by Adithi Rao
‘Ay!’ he protested, laughing and shaking his head to free himself, but the cloth stuck. Shanta reached up and quickly draped the third sari on the clothes line, then pulled the offending ones off her husband’s face.
‘Hurry,’ he chided. ‘You’re heavier than you think.’
‘Oh, and I thought your back was strong,’ she teased.
‘It is. But I can’t guarantee the strength of my arms. They may just drop you into the mud!’
The other two saris followed the first on the clothes line and were held in place by metal clips. On the air was the faint scent of rain. Shanta put her arms around her husband’s neck, and together they smiled up at the sight of the saris dancing in the moist, warm breeze.
‘Now my Shanta has laid a trap for the rain, and when it comes, she’ll capture it just like everybody else in Rudrapura!’
Five women arrived at Christos Convent and waited (by appointment) outside the staffroom for Pashupati sir. When he arrived, Narayanamma suppressed a quick smile at how accurate Srikanth’s description of his social studies teacher had been. Here he stood, little tuft of hair on the back of his head, watching them over thick, dark-rimmed spectacles that had slipped halfway down his nose, right cheek distended with paan. Gayathri must have been thinking the same thoughts, for there was a suspicious quiver to her lips. Better let Lakshmi speak to him, Narayanamma thought.
As it turned out, Adishree did the talking. Once they had stepped into the staff room and taken seats around the oblong centre table, she said, ‘Sir, since you teach about the environment, we had a few questions that we thought you might be able to help us with.’
‘What?’ asked Pashupati, pushing his glasses up his nose.
‘Charcoal,’ said Adishree. ‘It can purify water, no?’
Pashupati frowned thoughtfully. ‘I remember studying this in school,’ added Adishree quickly.
‘Well, yes. But for what?’
‘For the rainwater we will be collecting. If the water is harvested from the roofs of houses, we will have to find some way to clean it. Otherwise there will be so many pollutants that we won’t be able to use it for too many purposes.’
Pashupati glanced at Narayanamma, Srikanth’s mother. The resemblance was unmistakeable. He had heard much about her but never met her because he himself hailed from Chithalli, and his wife brought their groceries from the local store there. The lady next to Narayanamma was about the same age as she, and looked familiar.
‘You are Mrs Shankarnarayana, no? Sushila teacher’s sister-in-law?’
Lakshmi hesitated, shooting an involuntary glance at Maithili, who kept her eyes fixed on the bookshelf behind Pashupati’s head.
‘Sushila Chandrashekar teaches my daughter in school. Vidyapeetha Public School in Chithalli. She has been giving my daughter detention for past one week. Very strict! Too much strict she is! I went to meet her last Monday, Mrs Shankarnarayana.’
Seeing the strange look on Lakshmi’s face, he faltered, a doubt entering his mind. ‘Er … you are Mrs Shankarnarayana, no?’
Suddenly Maithili said, ‘Yes. She and I both are.’
‘Aanh?’ said Pashupati, gaping at her idiotically. The others looked startled.
‘We both are Mrs Shankarnarayana,’ she said, meeting his eyes evenly. ‘Sushila’s sisters-in-law. She is very strict as you say, sir, and very fair-minded, as I’m sure you discovered when you went to meet her last Monday. Now if you could tell us whether charcoal cleans water, sir?’
Adishree’s eyes were on her lap. Lakshmi and Gayathri were staring at Maithili in fascination. Only Narayanamma was grinning openly at the absolute cheek of the girl. Pashupati’s eyes strayed to Maithili’s rounded stomach for a fleeting moment, and he shut his jaw with an audible snap. Clearing his throat, he looked away.
‘Yes,’ he said hoarsely. ‘It cleans. But better not use it in raw state.’
A battered-up lorry arrived at the premises of Rudrapura Only Mechanics one afternoon, hitched to a tow truck. Its front portion had been completely smashed in, so that it had all but fused with the rear part. The back portion, however, was incongruously intact. The lights on the tow truck flashed, drawing the attention of the people working in the garage. Suresh raised his head from the autorickshaw he was servicing, frowned and simply watched, stunned, as the metal carcass of the wrecked vehicle crawled in through the gates.
