The Smoke is Rising by Mahesh Rao Read Free Book Online Page B

she had inherited fromSridhar. 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