her to reach the row outside, his eyes avoiding her face.

‘I’ll try and close the door and then we can go,’ he said.

He tried to pull the door shut with all the strength he could muster but it would not budge against the heft of the water.

‘There’s no money or jewellery in there?’ he asked.

Uma shook her head.

‘Then let’s leave it and go.’

They worked their way through the flood to the edge of the surrounding slope and then laboriously climbed up to the main road, their feet disappearing into the greedy mire. Every now and then Shankar would turn around to glance down at Uma, catching
sight of her outstretched arm as she tried to tramp up the incline without sliding into its swampy creases.

The tides of water continued to drum down. Shankar wiped the mud off his feet on a concrete slab by the edge of the road, slipped his
chappals
on and started the motorbike.

‘Why are you standing there? Come on,’ he called.

Uma hesitated and then shuffled forward. She sat down behind him, her ankles pressed together in a tense bind, her left hand grasping the rear grab rail, trying to maximise the distance between them. Her other arm pinned the picture of Shiva to her chest.

‘Ready?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she said, feeling like her legs would abandon her, founder and collapse onto the ground.

Shankar eased the bike through the overflowing ruts, blinking hard to keep the water out of his eyes. The road was deserted as they rode slowly towards the open fields that bordered the highway, the wheels hissing against the wet tarmac. Uma glanced down at the back of the picture of Shiva, now streaked with a web of fuzzy lines. Shankar’s back was perfectly straight and his shoulders tight with an inescapable awareness. Six inches of water and wind separated him from Uma and in that space there began to fan out the torturous wings of a new certainty. They brushed against Shankar’s vertebrae and paused over the nape of his neck. Uma felt them beat a hot gust against her ribs and cast a shadow over her face. The gap between them was not large but it was enough to accommodate the flailing realisation that, as they headed to Shankar’s home in the rain, they would not make it any further that night.

T
HE law courts of Mysore were housed in an Indo-Saracenic nugget opposite the faded green of Manuvana Park. The building had gained national prominence when a scene from a super-hit film song of the seventies had been filmed on its front lawn, between rows of flame-hued zinnias. These days the garden was bedraggled and contrite, its flower beds plagued by stray dogs who would collapse in the scanty shade of the frangipani trees like a set of errant commas. Justice, as envisioned by a Scottish sculptor in 1908, sat heavily on a plinth in the court complex. The downturned sword in her right hand looked like a walking aid and the expression on her face appeared to suggest immense relief at having been able to take the weight off her feet. If the artist had intended to create an impression of stately reason, safeguarding truth with a powerful gaze, his facility had failed him. In Mysore, justice took on the guise of an irritated matron who really did not wish to be harangued by the petty squabbles of an ungrateful rabble.

Behind the court car park, a number of shed-like structures housed the more prominent of the city’s tireless notaries. This was a prime location: some family feuds over the deserving occupant of a notarial seat here had spilled across generations. The longest serving functionary in this cloister was I P K Rangaraja, a man famed for his probity and his devotion to an ancient tweed suit, worn as a mark of contempt for the Mysore weather. Some years ago he had famously uncovered the participation of a number of his colleagues in a scam involving the submission of falsified land
title documents. The unscrupulous notaries were soon attending court in a different capacity and Mr Rangaraja basked in the exaltation that came with successfully guarding a profession from disrepute.

Opposite the seat of the notaries’ operations, the shade of a large
sampige
tree acted as a billet for the squadrons of interested parties that gravitated towards any hub concerned with the dispensation of justice. Scribes carrying portable typewriters zealously guarded space on the wooden benches. Ambulance chasers mingled with hotel touts; students at the evening law college shared experiences with sympathetic conmen; journalists killed time by trying to tease out scandals from desperate petitioners. The vexatious litigants could always be identified by their plastic bags full of papers and the lust for substantive advantage that warped their backs.

One gentleman with close-cropped, greying hair in a crisp white
kurta
was a steadfast feature of this juridical bazaar. He arrived on foot every weekday morning at exactly ten o’clock, in his hands a thick folder and a basket containing his lunch
dabba
. His exemplary attendance meant that the scribes even offered him a place on one of the benches. The man spent his time looking through his papers and benignly taking in the day’s events. He never solicited conversation but always responded to questions politely, neither enlightening nor offending anyone.

