by Mahesh Rao
A troublesome shred was caught between her front teeth, trying to provoke her into interrupting her gratification. Mala ignored it and slid a strip of peel out through her pursed lips. She reached for the mango’s stone, cocooned in its rich sheath, and slipped it into her mouth. Her lower teeth grated against the knobby ridge at its heart as she stripped it clean. Easing the stone into her fist, she bit down on the tip and then swallowed hard.
She picked up another piece and then paused. Sensing a presence she spun around, flinging the fruit into the sink.
Gayathri stood at the kitchen door. Neither woman spoke until Gayathri let out a rasping guffaw.
‘Enjoy, enjoy! They are the last ones of the season, after all,’ she grinned.
A tuft of fruit clung to Mala’s chin. Juice was dripping off her fingers onto the floor. She stared at Gayathri, a vicious flush spreading up from her neck to her ears.
Gayathri’s face settled into a detached repose.
‘I came to return the three hundred rupees that you lent me. Shall I just leave it here?’ she asked.
Mala looked at the notes, rolled tightly in Gayathri’s hand. She nodded, turned back to the sink and began to wash the juice off her hands.
Uma gathered her sari around her haunches as she squatted down to grate a coconut. Her hands made rapid, practised motions around the blade, its serrated edges devouring the white flesh.
‘Uma, what news?’
Uma looked up at Bhargavi’s head, which had suddenly appeared over the compound wall.
‘Nothing at all. What about you?’ asked Uma.
‘Oh just working, going home, sleeping and back to work. And did I tell you? My landlord died.’
‘No, was he sick?’
‘He was all right. It was suicide. He drank pesticide and died at the hospital. Couldn’t take any more harassment from his wife. For once, it was the husband that drank poison, eh?’
‘So the wife is your new landlady?’
‘Yes, I don’t know whether she will keep the place or sell it. So I may need to move soon.’
Uma wiped the blade clean with a corner of her pallu and stood up with the plate of grated coconut.
‘I’ll see you,’ she said.
‘No wait, did you see the police jeep on 6th Main yesterday morning?’ asked Bhargavi.
‘No.’
‘They had come for the man from the blue house, you know, the one with all those dogs.’
Bhargavi paused for any indications of excitement and, receiving none, went on: ‘I found out from the watchman. The woman who lives there with him is not his wife, her husband is in Bombay, some MP or MLA. She left him there to come to live with this man, so the husband used his influence to put a police case on him, saying he kidnapped his wife.’
Uma did not look entirely convinced that such intrigues could be playing out on 6th Main.
‘It’s true; anyway, that’s what the watchman said. The police took that poor man away to the lock-up last night and when they came back this morning, his face looked like a pumpkin. The woman has not come home since yesterday so God knows what has happened to her.’
‘I have never seen her. Or him.’
‘Too late to see either of them now I think.’
‘I’ll see you. I’m going inside.’
‘Okay, but keep your ears open for once. If you find out anything, let me know.’
‘I didn’t know they had a watchman during the day,’ said Mala, as the uniformed guard gave them a jaunty salute and opened the gates.
‘Well, you know Anand is a big man now, he probably has all kinds of mafia dons wanting to kidnap him,’ replied Girish, parking the blue hatchback behind his sister-in-law Lavanya’s silver Lexus.
Mala looked at Girish, not sure if he was being serious.
‘Take the fruit basket,’ said Girish, giving himself a quick glance in the rear-view mirror before getting out of the car.
The fruit basket had featured prominently in the day’s itinerary. The initial plan had been to pick something up at the usual fruit stall in Sitanagar. But an inspection of the selection there had revealed a mound of shrivelled oranges and an ailing watermelon. Girish had then driven to Devaraja Market where he had chosen a suitably carnivalesque combination, only to find that the vendor intended to place his selection in an ugly plastic basket, covered with some grease-spattered cellophane.
