They left the apartment silently, heeding Mr Rao’s request not to disturb the sleeping Sharadha Bhatt. (The old lady turned restlessly on her wooden bed as they departed; in the background the religious music droned on.)
‘Do come next week!’ Mr Rao had said from the terrace. ‘It’s the week of the Satya Narayana Pooja! I’ll make sure Kamini does a better job with the cooking next week, unlike tonight’s disaster!’ He turned into the house and raised his voice: ‘Did you hear that, Kamini? The food had better be good next time, or you’re divorced.’
There had been a laugh and a high-pitched scream from inside: ‘You’ll be the one to get divorced, unless you shut up!’
Once at a safe distance, the intimates burst into chatter.
What a pair! The man and woman such complete opposites! He was ‘bland’; she was ‘spicy’. He was ‘conservative’, she was ‘modern’. She was ‘quick’, he was ‘deep’.
Still picking their way along the muddy road, they began to discuss the forbidden topic, with all the excitement and eagerness of people who were discussing it for the first time.
‘It’s obvious,’ said one of the women, Mrs Aithal or Mrs Shirthadi, ‘Kamini is the one “at fault”. She wouldn’t have the operation. No wonder her life is racked by guilt. Don’t you see how she throws herself on any available child in a storm of frustrated maternity, showering them with kisses and blandishments and caramel chocolates? What does that signify, if not guilt?’
‘And why did she refuse the operation?’ demanded Mr Anantha Murthy.
Obstinacy. The women were sure of it. Kamini simply refused to acknowledge that the fault was hers. Some of Kamini’s stubbornness, to be sure, came from her privileged background. She was the youngest of four sisters, all fair as buttermilk, the darling children of a famous eye-surgeon in Shimoga. How she must have been spoiled as a child! The other sisters had married well – a lawyer, an architect, and a surgeon, and they all lived in Bombay. Giridhar Rao was the poorest of the brothers-in-law. You could be sure that Kamini was not the kind of woman to let him forget this. Haven’t you seen how defiantly she rides about town in her Hero Honda moped, as if she were the lord of their household?
Mr Anantha Murthy raised several objections. Why were all the womenfolk so suspicious of Kamini’s ‘sportiness’? How rare to find such a free-thinking woman! The fault was surely his. Haven’t you seen him refuse promotion after promotion just because he would have to move to Bombay? What does that tell you? The man is lethargic.
‘If only he would show…some more initiative…the problem of childlessness could easily be solved…’ Mr Murthy said, giving his bald head a sad philosophical shake.
He even claimed to have given Mr Rao the names of doctors in Bombay who could solve his lack of ‘initiative’.
Mrs Aithal reacted indignantly. Mr Rao had more than enough ‘spunk’ in him! Didn’t he have such thick facial hair? And didn’t he ride an entirely masculine red Yamaha motorcycle to the bank every morning?
The women enjoyed romanticizing Mr Rao. Mrs Shirthadi irritated Mr Murthy by suggesting that the modest little bank manager was also in secret ‘a philosopher’. Once she had caught him reading the ‘religious issues of the day’ column on the last page of The Hindu. He seemed embarrassed at this discovery, and parried her inquiries with jokes and puns. Still, the feeling had grown that beneath all his joking, he was undeniably ‘philosophical’.
‘How else can he be so calm all the time, even without children?’ Mr Aithal demanded.
‘He has a secret of some kind, I’m sure,’ Mrs Murthy suggested.
Mrs Karwar coughed and said: ‘Sometimes I fear that she might be thinking of divorcing him’ – and everyone looked concerned. The woman certainly was ‘modern’ enough to think of trying something like that…
But they had reached their cars now, and the group broke up, and drove away one after the other.
Later in the week, though, the Raos were observed as they circled the Cool Water Well Junction on his Yamaha bike. Kamini sat on the backseat holding on to her husband tightly, and the observers were surprised to see how the two of them looked like a real couple just then.
Next Thursday, when the intimates returned to the Raos’ residence, they found Sharadha Bhatt herself opening the door for them. The old woman’s silver hair was disarrayed and she glared at her tenants’ guests.