In the past few weeks, security at the court building had been increased, not as a result of threats from terrorists or organised criminals, but due to the increasingly animated conduct of the members of the Mysore Law Congress. The genesis of the strife could be traced back to an incident six months ago when an advocate’s motorbike rammed into the back of a judge’s car outside the court. There were no casualties but a frenzied row had ensued with the use of vivid language on both sides. Official complaints were made, investigations pursued and the matter would have
ended, reaching some forgettable stalemate, were it not for the fact that elections to the post of President of the Mysore Law Congress were imminent. The two main candidates, not confident that caste affiliations and their own distinguished professional histories would deliver victory, had dredged up the incident as a symbol of the disharmony that could disable the Congress’s future activities, without strong and dynamic leadership. A bilious brew of local gossip, procedural irregularities, vested interests, caste politics and tutored braggadocio meant that a strike of local lawyers was virtually inevitable. The
Mysore Evening Sentinel
called it an unforgivable perfidy that struck at the heart of the administration of justice. To the congregation under the
sampige
tree, it was simply another inconsequential distraction.

Beyond the parochial concerns of the courts in Mysore, the broader legal community was involved in an intense debate that now engaged many sections of civil society. The subject of the controversy was proposed legislation that could make the declaration of judicial assets mandatory and subject to public scrutiny. The majority of judges, of course, were entirely content that details of their wealth be submitted to the appropriate authorities. In fact, many of them were already providing this information to various bodies who could be trusted to treat it with responsibility and respect.

The contentious issue was whether the particulars ought to be released into the public domain. It was no secret that there were hostile elements who would seize the opportunity to ensnare the judiciary in frivolous litigation and media-fuelled imbroglios, a situation which would neither assist the upholding of fundamental freedoms nor enhance the efficacy of the courts. The Indian legal system had many unfulfilled requirements but a vaudeville centred on the bank balances of judges was certainly not one of them. Campaigners for transparency gave sermons on accountability,
institutional integrity and, above all, public confidence. A certain section of the judiciary, however, wanted to emphasise that it too suffered from a lack of confidence in the intentions of the general public.

One pro-information rights commentator stated that what was at stake was the humanity of the judiciary. The response from the editor of a prominent daily was that judges had shown themselves to be all too human. In support of this contention, a former Supreme Court judge was quoted as estimating that twenty per cent of judges in the country were vulnerable to subornation and unlawful inducements. The venerable gentleman, caught between his duty to the nation and loyalty to his old colleagues, had chosen his words carefully, making judicial corruption sound like a highly communicable influenza rearing up in a delicate constituency. In spite of this incrimination, society at large remained optimistic. After all, the conclusion to be drawn was that an awe-inspiring eighty per cent of the judiciary could still be trusted to maintain the rule of law with a humbling display of integrity. In these times of rampant parliamentary and administrative skulduggery, that figure could only be cherished.

In the half-light of the early morning, the loudspeakers set up on the walls of the city’s Venkateshwara temple let out a ghostly crepitation. The city was beginning to wake: a rickshaw rolled past the main bus stand, a few labourers sipped their coffee seated on the pavement by Sriram Circle and street sweepers crossed the road towards the front of the temple. A trio of buses, sporting garlands of marigold and jasmine, pulled into the bus stand and eased themselves into a row. A man opened the door of the first bus and jumped down from its steps on to the hard earth below. Three other men followed, their descent a little more hesitant and
cautious. They all knew that the slowly brightening day held in store a decisive pronouncement. As they stood uneasily in front of the buses, each light smudge in the sky refracted an ambiguous portent.

The loudspeakers sputtered into the dawn a few more times before releasing the low strains of a devotional song. The singer welcomed the morning, praised the light for its benevolence and gave thanks for the end of night. The men looked down at the spidery trails of
paan
juice on the paved ground, silent and trying not to read any significance into the words of the song. Its sound probably rose up over the temple wall and towards the tops of the coconut trees every morning. There was nothing special about today.

A few minutes later another handful of men arrived at the bus stand, their faces sealed against surprises. They joined the first group, a taut diffidence descending. The men seemed to need a welcoming sign, an indication that they were not simply detritus blown here by an ill wind. One of the men suggested going across the road to the coffee stall and they agreed that it was a good idea. But no one moved.

