Mahesh Rao - The Smoke is Rising

‘What we need is someone to just come and take charge and put all these goondas in their place,’ thought Susheela. ‘If you give a little bit of freedom to these thugs, they just abuse it.’

She flicked through the channels, looking for something indicative of a more enlightened society.

Mala slid open the glass doors of the cabinet and gingerly fluttered a duster over the ceramic debris of her late mother-in-law’s life. Girish’s mother had died some ten years ago in a flash flood while on pilgrimage to Badrinath. Discussions of a possible match between Mala and Girish were at an early stage when Rukmini and Mala’s elder sister, Ambika, came to know of the tragedy. They had clucked appropriately, Rukmini’s eyes gazing sadly into the middle distance, but there existed an unspoken contentment that came with the knowledge that Mala would not have to endure any mother-in-law related guerrilla warfare. Girish’s stock had just risen.

A week after the wedding, when Mala arrived at the house in Sitanagar, she wondered whether it would have been preferable for the departed lady to have been present in the flesh. As a memory, Girish’s mother weighed heavily on the rooms in the small house. The garlanded photograph in the sitting room showed a skeletal woman who looked like she had just sat on a pin. Her love for frogs was apparent in the cabinet, which also contained spindly trophies from some forgotten sports day, an enigmatic award from the Indian Red Cross, a few pairs of castanets and a soapstone elephant with one eye. In the spare room a wheelchair she had once used now housed a couple of badminton rackets and a vase filled with plastic flowers. Her sewing machine still glowered in the master bedroom, her name painted across the base in a five-year-old’s wobbly hand.

Mother-in-law or no mother-in-law, this was Mala’s home now, although late at night a wave of bewilderment would still occasionally wash over her. What peculiar devices of hazard had led to her ending up in this house, with its low, streaky ceilings, married to a man twelve years older than her, dusting the ceramic frogs of a woman who had drowned a decade ago in the Alaknanda River?

Mala shut the cabinet doors, folded the duster into a tiny square and buried it in her lap as she sat down on the sofa. She turned the television on and had to sit through the last few minutes of a quiz show before the melancholy strains of the theme tune to her favourite soap came drifting out. The show was set in a mansion in Delhi, inhabited by a prominent family of industrialists. The patriarch of the family was in a contemplative stage of his life. The money had been made; now the legacy had to be moulded. His wife, the third in an imperious progression, had recently come under the influence of a shady swami , a god-man with a penchant for travel by private jet. The state of her rapidly unravelling psyche formed one of the soap’s more prominent subplots.

The patriarch’s three sons all lived in the same mansion, along with their glamorous wives. The eldest son was a ruthless workaholic who managed to carve out a little time to conduct a rather obvious affair with his secretary. His wife symbolised the soul of the programme and was often shown in heart-rending close-ups, trying to make sense of the turbulent world around her. Her devotion to her family was matched only by her apparent inability to recognise infidelity in her husband, a man addicted to surreptitious text messaging and returning home freshly showered in the middle of the night.

The second son had not been endowed with a personality and was therefore reduced to looking craven and forlorn in various quarters of the large garden. His wife, on the other hand, tended to fizz and pop with storylines. The daughter of a powerful politician, she ran a major fashion house — primarily, it seemed, by making her senior employees sob in public. Her adroit manoeuvring had seen a rival designer arrested on terrorism charges weeks before the launch of the summer ready-to-wear collections. Now she found herself faking a pregnancy in order to achieve some as yet unrevealed ambition.

The third son ran a modelling agency, which allowed him to troop through the mansion with a string of coltish nymphs in full view of his epileptic wife. The actor who played this character seemed to have been cast mainly on account of his lustrous hair and the programme makers endeavoured to show it always in the best possible light. This son’s best friend was an art gallery owner who spent much of his time appraising paintings in Paris and New York. There were strong indications that he was developing an unhealthy interest in the wife of the eldest son. As the soul of the programme, it was beyond dispute that she would not be permitted to engage in any unprincipled frolicking. There were, however, signs that she was responding in her own way to some amorous stirrings, and her struggle to contain her restiveness would no doubt take the show through the summer months and into the rainy season.

Weight loss was big business in Mysore and not simply as a consequence of the city’s many yoga schools. For Faiza Jaleel, it was oxygen. As sole occupant of the lifestyle desk at the Mysore Evening Sentinel , her articles drew on the wispiest of details and then puffed out information and advice, steeped in the earnest vernacular of slimming. New gyms seemed to be springing up in Mysore practically every day. Dieting clubs had begun to make inroads into suburban kitchens. The new Dhamaka health club in Mahalakshmi Gardens claimed to have a formidable waiting list. Boxercise and jazzercise groups were convening on roof terraces, first floors of office blocks and in community halls. The readers of the Mysore Evening Sentinel were assured that Faiza would catalogue every fad and fancy.

In one poignant interview, Mrs Jethmalani of Jayalakshmipuram explained the difficulties she faced.

‘It is true that these days temptations are very strong, but I think the real problem is in my genes,’ she confessed to Faiza.

‘In my genes and in my jeans,’ she giggled, a second later.

It was lucky that Mrs Jethmalani was of a jolly disposition. She had joined her local laughing club, having heard impressive accounts of its health benefits. The club founder had assured her that with a positive attitude and the strong abdominal muscles engendered by communal hilarity, the pounds would simply fall off. Faiza had nodded sympathetically, switched her recorder off and returned to work.

Carbohydrates continued to get a bad press and a pall of dejection settled over a city of rice-eaters. The coconut seller outside Sheethal Talkies had begun to sell body-building supplements along with hashish and pirated DVDs. In Kuvempunagar and Gokulam, the Keralite Ayurvedic centres were offering consultations and massages to counter disproportionate weight gain. The enterprising general manager of Sri Venkatesh Traders had managed to procure several consignments of grapefruit essential oil after hearing about its virtues as an appetite suppressant.

Guests at parties and wedding receptions collared Faiza, eager to discuss the merits of burdock root in increasing metabolism. Stealing a look at her plate as she circulated, they would outline the ingredients of the latest miracle remedy for corpulence and describe the craze for veil-dancing or Zumba- Natyam routines. Faiza serenely absorbed the new intelligence while noting the relative girth of prominent socialites; she had an idea for a column called ‘Society Snacking Secrets’.

At a diabetes fundraiser, Faiza had spotted Leena Lambha, a well-known item girl. Leena was currently the face and body of a company that manufactured plug-in belts guaranteeing a toned midriff through a patented thermodynamic system. Leena had been charming and candid. Nothing she had ever tried had been as successful as the toning belt.