Mahesh Rao - The Smoke is Rising

‘Okay, enough. Get the bill.’

The phone had hardly stopped ringing that afternoon. If it was not an irritating press officer trying to elicit a comment, it was an underling from the Superintending Engineer’s office seeking a definitive version of the morning’s events. Girish, in turn, had asked two members of his team to try to put together an accurate report but they appeared to be floundering in their usual inefficiency.

The only objectively verifiable piece of information was that at about eleven o’clock that morning, a group of unidentified persons had descended on the electricity supply company office at Neelam Layout, an unfortunate South Mysore locality that had only been supplied with sixteen hours of power in the last four days. It was from this very point that accounts began to differ. A manager at the Neelam Layout office stated that an angry mob had torn into the building, smashed windows, ransacked a filing cabinet, damaged computer equipment and stolen the caretaker’s bicycle. A bystander, on the other hand, told a news channel that the protestors had simply stood outside the building, chanting and holding placards, until the security guards had begun to taunt and insult their mothers, prompting a lengthy scuffle. One of Girish’s colleagues reported that he had received a call from someone who was sure that there had been an attempt to burn down the building.

Girish slammed the phone down, having just informed an officer at the Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission that he would revert to her as soon as he was able to ascertain the precise nature and magnitude of the morning’s incidents.

‘This kind of thing would only happen somewhere like Neelam Layout,’ he spat.

‘I heard that they were accusing us of purposely not providing them with electricity because it is a Muslim area,’ said his colleague Ganesh.

‘Such fools. As if we can just disconnect Muslim areas even if we wanted to.’

‘When people are angry, they will believe anything.’

‘Anyway, they get more than their fair share of electricity. Who asked them all to have four wives and twenty children? Always first to start complaining about anything.’

Ganesh doubted that the consumption of electricity per household in Neelam Layout was higher than in any other fatigued and forsaken part of Mysore but was reluctant to feed Girish’s ill temper. It would only result in an afternoon of snide remarks and some petty retribution later in the week.

The story was destined to make it to the front page of the Mysore Evening Sentinel . Some of its readers were relieved to note that the accompanying editorial had decided to present the incident as the natural consequence of bureaucratic incompetence and poor governance rather than a clash of divided communities.

‘Our state government, in connivance with our electricity companies, has only now decided to close the stable door, by stating it will try to purchase additional power from other states,’ lamented the piece. ‘Unfortunately for the public, not only has the horse bolted, it has been found, sold off secretly through the good offices of a series of corrupt middlemen and the funds transferred via hawala brokers to a benami Swiss bank account. Such is the nature of official planning and foresight in Karnataka today.’

With that picturesque image, the editor of the Mysore Evening Sentinel managed to capture a number of societal ills in his forceful conclusion. The editorial did little to improve Girish’s humour that afternoon.

‘Susheelaji? It’s Jaydev calling here.’

He always announced himself in a cautious way, as if still undecided as to whether he ought to be calling.

‘Hello, one minute, one minute … so how are you today?’

‘I’ve just come back from a long walk so feeling very relaxed and refreshed. And you?’

‘Oh fine, I’ve been meaning to visit an old friend for ages now but something keeps coming up. I was just wondering whether I should go today. It’s one of my days for the driver, you see.’

‘I’m sorry, am I delaying you?’

‘No no, not at all. It takes me an hour to get out of the house these days anyway. Making sure everything is locked, switched off, closed, bolted. It’s ridiculous.’

‘Sometimes I do wonder. Maybe you have things to do and then I call and take up so much of your time.’

‘Please Jaydevji, I am not Sunaina, rushing off to meetings every five minutes. I really don’t know how she does it. Even the thought of it makes me tired.’

‘Well, she’s younger, but it’s true, so much energy. She reminds me of a person I used to know, my senior at my first job in Calcutta. He was also always running around from one committee to another, pushing bundles of paper into an old jhola he used to carry everywhere.’

‘This was in Calcutta?’

‘Yes, in the fifties. In fact, he even had the same hairstyle as Sunaina.’

‘Now you are just being rude.’

‘No, really, I promise you. Poor fellow, he must be no more, but if in those days he ever had a tendency to wear saris, he would have looked just like Sunaina. You know, us juniors always used to make fun of him. He had a habit of using long words even when he had no idea of the meaning. He must have just thought that it sounded impressive.’

‘I think that is a habit many of us Indians have. Also, why use one word when we can shower you with ten?’

‘No, but poor old Mr Mukherjee was really something. He would walk up to you and say: “I have a small piece of work for you. Very interesting. I am sure you will find it highly obstreperous.” Or else: “Such terrible weather we are having. Truly sybaritic.” After we had lost our initial nervousness in that place, my friend Shailendra and I would keep going up to him and using our own ridiculous words in conversation. I feel bad now; he must have thought we were just two such friendly chaps.’

‘You should feel bad! Poor old Mr Mukherjee. And I can imagine you and your friend laughing like hyenas the moment his back was turned.’

‘I wish I could deny that. But that is exactly what we did.’

‘Well, I won’t tell Sunaina that she reminds you of some poor man that you all used to laugh at years ago. It reminds me of my uncle who also had a very particular way with words. He was a professor of history at Mysore University. If any of the women in the family had put on weight he would smile and say: “You are looking nice and robust, much better than the last time I saw you. Then you were looking very inadequate.” The thing was, he really meant it in a nice way.’

‘But he never said it to any of the men?’

‘No, but I think the men always looked more than adequate.’

‘No doubt. So, what time are you going to see your friend?’

‘I don’t know. I’m not even sure if she’s here or with her daughter. I need to phone and check. I feel very bad for her, you know. She has a very nasty daughter-in-law so she tries to spend as little time in Mysore as possible. But what to do? She has to come from time to time to see her son.’

‘The usual saas-bahu story?’

‘Who knows what exactly goes on? But the daughter-in-law seems to really hate her coming so goes out of her way to make things difficult. Jaya, my friend, doesn’t eat brinjal, and she was saying that the last time she stayed there, this girl was making brinjal day and night.’