Mahesh Rao - The Smoke is Rising

Mala found herself once again in the room she used to share with her sister. Time dislocated itself. The crystal vase stood in the same corner of the windowsill, still waiting for fresh flowers to grace its narrow mouth. There was still a checked sheet on the bed, yellow and blue, or red and blue, tucked severely under the hard pillows. Some of Mala’s old accounting textbooks were wrapped in plastic and laid on the bottom shelf of the cupboard. She had told her mother that she would not need them again but Rukmini had always been cautious. Time’s fragments rushed at Mala. The temptation was intense: to step back through the glass, to reclaim her place in those settled images, to regress into the girl of whom nothing much had been expected. But she now knew far too much to return.

In the sitting room, the framed poster of Shakespearean quotes still hung above the television. She remembered the day the television had arrived. There had been countless adjustments of the antenna cable; even the polystyrene blocks had been discarded with the utmost care; in the first flush of ownership Rukmini had embroidered the letters ‘TV’ on the cloth that would keep the screen free of Konnapur’s redoubtable dust clouds. The television had continued to be given its due respect and, in return, it played its part in the maintenance of propriety in the house, remaining decorously hidden under the cloth until six every evening. Rukmini considered the watching of television during daylight hours a slovenly and reckless pursuit, the province of alcoholics and slatterns.

In private, Rukmini and Babu turned Mala’s situation over in their heads until they fell back, exhausted with heartache.

‘We should tell the police,’ said Babu to Rukmini.

‘What is the point of telling the police now?’ she asked.

‘That bastard should be in jail.’

‘How will that help her? And who will put Anand’s brother in jail? Tell me that first of all.’

‘Why didn’t she tell us sooner? That is the thing I don’t understand.’

‘Me too. Something we did or said made her feel that she could not come to us. We can’t even ask her what.’

Babu put his hand on her arm: ‘But she is here now.’

Babu’s powerlessness in the face of his daughter’s experiences gradually ground down his spirit. He grew taciturn and his perennial ribbing of Rukmini ceased. He began to spend more and more time lying on his side in the bedroom, complaining of a series of aches. When he emerged from the room he would sometimes smile sadly at Mala, a plea for forgiveness perhaps.

‘Is it because I am here? A married daughter back in her parents’ house,’ she asked Rukmini.

Rukmini raised her hand, a whisper away from her daughter’s shoulder.

‘No, it is because all this time we could not see your unhappiness. We were blind to what was happening to you. It’s not because you are here. He has been changing over the last few years anyway, nothing to do with you or me. Maybe just age.’

Mala had noticed the change too. Babu had always been an instinctive raconteur, a man who could command an audience, who had a fine feeling for the pace and punch of his stories. Their veracity was irrelevant; the pleasure lay in their intoxicating rhythm as characters were cut down to size, myths expounded or absurdities laid bare. The chronicles seemed to have dried up now. The few traces that remained of his volubility centred on a very specific narrative: narrow, repetitive tales involving thwarted ambitions and intimate disappointments, a record of where his life had ended up. Mala could not help but be worried and looked to her mother for reassurance. Rukmini would merely sniff. She was not one to indulge such introspection; as far as she was concerned, he simply had too much time on his hands. The real worries were elsewhere.

One morning Mala sat on the back steps again, as she had done so many times cramming resolutely for each set of examinations. Even the early mist in this town seemed to be imbued with dust, the drifting palls taking on a tincture of the packed earth. It was all out in the open now. Her words, baked hard by utterance, had freed her. What had seemed impossible was suddenly all around her, at her feet, in her core. She had been married, she had spent three years with her husband and she had returned home. It was still so surprising to her: the menace of chance, the intensity of misery, the velocity of collapse, the wonder of egress.

She waited for the shame but it did not come. Her only concern now was to make sure that her parents did not torment themselves. To that end, she was prepared to go to any length. She knew Rukmini had been watching her constantly. Even now, she felt her mother’s presence somewhere in the kitchen behind her. Mala would keep an eye on them too. She would step into any breach. She knew now that she could.

She smelt coffee and stood up to go inside. It was warming up and she took off her cardigan.

She would never see Girish again. It seemed incredible.

Susheela walked over to the fence separating her garden from the Bhaskars’ side patio. Bhargavi was bent low with a broom in her hand, neat mounds of leaves swept up in various corners.

‘Bhargavi, can you come here one second?’ Susheela called over the fence.

‘ Amma ?’

‘This is the third day that Uma has not come to work. Do you know what has happened to her?’

‘No, amma . I only know as much as you. Maybe she is sick.’

‘But I have asked her to always phone, or ask one of the neighbours to phone, if something like that happens. And she has always done that in the past.’

‘I was going to go over to her place today anyway. I will find out.’

‘You know where she lives?’

‘Yes, I have been there before.’

‘Something must have happened. People don’t just disappear like that. I simply don’t understand it.’

‘Don’t worry, amma . I will find out today.’

‘Oh, one more thing. Can you come and do a couple of hours for me after lunch? I have spoken to Mrs Bhaskar and she does not mind. This is the third day Uma has not come, you see.’

‘Shall I check again inside?’

‘I have already spoken to her but you can if you want. Can you come at two?’

‘I can.’

‘What a relief. I have told the mali ; he’ll let you in.’

Susheela returned to the house through the back door and surveyed the scene in the kitchen. She had done what she could over the last couple of days but the place was looking decidedly distressed. These things always happened at the most inconvenient times. Jaydev was coming over for dinner that night, and no doubt would find her weeping and dishevelled, presiding over pandemonium.

‘Enough drama,’ she said to herself aloud and began to go over her mental checklist.

The bone china crockery had not been used for a while so it would all have to be washed. The current whereabouts of the linen napkins was a mystery. She had most of the cooking still left to do and would have to go over her lists of ingredients again. Uma’s continued absence had mangled all Susheela’s systems.

The fairly absurd thing was that the peripheral details had all been accomplished in good time. The boy from the dry-cleaners had come yesterday with the curtains and had put them up. A handyman had been summoned to fix a listing shelf in the kitchen. She had asked him also to polish all the woodwork and get someone to clean the downstairs windows. Then she had reorganised the photographs on the dresser and brought out a silver and coral Nepalese urn that had been languishing in the spare room. That morning she had cleared the magazine rack of weeks of detritus and replaced some of the cushion covers.