Mahesh Rao - The Smoke is Rising

The trip had been Susheela’s idea. The drive would be easy except for perhaps the last fifteen kilometres up through the hills; there she knew Jaydev would take the bends slowly. At the summit there existed a place simply called Viewpoint. There was no temple, no market, no monument; only a handful of benches at the edge of a copse, facing the slope that led back down to the rumpled rug of paddy fields below. At times, on one side of the path that led up to Viewpoint, an old man sat next to a pile of tender coconuts. There was never any sign of how he had managed to get there with his stock or of how he proposed to leave; only his mirage-like presence in front of the eucalyptus trees.

Before dawn Susheela had packed some sandwiches and made a flask of coffee. She had put some extra sachets of sweetener into her handbag. In the basket there went a pack of paper napkins, two plastic cups and stirrers, two apples and a packet of butter biscuits. Jaydev no longer sounded the horn at Susheela’s gates. He preferred to call her mobile and let it ring a couple of times. It was yet another adjustment to the structure of unspoken arrangements that governed their meetings. The rather casual enquiries as to the presence of maids and drivers; the knowing references to crowded places that simply got on one’s nerves; the pointed avoidance of their own neighbourhoods; the search for distant entertainments that would satisfy their apparent craving for a change from the staid routines of their social set. There had been further visits to cinemas in unfamiliar localities. One overcast afternoon they had had coffee at the canteen in the Akaash Astronomical Observatory, a place frequented only by the occasional foreign tourist or visiting academic. Perhaps the oddest rendezvous had been a sudden late-night trip to the twenty-four-hour pharmacy at the J S Desai Hospital.

Jaydev had called Susheela just as the ten o’clock bulletin was ending.

‘Did I disturb you? I’m sorry, I only just realised how late it is.’

‘Not at all. I’m still downstairs.’

‘You will think I’m mad but I wanted to ask you something.’

‘Yes?’

‘I need to go to the medical shop. I’ve run out of some pills that I need to take in the morning.’

‘You’re going there now?’

‘The all-night one at J S Desai. And I was wondering, if it’s not too late for you, if you felt like coming on the drive.’

‘What, now ?’

‘No, of course you’re right. Please, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what comes into my head sometimes.’

‘No, wait. I’ll come. Can you leave in maybe ten minutes?’

‘You’ll come?’

‘Yes. Why not? Just give me a missed call when you get here.’

‘Of course. I’ll do that.’

They had driven through the silent streets of Mysore, the only other movement being silver dogs streaking into the shadows. The lights had been dim at eye level: a pale yellow bulb hanging over the entrance to a government building; the waning neon sign over a shuttered supermarket; a hint of lustre as the car turned at a junction, its lights reflected in a shop window. But far above their heads the hoardings glowed like gems. White teeth, gleaming car bonnets and gold screens lit up the sky, sending shapeless searchlights into the heart of the city.

‘Is this what it has come to for us? A drive to the medical shop is now an outing?’ Susheela had asked.

‘Aren’t you excited about your sudden tour of Mysore by night? When was the last time you saw the roads this quiet?’

‘Probably that day. The day we first met.’

‘We had met before that day. You just don’t remember.’

‘No, I don’t. Which is a surprise to me. I am normally very good at remembering things like that.’

In the hospital car park, while Jaydev was at the pharmacy, Susheela had looked up at the building’s dark windows. This was the place where Sridhar had spent his last days, endless hours when she had waited, sometimes with her daughters, sometimes alone. The heel had come off her sandal when walking up the entrance ramp that last morning. She had given a ward boy some money to go and find her daughter on the fourth floor. A few hours later her husband had died. But when Jaydev returned to the car, of course, there had been no need to bring all that up.

This morning they were on a proper outing. Susheela opened her window just a fraction and, her crimson shawl tucked snugly around her, narrowed her eyes against the whip of wind on her face. In recent years she had only worn the shawl once. It was what she would normally have termed a bold choice for a woman of her age. But Susheela’s nerve seemed to be firming up these days in matters beyond the merely sartorial.

In less than two hours Jaydev was shifting gears as they negotiated the steep rise to Viewpoint. There were no cars impatiently tailing them and nothing hurtling down in the opposite direction.

The road ended at the top of the hill, in a clearing marked by a faded white line. Jaydev got out of the car and walked around to Susheela’s side. He held the door open for her, the expression on his face deliberately purposeless. As Susheela stood up, the wind picked up, ruckling her sari and sending a plastic bag careening through the trees and over the edge.

‘See, in any beauty spot, even if there is not a soul about, you will still find some filth,’ she said. ‘That is what people here do.’

Jaydev shut the door, took the basket from Susheela and looked around. There was no sign of the coconut seller. The only other vehicle was a dirty motorbike a few feet away.

‘Which way?’ he asked.

‘If we go down this small path, there are some benches that face the valley.’

Susheela walked into the shade of the copse, where the light dimmed to the green of old bottles and the chill escaped out of the grooves in the bark. The path led through clumps of sweet violets and dense bushes of angel’s trumpets, hanging their heads in some unknowable shame. The ground was uneven so she stepped carefully, hearing the similarly cautious tread of Jaydev behind her. Above their heads there was an occasional whisper, caught only by the woody shoots on the highest boughs. Neither of them spoke until the trees had thinned out and they were back on the open hilltop, the sun bold again. In front of them five benches stood in an arc facing the glorious drop.

On one of them a young man sat with his back to them.

They both stood still.

At last, Jaydev said: ‘How about the one at the end?’

‘Yes, that’s fine.’

Susheela loosened her shawl and let it hang slackly from her shoulders before sitting down. Jaydev placed the basket between them and smoothed down his hair.

The young man did not look up. He was in his late twenties, the angled planes of his face making him look like he had been hewn out of a single piece of stone. The frames of his glasses were thick and black, widening his long face. He held his hands locked in his lap.

Rather than gazing at the view, in spite of themselves Susheela and Jaydev found themselves studying their neighbour. Every now and then the wind would puff out the front of his papery shirt. The man remained immobile.

‘There’s an unusually grave young man,’ said Jaydev in a low voice.

‘He looks very sad, no? Like he is caught in a great dilemma. And so thin.’

‘What do you think is bothering him?’

‘God only knows. Maybe he is suffering the pangs of a deep and unrequited love.’

Jaydev laughed.

‘You can do better than that.’

‘Okay, maybe he has lost his job, he has fought with his entire family, he has no idea what to do with the rest of his life and he has not got a single friend in the world. Happy?’

‘ Arre , why would that make me happy?’