by Mahesh Rao
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.
‘She won’t open the door. But she is inside. It’s obvious that she’s inside.’
‘Why don’t you come back tomorrow? Are you a relative?’ he asked soothingly.
‘No,’ she hissed. ‘I am nothing. She needs to open the door now.’
She gave the door another kick.
‘No, no, please, this is not the way,’ said the man, reaching out to stop her.
Janaki shrugged off his arm and pressed her whole body against the door, heaving at it with her hip. The veins in the wood shuddered, the jamb creaked, the whole frame shook, but the door remained locked.
A group had begun to form outside Uma’s door, leaving just enough space around Janaki for the heat of her rage to tear into the ground.
‘Is the woman inside sick? Has she fainted?’ someone asked.
‘Should we call a doctor?’
‘I think it’s this lunatic at the door that needs the doctor.’
Word had made its way to the owner of Uma’s room, who lived a short distance away. There was a commotion, someone was trying to break into the room, there might be damage, a police case, a whole month of unnecessary hassle.
The landlord pushed through the group.
‘What is this, madam? Why are you trying to break this door?’ he demanded.
‘What has it got to do with you?’ Janaki asked.
‘It is my door, it is my room, it is my business. Will your grandfather pay for the damage?’ he shouted, primed for battle.
‘Get out of the way,’ she spat.
‘Why do you need to get inside so urgently anyway?’ asked the older man, trying to intercede.
‘I need to speak to that whore inside and I will speak to her today no matter who tries to stop me,’ she said.
‘But why? What has she done?’
‘When she has finished fucking your son, you can come and ask me what she has done,’ said Janaki, wild-eyed.
‘This woman is crazy. Someone take her away,’ went up a cry.
‘Don’t you dare touch me,’ screamed Janaki.
The crowd closed in and soon a whistle pierced through. A police constable was on his way.
‘Let her taste the policeman’s lathi. She’ll remember her way home,’ said a smirking boy.
Janaki managed to get a few more kicks at the door before she was edged away by the crowd towards the entrance of the row. There were more jeers, more appeals for calm. It was another half an hour or so before the constable managed to convince her to leave the area.
To those who had gathered outside, each blow on the door had seemed heavier than the last. To someone on the inside, each impact might have sounded like the head of an axe cleaving the wooden frame, a hinge shattering into fragments and the thud of thousands of splinters embedding themselves in every part of the room’s walls and floor. It might even have sounded like the deafening blast of demolition, a structure being ripped from its foundations, setting off a series of seismic currents. Or maybe to someone on the inside it had all been curiously noiseless; maybe all that could really be heard was the sound of the deep hush that lay thick at the heart of any betrayal.
As Girish approached home, the muezzin’s call to prayer echoed through the evening air. It was an invisible kite wavering on the breath of faith, a sound no longer heard so much as simply absorbed every evening. His footsteps were heavy, kicking up a little dust as he moved up the lane. He lifted the bolt, walked through the gate and noticed that no lights were on. Could Mala be asleep at this hour? He rang the bell, its fierce jangle alerting only him. He rang again, this time holding the button down. Irritation swamped him like a sudden rash, unseen welts of annoyance rising up. Where had she gone at this time when she should be packing? He fumbled in his jacket pocket for his keys, let himself into the darkness of the house and slipped off his shoes.
‘Mala?’ he called, turning on the light in the hallway.
‘Mala?’
He walked into the bedroom and then the kitchen, still holding his shoes. He walked back into the bedroom, pressed the light switch and then opened the cupboard door. As he flung his shoes down, the other cupboard door swung open. Moving to close it, he stopped. It was nearly empty. Most of the clothes were gone. Had she packed already?
He looked up above the cupboards and saw that the smaller case was missing. So she had packed. But where had she gone? He looked for the case in the bedroom and then in the corridor and the sitting room. He walked back to Mala’s cupboard and began to pull open the drawers. Most of them were bare.
There was a rush of comprehension.
He grabbed his keys and opened the locker at the back of the cupboard. As far as he could tell, the cash was undisturbed but Mala’s jewellery was gone. He shut the locker door and returned to the sitting room.
