The Smoke is Rising (29 page)

Twenty years ago, the Central Lending Library – not to be confused with the City Central Library – occupied the entire ground and first floors of 34 Mirza Road, a three-storey building supported by sturdy pillars the colour of earth. Registration was free, members were allowed to borrow up to six books at a time and there was a special Reference Room for rare or delicate collections. The Chief Librarian had his own office adjacent to the Main Reading Room, and the noticeboard in the veranda usually advertised a variety of English literary events. Particularly well attended in those days were the Mysore Literary Society’s Great Masters discussion
evenings and the talks and readings arranged by the University of Mysore’s Department of English.

In the late nineties, the library was confronted by a deadly combination of drastically diminished allocations from the state’s consolidated libraries’ fund and shrinking interest from the residents of Mysore. In spite of the heroic efforts of the then Chief Librarian, the library was compelled to reduce its active lending stock and take up residence on the first floor of the building. The prestigious ground floor was quickly occupied by the offices of the Mineral Concessions Directorate, the Reading Rooms were lost forever and, along with the fustiness of old paper and threadbare armchairs, the astringent odour of loss pervaded the upper rooms.

Continued financial adversity meant further deterioration in the core collection and the imposition of a registration fee and refundable deposit. Little enterprising flourishes like the introduction of a home delivery service and a single computer for public Internet access did not improve matters; the library was forced to cede some of its first-floor space to the insatiable appetite of the Mineral Concessions Directorate.

Girish had accompanied the library through its lengthy travails, a frequent visitor to the Reading Rooms as a student and still a loyal member. Of course these days he purchased books online, at the regular book expos and in the seductive bookstores at the malls; but he still periodically negotiated the uneven stairs leading up to the first floor of 34 Mirza Road.

The current Chief Librarian at the Central Lending Library was a retired academic, a man who once held considerable influence at the Department of History at the University of Mysore. Traces of his former standing remained in his puckered lips and the haughty look of enquiry he directed at the strays who wandered up to the first floor. How he reconciled his current circumstances with the significance of his legacy at Mysore’s leading institution
of further education was a perplexing question, as imponderable as what he did to occupy himself during the course of his barren days on Mirza Road. A thin, carefully groomed moustache and a promontory of dyed hair made him look like an unlikely hybrid of Clark Gable and Dev Anand. Naturally, Girish’s dislike for the man was intense. They behaved in each other’s presence rather like the first and second wife of a lascivious seignior. Having lost pride of place to the more comely third wife, all that remained was for them to belittle each other in the course of meaningless battles.

Today their discussion touched on the precise meaning and origin of various Latin phrases but it was clear that neither of them could muster up much enthusiasm to ambush the other. After a while, Girish drifted back through the room’s dark aisles, casually running his finger along the rough cloth spines of the older reference volumes. Daylight had faded and the dim lights above the shelves only served to emphasise the hopelessness of any search. He had come to the library with the half-hearted intention of picking up something interesting and improving for Mala to take on holiday. Very soon after his marriage, his natural didacticism had trained itself on his young wife, a blank slate, ready to receive his painstaking inscriptions. His instruction was absorbed but seemed to have little impact on Mala’s desires and enthusiasms. But Girish persevered.

He remembered once having watched a Bengali film set in a period before independence. A cultured landowner, equally comfortable with Keats and Kalidasa, had been forced, or perhaps had blundered, into marriage with a traditional wife whose ambitions had only swept as far as the elaborate palanquin in which she had arrived at her new home. The landowner had quickly made amends. He had engaged an English tutoress, a woman of steel and scholarship, who would endow his new wife with all the important
attributes of classical cultivation and learning. The young wife had spent hours closeted with the gracious lady, exploring music, literature and history. Scales had been sung, dates memorised and quotations relished like plums sucked dry of every last drop of juice. Girish could not remember what happened in the rest of the film but he had begun to recall with increasing regularity those first images where a woman, in spite of herself, was lifted on to the same plane as her husband.

That was all he asked for, he said to himself: a consort who could be his equal, a truly companionate wife. He had suffered the occasional doubt but he had never thought it would be impossible to achieve with Mala. He sometimes felt the need to overwhelm her with good things, with the care and the direction that she needed. He had to protect her, guide her and warn her. Girish was not a man so lacking in self-awareness that he could claim complete ignorance to the effects of his little slips of self-control. But he viewed them as the unfortunate adjuncts of his zeal, the collateral damage precipitated in trying to bring equilibrium to their relationship. As he stopped in front of a shelf crammed with dusty classics, he told himself that they would have the time and the space on this holiday to forget each other’s transgressions, her infuriating dispassion, his occasional irascibility. They would explore and discover, returning home refreshed and renewed.

