Mahesh Rao - The Smoke is Rising

Jaydev looked like he was listening to her intently but did not respond.

‘I mean, especially for senior citizens, it is like we don’t exist. We can’t cross these crazy roads, we can’t barge into queues like youngsters, we can’t endlessly ask people to do things without going mad,’ said Susheela.

The car was approaching Mahalakshmi Gardens, silent at this time of the afternoon.

Susheela laughed. ‘I’m sorry. You have been kind enough to give me a lift and here I am, turning into one of those crazy raving people. It’s right at the end of this road.’

‘Not at all. I think speaking one’s mind is one of the privileges of getting old. Let’s face it, there aren’t too many others,’ said Jaydev.

Susheela smiled. The mali had come running to open the gate and the car pulled in to the driveway. Susheela got out of the car and noticed that the driver was still not back. She began to wonder whether something serious had happened.

She leant into the car and said, ‘I really don’t know how to thank you. Please come inside for some coffee?’

‘No, thank you. Maybe some other time. I also need to get home.’

Susheela stood in the doorway, waving as Jaydev reversed out of the gates. As she turned to go inside the house, her throat felt inflamed and her head still ached. All she wanted to do was wash the grime off her body and lie down until the night air brought some relief.

Girish could hear the rasp of drawers being pulled open in the bedroom. There was a clang as the door of the metal cupboard swung open and hit the corner of a chair. The room fell silent for a few moments before he heard the muffled sigh of something being lifted on to the bed. The cupboard door clicked back into place and the drawers were eased back with a jiggle. Mala emerged from the bedroom, a few loose strands of hair hanging limply by the sides of her face. Her forehead and nose glistened and a flush was forming on the skin between her collarbones, like a wet stain under a piece of muslin.

‘Some electricity man had come here to cut the supply. He said we hadn’t paid the bill,’ she said, leaning against the door.

‘I thought you said you had paid it.’

‘I did pay it. I told him that but I couldn’t find the receipt. That’s what I was looking for just now. He said he’s coming back later.’

‘That would be a great thing, no? The regional deputy chief of customer relations for electricity has not paid his own bill and so his current is cut.’

‘I told you, I have paid it. I just need to find the receipt. If they didn’t have such useless records, they would know that I have paid it.’

‘You better find it before he comes back.’

‘I know that.’

‘I am not going to bother calling someone up to sort all this out at the office, if that’s what you’re expecting.’

‘I was looking for it just now. I’ll find it.’

Mala sat down next to Girish and added as an afterthought: ‘If you are so worried about it all, maybe next time you should pay it yourself and not leave everything to me.’

Her hand lay on the waxy surface of the sofa, fingers curled upwards. Girish began to press down on them with his hand. He continued to look straight ahead; only a slight spasm in his jaw hinting at any effort. The heel of his hand crushed her fingers, a commanding force bearing down through the heft of his neck and shoulder.

Mala flinched.

‘No, stop it, please. That’s really hurting.’

Girish grabbed her hand and began to force it upwards. Mala’s fingers were trapped in a ridge of pain and her wrist began to tremble under the strain.

‘What are you doing? Stop it.’ Mala wrenched her hand away, pushing herself off the sofa.

Girish stood up.

The blow, when it came, was definitive. The impact of the slap loosened a tooth, rattled the glass cabinet doors, cracked the paving stones by the gate, split the trunk of an ancient tamarind tree in the lane outside, sent an alley dog skittering away in terror, collapsed the humpback bridge that led to the main road and caused a lone cold wave to begin rising over the surface of distant Tejasandra Lake.

THE senior executives of the Mysore Tourism Authority (MTA) were worried. Their critics in the local and trade press were becoming increasingly vocal.

‘We need dynamic individuals who will take resolute action to rescue our ailing tourism industry,’ thundered a front page article in the Mysore Evening Sentinel.

A leading hotel owner, interviewed at a travel fair, had been more blunt: ‘This band of baboons simply moves around from one luxury hotel to another, enjoying free hospitality and talking nonsense at their good-for-nothing events. I can tell you one thing, they are most certainly not welcome at my hotel.’

The information from associations of tour operators, travel agents and hotel owners was not encouraging. A survey across Tier I and Tier II cities by a market analysis firm showed a disquieting ignorance of Mysore’s main attractions, coupled with a worrying lack of interest. There was no doubt that serious efforts would have to be made to enhance the city’s lustre. The momentum had to build since the beginning of construction at HeritageLand kept slipping every few months.

The MTA quickly rejected any kind of international onslaught. The focus quite clearly needed to be the Indian market, as large numbers of domestic tourists were travelling further and more frequently, with apparently ever-increasing holiday budgets. In any case, as far as overseas tourists were concerned, overtures could be made at a later stage for Mysore’s prominent inclusion in the Ministry of Tourism’s Incredible India campaign.

The MTA, not known for its radical promotional strategies, had at first decided to play it safe. It seemed that the most logical step would be to recruit a popular Hindi film personality to become Mysore’s brand ambassador. An immediate issue had been the inability to identify a high- or medium-profile star with any connection to Mysore or its environs. A number of board members also began to question whether a close association with a major star would really capture the appeal of Brand Mysore. After all, if remunerated adequately, these luminaries were willing to lend their faces to everything from prickly heat powder to motorcycle engine oil.

The next suggestion was to approach reformed rowdy-sheeter and rising Kannada cine star, Nuclear Thimma, to represent Mysore. His hit songs were causing a sensation among the key youth demographic in South India and he had lived for many years opposite a mutton stall just yards from Mysore Junction. But he simply did not have the required national allure and his unfortunate past was an insurmountable obstacle. The idea was scrapped.

The board of executives decided that specialist assistance was required and set up a number of meetings with advertising agencies and brand consultants. A full briefing was sent out to the relevant representatives, pitches were prepared and the business of illuminating Mysore began in earnest. The ideas put forward by the various creative departments ranged from the inane to the fantastical, a fact that did little to achieve consensus among the members of the MTA’s board of executives. The elephant in the room was of course the many delays in the development of HeritageLand, a subject that was taboo in this sensitive congregation, many of whom felt faint at the mere thought of offending Venky Gowda.

After another round of meetings at various heritage properties, it was agreed that the proposal that offended the least number of people was the ‘Geneva of the East’ campaign. A team of consultants had drawn on Tejasandra Lake for inspiration and found that it had the potential to transform Mysore into a simulacrum of the Swiss city. The campaign would centre on the great range of attractions around the lake, from the Anuraag Kalakshetra and the museums at one end of the lake’s shore to the Galleria’s upmarket shops and restaurants at the other. Given the enduring affection for Switzerland among the Indian middle classes, brought up on a surfeit of films featuring chiffon-clad heroines on Alpine slopes, the campaign was certain to evoke the perfect melange of old-world sophistication and a suitably aspirational aesthetic. City officials on the board assured their colleagues that there would be a rapid improvement in basic services around the lake, including drainage and waste collection, in order to give credence to the key aims of the campaign.