by Mahesh Rao
It was not particularly urgent. He could probably go without a haircut for another week or so. But he had thought, in passing, that today might be a good day. It was a Tuesday afternoon and people tended to avoid Tuesdays for haircuts. He had spotted a place that looked passable and he had the time, as long as he could be home by four to have a shower. Susheela was expecting him to pick her up at about half past four. It was the first time he was taking her anywhere and it would not do to be late.
There were a couple of empty chairs outside the shop. Inside, no one was waiting and there was only one customer. He leant back in his chair, eyes closed as the barber dusted off his shoulders with a brush. The barber gestured to Jaydev to take a seat on the bench against the wall. An assistant stood at the end of the room, twisting a button on his shirt, his body popping with neglected energy.
Jaydev sat down, hoping it would not take too long. Seating with no back could turn into a problem. Above his head, a poster of beaming blond men had almost faded into the wall, the images teal with age. He picked up a film magazine and began to turn the pages. He stopped at a story setting out a top star’s plans to launch a website dedicated to tackling climate change. The star described in detail the moment he realised that urgent action was necessary during the filming of a chase scene in the jungles of Borneo.
The barber was showing the customer the back of his head in a mirror. Did any man do anything other than nod in buttoned-down approval at this point?
The customer’s head bobbed in contentment and he stood up. The barber bowed at Jaydev and indicated the vacant chair.
‘My name is Raju, sir. How can I help you today?’ he asked.
‘I think it needs a good trim. It feels heavy at the back. It might start curling up,’ explained Jaydev, sitting down.
‘Yes, sir. And the front?’
‘The front? Just do something that will go with the back.’
‘Not to worry, sir. First time here, sir?’
‘Yes, my first time. My usual man left town.’
Raju bowed again, as if in deference to that decision. When he tucked a towel into Jaydev’s collar, the skin on his fingers felt cool and grainy. With a flourish, he spread another towel over Jaydev, fussing over its edges. He smoothed out the creases over Jaydev’s arms and brushed imaginary fragments off its surface.
The assistant darted forward and asked Raju a question. As he replied, he rested his hands on Jaydev’s shoulders, like a friend in the playground making a declaration of solidarity. Jaydev waited for the haircut to begin. He stared at the counter in front of him, not wanting to look in the mirror. This type of lighting played tricks. It made his neck look like it had receded into a cavern and his eyes appear even more deep set, trying to catch the light from their submerged lair. Even Raju looked grey and pinched in the mirror. On the counter there stood small tubs of pomade, hair oils arranged by colour, from amber to mahogany, and muscular bottles of aftershave. An open razor loomed in a jar of milky solution, turning grooming into chemistry. The towel around his neck smelt of talcum powder, which always reminded him of his children, white specks mottling the rubber sheet whenever his wife changed them.
‘Sorry sir,’ said Raju, speaking louder than was necessary. ‘You have to tell these youngsters everything a hundred times.’
The assistant began to move a broom around the clean floor, delivering loud clacks as he manoeuvred it into the tight corners around the chairs.
Raju shot him a look of distaste and then squeezed Jaydev’s shoulders.
‘Sorry sir, I will start now.’
His hands swept up the nape of Jaydev’s neck, bunching the white locks for a quick assessment. He then placed a palm on either side of Jaydev’s head and contemplated his face. Satisfied, he picked up a spray and, placing his hand decorously over Jaydev’s eyes, he released clouds of fine mist into the air, all the while looking like someone who would really rather not have to intrude in this way.
He put the spray down.
‘Sir, machine?’
‘No. No machine.’
Raju bowed again. He picked up a pair of scissors and began cutting, blade over fist, the same closeness of clicks that always made Jaydev grind his teeth and look down at his knees.
A man with two young sons walked into the shop and sat down on the bench.
‘But last time you said he would cut off my ears,’ wailed the smaller of the boys.
‘I said if you didn’t sit still, he would cut off your ears.’