‘Devare!’ murmured the senior apprentice, and the junior fellow clutched his arm in shock. Alerted by the sharp warning beeps emanating from the tow truck, Devendrappa looked out from behind a lorry he was painting, and his heart went cold.
Everybody had just one thought at that moment: The driver of the vehicle must be dead. He’s got to be. Nobody could survive an accident of this magnitude.
Suresh nodded at the senior apprentice, who hurried forward and waved his arms to direct the tow truck into the front corner of the garage premises where all metallic waste was piled in readiness for the scrap collector to take away.
Once the battered lorry was stationed in the front yard, everybody crowded around it to get a better look. The tow-truck driver jumped out and wiped his brow on the sleeve of his shirt.
‘How many were killed?’ asked Suresh of him.
‘None,’ replied the driver laconically.
The others stared at him in disbelief.
‘Really?’
‘Neeru iddeya?’ growled the driver in response.
The junior apprentice passed him a bottle of water, and the fellow gulped down most of it, then poured the rest over his neck, shaking his head to get rid of the excess water. Everybody stepped back hurriedly.
Refreshed by the dousing, the driver suddenly became chatty. He grinned around and said, ‘The fellow took one look at the wall looming ahead of him and jumped out of the lorry just seconds before it crashed. He got away with a dislocated arm and a fractured hip. Good thinking, no?’
‘Quick thinking!’ exclaimed Suresh.
‘So this vehicle is beyond repair, then?’ asked the tow-truck driver. And, impervious to the disgusted expressions on the mechanics’ faces, he threw his head back and laughed at his own joke.
‘Come on, everyone, back to work,’ called Suresh, thinking that they had wasted enough time on this silly fellow. Everybody dispersed, returning to their various chores, and suddenly the driver found himself standing in the yard alone. He shrugged and began the process of unhitching his vehicle from the mangled one.
But then, the soft voice of Devendrappa stopped him: ‘Annaiya, swalpa iri. Ondu nimisha.’
The driver stopped what he was doing to watch Devendrappa hurry over to Suresh. As they conversed, the two men turned from time to time to gaze at the mangled truck, as if trying to appraise something. The discussion went on for a while, and Devendrappa spoke with growing animation, while Suresh listened keenly with his arms folded across his chest and his head to one side.
After a while, a slow smile spread across Suresh’s face, and he nodded. The two men turned and strolled over to the tow truck.
‘Annaiya,’ said Suresh, ‘Ondu upakara maadi. Please take this vehicle further on to Five Lights. We will lead the way on our bike and tell you exactly where we want it to be parked.’
‘But…’
‘We will pay the extra charge for it,’ said Devendrappa quickly, and the driver relented.
Just as the bamboo pipe drained rainwater from the roof of the Prasanna Parvati Temple into the well, it could be made to drain water into any other place by simply moving the pipe from over the well wall to wherever else it was needed. Raghu did this now, letting the bamboo pipe come to rest on the ground. He marked that spot and dug a shallow trench from it to his little field, beyond the temple premises. Inside the trench, he laid down the length of the PVC pipe he had bought the previous day. The pipe ran all the way to the head of his field where ears of corn danced golden in the breeze. At the receiving end, the pipe was bent upwards at a right angle so that the bamboo outlet cou
ld be fitted directly into it.
Subhadra, who had waited for her husband at home for over an hour, went looking for him. She found Raghuvir hard at work, firmly packing the earth around the pipe so that it was embedded in the trench. He was flattening down the surface to make it even with the land when he looked up and saw her watching him. Suddenly he remembered that she must have been waiting for him.
‘I got so caught up, I forgot the time …’ he trailed off apologetically.
She shook her head and went to join him. As they worked side by side in the sun, Raghuvir glanced at his wife. She was beautiful. There was no want of animation in her eyes, in her voice, in her movements. He felt a stab of regret at the thought of how many times a day she waited for things – a glance, a smile, a word – that he forgot to give her. He wondered how long she would continue to wait before the animation dwindled and the sparkle dimmed. She was a creature of love and she was married to a man who didn’t love her. How much longer would she love enough for the both of them?