‘She’s having trouble with Jimmy – you know, her architect son in Bombay. She’s asked him again if she can come to stay with him, but his wife won’t allow it,’ Kamini whispered, as she led them up the stairs.
Because of the anticipation of an extraordinary meal this evening, Mr Shirthadi was putting in a rare appearance alongside his wife. He spoke passionately about the ingratitude of today’s children, and said he sometimes wished he had stayed childless. Mrs Shirthadi sat nervously – her husband had almost crossed the invisible circumference.
Then Mrs Karwar arrived with Lalitha, and there was the usual shouting and shrieking between Kamini and the ‘secret lover’.
After the sherbet, Mr Anantha Murthy asked Mr Rao to confirm a piece of gossip – had he turned down another offer to be posted to Bombay?
Mr Rao confirmed this with a nod.
‘Why don’t you go, Giridhar Rao?’ demanded Mrs Shirthadi. ‘Don’t you want to rise in the bank?’
‘I’m happy out here, Madam,’ Mr Rao said. ‘I have my private beach, and my BBC in the evenings. What more does a man need?’
‘You are the perfect Hindu man, Mr Giridhar,’ said Mr Murthy, who was growing restless for dinner. ‘Which is to say, you are almost completely contented with your fate on earth.’
‘Well, would you still be contented if I ran away with Lalitha?’ Kamini shouted from the kitchen.
‘My dear, if you ran away, then I’d be truly contented,’ he retorted.
She shrieked out in mock outrage and the intimates applauded.
‘Well, what about this private beach that you keep talking about, Mr Rao – when are we going to see it, exactly?’ Mrs Shirthadi asked.
Before he could reply, Kamini came scampering out of the kitchen and leaned over the bannister.
A stertorous breathing grew louder. Sharadha Bhatt’s face became visible, as she limped up, one stair at a time.
Kamini was agitated.
‘Should I help you up the stairs? Should I do something?’
The old woman shook her head. Half out of breath, she stumbled onto a chair at the top of the stairs.
The conversation stopped. This was the very first time the old woman had joined the weekly dinners.
In a few minutes the intimates had learned to ignore her.
Mr Anantha Murthy clapped his hands when Kamini came out with the appetizer tray.
‘So, what’s this I hear about your taking up swimming?’
‘And if I am?’ she snapped, putting a hand to her waist. ‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘I hope you are not going to wear a bikini like a Western woman?’
‘Why not? If they do it in America, why can’t we? Are we less than them in any way?’
Lalitha giggled furiously as Kamini announced plans for the two of them to buy the scandalous swimsuits right away.
‘And if Mr Giridhar Rao doesn’t like it – then the two of us are going to run away and live together in Bombay, aren’t we?’
Giridhar Rao glanced nervously at the old woman, who was gazing at her toes.
‘All this “modern” talk isn’t getting you upset, is it, Sharadhaamma?’
The old lady breathed heavily. She curled her toes and stared at them.
Mr Anantha Murthy ventured a comparison between the barfi that Kamini had put out on the appetizer tray and the barfi served in the best café in Bombay.
Then the old lady spoke in a hoarse voice: ‘It is written in the Scriptures…’ She paused for a long time. The room went silent. ‘… that a man…a man who has no son may not aspire to enter the gates of
Heaven.’ She breathed out. ‘And if a man doesn’t enter Heaven, neither can his wife. And here you are talking of bikinis and wikinis, and cavorting with “modern” people, instead of praying to God to forgive your sins!’
She breathed heavily for another moment, then got to her feet and hobbled down the stairs.
When the intimates left – it was a truncated evening – they found the old lady outside the house. Sitting on a suitcase bursting with clothes, she was bellowing at the trees.
‘Yama Deva, come for me! Now that my son has forgotten his mother, what more is there for me to live for?’
As she called to the Lord of Death, she struck at her forehead with the stems of her fists, and her bangles jangled.
Feeling Giridhar Rao’s hand on her shoulder, the old woman burst into tears.
