Mahesh Rao - The Smoke is Rising

Mala could feel the hot sand pulsating through her chappals as she walked down the gradual decline to the river. She slipped them off and for a second the blistering charge against the soles of her feet made her spine ache. Drawing up her sari a few inches, she stepped quickly into the water and gained instant deliverance. Here the river bed was nearly forty feet wide where it gently swung away towards the lean scrubland further downstream. The stately progress of eucalyptus trees on both sides of the river came to a halt as the steep banks dipped into this gentle grainy bowl. The sustained dry spell had assailed the river basin and the water level was in full retreat.

Despite the mid-morning heat, various groups had made their way across the scalding dune to the water’s edge. Four young boys had stripped off to their shorts and raced into the river. Mala squinted at their brown bodies glancing off each other as they whooped at the world around them. Following some prearranged signal, the bodies disappeared for a few seconds before four pairs of inverted legs emerged in a row, pointing shakily at the sky.

A boy in trousers rolled up to the knee was offering to take people across the river and back for ten rupees.

‘Madam, you want a boat ride?’ he asked Mala.

She shook her head.

‘It will be like heaven,’ he said, his eyes rolling in earnestness.

Mala could not help smiling. But she shook her head again.

The boy looked crushed and then, quickly recovering, disappeared into the cluster of kiosks that inevitably sprang up in the fecund earth around tourist sites.

At the top of the dune, behind the low wall, one hundred and one stone steps led to a temple that faced the high lustre of the river. The temple’s roof was supported by thirty-six pillars bearing inscriptions in praise of the resident deity. A frieze of rearing horses ran over the plinths that formed the base of the structure. At its main entrance, the fangs and bulbous eyes of the carved sentinel served as a warning to tourists unable to muster sufficient interest in the history of the shrine. Taking his cue from this figure, a priest stood on the uneven porch and looked bleakly at the figures below, before returning to the solace of a large potato bun.

Mala looked at her feet, strangely flat and wide in the rippling water, like brown table-tennis bats. She wiggled her toes and a puff of sediment rose up to obscure the dull glint of her toe ring. Sweat was now running down her back, the fierce heat basting her arms and her neck. She looked around for Girish, who was deep in conversation with the father of the boat-boy. It was his usual sociological burlesque: what is your native place, who lives with you, how many children, how old are they, what do you grow, where are your parents, how far is your native place? Mala had seen the performance countless times. Girish would never listen to the responses, preferring instead to stack up more questions, revelling in the beneficence of his camaraderie with the drivers, the guides and the porters.

This time the conversation had veered into local politics. The constituency’s MLA had recently succumbed to his injuries following a disastrous attempt at skiing in Kufri. A by-election had been called and the opposition was taking full advantage of the district authority’s failure to construct a bridge at Suvarnadurga, four kilometres away. In fact, plans for the bridge had been stewing for nearly a decade. Opinions had been canvassed, engineers had been consulted, funds had been allocated, contracts had been awarded and invoices had been raised. The bridge, however, remained unconstructed: a footnote in the life of the late MLA for Suvarnadurga.

Girish waved at Mala, gesturing towards the tea stalls. She shook the water off her feet, slipped on her chappals and walked heavily up the dune again, the coarse sand cleaving to her toes. Girish was seated at one of the few shaded tables. She had felt his gaze all the way up the dune but had kept looking down at the little gullies her feet were making in the sand. She sat down opposite him, wiping her neck with her pallu .

‘So do you know about the myth?’

‘No, what myth?’

‘About the temple.’

When Mala looked blank, Girish continued: ‘It seems that there was a just and responsible king who ruled this area in times of yore. He always looked after his subjects and made sure that they did not start filing public interest litigation cases.’

Mala flashed a hurried smile in response.

‘The king was looking for a bride and began praying to the river god to assist him. Using the river god as marriage broker, you could say. So, after the king had prayed for many months, the river god was satisfied and offered him his daughter’s hand in marriage. The daughter, it seems, was a very beautiful creature. And also very entertaining.’

The coffee and vadas he’d ordered arrived and Girish broke off to examine them. Satisfied, he popped half a vada into his mouth with a smudge of chutney, shuffling the hot mouthful around with his tongue until it was cool enough to swallow.

‘Yes, so this daughter could tell amazing stories, dance beautifully and play lots of instruments. The king was completely bewitched and married her with no delay. But then what happened is that the king became obsessed with his new wife. He began neglecting his state affairs and all his subjects began to suffer. You could say that he was the model for our politicians today.’

A girl appeared at the table, holding out calendars for sale. Girish looked around impatiently for the tea boy. Within a few seconds, the girl darted away, her skirt billowing behind her.

‘Anyway, neighbouring kingdoms began to make plans to attack this state and the subjects began to starve so they begged the river god to make the king come to his senses. It seems the river god appeared before the king and scolded him for his dereliction of duties. The king was very arrogant, thinking that he did not need the river god any more, now that he had his beautiful daughter. So the river god punished the king by making his daughter invisible.’

A fight had broken out between two stray dogs in the parking area and it was a minute or so before their ferocious barking receded into a series of cartoon yelps.

‘Some people, I think, will question whether making a wife invisible is real punishment.’

Girish smiled at Mala and then continued.

‘But the king was highly distraught. He began to pray again to the river god, agreeing to any kind of penance as long as his wife was returned to him in visible format. The river god agreed to return his daughter, but only on condition that the king pray non-stop for forty days, restore the good fortunes of his subjects and also build a temple where the river god could always see it.’

Mala’s eyes ventured a glance at the next table as Girish spoke. A couple were holding hands across the table’s ringed surface. The tea boy set down two bottles of cola, flimsy straws capering at the top. Red and green bangles clinked on the woman’s lower arms as she traced little circles on her husband’s palms with the tips of her fingernails.

Mala stole another look. The woman was wearing a white salwar kameez , the fitted bodice showing off her contours. She stretched out her arm and turned the two pens poking out of her husband’s shirt pocket so that they would be correctly ranged for any impromptu drafting. Her hand moved upwards and her fingers swept through her husband’s hair, brushing it away from his side parting. Spotting a crumb at the edge of his mouth, she flicked it away and ran her thumb across his bottom lip.

Mala turned back to Girish and their eyes locked. She looked down at her lap and then across at the spread of the sluggish river below. Girish reached out for the sole paper napkin sitting in a plastic tumbler on the table and began to wipe his hands meticulously.