He wanted to love her. The way he had loved his Hibiscus Girl – with all the yearning of his body and heart for its companion, for everything that, by his very maleness, he was not. Or else, to love her as he had loved his Parvati – the yearning of a soul for its own completion.
But the truth was that he no longer loved. Not even the Hibiscus Girl or Parvati. The agony and the ecstasy of loving were no longer available to him. Now he yearned for a perfect, a nameless, a formless thing that seemed not to exist among the tangible. And all that he received from the world, everything he had received, could not fill the aching hollowness inside him. When he took Subhadra in his arms at night, he filled her with his emptiness. He knew now that emptiness, like love, was infinite. The more you gave, the more was generated. He would have traded the emptiness for love, but they were like opposite banks of a river whose bridge had collapsed. And there he stood, looking across to the other side with two voids in place of eyes…
When Raghuvir’s attention returned to the trench, he found that, without his being aware of it, Subhadra and he had dug channels so that when the water flowed out of the pipe, it would be diverted to where the rows of corn were growing in the field. She, by his side, had worked quickly and neatly. Unbidden came the memory of that distant morning when Rathnavva had taken ill and the Hibiscus Girl had rolled out wicks for him and prepared the temple lamps. A faint pain stirred in his heart, the ghost of the feeling that had overwhelmed him so completely the day he had married her to Sheshadri’s son. He closed his eyes and clung fiercely to it, savouring it until it grew and spread through his being, burning and clawing at his insides. Emotion of any kind was welcome to invade the blankness that he had become.
At the touch of Subhadra’s fingers to his cheek, he gasped and looked up. She was watching him with concern. Silhouetted against the blazing sunlight, she might have been anybody or even his Hibiscus Girl. He grasped her hand roughly and pulled it to his mouth, kissing her palm, her wrist, pressing his lips to the soft, secret place in the crook of her elbow. She reached for him, pulling him close, grasping, with her desperation, at this first offering of real emotion she had ever had from her husband. She gathered it all into herself, blind to the cause and blind to the consequences of those few minutes they shared entwined in that field of gold.
13
The Story of Rain – Part II
Lakshmi and Adishree spent several days discussing what Pashupati sir had told them about charcoal. They had even come up with a plan, but the feasibility of executing it was what was delaying them. Nothing about their plan might have merited so much thought, had it not been for the fact that it had to be implemented right there in Sheshadri Mansion first. That is to say, in the house of a certain gentleman who had the unfortunate tendency to put spokes in wheels.
Adishree, having seen a more affectionate side of her father-in-law (with whom she was a great favourite), tended to take a more hopeful view of the situation. But when the women let Gopala in on the secret, he had looked as doubtful as Lakshmi felt.
Still, as Lakshmi sat with Adishree in the living room one day shelling fresh peas, the baby playing on the floor beside them, she began to discuss the possibility of broaching the subject with Sheshadri.
‘Maybe you’re right, Adi. Maybe we should tell him and see about the consequences later,’ she said to her niece.
‘Let’s ask Atte what she thinks of it,’ replied Adishree, seeing her mother-in-law emerge from the kitchen.
Gopala’s mother walked over to them, picking up the baby’s toy that had rolled under the sofa and putting it within the reach of his tiny, grasping hand. He had learnt to drag himself on his tummy now, and would soon be crawling. Thuppa, the now old and nearly blind family dog, followed the child around like a devoted shadow to make sure he didn’t get away too far.
Mrs Sheshadri felt hurt when she saw Lakshmi and Adishree sitting with their heads close together, immersed in discussion. After all, she was the mother-in-law and Lakshmi only the aunt. And yet, between them as always, she sensed a oneness, a companionship of two souls better than herself. It made her wistful, sad, even jealous. For the hundredth time, Gopala’s mother wished that Lakshmi had never returned from her husband’s home. Immediately followed the thought that Lakshmi too surely wished the same thing, and a rush of pity for her sister-in-law washed away, if temporarily, the unpleasant feelings from her heart.