The intimates saw Giridhar Rao gesture for them to leave. The old lady had exhausted her histrionics. Her head sank onto Kamini’s breast and she convulsed in sobs.
‘Forgive me, mother… The gods have given us each our punishment. They gave you a uterus of stone, and they have smashed the heart in my son’s chest…’
After they had put the old lady to bed, Mr Rao let his wife climb the stairs first. When he joined her, she was lying on the bed, with her back turned towards him.
He walked onto the verandah and turned the radio off.
She said nothing as he picked up his helmet and headed back down the stairs. The kick-starting of his engine rent the quiet of Bishop Street.
In a few minutes, he was heading down the road that went through the forest towards the sea. On either side of the speeding bike, serried silhouettes of coconut palms bristled against the blue coastal night. Hanging low over the trees, a bright moon looked as though it had been cleaved by an axe. With its top right corner sliced off, it hung in the sky like an illustration of the idea of ‘two-thirds’. After a quarter of an hour, the Yamaha bike swerved off the road into a muddy track, thundering over stones and gravel. Then its engine went dead. A lake, a small circle of water inside the forest, came into view, and Giridhar Rao stopped his bike, leaving his helmet on the seat. Fishermen had cleared a small shore around the lake, which was bounded on the far side by more coconut trees. At this hour, there would be nets all over the lake, but there was not another soul to be seen. A heron, walking through the shallow water at the edge of the lake, was the only other living thing in sight. Giridhar had stumbled upon his lake years ago, on a drive through the forest at night. He had no idea why no one came here; but a small town is like that, full of hidden treasures. He walked beside the lake for a few minutes, then sat down on a rock.
The water, its glossy surface broken by black ripples, looked like sheets of molten glass settling one on top of another.
The heron flapped its wings and rose into the air. Now he was all alone. He hummed softly, a tune from his bachelor days in Bangalore. A yawn expanded his face. He looked up. Three stars had emerged from the tatters of a grey cloud; together with the two-thirds moon they composed a quadrilateral. Mr Rao admired the structure of the night sky. It pleased him to think that the elements of our world were not cast about at random. Something stood behind them: an order.
He yawned again and stretched his legs out from the rock.
His peace was broken. It had begun to drizzle. He wondered if he had remembered to fasten the windows above their bed; the rain might strike her face.
Leaving his private beach behind, he sprinted to his motorbike, donned his helmet, and kicked the machine to life.
One morning in 1987, all of Bishop Street woke to hear the dull thack-thack-thack of axes hacking away at the trees. In a few days, chainsaws were buzzing, and cranes were scooping up huge portions of black earth. And that was the end of the great forest of Bajpe. In its place, the inhabitants of Bishop Street now saw a giant pit filled with cranes, lorries, and an army of bare-chested migrant workers carrying stacks of bricks and cement bags on their heads like ants moving grains of rice. A giant sign in Kannada and Hindi proclaimed that this was to be the site of the ‘Sardar Patel Iron Man of India Sports Stadium. A Dream Come True for Kittur’. The racket was incessant, and dust swirled up from the pit like steam from a geyser. Outsiders who returned to Bajpe thought the neighbourhood had become a dozen degrees warmer.
Day Seven: SALT MARKET VILLAGE
If you want a servant you can trust, a cook who won’t steal sugar, a driver who doesn’t drink, you go to Salt Market Village. Although it has formed part of Kittur Corporation since 1988, Salt Market remains largely rural and much poorer than the rest of the town.
If you visit in April or May, you must stay to watch the local festival known as the ‘rat hunt’ – a nocturnal ritual in which the women of the suburb march through the rice fields bearing burning torches in one hand, as they pound the earth with hockey sticks or cricket bats in the other hand, shouting all the time at the tops of their voices. Rats, mongooses, and shrews, terrified by the noise, run into the centre of the field, where the women pound the encircled rodents to death.
The only tourist attraction of Salt Market Village is an abandoned Jain basadi, where early Kannada epics were written by the poets Harihara and Raghuveera. In 1990, a portion of the Jain basadi was acquired by the Mormon Church of Utah, USA, and turned into an office for its evangelists.