The prospect of not moving seemed even more terrifying and the boy buried his bushy head in his father’s lap.
The assistant tried to engage the older boy in some play involving enthusiastic winking but was roundly ignored.
The white snips were falling like snow on to the floor. Once a glassy black with a noble wave in it, over the years Jaydev’s hair had turned into a more tentative sweep, threaded with strands of soft grey, and had eventually settled into a timid, feathery drop, like thoughts made of tulle. Still, at least he had held on to it at his age, more than enough to worry a comb.
Raju picked up a razor and, pulling taut the skin on Jaydev’s cheek, began to scrape at his sideburn. The rasping seemed to be coming from inside Jaydev’s head and was curiously satisfying, like itchy worries being scratched. The process was repeated on the other side. Jaydev’s eyes met his own in the mirror. Everything looked neater, strapped in, kempt. He looked like a boyish old man.
Raju leant forward and said, almost into his ear: ‘Sir, head massage?’
‘What?’
‘Head massage, sir?’
Jaydev had no idea what to say.
So he said: ‘Fine.’
He supposed it would be.
His usual barber liked to keep things uncomplicated. There had never been any doubts, ambiguities or massages. Undoubtedly the glitzy salons in town managed to muddy these waters. But Jaydev had never even stepped through their doors. This was why change in these matters was so unsettling.
Raju poured a liquid into his palm, something brown that smelt of forests. Slathering it over his palms, he smiled reassuringly at Jaydev. The fingers that had been like a strip of wet sand were now like warm wax, melding, easing and quelling. The skin on Jaydev’s head felt fluid, teeming with spores, as Raju’s palms slowly gave up their heat. Jaydev’s eyes were screwed shut, the rings and waves of Raju’s touch only palpable as an irresistible foreign manipulation. The fingers migrated to his temples, stole on to his crown and then dropped to the back of his head. At the base of his neck, they reasoned and resolved. They fled back up his head in jittery bursts, cool, then hot, then cool again, and spread out over the top of his forehead. It could have been a few minutes or a few hours in that soft-cornered darkness.
‘All done, sir.’
Raju ran a comb through Jaydev’s hair and smoothed it down with his hand. Silky bristles caressed the back of Jaydev’s neck and a cooling wad of cotton dabbed the skin behind his ears. Raju finished the process with a mysterious crack that brought Jaydev back to the grey light of the shop.
Jaydev put money down on the counter, nodded at Raju and the assistant and pushed open the door with more strength than it needed. Outside, he crumpled on to one of the empty chairs. His head and neck smarted from the recent contact. All of a sudden, a great galloping sob rose through him, convulsing his body and placing a chilly finger in the hollow of his throat. He slumped forward, crying tearlessly, long absent tremors billowing out, one after the next. He covered his face with his hands and sat bowed in the chair, until, just as suddenly, the ferment fell away, leaving only complete stillness. It felt like the first moment of the early morning. Slowly, he stood up and stepped off the shop’s porch. It had been exactly ten years since anyone had touched his temples, held his head or made much of his neck.
Vijaya Road was not the type of thoroughfare featured in brochures or advertisements. It held no interest for the executive board of the Mysore Tourism Authority and could not have b
een more distant from the frenetic conceptualisation of the organisers of the Lake Utsava. The road was a stubby continuation of the more respectable Acharya Road, squeezed into the concrete jumble behind Sheethal Talkies. A string of bars lined one side of the street with names like Agni, Sagarika and Prithvi, curiously allied to the robust appellations of India’s nuclear missiles. The entertainment provided by these establishments varied. At Agni Bar it was a little television, permanently turned on to a sports channel, where everything appeared filtered through orange gauze. At Sagarika Bar, a number of girls in flashy clothes were encouraged to circulate among the patrons, half of them adopting a challenging sauciness and the rest swinging their dupattas while staring at the floor. At Prithvi Bar the owner’s son, seated on a high stool behind the counter, sang tuneless dirges and was ignored by the clientele.