The search had then begun for a more acceptable receptacle. The bamboo bazaar only stocked large bushels and trays and the man at one of the general stores had tried to sell Girish a basin that he swore was a fruit bowl. Finally, they had retreated to a shopping mall, where a number of themed fruit hampers were on display in the food section. Mala gazed at the Lovers’ Delight, the Aromatherapy Special and the Cheese N’ Wine Deluxe, not even daring to look at the prices. Girish proclaimed that the entire range was in some way deficient and stalked off towards the household department. Half an hour later they emerged from the mall with a small woven basket and made their way back to Devaraja Market, where the vendor had callously returned Girish’s selection to their original positions in his arrangement.
Mala now picked up the basket and followed Girish to the front door. Girish’s brother Anand lived in a large Yadavagiri property that he had bought about three years ago. The house was completely incoherent in layout and style as each successive owner had indulged an architectural vision, or corrected an apparent lack of embellishment, with scant regard for the overall composition of the building. The result was bewildering. The ground floor extended across the site like a cubist fantasy: three giant blocks of equal size, arranged like a three-leaf clover. The first floor, resembling a Swiss ski chalet, seemed to have dropped from the sky quite by chance, attaching itself en route to a trio of pretty Juliet balconies. Above the first floor, a Gaudiesque turret rose up to menacing effect, competing for attention with a stately dome, dotted with a number of portholes. The full impact of the house was like being brought face to face with a deranged aunt who had decided to wear all her party dresses on the same day.
Lavanya opened the door as they approached it.
‘I thought I heard the gate.’ She winked, waving them in.
In the sitting room Richie Rich, dubbed into Hindi, boomed out of the 52-inch plasma screen on the far wall. Anand was seated cross-legged on the thick cream carpet, sporting a tiger mask, a pink dupatta wrapped around his head. As Girish and Mala walked into the room, he began to lift himself up.
‘Ah, come in, come in. You have my permission. I am the maharani of the jungle, you see,’ he explained.
Standing next to the armchair was his daughter Shruthi, a green dupatta tied around her neck, waving a steel whisk.
‘Appa, I told you that you have to roar loudly before you say anything. That’s how all the other animals in the jungle know that you are going to speak,’ said Shruthi.
Anand looked suitably chastised as he unwound the dupatta and stood up.
Lavanya switched off the television and, surveying the jungle inhabitants’ paraphernalia strewn across the sitting-room floor, called out to the maid.
Turning to Girish and Mala, she said: ‘Look at me, still in my exercise clothes. Since coming back from the gym, these monkeys have not given me even one second’s peace. I’ll just change and come, okay. You’ll have some pineapple juice, no? Or tender coconut? Anand, see if Girish wants a beer.’
She went upstairs, her gait deliberate and ceremonial, as if aware that there could be an audience.
Girish shook his head from the enormous cream leather sofa. As Anand wandered off to speak to the maid, Girish looked at Mala sitting opposite him. Even though she had recently started to wear make-up when they went out, she still looked absurdly young: like a PUC student who had been dolled up for a skit at the school’s annual variety show. She was still clutching the fruit basket. The whole effect made it seem like she was going to burst into a harvest folk song.
‘What are you still holding it for? Gi
ve it to Lavanya when she comes down,’ he muttered to Mala.
He turned to smile at Shruthi who had retreated to the far end of the room. Her preoccupation with the whisk seemed to have increased but she still managed to show a modicum of interest in her aunt and uncle.
‘Shruthi, why are you hiding there? Come and tell me how your holidays were. Where did you go? What did you do?’ asked Girish.
‘We went to Bangkok,’ mumbled Shruthi.
‘Wonderful! So tell me, what did you see there?’
‘Lots of temples.’
‘Lots of temples, okay. What else?’
At this point Shruthi shrugged and slipped upstairs too.
The maid came into the room with four glasses of juice and set them down on the coffee table. Anand followed, smiling expansively, as befitted someone who wished his brother and sister-in-law to make themselves completely at home.
