Venky Gowda had only ever sustained one vision in his life: HeritageLand. He dreamed of a world where cutting-edge technology could harness the drama of the ancient epics and transport his compatriots to an alternate reality. When he slept, he twitched and kicked, mouthing his plans for a recreated Dandaka forest where the curious could follow in Lord Rama’s footsteps, battle the Lankan army in an elaborate flume, cut off Shurpanakha’s ears and nose with laser arrows, soar to the treetops in a mechanical Garuda. His cupboards were crammed with notes for a Kurukshetra War simulation involving luxury chariots and a buffet service. Napkins within his reach were covered with doodles of the Kailash Wonder Mountain and the Yamaraja Monorail.
Venky’s first attempts at obtaining finance for the project had been met with bloodcurdling laughter. Had he considered the problem of locating a site, the cost of construction and equipment, the logistical difficulties, the power shortages, the possibility that HeritageLand would only attract roadside Romeos feverish at the thought of witnessing the dishabille of a shapely Draupadi?
These were all legitimate points, but Venky Gowda only had one vision. And he was not the type of man to turn his back on it. After years of conspiring and toadying, endless feasibility studies and costs analyses, an MBA from Ohio State University, a rhinoplasty procedure and, finally, marriage into the family of a powerful political grandee, his phantom fantasy world faced the prospect of becoming real. Perhaps the gods had finally decided to bless Venky, themselves waking up to the fact that their universe would be incomplete without a representation of their fight against evil in the twists and turns of a water slide. And that representation would rise in Mysore, erstwhile land of maharajas, India’s second cleanest city and home of many talented snooker players.
Venture capitalists from Hong Kong were ready with finance, architects and engineers worked day and night on the park layout and, crucially, opinions had been canvassed among prominent Mysore residents. The editor of the Mysore Evening Sentinel gave the project a cautious welcome: it would be a good opportunity to showcase the country’s traditions and culture but historical and doctrinal accuracy would be essential. Ahmed Pasha, President of the Mysore Enterprise Forum, could see only benefits accruing from HeritageLand. He speculated at length on the growth in the city’s economy based on projected revenues from the theme park and also took the opportunity to publicise the fine merchandise in his own furniture showrooms. Priyadarshini Ramesh, proprietor of the Mysstiiqque chain of beauty salons, declared that she was not opposed to the plans on principle but her main concerns related to the park’s aesthetic impact on the city.
‘Class, not mass,’ she said, stamping her beautifully pedicured foot. ‘We don’t want the whole thing turning into a cheap circus full of low types.’
Professor M M Malikarjuna of the university’s linguistics department ignored the question entirely and instead renewed his appeal for better policing on the Manasagangotri campus in light of the number of youngsters openly canoodling there in broad daylight.
An overall impact assessment of HeritageLand resulted in the following conclusions: the theme park would bring enormous economic and cultural advantages to the city of Mysore, transforming it into a premier global tourist destination; any adverse environmental impact would be mitigated by the planting of trees on the park site and by the use of low-energy light bulbs; no obstacles could be envisaged in the grant of licences required for the park as all necessary inducements would be incorporated into its unofficial budget; the residents of Mysore, or in any case those who held any serious influence, would provide full support for the project as long as it was realised in the best possible taste.
A celebration party was held at the Mysore Regency Hotel where all the guests agreed that the head chef had outdone himself with his Hyderabadi chicken lollipops. The Secretary of the Mysore Regeneration Council made the mistake of bringing up the issue of the land yet to be acquired for the project site and was beaten down by several colleagues. There seemed little value in wringing their hands over a virtual fait accompli.
Susheela stood by the window peering at the hunched figure by the gate in the white vest and khaki shorts, a small basket in his right hand. She seldom allowed doubt to factor into her deductions, but this time she pursed her lips as she tried to make up her mind. Certainly he looked crude enough to signify someone with an uncouth mentality. She was sure it was him that she had seen on previous occasions.
The milky sky had begun to radiate a toast-like warmth and the smell of the Bhaskars’ breakfast drifted over the compound wall. Pulling her pallu over her shoulders, Susheela began to walk briskly towards the man, who was now standing gazing up at a frangipani tree in full blossom.
‘Excuse me, do you think this is acceptable?’
The man spun round, his reverie cut short by Susheela’s tone.
‘Every day I see you, helping yourself to flowers from my garden, as if this is some sort of free place for the public.’
‘Madam, these are for prayers. Not for selling in the market. What harm is there?’
‘The harm is that you are taking what is not yours. Every day you come here and just help yourself. Have you ever thought about whether I also need these flowers for my prayers?’
‘Madam, you should not deprive God of these small offerings, wherever they come from.’
‘God will be a lot happier with you if you keep your hands off my garden in the future.’
Susheela turned around, picked up a couple of dead leaves off the path and walked back into the house. The door shut with a sharp click.
Their lunches were packed. The pongal for their breakfast was ready. The coffee was dripping through the filter. Mala had paid the electricity bill the day before. She had washed the front steps first thing in the morning and drawn her standard rangoli: four diamonds intersecting in the middle of a large spiral. It was just after eight in the morning. Mala looked for a safety pin in the coin purse on the kitchen shelf and then glanced at her watch. Gayathri the maid was now ten minutes late. Girish liked her to be gone before he had his breakfast at a quarter to nine.
