Mahesh Rao - The Smoke is Rising

A swallowed gurgle from Jaydev stopped Susheela.

‘It may be funny for you because you are not the one being ill-treated. I hope your daughter-in-law treats you well.’

‘Actually, when I visit she is more considerate than my son, even. But anyway, please continue with your story.’

‘Jaya has to use a special foot cream. She used to keep it in the bathroom when she was staying with her son but she is convinced that her daughter-in-law kept hiding it.’

‘She was hiding the foot cream?’

‘Well, it kept disappearing and who else would take it? So now she has to keep it locked in her suitcase. I mean, is it right, that she has to hide her foot cream in her own son’s house?’

‘I think the best thing would be for you not to delay seeing her. She needs your support.’

‘It really is very upsetting for her. A while back her daughter-in-law dropped a wet grinder and it almost fell on Jaya’s foot. She is convinced that it was deliberate.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, she mentioned it again yesterday: “Susheela, do you remember when that girl tried to murder me with the wet grinder?”’

‘Do you think it was deliberate?’

‘Well, the girl is most insensitive but I don’t think she is a psychopath. Although I suppose it is difficult to tell with young women these days, they all seem so confident.’

‘Poor Jaya.’

‘Let me tell you one thing, Mr Jaydev: we should be pleased with what we have and not demand too much. My son-in-law may be messy and moody but at least he has never tried to kill me. Anyway, enough for today; I am going now. Just thank God for all your blessings.’

A young doctor emerged from the front of SG Hospital, trailed by a group of nervous, pleading relatives hoping for a second’s reassurance before he disappeared behind a closed door again. The doctor walked quickly towards his motorbike and sped off through the gates, his face inscrutable. The hospital was located on a busy road near Tilak Nagar, a squat, desecrated building, once a soft pink, now the colour of wet ash. At the back of the hospital, a series of puddles held their daily consignments of used syringes and soiled bandages.

The reception area was crammed with people. Every seat was taken, weary shapes leant against the walls or squatted on the floor, and a large crush surrounded the receptionists. The room smelt of close bodies, damp cloth and something sulphurous that was making its way in through the open doors. On the wall behind the receptionists, a picture of Mahatma Gandhi hung askew, his eyes decorously avoiding the scene below him.

Uma had not been able to speak to either of the receptionists. She asked a porter to point out the way to the ladies’ general wards and followed the direction of his disinterested thumb. The corridor light blinked on and off, sousing the walls with a pale green glow. Through the first open doorway Uma glimpsed the dingy ward, mysterious smears and streaks on the floor, filthy sheets trailing off the beds. A young girl seated at the entrance to the ward stared up at her with enormous eyes. She walked past the girl, looking at the inhabitants of the beds, seeking out Bhargavi. Torpid gazes, inert forms, sapped spirits: Uma took in the desolate parade of patients, trying to draw as little attention to herself as possible, a woman with good health and an upright bearing.

She walked across to the next ward and saw more faces, degraded and decaying, but not the one she was seeking. At the end of the corridor a dark stairway led to the wards on the upper floors. A ghostly form brushed against her legs as she walked up the stairs, making her cry out. In the near darkness she could make out a family of skeletal cats that seemed to have colonised this part of the hospital. She hurried up the stairs, two at a time, not wanting to touch the banister.

The second floor passage was in darkness too. Grimy rubber mats were strewn across the floor and a number of bodies huddled against the walls. Uma shut her eyes for a few seconds to try to accustom herself to the gloom. She turned into the next ward where, unexpectedly, all the fluorescent lights were working. As she stood uncomfortably between the rows of beds, someone grabbed her wrist.

‘Uma, isn’t it? How did you know she’s here?’

It was the distant cousin for whom Bhargavi had found work in Mahalakshmi Gardens, days after starting there herself. Uma had only met her once and had forgotten her name.

‘She hasn’t been to work for three days and I found out from amma that there had been an accident and she was in hospital,’ said Uma.

‘Accident? Accident, my foot,’ said the cousin angrily, still holding on to Uma’s wrist. ‘Come see what those animals have done to her.’

Uma let herself be pulled along the length of the ward. Bhargavi was in a bed near the far end, her leg in a cast. A bandage covered most of her head and her right eye was a shattered purple bulb.

Uma gasped and covered her mouth with her hand.

‘What happened? How did this happen?’

Bhargavi turned her head, her left eye blinking in recognition. She moved her swollen lips laboriously.

‘Come sit,’ she said, patting the edge of the bed.

Uma drew closer to the bed, her hand still locked over her mouth.

Bhargavi’s cousin lowered her voice: ‘It was on Thursday night. She had gone to the factory to talk to those girls as usual and a few of them went with her to the bus stand. She spoke to them there for maybe fifteen, twenty minutes and then she walked down to the other stop where she gets her bus.’

Uma listened while keeping her eyes on Bhargavi’s crushed face.

The cousin continued: ‘Then some woman called out to her and asked her to come with her. She said she was having a problem with the factory owners. Bhargavi had never seen her before but she went with her anyway. You know what she’s like.’

The cousin stopped speaking, her teeth biting down hard on her bottom lip. Uma took her hand in hers.

The woman had led Bhargavi through a warren of twisting lanes into a four-storey building that appeared to house another garment factory on its ground floor. They had climbed the stairs, the woman all the while looking nervously behind her as she told Bhargavi that she was desperately in need of help. There was only one vast room on the top floor, empty except for a few crates and bolts of cloth propped up against one wall. A moment later, three men had appeared from one corner of the room, slammed the door shut and set upon Bhargavi. She dropped to the floor. The last thing she remembered before losing consciousness was the strange silence in the room, broken only by the sound of their kicks, like the muffled bounce of fruit falling on grass. A passer-by had heard Bhargavi’s groans in an alley later that night and found her under a pile of soggy cardboard boxes.

Bhargavi’s left eye blinked again, as if to confirm the story. She tried to speak but winced instead.

‘I’ll give her this tablet for the pain. It’s been a few hours,’ said her cousin, reaching into a brown paper bag. ‘I have not seen even one doctor on this floor for two days. You have to do everything yourself. Yesterday I had to bribe a nurse thirty rupees to change the bandage.’

‘But who was that woman? And those men? Had you seen them before?’ asked Uma.

Bhargavi shut her eye and opened it again in response.

Her cousin responded: ‘They were definitely people from the factory owner’s side. But who can tell where they are or who they are?’

‘Did you go to the police?’