The light from the hallway threw a pale arc across the floor, lending a spot of colour to the objects in the room: the collection of Air India Maharajas, the ceramic frogs in the glass-fronted cabinet, the waxy sofa. It was only when Girish turned towards the front door that he noticed the television. The screen was smashed
all the way across, two almost parallel lines racing from one corner to another. In between these cracked tributaries, a black void took the form of a visceral wound, reflected minutely in his own dark iris.
CHAPTER NINE
When Mala arrived in Konnapur, it was late. Only the most wretched residents of the temple town were to be seen outside at that hour, along with one or two disorientated travellers. She managed to share a rickshaw with an elderly gentleman who was going her way. After she had paid her share, the rickshaw rumbled away, leaving her in the road with her bags. The moon was nearly new and there were no streetlights. The outline of her parents’ house seemed to have been cut into the night’s dark pelt.
She was worn out from the journey. The leisurely pace of the bus had made her restless but she had also dreaded arriving at her destination. At the halfway point there had been a halt and everyone but her had got off the bus to stretch their legs. Through the dust-coated window she had caught glimpses of a young girl feeding an infant on an upturned crate and a chicken being chased by an angry woman. The wait had seemed endless. Vendor after vendor pushed trays of fried snacks up at her window, making her move across to the aisle seat. A boy selling musical pens had boarded the bus and persisted in trying to make her buy one until the conductor returned. The driver had turned the engine on, the frame of the ancient bus shuddering with intent, and then just as suddenly turned it off again. Finally they had resumed their journey, a group of girls on the back seat singing ‘Sare Jahan Se Achcha’ over and over again.
Their dissonant voices still rang in her head as she prepared herself to knock at the door, the chorus scratching at her tongue. The only other sounds she could hear were the hymns of the cicadas melded in with her own uneven breathing.
It was only after her second set of knocks that a light appeared in the front window. Minutes later Babu appeared at the door, his eyes puffy, the neck of his vest sagging indecently.
‘Mala? At this time? What has happened?’ he asked.
‘I’m sorry I woke you up,’ she said softly.
Babu caught sight of the bags and stared at them, as if they were more likely than his daughter to provide a sensible answer to his questions. Rukmini had also emerged into the dim light of the hall, her hair standing up in a series of fearful crests.
‘Can we please talk in the morning? I promise I will tell you everything,’ said Mala, her voice nearly severed with exhaustion.
The house returned to darkness and they all went to bed.
‘She can’t come running here every time they have a quarrel,’ grumbled Babu, settling his hip into the familiar dip in the mattress, ‘I’ll tell her tomorrow.’
‘You don’t tell her anything, at least until we have found out what has happened,’ snapped Rukmini, finding an outlet for the anxiety that had begun to well up in her breast.
‘What is a life without compromise?’ asked Babu, turning over to face the wall, and falling asleep immediately.
Rukmini shot him a dark look and locked her hands over her belly. She knew that the combination of worry and annoyance would keep her up for most of the night.
The next morning the three of them moved around the house like strangers at the scene of a calamity. Rukmini and Mala were excessively polite, smothered in a flurry of banal enquiries and reassurances. Babu remained silent, but his wordlessness had the quality of glue, oppressing the other two as it oozed over their efforts at normalcy. Just as Mala had steeled herself to begin some kind of a genuine conversation with her parents, there was a knock on the door. One of Babu’s ex-colleagues and his wife were delivering invitations to their son’s wedding. They were surprised, they said, and delighted that Mala was there too. Babu and Rukmini would have to ensure that she came with them to the wedding, if she planned to be in Konnapur. Rukmini laughed. Mala’s plans changed all the time. How had she given birth to two such disorganised daughters?
After the visitors had left, the three sat down at the table. Before Mala said anything of significance she asked them for one thing only, that she be granted the concession of being allowed to tell them the whole truth. Once her account was given, she was prepared to collude in whatever connivance was required to placate the outside world. She had after all become an expert at dissimulation and deviation over the past few years. Whether what was required was an artful silence or a cunning pantomime, she was willing to participate, as long as her parents would grant her the grace of hearing what she had to say.
It was a festival day in Konnapur. Reedy drifts of nadaswara accompanied by solid drumbeats were approaching the temple, less than a couple of kilometres away. As Mala spoke, she had to stop from time to time as the noise engulfed her words. The procession was getting closer. A celebratory rattle descended around the figure of the deity, hoisted on the shoulders of several young men. Rukmini closed the windows and returned to the table. Babu continued to look at his hands, placed flat on the table’s surface, as if to show that he too had nothing to hide. The barrage touched the walls of the house as it passed by. It forced its way into the room and tried to wolf down Mala’s testimony. Finally, it moved away, sweeping its rhythm and quake to the foot of the temple’s soaring tower.