A couple of minutes later the gate bolt screeched across the stone floor and a shadow passed along one of the tiny front windows. Girish had said that they could afford a maid for an hour a day. Mala would have to get her to run a broom across the floor, mop all the rooms, wash the clothes hurriedly and clean the previous evening’s plates and utensils. The rest was for Mala to manage.
Gayathri gave Mala a practised smile as she walked to the bathroom. Nothing was said of the lateness. In fact, these days Mala said very little to Gayathri at all. When she had first started working there, Gayathri had tried to indulge in some banter. But Mala’s self-censorship had already begun to be a habit for her, one she was not going to break for the maid. Even though Mala knew that it was her place to assert herself, she felt uncomfortable in Gayathri’s all too corporeal presence. She could not stop herself looking at the audacious swell of the maid’s haunches when she crouched low to flick the wet rag under the dining table; her creamy brown belly that pushed through the thin fabric of her sari; her extravagant breasts scarcely contained by her sweat-stained blouse. How could she be so fat when she did physical work all day?
Mala had little knowledge of Gayathri’s home life, having only got so far as to ascertain that she had no children. Gayathri’s response to a query from Girish about her husband was: ‘Aiya, he comes and he goes.’
With that she had let out her long, throaty laugh, a perplexing noise that sounded like a series of quick hiccups, each being ambushed by the next.
There was no evidence of scabrous entertainments in Gayathri’s life but there existed an air of gratification and an earthy zeal about her that Mala had not encountered before. She had once asked Girish if he thought Gayathri drank. He had immediately responded with an interrogation as to whether Mala had smelt alcohol on her breath, had she been acting strangely, was there something wrong with her work, had someone said anything? Well, why was she asking then?
Mala regretted ever having brought it up.
The letter was addressed to the Head of Customer Services at the regional electricity distribution company and ran to three pages of block text. The author, the Chief Executive Officer and majority shareholder of a small company based in the industrial corridor to the south of Mysore, was by turns deeply concerned, immensely frustrated and utterly scandalised. The power situation in Karnataka had reached such a nadir that, by hook or by crook, urgent measures were required, come what may, without which, rest assured, there would be extremely adverse consequences for the future of Mysore as an attractive investment area. Furthermore, this was nothing less than a clarion call for the state’s reputation as a centre for the enhancement of development opportunities.
The letter’s author recognised that the damage to the country’s reputation as a rising superpower did not require elaboration but, nevertheless, felt compelled to enumerate all the associated dangers. The author also pointed out that there was neither rhyme nor reason, prudence nor perception, aim nor ambition in the state’s power-supply policies. He graciously acknowledged the lack of long-term investment in the sector and the grave challenges posed by transmission leakages and power theft; even so, his only option was to highlight to the authorities the fact that there was simply no justification for the current dismal state of affairs.
Attached to the letter was a schedule detailing the dates and times of load-shedding, power holidays and voltage drops in the last six months, along with calculations of output decline, loss of revenue, and expenditure on alternate power supplies. The author sought a full and frank explanation for the unscheduled power losses and a complete and comprehensive plan for the avoidance of such eventualities in the future. If an adequate response was not forthcoming, each and every legitimate avenue would be explored by the author of the letter, including, but not limited to, judicial intervention. The author’s final point was that the idea of a project such as HeritageLand being contemplated in Mysore would be comical were it not so insulting. The letter was copied to the Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission, the Mysore Enterprise Forum, the Mayor’s office and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry.
Girish slowly replaced the letter in a manila folder marked ‘Urgent’ with a faded red marker pen. The word was followed by a hurried slash, an exclamation mark that added a comedic exigency to the whole business: bungling officials skidding on banana skins and walking into doors as they scurried around, attempting to resolve the power crisis. He wished he could see the funny side, but there was not much laughter to be had on the second floor of Jyothi House at a quarter to three in the afternoon. A pile of quality assurance statements and various drafts of the customer grievance handling procedure sat on the corner of his desk. He flicked the folder on top of this pile, its edges crinkled with heat and sweat, the constituent layers accordioning out in a last mad dash.
A few minutes later Girish called the Director of Customer Relations again but was met by the same collapsed voice telling him in three languages that the mobile phone he was trying to call was either switched off or out of range. He tried the Director’s secretary once more. Sarita answered on the second ring and stated again that sir was in a meeting but yes sir, she had already passed on the message sir, when sir had emerged for a break, and sir had said that he would call sir as soon as possible, but you know how these meetings are sir, especially the meetings with sir, so she really could not specifically inform sir as to when exactly sir would be free to speak to sir but, of course sir, without a doubt sir, she would make sure that she reminded sir when he next emerged, not to worry sir, thank you sir, good afternoon sir. Girish knew she was lying; he could picture her face, like a boulder wearing a bindi. He also knew he would call her again in half an hour and hated himself for it.
Susheela’s left ear was beginning to smart so she transferred the receiver to her other side.
‘We’re having the downstairs bathroom redone. It’s been such a torture, I can’t tell you, and now that the workmen are finally in, life is even worse. Yesterday when I came back they had left the front door wide open and were nowhere to be seen. Now the stupid company has sent the wrong shower door and I’m going to have to sort all of that out,’ said Priyanka, Susheela’s elder daughter.
‘I know, everything goes wrong at the same time,’ said Susheela.
