Mahesh Rao - The Smoke is Rising

On the other side of the junction, the last few children were getting off a minibus impatient to leave, its engine growling urgently. Two teachers conducted a hasty count of the checked pinafores and the pairs of grey shorts. A moment later, two of the boys decided that the time was right to move on and ran across the road towards Mala. Before the teachers had time to react, the rest of the group began to follow them. In no time, Mala was buffeted by a surge of small heads, clammy palms pushing at elbows, all around her hot breaths and stifled yelps. One child’s chin ended up in Mala’s hand, both looking at each other in amazement at this sudden contact. In a solitary world, bereft of clear signs, the slightest irregularity had to be interpreted as a lodestar, bright with significance. So what did it mean that she found herself so trapped that she could not even make it across to the main road, stranded in a pool of chattering children?

‘Stop!’ shouted one teacher from the other side of the road. ‘Not another step!’

She came running across, stumbling over her dupatta , furious and terrified. The children froze.

The teacher grabbed hold of the arm of the first offender and smacked his leg.

‘What did I tell you? What have I been telling you all day? What is wrong with you? This is your last warning. Do you hear me? If you do anything like this again, I will tie you to a coconut tree and leave you there all night for the rats and scorpions,’ she shouted.

The boy’s eyes grew marginally wider.

‘Say sorry to Auntie. All of you, say sorry now,’ she commanded.

‘Sorry Auntie …’ filled the air, dragged out into an undulating chorus.

‘It’s okay,’ Mala managed to mumble.

‘I am also very sorry, madam,’ said the teacher. ‘They are just impossible to control.’

‘It’s nothing.’

‘Truly, I am sorry. Do you know what the time is please? Because of one of these apes, I broke my watch yesterday.’

‘Yes, it’s nearly four.’

The panic in Mala began to rise again.

‘Thank you, madam. Okay everyone, in a line, two by two. Now!’

The children scrabbled to one side and began to order themselves.

‘One more day is over and I am still alive. What else is there to say?’ said the teacher as the group began to move off.

A few moments after they had gone, Mala replied: ‘Nothing. Nothing more to say.’

Perhaps that was the sign.

She picked up her bags, crossed over towards the main road and hailed a passing rickshaw.

At the bottom of the slope leading down from Mysore Junction, a pipe had burst and water was spraying upwards, arcs of joy in the afterglow. A teenaged boy had wasted no time in taking advantage of this fortuitous state of events. As Janaki came down the slope, he stood with his back to her in his underwear, his hands soaping his back, lost in his lathery abstraction. There was something compelling about his insouciant pleasure that made her slow down to look at him as she walked past. He turned slightly and she could only just make out his face in the lilac light. His eyes were firmly shut and his cheeks sucked in as he let the jets hit his body, the soap running down into the ground in patchy streaks. Just as Janaki passed him, the boy opened his eyes. The expression in them changed. His lip curled up lewdly.

‘What are you staring at? Want to join me, Auntie?’ he asked.

Janaki stopped walking, her face devoid of intent.

‘Yes, I’ll join you. And then I’ll cut your filthy tongue out of your mouth and put it in your hand.’

The boy’s adolescent bravado shrivelled in the rime of Janaki’s flat tone. Suddenly he was just an almost naked boy in a puddle of waste water. He looked down at his wet feet and then, almost as an afterthought, turned his back to Janaki again.

She continued walking and turned into the dense grid of tiny rooms. Curious glances bounced off her as she purposefully picked out her route. An occasional visitor to the area would not normally have been able to negotiate the rows with such ease. But Janaki’s fury provided her with an adrenalin-fuelled clarity that brought to mind all the markers she needed to find Uma’s room: the collapsed section of chain-link fence, the perennial stack of corrugated iron sheets and the yellow telephone box clamped to its pole.

Curls of smoke rose through the gaps between the walls and the roofs of several rooms; there was the punch of curry leaves and wafts of kerosene; a girl walked past carrying two eggs. Janaki had timed her visit carefully. She was sure Uma would be home by now. In another life, this had been the fabric of her friendly conversations with Uma, questions about her routine, her work, her life.

The industrial clatter from Mysore Junction rolled down the hill and melded in with the sound of an impromptu cricket match at the edge of the rubbish dump.

‘Catch, catch, catch, catch, catch,’ went up the chant.

There was a loud roar as the ball was caught.

Janaki turned into Uma’s row. She was sure this was the one. In the first doorway, a woman was combing out her daughter’s waist-length hair, winding a section around her fist and then determinedly dragging the teeth through the taut strands. The girl endured the ministrations with a scowl. The mother paused as Janaki stepped over the girl’s outstretched legs and continued to walk down the row. The girl twisted around enquiringly to face her mother who simply shrugged and pushed her daughter’s head back into position. There was a job to be done.

Janaki reached Uma’s door and looked at the peeling blue paint. There was no lock on the outside latch. She listened for sounds of movement or conversation but could only hear the distant commotion of the train station and the shouts of the boys playing cricket. A baby began to cry in the neighbouring room.

Janaki knocked loudly on Uma’s door. It was the rap of authority and onslaught. She waited but there was no answer. For a moment she thought she heard a draught of deeper silence emanate from the room, a breath held, a beat skipped. But she could not be sure.

She knocked again, even louder. Again there was a sense of a frozen instant on the other side of the door, a suspension of will.

Janaki knew that her rage was too much for an assessment of something so subtle.

‘Open this door. Dagaar munde , I know you’re there,’ she shouted, her fist hammering against the wood.

She waited a moment.

‘I said, open it.’ Her voice broke.

Uma’s neighbour Parvathi came out of the next room, her face pinched with apprehension, a baby almost slipping through her weak grasp.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

‘Where is she?’ Janaki asked. Her knocking did not stop.

Parvathi looked at the door anxiously.

‘She is inside. She must be, there’s no padlock here. And the door’s locked from the inside. See?’ Janaki gave the door a violent kick. She seemed to be talking to herself now.

A few heads had begun to peer through open doorways. A group of boys edged forward from the other end of the row, keeping their distance, but within earshot.

‘I know you’re there. Open this door.’ Each of Janaki’s words was accompanied by a smash.

An elderly man emerged from the room on the other side.

‘What is going on?’

Janaki seized the hasp and began to shake it, slamming it against its staple.

‘You must stop that, my child. What has happened?’ asked the man, stepping forward.

Janaki looked at him. Sweat was stinging the corners of her eyes and running down her neck.