Anand was three years younger than Girish. Expectations for the younger brother had never been great. In fact, in some quarters there had been a grim apprehension that he would fall in with the wrong type of people and be responsible for his poor mother’s early demise. As it happened, one of those fears was proved accurate, although for reasons connected to the overloading of boats on the Alaknanda River, rather than any unmeritorious conduct on the part of Anand. Academically undistinguished, he had drifted into a job as a sales representative for automobile components and then moved on to a shadowy enterprise involving a number of cable operators in Sitanagar. It was only after extricating himself from those arrangements that Anand had wandered into the world that would make his name.
About ten years ago, on a hunch, he had gone into partnership with a friend and purchased the right to put up two advertising hoardings at a nondescript junction near the Bangalore–Mysore road. At the time, the section of the road separated a disused chemical plant from a belt of sugar cane fields at the northern periphery of Mysore. The junction’s main role had been to channel trucks and other goods vehicles to and from the state highway. But Mysore’s growth meant that the city’s boundaries began to carve away at the surrounding agricultural land, laying new extensions and sectors on top of fields of paddy and sugar cane. Within six months of Anand’s purchase, plans for the allocation of residential sites in the northern layouts were complete; a year later, the chemical plant had been demolished; and soon after that there was a brisk trade in real estate spoils from the area.
As the metropolitan contours of Mysore shifted, Anand’s entrepreneurial vision tapered to a fine point. The friend was discarded and the partnership transformed itself into Anand and Co, later Exospace Media, a company that sought to requisition all of Mysore’s outdoor territory for its huge commercial canvas. Nothing was safe from Anand’s keen gaze: bus shelters, station platforms, roadside banners and street dividers. As the months went by, park railings, tree guards, gantries on construction sites and mobile phone masts were all commandeered for his business strategy. Some years ago, in a pioneering coup for the city, he had negotiated the use of one side of a private apartment block to sell life assurance; the apartment owners’ association had resisted the move strongly until the financial rewards had been fully elucidated.
While Anand supplied limitless perspicacity and drive, he was assisted by a team of skilful affiliates. Carefully cultivated contacts at the civic administration headquarters meant that all relevant licences and certificates of compliance were issued whenever required. A couple of associates at the Mysore Regeneration Council kept him fully informed with regard to developments to the city’s landscape. A number of his well-wishers in the city’s network of organised criminals ensured that the small-time operators putting up illegal hoardings were encouraged to consider other vocations.
A disgruntled hoarding owner had observed: ‘G S Anand is shameless. If his wife is looking the other way, he will even try and put an advertisement on her bare buttocks.’
As the traditional out-of-home advertising market in Karnataka became saturated, Anand, taking his cue from the big players in Mumbai and Delhi, hitched his wagon to the new technologies that offered greater rewards. By then he had moved into the first of his bungalows in Yadavagiri and felt it unbecoming that he should be considered the type of person who would have his mobile phone number daubed on a roadside sheet of metal. His company moved into the production of customised digital advertising screens at train stations and interactive displays for shopping malls, cinemas and exhibitions. His latest flagship project was a complex system of interlocking panels that would flash the benefits of a mobile phone network to commuters from the side of a planned flyover. He had also recently managed to net a lucrative contract to install digital advertising monitors in all the lifts in Mysore’s newest private hospital. The next stage in his career had only just begun. There were still entire ranges of products that the middle classes were completely unaware that they required; Anand was putting in place all the architecture he needed to communicate the necessary messages effectively and profitably.
The first that Susheela had heard of this business was in an article in Scope, headed ‘Silver sweethearts: Second time round for seniors’. Apparently the trend was increasingly noticeable; or rather, had been noticed by one Vaishali Mehta, deputy features editor of the magazine. Older men and women were striking out again, refusing to disappear into their newspapers and knitting. If Ms Mehta were to be believed, most of the coffee shops in Delhi and Bangalore were occupied by septuagenarians on their third dates. The Internet, it seemed, had liberated an entire generation of metropolitan seniors who could now invite romance and marriage back into their lives. The article made it sound like no park bench was safe, no restaurant out of bounds and no theatre free from the triumphant cries of carousing pensioners.