‘Exactly. And Vivek’s in Brussels again, so that’s really helping. Actually he called last night but the line was so bad. It’s been happening the last few times. I think they’ve sold him the same dabba mobile that they sold me, remember? And of course, he’ll make me go and sort all of that out because he’ll claim to be too busy. Amma? One sec, one sec, okay … just got to get this.’
Susheela’s mouth felt dry and chalky as she listened to Priyanka’s travails. She swallowed hard, having completely lost the thread of the conversation some minutes ago. This in itself was not unusual. Their fortnightly conversations had come to mean progressively less to Susheela. Of course, it was lovely to hear from Priyanka and there was still that warm ripple when she remembered things Susheela had mentioned the previous fortnight. But their worlds had caromed apart a few years ago and the ties had grown flaccid and indistinct. Priyanka’s chatter now seemed like the background buzz from television or titbits gleaned from mobile phone conversations in the doctor’s waiting room. There were vague allusions to Katherine and Carlos, Jude and Alice, Matt and Chris. The call would be interrupted at times by mumbled asides to her PA or her husband. Susheela had noticed that of late Priyanka seemed to have a stock set of questions that she would clatter through, often hurriedly ending the conversation, promising further detail by email. These emails would arrive a few days later, stippled with exclamation marks and breezy references to Merzbau installations, shochu bars, experimental dance and city breaks to Stockholm and Berlin.
Susheela had not consciously withdrawn from Priyanka’s elaborate life. She would not even have recognised the growing distance as a consequence of her own actions. Her retreat was subliminally pre-emptive: she had begun an instinctive process of shutting out before she was cast as the lonely interfering mother gazing at her daughter sashaying into the distance. As far as Susheela was concerned, the important thing was that the precepts of form and propriety were maintained. So calls were made, emails read, cards sent. To proceed otherwise would be to descend into sloth and chaos.
Priyanka’s job entailed something incomprehensible in London to do with capital markets. Where once this had been a matter of accomplishment and esteem, Susheela had quickly understood that the current mood was very different. It now seemed that most of the recent global financial scourges could be tracked back to Priyanka and the incumbents of her world. Heads shook slowly at Mysore dinner parties, expressing disgust at the greed and recklessness of these brash, aggressive bankers and the mercenary politicians who had allowed them to gamble away the futures of decent savers from Caracas to Chennai. Susheela’s feelings remained ambivalent. Where once she had quietly skimmed along on the tide of her daughter’s achievements, she now stood tacitly at the shore, facing the other way.
She would be affected as much as anyone else by the tribulations of global finance, a widow with no actively earned income. There was a sum of cash in fixed deposits garnering a comfortable amount of interest: a combination of accumulated savings, the pay-out from the life assurance company and the entitlement received from Sridhar’s provident fund, following twenty-five odd years of service at House of Govind. She owned the house outright and had no debts. Her circumstances had never impelled her to examine closely the small portfolio of shares that she had inherited from Sridhar. From all the talk on the news, she surmised that it was probably worth very little.
There were gifts from Priyanka too: a new television one Diwali; extravagant bouquets and jewellery on her birthday; and two or three times arbitrary cheques for thousands of rupees which Susheela had been embarrassed to accept but too disconcerted to refuse. There was talk now of sinking banks, plunging interest rates and the end of the property boom. Her instinctive response was to look into some belt-tightening options; not easily done, as she did not regard herself as remotely extravagant.
Priyanka had rung off. There was someone at the door and she had to be at her Pilates class in fifteen minutes. Susheela sat by the window, still holding the telephone, looking out at the front lawn. Swirls of pale green, brown and white roiled across the ground, enraged at the lack of water. The mali had left the hosepipe in a great coil in the middle of the lawn, as if to provoke it further. There was a sudden rushing noise, followed by a few beeps. The power had gone again.
She sighed and began to sort through some old envelopes in the magazine rack. The situation was quite different with her younger daughter Prema, who had left Mysore for California on a celebrated scholarship. Her work had eventually led her to a research post involving the application of genomic knowledge to the development of fertility drugs. Prema offered up little about her life. Her telephone calls were more irregular, her emails hardly worth mentioning. Her life seemed to revolve around the lab and weekend rock-climbing trips. Even so, Susheela felt an implicit candour there that seemed to be missing in those lengthy conversations with Priyanka. The call from Prema could last five minutes or half an hour, but Susheela remained a participant. They talked about the most useful exercises for lower back pain, Obama’s sparkling speeches or the easiest way to get an intense smoky flavour in a baingan bhartha. Beyond these moments, Susheela knew that it would be advisable not to probe further. Prema was like a piece of parchment that revealed certain limited truths but which, if inspected too closely, would crumble into a fine dust.
Mala slowed down as she approached the busy junction, easing the scooter to one side. She had been living in Mysore for over two years but some of the routes still confused her with their sudden one-way systems and riots of side roads. City officials had helpfully provided a profusion of signs and arrows at this circle, but they all seemed to look skywards in despair. Matters were not improved by the proprietors of Sheethal Talkies, who had covered up a number of signposts with posters for their morning feature, Desires of the Night, a work chronicling the renaissance of a girl who moved to a large city from an inconsequential town. It was unlikely that Mala would ever have the opportunity to compare experiences with the film’s central character but there were one or two similarities.
