waited.
But the road continued to inch upwards, swallowing everything in its path. The sides of their beautiful hills were becoming gashed and scarred. From high on the slopes, the advancing tracks looked like rivers of mud defying gravity, as though nature had gone mad. The distant thunder of blasting and the roar of earth-moving machines floated up early in the morning, and the dreaminess of the dawn mist turned to nightmare.
Mr. Kohlah watched helplessly as the asphalting began, changing the brown rivers into black, completing the transmogrification of his beloved birthplace where his forefathers had lived as in paradise. He watched powerlessly while, for the second time, lines on paper ruined the life of the Kohlah family. Only this time it was an indigenous surveyor’s cartogram, not a foreigner’s imperial map.
When the work was finished, the minister returned to cut the ribbon. In the years since the ground-breaking ceremony, he had grown more corpulent but not less clumsy. He shuffled up to the ribbon and dropped the golden scissors. Seven eager sycophants leapt to the rescue. A tussle ensued; the scissors were wrested away by the strongest of the seven and restored to the minister. He fixed them all with a fierce glare for calling so much attention to a simple slip, then smiled for the crowd and cut the ribbon with a flourish. The crowd applauded, the Bhagatbhai Naankhatai Marching Band struck up, and in the off-key din of the brass winds no one noticed the minister struggling quietly to extricate his pudgy fingers from the scissors.
Then the promised rewards began rolling up the road into the mountains. Lorries big as houses transported goods from the cities and fouled the air with their exhaust. Service stations and eating places sprouted along the routes to provide for the machines and their men. And developers began to build luxury hotels.
That year, when Maneck came home for the holidays, he was puzzled (and later alarmed) to discover his father perpetually irritable. They found it impossible to get through the day without quarrelling, breaking into argument even in the presence of customers.
“What’s the matter with him?” Maneck asked his mother. “When I’m here, he ignores me or fights with me. When I’m at school, he writes letters saying how much he misses me.”
“You have to understand,” said Mrs. Kohlah, “people change when times change. It does not mean he doesn’t love you.”
For Mrs. Kohlah, this unhappy vacation would also be remembered as the one during which Maneck abandoned his habit of hugging his parents and whispering good morning. The first time that he came down and took his place silently, his mother waited with her back to the table till the pang of rejection had passed, before she would trust her hands with the hot frying pan. His father noticed nothing.
Stomach churning, Mr. Kohlah was absorbed in watching the growth of development in the hills. His friends and he agreed it was a malevolent growth. The possibility of increased business at the General Store was no consolation. All his senses were being assaulted by the invasion. The noxious exhaust from lorries was searing his nostrils, he told Mrs. Kohlah, and the ugly throbbing of their engines was ripping his eardrums to shreds.
Wherever he turned, he began to see the spread of shacks and shanties. It reminded him of the rapidity with which the mange had overtaken his favourite dog. The destitute encampments scratched away at the hillsides, the people drawn from every direction by stories of construction and wealth and employment. But the ranks of the jobless always exponentially outnumbered the jobs, and a hungry army sheltered permanently on the slopes. The forests were being devoured for firewood; bald patches materialized upon the body of the hills.
Then the seasons revolted. The rain, which used to make things grow and ripen, descended torrentially on the denuded hills, causing mudslides and avalanches. Snow, which had provided an ample blanket for the hills, turned skimpy. Even at the height of winter the cover was ragged and patchy.
Mr. Kohlah felt a perverse satisfaction at nature’s rebellion. It was a vindication of sorts: he was not alone in being appalled by the hideous rape. But when the seasonal disorder continued year after year, he could take no comfort in it. The lighter the snow cover, the heavier was his heart.
Maneck said nothing, though he thought his father was being overly dramatic when he declared, “Taking a walk is like going into a war zone.”
Mrs. Kohlah had never been one for walking. “I prefer to enjoy the view from my kitchen,” she said whenever her husband invited her. “It’s less tiring.”
But for Mr. Kohlah, long, solitary rambles were the great pleasure of his life, especially after winter, when every outing was graced by delicious uncertainty — what lay round the next bend? A newborn rivulet, perhaps? Wildflowers he had not noticed yesterday? Among his more awesome memories was a mighty boulder riven by a shrub growing out of it. Sometimes he was the victim of a sweet ambush: a prospect of the valley from a hitherto unseen angle.
Nowadays, every stroll was like a deathwatch, to see what was still standing and what had been felled. Coming upon a favourite tree, he would stop under its branches a while before moving on. He would run his hand along the gnarled trunk, happy that an old friend had survived another day. Many of the rocky ledges that he used to sit on to watch the sunset had been removed by dynamite. When he did find one, he rested for a few minutes and wondered if it would be here for him the next time.
Before long they began talking in town about him. “Mr. Kohlah’s screw is getting a little loose,” they said. “He speaks to trees and rocks, and pats them like they were his dogs.”
When Maneck heard the gossip, he burned with shame, wishing his father would stop this embarrassing behaviour. He also boiled with anger, wishing to slap some sense into the ignorant, insensitive people.
On the fifth anniversary of the new road, the local punchayet, dominated by a new breed of businessmen and entrepreneurs, organized a small celebration, inviting everyone to participate. Repulsed by the very idea, Mr. Kohlah left the shop early that evening. He pulled off his eyepatch and started on his walk. The rented loudspeakers, from their perches on tree branches in the town square, followed him for some distance with tinny music and the babble of empty speeches.
He must have walked about three miles when the light of day turned towards the promise of sunset. Strains of pink and orange were weaving their ephemeral threads through the sky. He stopped to gaze westwards, eager to savour the moment. At times like these he wished for two eyes again, to get a wider sweep of the landscape.
Then his gaze was pulled downwards, across the treeless hillside. From hundreds of shacks there rose the grey, stinging smoke of frugal cooking fires. The gauze obscured the horizon. Facing upwind, he could smell the acrid haze and, behind it, the stench of human waste that it grimly tried to shroud. He shifted his weight uncertainly. A twig snapped under his feet. He stood still, asking himself what he was waiting for. He heard the stark voices of mothers calling, the shrieks of children, the barking of pariah dogs. He imagined the miserable contents of the pots blackening over the fires while hungry mouths waited around.
Suddenly, he noticed that dusk had fallen: the sunset was forfeited behind the pall. And the entire scene was so mean and squalid by twilight, so utterly beyond his ability to accept or comprehend. He felt lost and frightened. Waves of anger, compassion, disgust, sorrow, failure, betrayal, love — surged and crashed, battering and confusing him. For what? Of whom? And why was it? If only he could…
But he could make no sense of his emotions. He felt a tightness in his chest, then his throat constricted as if he were choking. He wept helplessly, silently.
The evening darkened. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes. It was a moment before he realized, dabbing at phantom tears, that only the good eye was wet. Strange, he could have sworn the missing one had cried too.
Returning home through the gloom, he decided there was no meaning in going for walks from now on. If meaning there was, it was too new and terrifying for him to explore.
There was no place of escape. Not for himself, at any rate. His dreams had succumbed, as they must, during their collisions with the passing years. He had struggled, he had won, he had lost. He would keep on struggling — what else was there for him?
But for his son, he began considering other options for the first time.
Between them, relations did not improve when Maneck came home for the two-week break before his final term. Their most frequent arguments concerned the running of the store. Maneck was full of ideas about merchandising and marketing, which his father rejected outright.
“At least let me finish talking,” said Maneck. “Why are you so stubborn? Why not give it a try?”
“This is not a little hobby that we can try and toy with,” said Mr. Kohlah, his face mournful. “It’s our bread
