Mahesh Rao - The Smoke is Rising

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.

The food court had a complicated payment system involving the purchase of colour-coded coupons from different counters, depending on the type of cuisine. On their first visit, it had taken them half an hour to understand the intricacies of the system and another fifteen minutes to realise that they had paid for the wrong number of dishes.

Mala slid quickly towards the one free table, her lip curling in disgust when she spotted a greasy noodle on the tabletop. She looked around for the boy as Girish went to inspect the demented array of menu displays and special offers. On the next table three men were hunched over a mobile phone, shoulders shaking with mirth. They must have been brothers; as they leant back, Mala could see that they all had the same upturned noses. On her other side an elderly woman was staring at her with vapid eyes. Mala looked away, arching her back in an attempt to get comfortable on the tiny chair.

Girish returned, reciting: ‘Fried-rice-hakka-noodles- aloo-paratha -onion- paratha -veg-pizza-veg-club-sandwich-chilly- paneer - dahi-puri-sev-puri-masala-dosa -paper- dosa .’

‘Plain dosa ,’ said Mala.

Girish spun smartly around and initiated the complex procedures necessary to order some food. At the next table, the woman continued to stare vacantly in Mala’s direction. The boy arrived and gave the table a half-hearted swab. After he had gone, Mala took a paper towel out of her handbag and wiped the surface dry. The skin on her wrists looked raw and had begun to peel. She put her hands in her lap and tried to exhale her headache.