Mala had grown up in Konnapur, a three-road town choking in its own dust. It was famed for its Eeshwara temple, a Hoysala masterpiece that today sat among ramshackle lean-tos housing doleful purveyors of pooja items. Little hummocks of vermillion and turmeric rose amid baskets of chrysanthemums, jasmine and marigolds. Coconuts were piled into bushels under unsteady wooden tables. Framed photos of Shiva and Ganesh stood propped up next to brass plates containing twists of sandalwood paste, incense sticks, lozenges of camphor and glistening fans of betel leaves. A little further, at a slightly more respectful distance, a selection of beedi and paan shops nudged the periphery of the temple complex.
The temple was the town’s spiritual and economic hub, providing focus for most of its devotees, traders, handlers, speculators, brokers, priests, academics, itinerants, beggars and charlatans. Mala’s father, Babu, had paid his dues as a secondary school teacher, poet, real estate broker and areca nut dealer before ending up as a tour-guide-cum-travel agent. His business cards confirmed that he was a ‘History and Heritage Specialist’, thereby adding a scholarly sheen to his entrepreneurial activities. Dressed in oversized dazzling white shirts and pleated navy trousers, Babu would tell tourists that he chose not to tie himself down with premises and staff, preferring instead to meet his potential clients in the hallowed domain of the temple courtyard. In his professional ministrations he was finely attuned to the fascinations and appetites of his clientele.
‘Welcome, welcome to Konnapur’s magnificent treasure,’ he would say expansively, as if personally responsible for the temple’s architecture.
‘I can see that you have come here looking for something very special, and I don’t mind telling you, beyond any doubt, you will find it.’
For teenaged gap-year drifters he spun salacious accounts involving multiple gods, endowing the mace, the trident and the conch with an unparalleled lewdness. To salvation-seeking freethinkers Babu elaborated on the transcendence of the self required to discover the eternal identity and, naturally, highlighted Konnapur’s key role in various Vedic milestones. For wealthy North Indian dowagers he played up the Konnapur deity’s impressive record in reversing astrological ill omens, granting male grandchildren and bestowing longevity.
The truth was that while Babu tried to turn his natural resourcefulness and broad knowledge to some personal gain, his love for Konnapur and the Eeshwara temple was profound and enduring. Much of his childhood had been spent loitering around the shrine vestibule, sheltering behind the carved balustrades and watching swallows take off from the moulded lintels. There was little competition among Konnapur’s open sewers and garbage-strewn alleys. Babu’s investment in the temple, and his certain knowledge that destiny had no greater plans for him elsewhere, kept him rooted to the centre of Konnapur. If his embellishments of the temple’s historical and architectural significance resulted in some modest additional income for him, what was the harm?
At the age of twenty-three, Babu’s prospects had been scrupulously appraised by older family members as a precursor to marriage negotiations. Of course, as the saying went, parents would adore their child even if it were a bandicoot, but such subjective regard had to be put firmly to one side in the important business of nuptial assessments. Fortunately Babu’s parents had never had to avail themselves of such undiscerning devotion, nor later face any harsh realities. Babu was tall and broad-shouldered, with an open, confident face that invited further analysis. As a man, however, his looks were hardly of the greatest significance.
Hailing from a prominent Brahmin family that could number among its antecedents several Sanskrit scholars, a tax collector, a leading astrophysicist and the founder of a hospice for destitute widows, the initial outlook had been buoyant. Allowances then had to be made for a schizophrenic aunt and a great-uncle who spent his Sundays dressed as a former maharani of Mysore. There was also some speculation regarding the occasional presence of Babu’s father at an illegal gambling house. It was duly noted that Babu did not stand to inherit land of any great value, the bulk of the ancestral property having found its way into the hands of an alternate branch of the family. Being a graduate, his value had appreciated, but not by much. Years of Nehruvian planning and entrenched official venality had meant that he would still be adrift in a sea of lettered young men, unless a benevolent patron emerged to ease his passage into professional life. This was not an impossible occurrence. The astrophysicist’s son still passed through Konnapur on occasion. As a senior official at Western Railway who lived in a sprawling pistachio-green mansion in Baroda, there were plenty of favours he could grant.
Most importantly though, Babu’s personality conveyed the sense of a man sanctified by fate. His apparent confidence and social ease generated an assurance that could not help but conquer potential in-laws. Babu himself was more circumspect about his future. An opening at a local secondary school did not hold great promise. But he had to get married and he needed to make sure that he presented himself in the best possible light. As a result, Babu talked himself into a favourable alliance.
Rukmini’s family owned great swathes of land around Konnapur. Her father’s orchards and plantations were breathlessly enumerated by those who liked to keep abreast of such matters. In all likelihood the extent of his wealth was exaggerated in those provincial circles, thereby rendering his children even more attractive. His four sons and eight daughters could launch themselves into their adulthood with more than a degree of confidence.
Rukmini had been eager to study further, perhaps Hindi literature at college. This would have entailed moving to another town, an outlandish prospect for an unmarried woman. Rukmini accepted this fact, being above all a woman of great pragmatism, and resolved to throw herself into the life chosen for her with all the enthusiasm that she could muster. Happily she had avoided the fate of her sister, who had recently been coupled with a boss-eyed creature in a safari suit, albeit one with a safe full of gold; at least her husband was handsome, articulate and entertaining. It was a good start.