Opposite the bars stood the nondescript entrance to the Sangam Continental Lodge. In a previous incarnation the hotel had been the Apsara Lodge, but a police raid and the resulting adverse publicity had necessitated a change of management, a new front door and a different name. The Apsara Lodge had been found to be operating as a brothel, housing a number of Bangladeshi and Nepali girls, all illegal immigrants who were sent to the local women’s jail until further notice. The police had discovered a secret staircase leading from the hotel kitchen to a basement room, its entrance concealed behind piles of empty boxes. The room had served to hide evidence of unlawful activities during previous raids, the girls having been herded into the basement following an opportune call from a very obliging local sub-inspector. His eventual transfer meant the end of the Apsara’s time on Vijaya Road and what some sanguinely thought would be the break of a new morning.
A few weeks after the raid, the hotel was open for business again. The Sangam Continental Lodge was categorically not a brothel. The new management was either unwilling to shoulder the risks involved in such an enterprise or firmly resolved against the idea on moral grounds. But in death the Apsara succeeded in leaving more than a trace of her distinctive personality on her successor. Currents of wretched desperation continued to drift up the foul staircase and a profound contamination seeped through keyholes and air vents. The hotel guests shuffled past the reception desk in a hurry, seeking only the solace of a closed door. By day the reception desk was staffed by a threadbare woman with a hacking cough; by night a bearded goon sat in the doorway on a wooden crate that tried gamely to contain his colossal rump. Two straight-backed chairs with elaborately carved headrests stood at the bottom of the stairs but no one had ever been spotted sitting there. The kitchen was no longer operational, even as a conduit to a hidden cellar. In the rooms upstairs, a wan intimacy routed alienation for an hour or two before the space had to be vacated and the key returned.
Shankar closed the door of Room 7 on the first floor and walked downstairs. On the landing he nearly ran into a boy who was making a delivery, his arms clasped around six bottles of beer.
‘Watch where you’re going, sir,’ he said, practised and professional. A large patch covered the seat of his baggy shorts.
Shankar continued down the stairs. As he passed the reception desk, the woman called out to him.
‘Mister, the key,’ she rasped.
‘The lady’s still in the room. She has the key.’
‘What time is she coming down?’
‘Just now. Five minutes.’
The woman returned to the prayer book on her lap and Shankar escaped into the street.
Inside Room 7, Uma sat on the corner of the bed. In her hand she held the key, which was attached to a playing card with a hole punched through it: the seven of clubs. The key smelt like the counter at the medical shop, a combination of hot metal and floor cleaner. She turned to pull the sheet straight and then smoothed out the creases on the two thin pillows. There was no window, no picture, no calendar, nothing to look at in the room apart from the fluorescent light’s icy glare. A jasmine bud had broken free of her hair and lay on the sheet. She picked it up and ran its pursed nib along her cheek before flicking it into the air.
She skirted around the bed and sat down on Shankar’s side, picking at a dog-eared corner of the playing card with the side of her thumb. Someone pulled the chain in the toilet at the end of the corridor and a reluctant gargle made its way through the walls, over her head and down towards the belly of the building.
She guessed that it must be at least ten minutes since Shankar left. She had given him a present for the baby, a bib dotted with a collection of planets. The small square of brown paper lay on his side of the bed: he had either forgotten to take it or had chosen to leave it behind. She stood up and slid the present under one of the pillows. Switching off the light, she opened the door and walked towards the staircase, the key warm in her hand.
The court’s decision was handed down in the course of a short hearing. The judgment was unambiguous. There was no doubt that the ‘public purpose’ test required by the legislation had been clearly satisfied in this case. HeritageLand would provide vast economic benefits, employment opportunities and, with the expected surge in international tourism to Mysore, boost foreign exchange reserves. There could be no clearer formulation of a sound public purpose. It would be inequitable for the court to reject this purpose simply because the conduit for its delivery was private industry. The court was called upon to conduct a delicate balancing exercise and in such cases it was always important to consider the nature of the matter in the round.