Those in charge of the beautification of the area around Tejasandra Lake had unspoken aims far greater than the mere spectacle of a festival. They were setting down a template for aspiration, new rules to govern public spaces, perhaps even changing the fabric of modern urban mores. In the name of the common good, the crude and the coarse had to be conquered and a ruthless grandeur imposed. The benefits would be self-evident to all the faithful who witnessed the celebrations at the edge of the lake. To the rest, invisibility would be graciously bequeathed.
The theme park farmers had been effaced from the public’s consciousness with a brisk stroke. The news of the High Court decision had made front page news and all the major bulletins, of course. But then a membrane had seemed to knit over the wound even before it began to heal. The farmers were back on their land, the old fears flourishing again, as if they had never been assured of any kind of victory in the first place. Meanwhile the drone of topicality had settled over the latest corporate scam, cricketing disappointments and renewed party factionalism before inevitably moving on again. All over the country the curators of public interest knew that attention spans were short but appetites ravenous.
The pressure on the farmers was beginning to mount. Acres of sugar cane abutting the proposed HeritageLand site were found blazing mysteriously. Irrigation equipment was damaged in the middle of the night. A number of farmers were arrested on the basis of incomprehensible charges and refused bail. Intimidating representatives of a prominent land developer began to pay visits to some of the houses in the affected areas. A group of former activists were badly assaulted and abandoned in a gully. Wells were poisoned. Four young men who had set out on a pilgrimage, praying to see an end to the villages’ troubles, never returned.
At the same time, a new movement had taken form. The definitive failure of Vasu and his colleagues meant the rise of something far more hostile, a combative ardour that moved around the periphery of the city like a silent cyclone. The aim of these farmers was to reclaim their visibility and retrace their faded outlines by taking their grievances, not to the palaces of justice, but to the boulevards of culture.
The eyes of the world would soon be on Mysore. They were determined that along with the dazzle of celebrity and the sheen of art, the world would be blinded by the flame of their protests along Tejasandra Lake.
This time they had taken close charge of all preparations. There would be no advance notice to the authorities and no opportunity for pre-emptive action. They would arrive in Mysore in batches, separate groups making their way to the Promenade at designated times for maximum impact. They knew what to carry and where to hide. Two vests, a thick flannel undershirt and wadded up plastic bags would provide a few layers of protection when the lathis began to strike. Chilli powder flung into the air as
policemen approached would release a few seconds of valuable time. Scarves and monkey caps were essential to avoid identification on CCTV. Breathing through a wet cloth tied around the nose and mouth would help temper the violent sting of tear gas. Rubbing a rag soaked in vegetable oil on skin could help alleviate any burning sensation. Tear gas canisters were extremely hot and could only be picked up if hands were protected. If trying to escape pursuit, nails and sharp fragments of brick scattered in the road could puncture the tyres of police jeeps and motorbikes.
Vasu’s brothers would return late at night in the week before the Lake Utsava, their hoarse whispers dying down as they unrolled their bedding in the front room. In hardly any time their breathing would be heavy and even, filling every corner of the house. Facing away from them on the far side of the room, Vasu would be awake until the early hours, marking the passage of night with the beat of his right foot against the floor. He was not allowed to be privy to the preparations around him, but they were breaking his heart.
Mala’s tale was different from other tales. Some of it was told that first morning but its full heft could only be conveyed in the refuge of long silences and the nuance of truths only partially exposed. Its substance came from her gradual disclosures and her irregular recollections. Rukmini was a patient woman and did not push Mala into giving her an immediate and complete account. Her questions were never unprompted and her observations fell gently into their laps, like down. She did, however, watch Mala constantly. As she prepared lunch, sinking her knuckles into the roll of dough, she would glance across at her daughter’s moving shadow. When they knotted up plastic bags of vegetables from the market to put into the fridge, her gaze would settle on Mala’s silent profile. In the evenings she would make sure she could hold Mala, reading on the back steps, steadily in her sight. She was not sure if Mala was aware of this vigil; she was barely aware of it herself. But at this time, it was all she could do.