As time went on, however, it became apparent that Babu’s perpetual élan was not going to fuel an ascendancy in any chosen field. True, there were occasional successes in his varied careers, but these instances of good fortune could not disguise the fact that the months and years had generally been difficult and unpredictable. Rukmini had been forced to sell off most of the land that she inherited to meet various expenses. The small amount of capital that was eventually left was cautiously converted into Unit Trust of India units, generating a modest but vital sum of interest. She would run her finger around the blue edges of the certificates, before locking them in the secure compartment of her Godrej wardrobe. Rukmini was not in any doubt that bemoaning her husband’s fortunes would be futile and unbecoming. She had, after all, two daughters to raise and a labyrinth of social obligations through which to navigate.
In spite of the hardship, Rukmini felt that she had done well. Babu’s loving regard had made up for the shortcomings; she still thrilled at the awareness of his sudden presence and the rush of so many memories. The first Sunday of the month had always been special. At about half past six in the evening Rukmini and Babu would leave the house, Babu’s mother having concocted some fantastical event as a decoy for the children. The couple would then make their way to Sujatha Talkies for the early evening show. Depending on the film, there would either be an impatient tumult outside the cinema, manic ticket touts shoving their way towards anyone who looked desperate or simple, or a few layabouts keeping a weary eye on the stray dogs that padded around under the ticket window. It was always the same: a length of fresh jasmine, the cracked leather of the balcony seats, oil-roasted peanuts at the interval and the charge of Babu’s hand on her hip as they groped their way down the dark aisle at the end of the film. Later it was dosas and coffee at Kwality Hotel, Babu putting on a new accent each time to try to get the attention of the waiters in the ear-splitting din, osh bosh Britisher, ithe kithe Punjabi, apro kapro Gujarati. The waiters were never amused, and rewarded Babu with looks that could curdle milk. Rukmini and Babu would leave in high spirits, the syrupy burn of the coffee coating their tongues, their table instantly seized by a hungry waiting couple.
At the Vishram Coffee House in Mysore, two public sector bank officials were having lunch.
‘So, what news, sir?’
‘You have to tell me.’
‘So Kumar got promoted.’
‘Why wouldn’t they promote him, the buttock-licking chamcha.’
‘Sir, it is a real shame that they didn’t transport the filthy fellow to the moon with that space mission. And leave the bastard there.’
‘The moon does not deserve such treatment. Not happy with ruining this country, the government has to go and destroy the whole galaxy too.’
‘Chandrayaan-1, that rocket is called, sir. How many more will be sent?’
‘If these satellites are anything like the Nehru-Gandhi family, there will be one every five or six years.’
‘Sir, one more coffee?’
‘Make it one by two.’
‘You are correct, sir, about all this ruination. Every day things are getting worse. They will need to sort out all our social nuisances before that HeritageLand is built.’
‘Very true. The whole world will be looking at us.’
‘I tell you, sir, the current climate of criminality is too much. You know what happened with my aunt and an auto driver?’
‘Your aunt?’
‘Yes, sir. On my father’s side. She suffered very serious verbal abuse and mental torture.’
‘She was walking to the market, sir, and this idiot slows down next to her. She thought he was just wanting a fare so she told him that she was not interested. Very nicely, she told him, sir, my aunt is not just any kind of woman.’
‘Then?’
‘Then he asked her to go with him to a lodge. Can you believe it, sir? My aunt is in her sixties.’
‘What nonsense is this? What kind of bastards are becoming auto drivers these days?’
‘That’s what, sir, you will not believe. Two, three more times, he was inviting her to some lodge.’
‘She should have just given him two tight slaps on each cheek.’
‘She is a heart patient, sir. Diabetes, too.’
‘That is beyond the limit. Beyond the limit, I say.’
The two sipped their coffees in silence for a couple of minutes. Two blonde women walked past their table and left the restaurant.
‘Sir, all these yoga students who come here, they don’t have jobs in their own countries?’
‘No, it’s a very difficult situation for them. No jobs, thrown out by their families, rejected by society. Yoga is their last chance to make something of their lives.’
‘That is very sad, sir; maybe that is why they are all so thin?’
‘All that worry, unhappiness, shame, financial pressure, and on top of that, doing yoga in this heat, eating bad food and getting loose motion. What else will happen?’
‘It is strange how things change, sir. Here we are, two Indians eating big plate meals and wondering whether or not to have an extra sweet, and these poor foreigners trying so hard just to keep body and soul together.’
‘That is what you call the march of history.’
‘You are a poet, sir.’
‘No sir, a poet.’
‘All right.’
As Girish emerged from Staircase B of Jyothi House, he quickly checked under his arms for any unsightly sweat patches. He had ridiculed junior colleagues often enough for looking like rotund housewives in tight blouses. It would not do to fall into the same trap. He checked the time and stood under the building’s main arch, determined not to return upstairs for at least an hour.
The adjacent picture framers had spilled out on to the pavement, spreading strips of plywood and pieces of card over a large tarpaulin sheet. Pictures, mainly of deities, were propped up against the front wall of the shop, in the tiny strip of shadow cast by the cracked eaves. Among the beatific blue faces, giant lotuses and gleaming crowns, there stood a monochrome image of Frank Zappa, patiently awaiting its turn. An officious young man appeared to be in charge, taking orders from waiting customers while also arguing into his mobile phone and shuffling sheets of carbon in a receipt book. A teenage boy squatted on the pavement, hammering nails into the back of a frame while keeping a watchful eye on his boss.
