This novella is a 13-day story from start to finish. In this day and age, who has more time than that to deal with death and liberation? To the author, ‘A city has its language. It is not the language the people of the city speak.’ So how does one write in the mother tongue of the city? It is in no way the mother tongue of the writer. Neither is it Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, or Hindi. In Bengaluru, it is not Kannada because Kannada speakers do not make up even half the population of this city. The death of a young woman galvanises her family and neighbourhood into a frenzy of questions and unlikely discoveries.
How does one write in the mother tongue of the writer? The mother tongue of Bengaluru is not Kannada, nor is it Telugu or Tamil or Hindi, even if one of these languages becomes the spoken majority somewhere in the nebulous future. The language of the city is not another human language that we can speak. Yet the author finds the place to be an inspiration for writing the story. At the cusp of the millennium, in a fast-changing neighbourhood in Bengaluru, where languages vie with each other, they form a buzzing background of muted conversations as speculation mounts about what happened that night when a girl barely out of her teens died, at all of 16 years old, by committing suicide. She swallowed rat poison.
Raghavendra, a security guard, has dreams of setting up his own grocery store. It must have a name. Should he call it after himself and call it Raghvendra Grocery Store, or perhaps he should name it Poornima Stores? But his wife vehemently opposes the use of her name. She will not be a part of his grandiose plans. And every morning, for the 13 days following the event, local women continue to gather at the water taps, hours before sunrise, collecting both water and stories. Suddenly, he finds himself flung unwittingly into this potboiler. Needless to say, it does not work. That, and the endless wait for water. Sometimes it splutters, and sometimes it does, and at other times, it simply refuses to trickle out of the public taps.
With the offerings beginning to trickle in, soon there were ample funds to build a compound. On the 13th day, the rain came along with the setting sun, adding its layer of darkness to the night as Raghavendra sat in his grocery shop, finally! Seated on a wooden chair and staring through the glass partition. The lights came on in Patil’s tiny shop opposite their house. Raghavendra could not see Patil but could imagine him peering at his new competitor through his bifocals. The rain intensified, and the power went out. Poornima brought a lighted candle from the kitchen and placed it on the table in front of Raghavendra. She sat on a plastic chair next to him. Of course, there had been no customers on the first day, not even Rajesh or his promised multitude of friends. Now, with the rain, no customers could be expected.
Their lives only reflected the violent changes in the city, changes that would irrevocably erase the age of innocence in Bengaluru’s life. The author combines warmth and playful humour, which resembles the scent of the earth after rain. It gives his characters a certain earthiness. The book becomes a must-read as soon as you turn the first page.
The tale returns again and again, like a memory that lingers long after the event has passed.