Mahesh Rao - The Smoke is Rising

‘Yes, sir. And the front?’

‘The front? Just do something that will go with the back.’

‘Not to worry, sir. First time here, sir?’

‘Yes, my first time. My usual man left town.’

Raju bowed again, as if in deference to that decision. When he tucked a towel into Jaydev’s collar, the skin on his fingers felt cool and grainy. With a flourish, he spread another towel over Jaydev, fussing over its edges. He smoothed out the creases over Jaydev’s arms and brushed imaginary fragments off its surface.

The assistant darted forward and asked Raju a question. As he replied, he rested his hands on Jaydev’s shoulders, like a friend in the playground making a declaration of solidarity. Jaydev waited for the haircut to begin. He stared at the counter in front of him, not wanting to look in the mirror. This type of lighting played tricks. It made his neck look like it had receded into a cavern and his eyes appear even more deep set, trying to catch the light from their submerged lair. Even Raju looked grey and pinched in the mirror. On the counter there stood small tubs of pomade, hair oils arranged by colour, from amber to mahogany, and muscular bottles of aftershave. An open razor loomed in a jar of milky solution, turning grooming into chemistry. The towel around his neck smelt of talcum powder, which always reminded him of his children, white specks mottling the rubber sheet whenever his wife changed them.

‘Sorry sir,’ said Raju, speaking louder than was necessary. ‘You have to tell these youngsters everything a hundred times.’

The assistant began to move a broom around the clean floor, delivering loud clacks as he manoeuvred it into the tight corners around the chairs.

Raju shot him a look of distaste and then squeezed Jaydev’s shoulders.

‘Sorry sir, I will start now.’

His hands swept up the nape of Jaydev’s neck, bunching the white locks for a quick assessment. He then placed a palm on either side of Jaydev’s head and contemplated his face. Satisfied, he picked up a spray and, placing his hand decorously over Jaydev’s eyes, he released clouds of fine mist into the air, all the while looking like someone who would really rather not have to intrude in this way.

He put the spray down.

‘Sir, machine?’

‘No. No machine.’

Raju bowed again. He picked up a pair of scissors and began cutting, blade over fist, the same closeness of clicks that always made Jaydev grind his teeth and look down at his knees.

A man with two young sons walked into the shop and sat down on the bench.

‘But last time you said he would cut off my ears,’ wailed the smaller of the boys.

‘I said if you didn’t sit still, he would cut off your ears.’

The prospect of not moving seemed even more terrifying and the boy buried his bushy head in his father’s lap.

The assistant tried to engage the older boy in some play involving enthusiastic winking but was roundly ignored.

The white snips were falling like snow on to the floor. Once a glassy black with a noble wave in it, over the years Jaydev’s hair had turned into a more tentative sweep, threaded with strands of soft grey, and had eventually settled into a timid, feathery drop, like thoughts made of tulle. Still, at least he had held on to it at his age, more than enough to worry a comb.

Raju picked up a razor and, pulling taut the skin on Jaydev’s cheek, began to scrape at his sideburn. The rasping seemed to be coming from inside Jaydev’s head and was curiously satisfying, like itchy worries being scratched. The process was repeated on the other side. Jaydev’s eyes met his own in the mirror. Everything looked neater, strapped in, kempt. He looked like a boyish old man.

Raju leant forward and said, almost into his ear: ‘Sir, head massage?’

‘What?’

‘Head massage, sir?’

Jaydev had no idea what to say.

So he said: ‘Fine.’

He supposed it would be.

His usual barber liked to keep things uncomplicated. There had never been any doubts, ambiguities or massages. Undoubtedly the glitzy salons in town managed to muddy these waters. But Jaydev had never even stepped through their doors. This was why change in these matters was so unsettling.

Raju poured a liquid into his palm, something brown that smelt of forests. Slathering it over his palms, he smiled reassuringly at Jaydev. The fingers that had been like a strip of wet sand were now like warm wax, melding, easing and quelling. The skin on Jaydev’s head felt fluid, teeming with spores, as Raju’s palms slowly gave up their heat. Jaydev’s eyes were screwed shut, the rings and waves of Raju’s touch only palpable as an irresistible foreign manipulation. The fingers migrated to his temples, stole on to his crown and then dropped to the back of his head. At the base of his neck, they reasoned and resolved. They fled back up his head in jittery bursts, cool, then hot, then cool again, and spread out over the top of his forehead. It could have been a few minutes or a few hours in that soft-cornered darkness.

‘All done, sir.’

Raju ran a comb through Jaydev’s hair and smoothed it down with his hand. Silky bristles caressed the back of Jaydev’s neck and a cooling wad of cotton dabbed the skin behind his ears. Raju finished the process with a mysterious crack that brought Jaydev back to the grey light of the shop.

Jaydev put money down on the counter, nodded at Raju and the assistant and pushed open the door with more strength than it needed. Outside, he crumpled on to one of the empty chairs. His head and neck smarted from the recent contact. All of a sudden, a great galloping sob rose through him, convulsing his body and placing a chilly finger in the hollow of his throat. He slumped forward, crying tearlessly, long absent tremors billowing out, one after the next. He covered his face with his hands and sat bowed in the chair, until, just as suddenly, the ferment fell away, leaving only complete stillness. It felt like the first moment of the early morning. Slowly, he stood up and stepped off the shop’s porch. It had been exactly ten years since anyone had touched his temples, held his head or made much of his neck.

Vijaya Road was not the type of thoroughfare featured in brochures or advertisements. It held no interest for the executive board of the Mysore Tourism Authority and could not have been more distant from the frenetic conceptualisation of the organisers of the Lake Utsava. The road was a stubby continuation of the more respectable Acharya Road, squeezed into the concrete jumble behind Sheethal Talkies. A string of bars lined one side of the street with names like Agni, Sagarika and Prithvi, curiously allied to the robust appellations of India’s nuclear missiles. The entertainment provided by these establishments varied. At Agni Bar it was a little television, permanently turned on to a sports channel, where everything appeared filtered through orange gauze. At Sagarika Bar, a number of girls in flashy clothes were encouraged to circulate among the patrons, half of them adopting a challenging sauciness and the rest swinging their dupattas while staring at the floor. At Prithvi Bar the owner’s son, seated on a high stool behind the counter, sang tuneless dirges and was ignored by the clientele.

Opposite the bars stood the nondescript entrance to the Sangam Continental Lodge. In a previous incarnation the hotel had been the Apsara Lodge, but a police raid and the resulting adverse publicity had necessitated a change of management, a new front door and a different name. The Apsara Lodge had been found to be operating as a brothel, housing a number of Bangladeshi and Nepali girls, all illegal immigrants who were sent to the local women’s jail until further notice. The police had discovered a secret staircase leading from the hotel kitchen to a basement room, its entrance concealed behind piles of empty boxes. The room had served to hide evidence of unlawful activities during previous raids, the girls having been herded into the basement following an opportune call from a very obliging local sub-inspector. His eventual transfer meant the end of the Apsara’s time on Vijaya Road and what some sanguinely thought would be the break of a new morning.