Girish thought about walking down a couple of blocks before getting a coffee but the heat was merciless and no one in his office would notice or care. He stepped into the restaurant across the road and it was only a matter of seconds before the milky confection arrived in a chipped glass. Girish sent the coffee back, asking for another glass, incurring the savage but silent wrath of the waiter.
The restaurant was relatively empty at this hour. An old film song played very softly: a solemn ode to the beauty of a country belle.
‘Of course, everyone is at their desks, shuffling important bits of paper, mentally composing crucial memos and notices,’ thought Girish.
He decided to make himself comfortable and looked around to see if any newspapers had been abandoned. The waiter returned with the coffee, this time in an intact but grimy glass.
Raised voices from across the street carried into the restaurant.
‘Look what they have done to my Krishna! Look at my Krishna. Look!’
From where he was seated Girish could see a wiry woman with a hoarse voice in a state of extreme agitation. The usual idlers, starved of entertainment, had quickly gathered around to provide counsel and succour. The woman pointed to an image lying flat on the tarpaulin. A series of sooty smudges had appeared on the picture like smoke rings blown from those perfectly shaped roseate lips.
‘Look there! At the mouth! Look!’
The young man had quickly ended his phone conversation and was now cuffing the back of the boy’s head every time the woman pointed out the mishap.
‘What are you hitting him for? He has not been anywhere near the picture. You have done this. Or else it was that donkey inside. Look at my Krishna!’ screamed the woman.
‘Please calm down,’ said the young man.
‘Criminal sule magga. Ninna mukhake benki hakka.’
‘We’ll fix it.’
‘Nachikedu, paapi mundemakkala. May burning hot coals rain down on your dick.’
‘Che che, is that a mouth or a sewage pipe?’
‘May a stray dog fuck your wife from behind.’
‘She is not my wife yet. The marriage is in six months.’
Girish paid for his coffee and left the restaurant. That was all people could find to do these days: shout like a fishwife and cause a huge scene over a few dirty marks. He walked on the shady side of the pavement towards Kabir Road, stepping around the arrangements of cheap sunglasses and wallets laid out on dirty sheets. He thought of looking in on a friend who worked at a newspaper around the corner but then changed his mind. He was in no mood to hear about the daily miseries involved in being a third-rate journalist for a tenth-rate rag. He turned into Anegundi Road and headed towards the recently opened mall near the Farooqia College of Pharmacy. At least it would be cool and there would not be any howling harpies to give him a headache.
As he approached the mall he stopped and thought about paying Mala a visit at work. If he waited half an hour or so she would probably be ready to leave. Maybe they could go and have chaat somewhere and then go to an evening show. A vision of them sitting in a crowded snack bar, Mala playing with the chain around her neck, flashed through his mind. The thought depressed him instantly. There was nothing left in him to give to an evening of spontaneous recreation. In any case, going to pick up Mala would entail walking back to Jyothi House to pick up his motorbike and he had no intention of returning there at least until he had managed to speak to the Director of Customer Relations. He turned around again, crossed the road, walked quickly through the metal detectors and disappeared behind the mall’s dark sliding doors.
The towels had been hanging on the line all day and were baked crisp. Uma piled them into a brittle mound in a bucket and stashed the clothes pegs in the cubbyhole under the water tank. On the neighbouring roof terrace, Mr Bhaskar stomped from one end to the other, deep in thought. Uma could not understand why he chose to boomerang from one end of that small space to the other when there were at least half a dozen shady roads along which he could promenade; not to mention the neatly paved paths in the Gardens. She had overheard Susheela mention the same thing to one of her friends the other day. The friend’s response was that Mahalakshmi Gardens was a more agreeable place without the risk of running into Mr Bhaskar. A pleasant enquiry would inevitably lead to a long fulmination from the gentleman on the country’s decay.
‘Better that he just wears out his roof tiles than makes your ears drop off in desperation,’ the friend had observed.
Uma heard the neighbouring gate clank shut as Bhargavi left for the day. She looked down over the parapet and saw her half run towards the end of the road, obviously trying to catch the 42 bus before it rumbled off northwards. Bhargavi had only worked for the Bhaskar family for about three months but had established herself as quite a presence in this corner of Mahalakshmi Gardens. Within her first few weeks she had ensured she was on friendly terms with almost all the watchmen and malis. By the end of the second month she had managed to organise a boycott of a local coffee stall; the owner had gravely injured a boy who worked for him following some minor infraction. Recently she had arranged jobs in the locality for a distant cousin and her daughter, ensuring that they were aware that their conduct reflected closely on her reputation in the area as an efficient fixer.
One of Bhargavi’s new acolytes had declared: ‘Akka has a big heart. She is a good woman, very decent, very clean.’
Not everyone was a fan: ‘What decent? What clean? Does she wash her kundi with Nirma?’
Bhargavi had cornered Uma by the dustcart one morning and introduced herself. Then, assuming a fiercely protective air, she probed into the circumstances of Uma’s employment. How much was she paid, did she get her day off every week without fail, how was she treated, were there any problems, what meals did she get, any bonus, any gifts, what did her duties entail, who lived in the house, was there anything else she ought to know? Uma stared at this creature, not quite five feet tall, with her tightly oiled braid and the glossy mole in the middle of her forehead, who seemed to want to gather her up in the pleats of her sari. Uma was attuned to demarcations and boundaries. Her steps were the gentle footfalls of the careful navigator. Now she was faced by this tornado of unsolicited concern. While Uma had always been aware of the malice in prying eyes, Bhargavi’s kind interest was exotic territory.