Susheela had always assumed that dating and matrimonial websites were only for youngsters and perverts. Now her curiosity was piqued. A handful of online searches showed her that a fair number of seniors were locked in a lamentable bid to reclaim their youth. Apparently there was no humiliation that they would not endure in an attempt to turn back the clock. Susheela jammed her reading glasses further up the bridge of her nose: some of these characters were even older than her.
On one website a sixty-six-year-old individual who called himself Avinash stated that his wife Brinda had passed away three years ago. Surely these people would not use their real names? Avinash claimed to have a deep interest in philosophy and stressed that his family members were all highly educated professional people, living all over the globe. He also bore more than a passing resemblance to the old Hindi film villain Pran. Avinash was seeking a well-educated wife or companion, slim or slender, between the ages of thirty-five and fifty. Susheela could only presume that none of Avinash’s erudite, internationally settled relatives had access to the Internet.
She clicked on another photo. Narendra, aged sixty-eight, from Bangalore, had felt the need to include a lengthy description of his career trajectory in the medical equipment manufacturing industry. He was divorced. His wife, he stated, had ‘indulged in some unruly behaviour at the express instigation of her family members and others,’ the consequences of which were fairly apparent. Narendra was looking for a Hindu wife who would be pleasant by nature, devoted and adaptable.
At what point had so many people taken leave of their senses? One man proclaimed with no shame that he was working in Afghanistan and wanted his future wife to accompany him there. As if it was not enough that the unfortunate woman would have all her husband’s details advertised across cyberspace, this man wanted to take her to a place where she would be mercilessly abused by the Taliban. Of course, there were a number of seemingly normal older men who looked perfectly well meaning. Yet some temporary mania had sent them all scurrying off to find wives when they could barely stand up unassisted.
Susheela turned her attention to the women. There seemed to be a number of Anglo-Indian women in their sixties seeking husbands, a fact which did not surprise her. One Be
ngali woman’s profile had been created by her daughter who claimed to be speaking on her behalf. Was the poor woman even aware of the existence of this website or would her daughter simply present her with a long line of geriatric suitors one day, a swayamvar for the superannuated? At least many of the women had seen fit to refrain from publishing their photos. Susheela did, however, spot one very decent-looking lady in a Kanjeevaram sari with a gentle smile. Meena lived in Mumbai and stated that she was looking for a ‘second innings’ with a caring man who would respect her independence. How had her family allowed her to get involved in such things? Susheela heard the phone ring and quickly logged off, her thoughts still fixated on Meena. She really hoped she would not end up with that man in Afghanistan.
‘So what news in the world of power supply? More load-shedding? There will have to be since the rains are late this year,’ observed Anand, pouring himself a beer. ‘You’re sure you don’t want one?’
Girish shook his head.
‘Well, if the population goes on increasing and demand keeps going through the roof, what can anyone do? No increase in supply will be able to keep up,’ said Girish sourly.
‘What you people need to do is stop giving those farmers all that free electricity. At least you will improve your revenue streams and be able to invest in capacity.’
‘Not all farmers get free electricity.’
‘The ones who don’t just stick their line anywhere and steal it. And you people take no action, the police take no action, no one does anything. If it were up to me, I would have a few of their leaders thrown in jail and see how much power they can steal after that.’
‘It’s easy for people like you to talk. It’s not that easy to police the lines. Plus the rich farmers’ groups are very powerful in delivering votes. So they will always get what they want.’
Mala had followed Lavanya into the kitchen.
‘Where was the need to bring all these fruits? So formal you’ve become,’ said Lavanya. Then, turning to the maid: ‘Manju, put these fruits in the fridge. And that basket you can take. You might need it for something.’