Murali, waiting in the pantry for the tea to boil, took a step to his right and peeped through the doorway.
Comrade Thimma, who was sitting beneath the framed Soviet poster, had begun to grill the old woman.
‘Do you understand the exact nature of the doctrinal differences between the Communist Party of India, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), and the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Maoist)?’
Of course she doesn’t know, Murali thought, stepping back into the pantry and switching off the kettle.
No one on earth did.
He put his hand into a tin box full of sugar biscuits. A moment later, he was out in the reception area with a tray holding three cups of tea and a sugar biscuit next to each cup.
Comrade Thimma was looking up at the wall opposite him, where it was pierced by a grilled window. The evening light illuminated the grille; a block of light glowed on the floor, like the tail of an incandescent bird perched in the grille.
The Comrade’s manner strongly suggested that the old woman, considering her state of complete doctrinal ignorance, was unworthy to receive assistance from the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Maoist), Kittur branch.
The woman was frail and haggard; her husband had hanged himself two weeks ago from the ceiling of their house.
Murali placed the first cup before Comrade Thimma, who picked it up and sipped the tea. This improved his mood.
Once again looking high up at the glowing grille, the Comrade said: ‘I will have to tell you of our dialectics; if you find them acceptable, we can talk about help.’
The farmer’s wife nodded, as if the word ‘dialectics’, in English, made perfect sense to her.
Without taking his eyes from the grille, the Comrade bit into one of the sugar biscuits; the crumbs fell around his chin, and Murali, after handing the old woman her tea, went back to the Comrade and wiped the crumbs off with his fingers.
The Comrade had small, sparkling eyes, and a tendency to look high up and far away, as he delivered his words of wisdom, which he always did with a feeling of suppressed excitement. This gave him the air of a prophet. Murali, as prophets’ sidekicks often are, was physically the superior specimen: taller, broader, with a large and heavily creased forehead, and a kind smile.
‘Give the lady our brochure on dialectics,’ the Comrade said, speaking straight to the grille.
Murali nodded and moved purposefully towards one of the cupboards. The reception area of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Maoist) was furnished with an old tea-stained table, a few decrepit cupboards, and a desk for the secretary-general, behind which hung a giant poster, from the early days of the Soviet Revolution, depic
ting a group of proletarian heroes climbing a ladder up into heaven. The workers bore mallets and sledgehammers, while a group of oriental gods cowered at their advance. After digging into two of the cupboards, Murali found a pamphlet with a big red star on the cover. He brushed it with a corner of his shirt and brought it to the old woman.
‘She can’t read.’
The soft voice came from the woman’s daughter, who was sitting in the chair next to her, holding on to her teacup and untouched sugar biscuit. After a moment’s hesitation Murali let the daughter have the brochure; keeping the teacup in her left hand, she held the pamphlet between two fingers of her right, as if it were a soiled handkerchief.
The Comrade smiled at the window grille; it was not clear if he was reacting to the events of the past few minutes. He was a thin, bald, dark-skinned man with sunken cheeks and gleaming eyes.
‘In the beginning we had only one party in India, and it was the true party. It made no compromise. But then the leaders of this true party were seduced by the lure of bourgeois democracy; they decided to contest elections. That was their first mistake and the fatal one. Soon the one true party had split. New branches emerged, trying to restore the original spirit. But they too became corrupted.’
Murali wiped the cupboard shelves and tried to realign the loose hinge of its door as well as he could. He was not a peon; there was no peon – Comrade Thimma would not allow the exploitative hiring of proletarian labour. Murali was certainly not proletarian – he was the scion of an influential landowning Brahmin family– so it was okay for him to perform all kinds of menial work.
The Comrade took a deep breath, took off his glasses and rubbed them clean with a corner of his white cotton shirt.
‘We alone have kept the faith – we the members of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Maoist). We alone remain true to the dialectics. And do you know what the strength of our membership is?’
He put his glasses back on and inhaled with satisfaction.