Uma had responded to Bhargavi hesitantly, unable to resist her onslaught, but at the same time clinging to her own customary defences. In time, she had come to see Bhargavi’s actions in a different light. The genuine warmth and consideration were there, but they were sifted through with a desire to be needed. Bhargavi’s own compulsions had led her to act as a friend in places where regard was only given in return for profit or abasement. Much of this had become clear to Uma as she watched Bhargavi’s interventions. As she pushed herself to the fore she always told her mother’s story, an example of a woman who would not be forced down or held back.
Bhargavi’s mother had been born in a remote village in the Velikonda Hills, marooned on a bank of shale between two slow-moving streams. Her birth had been greeted with conventional disappointment, and then distress, as a bewildering fact became known about the newborn. The baby’s tiny palms were devoid of lines; they were as smooth as one of the hundreds of grey pebbles washed clean by the listless streams. The palms were washed, oiled, massaged and repeatedly inspected under the glow of first light, in the bleached dazzle of noon and by the beam of a smoky lantern. They remained unblemished and unbroken, a reminder that here lay an infant with barely a past and, seemingly, no future.
The creases that should have sealed her journey through life did not make an appearance in the weeks that followed, perhaps in protest at the life they foresaw. There were only two ways of looking at this unnatural occurrence: as a curse brought down on the whole community or a sacred sign indicating the arrival of a superior being. Unfortunately the lines had failed to materialise on female palms, in the home of a low caste potter, in a village marooned on a bank of shale in a forgotten corner of the Velikonda Hills. There was only one way that this story could end.
So Bhargavi’s mother was not fated to join the ranks of glorious local miracles: the weeping marble deities; the babies emerging unscathed from cauldrons of hot oil; the temple domes sprouting out of forest earth. Branded a witch, as soon as puberty struck she was palmed off to a drunkard from a neighbouring village, thirty years her senior. Bhargavi was born four years later and, shortly after, mother and daughter left the Velikonda Hills to find the future they had been denied.
Bhargavi’s mother had a dynamic imagination and a flinty streak of resourcefulness, both more useful than all the palm lines in the world. She reinvented herself as a healer using some practical midwifery skills, a flair for astrological neologisms, an education in the properties of various herbs and a store of common sense. Where particularly thorny cases were concerned, she flashed her naked palms at her patrons, silencing their doubts and hastening the efficacy of their treatment. Mother and daughter travelled from town to town, sourcing new remedies and clients, rapidly establishing a daunting reputation, and then, with impeccable judgment, moving on.
Upon her mother’s death, Bhargavi had not taken on her work but had, in her own way, continued the therapeutic tradition. Lacking an education, she was locked into a narrow channel of options, but had decided that this would not prevent her from making common cause with others when the situation required it. She had ended up in Mysore, starting out as a tailor’s apprentice in exchange for a couple of meals a day. Later she had joined a garment factory that specialised in men’s shirts destined for a supermarket chain in Germany. Her attempts at organising trade union membership among the young women at the factory soon saw her ordered off the premises and blacklisted in various quarters of the industrial area. Bhargavi had not gone quietly. She had returned at the end of each day’s shift to talk to the women as they emerged from the cramped depot into the evening haze. Eventually, one of the security guards had warned her not to return, while standing on her toes, his carefully polished shoe enormous on top of her tiny feet. She had left the area but she was sure that she would return.
A week later she had found work at the Bhaskar house. Now Uma found herself the latest beneficiary of Bhargavi’s solid determination and, as she watched her hurry out of sight, she was not sure whether she ought to be grateful or not.
Susheela began the long journey around the house, shutting windows and drawing curtains. The early evenings were the most difficult time. The tasks of the day were complete but the entrenchment of night was yet to begin. The gate lights would flicker into life along the streets of Mahalakshmi Gardens and the mosquitoes would begin their crepuscular investigations. The fridge would register its boredom with a prolonged sigh and every planet would pause in its orbit for a fraction of a second. She tried to delay turning on the television for as long as she possibly could, since it was, in her mind, a clear admission of defeat. She would pick up her current novel, the last unread section of the newspaper, the telephone book or an old copy of the Reader’s Digest: anything that might stave off a descent towards that final recourse.
The intensely irritating thing about being a widow, apart from all the other intensely irritating things, was that she had been rendered void by most of their social set. In the immediate aftermath of Sridhar’s death the messages of condolence had flooded in, as they should. The sombre visits, the enquiries as to the final days, the ceremonial panoply, everything had been correctly in place. It was after those first few months of bereavement that Susheela had dropped to the bottom like a sunken stone. Perhaps they thought that her grief would make her incapable of pleasant intercourse; perhaps they lacked the idiom required to extend a social courtesy to a woman missing a crucial appendage; perhaps they thought she would run off with one of their decrepit husbands; perhaps they had never warmed to her in the first place. Whatever the real reason, a curtain had fallen with a heavy thud over the invitations to bridge evenings at the Erskine Club, concerts at Jaganmohan Palace, drinks at the JW Golf Club and dinners at the Galleria by Tejasandra Lake. There were still the weddings, housewarmings and naming ceremonies, of course; anything where a woman with a dead husband could be seated in a corner among other women with dead husbands, so that they could all quietly discuss their loss.