‘Attige, Adishree and I want to ask your opinion about something,’ said Lakshmi, looking up at her sister-in-law with a smile. Mrs Sheshadri joined them on the floor, automatically reaching for the peas that the other two were shelling.
‘We want to do something to recharge the borewell in the front of the house with rainwater.’
‘The one that has run dry?’ asked the sister-in-law in surprise. ‘What can you possibly do for it now? It hasn’t yielded water in years!’
‘It’s a simple process actually, Attige. But it will involve an expense and so we’re not sure Anna will approve.’
Lakshmi was right. Sheshadri absolutely did not approve when he came home that evening and was told about the plan over dinner.
‘Are you mad?’ he shouted at his sister, and his wife flinched. ‘You think I have money to spare for this sort of rubbish? Don’t waste my time!’ When Lakshmi tried to reason with him, he got up from a half-full plate and disappeared into his bedroom, cursing Pattabhiram under his breath for initiating the madness that seemed to have possessed his hometown and ruined everybody’s peace.
‘And now the insanity has reached my own front yard! Boli maga! I should never have organized that talk for him in the first place!’
While everyone else looked distressed, Lakshmi remained unperturbed. Leaving his food halfway through a meal was an old trick of her brother’s. She glanced at Gopala. He was watching her anxiously, as if waiting for his cue. Adishree kept her eyes on the plate from which she was feeding her little boy. Lakshmi knew that she too was unimpressed by Sheshadri’s histrionics, although she was too well-bred to show it.
Gopala needs to grow up, though, thought Lakshmi. It’s been long enough.
‘Gopi,’ said the aunt, coming to a sudden decision. ‘Call the contractor home tomorrow morning at ten.’
Gopala gave a start and Adishree looked up quickly.
‘I have my wedding bangles. One should fetch enough…’
‘Atte!’ protested Gopala in a low voice, mortified. ‘You know it is not about money…’
But his aunt’s eyes were steely, and he looked away without finishing his sentence.
The townspeople responded enthusiastically to Devendrappa’s appeal for contributions. The printer had been asked to print a hundred fliers explaining ‘The Plan’ (as everyone now referred to it importantly), and soliciting the participation of the town in a day-long activity on a certain Sunday morning, at a certain location. The specific type of paint that was needed to put this plan into action, the price of it, as well as the name
and location of a paint shop where it could be procured, were all to be provided in the flier, so that there would be no problem for anyone wishing to contribute a can, and no surprise attacks on their wallets. The paint shop owner, Virendrappa, had agreed to stock enough paint for the occasion. Enthused by the whole idea, he had even promised a discount to all those who came forward in support of the lorry-and-signboard-painter’s ingenious venture.
‘Discount? Are you sure?’ Devendrappa had asked, knowing that people often regretted these impetuous moments of generosity.
‘Oh yes!’ Virendrappa exclaimed.
Devendrappa didn’t want to put this information on the flier only to have the fellow backtrack on his word, so he probed a little further. ‘It won’t be a problem for you?’
‘It will if my wife finds out about it. But she won’t, so no problem!’ Virendrappa said cheerfully.
Devendrappa had grinned then. He knew exactly what kind of problem the paint shop owner was talking about. ‘Your wife will certainly get to know, Virendra. The discount will be announced on the flier in big bold letters. How will you hide it from her?’
‘Hogli bidappa,’ Virendrappa had said, nonchalantly. ‘She can’t read or write a word!’
So the fliers had been prepared (discount and all!). Narayanamma, enlisting the help of Srikanth and his friends early one morning before they left for school, had slipped one into every copy of The Rudrapura Times that she stacked at the Nameless Shop.
The result was that people visited Virendrappa’s store the whole of that day and for some days after that to examine his stock of paints and the range of colours they came in. To make the final selection, they brought their little sons and daughters to pick the colours of their choice.
Most families in Rudrapura could afford no more than one can of paint, and that too at some strain on their pockets. But they were determined to do their bit, and the discount helped.