The driver from one of the buses jumped down and headed towards the back wall of the bus stand compound. The men watched as he stopped by the wall, adjusting his trousers in front of the words ‘The Sword of Truth will Safeguard the Voice of Democracy’ spray-painted in red. He turned back towards the men and they all instantly looked away.

Just as one of the men pulled out his mobile phone to make a call, a van made its way in to the compound. The door slid open and another group joined those already waiting. As their numbers grew, a buoyant spirit descended over the men and the few women who had joined them. There were jokes, a playful headlock and some theatrical tutting. More people arrived. They came on scooters, by
cart and crammed into rickshaws. Eight young men pulled up in a gasping Premier Padmini and three others on a bicycle. A couple in their seventies emerged from a
tonga
, rattled but cheerful. The young man who had first jumped off the bus began a headcount and then abandoned it. He divided the assembly into three sets, one for each bus. It was evident from his manner that from this point no further tomfoolery would be tolerated.

‘Vasu, what time are we leaving?’ a woman asked him.

‘In exactly twenty minutes, whether or not everyone is here,’ he said.

In just over three hours they would reach the outskirts of Bangalore and, depending on the traffic, it would be another half hour or so to the High Court. The judgment in the dispute over the government’s acquisition of land for the HeritageLand complex was due to be handed down before midday. It had taken years to get to this point and all the parties involved wore their bruises heavily.

The last protest by the theme park farmers in the centre of Mysore had led to a
lathi
charge at KR Circle, futile arrests, avoidable injuries and an abiding sense of failure. A group of community activists led by Vasu had become convinced that focusing on the legal process already underway was the only meaningful option. Rage and venom were easy to reap but the activists firmly held that only a well-placed belief in the legitimacy of their claim could sustain their campaign. It was the type of optimism that could part seas and arrest storms. The alternative was to collapse in the streets around KR Circle as smoke rose into the skies.

A local proverb said that a closed fist could not accommodate righteousness. Vasu said that angry men did not have the cool heads required for effective action. The activists had spent months explaining and reassuring, building up a deep swell that would
break on the steps of the High Court, leaving a corpus secure in its ideology and vindicated in its stance.

Vasu’s family had lived on the same plot of land for generations, slowly watching the smoggy extremities of Mysore snake up from the horizon. Dowries, debts and disputes had whittled away at the property and now all that remained was an acre and a half of tenacity. When Vasu’s father first heard of the land acquisition, he had sensed an intrigue. Although illiterate, he was well informed and he knew that even the most nefarious land-grabbing schemes could come cloaked in official sanction, bearing bouquets of worthless enticements and desiccated promises. Vasu was the only member of the family who had passed his PUC and he was immediately put in charge of getting to the bottom of the rumours and speculation.

Over the last few years Vasu had gathered an abundance of information, made contact with NGOs all over the country, learnt from human rights experts, formed links with other farmers’ organisations, consulted environmentalists and visited every village in the affected agricultural belt. It felt like everything he had ever done had been leading up to this day.

Ignoring the acid rawness in his stomach, Vasu began his headcount again.

Behind one of the buses, Ramanna let the
beedi
drop out of his mouth and ground his heel on it until a small pit had formed in the red earth. He pressed at his knuckles languidly, coaxing out a dull crack from each one. He had not expected so many people to be here; certainly not enough to fill three buses. Facing away from most of the others, as usual, he made no attempt to engage anyone in conversation. He was here only because he knew that he had to safeguard his interests. There was little else now to bind him to these people.

Ramanna had no sentimental attachment to his land. In fact, the
sight of the rutted path that led to his fields filled him with a stinging revulsion. The land only represented what it was worth in monetary terms: an opportunity to move away from the village and start life somewhere else. The money would perhaps allow him to learn a trade in Mysore. An acquaintance had started a business tending to some of the gardens in Jayalakshmipuram; maybe he could do that for a while. The land was nothing but his route away from the village and its ligatures of antipathy and malice. Ramanna and his family were not served at either of the village’s two provision shops. They were ignored at the bus stop and taunted at the post office. Excrement had been left in a torn plastic bag outside their door and broken glass sometimes glinted demonically on the approach to their house. Ramanna had married out of his caste and he had to live by that decision. The inhabitants of the village were well known for their hospitality and good cheer at festivals; what was less well known was the virulent hostility that many of them would direct towards transgressors of ancient codes.