Across the road, the Nachappa boy had just returned from work. As he reversed his car into the garage, a tinny version of ‘Que Sera, Sera’ sputtered out into the early darkness. Susheela admitted defeat and turned on the television. A news channel was relaying footage of the chaotic scenes witnessed in the Karnataka Legislative Assembly earlier in the day. A number of MLAs had stormed the Speaker’s podium in protest at what they saw as continued procedural unfairness in the conduct of debates. The Speaker had been escorted to another part of the building for his own safety while his microphone was dismantled by a particularly zealous member of the House. Balled-up paper flew across the room and, in the background, two MLAs had hoisted a chair up on to their shoulders, an action whose legislative purpose remained unclear.
Susheela’s mouth turned down in disgust at the sight of these hooligans who were in charge of running matters. What had the people of Karnataka ever done to deserve such representatives?
The newsreader announced impassively that one MLA had threatened to take poison in the House, at which point the Speaker had adjourned proceedings for the day before slipping away. The Assembly members had carried on with their protest against the disregard for parliamentary rules, apparently too absorbed to notice the adjournment.
‘What we need is someone to just come and take charge and put all these goondas in their place,’ thought Susheela. ‘If you give a little bit of freedom to these thugs, they just abuse it.’
She flicked through the channels, looking for something indicative of a more enlightened society.
Mala slid open the glass doors of the cabinet and gingerly fluttered a duster over the ceramic debris of her late mother-in-law’s life. Girish’s mother had died some ten years ago in a flash flood while on pilgrimage to Badrinath. Discussions of a possible match between Mala and Girish were at an early stage when Rukmini and Mala’s elder sister, Ambika, came to know of the tragedy. They had clucked appropriately, Rukmini’s eyes gazing sadly into the middle distance, but there existed an unspoken contentment that came with the knowledge that Mala would not have to endure any mother-in-law related guerrilla warfare. Girish’s stock had just risen.
A week after the wedding, when Mala arrived at the house in Sitanagar, she wondered whether it would have been preferable for the departed lady to have been present in the flesh. As a memory, Girish’s mother weighed heavily on the rooms in the small house. The garlanded photograph in the sitting room showed a skeletal woman who looked like she had just sat on a pin. Her love for frogs was apparent in the cabinet, which also contained spindly trophies from some forgotten sports day, an enigmatic award from the Indian Red Cross, a few pairs of castanets and a soapstone elephant with one eye. In the spare room a wheelchair she had once used now housed a couple of badminton rackets and a vase filled with plastic flowers. Her sewing machine still glowered in the master bedroom, her name painted across the base in a five-year-old’s wobbly hand.
Mother-in-law or no mother-in-law, this was Mala’s home now, although late at night a wave of bewilderment would still occasionally wash over her. What peculiar devices of hazard had led to her ending up in this house, with its low, streaky ceilings, married to a man twelve years older than her, dusting the ceramic frogs of a woman who had drowned a decade ago in the Alaknanda River?
Mala shut the cabinet doors, folded the duster into a tiny square and buried it in her lap as she sat down on the sofa. She turned the television on and had to sit through the last few minutes of a quiz show before the melancholy strains of the theme tune to her favourite soap came drifting out. The show was set in a mansion in Delhi, inhabited by a prominent family of industrialists. The patriarch of the family was in a contemplative stage of his life. The money had been made; now the legacy had to be moulded. His wife, the third in an imperious progression, had recently come under the influence of a shady swami, a god-man with a penchant for travel by private jet. The state of her rapidly unravelling psyche formed one of the soap’s more prominent subplots.
The patriarch’s three sons all lived in the same mansion, along with their glamorous wives. The eldest son was a ruthless workaholic who managed to carve out a little time to conduct a rather obvious affair with his secretary. His wife symbolised the soul of the programme and was often shown in heart-rending close-ups, trying to make sense of the turbulent world around her. Her devotion to her family was matched only by her apparent inability to recognise infidelity in her husband, a man addicted to surreptitious text messaging and returning home freshly showered in the middle of the night.
The second son had not been endowed with a personality and was therefore reduced to looking craven and forlorn in various quarters of the large garden. His wife, on the other hand, tended to fizz and pop with storylines. The daughter of a powerful politician, she ran a major fashion house – primarily, it seemed, by making her senior employees sob in public. Her adroit manoeuvring had seen a rival designer arrested on terrorism charges weeks before the launch of the summer ready-to-wear collections. Now she found herself faking a pregnancy in order to achieve some as yet unrevealed ambition.
The third son ran a modelling agency, which allowed him to troop through the mansion with a string of coltish nymphs in full view of his epileptic wife. The actor who played this character seemed to have been cast mainly on account of his lustrous hair and the programme makers endeavoured to show it always in the best possible light. This son’s best friend was an art gallery owner who spent much of his time appraising paintings in Paris and New York. There were strong indications that he was developing an unhealthy interest in the wife of the eldest son. As the soul of the programme, it was beyond dispute that she would not be permitted to engage in any unprincipled frolicking. There were, however, signs that she was responding in her own way to some amorous stirrings, and her struggle to contain her restiveness would no doubt take the show through the summer months and into the rainy season.