Furthermore, the court did not agree with the petitioners’ contention that the public benefits brought by the theme park failed to make restitution for the gross inequity of depriving thousands of farmers of their livelihood and the communities in which many had lived for generations. The government had clearly demonstrated that huge developmental gains would be made and the advancement was for all to share. Farmers who owned land were being compensated for the loss of their property and they would have an undeniable stake in the progress of the city and its environs. The government had guaranteed that landless labourers in the area would also benefit from the fruits of the development.
The court further held that the evidence proffered by the petitioners did not decisively support their assertions that compensation had been miscalculated. There was no obvious unfairness. There was evidence to suggest that elements of irregularity had crept into some of the reports submitted by the state’s land surveyors and in the provision of notices. This was not, however, a sufficiently egregious violation to warrant the court declaring the entire undertaking perverse, irrational, illegitimate, disproportionate or unlawful for any other reason. The parties were urged to come together to iron out these small differences in the spirit of economic cooperation and national betterment.
The lawyer present at the hearing took Vasu to one side. He was sorry to have kept the group waiting but he had needed some time to look through the judgment. It was a completely unanticipated decision. While they had not expected to prevail on every point raised, the exhaustive rejection of their case was mystifying. But matters could not be allowed to end here. The lawyer and the rest of his team would carefully examine the court’s formulations and work out a strategy. Of course, they could not lose hope. There was the Supreme Court. It would take time, effort and money to get there, but it would be worth it in the end. It was precisely for this type of case that the Supreme Court existed.
The lawyer understood that the community would be gravely disappointed. He would come now and explain the decision to those present and, if necessary, would visit one or two of the villages in the next few days. They had to have faith in the legal system. It would be difficult but they would have to be determined and perseverant. They would obtain a stay order on any attempts at encroachment or construction on the land. They would approach the court as many times as was required. If any government or private contractors attempted to defy the orders, they would move the courts again. In the case of harassment or intimidation, the police would be able to assist
them. Besides, such conduct would work against their opponents when it fell to judicial scrutiny at the next stage. The lawyer was aware that there had already been reports of the involvement of the Mysore land mafia in certain areas. The important thing was to bring all such incidents to the attention of the relevant authorities.
He could not say how long it might take for an appeal to be heard. He knew that Vasu had witnessed the delays in getting the case to the High Court and so had experience of the complexity of these matters. But the important thing was to emphasise to the community that the fight was not over. They just had to be patient.
Even though it was not a Sunday, the house was steeped in Sunday quiet. Susheela had told the driver not to come. Uma had asked for the day off because she had a wedding to attend. There was no mali, no chatter from the students on their way to their tuition classes, no commotion from the Nachappas’ garage doors. The morning had evaporated in the gentle heat of newspapers and phone calls, lunch had been perfunctory and now the early afternoon squared up to Susheela like a neighbourhood bully. There were still a couple of hours before Jaydev was due to pick her up. There was no point in having a nap; she did not want to look like someone who had been in bed all afternoon. She walked into the kitchen. Everything was in its place. A piece of netting covered a bowl of custard apples on the counter, beads weighing down its edges. In the pantry she saw that Uma had stacked the month’s newspapers and magazines and bound them with twine, ready for collection on Thursday morning. Through the window, she could see that there was nothing on the washing line.
She went back into the sitting room. Her heart lurched when she thought the clock showed a quarter past three but that was just her eyes; it was still a quarter past two. It was ridiculous. What was she doing to herself? It was as if the stiff progress of hands and pendulums in this house had been replaced by the erratic clashing of a monkey’s cymbals. She walked into the hallway where the telephone sat next to a vase of gerbera. The truth was that there was no one left to call.