Twenty kilometres from the self-regarding bluster at Tejasandra Lake, the light was dim in Vasu’s house. Resting his back against the cool wall, he could just about make out the outline of the rolled up bedding on the floor and the bicycle leaning in the corner. The two windows were shut. A wispy curtain hung over the doorway leading outside, its uneven hem sighing in time with the breeze on the porch. Around the edges of the curtain, the day was a spotted
gold, an ugly, grimy compound spreading over the sunlight itself. His father was in the inside room, lying down on the wooden bed whose boards screamed in rage every time they were disturbed. His sister had returned to her husband’s house. He had a good idea where his two brothers were. The whole morning they had spoken of fire and missiles, revolt and combat, action and engagement, damage and disorder. Then they had disappeared without saying a word to him.

The disappointment at the High Court had been overwhelming. There had been the long journey back to Mysore, the three buses caught in dense traffic most of the way. The recriminations had begun even before they had left Bangalore, accusations of manipulation and fraud levelled not only at the establishment but also at him and his colleagues. The meeting called by the
gram panchayat
the next day had turned into a jostling, snarling affair and had to be postponed. The next meeting fared no better. Those who had always maintained that the courts would never come to the villagers’ assistance paraded their furious affirmation from house to house in the dusty lanes.

Just as suddenly as Vasu’s efforts had collapsed, the rumours had sprouted and burst into the village’s every nook. There was talk that Vasu had always known that this would be the outcome; he was in the pay of the state authorities, the real estate developers, the land grabbers; his only intention had been to distract them while the merciless reality unfolded behind their backs. He had been seen having secret meetings; there had always been something shifty about him; how could they not all have known?

There was other talk too. It was said that the victory at the High Court had only hardened the government’s position further. The minister in charge had been heard saying that he would ensure that the farmers would be punished for their intransigence and temerity. Bureaucratic obstacles would be put in place to make
certain that they would never see even the small compensation that was owed to them. There were reports of other harassment. Funds that had already been earmarked for expenditure in these
taluks
would be diverted elsewhere and any future projects would bypass them entirely.

There were specific examples so the conjecture had to be true. One farmer had it on good authority that the distribution of subsidised fertiliser to these areas was soon going to develop an inexplicable bottleneck. Another had heard that power load-shedding would increase dramatically in the coming months, paralysing pumps and delivering a string of hardships designed for debasement. Apparently local
babus
had been made to understand that complaints against them would not be referred to superior officers; police officials had heard that they were to have even more of a free rein in controlling any unacceptable law and order situations.

At first Vasu had been moved to react angrily. He had demanded proof from his accusers; he had waved documents in their faces, the evidence of months of toil; he had stabbed his finger at his own stupidity for trying to give these ungrateful wretches a legitimate voice. But even his storm needed sustenance and the latent heat had simply dissipated.

One evening he had walked into an informal meeting at the house of a village elder. His intention had been to admit his mistakes and appeal to the reason of the community. He had meant to wrap his anaemic confidence around the platitudes of the lawyers and present it to the men as a fresh start. Every road had obstacles; they could not say it was over until all options had been exhausted; they needed to have faith. The words had turned brittle and acrid even in his own mouth.

When he had slipped off his
chappals
and walked into the house, a weary hostility had descended. Insects buzzed around a hurricane
lamp placed at the centre of the group of men and the
lotas
of coffee scattered at their feet. Vasu had stood awkwardly at the door, not having been invited to sit. The men’s goodwill was as impenetrable as the fug of
beedi
smoke.

‘With what face have you come here?’ one man had asked, his voice deadened by failure.

Vasu had looked at him and the others whose eyes held the same whetted flint. Without answering he had turned around and returned home. He did not know with what face he had gone there.

Like every morning, Susheela slipped the key into the letter box on the gate and pulled open its door. Out of the chaos of restaurant menus, sari sale flyers and magazine subscription offers, Susheela pulled out the programme for the Mysore International Film Festival, the logos of its proud sponsors prominently displayed on the cover.

On the inside page Jaydev had written: ‘What do you think? Warm regards, Jaydev.’

It was the first time that she had seen his handwriting and it made her smile. What clues to his character lay in those finely pointed Ws and the vertical tails of the Ys? Susheela had once picked up a guide to handwriting analysis at Great Expectations. The one thing from the book that had stuck in her memory was that the greater the rightward slant of the writing, the more emotionally expressive the person. She smiled again, picturing Jaydev’s reaction to her confident assertions regarding his personality, based on the straight lines and sharp edges that dominated his seven-word missive.